Sarah Cockings, 40, from Whitley Bay, won a £3,045,705 Lotto jackpot on 30 April 2005, when she was studying social care at Northumbria University. She bought herself a Swarovski diamond with the cash.
A Lotto winner has revealed how she splashed the cash on new boobs – but not before finishing Uni.
Sarah Cockings, 40, from Whitley Bay, won a £3,045,705 Lotto jackpot on 30 April 2005. She said “When I won, I was studying social care at Northumbria University and living at home. It was my mum’s dream to see me graduate, so I went back to university.”
Sarah treated herself to a Swarovski diamond-studded watch immediately after winning. She has since bought her own house in the Whitley Bay area and invested some of her win. She has also paid for breast enhancement surgery for herself and her two sisters.
Sarah was just 21 when she scooped the win and splashed out £10,000 and has described the win as a “whirlwind” of winning the National Lottery as she had been studying for a social work degree. She splashed out on plastic surgery for herself and her two sisters, Emma and Alex, and bought a house for her parents, a Mini Cooper, and a Range Rover Sport but has admitted people have stopped her sisters in the street to ask: “Are those the lottery boobs?”
When celebrating the lottery’s 25th birthday with other winners, Sarah, of Whitley Bay, North Tyneside, said: “Just after I won, I bought my two sisters boob jobs; everyone remembers that. But now – I’ve had one myself, because mine were wrecked by breastfeeding. It’s my two-year boob birthday. I love them.”
She said her young son would tell his schoolmates and teachers how Sarah had won the lottery. But after her life changed in April 2005 when she landed the jackpot with her partner of three years Roy Kelley, there wasn’t a happily ever after for the couple.
They enjoyed their engagement with a £2,500 platinum diamond ring but the romance fizzled out the following year.
Not everyone does as you might expect when they win the lottery.
Big-hearted Ray Wragg, 86, from Sheffield won a £7,649,520 Lotto jackpot in January 2000, with late wife, Barbara but has amazingly given the majority of his winnings to good causes. Ray retired as soon as his winning numbers came up, and the couple immediately started thinking about who they could help.
He said: “We gave £5.5 million away to family and friends, hospitals and good causes.”
The couple once paid £12,000 for war veterans to revisit the WWII battlefield of Monte Cassino and have also taken 250 local school children on an all expenses paid trip to see Disney on Ice, among many other things. Ray very sadly lost his beloved wife, Barbara in 2018 but has since found happiness again after meeting Anne on a cruise and they’ve just jointly purchased a three-bedroom bungalow together.
Before he lost his late wife the pair, from Sheffield, South Yorkshire, lived in a £10,000 council house and lived a modest life never living beyond their means or even leaving the country for holidays. They played the lottery every week, choosing five lines and picked numbers at random from registration plates.