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SOMBA K'E/YELLOWKNIFE
It was a great start to the week for Kevin Brooks, a portfolio manager at the NWT Housing Corporation. It would be for you too if you had just won $669,938.60.

Brooks and his wife Theresa are regular lottery players, spending about $20 each week on Lotto 6/49 and Lotto Max. On Sunday, Brooks stopped at Shoppers Drug Mart to self-scan the tickets he had bought that week. Nothing, nothing, nothing and then, on a Lotto Max Quick Pick he had won off a previous ticket, a whole lot of something.

In disbelief he scanned the ticket again. The magnitude of the small slip of paper in his hand sunk in and he was floored. He scanned once more and his face got flushed. He noticed a familiar face nearby, a woman with her daughter, and asked them to watch as he scanned it again, just to be sure his eyes weren't deceiving him. "You just keep on going, 'Is this real?' " he said.

The cashier scanned it for a fifth time. "Major prize winner" appeared on the screen.

Brooks called his wife and asked whether she was sitting down. Knowing that her husband had gone to check their lottery numbers, and also having heard that there was a winning ticket in Yellowknife, she had her suspicions. Still, she could barely believe it. "This isn't a joke, is it?" she asked. "You're not yanking my chain, are you?" Eventually Brooks passed the phone to the cashier. "Can you tell my wife we won?" he asked.

The Brooks family was one number shy of winning $50 million. The ticket matched six of seven numbers, plus the bonus number. The nearly $700,000 win is no pittance but Brooks said there will be no major life changes.

"We're trying to sort of keep our feet on the ground right now," he said. No trips, lavish jewelry or major home renovations are on their list, at least not yet. And neither Kevin nor Theresa, a lab technologist at Stanton Territorial Hospital, will quit their jobs. For now they are excited about paying off debts and replacing Theresa's 12-year-old car, which Kevin said is "on its last legs."

Brooks said he and his wife will continue to try their luck with lottery tickets. With two great jobs, two great kids and now "a great nest egg," it seems the lucky couple have the odds on their side.

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