A crowd gathered around Vincent Ma on the gaming floor at River Rock Casino Resort. A part-time magician, Ma was used to the attention — but this wasn’t an ordinary magic show.
Ma, a full-time security officer and first-aid attendant at the casino, leaned over a 60-year-old man who had collapsed while betting on horses. Ma checked for vital signs. Nothing.
Ma called for an ambulance and began chest compressions before a defibrillator arrived. Two shocks later the man coughed — alive.
The B.C. Ambulance Service later honoured Ma with a Vital Link Award for his work that summer night of 2011.
A second can make a difference in first aid. So too, in magic, in which case it took legendary illusionist David Copperfield little time to convince Ma to do more with his hands than just save lives.
Ma, 42, arrived in Canada with his family from Hong Kong at age 20. A Richmond resident and married father of one, Ma told the Richmond News over coffee Wednesday he quickly looked for a college program. He enrolled in culinary arts at Vancouver Community College, learning French cuisine while working in a Chinese restaurant.
He spent 10 years in the industry, even becoming chef and owner of a small cafe on West Broadway in Vancouver, all the while upgrading his skills in the classroom. He learned the arts of bartending, security and ballroom dancing, and made a career change by joining the Richmond casino before it moved to its River Road location more than a decade ago.
In 2009, he saw Copperfield in Las Vegas. The famous showman invited a few audience members — Ma among them — on stage for the final trick.
“I can do that,” he thought to himself. “The stuff he performed in that show, I know how to do.”
Fascinated by magic as a child, Ma began learning tricks at eight years old.
He even landed a part-time job as a magician’s assistant in Hong Kong.
But after arriving in Canada, he tucked away his bag of tricks, concentrating instead on building a new life here.
After returning from Vegas, however, Ma pulled out a few of his old instruments of illusion and found his hands were even faster than before.
“I told my wife I want to be a magician. I started to learn and practise again.”
In late 2011, Ma was asked to perform at Parker Place mall in Richmond.
“This was my first time on the stage because I spent a year practising. I performed for 10 minutes. It was so successful,” he said.
Buoyed by a receptive crowd, Ma made business cards and the calls for a magician started coming. Today, he performs at numerous private functions and public events, including shows last month at both Aberdeen Centre and Lansdowne Centre.
The magician entertains with classic tools of the trade — cards, rings, flowers — and is known for his signature trick: producing a card from empty hands, then another, and another until the stage is showered with an entire deck.
Ma leads a busy life but makes the most of it, holding close the phrase: “Use the time to enjoy the life; use the life to enjoy the time.”
Said Ma: “It doesn’t matter who you are. Only one thing is fair in the world: 24 hours. Everyone has just 24 hours (each day).”
