Escapes featured at Grant County Fair

MOSES LAKE - Mario Manzini lifts a pair of handcuffs up to several curious employees gathered around the pool at Moses Lake's AmeriStay Inn and Suites.

He's never failed to escape a pair of handcuffs, he says, and has won more than 2,000 handcuffs as trophies.

He beckons two of the inn's employees to an array of handcuffs spread over a table and instructs them to fasten them to his arms, securing the larger cuffs at the back of his arm and working down to his wrists. Finally, they secure a tiny pair of cuffs around his thumbs.

He's never come close to drowning in a pool, Manzini says, though he's come close in rivers. He can hold his breath for three to four minutes, which is necessary when a ball and chain and even more handcuffs are added to the mix. He points out that it's quite possible to drown in the five feet of pool water he's about to jump into.

As the employees look on, Manzini plunges into the pool as his wife times him - he's attempting to escape in less than a minute, she says.

In just 24 seconds, his head surfaces and the employees applaud as Manzini flashes them a big grin.

Manzini has performed these kinds of feats since he was four years old. It was watching Harry Houdini on TV that inspired him to escape from handcuffs, straightjackets, mailbags, safes and a variety of other constraints.

He holds six Guinness world records. One was listed in the 1980 Guinness Book of World Records, when on Aug. 31, 1979, he escaped from a straightjacket suspended upside down at NBC studios in Burbank, Calif.

"I got out in 8.5 seconds and no one has ever come close to breaking that record, which I feel good about," he says.

While Manzini has been a professional escape artist since he was 16 years old, some stunts still manage to scare him.

On the ABC TV show "That's Incredible!," Manzini jumped out of a plane 10,000 feet above the ground.

"I had about a minute to escape from the handcuffs behind my back, pull the ripcord and open the parachute before I hit the ground," he says. "And luckily, I made it, but I'll never do it again. That turned my hair gray. I had to dye it after that."

The passion that compels him to continue performing potentially dangerous feats is in his blood, Manzini says. His father was a race car driver, and kept driving until he got so smashed up he couldn't walk, he says.

"I just love entertaining and I like the challenge," he says. "A lot of people ask me if I have a death wish. I don't. It's not that I'm trying to kill myself. If I did, I would have done it a long time ago. I enjoy doing the shows, I enjoy the challenge. Just like Houdini; he did it until the day he died."

Manzini's wife, who goes by the stage name Victoria Roze, met him when she worked as a correctional officer at a prison in Jefferson City, Mo.

"He was trying to do a challenge there, getting out of a locked cell, and that's how we actually met," says Roze.

"I met him as an escape artist. Our first date he was hanging upside down from a burning rope," she says with a laugh. "I just accept him as what he does. It's a little scary. I'm always afraid there's going to be a slim chance that he gets hurt, but I would encourage him every step of the way to continue what he's doing because he's happy doing it. He's not happy doing a 9-to-5 job, he's always been happy in show business and that's where we're going to stay."

Roze opens Manzini's act by playing rock 'n' roll and bluegrass music on the violin. She's played the violin since she was nine, she says.

Manzini performs Tuesday, Wednesday, Friday and Saturday at 3:30 p.m., 5:30 p.m. and 7:30 p.m. and on Thursday at 3:30 p.m. and 5:30 p.m. on the Brian Miller stage at the Grant County Fairgrounds.