FOR the man in the pinstriped suit, staring at the judge, staring at the clock, the next 106 minutes will determine the next four years.
He is thin, a marathoner, with a short bowl haircut and a long nose. This morning, he said goodbye to his two children, bear-hugging them, just in case.
Paul Theodore Del Vacchio, now 41, is a gambler. In Riverside County Superior Court, a psychologist testifies that Del Vacchio fed his impulse-control disorder with online wagering, not caring about the win or loss, just the high of the bet.
This is why he stole half a million dollars from his employer, an Indian casino, Del Vacchio tells the judge. It was a compulsion. He needed to cover his losses.
His wife, Monica, 39, adds her own plea: "He has earned my love and my trust and my support."
Judge James T. Warren considers whether the defendant before him is an honorable man whose addiction made him stumble, or a schemer and crook. The judge's face reveals nothing.
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It started with $125.
Del Vacchio blew it betting on five pro basketball games and quickly won it back. He was 16, working the cash register for $6.50 an hour at a grocery store in Carteret, N.J., a suburb of New York City. His first bookie was a store manager.
At 18, he and a buddy were placing bets over the phone using code names such as Oscar or Dino. His mother wasn't suspicious; Paul was an unassuming kid, preoccupied with sports, and so polite that his eighth-grade class named him most courteous.
But the boys were losing -- big. When they tore through $13,400 in a week, their bookie -- a short, robust man who changed the oil in Del Vacchio's mother's car -- demanded they pay up.
"I said, 'What's wrong with you, taking money from a kid?' " recalled Del Vacchio's dad, a retired fire captain who shares the name and used to bet on football games and at casinos in Atlantic City, N.J. He helped his son wriggle out of paying.
Del Vacchio's parents, who have since divorced, steered him to Gamblers Anonymous. A member called, and the conversation with the gruff-sounding man terrified Del Vacchio. "He told me to never gamble again; he told me I'd only get worse," said Del Vacchio, who quit betting for four years.
Meanwhile, he was courting Monica, his blue-eyed high school sweetheart, whom he met on a blind date at a pizza joint and escorted to her junior prom. Del Vacchio wooed her with handwritten letters while he attended USC and later the University of Maryland; he fell just shy of a degree in accounting before moving to New Jersey in 1987.
