In the Las Vegas gambling world of the 1970s, Sam Boyd hit the jackpot. After opening the California Hotel downtown in 1975, he realized he needed a niche market — and decided it would be Hawai'i.

"We're going to make the California Hotel Hawai'i's home away from home," he declared.

And did he ever.

How Boyd made that happen is told in "California Hotel and Casino: Hawai'i's Home Away from Home," (Japanese Cultural Center of Hawaii), written by University of Hawai'i-Manoa professor Dennis M. Ogawa in collaboration with former California Hotel executive John M. Blink and Honolulu Advertiser reporter Mike Gordon.

The book is dedicated to Sam Boyd. Told through oral histories and interviews with key players — son William Boyd, John Blink, Hari Kojima, Jackie's Travel employees, hotel chefs, busboys, bellmen, and Hawai'i folks who love to go to Vegas — the story of "The Cal" is as local as ... well, oxtail soup.

Years before Las Vegas exploded into a desert fantasy, the hotel welcomed Hawai'i folks by the charter planeload, with waiters in Hawaiian shirts serving up local grinds. The Cal's beef jerky was a favored omiyage; the homemade saimin was the real deal. In Waikiki, thousands attended Boyd's "mahalo parties" at the Queen Kapiolani Hotel and Sheraton Waikiki.

"Sam Boyd and his staff took the business principle of knowing a community and the people who live in that community to a new level and created the No. 1 travel destination for Hawai'i," writes Ogawa in the introduction.

Less well known is Boyd's time in Honolulu in the 1930s working for Hisakichi Hisanaga, of Hilo. Boyd helped run Hisanaga's company Palace Amusements, flying to and from the Big Island in a seaplane that landed right off Waikiki.

Palace Amusements closed, but Boyd's time in Hawai'i had forged a bond with the Islands that would last a lifetime and earn him the ultimate compliment of "local boy." When he moved on to new ventures in Las Vegas, that bond would become his golden egg. Boyd and associates tapped into Hawai'i's fascination with gambling, and business boomed.

When he died in 1993, Boyd Gaming Corp. left behind an empire which by the end of 2007 included 15 casino entertainment properties in five states with assets of nearly $4.5 billion.

To most of the world, Las Vegas is all about risk, luck, losing your shirt or winning the jackpot. But for Hawai'i's kama'aina, it's so much more. It's where you gamble in groups and meet friends you've not seen in years; it's class reunions, 'ohana gettogethers, and the only place to really bust out those big birthdays. "The Cal," for thousands of Hawai'i folks, is a home away from home.

Excerpts from "California Hotel and Casino: Hawai'i's Home Away from Home"

IN THE BEGINNING

We lived in Hawai'i — my mom, my dad and myself — for a number of years, returning to the Mainland in 1940. My dad worked for Hisakichi Hisanaga, a Japanese gentleman. He hired my dad to go to Hawai'i and join a company called Palace Amusements. We lived in Honolulu on Davenport Street, and I was about 7 when we moved there. I learned to swim in Hawai'i, and I had a lot of fun.

... We loved Hawai'i, and the only reason our family left was that Mr. Hisanaga's business closed down. My dad was out of a job, so we had to come back to the Mainland. No question about it — my dad had tremendous pride in his association with Mr. Hisanaga and the Islands. He just loved the people of Hawai'i. They were genuine, down-to-earth good people, which was what he was. And he did see similarities.

... I believe the reason we have been successful — and it started with my father — is that we have maintained a loyalty to the people of Hawai'i, and they've maintained a loyalty to us. It is a commitment we have made and stayed with all these years and never wavered from.

— William S. Boyd, co-founder and executive chairman, Boyd Gaming

GAMBLERS, GIFTS

"A typical large group would arrive at the hotel around 10 or 11 o'clock at night, and the first thing many of them would do — and this is after being on a plane from Hawai'i for over five hours — would be to hit the craps tables before they even put their luggage away," Blink said. "And they would be on the tables all night long. They would just play and play and play. Some came here and never even used their rooms.

"... They would arrive in groups, laden with luggage they had filled with gifts for the staff: fresh pineapples, Maui onions, Kona coffee and boxes of chocolate-covered macadamia nuts.

"... In fact, at times it was hilarious when a new tour group would arrive with luggage full of gifts. Even a craps game would stop because someone was giving gifts to the two dealers, box person and stick man. Nowhere else in Las Vegas would you see this happen at a dice game," Blink said.

— From the introduction, by Dennis Ogawa

SELLING 'THE CAL'

On an average day, I would visit 12 to 14 travel agents. The travel agents, who became personal friends, taught us local customs, helpful behavior and would give us feedback; that was critical, feedback: from their clients' mouths. ... Another important word we learned was giri (omiyage) reciprocal gift giving.

... Probably the most popular giri was the Coors beer. One of the guys who ran chartered flights to the California Hotel was a police officer from Kane'ohe, on the Windward side of O'ahu. He ran the Holoholo Club charters. One day, he told Sam, "You know, we can't get Coors beer in Hawai'i. Big idea, Sam, if you guys would bring Coors beer over here."

... Sam went out to the Coors distributor in Las Vegas and paid him to fill up the belly of the Holoholo Club charter airplane going back to Hawai'i. ... The beer was stored for us somewhere in Kalihi.

With a rented truck, we began to personally deliver 150 cases of beer in the middle of summer to travel agents and contacts. This was work, but it really started putting the California Hotel in the minds of people.

— John M. Blink, founding executive of the California Hotel

UNIQUE OMIYAGE

(The Hawai'i guests) wanted to take home beef jerky as gifts. It was a big thing, still is. We have outlets at several of our hotels. A whole secondary industry was created downtown just to cater to the beef jerky needs. But these were Hawai'i people who came in, saw what the Hawai'i people wanted, and moved to Vegas so they could open a business. They saw a need and have done exceedingly well. One of the most noteworthy individuals was Herb Yamagata, who opened Aloha Specialties in 1980. The first beef jerky store in Las Vegas. With the profits he made, Herb also started the Aloha Specialties Restaurant on the second floor of the California Hotel. The success of beef jerky all goes back to giri, or omiyage — to buying a gift that couldn't be purchased back home as easily as it could somewhere else. Or maybe it was so expensive in Hawai'i that you rarely bought it. Now all of a sudden, people returned with luggage full of beef jerky. I'm talking 10 or more bags of beef jerky. You could do a lot of things with that beef jerky. It was a kind of currency, Hawai'i style."

— JMB

HOME AWAY FROM HOME

A major statistic at the Vegas visitors bureau is that the East Coast people, they will eat three meals a day. But the Hawaiians are one-and-a-half to two meals. Why? They are not gourmet eaters. They are more the tailgate kind. ... They figured if you ate three meals, how many hours would that consume from my trip, when they could be gambling? They get to town and they go straight to the casino and gamble rather than eat.

... We had Hawaiian food, a lot of Hawaiian food, and locals coming in there with slippers, that kind of atmosphere. If you go to the California, just keep looking down, you'll see hundreds of slippers. They came off the plane in slippers, they don't even bring shoes. For some reason, the Hawaiians, I guess the majority thought it was pretty cool, right? I can go in my comfortable clothing and nobody is looking at us because everybody is Hawaiian. If you come from the Midwest and go to the California, you get turned off at these Hawaiians walking around in tank tops and slippers. It doesn't look too good. It just doesn't. It doesn't sit too well with those people. They come in and see all these Hawaiians and hear all this pidgin.

John, he didn't care if you don't like it. He wants to fill up the hotel with 100 percent Hawaiians. If you didn't like it, the hell with you. Boyd made the commitment to the Hawai'i people and, to his credit, stuck with it.

— Herbert Tanaka, Honolulu travel agent

THE FISHING GUY

From 1970 to 1997, Hari Kojima was a fixture on a popular Hawai'i TV show called "Let's Go Fishing." He went from expert guest — the guy from Tamashiro's Market who could cut fish — to hosting the show, as well as a second show called "Hari's Kitchen."

When Kojima met John Blink, the sales and marketing executive from the California Hotel, in the mid-1980s, the two men dreamed up ways to lure Hawai'i gamblers to Las Vegas. One project was Kojima's annual fishing tournament on Lake Mead.

— Mike Gordon, Honolulu reporter

"To make the tournament really attractive, I was able at the time to procure a lot of things, prizes — trip for two to Hong Kong, trip for two to Japan, a systems pass on Northwest Airlines, a return trip next year to the fishing tournament, fully paid — big stuff," Kojima said. "Can you imagine just going on a stupid Vegas trip — you're going to go anyway — and you come home with a pair of tickets to Japan for doing nothing, for throwing your line in the water and drinking beer first thing in the morning? ... I think when it stopped, we had over six hundred on one fishing trip."

— Hari Kojima, television show host