The Daily Spectrum from Saint George, Utah • 23

Spectrum Sunday, March 25, 1984 7 iitD Barona Bingo bags big bucks i 70SICHTS Clft Hilt JACKPOT: LATE KICMT Mil 'V MO Oil SCO. SAN DIEGO (UPI) Before bingo, unemployment on the remote, rocky Barona Indian Reservation hit 60 percent; now if anyone is jobless, it is because he doesn't want to work, says tribal chairman Joe Welch. The community center has been expanded into an 800-seat bingo parlor, but that is only temporary, until the $2-million, bingo palace is completed in June. The Barona Group of the Capitan Grande Band of Mission Indians had to go to the U. S.

Supreme Court to get into high-stakes bingo. Now, tribal councilmen talk conservatively of bingo netting $1 million this year. Bingo began last April at Barona, seven miles up twisting Wildcat Canyon Road from Lakeside in East San Diego County. It has been so successful that the Sycuan Reservation has emulated the approach. Last week, a more modest operation began in a circus tent on the Rin-con Reservation near Escondido in the north county.

In all three cases, the venture capital was put up by non-Indian management firms in return for long-term contracts guaranteeing the concessionaires plump pieces of the profits. San Diego County Sheriff John Duffy maintains that wherever you have an unregulated situation in which great sums of money are at play, infiltration by organized crime is almost inevitable. So, in 1981, the county got a court ruling that would allow Duffy to enter the reservation to enforce the county's bingo ordinance. The ordinance, modeled on state law, limited jackpots to $250 per game with all profits destined for charity. The tribal council, on behalf of the 300 members of the band, appealed to the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals and won.

By refusing to review, the U.S. Supreme Court upheld the circuit court's finding that neither state nor county has non-criminal authority over Indian lands. Bingo action began last April with Barona boasting "the state's richest jackpots," up to $1,500 a game. Running the operation was American Amusement, Inc. of Los Angeles, whose only client was the Barona Indians.

Action was modeled on the successful Florida operation said to net the Seminoles $2 million a year. American Amusement was to get 45 percent of the profits, the Indian band 55 percent, for life of a 25-year contract. A dissident Indian group, opposing the large cut for the pale face operators and their apparent control over tribal land for construction of a bingo palace, attempted to impeach the tribal council. Since last December, when the council presented a bingo largesse Christmas bonus to each of the 107 voting members of the band, there has been no talk of impeachment. "I was a production engineer for Hughes before joining American Amusement.

I didn't know a thing about bingo until I took a look at the Seminole set-up," said Myles An-derberg, general manager, as he observed the matinee floor action this week. He said American Amusement president Harrison Hartzburg, a long-time acquaintance, tapped him for the job. He said eight buses bring in players daily from different points, but most players make the 40-minute drive from San Diego themselves. "We can seat 750. Weekends, we average 550 to 750 and weekdays, 400 to 500.

Our guaranteed minimum payout is $14,000 and the daily average is $17,000. Tuesday a woman won a $26,000 jackpot, so that's on top of that day's minimum payout," he said. He said bingo provides about 80 jobs for Barona Indians, and "there is no criminal element in our company." The tiny Sycuan reservation south of El Cajon has only 70 members and covers 630 acres, less than one square mile. It got into high-stakes bingo after the trail-blazing Barona band, but beat Barona to building a bingo palace. The Sycuans inaugurated their bingo hall last November.

Their pale face managers come from Florida-based Pan American the bingo professionals who brought prosperity to the Seminoles and are endeavoring to do same for the Minnesota Sioux and the Arizona Pascua Yaquis.The contract is for 12 years and the split is the same 55-45. Projections call for a $2 million profit per year for the Indian band. "We expect bingo to create 180 jobs and to pave our roads and pay for development and social programs," said tribal council member Jackie Worrell. Pan American president for local operations, Buddy Levy, said, "This area has got a lot of bingo players around to draw from." Pat Beinlich of Chula Vista publishes "Bingo Bugle," which reaches 24,000 of those players weekly. She said three established charity bingo operations, including that of Our Lady of Perpetual Help Roman Catholic Church in La Mesa, had folded because of Indian competition, and more would follow.

Attendance everywhere is down. "How do you compete with the busing?" she asked. "And at Barona they give a car away every Monday night." -to I Man, 108, kills wife of 60 years house reported a shooting. Police said a housekeeper was bustling about the house Thursday and Franks apparently did not recognize her and thought she was trying to rob him. KANSAS CITY, Kan.

(UPI) An 108-year-old man, apparently thinking he was shooting at an intruder, sprayed revolver shots wildly around his bedroom and killed his invalid wife of 60 years. Investigators said Ed Franks, who turned 109 today, was a "danger to himself and others" and sent him to the state mental hospital at Osawato-mie for a two-week evaluation before deciding whether to file charges. Franks was taken into custody Thursday morning after others in the TrueBlue- SAN DIEGO Approximately 900 participants play in Nov. of 1983 under the management of non-lndi- for an average of $30,000 total cash prizes nightly an organizers and is expected to raise $2 million at the Sycuan Indian Bingo Palace east of San annually for the Sycan tribe. (UPI) Diego.

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Keds. The skies America grew up in. For United Press International In LaVerkin 435 West Center (7th Day Advcntist Church Bldg.) WORSHIP EVERY SUNDAY, 3 P.M. Everyone Invited. For Information, Call: 'Mormon meteor' manages Latin American bureaus CARDON'S SHOES 25 North Main St.

George mam Ethiopia and reclaim the crown. And he did just that." The Utah native said he was awaiting the arrival of President Dwight D. Eisenhower in Brazil in 1960 when an airplane carrying the U.S. Navy Band crashed into a nearby bay. Press) continue to see that world news is covered objectively and fairly." UPI discovered Neeleman while he was on a mission for the Mormon Church in Brazil but did not hire him until after he returned and completed his bachelor's degree at the University of Utah.

He joined the Salt Lake City Bureau in July 1958, enduring a four-month "baptism under fire" filing Utah radio copy, and was sent to New York City to train on the Latin American desk. Speaks Portuguese, Spanish "After a month there, my wife and I packed up with one footlocker, a couple of bags, and a baby under my arm, and off we went to Brazil at $100 a week. I had a great time there seven consecutive years," said Neeleman, who speaks fluent Portuguese and Spanish. He was quickly promoted to bureau manager in Sao Paulo, where, at the age of 23, he was in charge of 20 people. He also traveled throughout Latin America, interviewing world figures and covering the biggest stories of the decade.

Some of his best reporting was due to being in the right place at the right time. "I was in a hotel room with the emperor of Ethiopia, interviewing him and his prime minister, when it came across the wire that he had been deposed by his son. I was routinely calling the bureau when they told me the emperor was no longer the emperor. I had to tell the prime minister he was out of a job," Neeleman recalled. "The police cordoned off the hotel and no other reporters could get in.

For 24 hours, I dictated a running story on the reaction of the emperor and his final decision to go back to AYS CJILV8 by Karen M. Magnuson SALT LAKE CITY (UPI) He is affectionately known as the Mormon meteor a Utah-grown flash of light that streaks across the United States and Latin America on a "mission" for United Press International. But it would be easier to track a shooting star than follow the hectic schedule of Gary Neeleman. One day he might be traveling across Montana, visiting UPI radio subscribers and training a new sales executive. The next day he may be addressing dignitaries and dining with newspaper editors in Sao Paulo, Brazil.

Neeleman, 50, a 26-year veteran of the news wire service, is an enigma among friends and co-workers alike. He is a devoted father of seven who rose through the company's ranks from a general assignment reporter in Salt Lake City to vice president and general manager for Latin America. Sort of a mission His entire career has been with UPI except for a one-year stint as assistant news director for KSL Radio and TV in 1957. "If you talk to any Unipresser, there's an esprit de corps, a feeling of belonging, and I suppose more than anything else, a feeling that you're sort of on a mission. You have something very important to do," the UPI executive said.

"In all my years with UPI, I've never been told how to approach a story and whether to slant a story or not. That unencumbered apolitical approach to covering the news has been an inspiring thing. I feel I've helped perpetuate something I really believe in that two free world agencies (UPI and the Associated Political hijacking "All of the band members were killed the night Eisenhower arrived in a pounding rainstorm. If you don't think that was a complex story. We were two days trying to recover the bodies and cover the presidential visit," Neeleman said.

The UPI correspondent also was on the scene for the world's first political hijacking. In 1961, a group of Portuguese exiles hijacked the Portuguese ocean liner Santa Maria, took it to Northern Brazil and asked for political asylum. "The boat arrived in Brazil with over 400 vacationers aboard and we had to interview them and get pictures. It was a two- or three-week saga, a story that was seemingly un-ended, before everybody was repatriated to their countries," he remembered. One of his most important exclu-sives came from an interview with Cuba's Fidel Castro in 1959.

"As I left the office to interview him, I pulled some copy off the wire and saw an interview with the dictator of Nicaragua complaining about Cuban mercenaries. I pulled out the story during the interview and the guy (Castro) went wild. He even went so far as to call me an arm of the imperialist government of the United States," Neeleman said. "It was one of the first indications that Cuba was going to go the other direction. Up to then, it was just speculation." Save L-J V- Babel TONETIC Celu-fone i aii.

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Matheson said the trip will be part of an effort the state has in developing an international market in the Middle East for Utah goods and services. He said he also plans to open an international trade office for Utah in Tokyo. Malin Foster, the governor's press secretary, said the office was in the planning stages, with funding and operational details still to be completed. Matheson called the news conference at the Capitol to discuss his recent trip to China, Japan and Korea. SALT LAKE CITY (UPI) Gov.

Scott Matheson said the state will send four doctors from the University of Utah Medical Center to mainland China next month to share technology concerning artificial limbs and organs. Matheson told a news conference Thursday the doctors would leave April 12 and spend a couple of weeks in Nanjing Province to conduct educational seminars and share scientific information. The medical center has pioneered research and development of artificial kidneys, arms and hands, and in 1982 31 WridoUM4GBBPEE3 i.