RALEIGH – Before last weekend, Jimmy Broadway said he couldn’t remember the last time he played the lottery. But when he saw that the Powerball jackpot had topped $300 million, the Wake Forest man decided to try his luck again. While his Powerball tickets didn't hit the jackpot, the $1 Mega Millions ticket he bought turned out to be worth $250,000.

Saturday morning, Broadway retrieved a few of his old Powerball and Mega Millions tickets from the sun visor in his car and, using the same numbers, bought new tickets at the Murphy Oil on South Main Street in Wake Forest. He played the Powerball numbers he had originally Quick Picked, and bought a Mega Millions ticket using the numbers he had chosen before himself.

Broadway didn’t have luck in Saturday’s Powerball drawing. His Mega Millions ticket was for Tuesday's drawing, but it sat on his kitchen counter until Friday morning when he looked up the winning numbers on his laptop. His ticket matched all five white balls, winning $250,000. With the win, Broadway said that he will pay off his wife’s car and become “debt-free.”

A North Carolina native, Broadway retired from the Air Force 22 years ago and worked in human resources until retiring in 2005. Upon receiving his after-tax winnings of $170,005, Broadway said it felt “great.”

Through June 30 of last year, Wake County players won more than $277.6 million in lottery prizes and local retailers earned more than $37.3 million in commissions on ticket sales.

During the same time frame, Wake County education programs received more than $145.8 million in lottery funds. By law, those funds pay for teachers’ salaries in grades K-3, school construction, need-based college scholarships and prekindergarten programs for at-risk four-year-olds.

To date, the N.C. Education Lottery has raised more than $2.2 billion for these initiatives statewide.