California Dreamin' at the Casino

Posted by: Monica Gagnier on June 01

As I was driving out of our condo complex Friday night, a man and a woman flagged me down and asked if I would give them a ride downtown. I normally don’t pick up hitchhikers, but I’d seen the middle-aged couple around before. They didn’t seem like they would pose much of a threat in the few blocks to downtown Palm Springs.

It’s well-documented that most violent crimes are committed by the young, and this pair was old enough to be the parents of Woody Harrelson and Juliette Lewis in Natural Born Killers.

As friends will attest, I’m a bit of a talker, but since I’ve been in the Coachella Valley, it’s been hard for me to get a word in edgewise. It seems that perfect strangers can’t wait to tell me their life stories, whether we’re in a hot tub or a car.

My neighbors, whom I’ll call Tom and Ellen, have been hard-hit by the recession. Tom lost his job at a printing company in February and has been unable to find work. He told me he has put in about 35 applications all over town and hasn’t been called for a single interview.

Tom said that he has decided to sign up for California state unemployment, even though he initially didn’t think that he’d be out of a job long enough to need it. “I’m not in favor of government handouts, but what I can do?” he asked.

Ellen told me she works as an office assistant for three doctors at the hospital, scheduling surgeries and appointments. Her truck has a cracked distributor cap and has been unreliable as of late; that's why Tom and Ellen needed a ride.

Last week, when she got a flat tire, Ellen discovered the spare, which is stored underneath the truck, had been stolen, and she had to buy a new one. That was a petty crime I'd never heard of, though I'm old enough to remember when gas-siphoning was a problem during the two gas crises of the 1970s.

As we passed a popular local restaurant that I call "Jack Hart's," Tom asked me, "Do you ever go in that place? Don't, because they called the cops on me when I tried to apply for a job there."

I nodded and looked briefly away from the road into Tom's eyes. He didn't strike me as the dangerous type. Perhaps there had been a misunderstanding of some sort.

I asked Tom and Ellen how they ended up in Palm Springs. They said they moved here from Los Angeles to be closer to Ellen's elderly parents, whom they shop and clean for. "They're doing their best to help us out financially," Ellen said.

That's a good thing, because when I asked Tom and Ellen where they wanted me to drop them off, they said, "The Spa Resort Casino, if you don't mind."

To tell you the truth, I wasn't surprised. So-called vices are the last things to go during tough times, not the first. And I've been in Palm Springs long enough to know that some folks believe their salvation is going to come out of a slot machine.

I hope that Tom and Ellen won enough to get their truck fixed. That may sound like a long shot. Still, the odds are probably greater than those of Tom finding a job in a county where unemployment is 13.3% and most businesses scale back employment during the scorching summers.