Betting on a Jackpot--in Court

Heather Devon had a gut feeling that one particular Las Vegas slot machine would reward persistence rather than luck.

So she persisted. For more than 12 hours, from early evening until well after daybreak Nov. 7, 1991, Devon played the same machine at Las Vegas’ Frontier Hotel-Casino, plopping in dollar coins three at a time from a steady stream of small payoffs as she watched the progressive jackpot build.

But Devon was no longer sitting at the machine when that jackpot hit, paying $97,823 to a man she described as a casino regular who slipped cash to staff workers to steer him toward hot machines.

In a battle now in its seventh year, Devon, a 40-year-old substitute teacher from Foothill Ranch, has been pressing the hotel’s former owners to cough up a second jackpot, plus interest, because, she said, hotel workers defrauded her of her chance at the big payoff. The trial is scheduled to begin May 26 in Las Vegas.

“It’s my jackpot,” Devon said. “I’ve been screwed out of $100,000. I will fight for this. That’s the kind of person I am. It’s a matter of principle.”

Her lawyer, Cal Potter, described the case as “trailblazing.”

“It’s a situation where she’s fighting the gaming establishment here,” Potter said. “There’s really no prior case like this.”

But a lawyer for the former hotel owners said Devon is simply making another run at a jackpot she already missed.

“The jackpot hit, the hotel paid it, and now she’s trying to get the hotel to pay the same jackpot twice,” said Stan Johnson, the attorney for Unbelievable Inc., the corporation through which Las Vegas’ Elardi family formerly owned the Frontier hotel. “I think it’s frivolous.”

Attempts to reach the Elardi family, which sold the hotel in February after a six-year strike by kitchen and building workers, were unsuccessful. The hotel itself, under new ownership, is no longer a defendant in the case.

Johnson said that even if Devon had been sitting at the machine at the same time as the jackpot winner, it is unlikely she would have won. Each slot machine, he said, contains a computer that constantly generates numbers at random. A gambler deposits money and activates the internal reels that, when they stop, select the randomly generated numbers that determine whether the machine pays out.

Timing is the determining variable.

“She would have had to insert coins and pull the handle at the exact millisecond that the other customer did in order for her to actually have won that jackpot,” Johnson said.

Devon, then a Buena Park resident, had gone to Las Vegas with her mother and brother on what she termed a “memorial” to her father, who had died four months earlier. About 7:45 p.m. Nov. 6, she sat down at the progressive dollar slot with a $100 stake, confident that she could get the machine to pay off.

“I just picked that machine and started playing it,” Devon said. “I knew in my gut I was going to hit that progressive.”

Over the next 12 hours, she said, she cycled about $20,000 in winnings through the machine as the jackpot escalated. She took no breaks for bathroom or food runs, she said.

“I went through a couple employee shifts,” Devon said. “It just felt like the machine was broken, the way the money was falling out.”

About 8:45 a.m., after her mother came down from a night’s sleep to find her daughter where she had left her, Devon said, a casino floor worker suggested she take a break to eat breakfast.

Devon said she balked at the idea, but the worker offered to shut the machine down so no one else could play it. Devon said she finally agreed.

“I never knew you could lock up the machines,” Devon said. “I walked away with my mother and turned around and walked right back. I told [the worker] there was just a gut feeling, I don’t feel comfortable about this, I don’t want to do this.”

The worker, though, convinced her that the machine would be saved for her, Devon said.

Johnson, the lawyer for Unbelievable Inc., disputed Devon’s contention, arguing that Devon asked for the break and asked that the machine be held.

“We agreed to lock down the machine, or hold the machine, for the normal period, which is usually around 45 minutes, so they could go get a break to eat,” Johnson said. “Usually, that’s designed to get something to eat right there in the hotel and come back.”

Saving a machine for a gambler is a matter of individual casino policy and not state regulation, said William Bible, chairman of the Nevada Gaming Control Board in Carson City. He said gambling regulators declined to get involved in the dispute because it was over a claim of access, not an unpaid jackpot.

“I suppose you could equate it with getting up from your seat in a movie theater and asking someone to save it for you,” Bible said.

Devon said she and her mother went to an adjoining hotel for breakfast because of the strike by Frontier’s food workers.

Devon said she was carrying a to-go breakfast box for her still-sleeping brother when she and her mother returned to the hotel an hour and 45 minutes later. She said she decided to check on the machine before delivering the breakfast, and she discovered a crowd around a man sitting on her chair as the jackpot registered.

“I stood in shock,” Devon said.

Devon said she complained to the floor worker and to on-duty managers, who called the Elardi family, who were vacationing in Hawaii.

“The Elardis told them to ‘give Heather our condolences,’ ” Devon said.

So she started calling lawyers.

Johnson, though, said Devon failed to return to the machine within a reasonable time, so it was reopened to other players.

“We waited beyond the normal time period,” he said. “There were requests from other players to play the machine, so finally, after an extended period of time, the floor person reopened the machine for play.”

He charged that Devon was playing other machines in the hotel when the jackpot came in.

“We have reports from other employees who say that she was playing other machines,” Johnson said. “We have a report from one employee that they were clearing a jam on one machine, that she was playing on a different machine. While they were clearing the jam, it was announced over the PA system, I believe, that someone had hit this jackpot. That was when she started saying this was her jackpot.”

Potter denied that Devon was playing other machines. Devon said depositions by former Frontier workers support her version of events, and that she’s looking forward to the trial.

Devon, who described herself as a substitute elementary school teacher who has not worked recently because of persistent medical problems, said she has continued to visit Las Vegas. But these days, she goes more for depositions and meetings with lawyers than to gamble, she said.

Since she missed the Frontier jackpot, she said, she has won two $14,000 payoffs at another casino and a few other smaller jackpots.

But that one big jackpot keeps dangling out of reach.

“The whole thing just makes me sick,” Devon said. “If there’s any justice in that city, then without a shadow of a doubt, I’ll win. . . . I’ll be so glad to have this behind me. It’s been so difficult. I can see where most people would just throw in the towel.

“I will never, ever do that.”