RALEIGH – Elbie Powers, a pecan farmer from Roseboro, plans to use the $178,740 prize he won in the June 4 Carolina Cash 5 drawing to help him retire.

“I’m retiring in thirty days,” Powers said. “This is life changing money for me.”

Powers learned of his win after he checked his numbers on the lottery’s website on Wednesday.

“I was looking at my ticket and my mind went blank,” Powers said. “Then my heart started racing. I put on my good glasses and looked again and said ‘Oh my god, I’ve hit it.’”

Powers received a check for $121,547 after state and federal taxes were withheld. He purchased his winning ticket at the Tobacco Road Outlet on Sunset Avenue in Clinton.

Powers’ Quick Pick ticket was one of two to match all five numbers in the drawing for the $357,480 jackpot. The first ticket was claimed on Wednesday by Dexter Brame, a fork lift operator from Henderson.

“This is the best feeling I’ve ever had,” said Powers as he received his winnings. “There’s no other way to describe it.”

Ticket sales for games such as Carolina Cash 5 have enabled the lottery to raise more than $2.8 billion for education initiatives statewide. Since the lottery began through June 30, 2012, Sampson County education programs received more than $20.6 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 need-based college scholarships and financial aid.