Florida Salvation Army office rejects donation from lottery winner

Thursday, Jan. 2, 2003 | 10:54 a.m.

SUN STAFF AND WIRE REPORTS

MARCO ISLAND, Fla. -- A local Salvation Army office in Florida will not accept a $100,000 donation from a Florida Lotto winner because its local leader didn't want to take money associated with gambling.

David L. Rush, 71, announced the gift last week. He held one of four winning tickets in the $100 million Florida Lotto jackpot drawing of Dec. 14 and took a $14.3 million lump sum payment.

Maj. Cleo Damon, head of the Salvation Army office in Naples, told Rush that he could not take his money and returned the check, which another official had accepted.

"There are times where Major Damon is counseling families who are about to become homeless because of gambling," spokeswoman Maribeth Shanahan said. "He really believes that if he had accepted the money, he would be talking out of both sides of his mouth."

Las Vegas Salvation Army officials said they do accept donations from gambling and lottery winnings.

"We have a particular job that we're trying to do, whatever resources we are provided with we will utilize," said Gary Zielinski, chief financial officer for the Las Vegas Salvation Army.

Jim Sullivan, a lieutenant colonel with the Las Vegas Salvation Army, said donations the group accepts may differ throughout the country.

"In a community where the main industry is gaming, that's where our support comes from," he said, adding that casinos have helped the organization with money and other donations in the past.

"Money is not evil or good," Sullivan said.

"Everybody has a right to be sanctimonious if they want to be," Rush said. "I respect the Salvation Army's decision. I do not agree with it, but that is their prerogative."

He said he has been giving money to the Salvation Army, an evangelical Christian organization, for 40 years.

Rush sees the lottery as something other than a typical gambling organization.

"There's no bigger gamble than investing in the stock market," Rush, a financial adviser, said. "For them to say this is gambling is an overstatement."

Sullivan said the local Salvation Army helped hundreds of thousands of people this past year, serving at least 1,000 meals a day and helping out about 15,000 people last month.

He said the organization's drug and alcohol program helped more than 500 addicts of alcohol, drugs and gambling in the past year.