It all started last week, when Steve Murphy, a 52 year-old mine manager at the Tulsequah Chief Mine, bought a lottery ticket in Atlin, B.C., at the Food Basket store. Lottery checker

And things got only better when, on Tuesday afternoon, Lottery officials from the British Columbia Lottery Commission confirmed he had won. To do so, Murphy traveled all the way to Kamloops, B.C., on Tuesday to verify that he was the winner of a lottery ticket worth more than $16 million.

For this, Murphy drove to this small community, which is about a two-hour drive south of Whitehorse.

Murphy said that he doesn’t usually play the lottery as a hobby, but decided to do it last week because he thought the jackpot was pretty high. Lottery winning numbers

“I checked one of those lottery terminal checkers … and all these numbers come up. I’m used to rejection,” Murphy said with a laugh. “And it came up with all these numbers, so I knew something was up.”

But Murphy was still confused about the situation, so he decided to pass the ticket to the woman behind the counter and told her to please check the ticket for him one more time. And so she did, but still after she checked, the same winning numbers came up over and over again.

As of right now, he says he still doesn’t have any plans for the money in the near or long term future. Nor has he decided to buy or travel anywhere in the future.

“(I’m) Probably going to disappear for a couple weeks and, you know, think of what I’m going to do. It’s a lot to take in right now,” he said. It was obvious that he was happy, but still in need of some time for the news to really sink in and to better under last week stand the whole situation.

Even though Murphy was born in Whitehorse, he has been living in Atlin for about 30 years now. So, what he does know is that he has a few projects he would like to put into work to help the community with their needs.

According to “The Food Basket” store’s operator, Corrine Johnson, Murphy has been a regular customer of the store for quite some time now.

“He just comes in and asks me for his usual ticket, except this time it was a little better than his usual ticket. He won one-third of the $50-million pot, and he validated it here and we’re all happy for him,” said Johnson.

Let’s hope that the week or weeks that Murphy takes to think of what to do with the money, will do him some good and that he can make the best investing decision for his life, his plans and community in the future.

So, remember that if you would like to be the next $16M winner, you have to play. Keep playing, next time the winner may be you!

Congratulations to Steve Murphy!