Do gambling funds have state hooked?

Byline: Bob Welch / The Register-Guard

He would have been 39 today. That's why his sister, Ronda Hatefi of Eugene, will be standing on the steps of the Capitol in Salem, as she has done every year but one since her brother, Bob Hafemann, died 10 years ago.

She wants people to understand why her mother, in filling out the newspaper obituary form, came to the "cause of death" line and wrote: "Suicide, thanks to the Oregon Lottery."

The irony is that while growing up - he attended Irving Elementary and Shasta Middle schools - he was known as "the lucky one." The kid who would win bingo night at school. The kid who would find the $20 bill on a hiking trail.

On his 18th birthday, he bought his first scratch-it lottery ticket. He won $500.

When he got his GED from Lane Community College, he celebrated by buying a diamond ring.

Single, he moved to Portland, where he was making $45,000 a year as a brake operator at a steel fabrication plant. He lavished his family - he was one of five children - with gifts. Poured big bucks into a pickup truck. Bought leather coats.

And kept trying to stay lucky. As the state instituted new games, Hafemann played them. Especially video poker, which debuted in 1992.

When his luck ran out, he did what lots of gamblers do: play harder. He borrowed money from friends and family. He hawked his diamond ring, his leather coat, even took money from the piggy banks of nieces and nephews - leaving IOU notes. A convenience store started advancing him money, then taking his paycheck.

"For him, it wasn't money anymore," Hatefi says. "It was just something to keep the games going."

Life had come down to him and a video poker machine. As if he were invisible to the rest of the world.

On Mother's Day 1995, he broke down and said he needed help. He got some, through an employees' assistance program. He went on a family camping trip and seemed on the upswing.

Three weeks later, he won $1,100. Lost it. Then put a gun to his head and killed himself.

His suicide note ready, "I'm a ghost."

"He wanted to be invisible from everything, everyone," Hatefi says. "He felt so ashamed, so guilty." He left a list of people to whom he owed money.

She didn't fully understand his words - in fact, wasn't convinced that gambling had led to his suicide - until she went to a Gamblers Anonymous meeting. A man stood up. "I am," he said, "a ghost."

Now, she doesn't want her brother's life - or death - hidden from anyone. As part of Problem Gamblers Awareness Day, she and others will rally at noon today for less reliance on lottery dollars to run the state and more money to treat problem gamblers.

"It's real apparent that the depression and hopelessness Bobby experienced was sparked by his gambling," says Julie Hynes, problem gambling prevention coordinator for Lane County Health & Human Services.

It is the strangest relationship: money made from gambling being used to fund education, salmon runs, parks - life-affirming stuff. And yet the process exacting a price from people: despair, loneliness, sometimes even death - hardly life-affirming stuff.

The more the state depends on gambling-created dollars, the more the state increases gambling opportunities. Gone are the simple "scratch-it" days of the '80s. Oregon now offers 11 games. Slot machines were OK'd last summer.

Before video poker was allowed in 1992, the state had three Gamblers Anonymous groups. It now has more than 50.

You wonder where it's heading. If, in the end, the real story goes beyond the ghosts among us, the Bobby Hafemanns, and their addictions.

You wonder if the real story isn't the state of Oregon's addiction.

People who think they might have a gambling problem can call [phone], Hynes says.