Second big lottery win leaves woman from Ontario ‘speechless’

Forget about dessert — Mary Fatima Francis Mariaseelan recently found something more palatable on the after-dinner menu.

While cleaning up following a family meal one night, the 62-year-old Mississauga woman decided to check her Daily Keno 8 Pick ticket.

That’s when Mariaseelan discovered her ticket in the Oct. 15 evening draw was worth $50,000 — the same amount she’d won playing the same lottery game 10 years earlier.

“When I discovered I won, I screamed with joy and tears filled my eyes,” the lucky ticket holder recalled while at the Ontario Lottery and Gaming Corporation (OLG) Prize Centre in Toronto to collect her winnings. “I checked my ticket about 20 times to make sure I wasn’t seeing things and was smiling from ear to ear. I kept thinking, ‘How could this happen to me again? This must be a dream.’ I was just speechless.”

The Mississauga resident, who works as a cleaner, has been a regular OLG lottery player for about 15 years and her first $50,000 Daily Keno win came in 2015, lottery officials said in a news release on Tuesday.

After finding out she’d won again, Mariaseelan, a mother of two, shared the news with her family right away.

“My husband was just as shocked as I was. The joy on his face was priceless. It was such a beautiful, happy moment,” she said, smiling. “My kids asked, ‘Mom, how did you win again?’ They thought I was joking at first.”

With the holidays right around the corner, Mariaseelan said the timing of her win couldn’t be better. She plans to put her windfall toward bills and a down payment on a house.

“I have to take some time to think about what to do with the rest,” she added. “I can’t even describe the joy I feel right now.”

The winning ticket was purchased at Petro-Canada, on Burnhamthorpe Road West in Mississauga.

(Cover photo: OLG)