Dana Plato was a child actress who made her name in the popular TV series "Diff'rent Strokes," in which she played the character Kimberly Drummond from 1978 til 1984.
Plato's was a short and troubled life. The child of an unmarried sixteen-year-old who put her baby daughter up for adoption, Plato's parents started pushing her acting career when she was seven years old and by the time she landed the role in "Diff'rent Strokes" at age fifteen, the child actress had already clocked up over 100 commercials and a movie. Plato was already experiencing problems with prescription drugs in her early teens and suffered a Valium overdose at age 14; she later admitted to drinking and using recreational drugs during her years on the TV sitcom.
In 1984, Dana Plato was fired from "Diff'rent Strokes" when she became pregnant by her musician boyfriend Lanny Lambert, as the pregnancy was deemed inappropriate to her character in the show. She and Lambert married, but it lasted less than a year and he got custody of their son. Plato tried to boost her flagging career with breast implants and appearances in Playboy magazine, but neither tactic worked and she ended up mainly appearing in soft pornography.
As to your question, there is a Las Vegas connection, but we could find no trace of Dana Plato having performed in any show here. In fact, the only instance of her having been employed in the city that we could find was in 1991, when she took a job in a Las Vegas dry cleaning store (we're not sure what she was doing here in the first place, but evidently not working). She was then arrested for holding up a video store with a pellet gun and was bailed out of jail for $13,000 by none other than "Mr Las Vegas" himself, Wayne Newton (this is the only Las Vegas showbiz connection we came across). This run-in with the law was not her last: In January 1992 she was again arrested, this time for forging a prescription for Valium. She served 30 days in jail for violation of the terms of her probation and entered a drug program immediately thereafter.
Reading any biography of the actress indicates that she definitely had some "issues." She once came out as a lesbian, taking erotic lesbian roles and appearing on the cover of a gay magazine, but subsequently recanted. She claimed to have made the US Olympic figure-skating team, and to have been offered the lead role in The Exorcist, neither of which claim is supported by others.
In May, 1999, Plato appeared on the Howard Stern Show, in a further attempt to launch some kind of comeback. We haven't heard the tape, but reports indicate that she was unbalanced, alternately crying and offering to take a drug test live on the show when badgered by callers. She claimed to be clean and sober and engaged to 28-year-old Robert Menchaca, who she said was her manager and with whom she was living in a recreation vehicle in Florida.
The day after the traumatic radio appearance, Plato and Menchaca were returning to California when they stopped at his mother's home in Oklahoma for a Mother's Day visit. Plato apparently went to lie down inside their vehicle, where she was found dead of an overdose from Vanadom (Soma) and Vicodin at the age of 35. What was at first considered an accidental overdose was later ruled suicide, due to previous attempts and the quantity of medication in her system. It was a sad end for the actress once voted among one of E!'s 50 Greatest Child Stars.
