Gary MacDonald went back to the Lakeside Shopping Centre in Thurrock with flowers, hampers and National Lottery lucky dip tickets, turning a quiet return to his old route into a day of surprise for the people who knew him best. The 61-year-old former parcel delivery driver, who spent more than three decades bringing goods to stores there, came back after walking away from work when he won £5.2 million in the Lotto last year.
That is why the name Gary MacDonald lottery winner is being searched now: he has gone from a familiar face on the shopping centre concourse to a man marking a very public change in fortune. After the jackpot, he later married his long-term partner Anita and moved from Barking to a four-bedroom detached home in Essex, but his return to Lakeside showed he had not forgotten the place where he spent years on the road.
MacDonald said it had been a crazy 12 months since finding out he had landed the £5.2 million prize and appearing in a Lotto TV ad, and he said he was delighted to come out of retirement for the day to fulfil a promise he had made himself. He also said being a Lotto millionaire had become almost a full-time job, even if only for the best kind of reasons.
The visit carried extra weight because MacDonald was never just the man with the parcels. He was known at Lakeside for his daily rounds and the friendly chats that went with them, and Donna Samuels, the manager of Babyeze, said his visit came as a complete shock. She said he had been there every day, rain or shine, with a joke and a smile, and that when he suddenly was not there one day last year she worried something was wrong.
Samules said she was over the moon when she learned the real reason was his National Lottery win, and she described him as a diamond for choosing to share the joy with his old colleagues. MacDonald said their faces had been a picture as he made the surprise deliveries, but the company-wide mystery remains who received which gifts during his return. What is clear is that he has kept faith with the people and the place that formed his working life, and his next appearance at Lakeside will be measured against that very public gesture of gratitude.
