(980 CJME file photo)

By Andrew Shepherd/ CKOM News

Annual STARS home lottery launches in Saskatchewan

May 12, 2021 | 6:00 PM

You can win a million-dollar showhome while keeping a life-saving service up and running in Saskatchewan.

The annual STARS lottery launched Wednesday, with a goal of supporting operations out of the service’s bases in Regina and Saskatoon.

The lottery raises 50 per cent of STARS’ operational funding, which works out to about $10.5 million in community support annually. The province funds the other half.

This year, there are two grand prize showhomes up for grabs. The $1.6-million Saskatoon home is located in Greenbryre Estates, while the $1.5-million home in the Regina area is located in Pilot Butte.

“With in-person events being an impossibility during the pandemic, it means virtual events like the lottery are more important than ever,” said STARS spokesperson Mark Oddan.

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While STARS regularly provides critical care and transport for people with influenza-like illness, that number has doubled during the pandemic.

Between regular missions and COVID-related missions, STARS personnel have been busy, carrying out more than 900 missions across Saskatchewan.

“Emergencies don’t take a vacation. They don’t slow down when there’s a pandemic. Perhaps people aren’t travelling as much but they’re still having medical emergencies,” said Oddan.

The STARS lottery has a total of 2,061 prizes valued at more than $4.2 million. There’s also the LUCKY STARS, which could see Saskatchewan’s biggest payout ever. If tickets sell out, the payout is expected to reach $2.6 million.

Due to the public health restrictions, the showhomes are not open to the public for viewing. They can be viewed here.

‘I’ll forever, forever be indebted to STARS’

Wade Cassidy said someone was watching over him the day STARS came to save his life.

“I was in the ambulance … when I could hear the helicopter hovering overhead,” said Cassidy.

It’s one of the last things he remembers before going into cardiac arrest shortly after the helicopter landed.

In the fall of 2018, Cassidy was at his cabin at Chitek Lake taking the dock out of the water when he had a massive heart attack at the age of 42.

Luckily, his friend who is an ER doctor was at the lake and helped diagnose the heart attack. He told the paramedics they had minutes, not hours, left and they needed to start driving south toward the hospital.

STARS met them on the side of the road.

“STARS gives you a gift that no amount of money in the world will ever let you buy and that’s time,” Cassidy said. “STARS gave my family that gift by giving me more time to get to the hospital and get in for surgery. If it wasn’t for that time that they saved, my time would have been up.”

Since his life-saving experience with STARS, Cassidy wanted to get involved in any capacity he could to raise awareness and help fundraise.

“I’ll forever, forever be indebted to STARS,” said Cassidy. “It truly is life-saving because had this incident happened 10 years ago, STARS wasn’t here at that point in time. It would have been the end of my story.”