Friday, May 2, 2003 | 11:15 a.m.
Amid the used prom dresses, old trunks and a Captain and Tennille album at the Salvation Army thrift store on Henderson's Stephanie Street is a high-ticket item not often seen in second-hand outlets.
In a back storage room, visible through an open portal, surrounded by police tape, sits a 1973 royal blue Rolls-Royce Silver Cloud. Sale price: $15,000.
It's not far from a pair of $3,000 grand pianos, a 100-bottle wine refrigerator going for $300 and a ceramic Elvis decanter with a $40 price tag.
This isn't your average charity thrift store, located among homes worth $200,000 or more, but even here the Rolls attracts attention.
Complete with right-side steering, leather seats, air-conditioning, an eight-track tape deck, just 81,000 miles on the odometer and a bottle of Grey Poupon mustard in the glove compartment, the Rolls is a sweet deal, said Maj. William Raihl, head of the Salvation Army Clark County Command.
A retired professional boxer donated the luxury car to thank the Salvation Army after one of his children graduated from its drug rehabilitation program, Raihl said. "He originally paid $109,000 for it and it still drives like a dream."
After the British-made Rolls sat several weeks on the sales floor and had only a couple serious nibbles, Raihl on Wednesday dropped the price from $20,000 to $15,000.
The car is being sold at the store as opposed to an auction because this way the Salvation Army doesn't have to pay any additional fees on the sale, officials said. The organization has advertised the car in the newspaper and has placed a hand-written sign at the front of the store noting that a Rolls is available in the back.
By far the Rolls is the most valuable secondhand gift the local Salvation Army has received in recent years. Even at the reduced price it beats a two-seat Mercedes that was donated to the agency last year and sold for $7,000.
It's a welcome gift, especially in the current tough economic climate, when the Salvation Army Clark County Command and other local nonprofit groups are facing declining revenues.
At the Salvation Army cash gifts are down 10 percent from last year, while this year's budget had called for a 10 percent increase in available funds. At the same time demand for services for the poor are up 25 percent.
Catholic Charities of Southern Nevada is down 40 percent in donations from this time last year, while demands for its family and shelter services have stayed the same.
"The economy is tough," Catholic Charities spokeswoman Sharon Mann said. "We are seeing more and more families with both parents working low-paying jobs seeking help with food and clothing because there is nothing left after paying rent and utilities."
Raihl said he hopes that by dropping the Rolls' price this one time from the car's appraised low "blue book" value will attract more potential buyers so that the Salvation Army can soon turn the gift into revenue to keep the religious nonprofit's programs thriving.
Mann said her organization also is utilizing unusual or large gifts to help resolve money problems during the giving drought.
"We recently received 27,000 units of clothing that had been earmarked for Sears but were found to be slightly irregular," Mann said. "We've been removing the labels (to prevent people from returning the clothing to the stores for undeserved refunds) and giving them out to our clients."
Mann said a Catholic Charities thrift store also recently got the gift of a luxury car -- a Mercedes that ran only in reverse. It sold, she said.
Unusual gifts are nothing new to Raihl, who began his career as a Salvation Army driver in Alaska.
"I once had to go pick up a gift that was marked on an invoice as 'meat,' " he said. "It turned out to be geese and goats, and they were alive. One of the goats ate my back pants pocket and a goose flew into my lap, stuck his head out the car window and honked all the way to the butcher."
While Raihl was serving at a San Diego Salvation Army chapter, his organization received among its gifts a 39-foot sailboat and some gold teeth. He also received an urn full of ashes from a woman who no longer wanted to keep her departed husband hanging around. That donation wasn't sold. Instead Raihl located another relative, and that person accepted the urn and cremains.
But the Rolls took special care.
Salvation Army officials decided they couldn't keep the Rolls on the nonprofit's "as-is" vehicle lot, on Lake Mead Boulevard and Yale Street, because the elaborate Rolls' hood ornament and hubcaps undoubtedly would have disappeared in short order and the car would have been subject to further acts of vandalism.
Raihl moved it to his garage for safekeeping.
"But when a neighbor asked if I got a raise, I started to think perhaps it was not such a good idea for me to keep this car at my home," he said. That's when the Henderson thrift store was chosen as the car's venue.
To set up an appointment to test drive the Rolls-Royce, call 870-4430.
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