Friday, February 7, 2025

Stroke of Luck

Ken Coppens
Former career: Video store clerk,
ex-online poker player
Hollywood Casino title: Poker dealer,
floor supervisor

The first time Ken Coppens won $45,000, he was in his underwear.

It wasn’t as salacious as it sounds. After all, he was in the confines of his bedroom, playing online poker. His roommates were asleep, and rather than wake them with the sounds of his celebrating he ran into the street with the adrenaline of a man who’d just won a ton of money. A man who just uncovered a method where he could make thousands of dollars without leaving his bedroom. A man who could buy a new car and spend summers in Vegas while his fellow college grads wallowed in the resume rejection of the worst employment climate since the Great Depression.

He was also a man still sensible enough to put some clothes on, first.

After a fully-dressed sprint in the street, Coppens officially became an online poker player. He went back to bed, slept for two hours and returned to his day job at DHL. That day at work was different though. He was walking into a job he would soon leave. He’d found a backer, a wealthy poker player willing to front the money for his online wagers and split the thousands of dollars in winnings. It was an almost risk-free agreement. His parents’ approval for his new profession grew with his bank account. He played 50 or 60 hours of online poker a week. He spent summers in Las Vegas, attended a party at the Playboy Mansion, played in poker tournaments in the Bahamas — he was eating from a bucket-list buffet he thought would never close. And then he woke up one morning and it was over.

“I got out of bed. I got on my computer to play,” Coppens said. “I went to log on to the website, and a pop-up said ‘Money gambling is no longer available in your country.’ That was the end of it.” The U.S. Department of Justice had shut down online poker sites due to a ruling in a federal case which purported theat the sites were involved in money laundering. Coppens,now out of work, had some friends who moved to Canada or Mexico in order to keep playing. Many of his poker-playing cohorts sought day jobs. He was attached to his friends and family in Toledo, so Coppens canvassed the city, distributing his resume —- Auntie Anne’s Pretzels, Bath and Body Works, gas stations. “It kind of sucked ‘cause I had a four-year gap in my employment history where I wasn’t doing anything but playing poker.” He started work at a video store in October of 2011.

That’s when he heard about Hollywood Casino. He checked their website everyday for job openings, and after a series of interviews was offered a spot on the other side of the poker table, as a dealer and supervisor. “It’s a great environment to work in — being that I spent four years in casinos and I’m not sick of them. There are a lot of characters.” That job security was born out of all his risk-taking is a stroke of luck not lost on Coppens

“If the casino wasn’t here, I’d be screwed. It kind of saved me, in a way.”

Michael Prephan
Day job: Lawyer
Hollywood Casino title: Poker dealer

“You know, I’m one of the older guys in the group. When the other dealers heard I was a lawyer, they were a little surprised. The poker dealers in my group are very nice people — I think when they did the hiring they were looking for something about their personality, as well. Honestly, I just thought it would be fun.”
 

Shanice Sample
Former career:  Preschool teacher
Hollywood Casino title:
Model beverage server

“The tips are where the money is going to be made in my position, and the most effective way to secure our tips is basically the golden rule of service — the customer is always right. I will have to bring my ‘A game’ to this job, and be an approachable person — that’s a critical piece to being successful in this position. You have to enjoy  interacting with people. And having a certain lookis a plus. My goal is to have my own daycare center
up and running by 2013, so this will be a good way to get my name out there.”
 

Will Irving
Former career: Middle-school
math teacher at a charter school
Hollywood Casino title: Player
services cashier

“I’ll be dealing with millions — it’s exhilarating, but it’s also a big responsibility. We had to go through a background check,
similar to the background checks teachers go through. As soon as I heard that they were opening the casino,I applied. After  teaching for four years, I discovered it just wasn’t for me. I wanted to make a change where I will be evaluated by work performance and not student test scores.”

Elex Turski
Former career:  
Landscaping and
construction worker
with a Toledo contractor
Hollywood Casino title:  
Craps dealer

“The main thing I want, because the company that owns the
casino has so many locations around the U.S., is to sightsee.I want to move around. It’s                                                                                                                 security for me that I can move to another city with a casino
and have a job. And my grandma’s happy I got the job.”

Kristy Ogden
Former career:  After taking time
off from her bank management
job to be a stay-at-home mom, Ogden
went on a two-year search for employment
Hollywood Casino title: Player services cashier (cashing vouchers for guests)

“I had years of retail and bank management experience and was getting minimum-wage job offers. I wanted long-term employment with the ability for advancement. I know a lot of people in my department are feeling the same way. There were about 60 people at one of the meetings I attended after I was hired, and I’d say probably about three fourths were unemployed before they started at the casino, or working a part-time job just to get by. This has been a great experience. My family and I feel very blessed and excited by the opportunity.”

And the Toledo newcomers…Meet a few of the casino vets who now call Toledo home. “We hired about 100 people from outside of Toledo, because we had a need for casino experience,” said Chrystal Herndon, Hollywood Casino’s vice president of human resources. “And we hired about 90 percent of our team members from within a 45 minute drive of the Toledo area.” Herndon, a Vegas transplant herself, says the toughest part
was transition from dry desert weather to plowing through snow (and she hasn’t even seen a real Toledo winter yet). “I think the biggest con of moving from somewhere like Las Vegas is having to drive in the snow,” Herndon says. “However,
I would say the pro is the family friendly environment that is so alive in Toledo … the landscape is gorgeous, and there is absolutely no such thing as traffic. And this is a highly involved community which is very different than what we are used to in Las Vegas.”
 

   Steve Dahm
Former position: Worked in casino industry for 13 years, most recently helping Penn National open the Argosy Casino in Kansas City.
Hollywood Casino title: Director of Surveillance

The surveillance room, it’s a wall of TVs, anything you can possibly imagine you will see. It is fun, but the movies make it a little more over the top than it actually is. Sitting in the surveillance room, we know everything that’s going on. We get to see it from a different perspective, a different angle. It’s a local market, so people will come in and we’ll know them. The customer will never know who we are, but we’ll know who they are.”

   Sue Ellen Longo
Former position: Ex-general manager of Banana Bay Resort and Marina in Key West, Florida
Hollywood Casino title: Director of Support
Services (which includes valet, environmental
services, wardrobe, and retail)

“If you live in Vegas, you get comfortable with the idea while growing up that you may work in a casino someday. Just like if you live in Orlando, you know you may work at Disney. But being in Ohio, a state that doesn’t have a lot of gaming, it’s going to be very new for a lot of our employees. It wasn’t a career choice for everybody before, and now it’s a career choice. And that’s pretty exciting for me to come into as a director — there are more things to be created here.”
 

  Bruce Loprete
Former position:  Director of surveillance at Four Winds Casino Resort in New Buffalo, MI
Hollywood Casino title: Director of Security
 

“You get the cheaters who travel the world looking at casinos, so we’ll be challenged with some of that because we’re a new casino in a new district, and these people have a network. It’s a cat and mouse game. The surveillance and security departments, all the gaming departments, we’ll be putting in experts to help train our dealers on what to look for. These cheaters use a lot of deception. While there’s a network of the bad guys, there’s a network of the good guys that make up the surveillance and security departments we have. When something
happens in one casino, information is passed to other casinos. We work together.”
 

 

Ken Coppens
Former career: Video store clerk,
ex-online poker player
Hollywood Casino title: Poker dealer,
floor supervisor

The first time Ken Coppens won $45,000, he was in his underwear.

It wasn’t as salacious as it sounds. After all, he was in the confines of his bedroom, playing online poker. His roommates were asleep, and rather than wake them with the sounds of his celebrating he ran into the street with the adrenaline of a man who’d just won a ton of money. A man who just uncovered a method where he could make thousands of dollars without leaving his bedroom. A man who could buy a new car and spend summers in Vegas while his fellow college grads wallowed in the resume rejection of the worst employment climate since the Great Depression.

He was also a man still sensible enough to put some clothes on, first.

After a fully-dressed sprint in the street, Coppens officially became an online poker player. He went back to bed, slept for two hours and returned to his day job at DHL. That day at work was different though. He was walking into a job he would soon leave. He’d found a backer, a wealthy poker player willing to front the money for his online wagers and split the thousands of dollars in winnings. It was an almost risk-free agreement. His parents’ approval for his new profession grew with his bank account. He played 50 or 60 hours of online poker a week. He spent summers in Las Vegas, attended a party at the Playboy Mansion, played in poker tournaments in the Bahamas — he was eating from a bucket-list buffet he thought would never close. And then he woke up one morning and it was over.

“I got out of bed. I got on my computer to play,” Coppens said. “I went to log on to the website, and a pop-up said ‘Money gambling is no longer available in your country.’ That was the end of it.” The U.S. Department of Justice had shut down online poker sites due to a ruling in a federal case which purported theat the sites were involved in money laundering. Coppens,now out of work, had some friends who moved to Canada or Mexico in order to keep playing. Many of his poker-playing cohorts sought day jobs. He was attached to his friends and family in Toledo, so Coppens canvassed the city, distributing his resume —- Auntie Anne’s Pretzels, Bath and Body Works, gas stations. “It kind of sucked ‘cause I had a four-year gap in my employment history where I wasn’t doing anything but playing poker.” He started work at a video store in October of 2011.

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That’s when he heard about Hollywood Casino. He checked their website everyday for job openings, and after a series of interviews was offered a spot on the other side of the poker table, as a dealer and supervisor. “It’s a great environment to work in — being that I spent four years in casinos and I’m not sick of them. There are a lot of characters.” That job security was born out of all his risk-taking is a stroke of luck not lost on Coppens

“If the casino wasn’t here, I’d be screwed. It kind of saved me, in a way.”

Michael Prephan
Day job: Lawyer
Hollywood Casino title: Poker dealer

“You know, I’m one of the older guys in the group. When the other dealers heard I was a lawyer, they were a little surprised. The poker dealers in my group are very nice people — I think when they did the hiring they were looking for something about their personality, as well. Honestly, I just thought it would be fun.”
 

Shanice Sample
Former career:  Preschool teacher
Hollywood Casino title:
Model beverage server

“The tips are where the money is going to be made in my position, and the most effective way to secure our tips is basically the golden rule of service — the customer is always right. I will have to bring my ‘A game’ to this job, and be an approachable person — that’s a critical piece to being successful in this position. You have to enjoy  interacting with people. And having a certain lookis a plus. My goal is to have my own daycare center
up and running by 2013, so this will be a good way to get my name out there.”
 

Will Irving
Former career: Middle-school
math teacher at a charter school
Hollywood Casino title: Player
services cashier

“I’ll be dealing with millions — it’s exhilarating, but it’s also a big responsibility. We had to go through a background check,
similar to the background checks teachers go through. As soon as I heard that they were opening the casino,I applied. After  teaching for four years, I discovered it just wasn’t for me. I wanted to make a change where I will be evaluated by work performance and not student test scores.”

Elex Turski
Former career:  
Landscaping and
construction worker
with a Toledo contractor
Hollywood Casino title:  
Craps dealer

“The main thing I want, because the company that owns the
casino has so many locations around the U.S., is to sightsee.I want to move around. It’s                                                                                                                 security for me that I can move to another city with a casino
and have a job. And my grandma’s happy I got the job.”

Kristy Ogden
Former career:  After taking time
off from her bank management
job to be a stay-at-home mom, Ogden
went on a two-year search for employment
Hollywood Casino title: Player services cashier (cashing vouchers for guests)

“I had years of retail and bank management experience and was getting minimum-wage job offers. I wanted long-term employment with the ability for advancement. I know a lot of people in my department are feeling the same way. There were about 60 people at one of the meetings I attended after I was hired, and I’d say probably about three fourths were unemployed before they started at the casino, or working a part-time job just to get by. This has been a great experience. My family and I feel very blessed and excited by the opportunity.”

And the Toledo newcomers…Meet a few of the casino vets who now call Toledo home. “We hired about 100 people from outside of Toledo, because we had a need for casino experience,” said Chrystal Herndon, Hollywood Casino’s vice president of human resources. “And we hired about 90 percent of our team members from within a 45 minute drive of the Toledo area.” Herndon, a Vegas transplant herself, says the toughest part
was transition from dry desert weather to plowing through snow (and she hasn’t even seen a real Toledo winter yet). “I think the biggest con of moving from somewhere like Las Vegas is having to drive in the snow,” Herndon says. “However,
I would say the pro is the family friendly environment that is so alive in Toledo … the landscape is gorgeous, and there is absolutely no such thing as traffic. And this is a highly involved community which is very different than what we are used to in Las Vegas.”
 

   Steve Dahm
Former position: Worked in casino industry for 13 years, most recently helping Penn National open the Argosy Casino in Kansas City.
Hollywood Casino title: Director of Surveillance

The surveillance room, it’s a wall of TVs, anything you can possibly imagine you will see. It is fun, but the movies make it a little more over the top than it actually is. Sitting in the surveillance room, we know everything that’s going on. We get to see it from a different perspective, a different angle. It’s a local market, so people will come in and we’ll know them. The customer will never know who we are, but we’ll know who they are.”

   Sue Ellen Longo
Former position: Ex-general manager of Banana Bay Resort and Marina in Key West, Florida
Hollywood Casino title: Director of Support
Services (which includes valet, environmental
services, wardrobe, and retail)

“If you live in Vegas, you get comfortable with the idea while growing up that you may work in a casino someday. Just like if you live in Orlando, you know you may work at Disney. But being in Ohio, a state that doesn’t have a lot of gaming, it’s going to be very new for a lot of our employees. It wasn’t a career choice for everybody before, and now it’s a career choice. And that’s pretty exciting for me to come into as a director — there are more things to be created here.”
 

  Bruce Loprete
Former position:  Director of surveillance at Four Winds Casino Resort in New Buffalo, MI
Hollywood Casino title: Director of Security
 

“You get the cheaters who travel the world looking at casinos, so we’ll be challenged with some of that because we’re a new casino in a new district, and these people have a network. It’s a cat and mouse game. The surveillance and security departments, all the gaming departments, we’ll be putting in experts to help train our dealers on what to look for. These cheaters use a lot of deception. While there’s a network of the bad guys, there’s a network of the good guys that make up the surveillance and security departments we have. When something
happens in one casino, information is passed to other casinos. We work together.”
 

 

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