“Once or twice a year, I always buy a raffle.”
She initially thought the phone call from Auckland was one of those “really dumb, annoying surveys”.
They asked if she was available for a FaceTime call, and a man on the phone first asked her if she had bought a ticket to the raffle.
“I thought if you had won, why would they ask you that question. I said yeah, and he said ‘Good, you won. Here is your new car’ and it had the crew from the helicopter standing by the car with the helicopter on the other side, waving out,” Smith said.
“When I called my daughters, one of them, who is a nurse, said, ‘I can’t talk, I’m doing a bladder scan’, while the other said, ‘It’s a scam, it’s a scam’.
“Probably the fourth person I rang was Patrick Willock [former chair of the Eastland Helicopter Rescue Trust] because we’ve done all that work together, just to say ‘Patrick, you won’t believe this!’ He goes ‘I was nearly going to buy a ticket in that too, Sonya’.”
She arranged flights and a hotel in Auckland to receive her prize.
“It was pretty buzzy, because it is a V8 with over 600 horsepower, so you get that rumble.”
She said she was lucky to have her mates, Scott Logan and Rod Maxwell, with her to share that experience.
“It was emotional getting to the helipad, to the hangar, and having the crew there.”
The sound of a Lamborghini engine will not be tearing down the gravel road of her home, however, as maintaining the high-spec vehicle was not financially viable for her.
“It was due for a service, it is $7000 to service the vehicle. Just for them to do an appraisal, hook it up on the computers and do their thing, it was $1400. I don’t know how much it costs to insure or maybe change a tyre, I just have no idea.
“It wasn’t really feasible to do that. I was made redundant just over nine months ago.”
She said they worked with the dealer to trade the Lambo in for a more “practical and sustainable” all-wheel drive hybrid SUV.
They ended up with a 2025 Toyota RAV4 and a six-figure cash payout.
“We were pretty happy with that in a pretty tough financial year.”
She still has a memento of the Lamborghini, keeping a gold keyring.
She said the experience had been “like winning Lotto”. She didn’t mind sharing the news publicly since it was for a good cause.
“It has been really cool sharing it publicly,
“If it means more people supporting the search and rescue helicopter, well, hey, you are donating to a really appropriate, cool charity as well.”
The money will go towards renovations at an old family home. She is also considering investing in a home around Gisborne.
