Former casino executive Robert Schuetz tells his story of recovering from depression to help others
LAS VEGAS — Nearly 25 years ago, a between-gigs Richard Schuetz Jr. was offered refuge by confidante Bill Curran, a former Nevada Gaming Commission chair, via a vacant office in Curran’s law firm in Las Vegas.
That’s where, eventually, Schuetz slid into composing a suicide note on a computer. At some stage, he informed Curran of his activities.
“Under most circumstances, a guy will say, ‘Well, let’s go have a drink.’ But he reached into his desk and took out the card of a psychiatrist down in Laguna Beach,” Schuetz said. “He said, ‘Get into your car and go see this guy right now!’
“I was in a down cycle.”
Schuetz (pronounced “shoots”) reached the beach and checked into a motel room. He awoke the next morning and started a Mr. Coffee machine, with poor results.
He rang the number on the card. The psychiatrist’s wife, operating the switchboard, said, “You know, my husband doesn’t have a drive-in business. How are you doing?”
“Well, I just made a cup of coffee here, spilled it and started crying.”
“OK, I’ll call you right back.”
Minutes later, she rang and said, “Go to ‘this’ hospital and check yourself in.”
They buzzed Schuetz in, the thick steel door unbolted, and officials showed him the way. He wore a $5,000 suit. They removed the laces of his expensive shoes and provided him with plastic utensils.
“My main thought,” he said, “as I walked through that door was, ‘Finally, I’m going to figure out what the [expletive] is wrong with me.’ I stayed down there for a couple of years. Just needed to change one thing, and that was everything.”
Getting through
On a responsible-gambling panel at BetBash IV, inside a Circa ballroom in August, Schuetz, the CEO for American Bettors’ Voice (ABV), was exceptionally qualified to talk about the perils of addiction.
Schuetz, 73, represents more than 50 years in the industry, with a spectacular résumé that includes running casinos in northern Nevada, and the Stardust, Frontier, Golden Nugget and Stratosphere in Las Vegas.
I was introduced to him in January and have gotten to know him during the year, but I knew nothing about the suicide note. At that panel, though, before an audience of hundreds, he spoke about it without reserve.
He delivered a shock, but Schuetz told me he has been quite open about it, in lectures while teaching classes, at seminars and on such panels. Always, feedback is tremendous.
“Someone would come up to me later and say, ‘You’re telling my story!’ So I’ve kept telling my story for that reason,” he said. “Every time I talked about it, it got through to somebody. So I’ve always thought that’s a good thing.
“[The rehabilitation] taught me to be more open about such things, and to realize it was a disease, not a weakness of character.”
Part of the job
In casinos, Schuetz would typically spend half the day in his office, juggling budgets and other vital paperwork. Afternoons, and into evenings, were spent on the floor or pits, tending to high rollers, observing the action.
He’d settle into a seat at a lounge table, and a telephone and drink were de rigueur, both promptly delivered to him. Whiskey or beer, sometimes tequila. With dinner, wine.
“I drank a lot in casinos, but it was not that abnormal,” Schuetz said of the 1980s and ’90s. “Drinking by executives was very common, and I was a functional drunk. I never made bad credit or employee decisions.
“And I was a popular casino executive. It wasn’t like I was this drunken guy hanging onto people. People liked me, and people wanted to play with us in the casino.”
The root of his issues stemmed from home, where Richard Sr. ran the household, including Junior and an older sister, with authority in Santa Paula, near Ventura in California. Schuetz couldn’t wait to attend the University of Nevada.
“I went away to school just to get out of the goddamn house,” Schuetz said. “Now, I kind of get it. I was raised in a family where alcohol is the most important thing. It’s supposed to be the kids, you’d think.”
In Laguna Beach, he’d be diagnosed with depression and a bipolar disorder.
“Which I fed with alcohol, which is a depressant,” Schuetz said with a sarcastic edge. “Good combo.”
A hoot
Schuetz’s stories are legendary.
Outside a Stardust back door, federal officials, tipped off about a supposed skimming operation, waited for a certain employee to exit. The suspect was frog-marched to a car and slammed against the hood.
Cameras clicked. Flashbulbs popped. The feds had yanked a satchel away from the person and dumped its contents — chocolate-chip cookies — onto the car’s trunk.
“Hilarious,” Schuetz laughed. “It was hilarious. Everybody was setting up everybody. You had to pay attention. You had to know your way.”
Stardust bellmen had a lucrative wheelchair side hustle. Outside its sportsbook, 11 pay phones produced the highest national revenue annually for Ma Bell, a company official informed Schuetz.
That book was legendary, too.
“When people came to town and they wanted to get down [make a large bet on a game], they came to the Stardust,” Schuetz says, “because they knew they could get higher limits.
“And those pay phones; all due respect to the Wire Act, but it wasn’t working.”
He’d investigate fountain coins. A security guard told him they paid for beer at a year-end party, but Schuetz learned that the haul came to $44,000.
“That’s just how it went with everything,” he said. “You didn’t take anything for granted. It was a hoot.”
Just stupid
ABV founder and chairman Gadoon “Spanky” Kyrollos recruited fellow renowned sports bettor Billy Walters to his endeavor, but he said landing Schuetz was key.
“Richard brings to the table invaluable experience from multiple facets of the industry, being a former regulator and executive,” Spanky texted me. “ABV would not have been a thing were it not for Richard.”
The pieces Schuetz pens for Casino-Reports.com are must-read material. We discussed industry issues, but I’m stumped; aren’t those elements that the grandiose-sounding American Gaming Association (AGA) should address and rectify?
“Well, I agree with you there,” Schuetz said. “If you go into perceptions about professions, like politicians and doctors and teachers, the least-respected profession in the U.S. is a lobbyist.
“They’re not out there to accommodate an industry; their desire is to maximize profits.”
Sustainability is the ABV’s lifeblood.
“No one is speaking for the player,” Schuetz laughed. “I mean, no one. We’re trying to build a sustainable model, and you can’t build a sustainable model without the input of bettors. That’s just stupid.”
About that dramatic letter, he does not recall exact words.
After a long telephone interview and many follow-up questions, I had a final inquiry for Schuetz late Tuesday night.
Did Curran save his life?
“Yes.”