Messenger - Vol. 2, No. 3, Page 4 Summer 1993 From bugs to blackjack Fate. Chance. Opportunity. Luck. They've all played a role in the major, lifetime decisions that led Michelle Michelini Hardiman, Delaware '78, an entomology and applied ecology graduate, into a world of non-stop gaming action in a craps pit, calculating and overseeing the payoffs and observing the antics of casino high rollers in the wee small hours of the morning. Hardiman's road to Las Vegas and Atlantic City began in her hometown of Wilkes-Barre, Pa. When she was considering college, her father, Francis J. Michelini, Delaware '50M, suggested his daughter accompany him on a business trip to Newark. As president of Wilkes University, the elder Michelini enjoyed returning to his alma mater, where he periodically visited his friend, Art Trabant, then U. of D. president. "As soon as I saw the Delaware campus," says Hardiman, thinking back two decades, "I knew I didn't want to go anywhere else." Although she had always been interested in science, Hardiman enrolled as an undeclared major in arts and science. Later, she learned that the father of an Alpha Chi Omega sorority sister was teaching a course in entomology. Hardiman signed up to see what it was like. She soon switched her major and decided to aim for a position in agricultural extension research. "In college, my nickname was 'Bugs,'" recalls Hardiman. "One friend pictured me driving in a VW bug, with an insect on top, and operating my own exterminating service." The Michelini family spent the summers in Ocean City, N.J., where Michelle worked in a retail clothing outlet. After graduation, she decided to enjoy one more carefree season at the shore before trying her luck in the real world. At that time, in the late '70s, casino gambling had just arrived in nearby Atlantic City. A fellow ag graduate, George Schilling, Delaware '79, ran into Hardiman on the Boardwalk in Atlantic City, mentioned he was working at Caesar's Casino and gave her an application for dealers' school. Jobs, he said, were plentiful, since there were not enough trained table game dealers to go around. Hardiman enrolled in a 12-week craps course and became one of the original dealers who helped open Bally's Park Place Casino in 1979. "I was kind of worried about how my father would react to my thinking of going to dealers' school," she says, "but, he was fine. He realized it's not necessarily what you do with your major, per se, but how you use your education, no matter what field you decide to go into. "Education, at that important time in your life in college, is a unique experience," she says. "And the skills you gain can be transferred. Gambling was a blooming industry in 1978-79, and I got in on the ground floor." During the last 14 years, Hardiman has worked as a dealer in craps, blackjack and red dog. She's been a box person in the craps pit-overseeing payoffs and the general hectic action of the game, a floor person, pit clerk and floor supervisor. Her career also has taken her to Resorts International in Atlantic City and the Mirage in Las Vegas. Currently, as a casino scheduler at Trump Plaza Hotel Casino in Atlantic City, Hardiman is responsible for placing 475 employees behind various table games and at special events, tournaments and other casino activities where licensed dealers are needed. Working on the administrative side of the house is different, Hardiman concedes, but it's just as hectic as working on the casino floor. Natural characteristics of a business that operates 24 hours a day, 365 days a year, are long hours and erratic schedules. "When you go into the casino business, you say good-bye to weekends and holidays off. You have to be here working when the customers are here," Hardiman says. Fortunately, there's some benefit in having a spouse in the same line of work. Hardiman's husband, Dennis, is a casino host further up the Boardwalk, at Trump's Taj Mahal Casino Resort. The couple has two children, Erin, 6-1/2, and Steven, 5. "I'll tell you one thing,"she says, "my children won't be afraid of insects. I just tell them: 'Relax, they won't hurt you.' When I first started working at Bally's, I had people bringing me insects in jars that they found in their apartments. They would ask me what they were and I'd look them up in my textbooks." So, just how much money can go through a craps table? "I've seen people play $100,000 at a time at the Mirage in Las Vegas. The biggest win I've ever had was in Atlantic City. There was a man who won half-a-million dollars in one night," Hardiman says. She says she's also worked with people who have picked up their pay and gone to the casino next door to lose it. Her free, expert advice to any visitor to Atlantic City's 12 seductive temples of chance: "Don't gamble what you can't afford to lose." -Ed Okonowicz, Delaware '69, '84M