Monday, May 5, 2003 | 8:12 a.m.
Tim Cooper took a breather from job-hunting last week and visited an old friend.
A chain-link fence encircled the charred corpse of Pahrump's Mountain View Casino, which burned to rubble in a fire early Tuesday.
Two days later, the bowling-lane mechanic visited the casino and talked with a patron who had hoped to retrieve his three bowling balls still sitting in a locker inside.
"I just turned in a bunch of applications to different businesses around town," Cooper said. "But I'm collecting unemployment. And they're having a job fair at the Nugget (Casino) Saturday. I'm going to that."
It has been five years since Cooper had to look for a job.
"I woke up at 5 o'clock in the morning, turned on the TV and saw my job just went into the ground," he said.
Cooper, 29, has a wife and mother-in-law to help support. Mountain View's other 200 workers also include sole breadwinners for single-parent homes or couples whose entire household income depended on jobs at the casino that opened about 20 years ago.
In such towns as Pahrump, which make up the bulk of Nevada's geography and very little of its population base, the loss of an employer is devastating, said Jeanna Howard, Pahrump town Board member.
"It's one of our largest employers. So you have a lack of spending in the community, the lack of taxes coming in the from the gaming, a lack of tax revenue from all the other business there," Howard said Friday morning.
"And then you have all those people looking for employment. It's a huge impact on a community of this size," she said.
Three Mountain View workers sat at a table outside Albertsons supermarket in Pahrump Thursday afternoon, selling raffle tickets for a living-room suite donated to raise money for the displaced workers and their families.
Pahrump's Furniture Warehouse and the Gallery of Home Furnishings each donated a furniture set to raise money from raffles. A Mountain View bartender named Abby, who would only give her first name, was among those selling tickets.
She now has to find a way to support her children, ages 7, 4 and 3.
"I'm a single mom with three kids," Abby said. "I've put in applications at other places, but they didn't call me yet."
"I'd been there for 14 years. I've never worked any place else since I came here," added Yolly, a casino change person who was also selling tickets.
"It wasn't just a job," a third woman at the table said. "It was our second home. It was the people we worked with."
Two days after the fire, people cruised into the casino's parking lot to gawk. Some stayed in their cars. Others got out and took pictures. But the most amazing part of the fire's aftermath is harder to see.
Within hours, Pahrump residents set up the Families of Mountain View Employees Fund relief account at Bank of America. They donated furniture for the raffle and organized two job fairs and a spaghetti dinner to raise money.
"People in other communities make their little jokes about this town, but without a doubt this town comes together without a second thought," Howard said. "It's pretty cool."
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