Porterville gaming gives Kern glimpse of what may come here
| Saturday, Feb 04 2012 08:00 PM
Last Updated Saturday, Feb 04 2012 08:00 PM
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Eagle Mountain Casino, east of Porterville is a popular place for Bakersfield residents to attend.
The friendly bus driver for Eagle Mountain Casino picks up several gamblers including Jackie Chambers from Bakersfield. Rosedale Village Shopping Center is one of the bus pick-up spots. The driver makes two trips from Bakersfield to the casino per day, seven days a week, including holidays.
Several people are picked up in the Rosedale Village Shopping Center on Calloway Drive heading to Eagle Mountain Casino.
Two customers walk up the front stairs to Eagle Mountain Casino, east of Porterville.
Jackie Chambers of Bakersfield has her eye on the prize on a recent Friday at the Eagle Mountain Casino as she plays the slot machines.
C.D. Anderson was having some good luck as indicated by his thumbs up sign on a recent Friday at Eagle Mountain Casino as he plays the penny slot machines.
C.D. Anderson of Bakersfield tries out the penny slots at Eagle Mountain Casino.
Jackie Chambers of Bakersfield spends some time on the slot machines at Eagle Mountain Casino after catching the bus from Bakersfield to the casino in Tulare County, east of Porterville.
The penny slot machines are one of many popular games at Eagle Mountain Casino.
Bakersfield resident C.D. Anderson took the casino bus early one Friday morning to play the slots at Eagle Mountain Casino.
The food court at the Eagle Mountain Casino offers a variety of food types for visitors.
The buffet at Eagle Mountain Casino is a popular meal destination for gamblers.
Eagle Mountain Casino manager Nicola Larsen.
It was not yet 9 a.m. on a weekday and a light haze lingered over the Rosedale Village Shopping Center, giving the place a grayish-blue tint.
The northeast corner of the parking lot was nearly empty, the stores in that portion of the strip mall either vacant or not yet open for business. But here and there, cars were parked, their drivers waiting patiently for the casino bus.
Every day, Eagle Mountain Casino sends a charter bus to this stop and others to collect the Kern County gamblers who comprise nearly three-quarters of the casino's daily visitors.
A lot of them are regulars, like Jackie Chambers of northwest Bakersfield, who goes about once a month.
"I enjoy going out," said the 82-year-old widow and retired bank teller. "My husband and I would go all the time before he died. Laughlin, Las Vegas."
Like most of the bus passengers, Chambers was aware that the Tejon Indians last month were reaffirmed as a federally recognized tribe, and that the Tejons are likely to open their own casino one day.
"I think it would be wonderful for them," Chambers said. "Everybody else has done it. Why not them? And it would be great to have a casino closer to home."
Disabled Navy veteran C.D. Anderson, 51, also visits Eagle Mountain roughly once a month "just to get away every now and then." He's anxious to see a casino in Kern County, too.
"Oh, yeah, definitely that would be nice, to go the opposite direction," he said. "I wish they'd put a hotel down there. This one doesn't have a hotel, so you can't stay over if there's inconvenient weather, like fog or something. I don't like riding in the fog on these curvy roads."
The bus ride north to Porterville in Tulare County takes about two hours. It's a cumbersome trek through small towns and farm fields, the last leg winding around mountainous terrain. Grazing horses and cows pay the bus no mind as it passes. They're used to the traffic.
Bumping along on the bus, Chambers pointed out how the 110,000-acre Tule River Indian Reservation had evolved since she first started coming nearly a decade ago. New buildings, mostly.
"That one's new," she said. "That one over there went up about a year ago, I think."
As the casino came into view, Chambers brightened. "We're here!" she said. "Now, none of that used to be here. It was just a little old cracker box when they first started. They've added onto it over the years."
Indeed, Eagle Mountain started life nearly 16 years ago in a double wide trailer.
"We opened in June so it was summer," said General Manager Nicola Larsen. "We started cooking hamburgers outside on a grill. Then we got an 8-by-12 trailer cook shack and outgrew that in about a day. We had our poor people lined up outside waiting."
Little by little, the trailers gave way to permanent structures that grew exponentially.
Today, Eagle Mountain is 60,000 square feet and employs about 600 people, roughly 15 percent of whom are members of the Tule River Tribe of Yokuts or their spouses.
The casino has had a 24-hour casual dining food court since 2007. Two years ago, it added a steak house and a buffet.
For the last nine years there's also been an event center that hosts sports and entertainment attractions, including professional fights and concerts by regional and national artists.
But all of those are just a means to an end. Larsen, who is American Indian, is more excited about what gambling proceeds have paid for outside of the casino -- road improvements, better schools and a gymnasium for the reservation's young people, and homes, lots of homes.
"We've seen houses spring up like flowers," Larsen said.
Marketing director Matthew Mingrone is not Indian, but he's worked for five different tribes over the course of his gaming career.
"I wouldn't have it any other way," he said.
Mingrone likes knowing that the revenue the casino earns is uplifting the Indian community, and finds the work environment warmer.
"There's a big difference between this and mainstream corporate gaming," he said. "There, you're just a number. Here, it's like working for a family."
Still, there's no getting around the fact that for all the industry's effort to push the polite word "gaming," it is, after all, gambling. And in gambling, there's more losing than winning. Hence, the profits.
There's some stigma attached to that. Several passengers on the casino bus declined to be interviewed, worried that friends, relatives and co-workers might judge them if they knew they were stomping around a casino in their leisure time.
"Oh no, no, no," one woman said while declining to have her photograph taken. Then she leaned in close and whispered, "I don't want my church to know I'm here."
Even those who think gambling is perfectly innocent entertainment concede it can ruin lives when it gets out of hand.
Retiree Chambers has a relative in Las Vegas who lost a house over an ongoing gambling addiction.
"I just bring so much money, and after that I stop," Chambers said.
At the end of this particular outing, she broke even, which she figured was good enough. She'd had a lot of fun and didn't lose anything.
Anderson, the Navy veteran, was up $51.
"I play the penny slots, mostly," he said. "Sometimes I'll do quarters, 50 cents. If money is really right I'll play the dollars."
Anderson said he's never lost more than $400 on a single trip. His biggest win was $800 about a year and a half ago.
More than six million Americans meet the criteria for a gambling problem in any given year, according to the National Council on Problem Gambling.
They are often preoccupied with gambling, bet more money more frequently, lie about the money and time they spend gambling, and often chase their losses, according to California Council on Problem Gambling Executive Director Robert Jacobson.
The council doesn't take a position for or against legal gambling, but it does note that the prevalence of problem gambling tends to increase when gaming is nearby and easily accessible, he said.
"I would just hope that if a casino does open, they choose to pursue their social responsibility to contribute to agencies that address problem gambling, either ours or someone else's," Jacobson said.
Another potential issue is that casinos can attract crime. Eagle Mountain tries to mitigate that by not serving alcohol.
"We're totally dry," Larsen said.
There's a heavy and visible security presence everywhere you go at Eagle Mountain. Uniformed guards patrol the gaming floor, which is separated into smoking and non-smoking sections. Discreet security cameras peer down from above.
The tribe also tries to improve its image by giving back to Bakersfield and other communities that have supported it over the years. Eagle Mountain regularly contributes to food pantries, homeless shelters and the Relay for Life cancer fundraiser, among other charities.
The ability to continue doing that, of course, hinges in large part on those buses from Bakersfield remaining full if Kern County gets its own casino.
Larsen insists that if the Tejons open a casino of their own, she won't grumble about the competition.
"When the Tachis opened (Tachi Palace Hotel & Casino in Kings County), I went out there and told the chairman, 'I'm proud of you guys. I know where you came from, and I know where you're going.'"
Her advice to the Tejons: "Research, research, research. Visit other casinos, talk to people who run them. Be prepared, and have a game plan."
