Chase the Ace player, a Sydney Mines woman, wins $79K
A Sydney Mines woman says she's making an exception to her non-superstitious ways after winning $79,000 in the Chase the Ace lottery on Saturday.
"My mother was looking down on me and said, 'She needs a break,'" Mary Margaret MacIntyre said, pointing to the sky.
She and a friend travelled to Inverness on the weekend with the intention of letting lady luck guide her hand to a winning card.
"I am not superstitious, but this one time I do believe my mother had something to do with it. So who knows — she may be with me next Saturday!"
In recent weeks, Chase the Ace fever in Cape Breton has grown fast, like its jackpot, which is now at $397,000.
The lottery is like a 50-50 draw, but instead of winning half the value of ticket sales, the winner gets a smaller cut of the take and a chance to draw the ace of spades from a deck of regular playing cards to win the jackpot.
While others were paying big money to win, MacIntyre got the winning ticket with a relatively small sum.
"Well, I felt a bit lucky because the fact I was going to spend a $100. I thought there may be a chance," she said.
"I saw people spending as much as $500 to a $1000 I think, I don't know, but to spend money on tickets they may be overspending with the dream. Chase the Ace is not a dream — it's luck."
MacIntyre says she remained calm when she stepped up to draw one of nine remaining cards.
"If I flipped the ace, that's fine. If I don't flip the ace, I am still going home with $80,000 — so actually it didn't matter. It would have been nice to get the ace but how could I complain?"
She and her friend have split the winnings, which MacIntyre says she'll share with the rest of her family.
"This money was meant from my grandmother to make us happy," said Amber, MacIntyre's daughter. "So we are going to make some other people happy with it too."
Chase the Ace organizers say this week's jackpot will grow to over $500,000.
