Lotto win is thanks to snow
LADY luck was smiling on Patricia Eisel when snow grounded her flight from New York to Dublin – giving her time to buy a lottery ticket and scoop the $21.5million jackpot.
The cash-strapped 40-year-old waitress was meant to fly to her native Ireland early in the New Year but snowstorms meant she had to stay home in New York.
Days later the mother-of-three used $8 tip money, about £5, to play the Lotto – and scooped the £13.6million bonanza.
Ms Eisel, who was “just scraping by” with her job at a bar, said: “If I’d caught that flight I wouldn’t have been here to buy that ticket. It’s karma.”
Despite the win she has no intention of quitting her job – and is yet to tell her three children or her mother, who lives near Dublin, about the windfall.
She said: “I didn’t tell her because I don’t want her to have a heart attack. I want to tell her in person.”