RALEIGH – Mebane resident Todd Swan’s weekly practice is to buy three tickets for each of North Carolina’s jackpot games: Mega Millions, Powerball and Carolina Cash 5. Saturday night, the Cash 5 numbers he let the computer pick turned him from a fan of jackpot games into a $128,069 jackpot winner.

“My turn came up,” Swan said the day before Thanksgiving at lottery headquarters. “It was awesome.”

After Swan and his wife had dinner the night of the drawing, he stopped at the Lowes Foods on Mebane Oaks Road for groceries – and his customary ticket purchase. Early Sunday morning he checked his numbers. Stunned, he called to his wife to share the good news.

Swan said the $88,688 in after-tax winnings would help the couple replace the roof on a home they bought recently.

The jackpot for Friday’s Cash 5 drawing is an estimated $110,000.

Ticket sales made it possible for the lottery to raise more than half a billion dollars for the state last year. For details on how $47.3 million in lottery funds have made a difference in Alamance County, click on the “Where the Money Goes” tab on the lottery’s website.