Ephrata woman wins house

EPHRATA - Donna Wallar was eating dinner at Mommy Yum Yums in Ephrata when she got the call on her cell phone.

She had won a house appraised at $260,000.

"I was really excited," she said. "At first I couldn't believe it was happening, naturally. Then I thought perhaps I had won one of the smaller prizes. I hadn't really dreamed that I would win the whole house."

The house was part of the annual Really BIG Raffle fundraiser for North Idaho College in Coeur d'Alene.

Wallar said she's been buying a ticket for the raffle every year for about 10 years.

"My kids thought I was crazy," she said. "I bought one a year and they said, 'why are you wasting your money?'"

Her daughter used to live in Post Falls. One day when she was visiting her daughter, she popped into the grocery store in town where people were selling tickets for the raffle.

"I went ahead and bought one and I've been buying one once a year since," she said.

Wallar is not sure if she will sell the house or live in it, but either way she plans to keep her home in Ephrata.

This year's raffle brought in approximately $210,000 for the college, said Kristen McFadden, data and resource coordinator for the NIC Foundation.

About half of the funds go to pay for whatever are the greatest needs of the college, whether it's scholarships, funding programs, technology or faculty grants.

"We have a panel that decides what the critical needs are for the college that aren't being met by other sources," she said.

The other half goes into the college's carpentry program, which is responsible for building the house that's raffled off each year. The raffle generates enough money for the students to build a house for next year's raffle and gives the students practical experience in the process.

"What other class can you take where you actually build a home?" said McFadden. "You can come back and see it 100 years from now and show your grandkids. And you know that you built that home. It's neat for them and it's neat for the community. It's kind of a win-win situation for everybody. It's a fun event and people really get into it out here."

Over the years since she started buying raffle tickets, Wallar said she's looked at some of the student-built houses during open house events.

"It's interesting to see the houses they've built over the years, just the years that I've been buying tickets," she said.

Luckily, she thinks she got a good one.

"The house is gorgeous," she said. "It's an absolutely beautiful home."