Mega-jobs

Melissa Schorr

Thursday, May 7, 1998 | 10:15 a.m.

They cruise around town, tethered to their beepers and cell phones, never making commitments, ready to leave at a moment's notice.

They call themselves The Hit Squad. They carry The Hit Kit. Their mission? "Babysitting the beeper."

It's not quite as mysterious as it sounds. The Las Vegas Hit Squad, or their official title, the more mundane Megajackpot Response Team, is the core group of technicians, publicists and jackpot response reps who are on 'round-the-clock call to respond immediately whenever an International Game Technology (IGT) jackpot hits.

Accepting the job means entering a life as a slave-to-machine, where interruptions are the norm -- in the shower, in the salon, in the sack.

"It's a weird feeling," Heidi Cook, a five-year veteran of the Hit Squad, explains. "Even though you may not do anything out of the ordinary, just taking a nap or gardening in the backyard, it's that lingering feeling that at any moment, you're going to be pulled from whatever you're doing."

And as the payoff for Megabucks mounts, so does their anticipation.

"I almost feel like an expectant father, and my wife keeps having these false labor pains," says Hit Squad member Michele Masse, an account executive at the Thomas Puckett public relations firm. "Every time my beeper goes off, my heart skips a beat -- and then I find out it's Quartermania."

A job to do

While the current record-setting climb of Megabucks may garner most of the attention, the members of the Hit Squad are actually responsible for responding to pay out any one of IGT's 16 jackpots, such as Nevada Nickels or Wheel of Fortune. That can means as many as five to eight hits on a busy weekend, one or two on a slow one.

When a primary jackpot hits, the call comes down from Reno, ordering the Hit Squad member on call to instantly get down to the Strip, downtown, or even out to Pahrump or Primm.

Then, each has a specific duty to perform: the technician verifies the hit, the jackpot rep processes the paperwork and presents the payment, and the publicist alerts the media.

All are expected to arrive as fast as is humanly possible -- usually within 20 minutes.

"You need to drop what you're doing and get there as quickly as you can," explains Laurel Morley, the current head of the Hit Squad, aka IGT's manager for Megajackpots in Nevada. "It can be crazy."

When Morley started 10 years ago with IGT, there was only one game -- Megabucks -- and there was only one response rep: her.

"I was the Hit Squad," she recalls. Then, the company started adding a batch of systems to its growing family, and Morley had an addition of her own -- a baby, yet another hungry and vociferous creature demanding 24-hour attention.

And so, the IGT "jackpot response crew" was born.

Today, the core members include Morley, Heidi Cook, Justin Arcemont, Joe and Dawn Cox, Beverly Ho and Ed Rogich, plus a host of technicians and three publicists.

Although most members of the Hit Squad rotate schedules so they are on call only about one week out of the month, managers such as Morley and Cook, who are responsible for responding to the world records, Super Megabucks and Megabucks, mainly trade off duty with one another.

"It really alters your life," Cook says. "When you're on call, you accommodate your lifestyle so you're not in the middle of doing something that you can't get out of. If you want to go biking, you have to stay close enough so you can get home, get showered and get to a casino in a reasonable amount of time. You have to be really accommodating."

But Cox has found it pointless to readjust her schedule while awaiting the call. "You have to do your natural thing," she says. "You can plan your life around it -- and then you don't have a jackpot."

One time, Cook was packed up, ready to escape for a weekend ski trip as soon as she was off-duty at midnight. Sure enough, at 10:30, there was a hit at the Mirage. After she ran down to the Strip to pay that one, another machine hit at another casino an hour later.

"Just as I was leaving," she recalls, "a third one hit! But my time was up, so I'm outta there. I had been thinking, 'there's no way (it will hit).' But it's a good thing I hadn't left town, 'cause I'd have been on my way back."

"We don't, don't, don't like to take the chance," she added, "because we know the one time we do that, it's going to hit -- and nobody's gong to be there."

Keep in touch

Whatever they are doing, it is crucial that members of the Hit Squad are never out of touch, even for an instant.

"When you decide to go for a bike ride, you have to gear up," Cook says. "You have to have your cellular, your beeper."

"It's like that experiment with school kids, where they make them carry around the egg," Lori Nelson, a publicist who was on the Hit Squad account for a year, recalls.

In the trunks of their cars, they also tote around The Hit Kit -- a compact leather briefcase carrying the all-important jumbo cardboard check to present to the winner, the "Jackpot Response Packet," with a questionnaire and release forms, as well as a portable fax, extra batteries and chargers for their cell phones, a camera and film.

Like obstetricians or superheroes on call, even their own time isn't really their own.

Romantic getaways up in the mountains or out at the lake? Forget about it.

Lounging around unshowered and grungy on a Saturday morning? Unacceptable.

Seeing a movie Saturday night from start to finish? Unlikely.

Hit Squad members can never get too inebriated. They can't carpool, in case they need to leave the movie or concert early. Their time at weddings and holidays are spent praying for a reprieve.

And while they're getting lucky, they're hoping no one else is. Coitus interruptus is another acknowledged, though undiscussed, drawback of the job.

What they do lament publicly is the forced sleep deprivation, with most hits occurring on the weekend nights when there is the most "play."

When it hits at 3 in the morning, Cook says, her husband will have one of two reactions: Sometimes, he asks if he can tag along. "And other times," she says, laughing, "he says, 'Sorry,' and moves right over and takes my pillow."

Joe Cox got tired of being a tag-along when his wife, Dawn, a 4-year member of the Squad, would have to respond to the late night calls. So the IGT production manager joined the Squad last year.

"Sometimes it gets frustrating when you get that 3 o'clock call," admits Dawn, who, along with her husband, juggles Hit Squad shifts around their three children.

While there are also Hit Squad members stationed in Laughlin and Reno, the Las Vegas squad is responsible for covering the far-flung locations down south -- Mesquite, Primm or Pahrump.

One night, Cook and her guests were on their way out to dinner when she got called to a hit in Laughlin. "We all piled in the car and spent the night, and made a party out of it," she recalls. "You can make fun out of it."

Then, her voice softens and fills with dread. "Our biggest fear," she confides, "is if it hits in Tonopah -- a three-hour drive."

Timing is everything

Ask a member of the Hit Squad for their prediction on when Megabucks will hit, and they'll tell you they know exactly when: at the most inconvenient time possible.

Morley has even been called out on Christmas Day.

"I tell them it'll probably be when I have something going on," Masse says. "I tell them to play while I have an appointment to get my hair dyed and colored -- I'm sure I'm going to have half my head cut when it hits."

Don't laugh -- that, too, has happened to Morley.

"I was the only one on call, and we had a jackpot while I was getting my hair cut," she recalls. "I responded in the middle of winter with a soaking wet head tied back in a pony tail. It was half cut, and half uncut, and totally soaking wet. I had to wear it that way for two days before I could go back (to finish the hair cut)."

The male equivalent of being pulled out of the salon, Cox says, is having to shave when called for a 2 a.m. hit -- just in case the head of the casino's gaming department is there. "It's the last thing you want to do," he sighs, "but you can't get there looking grubby."

But sometimes, they have little say in the matter.

Cook remembers the time she was yanked out of a workout at her gym in Green Valley. "I had a sweater in the car, I put it on over my sweats, put my hair in a ponytail, and I thought, 'this is going to have to do.' But (the winners) don't care -- I could come naked for all they care."

Then there are also the false alarms.

Cox recalls a day at the lake where she wasn't even on duty -- and her beeper kept going off. "We had to come into the dock to let them know I wasn't on call," she says.

Worse, when a really significant jackpot hits and the call goes out, there is, of course, a chance that it will do so up north -- such as the last time Megabucks hit in July at Lake Tahoe. "When we get called, we get all excited," Dawn Cox explains, "and then we find out it hit in Reno."

'Usually, it's fun'

Despite the inconvenience, most members of the Hit Squad hold down full-time jobs within IGT, and have actually volunteered for the privilege. They do receive a stipend for their time, which can take from two to seven hours to complete a payoff.

"We tell them it's going to be crazy," Morley says. "It can be a nightmare. But we get a lot of applicants, a lot of people are interested. I'm not going to tell you it's never been annoying -- but usually, it's fun."

"It definitely is a lifestyle change," Masse says. "When I was interviewed and told I'd have the IGT account, I had no idea... It terrified me at first, I wasn't used to bringing (my pager) into the shower."

Now, she says, grabbing for her beeper is second nature, like "grabbing your keys."

"I wouldn't even call it an an imposition," she says. "People are always so busy, it's never a convenient time. But everybody loves this account. When we come back from the press conference, everyone is clamoring for info."

"It can throw a wrench in your day," Dawn Cox agrees. "But once you get down there, with all the excitement, being the one to push through the crowd and pay off the winner -- it's worth it."

Maybe not worth a cool $15.8 million (and counting) -- but to the Hit Squad, it's worth it nonetheless.

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