Las Vegas Sun

March 28, 2024

Gambling addict pleads: Build stores without slots

A slight, modestly-dressed woman stepped to the microphone.

The packed room of gaming commissioners, investigators and attorneys shuffled and stretched, checking watches and position papers, anticipating a break.

"My name is Gina Garcia," the woman said. "I lost my free will to gambling."

Ears perked up, eyes glanced forward, the collective attention began to shift.

Garcia launched into a tale of extortion and lies, telling the Nevada Gaming Commission about a life broken by gambling addiction.

"I knew I had a serious gambling problem when I began to lie about my whereabouts," she said.

Garcia said she would spend hours, days even, parked in front of a Deuce's Wild machine at Renata's tavern near her Henderson home.

"I ignored my husband's pleas to stop this insanity," she said. "In fact, when he became too much of a distraction, I kicked him out of the home demanding a separation. When the children would plead for my stopping, I would tell them that I was the mother of the household, did not have a gambling problem, and that I knew best."

For crimes she committed to feed her gambling habit Garcia would be sentenced the next day, she told the now-attentive room, to a possible 22-month prison fine. She would also likely be required to pay back more than $100,000 she had extorted from the Juvenile Diabetes Foundation.

"In addition to the remorse and terrible guilt that I carry, I am aware of the loss that my children have felt, and will continue to feel," Garcia said. "Today it's easy to spot an addictive gambler, and more sadly, a child who sits and waits for hours, looking lost and hopeless while they wait for a parent to give it up, either in a casino, in a supermarket, and sometimes I'm not sure what's worse, home alone."

By the time Garcia ended her speech, the shuffling had stopped. Watches were forgotten beneath sleeves, position papers on spare seats. The room sat in near-stunned silence.

After a pause, the commission returned to its business: drafting new regulations to combat problem gambling. But the spell Garcia had cast remained with the regulators. A few minutes later, commissioners cited her testimony in deciding to require every gambling establishment, no matter how small, to give its employees basic problem gambling awareness training.

Garcia was indeed sentenced the next day, Oct. 28, to 15 months in prison. She must also pay back nearly $115,000 to the Juvenile Diabetes Foundation.

Garcia's story begins simply enough, and she came to Las Vegas for many of the same reasons that thousands move here each year.

Born in Norman, Okla., in 1962, Garcia moved with her family to Honolulu in 1964. She learned Polynesian dance at a young age, and danced competitively into adulthood. In high school, she studied drama and joined the cheerleading squad.

After a brief stint in community college, Garcia took a job as a fund-raiser at the Easter Seal Society of Hawaii. She worked her way up from development secretary to senior fund-raising specialist, winning the state employee award along the way.

Garcia moved to Las Vegas in 1991, seeking opportunity and lower living costs. She worked briefly at UNLV before an 18-month stint as a fund-raiser for the American Cancer Society. Garcia then moved to the Juvenile Diabetes Foundation, where she was a finalist for the National Society of Fund Raising Executives' Fund-Raiser of the Year award two consecutive years.

Las Vegas may have brought Garcia success, but it would also force her to swallow the bitter pill of hitting rock-bottom. Her troubles began in 1992, and they began at a quarter Deuce's Wild machine at Renata's.

"I always won," Garcia says. "Anybody will tell you, I was Lady Luck."

Compulsive gambling experts say gambling addiction typically starts with a big jackpot, and Garcia is no exception. She hit a $250 jackpot one of the first times she played, and that was all it took.

At that time, Garcia's husband would play the slots with her. They decided they liked gambling, but couldn't afford the quarter machines. In a rare moment of fiscal discipline, they switched to the nickel Deuce's Wild machines.

Gambling was fun, Garcia recalls, and it fit well with her family schedule. Her kids could bowl while Garcia played the slots.

"I was able to take my children in there," Garcia said. "That's where it started with me and my family, and look where we ended up."

Once again, it was a jackpot that pushed Garcia to the next level. After winning a $50 jackpot on her favorite nickel machine, she decided to try her luck once again on the quarter machines.

"By that point, the addiction was really setting in," said Garcia. "Before I knew it, what used to be a $50 weekly limit progressed to a $500 limit easily."

Garcia would spend 20 hours a week gambling. Her husband had never hit a big jackpot, and he stopped coming. But Garcia would be at the machines by 5 p.m. on Fridays, all day Saturdays, and any weeknights she could spare a few hours.

It didn't take long for her hunger for jackpots to drive Garcia to $1 Deuce's Wild machines. And that's when Garcia's need for more gambling money started to grow.

When you play the nickel machines, you feed the bill acceptors $1 bills, Garcia said. When you're on the $1 machines, it's not long before you're feeding them $100 bills.

At the height of her addition, Garcia was blowing an average of $800 nightly on the slots. It was not rare for her to spend $2,000 at a sitting.

"Even at $41,000 a year, I most certainly could not be spending $800 to $1,000 a night and not be getting the money from somewhere," said Garcia.

She first embezzled in January 1996. Garcia had check-signing authority at the Juvenile Diabetes Foundation, so it was easy to write herself a $5,000 check, depositing it on Monday to cover checks she'd written at Renata's over the weekend.

"I had mastered the system," she said.

At first, Garcia told herself she was just borrowing the money to cover her losses. As soon as she hit big, she'd pay it all back.

"But it never got put back," Garcia said.

Even though she was playing for jackpots, it wasn't about the money anymore, Garcia says. She just wanted to keep playing, had to keep playing.

"I just couldn't do anything," she said. "I just went and stole money."

Once in a while, when her kids asked her if she was going gambling again, Garcia felt bad about what she was doing.

"It made me sit there and feel really, really guilty," she said.

But mostly, her family just became a distraction, keeping Garcia from her machines. When she got home from work, she suggested her kids go play at their friends' houses. When her husband got too vocal, she kicked him out.

"It was easier for me not to have him here, because I didn't have to answer to anybody," said Garcia.

At Renata's, she answered to no one.

"When I sat at a machine, the shields went up," said Garcia. "It was like I was concealed by the world."

Renata's made it easy to gamble for hours on end. Like most neighborhood casinos, food and drink were available for free, 24 hours, on demand. And Garcia was able to cash as many checks as she needed.

"It's too convenient, it's too accessible," said Garcia. "You become too comfortable."

Garcia embezzled nearly $115,000 from her employer between January 1996 and March 1997, when an internal Juvenile Defense Fund audit noticed some inaccuracies. When a supervisor asked her about the discrepancies, Garcia didn't even try to lie.

"I broke down and said, ... I stole that because I have a strong gambling problem," Garcia recalled.

Garcia was fired the next day. But it was nine months before she knew the JDF was acting on her crime. One day last December, two FBI agents came knocking.

Garcia never fought the charges. She admitted her crime from the beginning, and formally pleaded guilty to wire fraud in April.

She has worked in sales since leaving the JDF. She does not want her employer's name released, but said she has been promised her job back after she leaves jail.

Garcia has been in therapy since her March 1997 firing. She tried Gambler's Anonymous, but found one-on-one therapy works better for her. She has not gambled since before she started personal therapy earlier this year.

Still, she says the road to recovery is a long one.

"I started healing two years ago, but didn't really see the light bulb until Monday (a few days before the Gaming Commission meeting)," Garcia says.

What ignited that light? A simple question, put to Garcia by her therapist: "What is your definition of free will?"

Identifying that you have lost your free will to an addiction is the first step toward recovery, Garcia said. Addicts of any kind should not be ashamed to admit they have a problem, she said.

"It's no different than being diagnosed with a cancer or a serious illness," said Garcia. "You had a choice to gamble or not to gamble, but when you became addicted you didn't have a choice, you just became addicted."

Garcia was at the Gaming Commission meeting last week to commend steps regulators are taking to combat compulsive gambling. Proposed measures include requiring establishments to post toll-free helpline numbers and brochures near gambling machines, and setting up programs gamblers can use to limit their access to check-cashing privileges and casino credit. Also, employees who deal with the gambling public will have to undergo basic training about problem gambling programs.

Does Garcia think the steps will work?

"I think that, had there been those warning signs staring me in the face ... it probably would have helped," says Garcia. "I think it would at least have started the process."

More useful, Garcia says, would be laws limiting the spread of gambling in neighborhoods.

"Take these little casinos out of the neighborhoods," she said. "Leave the big casinos on the Strip. Take these gosh-darn slot machines out of the grocery stores."

And stories like hers may help, too.

"If I can stop one person from getting to the point where I got, then I will bear all, tell all," she said.

Despite her sentencing last week, Garcia does not have to surrender to authorities until Feb. 5, after she finishes her therapy. Until then, she is not allowed to go into any establishment that has a gaming device.

In the meantime, she has one request:

"If somebody out there would please build a grocery store, please build a gas station without a poker machine in it ... I need to go shopping for my family."

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