Joe Carmack was not even sure he wanted a part of the Amazing Mystical Floating One Hundred Dollar Bill trick, but the magician was a persistent man with a big, easy smile, so he relented.
The magician needed a hundred. Or a twenty. Any bill would do, actually.
Carmack handed over a buck, wrote his name across it as instructed, then watched the magician rip it to pieces and try, and fail, to put it back together with a magic word and a wave of a hand.
The audience laughed. Carmack took a seat. The magician smiled unapologetically. "Never give your money to a stranger," he said.
The magician is Sgt. David Rosado, public information officer for the Chesapeake Sheriff's Office. He wore a collared work shirt, carried a badge and a gun and handcuffs at his waist, and spoke about scams and safety and how not to become a victim to a group of senior citizens who volunteer for other elderly people.
He engaged them - "definitely had them in the palm of his hand," said Julia Melvin, who coordinates the Senior Companions group - and that is no easy task. "They've seen it all."
But they hadn't, not yet.
Rosado opened his wallet and pulled out that $1 bill with "Joe" written across the face.
Sheriff John Newhart had heard about the sergeant's magic. But he didn't see it until a Christmas party in December and was a little bit awestruck.
Rosado had shown his coworkers a trick or two since starting work there in 2001. He took his act on the road after becoming the public information officer seven months ago.
He calls it magic with a message.
Rosado will use a hypnotic spiral to make his head look bigger and others' look smaller in a cultural diversity class he teaches - perception is not always reality, he'll say. He'll tell elderly men to keep their wallets in a front pocket so they aren't easily stolen, then flip open a wallet with flames that flare out.
Dressed in a head-to-toe red suit at Lakeside Park on July 4, he asked a little girl to help make a handkerchief disappear from his fist. It didn't work with the first 6-inch wand, so Rosado got a bigger one for her to try. Still didn't work. The next one was even larger, which also failed, but they kept on until a 7-foot-long wand finally did the trick. She was laughing, her head thrown back, her arms struggling to hold something twice as tall as she was.
Rosado regularly performs the routine with children to teach them that they shouldn't give up.
"Dave has been able to break down a lot of barriers with young people," the sheriff said. "He's got a following. Every time he shows up in public, the same four or five kids will show up."
The magic started 24 years ago, over a deck of cards in New York when Rosado was working in the fashion industry.
A co-worker asked him to think of a card. He did, and it turned out to be the only one face-down. Mystified, Rosado went to a magic store, bought the deck and learned his first trick.
He will absolutely not say how it's done.
Rosado spent most of his free time and extra cash at the magic show after that. He befriended magicians and started doing parties while working full time. He moved to Virginia in 1999 to be near family and continued working his magic.
He once sawed a Chesapeake school principal in half. That first card trick is still a favorite, though. So is any magic with cards or coins or balls, because they are inexpensive and sort of timeless.
Even when he's in uniform a card deck is with him, tucked in a pocket, along with a couple of coins and a small foam ball and the igniting wallet.
The expense of his 10-week-old son is "burning" a hole in his pockets, Rosado will say, or his new business cards are "hot" off the press.
"Would you like to see a trick with my balls?" he might ask, with some modification if the audience is particularly youthful. Or if he's speaking on behalf of the sheriff's office.
One foam ball becomes two becomes one becomes three becomes none. The coins appear and disappear in his hands. The card you pick is always the one he pulls from the deck.
There are a thousand tricks, mostly stored in a walk-in closet that Rosado's wife, Janet, calls the magic shrine. But in the days before a show, the props and the gimmicks come out and take over the living room and dining room.
"The house is a wreck for two to three days," Janet said, but it doesn't really bother her.
She knew Rosado had a magic side within weeks of meeting him. He turned a quarter into a diamond ring with a touch that sent flames shooting from the small box when he proposed.
"It was beautiful," she said.
Their wedding bands are engraved with "love is magic," and they watched seven magic shows on their honeymoon in Las Vegas.
Janet's skeptical eye helps Rosado perfect his performances. Their daughter, almost 2, likes to take his magic wand and put on his black top hat. He can't wait until she's old enough to be his assistant.
Sometimes the magic can kind of take over. Rosado stays up late practicing. When he had two gigs on a recent holiday, the family came out so they could spend time with him. He freely mentors a chief deputy in Stafford who saw a trick and wanted to learn a routine to take back to kids in his community.
The magic takes pressure off of a job that can make you a target because of the uniform you wear, Rosado said. It makes you feel like the kid you still feel like on the inside.
Janet jokes that she's just waiting for him to make missing items around the house reappear, like that dollar bill trick he did the other day.
Joe Carmack stared at the dollar bill safely back in his hands. He looked at Rosado and back at the dollar, a smile spreading over his face. The audience was cheering.
"That was all right, I gotta say." He put the bill back in his wallet and shook his head.
"Amazing."
Kristin Davis, (757) 222-5555, kristin.davis@pilotonline.com EXTRABOLD 8 pt. This is a 9 on 13 Olympian big lead in to your story in herey and more in here and in here and in here and in here. This is a 9 on 13 big lead in to your story in herey and more in here and in here and in here and in here. WASHINGTON - ONE inch here. This ONE goes out to the ONE I love. (File under fire) This ONE goes out to the one I left behind. A simple prop to occupy my.
TWO inches here. It was the best of times, it was the worst of times. A Tale of TWO Cities. It is a far, far better thing that I do, than I have ever done before. And I go to some sort of resting place.
THREE inches here. Commander, tear this ship apart until youve found those plans, and bring me the passengers; I WASHINGTON - ONE inch here. This ONE goes out to the ONE I love. (File under fire) This ONE goes out to the one I left behind. A simple prop to occupy my.
TWO inches here. It was the best of times, it was the worst of times. A Tale of TWO Cities. It is a far, far better thing that I do, than I have ever done before. And I go to some sort of resting place.
THREE inches here. Commander, tear this ship apart until youve found those plans, and bring me the passengers; I
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