Vernon Broom started playing the lottery about 12 years ago. Four years ago, he bought a $2 Jumbo Bucks scratch-off ticket at Petrofast Food Store in Gainesville.

His $2 investment paid off in a $50,000 prize.

“That was back when they had the (Georgia Lottery) office in Oakwood,” Broom said. “I put it in the bank. I painted the house, did some work and had some tree work done.”

According to statistics from the Georgia Lottery Corp., Hall County totaled $38 million in prizes paid in 2010 and almost $400 million since 1994.

There have been 503 winners of $10,000 or more associated with Hall County since the lottery’s inception. Of those, 355 are Hall County residents who purchased winning tickets from Hall County vendors.

Kathy Crawford of Gainesville is one of the area’s most recent winners. She was presented with a check for $2 million after buying a lucky scratch-off ticket.

“When we first scratched it off, I hadn’t scratched it all and I thought it said $2,000,” Crawford told The Times when she won. “I was excited to see that one. And then I kept scratching it and saw the other three zeros.”

She said she and her husband always try to buy a ticket at least once a week, and it finally paid off with the Super Millions ticket from the Shell Food Mart in Murrayville.

The top winning games to Hall County residents include $500 Million Club, Mega Millions and Jumbo Bucks Classic.

“We have any ticket starting with $100 and $500, then $10,000,” said Suraiya Jalali, owner of Flowery Branch Convenience on Spout Springs Road.

Earlier this month, customer Chris Thomas got a surprise when he went to buy his usual morning necessities.

“He never spends that much money. He buys a $1 Fantasy 5 all the time, his biscuit and his tea,” Jalali said.

But this time, Thomas ended up with something a little different.

“I didn’t ask for that ticket. I buy one once in a while and my daughter will scratch them off,” he said. “I bought her one and it was a winner for $30.”

He came to Jalali’s store to cash the ticket in. He requested another ticket and asked for his cash back, but Jalali heard him wrong.

“She ripped one of these off, Cash Blast,” Thomas said. “It was already perforated so I said, ‘Just give it to me.’ The ticket I didn’t ask for was a $1,000 winner.”

It was the first time Thomas had won anything major while playing the lottery. Because retailers can only cash tickets with prizes up to $600, he drove to the Georgia Lottery office in Duluth to fill out paperwork and claim his reward, which is now in the bank.

“I’ve never won anything more than $20 or $50,” he said. “I don’t play much and it wasn’t a big win, but a thousand bucks is a thousand bucks.”

Linda Anderson and her husband won the lottery twice, $15,000 in total. Both wins came off of scratch-off tickets.

“We played about once or twice a week,” said Anderson, a Gainesville resident. “I play it very rarely now. Now it seems like they’ve been putting less winners there.”

The Andersons had to cash their tickets at lottery offices instead of the gas station they bought the tickets at.

“We went and paid some of the bills off and put a little bit into savings,” she said.

AJ Adajania, owner of Wee Willy’s in Gainesville, has one regular customer whose big prize he likes to talk about. “A lady who won $250,000 on a scratch-off (in 2000), she still comes around every now and then,” Adajania said. “She handed the ticket back and said, ‘Son, did I really win?’ I said ‘I think you did.’ Her son had cancer so she spent all of her money on him.”

But in the past few years since the country’s economy began a downward slide, lottery retailers aren’t seeing nearly as many winners.

“I’ve noticed that there’s not as many winners,” said Lisa Simmons, a cashier at Petrofast Food Store in Gainesville. “I think we’ve sometimes had winners and then it may go a week before we have another one … We’ve had a lot of people complain about that.”

Adajania noticed the trend too, but attributed it to peoples’ financial struggles.

“It seems like the winnings have gone down, but it’s probably because we’re not selling enough tickets,” he said. “The more you sell the more winners you see, but you’re not selling as many.”

Kimberly Starks, media relations specialist for the Georgia Lottery Corp., said the corporation is not giving out fewer winning tickets.

“For fiscal year 2011 we paid out over $2.12 billion in prizes,” she said. “We do recognize the economic times we’re in and as economic times change, spending changes. The economy impacts our business … We did experience a slight 1 percent drop in sales, but people are still winning.”

Gainesville resident Ernest Driskell, a World War II veteran, is one of the lucky ones. The economy hasn’t gotten him down yet, and he’s won multiple times at Simmons’ store.

“(Simmons) gave me a winner one time for $500,” he said. “This little girl down here ain’t never failed to give me a winner.”

Driskell said he plays lottery about three times a week, buying $5 or $10 worth of tickets each time. He’s hoping to win a big payout one day, and he’s got a proven method to go by.

“I usually use the same numbers every time. All the numbers come out of the Bible. That’s when I won that $500,” he said.

Unlike Driskell, Gainesville resident Ronald Hedden, who won $175,000 on April Fool’s Day in 2005, has “slacked off” on his lottery playing. He only plays Mega Millions twice a month now, but he’s still hoping for another, bigger jackpot, perhaps one that would allow him to help others as well as himself.

“I guess it’s kind of an itch you have. It’s like a drive, ‘What would I do with all that money?’” Hedden said. “I can see some people who are really struggling. I know a girl who works at the Dairy Queen and I wouldn’t mind helping her out. She’s got four or five kids. She’s dedicated and she deserves a break.”