Bingo volunteers accused of cheating

"Baloney," said Bill Ashlock, 84, a staunch supporter of San Jose's Southside Senior Center bingo volunteers. There's no way to rig a machine that randomly sucks winning balls through a plastic tube, the volunteers insist.

"Is this just coming from a couple of paranoid people who love to gripe and have an ax to grind?" Ashlock said.

Suddenly, though, the grinding has reached City Hall. Starting Jan. 30, bingo lovers no longer will be allowed to volunteer and play on the same day. The city attorney's office and police department recommended the idea.

"This is about public perception where people are playing and working at the same time," said Diane Lindberg, acting recreation superintendent.

Nobody's getting rich on San Jose's senior bingo, where a big payday is maybe $75.

Still, eight of the city's nine senior centers have agreed to rotate volunteers so they can work one week and play bingo the next. But Southside's Bingo Committee is so incensed by the new rule that its 13 members are threatening to shut down the center's 28-year bingo tradition.

The Southside seniors planned to quit just before Christmas but were able to stall the new guideline until the end of January. They hope to meet with the parks and recreation department before that to try to work out a compromise.

The city's proposal "is not an unreasonable request," said Judy Nadler, a self-described bingo lover and senior fellow of government ethics at the Markkula Center for Applied Ethics at Santa Clara University. "I know they're thinking, 'Maybe others are dishonest, but I'm not,'" but that's not the point. The point is that you want to prove to the public that there is absolutely no way the volunteers could have had a hand in any of the games."

No one wants bingo at Southside to fold. The games raise $15,000 a year for the center and give seniors something to look forward to every Tuesday.

"We're here to play," said Pat Bias, 62, president of Southside's bingo committee, whose 13 volunteers pick up doughnuts, sell bingo packs, count customers, call the games, hand out door prizes, clean up, count money and keep the books. "And if we can't play, then we'll just find somewhere else to go, like church or the Lion's Club."

On their last game before the new year, nearly 100 seniors sat at long folding tables, marking score cards with bingo markers of teal, purple and red. The mood was festive. Many players kept stashes of jelly beans, candy corn and other sweets by their side for sustenance during the game.

When the bingo caller barked out the first number, a hush fell over the room.

Many of the die-hard bingo players at Southside don't think there's any need to fix what they feel isn't broken. Without Tuesday's game, the week just wouldn't be the same for Jane Savage, 78.

"Tuesday is my day," she said. "No one bugs me on Tuesday. That's the day I have lunch with my friends. What am I supposed to do without bingo? Sit around with the old man watching TV?"