Antonio Perez has a background story that eats other “hard knocks” tales for breakfast.
Perez, General Manager of Rolling Hills Casino and Resort in Corning, CA, discussed his challenging upbringing, including his parents’ backgrounds – which involved orphanages, incarceration, and living on public assistance – along with his own experiences working factory jobs and facing homelessness.
Perez overcame his tumultuous and humble younger years through his educational journey, starting college late and excelling through various roles at Penn National Gaming (now Penn Entertainment). He emphasized the importance of resilience, mentorship and persistence in his success. As a result, Antonio Perez shares lessons we all could learn from.
A lesser individual would wilt under the stress of hard times, but not Perez. He is an affable, charming person who looks through the Zoom screen with the ease of someone who was raised at Windsor Castle.
“It makes me appreciative. You know, no matter how tough things can get, I know that I’ve experienced a lot worse. And, you know, the worst possible day is nowhere near comparable to how things were in the past.
“It helps me have more gratitude. Often when things get tough, I’ll stop and reflect on where I’ve been and where I’ve gotten to. I definitely have a more positive outlook as a result, and I tend to look at things in an optimistic way. I refer to myself as an optimistic realist,” Perez said.
Two decades of experience
Antonio Perez is the General Manager of Rolling Hills Casino & Resort, an
integrated resort in northern California. Since joining the property in October 2020, he has played a key role in its continued growth and success. With over two decades of experience in the gaming and hospitality industry, Perez spent 17 years with Penn National Gaming, where he held leadership positions at five different casinos across four states.
Perez holds both a Bachelor’s and a Master’s degree in Business Administration (MBA) from Shepherd University in Shepherdstown, West Virginia.
Hard starts
Perez’s father began life in the United States under difficult circumstances.
“He went on a trip with his father, and his father left him in New York and went back to Puerto Rico without him. It goes without saying, I don’t really know much about my family. My mom grew up in orphanages with her brother. And so, I know my uncle.
“My father was in and out of jail in my youth. My mom, growing up in orphanages without a mother’s example to learn from, did the best she could and worked as a Spanish language phone operator. I give her tons of credit for everything she was able to do. I have three brothers and a sister as well as a cousin whose mom passed away when she was young. It was my uncle’s daughter, and my uncle was in a tough spot at the time, and his daughter was a month old when her mom passed away. My mom stepped up. My cousin was pretty much raised by my mom as our sister. My mom did a phenomenal job given the circumstances,” Perez recalled.
Not an option
Perez started out in Long Island, New York and eventually the family moved to Martinsburg, West Virginia, where he spent his formative years and went to high school and college.
“It was a culture shock coming from New York. I was not a good student in school after the move, mostly due to my own disinterest and lack of effort. College just didn’t seem like a realistic goal. I graduated high school in 1996 and back then they didn’t spend a lot of time trying to tell the people who didn’t think they were going to go to college what the resources were to go to college. So that never seemed like a realistic option,” Perez said.
Packing boxes
After finishing high school, Perez spent six and half years working in local factories. He went to work for the temporary agency Manpower who sent him to a vinyl siding factory, Veriform, where he stacked boxes of vinyl siding on pallets. When that job ran out, Perez was sent to a book printing factory, Quebecor, where he began placing books in boxes at the end of the production line.
“Eventually they hired me full time, and I started to move up. I became a material handler and drove a forklift. I was at Quebecor for over five years, and I got to the point where I was the senior driver. I was maxed out in pay and there was really nowhere to go,” Perez recalled.
Now most people would have done their job as a forklift driver and spent downtime in the break room. Instead, Perez used his time reading books for motivation.
“I worked a 12-hour rotating shift. As a material handler, I had a finite task list. I strategized the most efficient way to accomplish my tasks quickly and it led to a significant amount of downtime. I would go back into the paper storage area, I would climb up onto the top of the rolls of paper, and I’d read books. I read so many books in my downtime that it made me more and more curious,” Perez said.
“I remember reading all of the Harry Potter books before they were ever released. And it was funny because they had security around the books to protect them. Part of the publishing deal was you couldn’t let these books get out, and so security would stand around them.
“So, it made me curious. What is this book that it’s being guarded? And so, I would take the book into the back and read it. I read Lord of the Rings, and I started reading the business books and pretty much anything that caught my interest,” Perez stated.
Homeless
“I graduated high school at 17 because of where my birthday fell. At the time, we were on public assistance. When I was a kid, a dog bit me, and I had a small settlement that was supposed to come my way, and my mom was worried that it would jeopardize our benefits. So, I had to leave.
“I slept on couches at that point for a few months until I got the settlement, which got me started. That’s when I started in the factories. Towards the end of my time in the factories, unfortunate situations led to me being without a home again. I slept on couches again for a few months and in my brother’s basement for a little while; I had all my things in a storage unit. I even slept in the storage unit a few nights out of embarrassment to not ask someone to sleep on their couch,” Perez related.
Assistance and mentors
During this time, Perez had a friend who was going to take an entrance exam at Hagerstown Community College but did not want to go. “I said, ‘I’ll go with you and take the exam with you.’ I took the exam for moral support and ended up in community college,” Perez said.
That same friend worked for Charles Town Races & Slots, owned by Penn National and now called Hollywood Casino Charles Town, and convinced Perez to apply. He would work and progress with that one company for 17 years, completing his undergraduate and graduate degrees at Shepherd University during that time.
“I applied for the casino job, and it was a blessing. It always surprised me how people would look out for you. I had a supervisor that we affectionately referred to as Miss Karen, her name was Karen Duke. I don’t know if she ever knew how much of an impression she made on me back then.
“When I started, I was still dealing with some financial challenges and my shoes didn’t fit the dress code. Miss Karen asked me some questions and the next thing I knew, she bought me the Sketchers from the work program. It blew my mind that a supervisor that I barely knew would step up for me that way. I’ve been blessed to have great relationships throughout my career with people who really looked out for me and mentored me. I appreciate that in more ways than I could ever express to these individuals,” Perez stated.
Leadership journey
Perez started as a cashier and, rather than accept a promotion to the main bank where he would miss out on the tips he was making, transferred to slot attendant before eventually becoming a table games dealer. He became a dual rate supervisor, and then transferred to Bangor, Maine in 2012 to help launch their table games operation before being promoted to casino manager.
His leadership journey includes serving as Director of Surveillance at Hollywood Casino Hotel & Raceway in Bangor, Maine, and Director of Slot Operations at Argosy Casino Hotel & Spa in the Kansas City area.
Antonio spent 17 years with Penn National Gaming, where he held leadership positions at five different casinos across four states. Prior to joining Rolling Hills Casino and Resort, he served as Multi-Property Director of Casino Operations and Interim Director of Food & Beverage for Hollywood Casino Gulf Coast and Boomtown Casino Biloxi in Mississippi.
Perez joked that it seemed that he was promoted every eight months or so at Penn National.
Lost time
I asked what it was about him that led to so many promotions.
“I don’t know if it was actually a healthy way of motivating myself, but I felt like I had lost time. I had about eight years between high school and when I started college. I started to think about where I could have been if I had gone directly to college. I felt like I needed to make up for lost time,” Perez said.
“I felt the same way during college. It led to me taking the maximum credit hours allowable every semester and becoming involved in everything from the college radio station and student newspaper to the Program Board and Dean’s Student Advisory Board. I participated in so many campus organizations, and it seemed like my involvement in one just led to becoming involved in another, and it all started by hosting a radio show as an elective class.”
Relatable
Since Perez’s experience was so diverse over those many years with Penn National, I asked him how that helps him in his present position.
“It helped me relate to people and I think it makes me more relatable. If you can talk to a dealer and speak to them in their lingo and understand what they’ve done, it builds confidence and it makes it relatable. Having spent time in factories helped me with communication on the facility and manual labor side. It also taught me to lead with questions. I took on so many roles that I didn’t have previous experience with, and I quickly learned that asking the right questions can help me learn about a topic and about people, making me a more effective leader,” Perez stated.
A new challenge
After being briefly furloughed during the pandemic, Perez returned to Penn National looking for a new challenge. “I always try to challenge myself and take myself out of my comfort zone,” Perez said.
Perez was contacted by an executive recruiter and turned down the interview after seeing Rolling Hills Casino’s remote northern California location. After a couple more calls, he was persuaded to take a Zoom interview with then General Manager Steve Neeley that resulted in a property visit.
“I get into the rental car, and I start driving north on the 5, and it’s nothing but farmland. I’m starting to wonder, where are the people? Where do they get the business from? As it got dark, I started to see white flakes in the headlights. And, you know, I’m thinking to myself, it is way too hot for snow. I know it is not snowing. I get to the parking lot of the casino and the parking lot is completely packed. I want to say it was a Tuesday night and I got out of the car, and I smelled the fire, and that’s when I realized that its ash falling from the sky. And I look around and there’s ash on the windshields of the cars in the parking lot. It was the August Complex Fire, the largest fire in California history.
“I got really nervous. I’ve experienced blizzards, tornadoes, hurricanes, but never fires. I started wondering whether I should just hop back in the car and drive to the airport. The next day, I started meeting with the executive team and they were all excited about the direction the property was headed, and the entire time I was on the property it felt like there was something special happening, but I couldn’t quite pinpoint what.
“Then I spent time with the Paskenta Band of Nomlaki Indians tribal council, and that’s really what sealed the deal. When I sat down with the tribal council, and this was a relatively young Council, I immediately felt value alignment. I realized that their priorities are doing the right thing. They want to do the right thing for the tribe, for the community, for the team members and for the business. They want to make sure that they’re creating a long-term, sustainable business, and not at the expense of the customer, the team or the community.
“I walked out of that meeting energized; I realized at that point that I needed to be here. I wanted to experience it. It was going to be completely different, tribal gaming, you know, and a region I’d never been to,” Perez recalled.
Perez accepted the position of Director of Gaming in 2020, which was a step backwards from the dual-property role he was in with Penn. Soon after starting with Rolling Hills, Perez was promoted to Chief Operating Officer, and then COO & Assistant General Manager, and eventually to General Manager.
Substantial renovations
The property was undergoing substantial renovations and additions directed at the time by then General Manager Steve Neeley.
“Originally the property was more of a truck stop casino because they had a fueling station that catered to truckers. The location is essentially midway between Los Angeles and Seattle. They hadn’t invested in marketing and developing the property. When Steve Neeley joined the property, that’s exactly what happened. Steve supercharged the growth plans and the expansion.
“They went from having a buffet and a cafe with a central kitchen to expanding, doubling the gaming floor, adding a Rock & Brews restaurant, a Six Two Eight Steakhouse, named after the exit number where we are located, a Fat Burger restaurant, and a Double Down café. We added event center space. We remodeled both hotels that are here on property. We expanded the amphitheater, and we took over the gas station, which had been a third-party owned Chevron station before the tribe purchased it. We added a brewery and distillery into the casino, all in addition to the equestrian center, golf course, and Hunt Club that were already part of the property.
Perez said the primary market is Red Bluff, Chico, Redding, and the local communities in Corning and Orland and “we also get a lot of travelers during the summer season because of our location on I-5.”
Empowering
Perez said one of his current initiatives was to empower and develop middle management.
“One of the things that we really focused on through last year is to develop middle management, as that layer of leadership has a tremendous impact on both the employee experience and the guest experience.
“In 2024, 23% of our hires were rehires, people who left because they thought the grass was greener before deciding to come back. I think we only have maybe 10 open positions right now. With 650 team members, to be able to keep our open positions very low and to have strong retention and employee engagement, these are things that I take a lot of pride in. But it wouldn’t be possible without us taking the time to focus on developing our middle management,” Perez stated.
Success secret
I asked Perez what he thought was the secret to his success over years of growth.
“I would say resilience and good mentors; resilience is so important because if you’re not resilient you may avoid risk for fear of failure. If you don’t take calculated risks, you’re not going to learn and grow the same, and you’re not going to get the type of wins that can come from calculated risks.
“I’ve been blessed through my career at Penn to have phenomenal mentors, people who gave me opportunities to grow. Mentors have been a huge piece of my development, and something that I make a concerted effort to pass down, to pass forward,” Perez declared.
Optimistic realist
Today, those who come in contact with Antonio Perez may not realize that someone with his optimism and confidence came from such a humble beginning. Perez credits his success to resilience, persistence and mentors. He strives to share the results of his hard-won experiences with those he comes in contact with daily and feels his lost time gave him a perspective that could benefit others. In that way, Antonio Perez is a true optimistic realist.
Tom Osiecki is a marketing and management consultant for Raving Consulting and can be reached for consulting engagements at 775-329-7864.
If you know of a fascinating personality in the gaming industry you would like to see profiled, please send Tom Osiecki an email at tosiecki@cdcgaming.com
