Rachel's Winning Ticket

She won the lottery and used her good fortune to help those in need

- Claire Sibonney

ONE JANUARY EVENING in 2008, Rachel Lapierre bought a $4 lottery ticket at the grocery store. After an exhausting day cutting sugar maples in the Laurentian Mountains of Quebec, Canada, she needed something to lift her spirits. Her sugar-shack hobby was meant to be fun, but the 46-year-old mother of four was wearing herself thin as a nearly full-time emergency-room nurse and part-time volunteer aid worker.

For years, Lapierre had done humanitarian work overseas for organizations such as the France-based Médecins du Monde, and she longed to be able to one day quit her nursing job and focus on the volunteer work she found most fulfilling. She vowed to herself that if she ever won the lottery, that’s what she would do.