Marina Bukovcak couldn’t quite believe it when she got the phone call on Thursday to say she had won $5000 as the winner of Shop Richmond n Win.
The 22-year-old third-year medical student, whose lucky entry was from shopping at Raeward Fresh, says she’s never won anything in her life.
With the passing of her mother just days before, the news came as a welcome respite.
“Mum passed away a week ago, this is her last gift for us. I’ve never won anything in my life, we think it was mum’s doing.”
Marina and her father left for Slovakia on Monday to spend time with family.
The former Garin College student says it was the only form she filled in through-out the competition’s six-week lifetime, with her dad filling in many more across town.
“When I was growing up, Mum always used to make me fill in these entry forms when we were shopping, so I think it was just habit.”
“We were getting fruit, mandarins and strawberries [from Raeward Fresh], dad was trying to rush me off because we needed to go get some other things sorted, I was like ‘just let me fill out this form’, so I did it and we won.”
Raeward Fresh owners Mark and Lou Paton say they are thrilled the winner was one of their customers.
“It’s so nice to have a meaningful prize right before Christmas, and local too. It couldn’t have gone to a more deserving family,” Mark says.
Marina says the money will go towards Christmas presents, gifts for family overseas and a little bit towards the student loan.
Waimea Weekly has run Shop n Win in Richmond since 2007 and has given out $75,000 to local shoppers since its inception. This year it partnered with Richmond Unlimited and Richmond Mall along with local retailers.
Publisher Andrew Board says the competition is a fantastic way to encourage people to support local and says it was a massive success.
“This is an amazing competition and seeing Marina’s reaction was priceless. Richmond has some of the best retailers in the country and we’re delighted to support them by running Shop n Win alongside the Richmond Mall and Richmond Unlimited.”
More than 90,000 entries were collected during the six week competition.
