MILLIE VESSELS : She Just Has Horse Business in Her Veins

It so happened one day in April 1967 that Millie Vessels was sitting on a rock in India, leaning against a rifle, side by side with a maharajah waiting for a sloth bear to wander by.

She sat there for the better part of three days, waiting to shoot and kill, stuff and present a sloth bear to her husband, Frank Vessels Jr., for Christmas.

“I thought he’d get a kick out of the sloth bear because their faces look like a woman’s when she gets out of bed in the morning,” she said.

On the third day, a leopard happened by, a leopard that Vessels would have just as soon let go by except that the maharajah moved, and as he moved his shoes squeaked, causing the leopard to start toward the rock, causing Vessels to pick up her rifle.

The next day, Frank Vessels Jr., at their Long Beach home, received a simple cable from his wife: “Stalking bear, sighted leopard, shot same.”

That, in a wide-screen, Technicolor nutshell is what Millie Vessels is about. A rather extraordinary woman who helped found a race track (Los Alamitos) and develop a sport (quarter horse racing) whose outlook remains as practical as when she was a 16-year girl working in a dime store to buy a $50 horse named Red.

So it is perfectly in character that she survey the nearly 4,000 acres she owns in San Diego County--land so out and out beautiful that most people’s jaws reflexively genuflect upon first sight--and surmise, “Not a bad chunk of grass.”

Her property, located 11 miles east of Oceanside, includes the Vessels Stallion Farm and an equine training center, a golf course and a hotel resort known as San Luis Rey Downs.

Above it all sits a mansion on a windy hill. They’ve been moving stuff into the mansion for the past year, and the job is almost finished. The interior resembles something from the legacy of the mythical Charles Foster Kane. There are various works of art, sculpture and paintings from various periods.

Photographs of the famous--autographed pictures of former Presidents Eisenhower, Nixon and Ford--overflow from table-tops and window sills.

There also are photographs of famous quarter horses from the early years of Los Alamitos.

No matter what Vessels does, she knows she will forever be tied to Los Alamitos, the race track she sold to Hollywood Park in 1984. It will stick to her like the mud that clung to her ankles that first year--1951--that Los Alamitos offered pari-mutuel racing.

“We had 11 racing days that first year; it rained 10 of them,” she said. “Frank Jr. and I and some of the others had to go out and help people push their cars out of the mud after the racing was over. I was lucky, they let me drive the tractor most of the time.”

Millie Vessels, 66, was born Millie Nelson in Blythe, where her father was a cotton farmer. The family moved to Long Beach, where Millie’s father bought an iron works shop. Somewhere between Blythe, Long Beach and growing up, Millie Nelson fell in love with horses.

She met Frank Jr.--he was always called Frank Jr. --at a horse show in Santa Barbara. They courted for two years, then married.

But the Vessels family was ruled by Frank Vessels Sr. , a larger-than-life character who made and lost several fortunes. When Millie married into the family, Frank Sr. made another killing, this time in industrial construction.

He also bought a 475-acre cattle ranch in 1946 in Los Alamitos. The problem was, his cattle kept getting sick. The low-lying “tule fog” contaminated the grazing grass. Having been busted before, Frank Sr. weighed his options and figured he’d become a horseman.

“Frank Sr. originally came from Kentucky, so he knew a thing or two about horses,” Millie said. “But he couldn’t afford thoroughbreds, so he just started match racing stock horses. Because of his construction company, we put together a running surface.”

Forty years ago, Grace Vessels, Millie’s mother-in-law, sold hot dogs from her kitchen as anyone with a truck and a trailer was invited to come and plunk 50 bucks down on their horse in a quarter-mile sprint.

“Those were great days,” said Jack Clifford, former trainer and current executive secretary of the Pacific Quarter Horse Assn. “No one had any money. Our butts were sticking out of our pants and there were holes in our shoes. That’s where it all started. Without the Vessels there wouldn’t be any quarter horse racing.”

By 1951, Frank Sr. had lobbied hard enough to allow Los Alamitos 11 days of pari-mutuel racing. Millie helped sell hamburgers during the races and pulled mud patrol after.

Frank Sr. died in 1963, but the track was strong. Frank Jr. took over and by 1968 had introduced night racing. Millie showed up at her husband’s side at the track, but most of her time was spent managing her restaurant in Long Beach.

Everything changed the night of Dec. 20, 1974. In the library of the couple’s Long Beach mansion, Frank Jr. shot and killed himself with a 12-gauge shotgun. The police report said the wounds were “self-inflicted,” the newspapers of the day said suicide.

Almost no one could believe that Frank Jr. would kill himself.

“You’re talking about an entire race track that went into shock,” said Bruce Rimbo, former Los Alamitos public relations director.

Frank Jr. always had seemed impenetrable. His voice boomed, his character never seemed to waver. When he became fed up with striking Los Alamitos employees in 1970, Frank Jr. planted a “For Sale” sign in front of the track.

Millie Vessels has always held that what happened to her husband was an accident. He took out the rifle the night before because he thought he heard a prowler. That night in the library, he leaned against the gun and it accidentally went off and killed him.

“I don’t know what the hell people are talking about,” she said. “It was a loaded gun that happened to go off. It happens. I don’t get angry when I hear the suicide stuff, because I know it isn’t true. We had reservations to go to Hawaii in a week. My husband was a man; he just wasn’t the type.”

Less than a month after Frank Jr. died, Millie Vessels was installed as Los Alamitos’ president. Among the problems facing her were the new overlapping racing days that had race track competing against race track for the betting dollar, and the very fact she was a woman operating in a world dominated by men in cowboy hats and license plate-sized belt buckles.

She tackled the former with an advertising blitz. Billboards, television commercials, corporate sponsorship of races. She overcame the latter with something called self.

“I’ve never met a nicer person in all my years in the sport,” said Charlie Smith, a former national champion jockey who now works in Los Alamitos’ maintainance department. “You always felt like you could talk to Millie. More than being the boss, she seemed like a friend.”

Clifford said: “She became the horseman’s best friend. You could deal with her straight. She’d been there from the start; she knew what the sport was about and where it had come from. She wasn’t about lawyers and all that crap, she was Millie. That was enough.”

According to Clifford, a fat jockey, a trainer gone bust and a buddy who got thrown in jail always had a friend in Millie Vessels.

“I always kept a couple of extra dollars around the house, just in case,” she said.

By the late 1970s the track was doing record business. In 1981, the average daily handle reached $1.4 million, still a track record.

“Millie was such a down-to-earth person, her door was always open if you wanted to talk,” Rimbo said. “The track was doing well; people loved working there. It was a wonderful time.”

It also was the time that Millie Vessels took the first steps toward leaving Los Alamitos. She paid $6.3 million for San Luis Rey Downs that year. She also purchased the adjoining Duhlin Ranch for an undisclosed amount.

This was her Green Acres--the golf course was in disrepair and would flood each time it rained. The ranch had burned down several years before. Millie’s money started making a direct deposit down south.

“I think people saw the writing on the wall,” Rimbo said. “She was sinking so much money into that place. It was just a matter of time before she sold Los Alamitos.”

That time came in 1984, when Los Alamitos Race Course and the Los Alamitos Country Club golf course were sold to Hollywood Park for $64 million.

“I thought Hollywood Park made a good offer. It wasn’t like I had any master plan, I was just ready to have a less hectic life,” she said. “When you work all day in an office, then you have 6,000 to 7,000 guests every night, you get kind of tired of small talk.”

And so, the cornerstones of her operation are now five stallions who lounge about the breeding farm in luxury stables.

First there is Beduino, the big white horse who understands only Spanish. He has sired 27 stakes winners with total earnings of $6.7 million. Among his offspring are two-year-old champions Indigo Illusion, Brigand Silk and Tolltac. His fee, hold onto your saddle, is $20,000, second only to Dash For Cash ($25,000), who stands at the Phillips Ranch in Texas.

Also standing at the Vessels’ is The Signature ($10,000), Super Sound Charge ($2,500), Tolltac ($5,000) and Solar Rocket ($1,000). For all the expense, there has never been a lack of people willing to pay since the breeding farm became operational in 1985.

She returns to Los Alamitos every so often, but just to visit. Her home is now 11 miles east of Oceanside and seems filled to the brim with memories, including one stuffed leopard who lost his front teeth on the move down south.

“Looks like the move wasn’t so kind to him,” she said.

The same will never be said about Millie Vessels.