When 95-year-old Ursula McCafferty won $30,000 from the $30 worth of lottery tickets she purchases every week, she knew exactly what she wanted to buy with the money.
McCafferty, a mother of five, grandmother of 12 and great-grandmother of four, bought a brand new cellphone.
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McCafferty, who lives on her own in North Canaan, Connecticut, said she plays the lottery every Friday for her own amusement.
“I’m 95 and I don’t drive anymore and I have to have something for entertainment,” she said.
McCafferty said she wins some money every week but never anything close to $30,000. When she realized she had won earlier this month, she called her daughter who lives nearby.
“I said, ‘You have to come here, this can’t be real,’” McCafferty recalled. “She thought I said $1,000 but when she got here she said, ‘How the hell do you get so lucky?’”
The cellphone is the only splurge McCafferty made for her herself from the lottery prize. She is giving some of her winnings to her children and putting the rest in a trust.
“I’ve never been able to do what I like what to do, so I decided that my children are going to get $2,000 each,” she said. “And my daughter who lives here is going to get $3,000.”
She added: "She takes me to my doctor appointments so she was well worth an extra thousand, and her siblings will agree."
McCafferty, a retired postwoman, said her children have already sent her more than two dozen roses to say thank you.
“I must have done something right,” she said.