Were life like an episode of MTV’s The Real World, you could turn to one of its sister channels to see what happened to that bratty frat boy you hated, that smart-mouthed malcontent who had everyone at each other’s throats and the free-loving girl who slept with half the house. To find out what’s become of the local people, places and things that once consumed our consciousness, turn the following pages. A lot has happened since our first “whatever happened to” installment in 2004, where we told you the skinny on the Raelians and got you caught up with former Survivor contestant Kelly Wiglesworth. In that spirit, we’ve collected the dirt on an entirely new cast of characters—from Montecores to Moncriefs, we’ve got you covered.
Michael Galardi’s house
Unreal estate
Sure, the money was dirty. But the house was grand: 35,000 square feet, 10 bathrooms, a 15-car garage—15?!—an indoor basketball court, a 1,600-gallon aquarium and a built-in, 10-foot-by-12-foot master bed. Michael Galardi’s little hideaway in Queensridge was built in 2002, the heyday of the strip-club owner’s reign. But it sat on the market from 2003, when he was indicted on political corruption charges, throughout the legal proceedings and his guilty plea in 2005, until 2006. When it sold for $14 million—$6 million less than the original asking price—it was the most expensive home ever sold in Vegas. The buyer? The Black family, owners of KB Racing, which owns the dragster driven by Hillary Will, who’s a rising star on the drag strip. The Blacks should know what to do with that garage.
Cast of Dr. Vegas
Short-lived medical drama about a casino doctor
During the brief period in which setting TV shows in Vegas was the hot thing to do, probably the silliest offering was CBS’ 2004 Dr. Vegas, starring Rob Lowe as the house doctor at a fictional hotel-casino.
Only five episodes aired, but the show doesn’t seem to have damaged the cast members’ careers. Lowe continues to work steadily, most recently in a recurring role as a senator on ABC’s Brothers & Sisters. Co-stars Joe Pantoliano and Tom Sizemore were established character actors before Dr. Vegas, and Pantoliano has a mix of indie films, guest appearances and voice-over work on his resume since the show ended. Sizemore hasn’t been so lucky: He was recently sentenced to nine months in jail on drug-related charges, although his problems stem from long before his Dr. Vegas days.
The cast member who’s had the biggest career boost since the show is Amy Adams, who played Lowe’s assistant/love interest. She was nominated for an Oscar for her role in 2005’s Junebug, co-starred with Will Ferrell in Talladega Nights and has roles in high-profile upcoming movies alongside the likes of Tom Hanks, Frances McDormand and Meryl Streep.
Bill Bayno
Former UNLV hoops coach
When Bill Bayno arrived as UNLV’s head basketball coach in 1995, he was full of it. Charisma, we mean. And energy. Women liked him—then-UNLV President Carol Harter kissed him on the sidelines (and the cheek) before each home game. He had a deserved reputation as a savvy recruiter under the similarly beguiling John Calipari at the University of Massachusetts. Though lacking in experience (32 at the time he signed his contract, with zero head-coaching experience), Bayno figured to be the man to return UNLV to the top tier of NCAA programs, the halcyon days of Final Fours (three appearances) and championships (1990 national title).
But recruiting improprieties and a subsequent NCAA investigation led to his abrupt resignation in December 2000. Bayno’s hard-driving behavior off the court was also an issue with the school administration. His teams won—UNLV compiled a 94-64 record in his 5 1/2 seasons, twice reaching the NCAA Tournament—but never recaptured the Runnin’ Rebels swagger, the lockdown-defensive, high-scoring, fast-breaking juggernaut of the Jerry Tarkanian days. After UNLV, Bayno coached in the ragtag American Basketball Association—a lower-rung professional league—spent some time in the Philippines and toiled in the Continental Basketball Association, another middling pro league. While on that path, Bayno repaired his image and rehabilitated his personal life (he is a self-described recovering alcoholic) and today is a scout for the NBA’s Portland Trail Blazers. Of his days at UNLV, he says, “The only person I hurt was myself.”
David Cassidy
Former Strip headliner
Last seen in town in a working capacity: 2006, playing Bobby Darin in his production of The Rat Pack is Back. Cassidy lives in Fort Lauderdale, Florida.
Montecore
Roy’s attacker
October 3, 2003: Roy Horn was injured onstage at The Mirage—and the Siegfried & Roy enterprise imperiled—when a white tiger named Montecore grabbed him by the right shoulder. Steve Wynn told KLAS-TV that a woman sitting in the front attempted to pet Montecore, causing Roy to jump between them and subsequently trip. Roy later told People magazine he stumbled from a stroke, and the tiger merely dragged him to safety. So what’s Montecore up to these days? Says Siegfried and Roy spokesperson Kala Peterson: “Montecore is enjoying the beauty and the tranquility of the Secret Garden of Siegfried and Roy at the Mirage. He is basking in the sun and playing in the pools with his feline family.” Not bad, considering. Though Roy’s recovery has been slow, he occasionally visits the habitat.
Steve Lippia
Once-prominent Frank Sinatra tribute artist
In the late ’90s, Lippia was the city’s preeminent Frank Sinatra tribute artist. Don’t take our word for it—Sinatra’s own music director, Vince Falcone, said as much, and actually assembled and directed Lippia’s orchestra during his headlining days at the Rio, where he appeared in 1999. Lippia also played the “Frank” character in David Cassidy’s The Rat Back is Back during its short run at the Sahara.
That was in 2000, and that was the last Vegas saw of Lippia. Today he is singing with city symphonies across the country (over the past few months he has appeared in Columbus, Ohio; Shreveport, Louisiana; Fort Worth, Texas; and Fort Collins, Colorado) and performing at private and corporate functions. His self-titled CD was released last year.
JuneFest
Huge, outdoor classic-rock festival
For 11 years JuneFest was Southern Nevada’s preeminent—and usually only—large-scale outdoor music festival. The shows were held at Silver Bowl Park at Sam Boyd Stadium, always on hot Saturdays in the title month. Over the years, JuneFest headliners included Joe Walsh, Sammy Hagar, Joan Jett, The Romantics, The Knack, Creedence Clearwater Revisited and REO Speedwagon.
The most recent (and maybe last) JuneFest spectacle was the 2001 show, which was loaded with such classic-rock stalwarts as Journey, Styx, Bad Company, Night Ranger, Billy Squier and Molly Hatchet. More than 40,000 fans baked in the searing heat and guzzled warm beer to a lineup perfectly reflecting the format of KKLZ 96.3-FM, the classic-rock station that organized JuneFest. But the festival has simply fallen silent. The station originally said JuneFest was on a one-year hiatus—that one-year hiatus is now on its fourth year. Meanwhile, Sam Boyd Stadium and its adjoining soccer fields used for Silver Bowl Park no longer book large concerts, and KKLZ has retooled its format from classic rock to generic whatever.
Chrissy Mazzeo
Gubernatorial scandal moll
She’s alive. And that’s all that matters, as far as the public’s concerned, because the Mazzeo-Gibbons scandal of October 2006 was never in reality about Chrissy Mazzeo, a private citizen. But rather, it was about Jim Gibbons, a candidate for governor at that time whose actions, no matter what actually occurred during that rainy evening outside the McCormick & Schmick’s restaurant, raised a lot of questions about both his character and his intelligence, less than a month before the election.
Many of which still persist, though Gibbons’ victory in November and subsequent missteps during his first six months in the governor’s mansion have all but supplanted them as hot topics. And so, when catching up with Chrissy Mazzeo, perhaps it is better to ask what happened to the questions about Nevada’s governor that stemmed from her dispute with Gibbons. Such as:
1. Why was Gibbons, a married Mormon man, drinking with single women?
2. Why, and for whom, was Gibbons waiting out in front of the McCormick & Schmick’s, by himself, before Mazzeo exited the restaurant, 15 minutes after Gibbons?
3. Why was Gibbons attempting to escort Mazzeo to her truck, as he has always claimed, when she, according to all witness accounts, was clearly intoxicated?
4. Gibbons told police he checked back into his room after departing Mazzeo at 10:15
p.m. Marriott door-sensor records, however, place him in his room at 10:47 p.m. Gibbons says he went through the hotel’s back entrance to retire to his room for the night. The hotel’s front desk attendant distinctly remembers chatting Gibbons up as he passed the front entrance before retiring to his room, just before 10:47 p.m. Why the discrepancies?
5. Allegations that Gibbons had once hired an undocumented worker to be his housemaid were forgotten about as soon as the Mazzeo incident occurred. What is the governor’s explanation for the evidence that spurred those allegations?
As of the time this issue went to press, none of the questions have been answered.
Janu Tornell
Showgirl and Survivor contestant
Since becoming the fourth person ever to quit Survivor (during the show’s 10th season, in 2005), Janu Tornell has kept herself busy doing exactly what she did before her brush with reality-TV fame: appearing in the Tropicana’s Folies Bergere, where she’s been dancing since 1995. She’s now the lead showgirl and line captain in the Folies, and has also been putting her language skills to use teaching French at UNLV and serving as an interpreter for the Italian Trade Commission. “I am truly enjoying it,” she says of her UNLV experience. She also continues to model for the Fashion Show Mall and various stores around town.
Janu Tornell by Monty Brinton, CBS
Jeremy Parker
DIY media critic
Media criticism is a thankless task. Most of the people you want to reach—consumers of newspapers and broadcast journalism—couldn’t care less. They don’t have the time or inclination to think deeply about the news they absorb. And the people you mostly do reach—journalists—read it with a mix of schadenfreude (when you critique their enemies) and defensiveness (when you critique them) that invalidates their response.
Still, for the first six months of 2004, mystery man Jeremy Parker—none of us in the, ahem, journalism community had ever heard of him—ran the Las Vegas Weblog, subtitled “Dispatches from the American Apotheosis.” It wasn’t just about media, but close readings of the local papers—including, probably for the first time in this town, sharp analysis of the alternative press—were a staple. He fact-checked us, scolded us, praised us, compared our performance to our principles. (He did such a thoughtful, compelling job the Weekly made him a political columnist for a while in 2004.)
He last posted in July 2004; perhaps the thanklessness of the task just got to him. He lives in quiet, Charles Van Doren-like seclusion in Las Vegas.
Melinda, First Lady of Magic
Hot magician, Rich Little sex-tape co-star
When we last noticed her, in 2002, she was appearing at the Venetian. She’s now married, a mother (one child, with another due in August) and living in Scottsdale, Arizona.
Says Melinda: “I do not do magic anymore. I’m done. Children occupy all my time.”
Mikalah Gordon
Former American Idol contestant
She may not be doing a Kelly Clarkson up the charts, but the pint-sized fourth-season American Idol contestant has kept surprisingly busy. After signing a development deal with Warner Brothers, she guested on the now-defunct WB’s Living with Fran, was hired as a correspondent after a February 2006 appearance on The Tyra Banks Show and posed as “an American Idol finalist” on NBC’s Identity in April. Gordon survived a gunpoint robbery and assault last August near Washington Avenue and Nellis Boulevard. Since then, she’s landed a gig as co-host of the Fox Reality channel’s American Idol Extra, is in the early stages of producing an album and will be hosting Pop Tarts-sponsored webisodes from the summer American Idol Tour.
Janet Moncrief
Former city councilwoman
Last seen: Being floated as a lieutenant governor candidate in 2006.
Before that: Tucking tail after a 2004 recall election; she lost to Lois Tarkanian.
Up to now: UMC spokeswoman Cheryl Persinger confirmed that Moncrief, a registered nurse, still works for the public hospital. However, the Trinidad Surgical Center on Sahara and Eastern, which Moncrief co-owned, is no more—appears to be open, but the voicemail is full. The door to the place, on Eastern and Bonanza, was locked on a recent morning. Attempts to reach Moncrief by press time were unsuccessful.
Empty lot near Temple View Drive and Bonanza Road
Great make-out spot
Generations of bored Las Vegas teens remember the magical dirt lot off of Bonanza and Temple View Drive, and just not for its stunning view of the entire Las Vegas metro area—it may have been Las Vegas’ last great make-out point. During the ’70s and ’80s, the single dirt road in what was then the sticks of East Las Vegas drew bored and horny teenagers and others who ventured there to shack up, smoke out or enjoy a round of beers with a bird’s-eye view of our neon city.
But once the Mormon Temple was completed in 1988 and a neighborhood of single-family homes went up years later, the fate of make-out point was in question. Residents of the area didn’t like the hordes of strangers pulling up and parking across from their houses to engage in God knows what. Still, the lot lived on for 13 more years—it was closed for good in late 2003. In 2004 the dirt lot became home to another Mormon church. But for teenagers who grew up in that era of Las Vegas, the memories are still there.
Jack Carter
Famously surnamed longshot congressional candidate
The eldest son of President Jimmy Carter. He moved to Nevada in 2003, and two years later he told the state he would be running against incumbent John Ensign for a seat in the U.S. Senate. His announcement was met with much enthusiasm, especially among progressive Democrats, and he did in fact receive great support during his industrious campaign. But in the end he lost, by a significant margin, to Ensign, a Republican.
Carter had a good platform and a great pedigree, but it wasn’t enough. Although he told Nevadans that he had been one of them all his life and needed only to move to our state to realize it, Carter confessed after the 2006 election that his lack of time here proved to be his downfall. Yet, his daughter Sarah, who had a big Internet presence on behalf of her father during the campaign trail, has recently blogged that her father’s spirits haven’t been defeated. And his son Jason tells the Weekly that his father still lives in Las Vegas, loves Nevada and has every intention of remaining politically active. “Because he has politics in his blood,”
At this time, however, Jack Carter has not yet determined whether or not he’s going to run for another office in Nevada anytime soon.
Marzette Lewis
Mouthy, animated activist
Last seen in town in an activist capacity: Getting arrested in 2004 during a meeting at Agassi Prep.
Up to now: Lewis spends most of her time in Mississippi. Last year, Lewis told the Weekly she was tired of being the only one fighting for West Las Vegas students.
He Hate Me
Oddly named minor-league football character
Quiz time:
One: Who be He Hate Me?
A. Lil’ Torrold, from Lakeland, Florida
B. Rod Smart
C. A running back for the Las Vegas Outlaws during the XFL’s only season, and the league’s most popular player.
D. A special teams star for the 2003 Carolina Panthers that went to the NFL Super Bowl.
E. All of the above
Two: Why he gotta be He Hate Me?
A. Because: “It is what it is.”
B. Because: “Basically, my brother’s my opponent. After I win, he’s gonna hate me.”
C. Because: “I was on the squad in Vegas, and coach was puttin’ other guys in, and if I felt I’m better, you know, he hate me.”
D. Because: “It came from the heart.”
E. All of the above
Three: Has He Hate Me trademarked his name, so nobody else can claim He Hate Me?
A. It be true.
B. It ain’t true.
Four: Where be He Hate Me now?
A. In North Carolina, the Charlotte area, retired from football.
B. Teaching AP English in a Las Vegas high school.
C. Getting his rap career off the ground, in Western Kentucky, where he went to college.
D. In Japan, where They Love Him.
E. All of the above
(1-E; 2-E, according to Smart’s 2004 interview with the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel. 3-A; 4-A, according to sources close to Smart)
Organized crime
Iconic bad guys
They’re still here. Local FBI guys assigned to the organized crime beat say they’ve merely changed names, faces and operations. Nowadays, they come from Eastern Europe and Asia, and they run escort services and clandestine brothels entrenched within neighborhoods throughout the Valley, indiscriminate of class. Or, in some cases, they scheme on big casino slot machines, which has prompted properties like MGM Mirage to invest great deals of time and manpower into bringing them down, according to the FBI.
They’re just not as apparent or brazen as the Italians used to be. Those guys, the Spilotros and Cullotas and Cusumanos, are now dead, in prison or telling their infamous tales in Hollywood.
Urban Chamber of Commerce building
New digs supposed to open last year
Promises, promises. Casinos, county government and donors forked over nearly $3 million based on them—grandiose promises that the Urban Chamber of Commerce’s new multiuse business center would be everything West Las Vegans and the minority business community had clamored for since the Strip’s 1960 desegregation: business incubator, entrepreneurial think thank, service provider, employer, training ground for the next generation.
And it’s not like everyone’s faith was unfounded: This chamber was the most effective of the previous iterations of black business collectives, amassing cachet by championing economic investment in poor areas and playing key roles in connecting local gaming companies with willing and capable minority and women entrepreneurs.
Three years after the groundbreaking and not a single piece of heavy machinery sits on the site, on Martin Luther King Boulevard between Lake Mead Boulevard and Owens Drive. Nor is movement likely anytime soon, with the chamber embroiled in litigation pitting the old guard against expats. Even the rendering of the proposed facility has been removed from the chamber’s revamped website.
Scouring coils, single razor blades, single cigarettes and other household items coveted by drug dealers
Banned as drug paraphernalia from convenience stores
Last Seen: Playing a starring role in a City Council push to rid West Las Vegas convenience stores of items used as drug paraphernalia. None were visible during recent look-sees of several Westside mini-marts.
Darren Romeo
Siegfried and Roy protégé and “Voice of Magic”
The protégé of Siegfried & Roy, dubbed a “vocal illusionist” and “The Voice of Magic,” Darren Romeo enjoyed a choice gig at the Mirage, in a space named after his mentors (Siegfried & Roy Theatre). He met the duo in 1999 after successful runs at Caesars Palace and the Flamingo. The famed illusionists were wowed by Romeo’s unique ability to blend standard tunes with innovative and thoughtfully staged illusions. With the support of S&R, Romeo was given the Merlin Award, granted to the top illusionists in the world (Siegfried & Roy are past recipients). His show at the Mirage, Siegfried & Roy Present Darren Romeo, The Voice of Magic, debuted in 2002. Surely fame and fortune would follow.
It didn’t. Romeo’s act never took in Vegas, which was (and still is) filled with top-notch illusionists. By 2004, Romeo had left the Strip, and these days he is headlining at the Welk Resort Theatre in Branson, Missouri.
Frances Deane
Wacky former county recorder
Last seen: In the pages of the Las Vegas Tribune newspaper, where she wrote a column. Publisher Rolando Larraz hasn’t heard from Deane in months. Best he knows, “she’s out of town.” (Deane’s old cell phone number is out of service. There was talk of an alltalkradio.net show, but her name doesn’t appear in program listings.) Deane isn’t likely to go very far: Looming over her head are 19 felony counts related to selling her office’s real-estate records for personal gain.
Frances Deane by Ethan Miller, Las Vegas Sun
Christopher Brady
Disgraced former Metro cop
He was the one who almost got away, the one who escaped by the skin of his teeth, with help from his father, after his colleague, Ron Mortensen, gunned down 21-year-old Daniel Mendoza on December 28, 1996. He and Mortensen were cops at the time, off-duty. That night, as they drove to a troubled neighborhood near the Boulevard Mall, their mission, as he would later tell authorities, was to harass “vagrants and the bangers and the dopeheads and all the screwball people.” Brady watched as Mortensen fired six shots. Ignoring the blue wall of silence, the code binding cops—to save himself, as much as do the right thing—he served as the key prosecution witness, his testimony clinching a life sentence for Mortensen (earlier this year, the incarcerated Mortensen was charged with attempting to swindle his 89-year-old grandmother out of her $1.3 million home in California).
Brady, he nearly escaped prosecution. The district attorney dropped a sexual assault case from his days on the force—a woman claimed he forced her to perform oral sex. Brady was Teflon ... until the federal government charged him, in connection with the Mendoza case, with violating the rights of Hispanics, nullifying the influence of his father Mike, a law-enforcement veteran. District Court Judge Philip Pro sentenced him to nine years in federal prison. For his own protection, Brady was sent to prison in Sandstone, Minnesota. Where he is now is unclear. His name didn’t appear in a Federal Bureau of Prisons name search, and his initial inmate identification number now belongs to another prisoner. A call to the feds wasn’t returned before press time.
Loot from Sierra Club-NDOT settlement
Battle between environment and expansion
At the time of the lawsuit, filed in April 2002 against the Nevada Department of Transportation and Federal Highway Administration, the Sierra Club was seen as a group of meddlesome tree-huggers, content to roadblock a desperately needed expansion of U.S. 95 from the Rainbow Curve to the Spaghetti Bowl in the name of environmental protection. “We were made out to be the bad guys,” says Lydia Ball, regional representative for the Nevada field office of the Sierra Club.
Adds Jane Feldman, co-chair of conservation: “We weren’t thinking about sprawl or highway expansion; were concerned about children’s health and the impact highway expansion would have on it.”
News of 2005’s settlement for $7 million was downplayed, the Sierra Club’s victory characterized as “gumming” up the expansion process. Feldman says the money is being put to great use.
“Half is being spent in Las Vegas, focusing almost entirely on the schools butting up against the highway—Ruth Fyfe Elementary School, Western High School and Adcock Elementary. At the two elementary schools, we brought in air-quality experts who recommended changes in the filtering and air-handling systems to keep highway pollution out of the buildings. They’re doing those installations in those schools this summer. NDOT and the Federal Highway Administration are also doing research to see if the changes are making a difference. A researcher was also hired to do indoor and outdoor air-quality monitoring before and after the installations and before and after the new lanes are open, so we will have a good pattern of information. Outdoor air-quality monitoring began this spring at Western and air-quality experts recommended modifications to improve indoor air quality.”
As for the rest of the money: $1 million is earmarked to retrofit school district buses to reduce diesel emissions. Also on tap: moving portable buildings and the kindergarten playground at Fyfe further from the highway, education programs on reducing idling time of diesel vehicles and a national research project measuring vehicle emissions at five highway locations across the country to determine the levels and behavior of toxic air pollution.
“Everything we got out of this lawsuit,” Feldman says, “we earned.”
Carlos Garcia
Former Clark County schools superintendent
Last seen: As vice president of urban markets for textbook publisher McGraw-Hill.
Before that: Clark County School District superintendent (2000-05).
And before that: Supe for the Fresno Unified School District (1997-00).
Up to now: new superintendent of the San Francisco Unified School District; starts July 16 and will annually pull down $255,000.
Some wise words for San Franciscans: Don’t get too used to Garcia, because he may be gone before test scores improve. His Clark County tenure was mixed (middling test scores). And he divided more than united—faux pas such as using the N-word on a radio show and allegedly favoring Hispanic administrators over African-American ones. At McGraw-Hill, he said he was happy to be free of the workaday grind of running schools. The license plate on his company-bought sports car read “LIBRE”—freedom in Spanish. Now, he says he’s raring to get back into the grind, recently telling the San Francisco Chronicle: “I used to tell people that I’m a recovering superintendent. It’s something that I have a passion for and that I believe in. Something I really missed.”
Frank DeFrancesco
Indie entrepreneur
Thirty-year-old Frank DeFrancesco is sort of legendary in Las Vegas’ music scene. He and his store, Balcony Lights, were a cultural oasis long before the likes of First Friday. With art shows, poetry slams, activist group meetings and, of course, in-store shows featuring artists of all musical calibers, DeFrancesco’s store represented what Las Vegas’ countercultural scene should be.
It wasn’t to be. After nearly six years—the final stretch marked by frequent, increasingly desperate help-us-meet-our-mortgage sales—financial problems doomed the store for good last spring.
But for DeFrancesco, the closing of his store, which was a gift to him by his father, and the dissolution of his marriage to store co-owner Caroline Khamis, was a sign that he needed a change. He needed a new place to call home.
That summer, DeFrancesco and a friend sold everything they owned, pack their bags and moved to Portland, leaving this city and never looking back.
Louis Prima’s legacy
Lounge singer extraordinaire
The Vegas greats: Frank Sinatra, Elvis, Wayne Newton, Louis Prima ... wait, who? The exuberant, Grammy-winning singer/trumpeter/actor singlehandedly put the Sahara and the lounge lifestyle on the map during the ’50s, performing multiple shows that ran until 6 a.m. Prima—known as King of the Swingers—died in 1978 of complications from a brain tumor and has been covered by the likes of Smash Mouth, Brian Setzer, Los Lobos, Big Bad Voodoo Daddy and David Lee Roth (“Just a Gigolo/I Ain’t Got Nobody”). Alas, the man who voiced The Jungle Book’s King Louie gets no local love; no tribute-paying Prima statue/museum/mega-billboard has yet to emerge.
The Flying Elvi
Sideburned entertainers extraordinaire
It’s been 15 years since Honeymoon in Vegas writer/director Andrew Bergman hired 10 local skydivers to don jumpsuits and sideburns and drop 5,000 feet onto Bally’s parking lot. According to flyingelvi.com, they’ve performed at 300 events in 29 states since, including appearances at Fremont Street, a San Diego Padres baseball game and at the launch of the Elvis Presley slot machine. Good Morning America, CNN and the E! network have featured their 120-mph free-falling act. Good news for folks seeking some unique entertainment: Their site currently accepts booking offers. (They’re also available for Flying Santa engagements come the holiday season.)
Flying Elvi by Steve Marcus, Las Vegas Sun