Family gaming business teaches woman about her Indian roots
Story-Date: 02:15 p.m. PST Sunday   , September 20, 1998

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Family gaming business teaches woman about her Indian roots



HUNTINGTON BEACH, Calif. (AP) -- Gaming machines have given Nancy Bridgeman
a new purpose in life.

The Huntington Beach woman says the business her family founded ten years
ago to build and sell casino-style machines has helped her discover her
neglected American Indian roots.

Visits to casino on California reservations spurred her interest. She is a
supporter of Proposition 5, the November ballot measure that would permit
certain types of currently illegal gambling on California Indian
reservations.

"Gaming is the return of the buffalo," said Mrs. Bridgeman, who is part
Cherokee and part Seneca-Cayuga. "There is an Indian saying that says the
day the buffalo return, prosperity will return to the Indians."

It certainly has been prosperous Mrs. Bridgeman and her husband, Jim. Since
1988, they have invented nearly 100 games for their business, Pari-Mutuel
Gaming Inc. The company produces $6,500-apiece gaming machines they sell to
casinos, cruise lines and riverboats across the country.

Jim Bridgeman, a retired rocket scientist, got the idea to invent the
machines during a 1986 business trip to Las Vegas. He recalled walking into
a casino and watching customer pour dollars into gaming machines.

He figured he could put his computer skills into designing more thrilling
games.

"I saw the video poker games and thought they were very primitive," he told
the Orange County Register. "I thought we could do them better."

Bridgeman began creating Las Vegas-style video gaming machines based on
card games such as Seven Card Stud.

The business grew. A makeshift assembling workshop in the garage was moved
to warehouses in Indio and Fresno.

The Bridgemans and their four adult children now all work in the business.

Bridgeman, who used to design nuclear missiles for the U.S. Air Force,
programs computer games with the help of his son, Lance.

Mrs. Bridgeman designs the cards, numbers and graphics that appear on the
machines' screens.

Daughter Stephanie is in charge of marketing, sending out brochures to
potential buyers and attending gambling trade shows and conventions.

A son, Robert, designs the hardware and another son, Jerry, inspects the
machines.

The Bridgemans themselves are not gamblers; Mrs. Bridgeman said she doesn't
even know how to shuffle cards.

"When you create a video card game, you have to make it simple enough so
that the player can understand it," Mrs. Bridgeman said. "We took the
essence of the game and made some variations with it. If we were gamblers,
we would have come up with complicated video games nobody would play."

Mrs. Bridgeman also has been learning a lot about her heritage. She reads
something new about it daily, whether it is a slice of Indian history or a
fact of reservation life.

"It's been a real awakening for me," she said.



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