A whole Lotto cash

Jodie Pothoven, Lotto assistant at Countdown Carlyle, Napier, shows her delight after the store sold a winning $2 million first division Lotto ticket. Photo / Duncan Brown

Someone in Napier is $2 million richer, thanks to Lotto.

For the second time this year, a Napier supermarket has sold a winning ticket worth millions.

A ticket bought at Countdown Carlyle supermarket Lotto shop was the only one to score the Lotto first division jackpot in Saturday night's draw. It comes 3 months after a man won more than $10.3 million in Powerball and Lotto first division at nearby Pak'n'Save Napier supermarket.

The winner surprised both himself and a staff member when he went to check his ticket on a Sunday morning stroll downtown to get a weekend paper.

Yesterday Jodie Pothoven, the Lotto agency assistant at Countdown Carlyle, was practising how she might tell someone they'd just won $2 million.

By early last night no one had claimed the $2 million windfall which was landed with the numbers 9, 12, 17, 19, 21 and 35 in Draw No 1320, easily beating any other number the 22-year-old has seen come up on payout display in front of her in about a year that she's been a Lotto assistant.

"That would be about $800," she said as she went through a few mock routines on how she might react if someone walked in, asked her to put the ticket through the machine, and it came up up with the big one.

"I'd be pretty excited," she said. "I've got to keep my composure, offer them a seat to sit down, and get the manager.

A few hopefuls had been through, but none with the news everyone was waiting for. "I hope it goes to someone who really needs it. I think we all do."

The prize was a jackpot from the previous week.

It was just the second time the agency had sold a first division winning ticket, the previous occasion was in the draw on Waitangi Day 2010, when a customer was one of two nationwide to win $500,000 each.

Its nearby sister Countdown Napier store is one of Hawkes Bay's longest-operating Lotto agencies and has sold 13 first-division winning tickets since 1993, a Lotto representative said earlier this year after a customer won $500,000 in an Easter draw promotion.

Back at Countdown Carlyle, staff yesterday were putting up the promotion material for an expected $7 million Powerball jackpot this week.