Waterloo, Ont. woman's lucky break: How her lottery win will help kids with disabilities

Ontario lottery winner shares the wealth A $5 million lottery winner is paying it forward, while also honouring the memory of her late daughter. Spencer Turcotte has her story.

A lucky break will end up benefitting a Waterloo, Ont. centre that supports kids with disabilities and their families.

After recently winning a $5 million lottery jackpot, Sarah Nellis has decided to donate some of her winnings to KidsAbility.

Nellis has not had it easy lately either, so this win comes at a good time.

“I’ve been having difficulty with disabilities and things,” she said. “I’ve been trying to get better.”

But she’s had to put that on the backburner because she has a lot of other things on her plate.

“I have six living children,” Nellis explained, adding that she’s also had to cope with loss. “My daughter passed away in 2017.”

Between raising kids, managing her own health struggles and dealing with the death of her daughter Sophie, Nellis has not been able to work.

So, she was due for some luck and, a few weeks ago, it came.

“My son and I went to my mom’s for dinner, and he looked up at the sky and said, ‘Mom, look at the star.’ And I said, ‘OK, we need to make a wish.’ And I wished for a lottery jackpot, a big jackpot. And he wished for my health to improve,” Nellis recalled.

She went to a convenience store in Waterloo to purchase a pair of tickets. One happened to be a loser, but the other was a very different story.

“I looked and I couldn’t really focus on the numbers because there were so many zeroes, but I couldn’t really think about what the number is. I thought maybe $5,000. And then it was really the $5 million,” she told CTV News. “I phoned my mom right away and I said, ‘Please look at your phone, but don’t have a heart attack.’”

Nellis couldn’t jump for joy or throw her hands in the air due to her injury.

But an idea immediately came to her.

She wanted to give back to KidsAbility, the organization that helped her family.

“Sarah reached out to me and booked a meeting for us to talk about a very thoughtful donation that she was intending to make in memory of her beautiful daughter, Sophie,” said Lisa Talbot, the executive director of the KidsAbility Foundation. “We were very moved and touched by this very thoughtful gift that will impact and benefit the types of programs and services that Sophie received at KidsAbility for many years.”

And the giving doesn’t end there.

Nellis said she’ll keep donating to KidsAbility to honour her daughter’s memory.

“We have endowment funds at the KidsAbility Foundation, so we’ll be working with Sarah and her family on how we can create a real legacy with this,” Talbot explained.

A legacy that will live on, thanks to a little bit of luck.