Las Vegas Sun

March 28, 2024

Ill with terminal lung cancer, ex-slot manager presses for ban

Smoking

Tiffany Brown

Cheryl Rose, diagnosed with Stage 4 lung cancer in June 2008, worked in casinos in Las Vegas for 22 years. She wants to help transform the industry with a ban on smoking.

In Today's Sun

Protest for Smoke-Free Gaming

60-year-old Cheryl Rose has never smoked, but she has Stage 4 lung cancer from the second-hand smoke in the casino where she worked for 22 years. She's now working with groups like Smoke-Free Gaming to fight for the right to a smoke-free workplace. Smoke-Free Gaming came to Las Vegas to protest the opening of CityCenter's casino Aria, which is a LEED-certified "green" building but still allows smoking.

In April 2008, 60-year-old Cheryl Rose got a bad cough that wouldn’t go away.

Her doctors thought she had asthma — a bizarre turn for a woman who had never had difficulty breathing, not even during frequent workouts at the gym.

A few weeks later, an X-ray revealed that her right lung was filling with fluid at a frightening rate. Doctors told Rose, a woman who lived a healthy lifestyle and had never taken regular medications, that she probably wouldn’t live to see 2009.

Rose was diagnosed with Stage 4 lung cancer in June 2008. She had never smoked, and there was no history of cancer in her family. Doctors told Rose what she had suspected: Her cancer likely resulted from years of inhaling smoke at work — in casinos.

And now that she’s dying, Rose is on a mission to reform the industry where she spent the best years of her life. She wants smoking banned in casinos.

“God gives each of us a purpose in life,” she says. “I’m someone who can’t stand by and not do what I can to help. People are afraid for their jobs and they’re afraid to take risks. I want to be an advocate for people who are afraid to speak up for themselves.”

Working in casinos

Like others before her, Rose saw a career, and good money, in a casino job. She was good with numbers and had taken college-level accounting classes, so a job handling money made sense.

“This was the industry to be in — that’s where the opportunities were.”

Rose worked in Las Vegas casinos for 22 years, first as a slot attendant, or “change girl,” who paid jackpots and made change for customers in the days when slot machines accepted coins. She worked her way up the corporate ladder for more than a decade, finally becoming a slot director, overseeing slot attendants and technicians and working with slot vendors to purchase machines and place them in strategic locations.

She wasn’t around smoke much outside of work, as neither friends nor family smoked. But it was ever-present on the job. As a casino manager, Rose accepted that fact — even embraced it.

Allowing customers to smoke wasn’t just a way of life in Nevada, with its “live and let live” culture. Enabling smoking, she says, was a profit-driven goal.

Although most gamblers don’t smoke, there’s plenty of anecdotal evidence — much of it from casino companies — that many repeat gamblers smoke. Several studies have uncovered a strong link between chain smoking and problem gambling. The behaviors reinforce each other.

Rose knew smoking seemed to be good for business, even if it wasn’t good for customers.

She says some loyal customers stopped coming, because of doctors’ orders to avoid smoke.

But to her, smoke was a small downside to an otherwise fulfilling job.

“This was a good company to work for,” she says. “They offered me opportunities I never thought were possible.”

Her employer didn’t let her lack of a college degree prevent her ascent into management. The company paid for her to attend business leadership courses and UNLV classes in statistics and casino management. A high salary and performance-based bonuses were a testament to her skill as a manager.

All of which goes to explain why she wouldn’t consent to be interviewed for this story unless the company’s name was withheld. The company shouldn’t be singled out, she says.

Rose’s conflicted feelings toward her employer are typical of many casino workers who develop health problems linked to smoky environments or the high-stress nature of casino work.

Like many of her peers, Rose isn’t suing her employer for health-related damages, nor did she file a workers’ compensation claim.

It would be hypocritical, she said, because she had supported her employer’s efforts to accommodate smokers. She had encouraged gamblers to light up.

Instead, she is approaching her fight against smoke the same way she is tackling her battle against cancer: by focusing on what can be done in the future rather than what should have been done in the past.

Secondhand smoke

Slot directors have one of the most important jobs in the casino business. Although table games give casinos their mystique, slots make most of the money — and for Rose, overseeing the operation created 60- to 70-hour workweeks.

Rose didn’t always hole up in an office. She was a hands-on manager at a company that encouraged interaction between upper management, line workers and customers. She spent a lot of time walking the casino floor and talking to gamblers.

And, in hindsight, breathing in clouds of smoke.

She was aware of the risks of smoking, of course, but “when you’re working in the casino industry you’re not focused on health issues. You’re focused on the bottom line,” she explains.

Besides, she adds, “When you’re healthy, and you eat right and exercise, you don’t think bad things will happen to you.”

What she didn’t realize, until after her diagnosis, was that she didn’t have to be a smoker to develop lung cancer.

Speaking out

Rose was laid off from her job in February 2008 — one of the thousands of Las Vegas casino workers who have lost jobs because of the recession. As a widow, she had no way to stave off foreclosure, so she lost her house, too.

She was left with not much more than that troublesome cough — and her determination to speak out about the danger of secondhand smoke.

A few months ago, she appeared in a public service announcement sponsored by anti-smoking advocates Smoke-Free Gaming and posted on YouTube, calling for a smoking ban in casinos. She joined a group of casino workers participating in a Smoke-Free Gaming rally at the Global Gaming Expo, the industry’s largest trade show, in Las Vegas in November.

Mostly, though, Rose is preoccupied with staying alive.

Every three weeks a doctor hooks her up to an IV for chemo treatment. Once a week her doctor draws blood to make sure her blood cell counts are within normal ranges.

Now 61, Rose has so far beaten the odds, living well beyond the typical life expectancy for someone with terminal cancer.

But the cancer cells, which had previously lodged in her spine and hip, recently spread to her liver.

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