One piece of good news is always welcome. It’s even better when two come along and that’s what happened to Louise Tate from Sunderland. The 42-year-old received the all-clear from cancer and then won a £100,000 scratchcard win. Her jumbo-sized success all comes from her lucky elephants apparently.
The 42-year-old mother has been battling cancer and while doing so started collecting models of elephants. There obviously wasn’t enough room for the real ones. One of her friends said that collecting elephants brings you good luck. Louise felt that she needed “tremendous amounts of luck,” so started collecting them.
“Every time I went out, I would try to buy an elephant,” said the scratchcard winner. Her friends gave her elephant ornament too as her collection continued to grow. Now she has over 30 of them in her home. Never could she have imagined just how lucky they were going to be.
Her cancer caused her to have her left eye removed due to a melanoma developing. Now she has had a prosthetic eye fitted. Louise bought a scratchcard with an eye to some success . To get a big win, you had to reveal three elephants. That’s just what the 42-year-old did to win the top prize of £100,000.
Her winning scratchcard was purchased from a Morrisons store, while waiting for her husband Stuart, 45, to return from his work. Finally, he arrived, and they made their way home in his car. Louise was eager to discover if her scratchcard had won anything. When she discovered that it had won £100,000, she shouted at her husband to “stop the car.”
He wasn’t instantly convinced that they’d had a big win. “You’ve got it wrong,” he kept saying, believing that his wife was just winding him up. Louise did her best to convince her husband that he was right and told him that he really did have to stop the car.
Eventually he did pull over. The £100,000 scratchcard win was confirmed. Recalling that moment Louise said: “I think we went through every emotion, from joy to shock to breaking down in tears.”
Believing a big win has happened is never easy. “Neither of us could believe it. In fact, I don’t think it was until we called Camelot (not a trunk call) and then saw the six-figure sum land in our bank account that we started to believe this really was happening and totally true!”
Now the couple are planning a holiday to Florida with their two children. Carrying out some renovations and paying off the mortgage is also on their spending list. It’s all a massive change of fortune for Louise. She now has a prosthetic left eye after suffering a melanoma during lockdown.
There’s one more purchase that she wants to make. A gold elephant pendant is going to be purchased and she wants to adopt a real one.
