Since her appearances on the Game Show Network's "World Series of Blackjack", Midland resident Regina Guzior has a few aces up her sleeve for 2005.
Finishing in fifth place, she came away as the series' top female player, which left an impression on the entertainment community.
The show's producers invited her back for "World Series of Blackjack 2" to broadcast early next year on Charter Communications Channel 65. It finished taping in November in Las Vegas.
Guzior first will appear on the show at 10 p.m. Friday, Feb. 4. The Arts and Entertainment Network also approached her about appearing on its reality series "Caesar's Palace," planned for 8 p.m. Monday, Jan. 10, on Charter Communications Channel 62.
"I can't believe it," she said of the media gigs. "It's, like, unreal."
The Saginaw News visited with Guzior, who is legally blind, when the blackjack competition broadcast in the spring. Although she didn't win the jackpot, she walked away with $15,000 and fame.
"They are calling me America's Blackjack Sweetheart," she said of people she meets in airports and casinos who recognize her from the game show.
"I'm very recognizable, they say. I think it's the white cane," she joked. "'There's a blind lady: You think she's the one on television?' "
'Never alone'
After Guzior lost most of her vision to retinitis pigmentosa and macular degeneration in 1979, she said she sought something that challenged her mentally that wasn't dependent on vision.
During her first trip to Las Vegas in 1981, she took to the slot machines before taking a seat at the blackjack tables.
"The strategy and the competition (of blackjack) and the fact that you use your mind in that game is what I really enjoyed," she said. "Then I found out I was good at it."
She won her first tournament at the Excalibur Las Vegas Hotel and Casino in 1997.
Guzior has the help of a "reader," usually her husband, John, who tells her the cards and the amounts wagered. However, when he stays in Midland with their 16-year-old son, she travels the tournament circuit alone. Her fellow blackjack players, including former New York City cop Joe Pane and Hollywood Dave Stann of "World Series of Blackjack 2," assist her.
"So many of the guys take good care of me when John can't come out," she said. "They make sure that I'm never really left alone."
Well suited
Adorned in clothing featuring satin spades, hearts, clubs and diamonds and trimmed with embroidered blackjacks on the cuffs and lapels, Guzior's winning style has led her and friend Mary R. Johnson of Midland into a business prospect.
Johnson, 48, a Dow Corning Corp. mechanical engineer, offered to make Guzior "something special" for her first GSN appearance. She had in mind an embroidered sweatshirt that Guzior could wear around the casinos but not in front of the cameras. When Guzior suggested she add designs to a suit, the seams for the casino-style clothing line were sewn.
"In my mind I thought this is going to look like a band uniform gone wrong," Johnson said. "But when she's got it on, it looks way cool."
The women expect the "BJ Sweethearts" clothing collection to hit boutiques in Las Vegas and Atlantic City, N.J., next fall. They plan to get the originals to the manufacturer in January.
Guzior said she maintains a good sense of shape and color and instructs where to place designs and what colors to use. When combinations don't work out, Johnson lets her know.
"It's a collaboration between the two of us," she said.
The friends find inspiration even in mistakes. Once Johnson accidentally embroidered a blackjack upside down on a sleeve cuff.
"What a neat idea. The dealer can see one and you can see one," she said. "I didn't tell anyone that (she) made a mistake."