Rochelle Record from Whangārei could be a millionaire this week after winning promo competition

Rochelle Record is keeping her fingers crossed she picks the envelope with $1 million in it this Friday. Photo / Michael Cunningham

Whangārei grandmother Rochelle Record could be popping the champagne as the country’s newest millionaire by this weekend or having a subdued lunch after winning a guaranteed $10,000 in the Maxigesic Win a Million promotion.

The CrossFit enthusiast was the lucky winner from throughout New Zealand of the Green Cross Health, Unichem and Life Pharmacy promotion and gets an opportunity this Friday to pick the one envelope out of 100 envelopes that contains $1m.

The rest of the envelopes will have $10,000 so she’s guaranteed that much money.

The draw will be done at Orrs Pharmacy on Cameron St in central Whangārei.

Customers at Unichem and Life Pharmacy have had to spend $30 in-store and swipe their Living Rewards Card for a chance to win.

“I am always at the pharmacy getting stuff to make me pretend I am not 46,” Record says and bursts out laughing.

An office manager, she moved to Whangārei from Auckland 23 years ago and has two adult children and three grandchildren.

“I didn’t even know that I had entered a competition, to be honest, until I got an email. The funny thing was we’ve just started at work with all the email hoaxes that are going around.

“We started this new thing, it’s called phishing, they send us all these emails and we try and recognise them ... just an endless bombardment of fake stuff we’re getting now. I thought it was one of those.”

She missed a call from the loyalty programme manager at Green Cross Health, Debbie Klintworth, then a text, and later an email which Record said sounded like she was one of many people who may have a chance of winning money.

“I didn’t take much notice of it. Then she rang back and I answered the phone and said I’d actually won something and I was like “Oh, wow there you go.”

Her family thought the news about her winning the promotion was fake. She doesn’t count herself lucky and has never won anything in her life. Nor does she have high expectations she will pick the envelope containing $1m.

What if she wins $1m? “I’ll pay off my mortgage. That would be nice. We’re actually in the middle of starting a new family business, so the money would be perfect timing.

“The odds of me winning $1m are pretty good, as compared to winning $1m in a Lotto. I wouldn’t believe if it was one in three, to be fair. I am that person,” Record said.

Asked if she’d continue working should she beg the bigger prizemoney, she replied: “Always. I’d still be at work the next day.”

Even $10,000 was a “massive amount of money”, she reckons, which she’d use to pay off credit card debt.

Record is nervous heading into Friday.

“I don’t like people looking at me, I don’t like being at the centre of attraction. I am not gonna have a good day. I try not to think about it. All my friends are thinking about it.

“I’ve definitely spent over $10,000 on supplements in the last five years.”