American Heart
Association

Fohring Head asease
and Streqie

YOU BEING
STALKED BY

ARE

WOMEN S

No. 1

KILLER?

Reducing
vour risk
factors for
heart disease
and stroke is
good self defettse

©1997, American HearlAssotiatIon

ARNOLD

LINCOLN-MERCURY-MAZDA

Drive East Pay The Least

, t + .1 LINCOLN

mama

PASSION FOR ME ROAD"'

Mercury

GIL PRATT

Leasing Manager

Your West Side Specialist
(8 I 0) 445-6000

Gratiot Ave. at 12 Mile Road
Roseville, MI 48066
Fax (810) 771-7340

BetterS afe

an Sorry!

2 Complete
Show Rooms
of Floor Safes,
Wall Safes,
Gun Safes &
Drop Safes.

TL 15 & TL 30 Safes in Stock

WE CAN PROTECT YOU!

248-858-7100

SAFES NU ITE

4/28

1991 ORCHARD LAKE RD
SYLVAN LAKE, MI

74

Mon, Tues, Thurs, Fri 9:00-5:00
Wed 9:00-2:00 • Sat 2:00-5:00

2000

woman from New York" whom he
met when she moved to Las Vegas to
become a dealer. They have three
grown children.
The Schugars decided to live in
historic Indian Village on Detroit's
East Side because "I just felt strongly
about living in the city," he said.
'Also, it's just a 12-minute ride to
work. This job is so demanding, we
don't have much of a social life any-
way.
"When we got to town, I read an
article in the Jewish News about the
Downtown Synagogue, and I mailed
them a check and joined.
Jews just have to support
that synagogue to keep it
going in the city. And we
were happy to find a super-
market on the East Side that
carries kosher foods, espe-
cially matza for Passover."

Michigan and a law degree from the
University of Detroit. Her parents,
Ruth and Al Katzman, are both
retired psychotherapists.
Scott-Dube is married to Paul
Dube, also a psychotherapist, and has
three children, two from a previous
marriage. The family lives in
Huntington Woods. She clerked for a
judge, then was a Wayne State
University Law School instructor for
six years before joining a law firm
specializing in real estate.
Casinos entered her life when she
worked on land acquisition, statutes,

Vacation Planted Seed

rezoning, licensing and other facets of
the casino project for the Atwater
organization, which preceded
MotorCity. Its owner, Circus Circus,
and the parent company, Mandalay-
Bay Resorts, realized MotorCity
needed a full-time attorney and hired
her.
"Bringing casino gambling to
Detroit was like negotiating an enor-
mous obstacle course," Scott-Dube
declared. "We just kept working at it
until MotorCity opened. Now, it's a
constant challenge to juggle the large
variety of legal work associated with
running the establishment."
She usually works at the casino 12
hours a day and often brings work
home. She approves the casino's vari-
ous promotions; checks the licenses of
all employees and vendors, and han-
dles labor negotiations with five
unions. She also is liaison with the
state gaming board office in the casi-
no; checks all contracts, including the
recent Thomas Hearns boxing match
that MotorCity sponsored at Joe
Louis Arena; and tries to settle "slip-
and-fall" actions by patrons.
"People threaten lawsuits for all
kinds of reasons," Scott-Dube said.
"They think they won a jackpot
when they really didn't; a slot
machine may break down so they
believe they lost money because of
that, and so forth. I also get phone
calls at all hours of the night from
security seeking my advice."

tained. "People now are devoting a.
large portion of their entertainment
budget to gambling dollars," he
asserted. "Seventy percent of our cus-
tomers play the slots, and 30 percent
go to the gaming tables.
Gamblers are all driven by the
same goal, Schugar pointed out,
quoting actor Paul Newman's charac-
ter in the movie The Color of Money:
"Money won is twice as sweet as
money earned."
Added Schugar: "In this business,
cash is our biggest inventory"
Schugar supervises one-third of

A vacation in Atlantic C'ty
led to a life-long career.

Cohen is a transplanted Philadelphia
resident who became interested in the
gaming business 21 years ago.while
on vacation in Atlantic City. She
trained as a craps dealer, and quickly
moved up through the ranks. She
spent six years at Caesar's Palace and
seven years at the Trump Castle.
She left to open a river gambling
boat in the then fledgling casino town
of Biloxi, Miss., now the third-largest
gaming center in the country. In
1994, she moved to Windsor to help
start the casino there, then joined
MotorCity in April 1999.
"Quite frankly, I wanted to live
back in the United States," she said.
"Windsor is lovely ... there were
many nice things about living there.
But I needed a permit to get across
the border, and I had to pay duty on
new clothes and other things, and all
that was sort of annoying. There's
nothing like living in the U.S."
She resides in Birmingham and
usually works from the afternoon late
into the night.
Cohen has come a long way from
the "98 percent Jewish neighbor-
hood" of Oxford Circle in
Philadelphia. "Until I graduated from
high school, I thought the whole
world was Jewish," smiled Cohen.
Like Schugar, Scott-Dube is a
native Detroiter — maiden name
Katzman — but she never left the
area. She grew up in Oak Park and
Birmingham, graduated from
Birmingham Groves High School,
obtained a BA degree in American
culture from the University of

Money Drives Players

Schugar said visitors come to
MotorCity to have fun and be enter-

/ \
MotorCity's employees, 1,000 people.
"We hired 750 from the Detroit area
and brought in 250 experienced deal-
ers and others from other gambling
areas of the country. We relocated
them and paid for their moving
expenses," he said.
"After the mad rush to get open,
we're now fine-tuning our operation
by giving additional training to
employees and tweaking our comput-
er setup, especially our highly sophis-
ticated computer scheduling."
Cohen's job is to develop different
methods to bring in more patrons
and to keep MotorCity customer-ser-
vice focused. She and her staff of 60
do this mainly by getting to know
regular customers by name and face.
"People want to be recognized,"
she noted. "People at any level want
to establish some kind of rapport
with somebody. And it certainly helps
to have a pleasant staff"
Friendly greetings are reinforced
with small rewards. MotorCity uses a
high-tech database and computer
tracking system. Visitors are encour-
aged to sign up for a player's card to
plug into a slot machine or table. The
card keeps track of their action,
which helps Cohen determine what
rewards they should receive, such as
free meals or discounted tickets to
special events.
"The clientle here is pretty knowl-
edgeable and not at all shy about
their requests," she said. "In fact, they
can be pretty demanding at times. So,
you must be creative and provide
good service to stay a step ahead of
what the competition is offering."

❑

