Great Falls resident Karl Lewis was the unsuspecting winner of this year’s Taste of Great Falls 58-inch Panasonic HD plasma TV and Bose sound system raffle.
“It was fun to see the look on his face,” said Taste of Great Falls chair Terry Graves. “His wife Patricia bought him the ticket without his knowledge. Apparently she came into the Brogue … and charged the 10 raffle tickets to her bill and then left with the tickets and the stubs without realizing that she had them with her.”
Old Brogue owner Mike Kearney spent a few days trying to locate Patricia Duque Lewis, to no avail.
“She filled out all the ticket stubs in her husband’s name and paid by credit card, and then left with the tickets and the stub, and all we had was her credit card slip with no phone number,” said Kearney. “I tried to look her up in the phone book, and even called a few Lewis's and one Duque, but no one knew Patricia.”
Finally, a notice was put out on Sharon Rainey’s Great Falls “Neighbors” community e-mail network.
“I sent out an e-mail enquiry to the Great Falls Neighbors Network to put out a notice ‘looking for anyone who knows Patricia M. Duque Lewis,’ and to please call my cell phone number,” said Kearney.
On Sunday morning, Oct. 14, the day of the Taste of Great Falls celebration, Kearney received a phone call from Patricia Duque Lewis at 11:30 a.m. She told Kearney that she had seen her name on the Neighbors Network and wanted to know what she should do.
“I told her to bring the stubs to me by 3 p.m. and I would go put them in the raffle jar,” said Kearney. “She showed up at around two, I put them in the jar, and at 3:30 a Karl Lewis stub was pulled out as the winner.”
Tweeter delivered the TV and Bose sound system to Lewis a couple of weeks later.
“Karl is a very happy man as you could imagine,” said Graves.