Las Vegas Review-Journal (Sunday)
Westgate’s Siegels to honor late daughter
Victoria Siegel was the type of kid who would routinely visit the local Humane Society shelter.
Sometimes, she just played with the dogs.
Other times, she came home with a pet.
“She brought home one that I called the ugliest dog in the world,” Victoria’s father, Westgate Resorts founder David Siegel, says of the mixedbreed dog. “She named it Zen. Nobody would adopt this dog, but Victoria did. He’s still with us. We still have the dog.”
During a phone interview from the family home near Orlando, Florida, Zen could be heard yapping in the background, as if calling out whenever he heard his late parent’s name mentioned.
Victoria Siegel, known as “Rikki” and a “hippie chick” by friends, loved to sketch and jot down her musings. She died June 6, 2015, of what coroners ruled an accidental overdose of methadone and sertraline. The 18-year-old, who had been sent to rehab for Xanax addiction in the
spring of 2015, had been fighting dependence on those powerful medications at the time of her death.
Methadone is a prescription painkiller commonly used to help ease morphine and heroin withdrawal symptoms. Sertraline, sold commercially as Zoloft, is prescribed to treat depression.
Victoria’s parents, David and Jackie Siegel, the “Queen of Versailles” from the infamous documentary, were unaware of the severity of their daughter’s plight at the time of her death. Victoria was often holed up in her room, scribbling and doodling in her diary, which she kept hidden in a nightstand next to her bed.
Victoria wanted that journal to be read by the public, as if she knew she might not live to tell her story herself. She had texted that message to her best friend, who shared it with Jackie at Victoria’s funeral. “Victoria’s Voice” is now a book, a collection of random musings, quotes and doodles, which offer a glimpse into the mind of a young addict.
“Be at peace, not in pieces,” is one handwritten note. Another, in three stacked sentences: “When you’re happy, try to remember that feeling. Because once it goes, you never get it back. Then you’re left with nothing, and there’s nothing you can do.”
A foundation rises
The book, released in December, is the cornerstone of the Victoria Siegel Foundation, the Siegels’ burgeoning charity combating teen drug abuse. The inaugural “An Evening to Save Lives” benefit gala supporting the foundation is set for Friday at the Westgate.
The event will raise funds and awareness for a program dubbed Victory Clubs — inspired in part by Victoria’s name. These clubs follow the same incentive-program template as Siegel’s resorts. Young people who remain drug-free can earn a kind of VIP status in the clubs, which will open offices in Las Vegas and Orlando, and join in partnership with parents and educators across the country.
Victory Clubs are inspired by the nationwide Drug Free Clubs of America initiative, which has 70 schools and 11,000 members on its rolls. Those in eighth grade through college will be afforded certain perks for remaining clean. And if Siegel’s message that, “We’re going to get the kids high on benefits instead of drugs,” doesn’t reach a younger generation, the benefits might.
“They are going to get benefits like getting out of school five minutes early to beat the traffic, preferred parking spaces, head of the line in the cafeteria, free movie tickets, free pizza, free popcorn; hundreds of freebies and discounts,” says Siegel, who also plans to issue black Victory Clubs credit cards to those in the program.
As he explains, “When they go to see a movie with a girlfriend or boyfriend, they show the card and get free tickets, or if they are at a nice restaurant with their family and there is a 30-minute wait, they show the card and they go to the front of the line.”
The foundation is also developing a speaker series, providing advice to families who want to thwart drug use, and counsel for those with a loved one who has become addicted. Siegel continues to push for legislation that would require people to keep prescription medications locked up — similarly to loaded guns — and to create a law that would require doctors to prescribe naloxone for every patient given a prescription for a pain-relief drug.
Naloxone, sold under the brand name Narcan, arrests the effects of an overdose, and Siegel says it would have saved Victoria’s life if it had been administered when she was found unresponsive on the day she died.
“When she overdosed, she was still alive,” David says. “By the time she got to the hospital, she had died. I am a big advocate that if a family has a child who might be using drugs, they should have Narcan in their homes.”
‘Queen of Versailles’
Victoria’s death has led to widespread speculation that she turned to prescription drugs because of the pressures of being the daughter of wealthy and powerful parents. In the “Queen of Versailles” documentary, which David detests, Victoria appeared to be distant from her parents and often aggravated by the family’s lavish lifestyle.
The documentary was filmed in 2008, when Victoria was 12, as the Siegels were constructing their now-legendary 90,000-square-foot mansion near Orlando, which was inspired by Versailles in France.
“She was embarrassed by it, and she was also going through a kind of a bad period in her life, weight-wise,” David says. “Everything that could have gone wrong, went wrong.”
As Jackie notes, “In her diary, she said the worst thing that had happened to her was the movie ‘Queen of Versailles.’ When the camera people were around, David would try to lock up somewhere and hide. He had no interest in it or being with them, either. It was hard for them to catch any normal family interaction.”
David adds, “During that same time we were going through the recession, so between business pressure and these film people showing up unexpected. … I would throw them out,