Cathy Dobson/The Independent

Hail, thunderstorms and several tornado threats didn’t deter thousands from lining up to Catch the Ace Thursday at the Sarnia Legion Branch 62. 

And they’ll all be back to do it again next Thursday.

The Legion’s Catch the Ace progressive raffle lottery is moving to week 43, generating a record $3.6 million prize board and massive weekly party.

“There’s been nothing like this in Sarnia since Bayfest days,” commented the Legion’s operations manager Nick Chorostecki.

This week’s winner was Petrolia’s Maureen Kelly whose ticket was chosen from an enormous Plexiglas barrel, large enough to allow the Legion’s past president Les Jones to climb inside.

Kelly won $173,096 and the chance to pick the ace of spades hidden in one of 11 small brown envelopes still remaining.  When her card proved to be the four of diamonds instead, a resounding whoop went up throughout the building from ticket-buyers happy to get another chance next week.

Kelly took home the weekly prize money but Thursday’s really big winners were the Sarnia & District Humane Society (S&DHS) and Lambton’s volunteer rescue groups including Caregivers of Petrolia Ferals.

Several weeks ago, the Legion saw the wild popularity of Catch the Ace as a great opportunity to collect donations for various charitable groups. The area’s shelters, food banks and soup kitchens received big boosts in previous weeks from the generosity of ticket-buyers encouraged to bring along non-perishables.  This time the region’s stray dogs and cats benefited.

A whopping 5,500 pounds of dog and cat food was collected from patient Catch the Ace patrons as they waited outside the legion in some nasty weather. An estimated $7,000 in cash donations were also received, including money from Bad Dog Bar & Grill, which was giving away lemonade in exchange for humane society donations.

“This is a tremendous amount of support,” said humane society president Bob Farlow.  “Our community is just awesome.”

S&DHS manager Donna Pyette said she believes Thursday’s Catch the Ace food drive was the biggest in the shelter’s history.

“We’ve had food drives before, but nothing close to this,” said Pyette.  A large truck donated for the day by TJ’s Furniture & Home Décor was filled with pet food.  Some people also chose to bring more non-perishables for area food banks. That was sorted by humane society volunteers and employees as well.