The Ace is Caught! Toronto Man Wins Over $120,000 in Lions Club Lotters

Of course, it was inevitable, but it was still a bit of a shock for those who were gathered at the Northbrook Lions Hall on Sunday morning (October 5).

After 46 weeks of pulling almost every card in the deck except the Ace of Spades, it was picked this week, in envelope #45. Gayle O'Rayne, who bought a ticket online, won the jackpot.

The grand total had risen to $116,138. When that was added to the $5,528 that he won from his winning ticket being picked, O’Rayne pocketed a grand total of $121,666.

Unlike many of the previous weekly winners, he was near his phone on Sunday when Red Emond called from the hall, and could hear Emond yell out, “It is the Ace of Spades” when the card was revealed.

He told Emond that when he was a kid he had been a little brother in the Big Brothers program, so he tries to donate to groups that help out in the community whenever he can. He heard about Catch the Ace from a friend and co-worker who is from Madoc, and was happy to help out by buying a ticket.

He is a construction worker in the Toronto area, and arrangements were made to meet the Lions’ Catch the Ace crew hallway, in front of a mall in Belleville, on Tuesday afternoon (October 8) to deliver the cheque.

The money will help O’Rayne purchase a home, and to make his daily commute to work a lot shorter.

With Catch the Ace over and done with for now, the core group of five volunteers will “be sleeping in on Sundays,” said Lions Club of Land O'Lakes President, Sandra Carman, in a phone interview from the Lions Hall on Monday (October 7) at a biweekly coffee gathering for club members.

The weekly draws for 47 consecutive weeks, broadcast for 6 or 7 minutes on the club's Facebook page, were preceded by 3 hours of preparing all the tickets. Tickets, both online and store bought, were uniformly placed in the drum for the draw. They were also getting new tickets ready to go out to stores if, as was the case for the first 46 weeks, the Ace did not get pulled.

“It is quite a process, and we needed to make sure we were following all of the rules from OLG (Ontario Lottery and Gaming Commission).

Those rules included opening a new deck of cards to set up the lottery, checking to make sure all of the correct cards were in the deck, shuffling them in a prescribed manner and then sealing them in the envelopes such that no one knew which cards were in which envelope.

“Everything we did was captured on video,” Carmen said, “another OLG requirement”.

This is the second time the Lions ran a Catch the Ace Lottery. The first lasted 13 weeks and had a grand prize of $8,000.

“With the cost of setup and everything else, we did not make any money, but we tried again,” said Carmen.

This time, there was a pretty good profit, however,

Lynn Lowe, who brought the idea of Catch The Ace to the group in the first place, has been keeping track of all the payouts, expenses, and profit that is to be spent in the community.

“I have estimated that the Lions earned $165,000 after expenses” she said in an email to the News.

$76,000 in prizes was distributed to weekly winners, along with the $121,666 that Gayle O'Rayne took home.

Catch The Ace came along as the club was already working on a $200,000 fundraising campaign to establish their hall in Northbrook, as an Emergency Centre for residents of Addington Highlands and North Frontenac, in case of a disaster. That campaign has now reached its goal and added funds have already been donated to North Addington Education Centre to improve access to technology for the students.

There will be another Catch The Ace in Northbrook, but not right away.

“We certainly need a break,” said Sandra Carmen, “and there is lead time as well. It will be back, but it could be a while.”