Chili Peppers heat up pool party at LV apartments

Monday, Aug. 5, 2002 | 9:45 a.m.

Take one of the country's top rock bands, 50 of your closest friends, a sparkling aqua pool and plenty of free food and beer: It is a recipe for summertime fun that music television's VH1 cooked up in Las Vegas Saturday.

Las Vegan Leslie Prekop, an American Airlines flight attendant, won a sweepstakes for the party -- an annual promotion for the cable channel's Labor Day weekend programming. Along with the party, she also received the keys to a new Volkswagen and $3,000 in cash.

The Red Hot Chili Peppers flew in from Los Angeles for the party, which will air Sept. 2. Prekop, who says she has never won anything, entered the sweepstakes online on a whim because she is a fan of the funky alternative band. Prekop was one of 90,000 people who entered the contest.

She admitted to being a bit nervous when she met the band members, who surprised her in her apartment.

She said the hardest part of the party was selecting her 50 best friends from Southern California and Las Vegas.

"I had too many people," Prekop said. "It's hard saying no."

Friend Michael Rossi said Prekop has been "a tremendous fan" of the band since the late 1980s.

The crowd inside a fenced off pool area at the Fountains at Flamingo included many of her friends who worked with her at the former Reno Air commuter service.

Joining her friends were bevies of local models sporting tiny bikinis. Once word of the short concert got out to the public, fans joined Prekop's neighbors in the apartment complex to watch the show, perched in apartments adjacent to the pool, leaning over the fence or having their own party on the nearby grass.

Even those who were not allowed inside the fence said they had a blast.

"I love it! I've been waiting for it for weeks," resident Jennifer Forsyth said. She said she learned of the "Backyard Barbecue" when VH1 cameramen came to the apartments to scout the location.

"This is better than any concert, ever," Forsyth's friend Jake Vincent said. "I think it should happen every day."

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