Las Vegas Weekly

July 24, 2010 · 2:56 PM

Charitable Robin Hood 702 strikes again in Las Vegas

By Robin Leach

An aerial tour of the Las Vegas Strip.

Photo: Tom Donoghue/www.donoghuephotography.com

We wanted to share this feel-good story with Vegas DeLuxe readers courtesy of Rick Leventhal at FoxNews.com.

On a blistering hot Friday morning in Las Vegas, an unusual crew strolls out the VIP entrance of one of the most luxurious hotels in town and steps into a stretch limousine. Leading the group is a man who calls himself Robin Hood 702 (702 is the Las Vegas area code) wearing jeans and a T-shirt and hiding his face behind a beard, hat and sunglasses.

His much younger beautiful Brazilian wife Gracie, wearing heels and a dress, joins him. Their friend Dr. Richard Schulze is there, too, a very wealthy herbal medicine specialist with a mail-order business who’s known as the “Herb Doc” to the stars, treating Sting and Steve Jobs, among others.

The group directs the driver to an address about 20 miles off The Strip, a well-kept apartment complex where an unsuspecting family is about to get the help for which they’ve been praying. We follow Gracie to the front door with camera crews in tow. She knocks, we wait, and after a few moments, Jeff Martinez is welcoming us in.

Gracie tells him, “You have been chosen by Robin Hood 702,” and moments later, the men enter to embrace Jeff and assure him that his financial problems will soon be solved. Jeff has Stage 4 cancer attacking his colon, liver, adrenal glands and lungs. He’s a dispatcher for a motor coach company and continues to work 40-hour weeks while battling the disease.

His wife works two jobs and has little time for their two teenagers, who broke down in tears remembering how they had to move out of the house they’ve called home for 10 years because the family couldn’t keep up with the mortgage payments with all the medical bills.

Robin Hood 702 has helped other families before usually by soliciting video submissions to his Web site RobinHood702.com, then choosing people down on their luck who he believes are most deserving of his help. This time it was the local Fox affiliate that contacted the modern-day bandit and his merry men after doing a story about Jeff and his family losing their house.

“I want to give this guy some hope,” Robin Hood said. “That’s all he’s looking for, hope to fight this disease, to give him a break in paying some of his bills, so he can put on his armor and fight this war that he’s got to fight. And I want to stand next to him with my suit of armor.”

I’m sitting across from Robin Hood in his sprawling two-story, high-roller suite overlooking The Strip. I tell him, “People look at gamblers, they don’t see saints, they see sinners.” He looks at me with a small smile. “That’s why I am Robin Hood 702. He wasn’t a saint or a sinner; he was a little of both. That’s what I am. A little of both.”

I’ve seen Robin Hood gamble in private VIP high-roller rooms for thousands of dollars a hand, two hands at a time. It’s how he plays, and it’s why he gets the luxurious surroundings and amenities that he tries to share with others. We don’t see him gamble this time, but he says he was down 200 grand, then came back to win tens of thousands of dollars.

He pours the results on a table in front of the family the next day, a bag of $100 chips (and adds some $1,000 chips on top) to be used to pay his rent for a year, lease him a car and buy a year’s supply of groceries, among other things.

Jeff is overwhelmed. “It’s gonna help me heal, and you know what? He’s going to be the first person I call when I can finally say I’m cured of cancer. So thank you, Robin Hood!”

Jeff’s eyes well up, and so do just about everyone else’s.

Robin Leach has been a journalist for more than 50 years and has spent the past decade giving readers the inside scoop on Las Vegas, the world’s premier platinum playground.

Follow Robin Leach on Twitter at Twitter.com/Robin_Leach.

Follow Vegas DeLuxe on Twitter at Twitter.com/vegasdeluxe.

Follow VDLX Editor Don Chareunsy on Twitter at Twitter.com/VDLXEditorDon.

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