Eve Barnes says she feels like she’s a winner every time she buys a Catch the Ace lottery ticket, since she knows the proceeds benefit local health care.
It’s a nice bonus for the Ottawa woman that she is, in fact, the big winner. Barnes won the Week 35 prize in the St. Francis Valley Healthcare Foundation lottery program last week. And when a card was flipped over, the ace of spades came up, so she also won the jackpot.
Altogether she took home $70,446.50; money she says she’ll share with her family. Barnes, who has a cottage on Round Lake, says she’s purchased Catch Ace tickets for years, because she likes how the proceeds support health care programs.
She picked up the cheque at St. Francis Memorial Hospital Tuesday, with her grown children Tara and Michael with her. The family says the hospital is a special place for them, because it’s served them several times over the years.
“It’s for such a good cause,” Barnes says. “Everybody has to get to the hospital sometime in their life. To have all that extra money, for the hospital to buy things they haven’t been given money for, that’s great.”
This Catch Ace lottery program was the sixth edition by the Foundation, since 2019. It raised about $103,000, which will be used to purchase equipment for St. Francis Memorial Hospital. The Foundation expects to launch a seventh Catch Ace lottery in the future.