The Press and Journal (Aberdeen and Aberdeenshire)
Carly queen of the road in Audi A1 win
An 18-year-old student will soon be whizzing around in her new motor thanks to a north-east charity.
Carly Stott, who passed her driving test last August, won the Audi A1 in the Friends of the Special Nursery raffle.
The charity supports premature and sickly babies at Aberdeen Royal Infirmary’s neonatal unit, and managed to sell a massive 17,000 raffle tickets each priced £2.
People from Stonehaven to Ullapool snapped them up, raising a total of £17,000 for the charity. The cash will be used to buy specialist incubators for some of the smallest newborns at the unit.
Miss Stott said she had completely forgotten about entering the raffle when she received the good news on Christmas Eve.
She said: “My first thought was it must be a joke, I just couldn’t believe it.
“I didn’t know who to phone first, I was just so excited – my mum and dad were very happy, and a lot of my friends were pretty jealous when they first heard the news.
“It’s great that they’ve raised so much money for the Friends of the Special Nursery, it’s a brilliant charity.”
Dave Smith, one of the organisers of the fundraiser, said: “A group of parents who have had children in the ward put together their money and bought the Audi, and we’ve been spending the last year driving it around and selling raffle tickets.
“We had a lot of support from a lot of people and businesses who helped to sponsor the fundraiser and sell tickets, we got a lot of help from Tesco in particular.”
Kirsty Mills-Bishop, the chairwoman of the charity, said: “We’ll put the money towards a giraffe incubator, which is a specialist all-singing, all-dancing incubator.
“David and his team have done an absolutely incredible job raising funds for us with this car.
“Not only have they made a lot of money for us, they’ve really raised awareness of who we are and what we do, which is amazing in itself.”
“My first thought was it must be a joke, I just couldn’t believe it.”