A Christchurch woman says she was "light-headed and in a bit of shock" after learning she'd been carrying around a $1 million winning Lotto ticket for a week.
"I hadn’t heard that anyone had won in Christchurch, so it came as a bit of a shock," she said.
The woman, a regular Lotto player, was going about her day last Wednesday when she decided to check her ticket at a local store from the July 8 draw.
On scanning the ticket, the terminal displayed a message saying she’d won "a major prize".
"I asked the staff member how much it was, and she slid the receipt across to show me that it was $1 million," she said.
"There was no doubting there was six zeroes there, but it took a while to compute."
The woman then called her husband who was at work.
"I told him I needed to see him straight away, but not to worry, and that everything was OK,” she said.
After the pair met up, the woman told her husband she was "light-headed and in a bit of shock".
"His face went completely white."
Instead of explaining, she showed him the prize receipt.
Her husband said he "didn’t really process what I was looking at".
"When I saw it was a prize, I actually thought it said $1000."
His wife then told him to have a closer look.
"That’s when it clicked," he said with a laugh. "It wasn’t a thousand dollars, it was a million. All I could say was, 'Oh my goodness'.
"Then I had to go back to work and act like everything was completely normal – that was hard!"
The couple spent the evening talking about their win and what the future might hold.
"It still feels unreal," the woman said. "I think it’s going to take some time before it fully sinks in. We’re going to take some time to think about what to do with it."
Meanwhile, Lotto's Powerball prize was not won last night, and has rolled over to $40 million for Saturday's draw.
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