Metro worker hits 90

Cathy Scott

Monday, March 25, 1996 | 11:59 a.m.

Frank Smith said he had a choice of "growing old in a rocking chair" or going back to work.

He opted to work.

That was 15 years ago. On Tuesday, the Metro Police photo lab employee turns 90.

To commemorate his birthday, Smith was presented Friday with a "best employee" award by Clark County Sheriff Jerry Keller.

"I was going to knock it off on my birthday, but I looked at that rocking chair at home and it didn't look good," Smith said. "I can't just sit in a rocking chair and grow old.

"As long as the good Lord lets me, I'll keep working. It keeps me off the street."

Other than that, Smith said he doesn't have any plans for the future.

"I don't even buy green bananas because I don't know how long I'll last," he said.

But his health is good, and so is his attitude. "I'm not a grumpy old man," he said. "I try not to be."

He said he doesn't want to live to be 100, like the late George Burns, because "I don't want to get in the way."

But his fellow workers at Metro's photo lab at Charleston and Rainbow boulevards don't feel he's in the way.

Smith numbers and catalogs all the mugshots for Metro, the city jail, Clark County Detention Center and county work cards. He has a private office and works 19 hours a week.

And he still drives the 15-mile round trip to work from the southeast area where he has lived since 1956.

"Geez, that's 40 years," he said as he sat at his desk looking at negatives on his light table.

Mugshots are coming in more than ever before, he said, because "this town's getting so big."

Born in 1896 in Muskegon, Mich., Smith moved to Las Vegas from San Francisco in 1949 "when the Strip was a gravel road and not a car would come by." He left Muskegon on a steamboat as a cabin boy when he was 18 and ended up in New York City before moving to San Francisco.

In 1942, he married his wife, Kay, a Las Vegas theatrical manager and agent, who "left me for heaven 10 years ago," he said. His daughter, two grandchildren and three great-grandchildren live in the Reno area.

"A friend had a dance studio in the building we lived in," he said of his early days in Las Vegas. "She was a showgirl at the El Rancho Vegas hotel. She invited us for the weekend, and I got the bug. I moved here as soon as I could."

Once in Las Vegas, he worked as a captain in the showrooms of the Desert Inn and Caesars Palace until he semi-retired in 1968.

When he's not working in the photo lab, Smith watches French cooking programs on television.

"I like to cook," he said. So much so that he prepares his favorite gourmet dishes and brings them to work and tries them out on his boss and co-workers.

"He's quite a cook," said photo lab supervisor Phil Kulis. "We think we'll keep him for a while longer."