Student wins one million at Pantelotteriet

26-year-old Jonathan Swenson is going to buy macaroni for dinner. Then he won a million.

Jonathan Swenson (26) went to Rema 1000 Nutland on Monday to buy macaroni, sausage and milk – as usual he took a full deposit bag with him.

Svensson studies networks and management and is a personal assistant in two different positions at 20 percent. His girlfriend Thea Hegren Asheim is a nurse.

There was a line at the deposit machine that accepted full bags and counted the bottles for you.

So Svensson went to the manual deposit machine, deposited NOK 62 and pressed the Red Cross button.

– There is no sound that there was a winning ticket, only from the printed receipt, says Svensson, and continues:

– I took two steps into the store before I saw the note and was completely shocked. Will it be 1000? No, 10,000? Fifty cats, that’s 100,000. No, it’s a million!

Swenson called his girlfriend directly, and she struggled to believe him.

– I stopped and cried a little, shivered in the store, why should I joke about it, says Svensson, who ran out of 4G on his mobile phone, could not send photo evidence.

He called his girlfriend on the phone until he went to check out.

– When I showed the note to the cashier, she said “Oh,” he says.

– Has it sunk in a bit?

– It sank in no time. I got a call saying that the money is coming and the account must have been verified 200 times. “Now that I have the money in my account, I know I won,” says Svensson.

The money will be used to make a home dream come true in Pomlo – a holiday trip to Alicante in February.

Hordaland Red Cross General Manager Thorbjørn Fosse says that the lottery has become one of the Red Cross’ most important sources of income, and that Red Cross groups in Hordaland received NOK 6.37 million last year.

– Last year we bought, among other things, an emergency boat that is fully functional and covers the entire Hartaland. Last year they flew 22 missions and were active for 9,000 hours, he says.

– This funding also means we can do 190 different activities in Hartaland. “This wouldn’t be possible without the support we get from everyone who pledges to us,” says Foss.