Seventy-nine-year-old Marilyn Lancelot lives nearly 2,000 miles from a Pennsylvania casino and has never been to one, but she has a message she thinks will resonate with other senior citizens:

Be cautious on the slot machines.

"I didn't think it was an addiction till I got arrested," she said from her Sun City, Ariz., home. "I did it because I had very low self-esteem. Some people do it out of loneliness, death of a spouse, retirement boredom -- there's so many factors that enter into this."

Ms. Lancelot, who embezzled $300,000 over seven years from a fertilizer company she served as a bookkeeper, will be the featured speaker at a Sept. 24 presentation of the Southwestern Pennsylvania Area Agency on Aging.

The "Gambling and Older Adults Symposium" is to teach people who work with the senior population how to identify possible gambling problems among them.

Leslie Grenfell, executive director of the Greene-Fayette-Washington agency, said it pursued a state Bureau of Drug and Alcohol Programs grant for the symposium after local senior centers sensed a loss of attendees due to the attraction of slots at The Meadows Racetrack & Casino.

"They were maybe using the casino as a social outlet and replacement of senior centers in certain areas," Ms. Grenfell said. "We don't have any statistics that would support that this has moved from entertainment into compulsive gambling addiction ... but this might be one of those silent type of situations that isn't clear to those working with older adults."

Anyone stepping into a Pennsylvania slots parlor, particularly in the daytime, realizes quickly that people of retirement age make up a disproportionate share of players. That can reflect both the region's older demographics and the amount of spare time they have on their hands.

Most data from compulsive gambling studies and calls to help lines, however, do not suggest that older adults have a higher share of slots addiction. Still, local clinicians have anecdotal examples of seniors who have become compulsive, and experts cite reasons they can be particularly vulnerable.

The Florida Council on Compulsive Gambling started specific programming for its large senior population after some of its surveying suggested that when addiction was detected among elders, it was often too late to help them.

"There's a lot of shame associated with it, and they're terribly embarrassed and humiliated that all their life they could be responsible people, and then find themselves at this point in their lives where they lost everything they worked a lifetime for," said Pat Fowler, head of the Florida council.

She said it's common for older adults to begin visiting a casino with friends but then return on their own if they become too enamored. The slot machines are an especially easy form of gambling for those with physical limitations.

"It really serves as a great anesthetizer for whatever ails you," Ms. Fowler observed. "Seniors tell you that when they're gambling, they don't feel the physical pain they feel when not gambling. ... They can sit in front of a slot machine regardless of whether they're in a wheelchair or on an oxygen tank."

Clinicians note casino gambling is new for many older adults, because it was an illegal vice locally for most of their lifetimes. Now that they've retired in Pennsylvania and elsewhere, looking to fill their leisure hours, it's become a government-sanctioned activity that some are unprepared to handle.

Dennis McNeilly, a University of Nebraska Medical Center associate professor of psychiatry who has studied the age group, noted, "It's a particularly hidden problem in this older group because most adult children don't know their parents' finances.

"This particular age cohort tends to be rather stoic. They like to take care of their own problems. They don't air their dirty laundry. They don't understand addiction very well. They haven't accessed mental health care well, so it can be something unknown even to a spouse pretty easily."

Older women, in particular, are thought to be the type of "escape" gamblers to whom slots most appeal. There's no sense of intimidation, as they might feel around veteran gamblers in a casino with table games.

Ms. Lancelot said that sense of being looked down upon by men even came up at Gamblers Anonymous meetings, prompting her to organize the first female-only GA group in the Phoenix area.

Ms. Lancelot, who served 10 months in jail in Arizona, wrote a book about her experiences, "Gripped by Gambling." Her gambling addiction actually started in her early 50s, but her age makes her a popular speaker on the topic as it relates to older adults.

"It was the chance of a win, the excitement, the promise, all the hype -- it hypnotizes you," she said of the slots attraction for her, acknowledging a compulsive personality that also drew her to alcoholism.

She hopes other vulnerable retirees avoid succumbing by hearing her story.