PEARISBURG -- Billy Conley's laboring days should be over.

After two heart attacks and a recent bout with breathing difficulties, the 59-year-old Conley -- employed for the past 26 years at Pulaski Furniture Co., where he earns a modest hourly wage of $11.25 -- has been advised by his doctor to declare himself disabled and exit the workforce.

Then, too, there's the added incentive.

On Aug. 19, Conley won half a million dollars.

"I just took a notion to buy a couple of $10 [lottery] tickets," he explained. "The first was a dud. The second one I had to look two or three times. I didn't believe it."

Virginia Stafford, 64-year-old manager of the Time Out Food Mart where Conley bought the winning ticket, remembers it this way:

"He just comes in and scratches. He never scratches a $10 ticket, but that morning he decided he wanted to scratch a $10 ticket. He said, 'I think I just won $500,000. ...' I believe I was more excited about it than he was. But I was so happy that he won."

"I didn't jump or holler or anything," the cucumber-cool Conley admitted. "After I won down there, I went to the Narrows Liberty and won $200."

After settling his bills and putting groceries in the cupboard, Conley generally gives his paycheck leftovers to the Virginia Lottery.

"Sometimes $50, sometimes $75 a week," he said.

Although statistics say he has a better chance of wrecking his car, getting into an airplane accident or being struck by lightning than winning a lottery game, Conley says he has defied the odds time and again.

"I've won $500 several times," he said, pointing out that the money's not the point.

"It ain't much of nothing to me," he said. "I just like to scratch off."

Conley isn't one to overestimate material things. He lives in an 18-foot camper next to his niece, Tina Robertson, and drives an older vehicle that recently caught on fire.

He does plan on replacing the wheels but not the digs.

"I ain't got nobody but me and my dog," he said Wednesday as he relaxed in his niece's living room. "Why get a house? I don't need one."

Robertson, who calls Conley one of her two favorite uncles, said she will invest his winnings -- about $300,000 after taxes -- primarily in certificates of deposit. Right after he collected his check in Richmond, Conley handed it over to Robertson.

"Trusting, ain't he?" she laughed. "He's getting pretty harassed for money by other people. I didn't ask him for any money and wouldn't take it if he offered. He just gave me a cashier's check and told me to take care of it for him."

"I was treated like a princess at the bank that day," she added.

Conley kept some cash from his winnings.

He bought his grand niece, Kimberly Keffer, a 2001 Suzuki XL7 SUV to haul her two sets of twins, and he plans on investing in his brother-in-law Terry Havens' roofing and paving business.

He also bought himself a cell phone.

Robertson said the phone was something he needed because he didn't have one.

"That's all he's spent," she said. "He's going to try to find him a car. I told him to get something nice ... but he's wanting to buy an old rusty truck. He gets set on something and you can't talk him out of it."

Although he has been married twice, Conley does not have children. He and his first wife divorced, but he's not sure about his second marriage.

"Far as I know I ain't [married]," he said.

"He hasn't seen his second wife since 1992," Robertson added. "She left."

Conley -- who says he doesn't smoke, drink or chase women -- probably won't give up his only vice.

He'd like to take a vacation. Las Vegas pops into his mind right off the bat, but his recent health problems probably won't allow a trip that far.

Atlantic City, N.J., he speculates, is a possibility, but he swears he won't blow his windfall as other lottery winners have.

"I can't blow it," he said. "My niece won't let me blow it."

What he would really like to do is go back to work.

Although his doctor made him take some time off earlier this week and ordered him to receive oxygen treatments, he hopes to soon be back at Pulaski Furniture Co. where his friends are.

"They've been awful good to me since I've had these health problems," he said. "If I get better, I'm going back to work."