Melissa Pierre checked her credit card. There was just enough left under her credit limit to purchase 150 entries for $50 in the Vancouver Canucks 50/50 raffle. She clicked the button. She didn't think much of it.
Pierre and her husband, Desmond Johnnie, had been participating in the raffles since the Canucks opened them up to the public for the 2018-2019 season, no longer limiting them to the fans at Rogers Arena for games. So when they heard, at the very last minute, that the Canucks were doing a special raffle for COVID-19 relief, they went for it.
"I was like, if I do [have enough money], I will," said Pierre, who lives in Burns Lake, British Columbia, a little more than 600 miles north of Vancouver. "I had enough so we went ahead and bought it."
She had never heard much about the previous winners, so she didn't think anything when she didn't hear this time.
Until the phone call.
Pierre's husband and daughter, Payton, were napping when the phone rang with a strange number. Ticket ZE-2133495 had won. It was her ticket.
"I was trying to cover my mouth," Pierre said. "I didn't want to scare Payton and Des."
But the emotion was overwhelming. It was an astounding windfall ($248,848) for a family that had overtaxed its credit cards while dealing with Johnnie's cancer, medullary thyroid cancer, which was diagnosed on February 8, 2019, and Payton's autism.
"In a lot of ways, hockey got Desmond through. We didn't have much," Pierre said of the time Johnnie was at Vancouver General Hospital, not far from Rogers Arena, where the Canucks play. "I bought TV at the hospital -- and it's by the day and it's not cheap -- but I bought it by the day because we were there, in Vancouver, and it's hockey season. It's an escape.
"No matter how much pain Desmond was going through, that light in his eyes was still there when hockey was about to start. He's like, 'There's a game on right now right across that bridge and you can feel the energy in the city.' He said, 'I can feel it and it feels amazing.'"
That's how much the Canucks mean to the Johnnie, whose favorite players include Trevor Linden and Gino Odjick and, now, Elias Pettersson and Quinn Hughes. That made it "surreal," as Pierre put it, that they were able to get so much back.
The raffle had raised $497,695, with half going to Pierre and the other half to causes benefitting people affected by the coronavirus pandemic, including Food Banks BC ($150,000), KidSafe Foundation ($25,000), Canadian Mental Health Association ($50,000), and Family Services of Greater Vancouver ($20,000). The Canucks for Kids Fund, the team's charity, runs the 50/50 raffles, which raises the biggest chunk of the fund's annual $4-5 million in donations.
"Despite the fact that we can't have any games right now, we heard from some of our fans and we thought, let's do a 50/50 to help raise money specific to people in need right now of everything that's happening with the crisis," said Alex Oxenham, who is the senior director of fan and community engagement for the Canucks. "It was more successful than we thought. We weren't sure. We've never done one without a game behind it."
But the fans responded. They bought tickets. They gave money, in a time when giving money isn't easy, something for which the Canucks are grateful.
So is Pierre.
Johnnie had felt a lump in June of 2018, but it wasn't until the following February that he was diagnosed.
"He came home right after seeing the doctor and he just looked like a shell of himself," Pierre said. "He looked like he was scared to say it. I looked at him and he said, 'It's cancer.' He just stood there. … I could feel us kind of losing control of the situation and I said, 'I told you when we got married I'd walk through hell with you, and I mean it. You're not going to go through this alone.' I made sure he was never alone."
Even in the darkest moments.
When he went into the hospital the first time, the doctors didn't expect him to come home. Not only that, but when Johnnie made the long ride to Vancouver, the family had to find a caretaker for Payton, who is nonverbal. It was the first babysitter that the 6-year-old had ever had.
He had surgery after surgery, scare after scare, out of one and into another.
Pierre started calling family. She was at the hospital alone. She wanted to make sure that Johnnie's family was there, in case it was the end. She put the food and the lodging on her credit cards. She wanted to make sure they came, whether or not anyone could afford it.
They were in the hospital for 43 days.
Johnnie has since been in and out of the cancer clinic, in and out of pain. Pierre had to leave her job as a cashier to care for him. According to Pierre, the family recently found out that there is more cancer in his chest, back and ribs that is too small for additional surgery, and a remaining tumor.
"We thought that part of the fight was won," she said. "It's like being told it's happening all over again."
The money will change their lives, allow them to do things that they wouldn't have been able to do otherwise, to alleviate the mounting bills and stress. When the family goes to Vancouver for treatments, for instance, they drive the 11 1/2 hours with Payton in the car, not knowing how she would handle a flight.
With more trips and more surgeries in the future, they might be able to upgrade to a bigger SUV to make their lives more comfortable, to make at least one thing easier for them and for their daughter.
"I definitely want to focus on making sure Payton's OK," Pierre said. "With what's going on health-wise and everything, it just makes me think, she needs stability, she needs security. If and when me and Desmond aren't here anymore, I want her to be safe and taken care of."
Pierre laughed when asked if the family might enter the raffle again. She said she might, to continue to give back to the charities, especially because they benefit kids -- like Payton.
And given how successful the first one was, the Canucks are hoping to do another online raffle in the coming weeks.
"We had a conversation like, 'Oh man, I really hope this winner is deserving,' and then we kind of laughed, like everyone is deserving right now," Oxenham said. "There's no one who hasn't been impacted in some way by this crisis. And then when we heard their story, it just brought tears to my eyes. We're just so happy. We couldn't have asked for a more deserving winner.
"When we heard her story and we shared it with the board, it was like the big warm hug we all needed, the good news we all needed. Someone was really going to be impacted in ways we couldn't have imagined by winning this prize."
