PLEASANTVILLE, N.J. - Ramon Melo has finished a day of teaching algebra and calculus at Pleasantville High School, finally using his background as a chemical engineer in the Dominican Republic - not to mention his Spanish - after spending 14 years as a cocktail server for now-closed Showboat.
But little more than 12 hours after arriving home from the substitute teaching job, he will be headed for a familiar 4 a.m. shift at Bally's Wild Wild West, slinging drinks for gamblers in the predawn hours.
Eight members of the extended Caceres-Melo family lost jobs in the Atlantic City casino meltdown of 2014 that saw four casinos closed, 8,000 employees let go. Seven relatives lost jobs at the beloved Showboat; one, Melo's wife, Esperanza Caceres, from flash-in-the-pan Revel.
Now, nearly nine months later, the lives of these loyal casino workers are quite different: in some ways more expansively imagined; in others, more frugally defined and difficult.
Esperanza Caceres and her brother Juan are studying in an intensive English class courtesy of a $29 million federal retraining grant, but haven't found other jobs.
With bills and mortgages mounting, sisters Walfa and Fanny Caceres are moving their families in together in order to rent out the other house. Neither has been able to find work other than temporary and now part-time work at H&R Block.
For Melo, 53, the closing of the casino reminded him of other long put-away ambitions and skills.
"I see the money in the casinos," Melo said Thursday, reflecting on his decade and a half as a cocktail server, as daughters Magdalis, 28, and Esperliss, 20, hung decorations for Esperliss' graduation party that evening. A huge pot of spaghetti with sausage and corn sat on the stove. "This has changed my progress to continue to go up."
For his sister-in-law Fanny Caceres, the road has been more discouraging.
"Emotionally, I've been a little bit depressed, you know," said Caceres, who also has training as a medical assistant. "Because I'm not doing work. You start over again, like when I came to this country. It's really hard for us, the whole family. My son needs to help me a lot."
Ramon Melo and Esperanza Caceres, with three successful daughters - one the owner of a busy interior design firm in Philadelphia, one who graduated from Atlantic Cape Community College on Thursday with a degree in early childhood education and who will attend Rowan University this fall, the third a hair stylist - also relied on family support to keep their bills paid and their outlooks positive, though the strain of the last year is evident.
Melo's cousin Mercedes Justo got a new job at Harrah's in housekeeping; her son, Steven, is at the Golden Nugget. Walfa Caceres nearly got a job at Gordon Ramsey's new pub at Caesar's, got her uniform, but at the last minute didn't make the cut.
Post-Showboat, Melo has juggled three jobs, none permanent: seasonal H&R Block tax preparer; per-diem substitute teacher; and, as of Thursday, taking on seasonal low-seniority shifts at Bally's, where workers were removing fake mountains and the remnants of the old gold mining animatron Western figure at the Boardwalk entrance in favor of more bar and entertainment space.
Hopefully that will spark business. The math of Melo's first pre-Memorial Day shift, meager tips vs. the set rate of taxes due per shift, was discouraging. Not like the old days.
In July, Melo will take the New Jersey test to be licensed for a full-time teaching job, hopefully as a high school math teacher, he said.
Magdalis Melo, 28, who owns Magda Green Design L.L.C., said the casino closing was the only way her father and other family members would have left their casino jobs.
She views this, in the long term, as a good thing.
"If they wouldn't have closed, they would have stayed there, stuck in the casino, I don't know how many years," she said. "For me, I think it was a good thing they all got fired. It was the only way to leave the casino and do something that he studied for. His goal right now is to pass the test."
A teacher's salary would start at $54,000 and perhaps pay for him to pursue a master's. His chemical engineering degree from the Dominican Republic grants him a bachelor's equivalency in the United States. "They need bilingual teachers," Ramon Melo said.
In the Dominican Republic, he worked as an engineer at a beer factory; here, he applied to work at the Budweiser plant in Newark, but it is cutting back, too. "It's a domino effect," he said. "The casinos close, then they order less beer."
Melo said the experience has only reinforced the importance of education for all generations of his family. He said casino worker culture doesn't often reward education; he worked with a bartender with a master's degree.
He also said many more people could be taking advantage of classes provided by the $29 million federal retraining grant. "The 8,000 people who lost their jobs have a problem. They don't have an education."
Esperanza Caceres and her brother, Juan, are attending. Caceres is hoping to help her daughter Esperliss in a future early childhood education business. Esperliss' new degree allows her to open a center.
"I passed the first test," Caceres said. She has been unable to find another job to replace her Revel environmental services job, to which she brought great enthusiasm and camaraderie. Her close-knit family has helped keep her spirits from falling, she said.
"My three daughters," she says, opening her arms wide.
One of Melo's nieces, 22-year-old Issa Caceres, Fanny's daughter, lost her job at Showboat, but went on to graduate from community college and enroll at Rider University, where she is studying international business. She is currently in Shanghai studying Mandarin.
"You have to keep a goal in your mind," said Magdalis Melo, Ramon's daughter. Melo wants her aunts to study office computer skills in order to be able to join forces in a future business venture. She urged family members to think positive, not to be discouraged by communication issues, or reactions to their accents, to keep studying. Walfa Caceres has also hoped to get a commercial driver's license.
Memorial Day weekend long signaled the start of a busy and beneficial season for Fanny and Walfa Caceres and their family. But with their small piece of the Atlantic City economy no longer in their grasp, the two sisters face only consolidation of their homes, and a plan to rent out Fanny Caceres' house.
Melo purchased his four-bedroom house on Fork Road in Egg Harbor Township for $195,775 in 2004. The website Zillow today lists its value as more than that: at $217,462.
"We still have equity in the house," Melo says. "But many of my coworkers have lost their homes."
Indeed, red dots symbolizing houses in foreclosure are all over the Zillow maps of his block, his neighborhood, the township and, spreading out from the screen on his iPhone, the entire casino worker landscape, from Atlantic City to Galloway.
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