The Star played a small role in locating the quarter-million dollar winner in Feb. 6's Super 7 lottery draw.

"Actually, just as I was reading the Whitehorse Star about there having been a winning ticket, one of the guys from work came downstairs after reading the same story," Nicola Letoria said Tuesday afternoon from Yukon Engineering Services, where she works. "Because we actually buy tickets as a group here."

It was Feb. 10 when the Star reported an as-yet-unknown Yukoner was holding a winning $250,000 Extra ticket on the previous week's Super 7 draw.

But the group at work didn't win, and Letoria's husband, Dwaine Holt, wasn't holding the lucky ticket, so she knew it had to be her.

"Quite often it takes Dwaine and I a few days to check our tickets because we're so busy all the time," Letoria added.

Busy, due in part to the couple's efforts to construct a new home in the Pilot Mountain subdivision.

"We just finished building a house on nine acres out there," Letoria explained. "So it couldn't have come at a better time for both of us; we just figured there's nothing smarter to do with the money than pay off our mortgage."

While the big win won't quite cover it, Letoria's and Holt's good fortune has now bolstered their retirement plans.

"No, my husband's already past that and I'm not that far off," Letoria said when asked if it was onward to "freedom 55".

"If we're going to continue to work for the next seven or eight years, now it's just building our retirement and not wondering how."

She bought her tickets at Shoppers Drug Mart in the Qwanlin Mall.

"I didn't have my glasses on when I checked them through the ticket checker, and I thought it said $2,500," she said. "I said to myself, 'Yes! I could use that money!'

"I was shaking like a leaf, I was so excited!"