Teacher Bets She Can Beat Odds, Casino

When it comes to choosing sides in a lawsuit between a private citizen and Las Vegas casinos, my instinctive reaction is to go with the casino. And that’s before I even begin checking out the details.

Why?

I’m no fool.

When I think of the Las Vegas gambling industry, names like Bugsy, Lucky and Moe emerge. Visions of cement form in my head. I can’t separate the word “witness” from “trash compactor.” I picture people taking walks that come to abrupt ends.

In recent years, the word is that Las Vegas has quieted down and become a mecca for the whole family. Could be, but I wouldn’t care if the town were being run by Dominican monks. This is not a place where I would buck the establishment.

With that in mind, let me say I am not--repeat, not--taking Heather Devon’s side in her long-running lawsuit against the Frontier Hotel in Las Vegas. I enjoy the way in which my various body parts are connected to each other and wouldn’t want to say or do anything to alter that.

But let me take a moment to marvel at Devon’s persistence, if not her seeming obliviousness to what Robert DeNiro and Joe Pesci did in “Casino.”

Devon, 41, is a substitute elementary school teacher who lives in Foothill Ranch. She loves Vegas, but it’s probably safe to say Vegas doesn’t love her. At least, not the Frontier Hotel.

Devon sat down at a Frontier progressive slot machine one evening and began playing. And playing. And playing.

“I played for 12 solid hours,” she says. “I didn’t get up to go to the bathroom, to eat, anything. I knew this machine was going to hit. Money was falling out of this machine.”

Devon kept feeding dollars into the machine. The progressive jackpot kept rising. In her mind, it was simply a matter of waiting until she hit the big one.

That’s where things get interesting. Devon’s suit alleges that a Frontier employee approached her and, in effect, suggested that she take a break. The employee said, according to Devon’s suit, that the machine could be “locked up” and that no one else could play it until she returned.

This was around 8:45 in the morning. Devon’s mother, who had awakened to find her daughter sitting in front of the same slot machine where she’d left her the night before, told her daughter she was going to breakfast.

Eventually, as both sides in the suit agree, she did leave. Devon says she did so with the assurance the machine she had nurtured would remain unavailable to anyone else. About 90 minutes later, Devon returned from breakfast to find another man celebrating a jackpot of $97,823--on her machine!

Devon charges the casino with negligence, breach of contract and fraud.

The hotel has said through its lawyers that Devon left on her own volition and stayed away too long, in effect forfeiting any right to reclaim the machine.

That is the case. Oh, did I mention this all happened in November of 1991?

Yep. For nearly eight years, Devon has kept the dream alive that she can beat the house. On its own turf.

On Aug. 31 in a Las Vegas court, a trial postponed time and again is set to begin.

“A lot of my friends have said, ‘Are you sure you want to mess with these people?’ ” Devon told me last week. “I am so ready. You have no idea. I have boxing gloves on.”

Devon wants her jackpot but says after all this time the case is about more than just money.

“They’ve tried everything to wear me down,” she says. “I’d like to see justice done and the honest person win out over the big casinos.”

If only to underscore the march of time, Devon’s original attorney, famed lawyer Melvin Belli, has died. So have her mother and brother, both of whom accompanied her to Vegas that night in 1991.

“They’re up there pulling for me,” says Devon.

I don’t know what the point spread is on the trial. I wouldn’t bet the farm on an outsider beating the casino in a Las Vegas court.

But I like this irony:

The casinos always say they love a good fight. They especially love confident fighters who don’t give up.

Looks like they found one. They just never expected it would come in the form of an Orange County schoolteacher.

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Dana Parsons’ column appears Wednesday, Friday and Sunday.

Readers may reach Parsons by calling

(714) 966-7821, by writing to him

at The Times Orange County Edition,

1375 Sunflower Ave., Costa Mesa,

CA 92626, or by e-mail at dana.parsons@latimes.com.