Family gaming business teaches businesswoman about Indian roots
Story-Date: 11:30 p.m. PST Sunday   , September 20, 1998

------------------------------------------------------------

Family gaming business teaches businesswoman about Indian roots



HUNTINGTON BEACH, Calif. (AP) -- Nancy Bridgeman's gambling machine
business has helped her rediscover her American Indian roots.

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

Visits to casinos 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.

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

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

He figured he could put his computer skills into designing 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."

He created video 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 all work for Pari-Mutuel
Gaming.

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

Nancy Bridgeman designs the graphics on the machines' screens.

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

Son Robert designs the hardware, and son Jerry inspects the machines.

The Bridgemans themselves are not gamblers; Nancy 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," she 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."

She also has been learning 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.



------------------------------------------------------------