Las Vegas Weekly

February 25, 2010 · 2 PM

Las Vegas entertainer Stephanie Dianna Sanchez is living her dream

By John Katsilometes

Las Vegas entertainer Stephanie Dianna Sanchez and her brother Rico Sanchez prepare to record a song in the Las Vegas Weekly studio Monday, February 22, 2010.

Photo: Steve Marcus

Stephanie Dianna Sanchez's life story is the stuff of Las Vegas lore.

The holes in Bob Stupak's socks, for instance.

In her first job as a Las Vegas entertainer, the gangly 17-year-old Sanchez toiled as a backup dancer for Hallelujah Las Vegas at Bob Stupak's Vegas World. This is the hotel once positioned on the same spot where the Stratosphere stands today. A 99-cent afternoon production that was worth every penny, Hallelujah Las Vegas featured a promenade of showgirls wearing 3-inch heels and a flourish of feathers.

Forget that the costumes smelled like cat pee, or that it was not uncommon for patrons to doze off in the Vegas World lounge in the middle of the show, or that the hotel was so chintzy that even Sanchez's mother, Mary Jo, was charged admission. The owner, Bob Stupak himself, would often show up to catch the action.

What a treat, right?

Not quite.

"He'd throw his shoes on the floor and you'd see his toes sticking out of holes in his socks," Sanchez recalls. "He was sort of different. "

At age 17, Sanchez was just happy she didn't topple over for the weight of her giant sequined headdress in a show she later termed a 'Jubilee' wannabe."

It was one of many Las Vegas jobs Sanchez has held during a life lived in Las Vegas — the most recent being as the lead performer in Fantasy, the adult revue at Luxor's Atrium Showroom.

Sanchez is one of thousands of women who have performed almost in anonymity over the years in Las Vegas as backup dancers and singers, but her story is different.

She grew up here.

And now she has chronicled her life in an ode-to-Vegas CD, Small Town. A release party for the CD is set for 8 p.m. today at the Courtyard at House of Blues, where Sanchez and her backing band (including brother Rico on guitar) will perform a 45-minute, all-ages showcase of Sanchez's original material.

"It's about my life, my family, growing up in Las Vegas when it really was a small town," Sanchez, a native Las Vegan, says. "I wanted to write and sing about what that feels like."

One song, "Rainbow," is a tribute to Sanchez's 15-year-old daughter, Shelby. "Corner Bar" speaks to her coping with her second divorce, from husband Tracy Jordan, Shelby's father. The two were married for 16 years, splitting in 2008. She was married to her first husband, Paul Rubin, from 1988-1991, and the two are parents of 21-year-old Benjamin Rubin, who is autistic.

Sanchez is known mostly for her role in Fantasy, where she worked for nearly 10 years. She departed the production in October when producer Anita Mann brought in Angelica Bridges (formerly of Baywatch and a former Playboy model who fronts the pop vocal group Strawberry Blonde) to add some celebrity punch to the show.

Mann offered her a reduced role in the show. Sanchez declined, and instead cut ties completely with the production to work on Small Town — though she remains well-liked among the Fantasy cast and crew.

It was the first time since she was a freshman in high school that the 41-year-old single mother of two had been out of work.

"I'd never collected unemployment. I didn't even know what it was about," she says, laughing. "My unemployment guy loves me. I tell him, 'You mean to tell me I can collect $400 a week by sitting on my butt? How long has this been going on?"

Sanchez is a former Gael. She graduated from Bishop Gorman High in 1986. She's the youngest of seven children, four boys and three girls. Her father, Jose "Benny" Sanchez, worked at the Nevada Test Site and, later, as a surveyor for Frehner Construction Company in North Las Vegas. Her mother, Mary Jo, has been fighting cancer for years — it has spread to her breast, brain and spine — and is an ongoing battle that, for the moment, she is winning. The cancer is not spreading, but Mary Jo is still undergoing radiation treatments, sessions so commonplace that Stephanie refers to them as "hair appointments." Her parents live in Pahrump.

Sanchez's first job was at age 16, when she pushed an ice cream cart at the since-imploded Landmark. (Sanchez about leads the league in imploded former places of employment.) Then she was off to the Horseshoe, where she worked as a casino runner who worked in the payroll office, often wearing roller skates to make or pickup deliveries for the hotel. An errand girl, essentially. That led to her move to Vegas World, and the world of Las Vegas entertainment.

From there, Sanchez's resume is dotted with some of the smallest and largest hotel-casinos in Las Vegas. Some are still in operation, but many have been shuttered.

She performed at the since-closed Westward Ho, in the rotation of "junket" shows, productions of various themes (Western and Egyptian among them) in a makeshift showroom on the hotel's rooftop. Then it was "Luck is a Lady" downtown at Lady Luck, which today still is closed while investors ponder the hotel's renovation. Then it was Enter the Night the long-running show at Stardust that replaced Lido de Paris, leading to Legends in Concert at Imperial Palace, where she performed as a backup singer.

Sanchez was a cast member in three so-so shows at Aladdin: Abracadabra, Alakazam, and Country Tonight. She then worked at MGM Grand's Adventure Theme Park, the good-idea-at-the-time carnival attraction behind the hotel that offered every amenity except shade for families visiting Vegas. Among the roles she performed was as Scary Spice in a Spice Girls tribute, a character that required her to actually sign autographs for excited children, 'tweens and teenagers after the show.

The Rio's At the Copa, the plucky musical starring David Cassidy and Sheena Easton in quasi-autobiographical roles, was next. One year there. After Copa closed, Sanchez moved on to front two bands, Blackberry Jam and the East Coast Connection, that played at various lounges around town, including the Palms Lounge, Courtyard at House of Blues, La Scena Lounge at The Venetian and Cleopatra's Barge at Caesars Palace. It was while singing with East Coast Connection that Sanchez was told of the opening in Fantasy, which was an ideal fit except for one crucial demand of Sanchez: She would not appear topless.

"Other girls in the show were not from Las Vegas, this wasn't home to them, but my family is here," Sanchez says, looking back on a career in which she never doffed her top onstage. "I couldn't do it, and once you go there, you can't go back. It's like having sex — once you've done it, you've done it."

The benefit of performing at night has given Sanchez a chance to work in many different fields when not onstage. At various points she has run her own catering and photography businesses, worked as an events planner at MGM Grand in the years she was performing at the theme park, been employed by a Las Vegas party-planning business, and worked as a personal trainer and kickboxing instructor.

This, while raising two children, one of whom has autism.

"I'm busy-busy. Sometimes the schedule has been literally 24 hours straight," she says. "I remember working at the MGM, driving to pick up the children, writing songs in my head just to stay awake while I was driving."

Sanchez has spent two stints living away from Las Vegas. She lived in Los Angeles from January to March of 1987, and later that year moved to New York — Staten Island — where her then-husband Paul lived.

"I learned how people look at you when you say you're from Las Vegas, they automatically think you're a stripper," she says. "It took me 20 times to figure out that when I say I'm a dancer, people think I'm a stripper. Also, in Vegas, nobody is starving for their art. We're all working it as a job."

With the release of Small Town, Sanchez launches a new career, as a singer-songwriter. This week, local cover band The Trust has convinced her to perform dates around town (at the Courtyard on Tuesday night she sang an impromptu version of Joan Jett's "I Love Rock 'n' Roll.") She's in a relationship with Tropicana executive Tom Recine, whose apartment served as the recording studio for the vocal tracks on Small Town. Shelby and Benjamin live at home. It's a happy bunch.

"I'm happy, happy with where I am and happy with the CD," Sanchez says. "I felt it was time to do this, go for broke."

Follow John Katsilometes on Twitter at http://twitter.com/johnnykats.

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