Putting a face on Pa. slots gambling

Slots parlors in Pennsylvania are bringing in hundreds of thousands of dollars a day. But not everyone is a winner. Gamblers, employees, and those who haven't set foot in the door talk about how the casinos have changed their lives.

Patricia Brandt, 59

It was the couple's third visit to the casino since it opened in February. They used to frequent Charles Town Races & Slots in Charles Town, W.Va.

Now, they go to Hollywood Casino about once every two months with a $100 budget for gambling.

"We enjoy it," said Brandt, a picture framer for a Gettysburg gallery. She won $1,000 on Mother's Day playing slots at the new casino. "We just don't overdo it.

"We do what we can afford," she said. "We know when our $100 is up, we go home. We don't blow our bank account, and we don't miss the mortgage."

Anthony Jordon Powell, 60, and Addie Powell, 91

About twice a month, the Powells - mother and son - ride a chartered casino bus from the Willoughby Senior Center near their home in Brooklyn, N.Y., to PhiladelphiaPark in Bensalem.

There, each plays about $50 worth of slots.

"It's recreation," said the son, who is caregiver for his mother; she suffered a stroke in 2005.

"It's just to get away for a few hours and go home," he said, sitting beside his mother at the casino last month.

Both had their canes leaning against their penny slots machines.

Mother and son played in Atlantic City before the Sands Casino Hotel was imploded last October. They haven't been back. The bus ride to Bensalem is at least an hour shorter.

"I enjoy myself. I like playing the slots," Addie Powell said. They went back last week, and played for five hours.

Shirley Dennis, 58

"I used to go to plays and movies. I don't anymore. I come here," said Shirley Dennis, a certified nurse's assistant from Wilmington. Last month, she lost most of her $1,100 biweekly paycheck at Harrah's Chester Casino & Racetrack.

"Evidently, there's a problem."

Dennis said working straight double shifts wasn't enough to recoup the $950 she lost in two days in late September.

It has become a habit for Dennis to gamble a couple of times a week before her graveyard shift at a Wilmington nursing home.

In fact, she was back again that September week and lost $50 more.

The mother of five grown children said her 27-year-old son had urged her to get help.

"It's just like the cigarettes," said Dennis, a smoker. "I know I need to stop, but I keep doing it."

Lamont Spangler, 53

Lamont "Monty" Spangler once supervised custodians at the Wallingford-Swarthmore School District. Now, he has a higher-paying job as one of five environmental supervisors at Harrah's Chester Casino & Racetrack. He oversees two dozen workers who clean public areas.

"There's opportunity here for people to move up throughout the casino," Spangler said. "It's taken them off welfare."

Spangler is among 1,100 people who work at Harrah's, about a fourth of them from Chester.

Gaming revenue is also changing the community for the better, he said.

"I have seen some improvements in the roads and the way some of the housing is being redone," he said. "All of that is a reflection of what's coming in."

Jim Higgins, 44

Business is up 10 percent this year from a year ago at the American Diner & Pub at 2495 Street Rd., a couple of blocks south of PhiladelphiaPark Casino & Racetrack in Bensalem.

"I see a lot of new people," said Jim Higgins, general manager of the eatery, which specializes in all-American cuisine.

Higgins became GM in October 2006, two months before PhillyPark opened. "Definitely, we've benefited by being so close to the casino.

"I can even tell by the license plates in our parking lot," he said. "You see cars with New York, Delaware and, definitely, Jersey plates."

Higgins can easily pick out casino regulars.

"They're wearing their player card around their neck," he said.

Bob Liebel, 72

A widower and grandfather of eight, Bob Liebel worried that PhillyPark would draw crime, traffic, and other bad elements to his neighborhood less than a mile away.

That didn't happen, he said.

What's more, the retired SEPTA bus driver is happy about the $250 "homeowner assistance grant" he got in the mail on Oct. 1 to reduce his property-tax bill.

The check is part of $4 million that Bensalem is giving to homeowners this year. It's a portion of the $15.6 million the township has gotten from casino revenues - a point not lost on Liebel.

"It's a fringe benefit," said the devout Christian, "but how many people had to lose their homes because they've become addicted to gambling?

"They should have warning signs at the casino," he said.