A FIVE-member family syndicate from Monmouth have become the latest UK winners to land the EuroMillions jackpot, scooping a colossal £61,102,442.90. 

The winning ticket, purchased at Overmonnow Garage in Monmouth, was won by the syndicate on Friday (29th July).

Sales Exec Stephanie Davies (23), reluctantly left her house late on Friday evening after she’d had a call from her mum, Sonia (53) pleading with her to pop out and buy a EuroMillions ticket.  Sonia and her partner Keith Reynolds (55) were on holiday in Florida at the time, but after the week they’d had, felt that lady luck was shining upon them – and after reading about the huge jackpot they knew they just had to buy a ticket. 

Stephanie said: “I thought mum was mad calling me from holiday, but they were so insistent I knew we had to do it. My car was blocked in the drive by my boyfriend Steve’s, so to save time I made him drive me to buy a ticket instead of moving mine.”

Sonia, an admin assistant and Keith, who is a Regional Director, were in the USA for two important reasons – to see Keith’s daughter graduate and for Sonia to have surgery.  Earlier in the year, she had been diagnosed with a tumour on her Parathyroid gland and after researching her options, discovered that the world-leading treatment centre was near where they were on holiday and she could have keyhole surgery there. 

Sonia said: “What a roller coaster of a week we’ve had! I had my operation on Wednesday and until then, we didn’t know how serious it was.  They told me that if it hadn’t been removed it would have been fatal – and at the very least I would have lost my voice within a year.  They managed to give me the all clear straight after the operation, so as you would imagine, we were on cloud nine.

“Excited we were about to return home to celebrate our brilliant news, Keith was scanning his emails and read about the EuroMillions rollover.  He was convinced that we were the luckiest people on the planet and definitely on a winning streak after the success of my op, so we called up my daughter Courtney (19) to ask her to go and buy a ticket.  She was travelling and wasn’t able to change her plans so we called Stephanie instead as ‘something’ told us we needed to get a ticket – and the rest is history!”

Stephanie bought six Lucky Dips from the Overmonow Garage, Cinderhill Street, Monmouth but it wasn’t until the early hours of Sunday morning that Stephanie remembered to check the tickets. After dinner with friends, on her way up the stairs, she said to Steve (30): “If I shout down it means we’ve won the lottery and if not, I’ve gone to bed.”

Checking the numbers on her iPad, she realised they had all of them – and read that one UK ticket-holder had won the whole £61m.  She said: “I came back downstairs to find Steve and couldn’t take my hand away from my mouth in shock. I kept saying ‘we’ve won and I’m not joking’. I could see Steve was trying to read me to see whether I was telling the truth but I was so emotional, he decided to check.  And he checked again. We giggled. We memorised the numbers and checked again.  We checked the draw date again.  We locked all our windows and doors and spoke in hushed voices just in case someone could hear that we had won.  It was all very MI6 – very secret service!”

Desperate to share the unbelievable news, Stephanie called her mum who was now waiting to board her delayed flight home.  Sonia said: “I was worried there was a problem.  All I could hear was Steph sobbing down the phone and the odd muffled word. I thought she’d told me she’d lost her dog.  Then I heard Steve shouting ‘we’ve won £61m’!

“We put them on speaker phone so Keith and I could both listen, but realised everyone in the airport could hear, so we huddled round a bin while we checked the numbers and realised we really had won!  I can remember saying ‘if we don’t make it home just make sure you spend it all’. It was the longest flight of our life!”

At 1.:45am, Stephanie called Courtney who was in Reading with her boyfriend Kieran (20). Answering the phone quickly because she thought something was wrong, Courtney said: “Steph just kept saying she didn’t know what to do.  She then said we’d won the lottery.  We kept repeating ‘oh my god’ to each other, over and over.  In the end we had to say bye and hang up as we were so in shock we weren’t actually talking to each other.”

Stephanie and Steve didn’t know what to do with themselves. They couldn’t sleep so decided to take selfies with the winning ticket in case anything happened to it. At 5:20am they could wait no longer so they shared the news with other family members before calling Camelot to claim their prize.

With the win still sinking in, each member of the syndicate are starting to think about what they are going to do with their £12,220,488.58 share of the jackpot. Steph and Steve bought their first home together at Christmas, so they want to spend some time decorating it how they would like.  Steph says she has been waiting eight months to finish her bathroom, so this will be high on her list as well as a trip to the Caribbean. 

Courtney is studying at the University of Southampton and has just finished the first year of a Psychology degree.  She plans to complete her degree before deciding what to do next (she has already chosen her accommodation for next term) but has two items on her shopping list – an electric toothbrush, as she always wanted one but never felt she could justify spending £50 on one, and a new car to replace her VW Fox which has no air con and wind-up windows. Kieran, a student at Reading University is over the moon about her win and now has ‘high expectations’ about his upcoming 21st birthday gift. He’d also like Courtney to get the leak in his car fixed.

Sonia and Keith, who live near Ross on Wye are looking forward to sharing their win with family and friends, although Sonia would like a new oak carport for her property.  “Winning is just like living the dream,” she said.”

Stephanie bought the winning ticket from the Overmonow Garage, Cinderhill Street, Monmouth. Their winning numbers from the EuroMillions draw on Friday 29 July were 1, 21, 26, 40, 50 and Lucky Stars 2 and 4.

The National Lottery changes the lives of winners like these as well as communities across the UK – players raise, on average, over £36m for National Lottery-funded projects every week across the arts, sports, heritage, health, education, environment, charity and voluntary sectors.

For more information on National Lottery funding please visit www.lotterygoodcauses.org.uk