Rick
“He was a son of God…and he must be about His Father’s business, the service of a vast, vulgar, and meretricious beauty.” F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby
Like in F. Scott Fitzgerald’s seminal novel, everything Rick Chance did was bigger than life. His rise from farmer to millionaire came faster than most; his marketing style was more brash, his marriages more passionate, his divorces more rancorous, his death more violent. A paradox of personalities, Chance was part huckster, part born-again Christian, part genius, part fool. Labels didn’t seem to fit Chance and he was constantly shedding one persona for another.
From his humble beginnings on a farm outside Tempe, Arizona, Chance built Empire Auto Glass into the Southwest’s largest glass replacement firm by bucking the conventional wisdom and not shying away from a fight. The auto glass replacement business is a lucrative one in the West, where travel on the sun-baked roads seems to kick up more gravel and debris than other places. Chance knew how to market his company, and while sitting in an Arizona diner one day hit upon the idea of giving away a free meal with every windshield replacement. He figured it was a no-lose proposition. The restaurants he engaged would get free advertising, Empire would get more business, and the insurance companies would pick up the tab. In the beginning the insurance companies balked, but several lawsuits later, Chance’s marketing plan had withstood the challenges and was taking off. Business was so good for a time that Chance had trouble finding restaurants willing to give away the volume of meals his offer was attracting.
Chance starred in his own commercials and became a cultural icon on local television stations from Phoenix to Seattle. His spots were in heavy rotation on TV, and the advertising was paying off. In 1982 Empire Auto Glass was a one-man operation. Two decades later the operation had expanded into six states and was bringing in $13 million in revenue. Chance took home $2.1 million in 2001.
Even if you’ve never seen an Empire Glass commercial, you would know Rick Chance. Every market has a pitchman like Chance, whether they are selling appliances, cars or something else. Their commercials seem to be louder than the rest and their repetitive catchphrases sear themselves into the collective unconscious.
“People loved him or they hated him, or they loved to hate him,” said Bob Hittenberger, president of the Arizona Independent Glass Association. “He got them talking about him non-stop whether it was good or bad. And it was good for business.”
Chance attracted a lot of attention and he loved it. His business couldn’t have been going better, but his personal life was a mess. Unfortunately for him, his desire for recognition made his personal failings all the more public and all the more humiliating.
The first public failure was an eerie dress rehearsal for his murder. It occurred almost a decade before he was slain and caused his second marriage to publicly combust (His first marriage was a failed post-high school romance). Chance was dabbling in the jewelry business in 1993 and invited a woman he had met at the toney Phoenician resort back to his home to view his designs. She turned out to be a prostitute and not only did the woman look at the jewels, she drugged Chance and stole his inventory. The loss of several hundred thousand dollars in jewelry by the already famous TV pitchman made front page news and humiliated Chance’s born-again Christian wife, Christine.
In addition, Christine complained that Chance was consumed with building his business and had little time left for her and their two children, Chazz and Stephanie.
“He is wasteful and frivolous and spends 60 hours per week in work and work-related activities,” she wrote in her divorce petition.
When the couple separated after Chance’s ill-fated run-in with the larcenous prostitute, Christine Chance took the children with her to Denver. He countersued in divorce court that Christine was physically unable to care for the children and that she had taken them out of state to prevent him from seeing them. The divorce was settled with joint custody of Chazz and Stephanie, and Chance signed over control of the Denver franchise of Empire Glass to Christine.
Chance’s third marriage was a metaphor for his life a fairy tale that served as cover for a soap opera existence. Jill Scott was a former Mrs. America and she had the look of a beauty queen. Jill was a green-eyed beauty with a big smile, big hair and even bigger secrets. She and Chance enjoyed a whirlwind romance and were married on Valentine’s Day 1996 before a national audience on “Good Morning, America.”
It wasn’t long before the veneer rubbed off the fairy tale and the soap opera took over. Stories about Jill surfaced within weeks of the marriage. She had not been in compliance with Mrs. America pageant rules when she won she was separated from her husband and its organizers were suing her for breach of contract. The pageant eventually won $100,000 from her.
Further, Jill had agreed to perform in a porno movie, “Mrs. XXX-America” shortly before she met Chance a secret she withheld from her husband. Chance filed for an annulment in June 1996, halted it a week later and filed again in 1998. Of course, the couple played out the divorce in the media and the people of the Southwest ate it up.
She was a gold-digger who hid the fact that she’d had plastic surgery, he claimed. He was a “religious kook” who repeatedly chanted the same prayer over and over, she fired back.
The publicity over the divorce sent the tabloids digging, and soon the National Enquirer entered the fray with the story of how Jill Scott used $100,000 of her ex-husband George’s money to get plastic surgery to win the Mrs. America crown.
While Jill was living with Chance, she had two bounty hunters pick up her first husband for failing to pay child support and they brought him to San Diego in handcuffs. The judge immediately ordered George released and he successfully sued her for false imprisonment and was awarded $450,000.
Rick Chance’s divorce from Jill Scott was formalized in 1999.
Brandi Lynn Hungerford was adopted from South Korea and brought to Grand Rapids, Michigan, one of the most religiously and politically conservative areas in the United States. Rick Chance would have been at home in Grand Rapids, the hometown of Gerald Ford and Amway Corporation the multi-level sales business built by self-made millionaires Dick DeVos and Jay Van Andel. In parts of Grand Rapids, fast food restaurants do not open on Sunday and woe unto the homeowner who uses the day of rest to mow his lawn.
How the adopted daughter of a machine shop foreman would go from having dreams of being a nurse in one of America’s most conservative Christian enclaves to dancing nude for an outcall service is a story of dashed hopes and tragic choices.
The mug shots and surveillance camera stills don’t do justice to Brandi Hungerford. She is a pretty young woman with exotic good looks. But the modeling work she was hired for was not the kind that would put her on the cover of Vogue.
Using the stage names “Eden” and “Tiara,” Hungerford was licensed as an escort in Maricopa County. The work was barely a step above prostitution, according to news reports. For a fee, she would travel to a hotel room or home and while she shed her clothes and danced provocatively, the customer would masturbate. A bodyguard would accompany her to make sure nothing got out of hand.
At the top of her game, Hungerford was bringing in $1,200 a week. Much of the money went to pay for her father’s chemotherapy, the Arizona Republic reported. Her father’s illness and the nature of her work changed Hungerford, friends said. She became sullen, cold and materialistic. By the time her father died in 2001, she was almost a completely different person.
From her job as an escort, Hungerford moved into the world of exotic dancing, taking a job at Christie’s, an upscale club where men would often pay extra to have her dance in one of the facility’s private rooms.
The third side of this triangle was 24-year-old Robert Donald Lemke II, a male dancer from the Pacific Northwest with a checkered past. Lemke was convicted of felony assault and ended up in Tempe by jumping bail after he pleaded guilty to illegal possession of a firearm in Tacoma, Washington. Despite his criminal record, he had a fresh- faced, frosted-hair look that most people found attractive.
Friends told police that Lemke liked living “in the fast lane,” drove a Cadillac and kept pit bulls. He was known in the adult entertainment business as a hustler and dealmaker, the Arizona Republic reported.
He arrived in the valley as a skinny kid from Washington state with a penchant for guns and violence. Lemke discovered the world of exotic dancing and escorts and apparently had what it took to succeed in the business. He bulked up from 185 pounds to more than 220, according to his escort license application. In a little more than two years, Lemke managed to build his own escort business and somewhere along the line he met Brandi Lynn Hungerford.
Friends recall that the pair hit it off immediately. Business was still business, however, and Hungerford continued working as an escort and dancer while they dated.
Trouble seemed to follow Lemke around. He was an aggressive dancer, sometimes taking his routine over the line of acceptability at the clubs he danced at, said one club manager.
What was clear to everyone who knew him was that Lemke liked the better things in life and wasn’t averse to taking shortcuts to get them.
Rick Chance was growing bored with the auto glass business, so he turned back to his avocation jewelry design. He wanted to make it big in jewelry as he had done in the glass business, but he was reckless, naive and cocky, according to people in the business. He would carry around thousands of dollars worth of jewelry and gems and show them to anyone. Chance told friends he wasn’t worried because the jewelry was insured and could be replaced.
“But your behind can’t,” one friend remembers telling him.
Chance worked both the wholesale and retail ends of the jewelry business, buying from designers and selling the pieces to merchants, while claiming he had designed the pieces. He loved to move Rolex watches, friends told authorities.
While he was busy trying to crack into the very closed world of jewelry sales, Chance was marketing to the masses, as well. He placed several ads in the classifieds section of the Arizona Republic for diamonds at below-market cost. Asked where the jewels came from, he said sometimes people who owed him money would pay in gems.
Hungerford told police she liked Rick Chance, but that he tended to think his money could let him get away with more than it really could.
She confessed to police that she had met with Chance several times at Lemke’s request, sometimes over dinner or drinks, but that the relationship was strictly platonic. Hungerford did not deny leading Chance on, police said.
As if they were acting in a bad comedy, the pair’s first attempts to rob Chance failed miserably. Hungerford told authorities she met Chance at a Starbucks Coffee shop and he showed her his jewelry designs. A few nights later she called him and they met for Mexican food. After dinner, Chance invited Hungerford back to his home all part of the plan, she told police. They proceeded to his house where they talked and smoked marijuana. She excused herself and while in the bathroom she phoned Lemke, who was driving around, waiting for her to let him into Chance’s estate. They connected, but Hungerford had forgotten the street address and a frustrated Lemke went home.
“And I couldn’t remember what street Chance lived on . . . cuz he was askin’ me which street does he live on, I told him I, I, I didn’t know, I couldn’t remember,” she told police in her statement.
Hungerford told police she and Lemke developed a “safer” plan to rob Chance at a hotel to avoid the possibility of his children or household staff catching them.
Through the hot summer of 2002, Hungerford and Lemke continued to track Chance. Hungerford made multiple calls to Chance on her cell phone, leaving a nice trail for authorities to follow. Chance might have known something was amiss, because he never returned her calls, Hungerford told police later. They apparently talked at least once, because in early August Chance and Hungerford agreed to meet for dinner and went out on the town after. They played around with a statue in downtown Scottsdale. Chance tried to place a condom on the statue, Hungerford told police.
“And then it wasn’t big enough, so he went and sketched out a penis with a pen on a piece of paper and taped it on the guy in Scottsdale,” she said.
The relationship was getting cozier, Hungerford confessed, and a few nights later August 9, 2002 they met for dinner again. This time, according to Hungerford’s confession, Rob Lemke would be waiting nearby when she suggested they go to a hotel. They had it all planned.
They met at Tempe’s P. F. Chang restaurant and after dinner and drinks, Hungerford suggested they adjourn to the nearby Best Western motel. A surveillance camera took pictures of the couple as they checked in. Chance looks relaxed in his print shirt, leaning on the reception desk. Hungerford stands slightly apart from him, but she is also relaxed, one arm on the desk.
“Rick’s probably thinking that he’s gonna get sex,” Hungerford told police when they showed her the photo during questioning.
When Hungerford and Chance got to their third-floor room, they kissed for a few moments and Chance lit a cigar while she went to the bathroom. Just as she had done at Chance’s house, Hungerford phoned Lemke and told him where she was. She told police that they arranged to meet a few minutes later in the hallway. At this time, she asserts, no violence was planned.
Using the excuse of going out to get ice and a drink, Hungerford left Chance smoking his cigar in the room and met Lemke in the hallway. She never returned to the hotel room, she told authorities.
According to Hungerford, she stood in the hallway “not even a minute and just fidgeting around. And, uh, I peek around the corner and at some time I hear a pop and it scares me. . . . It sounded like a gunshot.”
That claim, however, has been disputed by witnesses.
In her confession, Hungerford said Lemke, wearing a mask and gloves, confronted Chance in the room with the gun. He took the jewelry Chance kept in a black bag.
But a witness told police she heard a woman say, “Don’t hurt him. He’s not going to say anything,” and then four gunshots. At first, the witness thought it was a dream. The woman, who was from Kansas City, told authorities she looked out through the peephole in her door and saw a man “standing in the hallway, as if standing guard.” The police did not say whether she identified that man as Rob Lemke or another man.
With Chance dead or dying, the robbers placed a “Do Not Disturb” sign on the room and fled the hotel with their loot. They jumped in a Nissan Pathfinder and headed for Tacoma, Washington.
The murder went unreported for approximately 12 hours until Chance failed to show up for a meeting with his attorney, who filed a missing person’s report. Across the valley, just after the posted check-out time, a hotel maid ignored the “Do Not Disturb” sign on the door to a room she had been notified was vacant and discovered a crime scene. On the floor lay Rick Chance, clothed and dead from gunshot wounds. Police also found a single bullet casing, an orange pill and a white powder. At first, authorities didn’t have a motive in the killing because Chance’s wallet containing hundreds of dollars and credit cards was still at the scene. They didn’t know about the jewelry until advised by family and friends. Within hours, the motive was clear.
The killer or killers left a wealth of forensic information in the hotel room Hungerford didn’t bother to wipe down her plastic room keycard or the courtesy hair dryer for prints and it didn’t take long for detectives to find the image of Chance and a young Asian woman checking into the hotel. In addition to the photo of Hungerford with Chance at the front desk, they had security photos of her with him in the parking lot of the hotel and alone in the third-floor hallway. With the assistance of the media, they published the photos and asked for tips.
Within 24 hours they had hundreds of leads from people who recognized Hungerford from her dancing days. One of the tips came from an employee of the Maricopa County jail Hungerford’s mother.
From there, the authorities quickly linked Hungerford and Lemke from cell phone records and found an image of Lemke on the hotel’s security camera tapes. Lemke helped authorities somewhat by stopping in front of the camera and staring at it long enough for the camera to take a front portrait. A criminal check on Lemke led police to notify their Washington state colleagues that the pair wanted for questioning in the murder of the flamboyant glass replacement salesman could be headed their way.
Investigators learned that Hungerford had told friends she and Lemke were planning a robbery and were going to flee to Tacoma afterward. They found tags unique to Chance’s jewelry stock in Lemke’s apartment. Hungerford also led police to the murder weapon, which was placed in a pizza box and sold to a friend of Lemke’s. Ballistics tests positively identified it as the gun used to kill Chance.
Brandi Hungerford was arrested in Tacoma on August 14. She was quickly charged with first-degree murder and waived extradition back to Arizona. Once back in Tempe, Hungerford confessed and implicated Lemke, giving police a detailed account of the duo’s plan. She said she didn’t know Chance had been killed until she talked by phone with a friend in Arizona who said her picture was all over the news.
In return for her cooperation, prosecutors offered Hungerford a deal. Before Thanksgiving 2002, Brandi Hungerford pleaded guilty to second-degree murder in return for an expected sentence of between 11 and 22 years. Her sentence will depend on how well she helps authorities in their prosecution of Rob Lemke.
Lemke was arrested two days after Hungerford and was initially charged with a variety of offenses in Washington as Arizona police developed their murder case against him. He fought extradition to Arizona, but once Washington authorities dropped their pending charges against him he was returned to Tempe. Lemke was charged with first-degree murder and faces a possible death penalty.
For most of the people of Tempe, those who only knew Rick Chance as the flamboyant TV huckster, Chance’s legacy will be that of a murder victim who ignorantly placed himself in harm’s way by letting his base instincts get the better of him. Whether it was the lure of sex with Hungerford or just the chance to make a few more dollars, Chance’s gluttony put him in a position to get himself killed, many say.
But for others who knew Rick Chance well, the loss was far more painful. After he died, dozens of people came forward to say Chance had provided funds for various projects, used his Rolls Royce Corniche to deliver food to a nursing home, and gave $60,000 a year to his late father’s church.
Friends told about the man who offered to wash the windows of Chance’s estate. The coming rain would have made the effort futile, but Chance gave the man several hundred dollars and asked that he return after the rains left. The man did.
Candess Hunter, an attorney friend, told how Chance was responsible for paying for the care and board of his 96-year-old former babysitter who no longer even recognized him because of the ravages of age. Even so, Chance visited the woman he called “Mama Doll” every week.
Earlier this year, the Athletes International Ministries in Phoenix, a Christian conference for retired athletes, needed money to sponsor 25 athletes, and Chance stepped in.
“He was bigger than life,” Pastor Larry Kerychuk told the Arizona Republic. “He’s already walked on the streets of gold.”
Arizona Republic. “Slain Valley millionaire lived life in the fast lane.” Aug. 28, 2002.
Douglas, John E. Ann W. Burgess, Allen G. Burgess and Robert K. Ressler. “Crime Classification Manual.” San Francisco: Jossey-Bass. 1994.
Fitzgerald, F. Scott. The Great Gatsby. New York: Scribner and Sons. 1925
Miller, Carlos. “Multimillionaire found slain in Tempe hotel.” The Arizona Republic, Aug. 10, 2002.
Scarborough, Senta. “Suspect in death of pitchman will be returned to Arizona.” The Arizona Republic, Dec. 18, 2002.
Sidener, Jonathan. “Long trail of clues in Chance case.” The Arizona Republic. Nov. 30, 2002.
Sowers, Carol. “Stripper guilty of 2nd-degree murder in fatal Chance robbery.” The Arizona Republic. Nov. 6, 2002.
The Associated Press. “Witness reports hearing gunshots in Chance murder.” August 16, 2002.
The Associated Press. “Police Seek Help In Multimillionaire Murder.” August 12, 2002.