Tribe Hits Jackpot With Its Gambling Operation : Indians: Led by welfare mother, clan members take back business from outsiders and transform their lives.

Anna Sandoval remembers the low point as the day she trudged 10 miles to El Cajon, a Mission Indian on welfare looking for milk for her five children. Passing the wooden shacks with outhouses on the rocky hillsides of her reservation, she prayed for deliverance of her people.

“I said, ‘God, what can you do to help us?’ ” she recalled.

Two decades later, when the bingo came, the first thing she did was build a new church.

Then came the houses. Sprouting on the hillsides were 29 Spanish-style homes rivaling those of any suburban subdivision.

Built nearby were a health clinic and firehouse designed to save lives of Indians and non-Indians alike throughout the Dehesa Valley in eastern San Diego County.

And last November, Sandoval--by then a fixture as tribal chairman--dedicated a new 68,000-square-foot Sycuan Gaming Center, a sparkling complex reminiscent of the Vegas Strip with a 1,500-seat bingo parlor, 520-seat off-track betting “theater” and sunken 35-table poker area overlooked by a restaurant, bar and gift shop.

Sycuan--a square mile of wasteland where the government dumped a few Indian families a century ago--had become one of the great success stories of Indian gambling, up there with the San Manuel band in San Bernardino, the Seminoles in Florida and the Shakopee Sioux in Minnesota.

There is a grim underside, to be sure, to the industry that in one decade has come to dominate Indian economies: reservations left with empty bingo halls, victimized by Mafia infiltration, devastated by internal battles. For the majority, the alluring promise of gambling has not been realized. It’s been a marginal moneymaker, an occasional source of jobs and trickle of profits.

But some have prospered. In California, for example, gambling has brought clear economic gains to a half dozen of the state’s 96 Indian communities.

Reservations once derided as blights on the surrounding area now hire their non-Indian neighbors. Tribes that once looked for charity hand it out. Families that lacked indoor plumbing have satellite dishes in their back yards.

Even more significant, perhaps, are the changed lives: Philip Knight freed from picking sugar beets to become full-time chief executive of the Rumsey Rancheria; the children at San Manuel rejoicing at receiving bonuses for good grades from kindergarten through college; and John Welmas, once sinking into cocaine addiction, now sober and running a $400,000-a-year business feeding gamblers at the Cabazon Reservation.

“If it wasn’t for the bingo,” he said, “I probably wouldn’t be around today.”

Why have some reservations made it while others have become casualties?

A prime location never hurts--proximity to a Minneapolis or San Diego. Good management is a must. But equally essential is political stability, particularly leadership able to maneuver around the trapdoors that doom many tribes.

This was difficult to find in California, where Indians were scattered on small plots. Few groups had the traditions of strong government seen among the great Indian nations elsewhere.

While the Oklahoma Creeks had a two-house legislature and volumes of tribal law, politics here was of the extended family variety. One clan battled another for control of sewer hookups, housing funds--or bingo profits. Unscrupulous promoters could play one faction against another, offering gifts, jobs or cash.

“It’s much like if you feed fish,” said David W. Peri, a Bodega Mi-Wok who teaches anthropology at Cal State Sonoma. “If you have a small area and throw in a crumb, the crumb disappears quickly. And what you have is people after each other in the hope that the crumb is still there.”

“Infighting, power and greed,” was the way Anna Sandoval put it. “You put them all together and they’ll destroy you.”

They never destroyed her. But after she wound up in the grandest home in Indian country, a Cadillac in the driveway, they did put a bittersweet ending on what should have been her moment of triumph.

Sycuan (pronounced SICK--wan), needed crumbs--anything--when she was elected chairman in 1972. A short, stout woman with an air of confidence, she became the undisputed leader, the object of “a mother complex or whatever,” said Jim Trant, the non-Indian development expert she brought in as a consultant in 1983.

Even then, the reservation remained “largely neglected,” a government survey said. The average adult had a sixth-grade education. The only communal structures were a century-old Catholic church, reflecting their heritage as Kumeyaay Mission Indians, and a cinder-block meeting hall.

The bingo hall would dwarf those. It was proposed in 1983 by Pan American International, a company that ran one of the pioneering Seminole halls in Florida and was looking to branch out to reservations coast to coast.

When tribe members worried about the influx of strangers, Sandoval suggested a construction site in a corner of the reservation--which happened to fall 91% on her property and that of another member. “I said, ‘We can put it on my land,’ ” she recalled.

She’d get a larger share of the hassle--traffic right by her home--but also of the rental, which was based on profits. If the place prospered, so would she. “They got mad about it later,” she said of her fellow Indians.

At the time, however, who knew what would become of bingo? Worried it could disappear any day, Sandoval rolled tortillas in her kitchen and sold them to the players.

Indeed, it was no overnight success.

Within a year, the hall was raided by San Diego County sheriff’s deputies, who said an upstairs lounge featured illegal casino games. Court decisions had affirmed Indians’ right to offer high-stakes versions of any gambling legal in a state--then basically bingo and poker in California. At Sycuan, though, a game dubbed “bingo-jack” was being played at what were “obviously blackjack tables,” then-Sheriff John Duffy declared.

As late as 1987, testifying before the U.S. Senate Select Committee on Indian Affairs, Duffy distributed photos of “dilapidated conditions” at Sycuan to illustrate the failure of Indian gambling. “Reservations themselves . . . have not profited,” he said.

Sandoval was hearing similar criticism from her people.

Tribe members received only small payments, $300 in the summer and at Christmas. “They promised us a lot of things, and I haven’t seen nothing yet,” one elder griped.

The problem, Trant said, was that while the tribe was supposed to get 55% of the net, Pan Am reported little profit.

There was grumbling from another direction as well. An Indian activist from Arizona, Dineh Eagle, rallied six elders to write their congressman asking to have “our reservation restored to our old ways.” They accused Sandoval of being part of “a money oriented clique” ruining the place.

Elsewhere, such factionalism was paralyzing. Here, Sandoval obtained a court order barring Eagle from the reservation. “She was just stirring them up,” the chairwoman recalled.

“Anna? If she likes you she’s a great person. If she doesn’t like you, stay out of her way,” said Kenny Meza, then chairman of the nearby Jamul Reservation.

By the end of 1987, Sycuan made its big move: Declaring Pan Am in violation of a tribal licensing ordinance, the Tribal Council ordered the company off the reservation.

While the action was fought in court, Sycuan eventually prevailing, tribe members ran the bingo themselves--profitably. “The next month . . . we had about $300,000 to distribute,” Trant said.

In 1989, Sycuan was among the first reservations to take advantage of the national Indian Gaming Regulatory Act by negotiating a “compact” with the state to add off-track betting to its mix of games.

To direct the expansion, Sycuan didn’t pick the promoters regularly making pitches to Indians. Trant found an Arizona-based partnership, First Astri Corp., whose background was in real estate and entertainment.

Whereas some tribes allowed outside managers to hand them profit-and-loss statements, Sandoval insisted the Indians count the chips themselves.

“When they come in and say ‘We want to help you, do this for you,’ that’s bull,” she said. “They’re here for money, not because they want to help the Indians.”

This year, with $30 million in betting on horse races alone, the tribe expects to clear $4 million. But that estimate is conservative--the Indians received a check for $600,000 one month recently.

The Sycuan Gaming Center bears little resemblance to unadorned aluminum or cinder-block bingo halls elsewhere. It has a Southwest look, sand-colored with peach accents, and an entryway with skylights and mirrored ceiling. You drive up and a valet parks your car.

People start coming at 9:30 a.m. for “Wake Up Action Bingo.” There’s “matinee” bingo also, then conventional evening sessions.

While women are the mainstay of bingo, men are drawn by the plush poker parlor and off-track betting. Showing races on a 20-foot screen, the casino drew $150,000 in bets for the Kentucky Derby alone, the tribe keeping 2.3% of the handle.

With 600 workers, Sycuan is one of the largest employers in east San Diego County. And with nearly 1 million visitors expected this year, marketing director Fritz Opel, a former Disney executive, has a motto: “Why go to Vegas when you can come out to Sycuan?”

For years, the Indians were the objects of complaints about run-down conditions, drunkenness and the like.

Their problems with the surrounding community are very different when they run the most successful business around.

Now neighbors complain about traffic and overdevelopment. Some look cynically at Indian gambling as “people trying to get away with something, rather than accord them the dignity they deserve as governments trying to do good for their people,” said Jerry Levine, attorney for the San Manuel Reservation in San Bernardino County.

That’s why the Sycuan Fire Department was so important. With an ambulance, two firetrucks and 13 employees, it began answering calls throughout the Dehesa Valley, where residents previously might wait 30 minutes for an ambulance from El Cajon.

“Had the tribe offered this in any formal manner to the community, it probably would not have been accepted, just because of jealousy, resistance,” Trant said.

The tribe also sponsors a Little League team (the Sycuan Bandits) and bought computers for a nearby elementary school.

Other bands similarly have learned the art of public relations. The Seminoles have made campaign contributions to Florida state legislators and given bingo proceeds to Jerry Lewis’ muscular dystrophy telethon. The Shakopee Sioux gave $78,000 to blacktop a road in nearby Prior Lake, Minn.

But the Shakopee chairman, Leonard Prescott, is one of many tribal officials under pressure to use gambling revenues--first and foremost--to take care of public relations at home.

Prescott faces tumultuous reservation politics. After disputes with a rival faction escalated into fighting at one meeting, he hired 20 off-duty policemen to keep peace.

So while the Shakopees have put in new sewers and homes, Prescott uses 65% of the gambling profits to keep constituents happy. Some families receive $80,000 a year.

Most Indian leaders agree that such “per cap” payments are not ideal use of the money because the community may be left with few permanent improvements.

“Politically, it’s a real temptation,” said Jana McKeag, an Oklahoma Cherokee recently appointed to the Indian Gaming Commission. “But it’s short-term.”

At Sycuan, Sandoval felt secure enough to take the long-term view.

Only 30% of the tribe’s revenue is “per capped,” adults in the 96-member tribe getting $6,000 a year. Another 25% goes into trust funds and insurance--full health and $250,000 life policies for everyone. The rest is used for reservation projects.

The houses were a startling contrast to the boxlike government homes seen on most reservations. “We wanted something better,” said tribal Vice Chairman Hank Murphy, who got a 2,600-square-foot home with a “million-dollar view.”

Now Sycuan is one of the few tribes--”the real smart ones,” noted gambling expert I. Nelson Rose--using gambling to rise above it. It’s looking to invest profits in businesses that, unlike gambling, won’t be subject to whims of courts or state legislatures, and that won’t attract the shady outsiders drawn to casinos.

On the drawing board is an all-suite hotel to capitalize not only on gamblers, but golfers using Singing Hills Country Club up the road. Also planned is a $7-million senior citizens housing project, whose 283 units will be rented mostly to non-Indians, Trant said.

There’s talk as well of a vineyard to produce wine--with the Sycuan label, of course.

In Florida, the Seminoles already have invested in land, an orchard and a hotel.

In Indio, the tiny Cabazon band is partner in a $150-million plant to produce power from agricultural waste and has plans for a 1,300-home real estate tract.

Cabazon, which had to survive organized crime infiltration in the early 1980s and still suffers from fierce internal feuds, has not made Sycuan’s gambling profits and only months ago paved its first road. But the new projects, joint ventures with outside investors, would be impossible if the tribe had not managed to keep its bingo and card room going, according to Mark Nichols, Cabazon’s non-Indian chief executive officer.

“We had to be established as a fighting entity,” Nichols said. “Without gambling revenue, (the Indians) would not be dealing from a position of respect.”

Cabazon has big plans for its gambling facilities, too. It hopes to expand to 55,000 square feet, one of several tribes looking to challenge the king-of-the-hill status held by the Sycuan facility unveiled last November.

“Sycuan is the model,” said the manager of another nearby Indian gambling hall. Agreed George Forman, a former government attorney who works with many tribes: “It’s what Indian gaming should be.”

But just two weeks after the grand opening, events took a turn for Sycuan’s matriarch.

Last Dec. 10, Sandoval’s reign as chairman ended in a shocking election upset. Dan Tucker, then vice-chairman, beat her by three votes.

Tucker declared his win a mandate for “more working together.”

“Anna,” he noted, “did a lot of stuff on her own.”

He is of a new, more assimilated generation. Just 39, he rose from box boy to become manager of a Ralphs supermarket. Whereas Sandoval likes to travel to traditional Indian pow-wows, his hobbies are playing golf and attending football games.

While Tucker pledged to turn the old church into a museum to “our heritage,” no one mistook him for anything other than a modern-day managerial sort.

Another of his projects? He’d like the Sycuan Band of Mission Indians to sponsor a golf tournament at Singing Hills Country Club.

Anna Sandoval knew she’d alienated some tribe members by running things “with an iron hand.” But she couldn’t hide the hurt.

“I don’t know if they appreciated what I did,” she said. “No one has ever come to me and said ‘Thank you, Anna.’ ”

She retreated to her new home. Dubbed the “house on the hill,” it was the talk of reservations hundreds of miles away, with its imposing, tower-like front--a kiva, actually, a round room for meditation or prayer.

She hardly left office empty-handed: The rent for use of her land and pension from her chairman’s job total well over $100,000 a year, according to tribal officials. Outside the land-rich Agua Caliente in Palm Springs, she may be the wealthiest Indian in California.

But the onetime welfare mother wondered whether it all was worth it.

While her new microwave worked fine, she sometimes found herself thinking, “Boy, it would be nice to have a wood stove.”

She thought back to the old days, when Sycuan survived on fried bread and acorn mush. While it was hard to be an Indian then, you felt free on the “res.” There wasn’t all this materialism. All this commotion.

She wasn’t about to give up the money, of course, nor the house, nor the Cadillac. But a thought came to her: “You have to give up something to get something.”

Indian Gambling in California

Two dozen of California’s 96 reservations and tiny rancherias have experimented with gambling, producing several showplaces of industry--and some of its worst scandals, including two unsolved murders.

1) BARONA RANCHERIA, San Diego (County): Bingo manager Stewart Siegel was caught fixing games in 1986, then admitted being a front for organized crime. The current management firm is headed by Emmett F. Munley, who twice failed to get a license from the Nevada Gaming Control Board.

2) BISHOP RANCHERIA, Inyo: Bingo is played twice a week in a 125-seat hall. “It’s just nip and tuck,” a tribal official said.

3) CABAZON RESERVATION, Riverside: A poker room was managed in 1980 by reputed organized crime figure Rocco Zangari. In May 1981, tribe vice president Fred Alvarez began complaining that “money was being skimmed,” according to the state attorney general’s office. Soon after, Alvarez and two friends were shot dead -- a crime never solved. Fired by the tribe that November, Zangari accused Cabazon’s non-Indian administrator, John Nichols, of obtaining “fictitious salaries” from gambling. In 1985, Nichols was sentenced to four years in prison for trying to hire an undercover policeman to serve as a hit man in an unrelated incident. Cabazon now offers card, bingo, off-track betting and “pull-tab machines.” Tribal officials insist Alvarez’ murder was unrelated to gambling.

4) CHICKEN RANCH, Tuolumne: In 1984, Mi-Wok activist Karl Mathiesen re-established a tiny rancheria so an outside firm could open a bingo hall. While he soon had a gold-grille Cadillac, he complained that the Indians were not given fair profits. On Nov. 15, 1987, an arson fire swept through the shack where he lived, incinerating him. There were no arrests, or proof the crime was tied to gambling. But “someone wanted him very, very dead,” said Deputy Atty. Gen. Rudolf Corona Jr.

5) COLUSA RANCHERIA, Colusa: A 1,200-seat bingo hall has funded construction of four homes. The tribe runs the business itself, rather than rely on outsiders, because “we know the way the world is,” an official said.

6) FORT YUMA RESERVATION, Imperial: “Snowbird” tourists who fill area trailer parks in winter generate $500,000 in yearly bingo profits for 2,200 Quechan Indians.

7) HOOPA VALLEY RESERVATION, Humboldt: A 600-seat bingo hall has “never turned a profit,” a tribal official said.

8) JACKSON RANCHERIA, Amador: Reputed Florida crime figure James L. Williams managed bingo in 1985 after contracting to pay $300,000 to a local man who financed the hall. “I was very dumb,” the businessman said, complaining in Amador Superior Court that Williams paid him nothing, skimmed profits, then left. The hall reopened this summer.

9) LONE PINE RANCHERIA, Inyo: Elders play bingo once a month. The “crowd?” About 25 elders.

10) MORONGO RESERVATION, Riverside: The tribe in 1984 sued an outsider for running unauthorized bingo on one member’s land. Testimony disclosed that two reputed crime figures--Zangari and Tommy Marson--sometimes hung out at his hall. The tribe now offers bingo, off-track betting and gambling machines. In 1989, a local grandmother won $500,000 here playing MegaBingo, a televised game beamed to reservations.

11) PIT RIVER TRIBE, Shasta: Weekly bingo with $30 prizes in a 74-seat room. “It’s just for fun,” a tribe member noted.

12) RESIGHINI RANCHERIA, Del Norte: A failed bingo hall is used as a lunchroom by elders.

13) RINCON RESERVATION, San Diego: FBI wiretaps detailed the Chicago mob’s plot to take over the bingo hall, now closed.

14) ROBINSON RANCHERIA, Lake: On-and-off bingo has prompted lawsuits among investors and the tribe. The FBI seized slot-type gambling machines in February.

15) RUMSEY RANCHERIA, Yolo: Bingo liberated the Indians here from grueling farm labor. But a former tribal secretary is awaiting trial on tax charges for allegedly fleeing to Nevada with a Rolls Royce and $400,000 in proceeds.

16) SAN MANUEL RESERVATION, San Bernardino: A 15-family tribe went to court to oust its first management firm, then established the most profitable bingo hall in the nation, seating 2,600 players. Tribe members have new homes and a scholarship fund rewards children for good grades from kindergarten through college.

17) SANTA ROSA RANCHERIA, Kings: Bingo has financed a recreation center, pays tribal bills and provides small “per cap” payments to 400 tribe members: adults get $27 and kids $18 per month.

18) SANTA YNEZ RESERVATION, Santa Barbara: Even the backing of singer Wayne Newton could not overcome a remote location. A 1,800-seat bingo hall now is closed.

19) SOBOBA RESERVATION, Riverside: Bingo is closed--for the fifth time. One management firm was found to have embezzled $252,000. Another included a fugitive from the French Connection heroin case. “I think a lot of the tribes rely too much on bingo,” Chairman Robert Salgado said.

20) SYCUAN RESERVATION, San Diego: “Sycuan is the model,” a rival says matter-of-factly. The showplace of Indian gambling.

21) TABLE MOUNTAIN, Fresno: A tribal chairman was recalled “because we couldn’t get (bingo) money . . . to divide,” the leader’s brother noted. Now adult tribe members get $200 monthly from televised MegaBingo games.

22) TRINIDAD, Humbolt: A 600-seat bingo hall financed a new roof for the tribal building.

23) TWENTY-NINE PALMS RESERVATION, San Bernardino: Wiretaps in 1987 overheard mobster Chris Petti discussing a possible hotel-casino here, but the deal never materialized. The tribe now has a request for a gambling “compact” pending before the state.

24) VIEJAS RANCHERIA, San Diego: A casino will open soon. “They were hoping for something better than (gambling),” a tribal adviser said, but “there were not business opportunities other than that.”