Lottery winner Bob Erb at his home in Terrace, B.C. Erb keeps the donation requests he receives in a detergent box at his Terrace home. Anna Killen / Special to The Province

Multimillionaire and marijuana activist Bob Erb of Terrace still lives in same home he had before winning a $25 million lottery jackpot — but he did treat himself to an Airstream trailer. Anna Killen / Special to The Province

Bob Erb keeps the donation requests he receives in a detergent box at his Terrace home. See Notes / Direction / PROVINCE

Lottery winner Bob Erb at his home in Terrace, B.C. Anna Killen / Special to The Province

Pot activist Robert Erb poses with his multi-million winning lottery cheque at his home in Terrace, B.C. Anna Killen / Special to The Province

Lottery winner Bob Erb at his home in Terrace, B.C. Anna Killen / Special to The Province

Lottery winner Bob Erb at his home in Terrace, B.C. Anna Killen / Special to The Province

A year ago, the universe decided to wallop the world with a heart as big and rough-edged as a giant ­marijuana leaf. Bob Erb, by no means rich, had spent his six decades quietly donating to everything from homeless strangers to schoolchildren needing winter coats. But that was before the Terrace man won $25 million in a Lotto Max draw on Nov. 2, 2012. In the first year since Erb’s win, he estimates he has made about $8 million in charitable donations and gifts to individuals. His dazzling acts of kindness range from hundreds of thousands for family and friends to $20 for wandering street people. They range from the 10 cars he has bought for people to the $300,000 he has spent on dental work for Terrace residents who couldn’t afford it themselves. It’s as if Erb’s life before the lottery win was a dress rehearsal for the moment he was handed the financial firepower to become what he was meant to be: a social conscience with legs. “He was generous before he won the lottery,” says Rod Link, editor-publisher of The Terrace Standard weekly newspaper. “Obviously, that spirit of generosity has now been amplified.” Erb’s friends say that in the decades leading up to his lottery win the ­seasonal construction worker was always keen to help those whose fortunes were feebler than his. MORE FRIENDLY FOLKS There are probably a few folks in Terrace now wishing they’d been nicer to Erb along the way. And Erb acknowledges that many people are more respectful than they were before he won the Lotto Max jackpot. “They’re sweeter than what they had been in the past,” he says. “More friendly, I guess.” His generous loyalty to old friends is becoming the stuff of local legend. Robert Dowse, Erb’s buddy for two decades, was given a new $105,000 truck for his delivery business, a $19,000 Ski-Doo and $70,000 for him, his wife and five sons. “He’s an awesome guy,” Dowse says. Herb is a 61-year-old grandfather whose compassion extends to utter strangers battered by life’s circumstances. “He’s sort of like a community saint,” says Kelsey Wiebe, curator of Terrace’s Heritage Park Museum. “I don’t think anyone else would deal with the windfall in the way he has. People say they would, but I don’t know anyone who actually would.” Erb, who had been buying ­weekly lottery tickets for 40 years, hit the ground running when his dream of wining the lottery came true. He had long planned how and whom to help if wealth came his way. “I always figured I’d give a third of it away to friends, families, charities, needy causes, businesses that are struggling,” Erb says. 'HE'S GENEROUS AND A MAN OF HIS WORD' Nora Thompson, who has known Erb for almost 40 years, says he used to tell her whom he was going to help if he ever got any money. “I thought, ‘Oh, well, that would be nice but will it ever happen?’” says Thompson, 60. “Wow, did it ever. He’s generous and he’s a man of his word.”

Thompson, president of the Rosswood Community Association, experienced Erb’s generosity first hand. Erb spent about $70,000 on a new roof and other improvements for the association’s hall 40 kilometres north of Terrace. Erb’s kindness reached into Thompson’s personal life. Her husband suffered a severe head injury in an accident eight years ago. The couple, whose rural home was without running water, found it increasingly difficult to carry water sourced from a nearby stream. Erb spent about $75,000 installing a well, filter system, septic tank, crawl-space heater and new bathroom. An avid marijuana user, Erb has also donated many chunks of ­money totalling about $825,000 to the cause dearest to his heart — legalizing pot. Bob Erb’s sympathy for the sorrows of others has been heightened by tragedy in his own life. His wife took her own life in 1998, a few years after they separated. His son, Robert, died of an overdose in 2008, two months before his 27th birthday. Erb says he would give every cent he has to bring him back. Five years later, Erb still cries over this loss every day. “Some days, a few times,” he says. “I try not to dwell on it.” A $10,000 TIP In June, Erb made national news when he left a $10,000 tip for the owner of a restaurant in Chamberlain, Sask. He had learned that ­owner Cliff Luther’s 25-year-old daughter in B.C. had just been diagnosed with cancer. Erb well understood the other man’s distress. “My heart went out to him,” he says. “You have more empathy when you lose an adult child.” Erb’s social conscience is, perhaps, a product of nature and nurture. He grew up on a lower middle class farm in Weyburn in southeastern Saskatchewan, where neighbours grouped together to help each other when one suffered a mishap. Walter Erb, his great uncle, whom he resembles, was health ­minister in Saskatchewan’s CCF government when Premier Tommy Douglas moved to introduce medicare in the early 1960s. Walter Erb was initially given responsibility for implementing medicare but later quit the party in opposition to it. Erb says he was comfortable before the lottery win so giving himself a lavish lifestyle hasn’t been at the top of his priorities. His friends and adult daughter have had to tell him it’s OK to buy a few toys. He still buys weekly lottery tickets. He lives in the same modest house on a half-acre lot in Thornhill, across the Skeena River from Terrace. Sharing Erb’s home is Jenny Brown, his romantic partner. Brown, 23 years his junior, began living with Erb after the lottery win but had been dating him before that. “She’s drop-dead gorgeous. Every man’s dream,” he says. His initial attempts at splurging on himself were somewhat feeble by multimillionaire standards. Instead of a second home in ­Jamaica, Erb bought a 23-foot Airstream ­trailer and a Lincoln Navigator. But he has recently shown signs of loosening up, having ordered two Shelby American Super Snakes — souped-up Mustangs — worth about $250,000 each.

His wealth hasn’t bought him time. Erb still has a sideline in buying and selling antiques and collectibles. But he has been so busy with making and overseeing donations that there’s little time for the garage sales he used to haunt. The history of lottery winners is full of folks who have gone bust after burning through millions. At a rate of $8 million in giveaways a year, Erb’s fortune wouldn’t last long. RISK OF OVER-DONATING Erb knows he can’t maintain that pace of compassion. He understands the risks of overspending — or, in his case, over-donating. “I wanted to get a lot of the dispersement process done in the first year because at my age I didn’t want it to drag into two years,” he says. He has more than 200 outstanding requests for help stashed in zip-lock bags in a Sunlight detergent box. Almost every day the list of requests from groups and individuals grows larger. The outstretched hands put this big-hearted man in a position he doesn’t like: saying “no.” But it bothers him if people he has assisted try to come back for second helpings when he hasn’t been able to respond to others in need. “There’s only so much money. You’ve got to be almost cold,” he says. “I’ve easily got $50 million worth of requests.” UNABASHED PROMOTER OF POT Bob Erb could have become a terminal space cadet. Anyone who smokes as much pot as the Terrace multimillionaire does — half an ounce a day — might be forgiven for having colonized a distant mental planet. It would be understandable if perpetual munchie-ism ballooned him to 300 pounds. But Erb, an affable 61-year-old grandpa, makes perfect, down-to-earth sense when he speaks. And his lean 163 pounds is draped around a 30-inch waist. His blood pressure is excellent. Erb is brazenly open about his lifestyle. He rises about 4 a.m. each day and within minutes he has smoked the first of 15 daily spliffs. “I use marijuana as preventive medicine,” he says. “It’s like a multi-vitamin.” If his $25-million lottery win gave Erb supercharged compassion, he’s outspoken enough that some Terracites see him as more demon than saint. “I’ve been treated rather rudely by God-fearing Christians because of their belief that I am the antichrist,” he says without malice. Erb says he has been busted four times for pot — twice in the early 1970s for possession and twice in the 1990s. The last two busts resulted in one conviction for possession for the purpose of trafficking and another for cultivation. “There are people who do not like him because of his marijuana activism,” says Kelsey Wiebe, curator of the Heritage Park Museum in Terrace. “There are definitely those who find him distasteful.” Sensible B.C. director Dana Larsen says Erb has donated more than $250,000 to the campaign for a referendum on marijuana. “Bob’s support for our efforts has been transformative,” Larsen says. “Without Bob’s support, this campaign would have been way more challenging.” Erb’s passionate pot advocacy sometimes veers toward dark comedy. In 2002, he ran for Terrace mayor under the Marijuana Party banner.