By By BEN RAYMOND LODE / Niles Daily Star
NILES -- When she came home and listened to her answering machine Friday at 7 p.m, her first thought was to call a sister.
By then, it was already two hours after Eloise "Elly" Frucci, a former supervisor at Simplicity Patterns in Niles, had been announced the winner of this year's St. Joseph Medical Center's Women's Care Center annual house raffle.
The raffle house she won is located at Covington Shores in Granger, Ind.
Eloise said she and her late husband, Rosario "Roy" Frucci, who worked as a supervisor at National Standard in Niles and passed away in January, always bought raffle tickets for the Women's Care Center.
Eloise, who for the last three-and-a-half years of her husband's five-year struggle with illness was his only care giver, however, said the money they spent on the raffle had always gone to a good cause.
When she called to tell her daughter, who lives in Lake Elsinore, Calif., and her son, who lives in Cincinnati, Ohio, that she had won, she said they were surprised, but very happy on her behalf.
Eloise said it hasn't really sunk in that she has won a gorgeous new house with a spacious garden.
When she went to the doctor the other day, she advised the doctor up front that her blood pressure was going to be high, more as a joke than anything else.
Her new house, which has a three-car garage, living, dining and family room, four bedrooms, two-and-a-half baths, a full basement and rooms upstairs, however, won't be Eloise's home in the future.
She has already put her new house up for sale.
But she said moving away from her home on North 13th Street in Niles, which has been the family's home for 46 years, would have been difficult, especially since her husband passed away.
That, however, doesn't mean she hasn't already celebrated with friends and family the fact that she is currently the owner of a brand new house.
She has already taken a few sisters and their husbands out for dinner, as well as taking her daughter's mother-in-law and a friend to a nursery to look at, and buy, new plants for her garden.
When winter rolls around next year, she plans to spend a while with her daughter in California.
Eloise said many people have contacted her and expressed their pleasure with her good fortune.
The home is valued at $289,900. She doesn't know how much she'll get for selling the house, or how long it will take to sell.
Selling the house within the month, then, would make May a pretty good one for Eloise. She won the home on May 2. Mother's Day is May 11, and her birthday is May 26.