When Toronto butcher Jose Lima won more than $14 million in the lottery, he shared the wealth, handing out thousands of dollars - and 50,000 pounds of chicken.
For years, Jose Lima, the 52-year-old owner of two Portuguese meat markets in downtown Toronto had been telling his friends and co-workers what he would do if the numbers he’d been playing for the last decade ever won the lottery. For starters, he would give $5,000 to every one of his 50 employees. Next on his list was rewarding his customers for their loyalty. And after winning $14 million on Thursday, April 3rd, that’s exactly what he did.
“I said I’d give (something) away to the most people I can, (for them) to have something on the table for at least one day, and today I pay all my bills to God,” Lima, otherwise known as “Joe from the butcher shop,” told CNEWS. Lines grew to over a hundred people at each of Lima’s two butcher shops as Joe’s largess began to flow in the form of free 10 lb. bags of fresh chicken legs - 5,000 of them! When the 48,500 lbs. of chicken Lima had ordered in began to run low, he ordered some more, to make sure that none of his customers would leave empty-handed.
Lima’s customers weren’t the only ones smiling that rainy Thursday. Darcy Silva, a butcher who works at one of Lima’s stores, was grateful for his boss’s $5,000 gift, but not entirely surprised by his generosity. “The employees loved him before and everybody appreciates it,” said Silva, who plans to invest some of the money for his children’s education. “Obviously there’s different levels of need, some need it more than others, but just to have him do it is phenomenal.”
As for Jose Lima himself, he was in his glory - smiling ear to ear, hour after hour as he talked to journalists and friends. When he wasn’t doing interviews, Lima was gladly accepting congratulatory hugs & kisses from long-time customers including Myrtle Hodge, who recounted an example of Lima’s kindness and compassion. Hodge was short of money for her purchase at the store one day, but instead of letting her walk out with nothing, Lima pulled a $20 bill out of his pocket and paid for her order himself. “It couldn’t happen to a better person than him,” said Hodge. “God bless him.”