
Losing Everything to Gambling Addiction However, in the end it was the machine that beat O'Connor, leaving the previous San Diego city hall leader and beneficiary to a $50 million fortune everything except penniless. At 67, she presently lives with her twin sister rather than in the beachfront bequest in La Jolla that she and her late spouse, the originator of the Jack in the Box cheap food chain, when called home. O'Connor's dependence on video poker ("that machine," she called it) was all-devouring. In nine years she put more than $1 billion in wagers at gambling clubs in San Diego, Las Vegas and Atlantic City. O'Connor, truth be told, was a hot shot — a "whale," to utilize the business' not really complimenting term — that Vegas gambling clubs would send a personal luxury plane to get her in San Diego. She didn't baffle. "I could lose in excess of a hundred thousand in a day," she told a questioner last February. (O'Connor...