RALEIGH – Robert and Paula Stallings, a married couple from Lumberton, plan to use some of the $319,680 prize they won playing Carolina Cash 5 to pay off their mortgage.

By winning the jackpot in the Sept. 22 drawing, the couple beat odds of 1 in 575,757. The Stallings’ said their big win came one day after they had matched four out of five numbers in the previous evening’s Cash 5 drawing.

“We had just won $321 dollars the night before,” Robert Stallings said. “So we decided to use some of those winnings to buy ten more Cash 5 tickets. The next morning when we saw the numbers online, we must have checked it 30 times. This feels wonderful.”

The Stallings’ plan to use another portion of their winnings, worth $217,832 after taxes were withheld, to help their family and go on a vacation. They purchased the winning ticket at the Sundo Kwik Shop on East 5th Street in Lumberton.

“We like playing because the odds are better than Powerball,” Robert Stallings said about the Carolina Cash 5 game. “Also, every five dollars we spent got us an entry into the Bonus Bucks drawings, so we’ve got another chance at winning some money later on, as well.”

The Bonus Bucks promotion offers Cash 5 players five extra chances to win as much as $50,000. The lottery will hold five Cash 5 Bonus Bucks drawings between now and next summer. In each drawing, five prizes will be awarded: One $50,000 grand prize, one $5,000 prize, and three $1,000 prizes.

To get a Bonus Bucks entry slip, a Cash 5 purchase of $5 must be made in one of two ways. A player can select five sets of numbers for one drawing on a single ticket or choose one set of numbers for five drawings on a single ticket. Along with the $5 Cash 5 ticket, an entry slip for the Bonus Bucks drawing will be generated. The entry slip received at the time of purchase must be kept by the player and then validated at one of the lottery’s regional claim centers to collect a prize won in the drawing.

Since the lottery began through June 30, 2011, Robeson County education programs received more than $38.4 million in lottery funds. By law, those funds pay for teachers’ salaries in grades K-3, school construction, prekindergarten programs for at-risk four-year-olds, and college scholarships and financial aid based on need.

To date, the N.C. Education Lottery has raised more than $2.45 billion for these initiatives statewide.