Link With Track Puts Charities in Winner’s Circle

DEL MAR — Some of the ponies that trot around the track Bing Crosby built do tend to amble more like animals of other species than of thoroughbred horseflesh. Or so a horse-faced gambler will tell you as he rips up his losing tickets.

But even given the fact that a few of the thoroughbreds at the Del Mar Racetrack run more like porkers than ponies, no one expects to see an actual Vietnamese pot-bellied pig cruising down the track. Nor, for that matter, would a llama canter unnoticed. And a couple of snakes squirming 6 furlongs to the finish line might well cause a genuine sensation.

This animal parade sounds most unlikely, but the early-morning “Pacific Classic Walk for Animals,” to be held at the track Aug. 22 to benefit the Helen Woodward Animal Center, is an interesting sideshow in the lengthy parade of charity events presented at, and occasionally by, the Del Mar Thoroughbred Club during the 43 days of the club’s annual meet.

The animals mentioned above participated, with their owners, in the first such walk, given last summer during the week leading up to the inaugural running of the $1-million Pacific Classic race.

*

Everybody wants to make money at the track, but what is not well known is the long, long list of charities that consistently leave the grandstands as winners, sometimes on a rather substantial basis. The process is not a gamble for any of them because the odds are stacked in their favor; those groups selected to share in proceeds from the track’s three “charity days” parlay their earnings into even larger returns.

That the track actually gives money away may come as a shock to anyone who ever has held a fistful of losing tickets, but it does, courtesy of a California statute passed in the 1930s. According to Mary Shepardson, the track’s society publicist, the law mandating that some proceeds be donated to charity accompanied the return of legal horse racing to the state after a hiatus that stretched through the Prohibition period.

By law, the track’s parimutuel commission (the amount it keeps from wagers placed at the betting windows) and all profits from admissions, parking, concessions and program sales on designated “charity days” are funneled to Del Mar Charities Inc., a nonprofit corporation charged with distribution of the funds. Overhead expenses are not deducted from the amounts earned. The number of race days on a given track’s annual calendar determines the number of charity days; at Del Mar, there are three such days.

United Way of San Diego County usually takes the lion’s share of the charity day proceeds, garnering $260,000 of the $394,000 disbursed following the 1990 race meeting (because of accounting and administration procedures, monies are distributed about 12 months after the meet at which they were earned, and the 1991 proceeds have yet to be disbursed). But a trio of high-profile, socially well-connected charitable organizations traditionally share both in the remaining sum and in the glamour of having a day at the races named in their honor.

These three groups, The Country Friends, Las Patronas and the Junior League of San Diego, augment their share of the charity days funds--$20,000 each from the 1990 season--through being granted the privilege of selling up to 500 tickets to the exclusive Turf Club on their designated days. The track donates the guest tickets, which normally cost $17 each, and the charity is free to sell them “for whatever the market will bear,” Shepardson said. Guests are, however, required to pay the $5 tax charged by the city of Del Mar.

The groups generally don’t earn a fortune from the ticket sales, since they usually retail the admissions for $15 or $20. Charity is, nonetheless, a high-stakes proposition at the Del Mar Thoroughbred Club, which since 1946 has disbursed more than $4 million through Del Mar Charities.

The choice of beneficiaries is made by a five-member board of influential county residents, headed by retired newspaper executive Alex DeBakcsy. The other members are hotelier Anne Evans, attorney James F. Mulvaney, poinsettia potentate Paul Ecke Jr. and banker Larry Cox. By tradition, the group includes a number of local hospitals on the gifts list.

But groups don’t have to go through Del Mar Charities to make money.

According to Shepardson, the possibilities for money-making are about as varied and numerous as the entries on a typical day’s racing card. Groups whose members tend to view frivolous hats as necessary accouterments to placing bets generally request and receive tickets to the Turf Club. This coterie includes a spectrum of organizations from the American Cancer Society to the San Diego Bar Assn. Auxiliary. Less formal groups, such as the Del Mar Lifeguard Assn. and the Senior Citizens Gadabout Club, are granted clubhouse tickets for resale to group members and supporters. Still other groups are granted free use of the Pacific Pavilion in the infield, which can accommodate as many as 2,000 participants.

Julie Sarno, also of the track’s publicity office, said that the club often provides support indirectly, by donating use of certain sites as party spaces and providing site preparation and after-party clean-up, expenses that generally would be charged to the group giving the event. Nor need the benefit take place during racing hours; the annual “Foot Stomping Madness” fund-raiser for the Voices for Children auxiliary was given in the infield July 25, the Saturday preceding opening day. The elaborately staged country-Western gala attracted some 500 guests.

While the Del Mar Thoroughbred Club assists the fund-raising efforts of a great many organizations, it directly sponsors the most profitable event of the year, the Pacific Classic Gala, given in the Satellite Wagering Facility on the eve of the Aug. 30 stakes race. Hosted partly as promotion and partly as celebration of this major racing event, the gala attracts a mixture of owners, trainers and locals, particularly those who support the charity on the receiving end of the festivities. The beneficiary of the first gala, the San Dieguito Boys and Girls Club, received more than $100,000; the Armed Services YMCA will benefit from the Aug. 29 event.

Shepardson added that she expects the number of events given to increase even further with the completion, next year, of the $80-million reconstruction of the grandstands and Turf Club. The project is two-thirds complete; the remaining work will begin after the close of the season. The venerable Turf Club will come down, to be replaced by a grander, larger club that will offer about 30% more seating--and thus about 30% more room for those willing to bet that no matter which horse streaks past the finish line first, their charity will always be in the winner’s circle, too.