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In late August of 1980 my father took me along with him to deal with a claim at Harvey's Wagon's Wheel Casino at Lake Tahoe. There had been a bombing there and he worked for Fireman's Fund as a claims adjuster. Harvey’s Wagon Wheel bombing: The bizarre but true story of a crime gone wrong. The building looked OK for having gone through a bombing from what I could see from the exterior. We got inside but I was only allowed to stay with the Head of Security of the casino would started telling me stories about how they catch grifters, cheaters at cards, and all sorts of other who try to game the casino or the people playing there. I did not believe some of his stories like planting a device on people if they could not find enough evidence to call the police into charge the person. Probably just telling me tall tales to see how big my mouth fell open while he told them. I had my mind on what classes I was going to take that Fall at the University of Nevada, Reno. So, my mouth might not have fallen open as far as he wanted it to from his scared straight like missives.

I did have some friends at the University who would sometimes try to beat the casinos in various ways but I would decline their invitations as I had started to think that I might want to go to law school at some future date and an arrest would not look very good on my law school applications nor anywhere else for that matter.

We did have a nice time driving to Harvey's Wagon Wheel. I had a few more of these outings to various claims with my father around then usually involving suspected arson or things like that.

He even was involved in 1983 after I had worked at Bower's Mansion in the concession stand near the swimming pool. There had been a massive mudslide on Memorial Day at the park just about 1 mile north of Bower's Mansion. This was at Davis Creek park. There had been an avalanche which pushed a massive amount of snow into a mountain lake. The water from the mountain lake rushed out the other side from the wave created by the impact of all that snow. A wave of fast moving mud resulted which gained speed moving down the hill into some homes, campers and the like. My father had some of the claims from the home owners whose homes were inundated with the mud from this Memorial Day mudslide. Photos: Slide Mountain disaster, Memorial Day 1983

Tahoe Weekly1983 Memorial Day Flash Flood, Part I - Tahoe Weekly

Tahoe WeeklyMemorial Day Flash Flood, Part II - Tahoe Weekly

I saw the effect of the mudslide when I walked a ways where I could see the hill to the north where the mud has pushed over the road on the hill into the field beyond. The telephone lines were also nearly perfectly horizontal because of how taut they were made from the poles that were struck by the mudslide further to the north.

I had been working alone with Richard Mikkelson at the Bower's Mansion concession stand. This had been my last day working with them-- Farwell and Mikkelson-- as I was leaving for the University of Denver Graduate School of Librarianship and Information Management not soon after Memorial Day to get my MA.