Skip to main content

Search the Special Collections and Archives Portal

Jack Weinstein and Polly Weinstein interview, April 12, 2018: transcript

Document

Information

Date

2018-04-12

Description

Tower of Jewels is one of those iconic Las Vegas businesses that continues to thrive. At the time of this interview, Jack Weinstein is in his nineties and “retired.” With him is his daughter Polly Weinstein, who in addition to being involved in the business management has her own custom designed jewelry line, aptly named The Jeweler’s Daughter. As the youngest of six children born to Jewish Russian immigrants Joseph and Pauline (Polly is named for her grandmother), Jack was raised in a dangerous neighborhood of Detroit, Michigan. His youthful enterprise included collaborating and then splitting up with his brothers in a jewelry business, before eventually moving west to Los Angles in the early 1960s. On his own, Jack became a wholesale salesperson representing lines of watches to other businesses. Included in his list of clients was Al Sanford’s Tower of Jewels in Las Vegas. The two became friends and Al suggested setting up a partnership between Al’s son and Jack in 1964. Eventually

Digital ID

OH_03425_book

Physical Identifier

OH-03425
Details

Citation

Weinstein, Jack and Pauline, Interview, 2018 April 12. OH-03425. [Transcript]. Oral History Research Center, Special Collections and Archives, University Libraries, University of Nevada, Las Vegas. Las Vegas, Nevada. http://n2t.net/ark:/62930/d1wp9tk2r

Rights

This material is made available to facilitate private study, scholarship, or research. It may be protected by copyright, trademark, privacy, publicity rights, or other interests not owned by UNLV. Users are responsible for determining whether permissions are necessary from rights owners for any intended use and for obtaining all required permissions. Acknowledgement of the UNLV University Libraries is requested. For more information, please see the UNLV Special Collections policies on reproduction and use (https://www.library.unlv.edu/speccol/research_and_services/reproductions) or contact us at special.collections@unlv.edu

Standardized Rights Statement

Digital Provenance

Original archival records created digitally

Language

English

Format

application/pdf

AN INTERVIEW WITH JACK WEINSTEIN & POLLY WEINSTEIN An Oral History Conducted by Barbara Tabach Southern Nevada Jewish Heritage Project Oral History Research Center at UNLV University Libraries University of Nevada Las Vegas ii ©Southern Nevada Jewish Heritage Project University of Nevada Las Vegas, 2014 Produced by: The Oral History Research Center at UNLV – University Libraries Director: Claytee D. White Project Manager: Barbara Tabach Transcriber: Kristin Hicks Interviewers & Editors: Barbara Tabach, Claytee D. White iii The recorded interview and transcript have been made possible through the generosity of a Library Services and Technology Act (LSTA) Grant. The Oral History Research Center enables students and staff to work together with community members to generate this selection of first-person narratives. The participants in this project thank University of Nevada Las Vegas for the support given that allowed an idea the opportunity to flourish. The transcript received minimal editing that includes the elimination of fragments, false starts, and repetitions in order to enhance the reader’s understanding of the material. All measures have been taken to preserve the style and language of the narrator. In several cases photographic sources accompany the individual interviews with permission of the narrator. The following interview is part of a series of interviews conducted under the auspices of the Southern Nevada Jewish Heritage Project. Claytee D. White Director, Oral History Research Center University Libraries University of Nevada Las Vegas iv PREFACE Tower of Jewels is one of those iconic Las Vegas businesses that continues to thrive. At the time of this interview, Jack Weinstein is in his nineties and “retired.” With him is his daughter Polly Weinstein, who in addition to being involved in the business management has her own custom designed jewelry line, aptly named The Jeweler’s Daughter. As the youngest of six children born to Jewish Russian immigrants Joseph and Pauline (Polly is named for her grandmother), Jack was raised in a dangerous neighborhood of Detroit, Michigan. His youthful enterprise included collaborating and then splitting up with his brothers in a jewelry business, before eventually moving west to Los Angles in the early 1960s. On his own, Jack became a wholesale salesperson representing lines of watches to other businesses. Included in his list of clients was Al Sanford’s Tower of Jewels in Las Vegas. The two became friends and Al suggested setting up a partnership between Al’s son and Jack in 1964. Eventually, the partnership dissolved and the business flourished under Jack’s leadership. Two keys to his success: have the right merchandise and assure that the customer knows they are special. In the early days, the popularity of Native American turquoise jewelry was Jack’s signature offering. Today it is his signature phone call of good wishes to his tens-of-thousands of customers. While he steadfastly protects his customers’ privacy, photos of special customers v surround him in his office and he beams over the publicity his business has received over the years of building the Tower of Jewels brand. Like her father, Polly is the youngest of six siblings. Born and raised in Las Vegas, Polly attended Meadows School, studied at Sarah Lawrence College, and chose to return home. She is the Mayoral Appointee on the Las Vegas Arts Commission. Together, father and daughter Weinstein are a tireless force of energy in the Las Vegas community for over five decades. vi TABLE OF CONTENTS Interview with Jack Weinstein & Polly Weinstein April 12, 2018 in Las Vegas, Nevada Conducted by Barbara Tabach Preface…………………………………………………………………………………………..iv Jack begins with immigration story, his parents were born in Kiev and immigrated to Detroit, where father was a blacksmith turned fruit seller then candy storeowner; family lived in a dangerous neighborhood, controlled by a local mobster who took a liking to his father Joe. Explains how two of his brothers were in jewelry retail business, sold at discount prices in Detroit; how he chose to get into jewelry business; disagreement with his brothers and split the business; creates his own wholesale jewelry business and relocates to Los Angeles; once of his clients was Tower of Jewels in Las Vegas.………………………….…………………………………….1 – 5 In the late 1950s, Tower of Jewels owner, Al Sanford retired and created a partnership between his son [Ronnie Sanford] and Jack; Jack was road salesman; company sued for operating “going out of business” sales, represented by Oscar Goodman, case dismissed. Has resided in Las Vegas since 1964 and became sole proprietor, located at 23 East Fremont; era of turquoise Indian jewelry, manufactured in Mexico. Tower of Jewels expanded to larger location in Commercial Center on Sahara, had 12 jewelers working for them, near several others jewelers……………………..6 – 10 Jack and Polly talk about his clientele, the VIP program as a way of building repeat business, and that he still calls his list of customers personally; scarf give-away, jewelry cleaning. Tell of having had ten locations at one time throughout the valley and trying to maintain the “Jack Weinstein experience.”……………………………………………………….………………………..10 – 13 Talks about advertising on the Howard Stern radio show in the 1990s before Stern became a popular celebrity. Talks about wall of photos and ads in his office – including Frances MacDonald. Describes current advertising strategies, as overseen by Polly. Declines to talk about specific celebrity clients, but mentions some that he has photos of, such as Bill Clinton. Reviews his daughter Polly as “epitome of quality.”………………………………………………….…14 – 16 Talks about raising his children in Las Vegas; Polly attended Meadows School; she is youngest of six children, attended Sarah Lawrence in New York. Remained in New York, visited Jeffrey Stern, stayed in New York until Mayor Carolyn Goodman invited her to be on the Las Vegas Arts Commission………………………………………………………...……………………….17 – 19 Explains joining Temple Beth Sholom when moved to Las Vegas; describe neighborhoods the family lived in; family. More about advertising. How Polly decided to be in jewelry business, making her own line of jewelry; being asked to plan parties in the community………….....20 – 29 vii viii This is April 12th, 2018. Would you pronounce your name for me and spell it? My name is Jack Weinstein; J-A-C-K, W-E-I-N-S-T-E-I-N. We are sitting in Tower of Jewels on Sahara. For the Southern Nevada Jewish Heritage project, we like to start out with what do you know about your family ancestry. Where are the roots and how did the family come to live in America? My mother and father were born in Kiev, Russia, but I don't think it was Russia at the time, but Kiev. They came to Detroit and that's where we were born. How many children did they have? Six. Where were you in that lineup? I was the youngest boy. What did your father do; what was his work? My father, first he was a blacksmith until he got something in his eye and then he couldn't do that anymore. Then he bought a wagon and a horse and went to the market and got fruit and was selling the fruit on the street. Then after that he bought a candy store in Detroit and that's what he did. What was the name of the candy store? Poppa Joe's. Is his name Joe? [Nodding yes] What was it like to grow up in Detroit? Very difficult because the street we lived on was the most dangerous street in Detroit. The gentleman—not gentleman—the person who controlled that area was Izzy Cooper (sic); his 2 nickname was Murder Incorporated. No one did anything in that area without his permission. But he took a liking to Poppa Joe and he sent out the word that you do not monkey around in Poppa Joe's Candy Store; he protected him. You knew him as you were growing up? Yes. He was a nice guy, but that was his business. What ages did you live in Detroit? I lived there until...I've got to think about it. I lived there until I was about thirty-one, thirty-two years old. You really grew up there. Yes. You were born in 1927. Yes. How did Detroit change over those years that you were growing up? Detroit, in 1966 with the riots, got dangerous and bad and I moved out. We had a jewelry business there, which was very successful, my two brothers, Harry and Fred, and myself. We had a small office in a building and we were doing work for jewelry stores. I would go around picking up the work every day. Then we took in a young man from Israel to live with us and we taught him the business. The next thing I knew he was picking up the work from the stores and we lost all the accounts. We started selling to retail; by knowing how to manufacture, we built up the business. Next door was a big wholesaler. We had a hole in the wall and when I wanted something I'd push the button and they would come over to the hole. I would tell them, "I want a Bulova watch," or so, and they'd hand me the Bulova watch and then I'd sell it. We built that up and built 3 that up until we had so much business and the store was too small that we moved across the street to a four-story building. At the time we had fair trade, so everybody was selling at the full retail price except us; we were selling it at discount prices. Our business increased, increased, increased until one day we went to court; they sued me, like twenty companies suing me, like Bulova and so on. Because you were selling below traditional retail markup. Right, because the law was supposedly that you had to charge the fixed price. My little lawyer, Max Marston, we went to court, and they had about twenty lawyers there. The judge heard the case and said, "I don't understand this; do you mean that you want the American public to pay the high price instead of what someone is willing to sell it for?" And they said, "Yes." The judge took it under advisement and came back an hour later. He says, "That's not legal." So we won the case and broke fair trade. Well, we thought that was wonderful, but that was really the worst thing that could happen because now everybody was selling at a competitive price. I'm curious. We'll back up a little bit. How did you get into the jewelry business to begin with? My brothers were doing the repair work for the stores. So they led the way. Right. I was going around and picking up, like I said, the jobs until the Israeli young man who came to live with me...In fact, I slept on a day bed upstairs from my father's candy store and he didn't have any room, so he slept with me. He's the one who took over our accounts. Why not the candy store? Why didn't you get into the candy business? I never had any interest in the candy. But then in Detroit I moved out to the country and my brothers built me a nice house. They bought four acres. There were dirt roads. I had a barn with 4 horses that I would ride every night. I had a pool aboveground. We would have parties every Sunday. At first, we were serving steaks and then we wound up serving hamburgers. I lived there until I broke up with my brothers because I was the youngest and they didn't agree with anything that I did. Because you were the youngest. Yes. When you're working out of a catalog, which they objected to it, but then we did business all over the Midwest, very successful and we had to get a warehouse. We had eighty people working in the warehouse selling product because the catalog was very, very successful. My brothers never agreed with anything that I did, so I decided to leave. We split the inventory and I gave them first and second choice and I took the third one. I left with the inventory. And they went to my mother and said, "We can't do that. It's not legal." So she made me bring it back. I brought it back and then two years later I left with—instead of a quarter million dollars' worth of merchandise—with thirty-four thousand dollars, which was okay. I just wanted to get out of there. There was a young man from New York that used to come and live with me in the country every summer for ten years. When I went to California, he came with me. Then his father, who owned an exchange in New York on 47th Street, very successful, made him come back to New York and gave him a booth in the window right on 47th Street. He did that for a while and learned how to cut diamonds and he loved the business. I had a factory in India called Seep's Free Zone Factory, which I had. The guy I had running it didn't know how to run it and made it not worthwhile for me, and so I gave it to my friend, Jeffrey Stern, who was the one who came to California with me. He started manufacturing in India. He was a very good buyer. He has followed my formula that you look at 5 the goods and then you put the cash on the counter and then they take either one without any conversation. There's no conversation to it. They think about it. If they want it, they pick up the cash. And if they don't want it, they go and they can't come back. Today he is probably one of the best manufacturers in the country. No one can compete with him because he's very knowledgeable on design and he's got the best jewelers in India and he knows what to make and he sells to the biggest dealers. If they've got the money, he's got the goods. I talk to him every week and we're very close. POLLY: Also Jewish. Then I came to California. How did you decide to move from Detroit to California, and where in California did you go? L.A. I bought a truck when I left my brothers and I only had thirty-four thousand dollars. I bought watches in Switzerland and was selling them wholesale in L.A. On the way out there, Jeffrey and I, I was driving one night and Jeffrey was sleeping in the truck. I asked Jeffrey, "Do you want to drive for a little bit?" He said, "Yes." He got in the driver's seat and he started driving except he wasn't awake; he was asleep and he hit a sign and broke up the front window. Anyhow, we drove to L.A. and we sold to dealers in L.A. Then I had a dealer in Vegas that owned the Tower of Jewels that I would sell to him, here. Who was the owner of Tower of Jewels at that time? Al Sanford, and he had a son who worked the business. Al Sanford wanted to retire, so he asked me would I want to be his son's partner. I said, "Okay." We had a store on Fremont Street and it was very successful. We had an advertising gentleman who was very progressive and he would run full-page ads, going out of business, and the signage was something. It was very successful. 6 The head of the advertising for the city took me to court one day because I was running fictitious ads. I was on the way to court one day and this lawyer who is now the ex-mayor asked me, "Where are you going?" I told him. "I've got time; I'll go to court with you." I assume we're talking about Oscar Goodman. Yes. He's looking at the papers and the date was wrong on the paper for this court case. He told the judge, "That's not correct because that's the wrong information." The judge dismissed the case. Then the manager who was my enemy became my friend and I didn't have any more trouble and built up the business. By being Al Sanford's son's partner, I would come every weekend and see how we did. We had a cash drawer and there was about four or five thousand dollars in the cash drawer. Then someone told me that he was a nice guy, but he was gambling and drinking. That time I left, but I didn't leave Vegas, and I came back on Tuesday and went to the cash drawer and it was empty. So he was borrowing the money and then I confronted him on it. And he says, "Yes. I don't want to be in the business anymore, so why don't you just take over the business?" That's how I got the Tower of Jewels and built it up and built it up and built it up. What year was that? Let's go backwards. I'm here twenty years and I was across the street twenty years and I was down twenty years. He came in '64. How long after you partnered did that happen? Let's go backwards. Take twenty years off of this. Sometime in the seventies, right? Sixty years ago would have been what you're saying, so sixty years ago would have been like 1958? 7 Sixty-four is when he came. Sometime in the sixties then you became the sole owner, sole proprietor of Tower of Jewels. Right. What was the son's first name, do you remember? No, I don't remember. Selective memory, which is okay, right? He was a nice guy except he drank. He got smashed every day. In the sixties, you were on Fremont Street, and that was where the store was when you took over? Right. What did it look like then? Nice store. I have a picture of it. It took us years to find this, oh my goodness. I should also state that Polly Weinstein is sitting with us in this interview. I neglected to say that at the beginning. We're at the corner of Fremont and what? 23 East Fremont. It's under the canopy now. There's a liquor store there now. Fitting, right? This is great. We did good there. How many employees did you have? Probably about six. Then Indian jewelry was hot jewelry; it was selling very good. I used to go to Kingman to buy turquoise from the miner there. I started building Indian jewelry and that was selling very well so that I opened a factory and went to Mexico, Guadalajara, and opened a little five-people factory, but we were selling everything that we made. Then we got bigger and then I 8 opened up a big factory where I had four hundred people. I had an arrangement with the union man that he would come every day and settle all of the disputes and all I had to do was rent him a car every year and that went on for, I don't know, ten years probably. We had an airplane and we were going from Guadalajara, clearing customs in Tucson, and go to Albuquerque and sell, Gallup, mainly Indian jewelry, and then Las Vegas and L.A. and back down, so every two weeks. Whatever we would make we would sell out because we were owning it cheaper and we had the best turquoise and the best quality and the least expensive prices. That was kind of a signature of people who lived out west to wear turquoise jewelry, wasn't it, back in that era? It was very good. I still have pieces from that. There's a handful of pieces that I have that were from when they were making them in Mexico. Show her the pieces in your case. Are any of those from you? Yes. Did you continue manufacturing there for a number of years? Oh, yes. Do you still do that? For ten years. Then this guy at the front door, someone came to check and see if we were on strike. Instead of an employee, he was a (HEP) guy. He lived in Denver and lived in Guadalajara. He said, "What do you mean he's on strike?" So they found out we were on strike and they went on strike and they got violent. Someone told me to leave town and I left town and never went back. I went back one time to get stuff out of my safety deposit box, because they wanted to hurt 9 me. Then I got Vegas bigger and opened the store across the street. Across Sahara in Commercial Center? In Commercial Center on the corner. We had twelve jewelers working. We were making product and selling it as fast as we could make it. I was there for twenty years and then I bought this building. I tore out the floor. I tore out the ceiling. This store became very successful. This is our series of artifacts. I want to make sure I take some snapshots before I leave. Isn't that beautiful? That's amazing. This is from the original era of manufacturing there? (looking at jewelry case) Yes. What does something like this retail for today? That's a substantial piece of jewelry. Two-thousand-dollar pieces; something like that. This one more because of all the inlay. My boyfriend has a piece that was scrimshaw. They were doing scrimshaw in Mexico, which is ivory that they carved pictures into and then inked. My mom saw this ring from her collection. It's a man's ring, obviously. It had a big tiger on it. She's like, "Ah, this is from Jerry." I was like, "What about me?" To continue, we bought this building, tore out the floor and ceiling and built this magnificent store. Three years in a row we were doing twelve million dollars. Then '08 came, '07, and it dropped down from '06 and '05, from before. In '08 we dropped down to two million dollars from twelve. Needless to say, we had the building, but all the people we had working, we had to cut them all the way down to what we have today, which is ten, twelve people, but we still have the building. 10 It's always good to be your own landlord. That's an upside. At your peak here, how many employees did you have? Forty. You're surrounded; you had other jewelers in this area. Yes. M.J. Christensen was next door. One is across the street. But we own the goods at the right price and we knew what we were doing and we weren't selling retail. We've always sold wholesale; in other words, to the consumer we sold at the same price that we sold it to stores for, and we still do. There was a lot of cooperation amongst jewelers in Commercial Center, right? Oh, yes. Different people were good at different—pre-Internet. There was ten jewelers in there at one time and different people were good at different things. "Hey, So-and-so, can you engrave this for me?" Or whatever. That's kind of nice to know. Different, right? Yes. You can't image that happening today, I wouldn't think. Since then it has never recovered. We're running a much smaller business, proficient, best jewelers. There's nothing that we cannot manufacture. All these pictures are our own creations. If somebody wants a ten-carat diamond or a two-carat diamond or whatever or brings us a picture, we can make it because our jewelers are just magnificent. Talk about your clientele. Talk about from the sixties and however you want to tell that story, but who came to your stores and what's that story? It's very interesting. 11 You need a piece of paper? Yes. We started way, way back with a VIP program—Very Important Person program. Everyone who bought from us became a VIP and they have a number. We have on our list eighty-one thousand VIPs. What does a VIP get? Number one, they get their batteries free. They get their jewelry cleaning free. Whatever they buy, they get five percent in their VIP account on everything they buy. Even today, if someone bought something for two thousand dollars, they would have a hundred dollars in their VIP account. This whole last week, I've been calling the people who had money in their VIP account, a hundred dollars or sixty dollars, and giving them an extra hundred-dollar bonus because if I don't give it away, I've got to pay tax on it. All day long yesterday, I sat on the phone and called them. You personally? Yes, and called so-and-so and so-and-so. "You have a hundred dollars in your VIP and we're giving you an extra hundred dollars, so come in and spend it because it's only for a short time. Either I give it to you or I give it to the government." All of them are happy to hear from me. The ones I couldn't reach, I left a message on their phone last night. I took it home and left a message if I couldn't reach them on their phone. He works ten hours a day. They're all VIPs. All their batteries are free. All their cleaning on their jewelry is free. What we do for our clients nobody even has the ability to do because they don't know how to do it. They're a retail store. If someone comes in for a battery, they charge them twenty dollars. If they come in for a battery from us and they're a VIP—once they buy from us, they're a VIP. I think he's very well known amongst his customers and you can look on reviews and things like that. Even a person who hasn't said they're going to spend any money yet, even a person who 12 doesn't have very much to spend, he treats every person the same and gives people two words and makes them feel part of the family. Bedside manner is not the right word for it, but it's the retail version of that and it's unduplicatable. You can't hardly teach people how to do this. He just believes every person is worth spending his time. It doesn't really matter to him if they're going to buy something today or maybe never because the goodwill is worth something greater. I don't know where it comes from exactly. I can give you an example of one of the things we do. Ten years ago a friend of mine owed me fifty-nine thousand dollars. He had a problem and he had to leave town. He used to supply these scarfs to the hotels that they would give away to their good clients. He backed up his truck to my warehouse and he gave me a truckload of these scarfs. Oh my gosh. I see it's got the Louis Vuitton insignia on it. So you have a truckload of scarfs. You still have them. We have so many of them we can make a tent of them. Ten years. I've been giving them away for ten years and we got another ten years at least of scarfs. So I got a scarf. Of course. Thank you. I am a scarf person, so this is good. Thank you. I have six, seven different scarfs. If someone comes in and I'm waiting on a customer, I say, "I've got something for you," and I give them a scarf. We are totally different with our clientele than anybody. It's an experience. Before that was a thing. 13 Yes, experiential retailing before that was a thing, the way to do it. You were setting a standard. Yes. They go in and, in the first place, they charge retail; we charge wholesale. Pricing structure is changed, yes. Big difference. Second place, we can make anything. There's nothing my jeweler can't make. He's been with me fifteen years. He is absolutely the best jeweler I have ever, ever seen. He's been casting since he was ten years old. I asked him, "How do you measure this? How do you do this? How do you do this?" He's like, "I don't know, I just know how to do it." You never made jewelry yourself. He tried. You're the creative businessperson behind this. He's waving me off. No, huh? Anyhow, so that's how we built up VIPs and a business and it's personal. I don't know all the clients because I don't wait on a lot of people. That's hard, I would think, or challenging to sustain as Las Vegas grew. You've gone through several booms in population. Once someone starts with us, they become a VIP and their batteries are free and cleaning. To get your jewelry cleaned, people just don't do it. They bring it all in at one time to get cleaned. You can just stop by and get your—it's crazy how different it looks. He's looking at mine that need cleaning. Let me go clean your ring for you, really. It's crazy how different it is. He gets mad at me if I have a diamond on. "Give me that." 14 You see the dirt, the grime. Thank you. At one point we had ten stores, in the mid, late nineties. Ten stores in the whole valley? Yes. I guess I didn't realize how many. I'm trying to think of the different ones. We had Dolly's, Harrah's, Rampart, Rainbow, here, Fitzgerald’s. Those are the ones I can name off the top of my head. In the nineties, we had them everywhere. Didn't you have a store in Texas at one point? Yes. During that same time. But I do think it's hard to maintain that experience. It's the Jack Weinstein experience. Maybe I can do it a little bit and Joey can do it a little bit. Even if you taught it to someone else, it's not the same because it has something to do with his wisdom and the things that he's seen. People trust him in a way. Even me sitting across, I'm young to them and he knows things that you're not going to argue with him. Right. I think I shared with you, Polly, on the phone that when I first moved here in '94-95 I would be listening to the radio because at that time Howard Stern was on regular radio. He would be talking to you or about you on such a regular basis and that was to me fascinating. How did you choose to do advertising with him? I just started. Did you know he was going to be such a celebrity? No. We're very simple people and we don't say something that isn't so. We sell half-carat stones, carat stones, ten-carat stones, million-dollar sales. We build a relationship, like with that lady there who now is passed away. 15 The MacDonald, Frances MacDonald. Yes, MacDonald Ranch. That ring is the daughter's wedding band. I'm looking at photos of jewelry that's been designed here and then the person who you designed it for. Did you use these in ads or are these just your memorabilia? No. I made it for them and took a picture and put them up until I ran out of space. The stuff that we can make I would say very few people can make because they don't have the shop to do it. You're a destination. People know that they want to go to Tower of Jewels. Oh, yes. Today what is your marketing strategy? How do you keep in front of a new audience of people that live here? We advertise in the paper once in a while, which is not very effective. We had a nice ad on TV, which was not very effective. Advertising is a different world today. Polly knows where to advertise. I don't know. You have to trust her. She's of a different generation. I don't know that anyone can pinpoint what advertising pays. The most important thing is word of mouth. I was on the phone day before yesterday and we're giving a hundred dollars in VIP points; in other words, they can come in and get a hundred dollars extra; if they have a hundred dollars in their account, we're giving them another hundred dollars, so now they've got two hundred dollars to come in and spend. I think that's really great. The personal touch and the fact that you're actually making those calls is amazing. Over the years, were there some celebrity customer stories that you can recall? A lot of them. 16 Any that you can share with me today? No? No. It's not right to do. It's not right to do. I'm looking for the fun part of meeting people like that. I know, but I...If someone were to read that Jack Weinstein said...They're a customer. But I'm sure that people felt comfortable coming to you because of that; that trust. We have some very, very fine clients. This is a letter from Harry Reid that he and his wife, Landra, cannot attend the celebration in honor of your eight decades of life and how long he's known you. He's been your lawyer, your friend and congressional representative. Now you've got him back full time here, right? True friend for over forty years. Wow. How did you meet him? I don't know. There wasn't that defining moment, huh? Vegas is just filled with such interesting people, such leaders. You've mentioned Oscar Goodman. Now you're pointing at—is that Sandoval? Oh, no, Bill Clinton. What were the circumstances of meeting him? He was here one day and he had four hours extra to spend. We were having a drink. "What do you do?" Dada, dada. "Would you like to be my jeweler?" Occasionally he calls me and says, "Send this here; send this here; send this here," and I do. Very nice guy. How many children? You have several children here. A whole bunch. When did Polly start showing interest in being a jeweler? Polly went to the Meadows and graduated from the Meadows and then her and Carolyn figured 17 where to go and then she went to college in New York. She had a very successful college there. Then when she came home she started in the business. Polly is the epitome of quality. Don't ask her to tell a fib because she won't. She made that clear a long, long time ago. I'll tell you an example. One day I sold a ring and Polly came in and I said, "Polly, how do you like that?" The normal answer would be, oh, that's beautiful. She said, "It's okay. I personally don't like it." That's Polly. Straight shooter. Like that. You can trust her with a million dollars uncounted. That's great. She learned those values from you. All my kids are absolutely honest. What was it like to raise a family in Las Vegas during the 1960s? No problem. Yes, no problem, but how did it differ from the life that you experienced in Detroit growing up? You can live anyplace you want. It depends on how you raise them. Like in Detroit, there was toughness, street, in Detroit, but then Izzy Cooper put out the word; "You don't monkey in Poppa Joe's Candy Store; that's their business." None of my kids used drugs. It's just good family, good kids. First place, it's not acceptable, not this much. Not that much. Not a smidgeon. Oh my goodness, my jewelry looks brand-new. It's also beautiful. Thank you. This is terrific. You'll be seeing me again. You can get your jewelry cleaned any time. 18 We have customers that come in every two months religiously and get their jewelry cleaned