Wondering if the top ticket-holders in the Mega-Gift drawing would beat the Feb. 28 deadline to make their claim? Well, you can wonder no more--and meet longtime Oak Parkers Paul and Polly Grimes, a delightful couple that discovered their good fortune on Sunday afternoon, 10 days after the drawing.
A late-January birthday dinner for Polly at Trattoria 225 on Harrison Street generated the winning ticket, which they redeemed on Feb. 23 at Oak Park Village Hall.
In addition to watching the two videos below, you can read many more details about their story if you scroll below the videos.
Oak Park Couple Wins Shop the Village’s Mega-Gift Prize
On Sunday, after returning home from church, Paul and Polly Grimes of Oak Park received a most welcome revelation.
After logging onto Oak Park’s Shop the Village website, they were stunned to see that they were in possession of the Mega-Gift drawing’s top ticket. It is worth more than $4,000 in gift certificates and other prizes from the more than 100 participating Shop the Village businesses.
As Shop the Village devotees have known since Feb. 11, their ticket--#595068—matches the first ticket Village President David Pope plucked on Feb. 11 from among 83,000 accumulated during the nine-week incentive shopping program.
Late Monday morning, the Grimeses went to village hall to share their story and claim their winnings from Shop the Village organizers. By coincidence, those organizers had gathered for a pre-scheduled meeting to discuss ways in which they could continue the program encouraging in-village shopping.
Trattoria 225 owner Craig Charlton was among the program leaders in attendance at the village hall meeting. Serendipitously enough, the Grimeses’ winning ticket had come from Polly’s 48th birthday dinner at Trattoria 225, at 225 Harrison St. in the Oak Park Arts District. The excursion came just in time--in late January, during the program’s final week.
“We went out to one of our favorite neighborhood restaurants and had a lovely dinner and ended up getting this little beauty,” said Polly, referring to the ticket.
Fittingly, the couple had begun their Shop the Village journey at the restaurant in late November, at their daughter Meghan’s 24th birthday party. In between their two Trattoria 225 outings, they had shopped at a variety of other businesses partaking in the program: Shirtworks, Ten Thousand Villages, Careful Peach, Competitive Foot, Pumpkin Moon and Scratch ‘n’ Sniff.
In all, they had racked up 33 tickets representing more than $800 in purchases. Participating merchants gave one ticket for every $25 spent in a transaction, and the program overall recorded about $2.1 million in shopping.
The Grimeses had faithfully retained all their tickets, and checked a few times over the past few months to see if they had won any of the weekly drawings. They didn’t come close, but kept the faith—and their tickets—though the biggest prize they recall winning in the past was $25 at a church raffle.
Polly’s role was to ensure that whenever they shopped, they inquired if the business was part of the Shop the Village program. Paul’s role was to safeguard the tickets once they returned home, which he did in the area where they file their bills.
On Sunday, Paul checked out the Shop the Village website, at www.ShopTheVillage.biz.
“Polly said we should look one more time before we put the envelope away, maybe we won something,” recalled Paul. “I went on and we were the first number.”
Polly picked up the scene from there: “I was in the kitchen and Paul shouts, `Polly come here!’ I’m like,`What?’ He says, `Look at this, look at this number.’ And I’m like, `Oh my God, we won. We’re number 1!’”
In all, 28 numbers had been drawn for the Mega-Gift, to guard against the possibility that shoppers had discarded their tickets over the course of the program.
Before the Grimeses contacted program coordinator Matt Baron on Sunday, two others—those holding the 14th and 23rd tickets drawn on Feb. 11—had touched base to beat the Feb. 28 deadline that had been set for those registering their potential winning claims.
Charlton (pictured here with the couple) was pleased to see two of his regular patrons rewarded for their loyalty to local businesses.
“We had a lot of people that participated in the program,” said Charlton. “We were very, very excited to be a part of it. The biggest message you can get to everybody out there is to continue to shop the village of Oak Park.”
Paul Grimes a 50-year-old computer software project manager, said his family has always made a conscious effort to support local businesses. “We try to stay within the village for a lot of stuff,” he said.
Polly is a bookkeeper and assistant manager at The Tennis and Fitness Centre on Ridgeland Avenue in Oak Park, which was a Shop the Village participant.
For Polly, receiving compensation at the village hall location was nothing new: her prior employment includes working for three years at the Park District of Oak Park at a time when its offices were at what is now exclusively village hall.
The couple has been married for more than 25 years. Polly is a Franklin Park native and Paul is a third-generation Oak Parker. They have lived in the same south Oak Park home since September 1984 and have two children, Meghan, 24, and Ben, 23.
