Group of Utah seniors takes trip to Idaho for lottery tickets

MALAD, Idaho — Whenever you consider a subject journey, you usually consider heading to a museum or a monument — not going throughout the state border for lottery tickets.

However one group of decided Utahns did precisely that on Friday.

Residents of Lotus Park Assisted Residing and Reminiscence Facilities took a highway journey with excessive hopes, questioning if there shall be a Powerball pot of gold on the finish.

The hour-plus trek north from Salt Lake Metropolis to Idaho isn’t one thing most Utahns do fairly often. However when the prize is over $1 billion, this group packs up and heads out with a mission to receives a commission.

“They’ve labored exhausting their entire life, so now they’ll play exhausting,” mentioned Bree Payne, the resident care director at Lotus Park. “These residents are, you recognize, dwelling the dream.”

Lotus Park staff considered the concept due to the desires of their residents.

“If a resident has a dream to go win, you recognize, the lottery, win one million bucks, desires to go do one thing with some cash, yeah, we’ll make that occur,” mentioned government director Kayden Grenko. “We load up the residents within the van and we take those who wish to go, and we fulfill desires.”

The final time they did this in July, they posted a video of the journey on TikTok with many individuals commenting about how they cherished the concept.

And Friday after the sphere journey north, this crew was prepared as soon as once more.

“They’re actually cute. They wish to give again, they wish to contribute to one thing, they wish to make the world a greater place,” Grenko mentioned.

“Most of them, they do not even care about themselves. It is extra about serving to different individuals, so that is what’s so nice about our residents,” Payne echoed.

In fact, the workers bought in on the enjoyable as effectively — saying they could as effectively reap the benefits of being in Idaho and spending some money with the hopes of profitable all of it.

Grenko mentioned these subject journeys are particularly vital after a tough few years of COVID-19.

“I do not assume there’s something in my reminiscence that is been extra heartbreaking than shutting them indoors and watching them remoted,” he mentioned.

Regardless of the low probability of profitable, Grenko was optimistic.

“Odds are, positively,” he joked.