If Nurse of the Week Duane Kelloway is Crying, Rest Assured: They’re Happy Tears

Florida nurse Duane Kelloway is the Man Who Broke the Bank at… Seminole Hard Rock!

We need lucky nurses more than ever, so maybe our Nurse of the Week‘s jackpot last Saturday will rub off on our readers. OR nurse Duane Kelloway works at St Joseph’s Hospital in Lutz, Florida. With the state struggling under the Delta variant surge as well as the—let’s call it Florida-ness—that can astound even hardened natives, the 50-year-old nurse was very much in need of an R&R break.

Like most nurses, Kelloway has been seeking healthy ways to shed the stress and burnout that may be joining the stethoscope as an integral part of the average nurse’s uniform. After a summer of working overtime to treat Covid-19 patients, Kelloway says, “We thought we were heading on the downturn and now all of a sudden we’re back in the mess again.” Then, last week, his wife Kelley (also a nurse) convinced her husband that Saturday was the best night for a venture into Tampa to enjoy an evening off at the casino. The Kelloways got their longed-for R&R, a break—and much more—while playing the 2-cent machines at the Seminole Hard Rock Hotel & Casino.

As Kelloway was blowing off accumulated steam at the slots, apparently his “one-armed bandit” had a sudden crisis of conscience. “I was spinning, spinning,” he told Tampa’s Channel 8. “Then, I [came] across the ‘Wild Wild Wild Wild’ box and I was like, ‘Oh my god! I just hit the $2,000 jackpot!” But it didn’t end there.

The $2,450 he won on the machine nudged the casino’s total 2021 slots payout past the $1 billion mark—and no casino worth its salt allows any milestone to pass by unnoticed. The managers told Kelloway, ”I could either get 10 times my jackpot—which would’ve been $24,000—or, they [would give me] this 2022 X7 BMW worth $112,000. I about fainted.”

His decision did not require much in the way of “Let’s Make a Deal” type deliberation; Kelloway went with the New Car.

The prize boosted his mood even before he had a chance to test drive it. “I thought I was going to pass out,” he recalled. “To be so lucky to be here at the right time and the right place and at the right machine.” (Thanks to Kelley’s sharp sense of timing; Duane had initially wanted to go out on Friday). The 2022 BMW represents a significant upgrade for them: that night, the Kelloways had driven down to Tampa in a 2013 Taurus.

Duane and Kelley Kelloway drove home last Saturday in an unusually snazzy new Nurse-Mobile: a 2022 BMW X7.

But Kelloway is not likely to embark on a major gambling spree.

”It’s a release. It’s an escape. It just gets you away to decompress for a couple of hours.” And it does sound a lot more fun than simply buying lottery tickets.

We hope that the Fla surge winds down soon and that Duane Kelloway, RN, and Kelley Kelloway, RN get the most out of their new wheels. For more on Kelloway’s win, see Florida CBS stations Channel 6 or Channel 8.