What happens when you win a new Jeep Wrangler but you're aged 81 and don't drive? You exchange it for $50,000, of course.
Dunedin woman Evonne Fogo was one of two people in New Zealand to win a Jeep in a recent New World supermarket promotion.
To make the prize even more exciting, she did not even know she had entered the competition, as customers were automatically entered at the check-out.
‘‘When they called to say I had won a prize ... I asked if it was a scam, because I get plenty of phone calls that are,'' Mrs Fogo said.
‘‘I thought it might be a voucher for some groceries ... [but] when they told me it was a car, I started to shake. My heart was going 50-to-the-dozen.''
Mrs Fogo, daughter Robyn James, and New World were able to negotiate with the car dealer to exchange the Jeep for $50,000.
‘‘I can't drive and I wouldn't be able to step up into it,'' Mrs Fogo said.
‘‘If my husband was alive, I might have had the Jeep.''
The Francis Hodgkins Retirement Village resident said she ‘‘wouldn't have a clue'' what she had bought to enter the competition.
The money would be spent on her family, most of whom were in Christchurch, and it would make for a really nice Christmas, Mrs Fogo said.
Centre City New World owner-operator Craig Nieper presented the cheque to Mrs Fogo at the store yesterday and said it was ‘‘pretty special'' to be able to give the prize to a really deserving winner.
