Jeff Haney chats with the organizer of a poker tournament that will honor a local war hero by raising scholarship money

By Jeff Haney

Wednesday, Sept. 12, 2007 | 7:38 a.m.

While attending Boulder City High School, Shane Patton played baseball and rock guitar. He loved skateboarding and lifting weights.

On graduation in 2000, Patton announced his desire to become a Navy SEAL, a decision that surprised and pleased his father, Jeff Patton, himself a former SEAL.

After enduring the Navy's rigorous Basic Underwater Demolition school, Patton was awarded his "SEAL Trident," or Special Warfare Badge, in 2002.

He was assigned to Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, where he continued training with the Navy SEAL Delivery Vehicle Team One, and was deployed to Afghanistan in early 2005.

On June 28 of that year, Shane Patton was killed along with 15 other U.S. servicemen when their MH-47D Chinook helicopter was shot down during a rescue mission in the mountains of Afghanistan.

An unguided enemy rocket-propelled grenade hit the helicopter, which had entered the mountainous region in an attempt to rescue another team of soldiers, according to the Defense Department.

The deadly incident became the basis for Marcus Luttrell's best-selling book, "Lone Survivor: The Eyewitness Account of Operation Redwing and the Lost Heroes of SEAL Team 10," published this year.

This weekend in Patton's hometown, a benefit poker tournament will raise money for the Shane Patton Scholarship Foundation, which was established in his memory.

Tony Korfman, the top boss at the Hacienda, figures a scholarship is an appropriate way to honor a local serviceman he considers an American hero.

"There's nothing better to remember someone by than education," said Korfman, whose business card reads "I'm Responsible" rather than listing an official title. "I think having more people educated is the answer to a lot of the problems of our country, and other countries. Education is probably the answer to poverty, hunger, a lot of things."

The no-limit Texas hold 'em tournament, scheduled for 5:30 p.m. Saturday at the Hacienda on U.S. 93 just south of Boulder City, carries a $50 entry fee with $20 rebuys.

Half of the prize pool will be donated to the scholarship fund , with half awarded to the top 18 finishers in the tournament.

Korfman, who has organized poker tournaments at the Hacienda to raise money for Boulder City junior high sports and band programs, expects Saturday's event to attract 80 to 100 players and raise about $3,000 for the scholarship designed to help Boulder City students.

The idea to support the Patton foundation with a tournament came when Korfman hired a Boulder City High grad named Grant Turner to help him transcribe a book he wrote that takes a humorous look at the poker scene. Korfman, who began playing poker at Artichoke Joe's in San Bruno, Calif., in the early 1960s, writes longhand and needed word-processing assistance.

Shane Patton was Grant Turner's best friend.

"So he set up the foundation, and I said , 'L et's kick it off with a poker tournament, ' " Korfman said.

Korfman, who started his career as a 21 dealer at Diamond Jim's Nevada Club on Fremont Street about 1962, has mixed emotions about the poker craze of the past several years.

An enthusiastic tournament player talented enough to place second in the seniors event at this year's World Series of Poker (good for a $217,503 payday), Korfman worries that too many young people pursue poker at the expense of focusing on a legitimate career.

"I go into these card rooms and see a lot of the same kids, a lot of the same faces," Korfman said. "They're starting to lose their money. They're looking for someone to stake them or they're looking for someone to buy them in. And some of them are very bright, smart, personable.

"They've got to realize that poker can be fun, but you've got to have a career , too."

So Korfman uses poker - and poker winnings - to raise awareness of good causes whenever he can. Once he got heads-up with eventual winner Ernest Bennett in the World Series seniors' event, for instance, he cut a deal that allowed Bennett to secure the gold winner's bracelet. In exchange, Korfman kept a bigger chunk of the prize pool than he otherwise would have.

"The bracelet in essence cost him $70,000," Korfman said. "I can do a lot more good helping people with 70 grand than I can with a bracelet."

And although he does not consider himself an activist or a politician - "I always figured there's enough people that hate me already," he cracked - Korfman found his feelings on the Iraq war crystallized sometime after Patton's helicopter went down in Afghanistan.

"I got a real problem with this (expletive) thing," Korfman said. "The surge, all this (expletive), come on. It's time to come home. Let them enjoy being with their families and get on with their lives.

"I appreciate the fact a lot of kids have given their lives, but the ones that are still alive, let's bring them home."