Dozens of missed calls later, panicked B.C. man last to find out he won a 5-bedroom, 4-bathroom house
Unable to read his writing, contest organizers had asked for help after a wrong number and answering machine
Juan Pablo Garcia Silva Perez was just trying to have a relaxing board game night with friends, so he turned his phone notifications off and placed the device face down.
When the Prince George, B.C., man picked it up again a couple hours later, he panicked. On his screen were dozens of missed calls and notifications from friends, family and complete strangers.
"I was like, 'I think something really bad happened,'" Perez said he remembers telling his friend. "I have all these missed calls from my Mexican family."
But his fear turned to confusion when he reached his father, who began peppering him with questions.
"My dad was like, 'What's going on?... Everybody's saying you won a house.'
"I was like, 'No, I didn't win a house. How could I win a house?'''
Perez told the story to CBC News while standing outside of the house he did, in fact, win on the night of Dec. 1 as part of the Prince George Hospice Dream Home Lottery.
He had entered the lottery on a whim, buying tickets for the draw at the local Canadian Tire. By the time he was announced as the winner, he said he had completely forgotten about the contest.
"I just bought the ticket to try and give back," he said. "You never buy it expecting to win."
'My whole family in Mexico knew before me'
While Perez may have forgotten about the draw, hundreds of others had not. According to the Prince George Hospice Society, 13,999 tickets were available and nearly all of them sold out.
Up for grabs was a fully-furnished, newly built 2,940-square-foot home in the University Heights neighbourhood featuring five bedrooms, four bathrooms and appliances appraised at the value of $800,000 in a city where the average single-family home sells for between $300,000 and $600,000, according to data from the Northern B.C. Real Estate board.
On the evening of Dec. 1, president Donna Flood went live on Facebook to pick a ticket and announce the winner.
Her first attempt at reaching Perez went wrong when, unable to read his writing, she accidentally dialled the wrong number.
"When I saw the video, I was like, 'Yeah, that's me if they couldn't read my writing,'" Perez said with a laugh.
When the second attempt went to voicemail, Flood left a message, urging Perez to call her back.
Then, just before the video ended, she decided to read his full name out loud, in the hopes he could be found.
"If you know him and you find him and you know where he is, tell him to give us a call," she said.
That's when Perez's phone blew up, though he would remain blissfully unaware until more than an hour later.
"My whole siblings in Mexico knew before me," he said. "People that I didn't know added me on Facebook.... Contractors that I used to work with ... they were like, 'What do we have to do to get a hold of you?'"
Even after figuring out what was going on, he said, he remained skeptical of the news until he was speaking directly to Flood.
"I couldn't even talk," he said. "The moment that I talked, I knew I was going to cry."
Perez, who works as a financial advisor, says he plans to move into his new home before Christmas and give away some of the furniture to people who need it.
He's given an open invitation to his family, most of whom are in Mexico, to come stay with him and he hopes to have all of them visit next year so they can celebrate a "Mexican Christmas" in Canada.
He says he's still trying to process the news that changed his life while he "was just hanging out with a friend, playing a board game."
Corrections
- A previous version of this story, citing information from an earlier real estate listing, gave the incorrect number of bedrooms and size of the property. The story has been updated.Dec 12, 2023 10:43 AM EST
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