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Ticket in hand, Byung Kim, a valet attendant at The Venetian, sprints into the hotel's parking garage to pick up his next car. Photo by K.M. Cannon. Valet attendents Dave Linihan, right, and John Lindsay, background left, assist Palace Station visitors into their vehicle. Photo by Craig L. Moran. Rich Webster, a valet attendant at The Venetian, looks for a car in the hotel's parking garage. Photo by K.M. Cannon. Palace Station parking attendant Dave Linihan drops a key into a security booth. Photo by K.M. Cannon.

Tuesday, November 28, 2000
Copyright © Las Vegas Review-Journal

CUSTOMER SERVICE: In the Driver's Seat

Parking attendants are asked to handle everything from pickups to luxury cars

Remember the old arcade game "Frogger"? The one where you'd try to maneuver a little cartoon frog across a freeway, skittering between rows of swiftly moving cars?

Rich Webster does. And, he says, "I never thought the game `Frogger' would come in handy in my life."

These days, Webster, 34, plays a pretty fair live-action version of the classic death avoidance game in his job as a parking valet at The Venetian.

Webster is only one of the legions of Southern Nevadans who spend their workdays dodging cars, taxis, limousines and pedestrians, parking and retrieving everything from the lowliest pickup to the ritziest sports car.

In many cities, parking valets are fixtures only at expensive hostelries or restaurants. Here, parking valets are an affordable luxury provided just about everywhere from hotels and malls to restaurants and hospitals.

"I grew up here my whole life and I don't think I ever went into a hotel where we didn't go valet," says Stephen Perkins, a parking attendant at Main Street Station.

Perkins, 31, has been a parking valet for almost 10 years. Before that, he worked as a lifeguard at an off-Strip hotel, and, Perkins says, "my dad kept telling me, `You should probably get away from the pool. You'd make a lot more.' "

Chuck Woodruff, who oversees a crew of parking attendants at The Venetian, began a second career as a parking valet after finishing up his first, a 27-year career in the U.S. Marine Corps.

"My wife was from here, so I retired here to play golf seven days a week and do valet at night," explains Woodruff, 48. "It's a wonderful thing."

Actually, parking and retrieving cars is only part of a valet's job description, Woodruff says. Because they're among the first people a hotel guest meets when arriving and among the last they see when leaving, valets are vital links in the guest relations chain.

"You've got to smile," he says. "You've got to have good eye contact. You've got to have a good personality. We're not looking for robots."

Dave Linihan, who's been a parking valet at Palace Station for about 18 years, likes the fact that he's come to know many of the hotel's regulars.

"I'd say we probably know about 40 percent of the people who come in here by name, just because they come in all the time," he says.

Linihan, 41, began working as a valet part time while attending the University of Nevada, Las Vegas.

"Then it became full time and I liked doing it," he says.

"You run around. You stay in shape. And, you're outdoors."

The valets say they're seldom bored. Woodruff estimates that, on a typical weekend night, his crew at The Venetian parks 120 to 150 cars an hour and retrieves 100 to 105 more.

The average wait for a customer is five to seven minutes, he adds, "and I still say when we're busy, five to 10 minutes. These kids run their little booties off."

Indeed. The constant activity valets find so appealing also can mean sore legs, sore knees, sore shins and sore feet after a particularly busy shift.

"When you get up in the morning you feel it," concedes Hector Millan, 26, a parking attendant at Main Street Station. "Your knees let you know."

"When I first started, it took a toll on me," Webster says. "I thought I was in shape until I started."

Now, he's used to the physical demands of the job -- so much so that, Webster says, "I dropped my gym membership."

Unlike many hotel workers, valets also must cope with Las Vegas' torrid summertime temperatures.

"When it's 110 or 115 out here that pavement gets brutally hot, and you get in the cars and they get to be like saunas," Linihan says.

Sometimes, though, the valet's challenges are a bit more cerebral -- for instance, trying to divine the ever-changing, ever-more-sophisticated security systems with which today's cars are equipped.

"Some cars have three alarms in them," Millan says. "Not one, but three."

"Sometimes, you have to (turn on) a left turn signal or something to start it up," adds Junior Racoma, 27, a valet at Main Street Station. "Sometimes, they forget to tell you, and we've got to figure things out."

"Some don't say anything. Then we just have to take it upon ourselves to figure it out," says Ellie Shefler, 26, a valet at The Venetian. "There are cars that don't have door handles, and the only way you can open them is (with a device) like an alarm."

Linihan recalls one car that could be started only by passing a small wand across a sensor in the console. "They didn't tell me anything about it," he says. "I was waving the magic key all over to find it."

Driving high-performance, or merely unfamiliar, cars can be intimidating for a rookie valet.

"If you've been here only a week, maybe you're not up to driving a Lamborghini or a (Lamborghini) Diablo right off the bat," Woodruff says.

When he drove his first Rolls Royce, "I was just in awe of it," he adds. "Here I am: me, driving a Rolls Royce. But, after you drive it, then you feel comfortable with what you're doing.

"It just comes with experience. The more time you have as a valet, the more comfortable you are."

The valets do say, though, that driving different cars is one of the main attractions of the job.

"Everybody says, 'Hey, you drove that 'Vette? You drove that Ferrari?' " Millan says.

"I have a little hot rod, don't misunderstand me," Woodruff says. "But I never had an opportunity to drive a Lamborghini, a Diablo, a Mercedes."

At the other end of the spectrum, Woodruff remembers parking "a '59 or '60 pickup truck that had no brakes and springs hanging out of the seat."

But, he says, that truck merited the treatment of any other car, because "that was one of the joys in (the owner's) life."

The human landscape can be just as interesting, the valets say. For example, confused revelers are an occasional problem at Main Street Station.

"A lot of people go to the Fremont Street Experience, have too many cocktails and come back and say, `Where's my car?' " Perkins says. "You go through the lot and their car's not here. They didn't park here. They say, `Oh, sorry, it was the Las Vegas Club.' "

Forgetful car renters also can offer amusement.

A few weeks ago, two guests, both of whom had rented Mustangs -- one red, one silver -- got into each other's cars, Woodruff says. "They were both going to drive away, and we stopped them and told them they were in the wrong car. We always hear, `Oh, it's a rental. We didn't know.' "

The valets say one benefit of the job is the latitude it allows in choosing shifts. Because parking cars is a 24/7 gig in Las Vegas, it's easier for valets to bid on different shifts than it is for employees whose jobs require them to work 9-to-5.

"We have a lot of flexibility," says Woodruff, who prefers working the late-afternoon/evening shift, particularly this time of year. "I don't want to work graveyard, I don't want to work morning," he says. "It's cool at 4 (p.m.), but it's not freezing at midnight. At 2 in the morning, it's freezing."

The valets say that, while parking attendants at Las Vegas hotels can make a good living, the job isn't quite as lucrative as many people might believe.

Woodruff estimates that valet parkers at hotels around town make from $5 to $9 in base pay, plus tips that can add on to that an additional $11 to $20 an hour.

The best tippers, valets agree, are locals. These days, the tips valets receive usually are pooled then divided. Otherwise, Perkins says, "you'd have people holding certain keys (from big tippers) in their pockets."

Still, the pay is good enough to make valet parking a valid career choice, and not just a temporary or part-time job, in Las Vegas.

In fact, Webster says, "I'm probably going to do this for as long as my body lets me."

"It's been a good living for me," Linihan agrees. "I love doing it, and it pays my bills."