Vanished in Vegas

Melissa Schorr

Wednesday, April 7, 1999 | 10:11 a.m.

Jack Cheung always had a fascination with the seamier side of life.

As a part-time college student in New York City, he would pore through books such as "How to Become a Fugitive," "How to Change Your Identity" and "How to Make Money Without Working." "He was a loner, an underachiever in school and had the propensity to lie," recalls his sister, Jackie, 27, a Manhattan investment analyst. "He was always very guarded about his privacy."

Cheung was also something of a dreamer: He longed to be a policeman, but failed to pass the test. He strived to be an attorney, but barely made it through a few college courses on criminal justice.

He talked of making a fresh start in a warmer climate and a hotter job market, as a personal trainer or, perhaps, a blackjack dealer. Florida and Atlantic City both tempted him, but Las Vegas' neon lights seemed to flicker the brightest. "Las Vegas," he used to tell his family, "is the easiest city to find a job in the U.S.A."

Whether that dream came true is not clear.

Almost nineteen months ago, Cheung, 24, cashed a $1,000 check from his brokerage account, boarded a plane for McCarran International Airport and landed in Las Vegas.

His family never heard from him again.

Enter the PI

"When you're religious, you hear about heaven; when you're not religious, you hear about Las Vegas," quips Eddie LaRue, a veteran private investigator hired by the Cheungs.

LaRue, who seems to be lifted from the pages of a pulp detective novel, is a smallish man with an accent most can't place. The Southern-reared LaRue, a jockey in his youth, fell into detective work after a career in law enforcement didn't pan out because of his size, he explains ruefully.

Now he runs Las Vegas' 43-year-old A.G.R. Detective Service, working a cramped office downtown that resembles a large supply closet, surrounded by his tools of the trade: stacks of phone books dating back 25 years, a pair of walkie-talkies and a copy of "Black's Law Dictionary."

The kind of detective who relies on old-fashioned pavement-pounding, LaRue shies away from high-tech databank research whenever possible, leaving that to his son, the "computer whiz," Eddie Jr. "I don't like the phone -- face to face, here's who I am, here's my credentials," LaRue explains. "It takes more time, but you get better results."

Working in Las Vegas for the past 35 years has provided LaRue with many chances to perfect his craft.

"People who commit crimes come here to hide, and people who steal money come here to spend it," LaRue observes. "If you watch 'America's Most Wanted' or 'Unsolved Mysteries,' I don't think a show ever goes by where there's not an association with Las Vegas."

The Cheung family has learned this simple lesson the hard way.

"It seems like Vegas is a town where people escape to," Jackie Cheung notes via e-mail, her sadness perceptible through the printed lines, "either to pursue their dreams of making it big in gambling, in crooked activities or simply just to disappear."

Vegas-bound

Indeed, Las Vegas lore is full of famous fleers. Last month, New Zealand convict Clint Hallam, the first man to receive a hand transplant, snubbed his nose at his Parisian doctors and fled for some hang time in Las Vegas. A 1998 story in the Review-Journal noted the phenomenon, reporting that Patty Hearst stopped off here on her way into hiding and Heaven's Gate cult members came here before taking off for the afterlife.

"I wouldn't say Vegas attracts missing people -- other things attract people to Vegas," says Det. Gary Sayre, head of the Las Vegas Metro Police Missing Persons unit. For one thing, he notes, 70 percent of his cases are locals, while only 30 percent are out-of-towners such as Cheung.

Sayre estimates that as many as 80 percent of his cases are eventually closed or solved, with many of them only "temporarily" missing and turning up sheepishly a few days after a gambling or partying binge.

Of those who aren't locals, he says, "most people who come to this town pass through and don't find the type of employment they want here and end up going elsewhere."

Still, to say that Las Vegas doesn't draw people who tend to vanish seems somewhat disingenuous, considering that the under-staffed two-person unit receives 350 to 400 missing persons reports every month, and is juggling hundreds of cases at a time.

Of those, Cheung's case is "not atypical," Sayre says with a shrug. "It is our experience that in most cases, the individual is out there on his own, involved in his own life, and has neglected to make contact with his parents."

A lot of people who are reported missing, Sayre adds, aren't "missing" per se -- they just don't want to bother. "I just think the young man might be doing his own thing and not being considerate enough to contact the parents right now," he says, "and hopefully that's the case."

When pressed to make a prediction, Sayre says, "I think he'll surface." And until then, the case will be considered open. "We don't ever give up."

In LaRue's decades on the job, handling about 15 to 20 such cases a year, only a few have eluded his reach -- most notably, the still-unsolved, high-profile kidnapping in the '70s of Cary Saygh, son of former Carpet Barn owner Sol Saygh.

Last week, one more was checked off his roster: the case of Debbie Ann Stolo, the 34-year-old Circus Circus secretary who was reported missing in February. Her body was found this month in her car, which had crashed in a ravine off the side of Mt. Charleston. Stolo had just gone through an upsetting breakup with her husband. The coroner's office has ruled the death accidental.

LaRue finds that most of his missing persons cases fall into a pattern such as Stolo's: women ages 25 to 40 who have fallen prey to cases of the "emotional" variety: unrequited love, failed relationships. A few also fall victim to what LaRue quaintly calls "foul play," but their bodies tend to turn up, abandoned and discarded.

Seeking the hidden

Cheung seems to be in another category altogether -- the ones who are officially classified as "missing" but who really seem to be "hiding."

But why would he hide? According to his family, Cheung had no known gambling debts, no mob connections, no criminal history.

"I'm baffled on this," admits the veteran investigator, who came on the case in January after two other detectives had turned up nada. "I have nowhere to go. If he was abducted, the body would have surfaced. Was he embarrassed that his family would be so upset (he cashed that check) they never want to see him again? And assuming that happened, he still should be out here in the world working, having a job, using his Social Security number. He changed his identity -- but there's no reason for that, he's not wanted for anything. So why is he trying to phony himself up?"

Cheung's family -- his sisters, Jackie, and Jessie, 21, a medical student, and parents, Taiwanese immigrants Chi and Chien -- are also bewildered.

"We have a difficult time figuring out why he left," Jackie Cheung writes earnestly in an e-mail asking for the Sun's help. "Wanderlust? Sure, but why does he not call?"

For a long time, the family and investigators theorized that Cheung was ashamed by his attempt to empty out the family bank account. Or that he had landed in jail and not called his family out of embarrassment, or run up huge gambling debts with a loan shark. One key trait of the Asian culture, LaRue notes, is the idea of disgrace; so is a fascination with gambling.

But the family cares more about the loss of Jack than the loss of money -- or loss of face. "It's not about money," Jackie Cheung says, it's about "closure."

"My parents really want to find him and just talk to him," she explains in a phone interview. "If he wants to live his life, fine, but at least let us know that you're OK. Just come forward and put them out of their misery."

What Jack Cheung has been doing for the past two years is unclear.

"He's probably OK," Jackie Cheung says bravely. "He's probably doing something really strange. I think he doesn't have the guts to do something very criminal-like -- he wasn't into drugs, he didn't drink. He's just trying to live his own life, trying to shut out anyone else."

His mother, though, is not so sure. "He's studied criminal law, so he knows where is the loop(hole)," Chien Cheung frets.

Even so, it wouldn't matter.

"Only your family can forgive you and give you another a chance, nobody else will," Chein Cheung says, addressing the son she hopes will read her words. "Just let me know (where you are), because we'll always help you. Anything you do, we'll forgive."

A life examined

Born in the Bronx, N.Y., Cheung grew up in the various boroughs of New York City, attending Susan Wagner High School in Staten Island. The middle child among two over-achieving sisters, Cheung struggled in school while his sisters excelled.

"He was never really happy with himself," Jackie Cheung notes. "He always talked about trying to be someone else. He's not social, he's never had a girlfriend, I don't think he really knows how to deal with people. He's just different from other people."

Chein Cheung remembers telling Jack: "You have to make some friends, people need people."

"No," he'd reply. "Friends take advantage of you."

Jack Cheung had a history of disappearing for long and short stints. Once, he went off to Atlantic City and didn't return home for two days, his sister Jackie recalls. Another time, his parents went to visit him in his Queens apartment after not hearing from him for a few months.

"I felt too much time had passed and I was ashamed to call you," he told them, tensely, before finally breaking into tears.

Then something in him may have finally snapped.

On Sept. 2, 1997, Cheung withdrew $1,000 from a joint brokerage account he shared with his mother. A week later, he attempted to remove another $4,600, but overestimated the account balance by a small sum and bounced the check.

Still, on Sept. 19, he left a message on the answering machine in the apartment he shared with his sister. "I'm going on a business trip," he said matter-of-factly. "I'll be back in a few weeks."

Going west

Taking his passport, his birth certificate and some personal items, he boarded a plane, and according to hotel records, checked into the Sahara hotel-casino.

Cheung stayed there for about a week, charging up phone calls to various local businesses. He called some local gyms, perhaps trying to find work as a trainer. He also called several travel agencies, suggesting that he may have even taken a side trip.

In November 1997, he checked into a small, short-term rental apartment at 1155 East Flamingo Road.

With his funds probably running low at this point, Cheung may have decided it was time to find work. In early December, the unskilled worker apparently approached the Culinary Union, which sent him to register with Metro for his work card.

Meanwhile, his parents' worries had grown into deep concern. They hired International Investigations, Inc., a New York City detective agency, to see if they could track his whereabouts.

The agency performed a records searches through its vast databases and turned up a paper trail that tracked him to his apartment and showed that he had applied for a work card as a food runner.

Overjoyed that he seemed to have established a life in Las Vegas, his parents jumped on a plane in March -- but arrived just weeks too late.

Jack Cheung had left his apartment in mid-December, the angry landlord informed his parents -- evicted for not paying his rent. At the Culinary Union, his parents were told that their son had registered with them -- but had never returned for work.

To this day, Cheung has never showed up for legal, registered employment in Las Vegas. There is no record of the use of his Social Security number.

Lack of leads

From there, the trail grows icy cold.

Before they returned to New York, his parents filed a report with Metro's Missing Persons detail.

Sayre ticks off the places he checked: locals hospitals, jails, the coroner's office, the Department of Motor Vehicles, a "death index," (a nationwide list of those who have been reported deceased) the Culinary Union, forwarded addresses.

All came back "negative."

"What you have to understand," he says with the weary tone of a man who has repeated this countless times, "is that being a missing person is not a criminal act. Therefore, police agencies are limited in what they can or cannot do."

"The first three months, I called (the detective) every week; nothing happened," Chein Cheung recalls. "He said if he had news, he'd let me know. If he's an adult and not a criminal, they can't do anything."

Metro detectives are not allowed to give people referrals to specific private investigators, but somehow, in mid-January, the family found itself pointed in LaRue's direction. "The private sector," Sayre admits, "is not limited as to their sources as we are, being a police agency, and may be able to get some more information."

The Cheungs have also hired private investigators in Oregon and Boston, and spent several thousand dollars in the pursuit.

"People are very hyper," LaRue explains. "They want things done now. Time moves too slow. They want certain things done, and you can't tell police, 'You go do this.' Police get to it when they can. When you hire a private investigator, and they tell you, 'I want you to go to Mt. Charleston and look over the side and tell me if you see anybody down there,' well, they're the client," says LaRue, who once had a client send him to Russia on the advice of a psychic. "You're paying the bill, OK, I'll go do it."

But after pounding the pavement and rehashing the case, LaRue found no further evidence of Jack Cheung's existence -- no DMV records, no other local addresses, no arrest records. "None of that panned out."

There's little left for LaRue to do: Every few weeks he runs Jack Cheung's Social Security number through databases in a vain hope that something will turn up.

"That's it," he says with a sigh. "It's a cold trail. But I took the case because it was a challenge. In my business, you want to meet a challenge."

"My gut feeling about this case?" he says. "I think he came here for the same reason the rest of the world came here -- a chance to make money, to get rich."

Or perhaps Jack Cheung came to Las Vegas for a chance to live the life he'd only read about -- a life where you could "Change Your Identity," "Make Money Without Working" and "Become a Fugitive."

Whether or not he made those dreams a reality remains unknown.

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