Lucky young adult Set for Life

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This article was published 16/09/2010 (5820 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Of all the ways to celebrate becoming a legal adult, Taylor Witzke wasn’t expecting becoming a millionaire to be one of them.

The Transcona teen, who turned 18 on Sept. 6, got a birthday present to last a lifetime: a scratch lotto ticket that nabbed her a million-dollar prize… and made her quite possibly the youngest million-dollar jackpot winner in Canadian history.

“It’s so incredible,” Witzke said, a week after her win. “One second you’re in a friend’s garage just hanging out, the next you’re holding a ticket worth a million dollars.”

Talk about birthday luck. To celebrate all the legal perks of her 18th, Witzke and a friend headed to Club Regent Casino the day after her Labour Day birthday.

After blowing $20 on casino games, the pair decided to make a hasty retreat. On their way out, they bought a handful of Set for Life scratch-and-win tickets. One of Witzke’s tickets was a $5 winner, a prize she parlayed into a second ticket. And that one, it turned out, was the top jackpot winner.

Not that Witzke, her friends, or her mom — who the winner called minutes after scratching the lucky ticket — could believe it at first.

“I’m thinking, ‘This can’t be happening. It must be wrong,'” chuckled mom Andrea Witzke. “And there was a lot of screaming, and then I phoned my family… still not really believing it, of course.”

Well, they definitely believe it now. The windfall will change the world for Witzke, who graduated from Transcona Collegiate earlier this year and was taking the year off school to work and consider her university plans. While the teen still isn’t certain what she wants to train for — maybe writing, maybe performance — she plans to stay at her retail job until she settles on an academic path.

That was part of the pre-million plan for Witzke; only now, the possibilities are endless. “Now I have the money, it’s incredible. No student loans, nothing like that. I can do anything I want,” Witzke mused. “It’s weird. I’m trying to be so careful. I’m only 18, and it’s so much at once.”

While having a teen with a newly-legal birthdate and a giant wad of cash would be enough to terrify most parents — Lindsay Lohan, anyone? — Witzke’s folks aren’t worried.

“She’s a really smart girl, so I know she’s not going to go too crazy,” Andrea Witzke said. “School is her No. 1 priority, and that’s all I really hope for her. I’d love her to go to university and be whatever she wants to be.”

So, what does she want to be? Just plain ol’ Taylor Witzke… only maybe now, she’ll get her own car. “I don’t want to be somebody else,” Witzke said. “I just want to be normal me with a little bit more money in my pocket.”

Andrea Marantz, a spokeswoman for the Western Canada Lottery Corporation, said Witzke could very well be the youngest winner in WCLC history.

“This is the first win like this in my time,” Marantz said, agreeing that Witzke’s just-18 win is a remarkable stroke of luck and coincidence. “I can’t imagine there have been many other cases.”

melissa.martin@freepress.mb.ca