#329 Justin DeLoretto - Ex-Mongols President Reveals What Really Happens Inside a 1% Club

>> Justin Dealerado, how you doing?

>> Good, good, thanks so much for having me on, bro. >> Thanks for coming. So yeah, we just had our mutual friend on. >> I saw that, I saw that. >> And then we connected, and so, here we are.

>> Yeah, I appreciate it, man. >> dive it into the Biker gang, one percent our lifestyle. >> Yeah, yeah, they're going to kill me if I don't correct those motorcycle club, but you can kill me if you want. [LAUGH]

>> Oh shit, but, uh, man, just go pick it through your outline to get a hell of a life story, man. >> It's been a while.

>> Love what you're doing now.

>> Thank you so much. >> Really fucking cool, man. So, I'd like to do full-blown life story on you, and cool, all that awesome excited again to it. >> Cool, all right, let me start you up with an intro. >> Just in Mooch, Dealerado, you spent

years in street gangs before becoming a chapter president in the Mongols motorcycle club. During a nearly 15-year run with the Mongols motorcycle club, you helped lead the club's expansion across the northwest Midwest and Australia. You serve as president of several chapters before rising to regional representative. You reinvented yourself as a social worker and mental health therapist helping at risk youth.

You documented that journey in your book, the ride of my life from street gangs to motorcycle clubs to social worker, it's quite the arc, yeah, quite the arc. But, um, yeah, and then before we get going, a couple things here, everybody gets a gift. Awesome, thank you so much. >> The joints lead gummy bears, mainly USA, legal, and all 50 states.

>> Cool. >> At least for another year when they all loved Reddy, but, uh, and then I got a Patreon account, patrons, uh, it's a subscription account with built of them to quite the community and, uh, to be honest with other the reason I get to sit here with you today, very cool. So, they get the opportunity to ask every single guest a question.

This is from Mech. How would you apply your life experience and testimony to today's children to be tomorrow's community support on aspects pertaining to a strong family unit, along with accountable, interactive fellowship, and brotherhood sisterhood within a local community?

“>> Yeah, you know, I think every, especially male youth is in the search for identity, right?”

And, um, to be surrounded by people with similar morals and values and, you know, in an early age, maybe you don't recognize it, but we're, we're pulled together. It's as tribalism, and I think, you know, from my experience, what I've learned is if you can get involved in positive, actually, like pro social activities, like for me, wrestling was huge for me growing up because I got to learn personal accountability, if I was losing, it was my fault,

I couldn't blame the quarterback, but I also got to be a part of the team and travel with the team and see if the role my, my role played in the whole and the bigger picture. And so, I think, you know, getting youth involved in these pro social activities, getting them to learn these positive lessons, instead of, you know, hanging out and supervise with negative peers, um, you know, that plays a really big role, and then on top of that,

I came from a very tight knit Italian family, so I had a lot of support, even when I was in trouble.

I mean, I learned, you know, they make sure I was learning lessons, but I still always had that support,

and, you know, not everyone has that, these days there's a lot of single parent households, a lot of youth I work with, their parents, or, you know, their single parent, they're working all the time.

“So, also trying to find that community piece, I think, is super important.”

I think a lot of that's been lost where, you know, neighbors don't talk to each other and, you know, but if, if people are friendly and open up or you find like minded people or shared morals and values, and you find this community, be it church groups or, you know, uh, there was all sorts of different stuff that were where if it's your identities tied to or your hobbies or tied to it. So, I think that that would be the link that would be the important part is finding a community,

instead of trying to do things on your own. That's, I mean, it seems like the whole one common theme of your entire life is looking for brotherhood, for sure, from being a kid to young adult to, I mean, even today, it seems like that. Am I right? Yeah, absolutely. We're, we're to that come from. You know, on reflection, I think maybe it's from being an identical twin,

you know, everywhere I went, I had somebody with me, you know, like you mean family vacations, school, you know, any kind of, we've followed in the church footsteps for the most part. I think that played a big role. I think starting sports really early, all of my, pretty much every one of my family was a school teacher or sports coach. So, I, you know, played every sport there was growing up and really got into wrestling.

“And so, I was always in this team thing and I think I was kind of, once that started,”

I really kind of kept it going. But I also think being a twin is trying to identify, at least the goal of the time was to kind of come up with my own identity. And at the time,

And we're not two people. I'm one. And finding this identity piece. And I think that played a strong role in it as well.

Is that, do, uh, twin nephews? Is this the, they're very young? Is this, is this a common thing with,

“between twins, searching for your own identity? Yeah, I would think so because the tough part is, right?”

Like most people, they're parents dressed on the same one, they're young, right? And they go to the same school, and then the same grade, and they share the same friend group. One thing my parents try to do is in high school, they separated, we went to different high schools. I lived with my grandparents, actually. And yeah, we went to different high schools, which initially the plan was so we didn't have to compete at the same weight class. But in reality, so we could try and develop our own peer groups and, you know, have different,

like I was, he was in the country and I was in the city. But well, that little experiment taught me as I didn't help much. Like we still, we still, you know, his friends would come over or mine. And then we all get to know each other and we'd have this big overlap. But yeah, I definitely think, like, you know, if you spend a ton of your time with somebody, it's something eventually, people refer to you as the twins, right? And then so like wanting to like stand out on your own and not be, you know, just kind of enjoying with somebody else the whole time makes a hell of a lot of songs.

All right, let's start at the beginning. Cool. Where'd you grow up? I grew up in Salem, Oregon. So the capital, Oregon, and like said, I grew up, I'm going to tighten it Italian family. So we did, you know, all the breakfast or all the dinners on Sundays, every holidays and birthdays and real supportive community,

most of my family members were school teachers. My biological father and mom were never married.

And then he went to prison when I was six, I believe, for 10 years. But then my stepfather, he was like my dad. He was my role model. He was, he was, he came into our life and I was around five and that's where around time they married. So he was involved a lot more than my biological father was. I know growing up, my mom wanted to have relationship with my dad so we'd go visit him in prison once a month and one of those things upon reflection was like, wow, okay, I was exposed to some things

that, you know, nothing crazy, but just getting used to that system, right? Like, you know, and just the institution and, you know, one of the things I've learned as I got older is

“you don't know what's normal, what's not, when you live in a household and that's what you see,”

you know, it's not stuff people talk about, it's normal. It's normal, you know, and we said a lot with the, you know, children of abuse and, you know, domestic violence, all that stuff. It's not like you go to your friend's house and talk about it normally, right? And so you think that's normal until you have other experiences. And so I think not knowing my father might, you know, not having that type of relationship with my biological father. But then I said, we sort of playing sports, you know,

got really involved in team stuff and then I really fell in love with wrestling at a very early age. And do you remember your biological father? Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, he's still like he's in my life. He's been, uh, I hate to say it, so probably watch it. But I equate to him, like, as a friend of like, we talk often, he's as his older years. He's been very supportive and he's been great. Now, at the time, you know, he would write me letters and I visit him once a month and when he got out,

he would go see him every couple of weekends or whatever. But, um, you know, he was figuring his life out too. He just got an out of prison and trying to figure out what was an accident. So he played a role in my life, but it wasn't like the best of the father figure like my stepdad did. Do you remember what he wanted to prison? Yeah, yeah, tell me about that. So he was involved in a cocaine conspiracy drug dealing operation. And, um, again, thinking about things you don't notice to

you look back on. Like, we'd spend the weekends there and there'd be stacks of cash on like, you know, in a kitchen or on a coffee table. And I'm, you know, I'm like five six years old. So, you know, I didn't really think much of it. But, you know, yeah, the jet boat, we used to go skiing and, you know, kneeboarding and all, and inner tube being and stuff. Um, so he had all the nice stuff. But, I remember people were coming going all the time. I remember his house got robbed once and I was thinking,

"Who would rob my dad? That's crazy." You know, there was a, there was a very specific memory. I have, for me, my twin brother, we're the back seat of a car. And he got out of it, talking to a friend, like, kind of in the country. And he had a, like a oozy. And he was, they were shooting at pop plans with it. And, uh, you know, things, these, these random memories of stuff like that. And I remember coming home from school and my mom telling me, you know, your dad was rated by the FBRDA. And, um, and I was like,

"Well, why my dad's never done anything?" You know, like, I didn't, my young mind couldn't comprehend it.

“So, it came, that came as a complete surprise to you. Yeah, I just, I think I was too young to understand,”

like, will he drug dealing even was or, or is that true? You know, I, I remember at one point, he lifted up his mattress and showed us some guns. I didn't unless touch him or anything, you know, but still, but in my young mind, it was like a BB guns. Because I remember when she said that, he got arrested with one of the things he had was it was guns. I was like, "But there are BB guns." You know, because it was my young mind and it, you know, my young mind was probably trying to make sense of it.

You know, like I can recall being dropped off there before and he'd still be asleep because probably a plate, you know, things like that. Um, again, don't comprehend why. It's just, there was part of dealing with the ad. Um, did it come to a surprise to your mom? I don't think so. She knew. Yeah. Or at, at very least, so his, his whole side of the family, the other diet of drug

it was kind of an abusive household and alcoholic family. And, um, so we had a really rough upbringing.

“And so, in fact, when we were born, we took my mom side of the family's last name, Deloretto,”

my dad's last name, Yola, and Demiola, we didn't take it because, you know, there's the stigma, so to speak, which I guess I didn't help out with the Deloretto name eventually. But yeah, so there was, there was already kind of that piece, right? Where, where they were already kind of in trouble and, and known for that. In fact, my high school wrestling coach went to school with my dad, and, you know, would tell me, like he loved my dad, but he used to, he called him a hood,

like, you know, and he just, yeah, your dad was a great guy, but he was lumped in with the hoods. And, you know, I don't want to see you to go down that road. Um, so they kind of had a reputation. So you got, you, he was a good dad. Yeah, you were close. Yeah, you didn't know anything was

going on. I mean, he cared about he loved you guys. Yeah, yeah, and, and, and always has, I mean,

like I said, the special noun is a dog. He takes, he's, we become very close. Um, but even then, like he did what he could, you know, I, I just think there was a lot of different factors in his life that put him on a different path. How, how was it integrating him with a, with your stepfather? Good. My stepfather's, like, so he comes from, like, us working class family. They ended up buying several seven up RC franchise. So they were all, like, he has an engineering degrees, like, he's,

a lot different than my biological dad, but the kindest nicest guy and there was no jealous of your insecurities. They both got along well. Wow. Wow. Now, my dad's girlfriends all the time,

“didn't always get along with my mom. I remember. I remember that because I think, you know,”

my mom had us when we were 22. And so, you know, when you're a kid and you think of your parents, or they're old, you know, and I'm like, I remember my mom dropped in a soft and my dad's one time, and, um, my dad's girlfriend fight fistfighting my mom and my mom's not a fighter. But, you know,

it's one of those things I remember as a kid. And I was, now I'm like, at first, you know,

I was like, why would, why would someone's mom fight? And I'm like, she was, like, 27 years old, you know, wasn't that crazy? Shit. Shit. Any other brothers and sisters? I have a little brother, Kyle that passed away right before his 11th birthday in 2002. And then, um, and because of that, my parents wanted to have another kid, so I have a sister that's 22 years old now. How did he pass? He was an ATV accident. So my, my stepfather, they moved out to the country, and their family

had like 120 acres, 148 acres, outside of town. And so we grew up riding four wheelers and clouds and stuff. And he, he first had the power wheel, four wheeler, you know, and that wheels one. And then he had like the many, pull, pull start ones and then he ended up having the full size ranch one. And he was out riding around with his buddies and he was riding home for dinner. And he had ran out of gas. He was on a hill. So he leaned over to put it on reserve and the

ATV just rolled over on top of him and suffocate him. Shit. Damn, I'm sorry to hear that. Yeah, thank you. That was a tough time for sure. I will bring you on that, Abon. He, uh, 20, 20, 20, 21. Oh, okay. Wow, quite a difference. Yeah, yeah, but see, I was really close with them. So I was going to pick them up from school and because I said, I lived with my grandparents. So I would be able to pick them up from school. I got them super into punk rock. Um, he actually for a

school project, he had to like write about the best day of his life and I still have it framed where it was a day out with me where he came and watched my band practice and I got him to hit the heavy bag and I took him to a hoppy game and he got to meet my friends, you know, and I got into that punk rock and the interest of skin and culture. And so like he would want to dress like me and he had like his little bedroom and button downs and Doc Martens. Um, so we were, we were really close, man.

“Wow. Wow, damn. That's tough. You still have that framed? Yeah. Yeah. Where is it?”

It's at my mom's house. It's like my collectible stuff that I don't want to lose because I'm moving around. Right on, man. Right on. So you got into wrestling. Yeah. Yeah, my uncle, my uncle was in a wrestling coach, but he was, he was a football and basketball coach, but he was kind of in that circle and he would, he would teach me my brother stuff even before we started in the math club.

And he would always trying to keep me and my brother fighting each other all the time. So he tried

to chose the cool stuff. My biological father was in a boxing. And so, you know, he was trying to get us into boxing early on. But we're, you know, two, three, four years old. Um, I was always told and I don't have a memory of it. But I was always told that there was a time when my dad put me in my twin brother in a, in a diaper box and that is boxing. Oh, shit. That's awesome. How did you, I'm just, I mean, how did you, did you, did you reconnect with your dad? Was there a, your biological

father? Was there an absence there? I mean, obviously was once a month, but did it just completely fall off? And they were completely fell off, but it definitely wasn't consistent. And as, because I was towards end of high school when he got out. And, um, you know, I'd go stay with him, but a lot of times was like, I'd go stay with him because he wouldn't tell me what to do. And I could be able to, you know, have my friends over and go out when I wanted. Um, so I kind of took advantage

of that. And then, um, he, yeah, he struggled with addiction to on and off. And so there would be times where we just wouldn't hang out or I wouldn't talk to him. And, um, and then, you know,

motorcycle. Like I have pictures of us like four or five years old sitting on his gas tank of his old Harley, um, and he did some prison time with the local club, the gypsy jokers. And so when we, once my brother and I started the club and started to hang it out, then he came, it was coming around more.

In fact, the one and only time, well, we have sense, but the first time I ever rode motorcycle

with him side by side, I was in a club called the Vagos and my dad was on my brother's bike. And we arrived through town and we got pulled over for, um, not stopping at the line on a stop side. We get pulled over and turns out the cop that pulled us over used to be a corrections officer, knew my dad from prison. And I might go great. You know, here we go. And my dad didn't have a motorcycle endorsement or anything and they got in it notice. So he let us go, we get about

half a mile down the road, we get pulled over again. This time the cop there used to be a school resource officer by school. So he knew me and, um, the impound of the bike, um, and so then I had to have a girlfriend come pick me and my dad up. And that was like our first time riding motorcycles together. Damn dude. Damn. The last couple months have been all over the place for me, traveling for interviews,

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“All right, back to childhood. So you got into wrestling. What happened? Where do we go from here?”

Yeah, so you know, grade school is grade school. It's a personal sports around junior high schools and my stepfather, my family moved out to the country. So outside of town. So we switched junior high schools for a minute. And it was a different vibe than we were in like the South side of town. It was kind of more like the working class, middle class community. And going out to

It was just that kind of country thing, you know. And this was really when that identity piece started to come play because before I was, it's like the job, right? I was like, I love basketball and sports. And you know, everyone was kind of getting into the scattered crowd scene and those things. And I started first getting involved in listening to punk rock and just trying to figure things out. And that's when like we started getting trouble for fighting. My twin brother used to

he'd been in trouble for fighting since like the third grade or fourth grade. And but in a junior high, he did business getting suspended for fighting. We were getting trouble for stuff like that. And then you both were, yeah, he was getting a trouble more than I was fighting more than I was

“back then. We kind of switched roles later on. Where were you guys fighting about?”

Just high school or junior high school stuff, probably nothing, just ego or, you know, we were the new kids. So would you consider yourself a trouble maker? Then yeah, for sure. I mean, I went, yeah, yeah, no absolutely. Yeah, we were trouble makers. But

like you said, we, our family was supportive, but there was always consequences. Like when my brother

got suspended in the seventh grade, my dad was going to put in a septic tank and he decided he wasn't going to, he wasn't going to order the backhoe. He wasn't going to make my brother dig the ditch because he was suspended. So my brother's having this huge hole for the septic tank. And then my dad got to ask Philip back and I'm going to put it over here. So there was consequences for it. It wasn't like the family was turning a blind eye. I mean, they were doing what they could.

We were probably the first pain that pain in the ass was under that, the last name that group, you know? And so there was this struggle to try and keep us, you know, get us back in lying,

“get us back on track. Will we guys get into? Well, early on, it's like seven, like once I got”

the punk rock stuff. And then once I got, yeah, seventh eighth grade still is just, you know, the basic high school, you know, hallway fights and stuff. But when I went to, I went back to high school. So my, my parents had separated us. I was saying for schools. And so he was going to the country school for wrestling. And then I was at, and like back in the city. And my freshman year, I was into the punk rock band, the dead Kennedy's in the back of my shirt, said Nazi punk's

fuck off. And at this time in that area, there was this white power skin and group called Volksfront. That was getting very large. And most of them were either seniors or graduated, but they would

still hang around on campus. And so I got beat up my first day at school for having a nice day.

They kept calling me a sharp, which I didn't know what it meant. Because pre-internet where you can't just type stuff in and look it up, you know. But essentially, it was because I was anti-racist, you know, like I got beat up over it. And so I shifted, that was a big moment for me. Because then,

“I was like, I'm going to get picked on a bullet for this. I want to know what it is. And I really”

started looking into that skin-head movement. And the traditional roots of it and the anti-racism part of it. So I started slowly, starting to dress that way. And so now I'm having this, like, conflicts with these guys often. And it just continued all through high school. And it escalated to the point where in my mind, I was doing some social justice work, right? Like, I'm anti-racist. But in reality, it was pretty much just doing gang stuff. It was us versus them.

So I was getting in a lot of, you know, there was fights. Thankfully, at that era, there wasn't quite shooting some stuff yet. But I mean, you know, people were getting stabbed with bottles. I mean, it was, I mean, it was, I was like, how old are you? I was in high school. So I got my first felony at 16th for a salt. And then I got a felony in an 18th for a salt. So that was just kind of like our lifestyle was fine on. Let's back up a little bit. Yeah. So hold on. So you use switch schools.

You're going to a city school. There's a skin head gang, a bunch of racists. You're an anti-racist. Right. You just so did you start a gang? Eventually. Yeah. So there. So the term sharp Sanford skin heads against racial prejudice. And it's, it was like, back in, in those days,

it was like an organization, almost a gang. And I never quite aligned with that. I was against

their racists, but I never like claimed it. Right. But eventually, you know, I'm dressing the certain way. And it would attract other people around to stuff like that. So I found this other do that was into that stuff. And then some of the buddies on wrestling team liked the music and the fashion of it. So they wanted it. So the next thing I was a few of us. And yeah, we banded together initially with the goal to defend ourselves and fight back against these Nazis. And then,

you know, it just kind of progressed. And so then a couple of years later we moved to Portland. Let me join the bigger gang and then it's kind of kept progressing. So hold on, let's 16. You get arrested for a felony. Yeah. What was that for? There was a guy in our gang, the capital city who begins. That was getting harassed by this other kid that was not really coming to school often, but he would hang out at the bus stop after school. And I was thought it was Mr. Protector,

you know, I was going to go protect my buddy. So I went up and hit the kid and at that time, pretty young age for him to be involved in drug use, but he was involved in drug use. So when I hit him, it collapsed a sinus cavity broke his nose and cracked his eye socket. So he had major surgery damage, so it made it a felony charge. And I was arrested and spent three years on probation and going to a scared straight program and your management, cutting lawns for the

It's stabbedings happening in high school. Well, describe the first time that happened. Yeah. Yeah. So it's the same thing against the Nazi guys. One of the guys in our group had run into those guys and they stabbed them with a screwdriver, but he got stabbed in the

“stomach and then twice the stomach and then I think twice in the leg, because he was like kicking”

up that money fell down. So something that then things start to escalate after that, you know, because they didn't like, hey, these guys are going to stab me. So then you carry it out for this. So did anybody? I mean, did that, did the fear of getting to anybody? Was anybody like fuck this amount? That's tough to say because just like with the club stuff, we'll get it to later. But when you're wrapped up in it, you know, and especially like at this age, you know,

I'm clearly not mentally developmental, developmental to the point where I'm like being mature. I'm like, all off fire flight. I'm in this zone. I've, you know, I've got this image. I'm a tough guy and what's going to mess with me. So I, I don't think I really thought of consequences. All right, no, I didn't think of consequences. And I was so wrapped up in it that the fear really wasn't there. And because there are, I mean, these guys would come to my house

and bang on my windows, you know, and I have to go outside and fight them and woolly shit. And it was like if we were on a lunch break and we'd go out, you know, we'd leave campus to get lunch. Sometimes they'd be there at lunch and, and they said these guys were either seniors or older. And I wrestled at 124 pounds. Man, I wasn't a big guy. And so yeah, we were just like, felt like if we were out in the community, we would see there, they were going to attack us or reattach them.

So there was this back and forth thing that started out really early. Wow. How much of your time did this consume? I mean, that was my high school for the most part. I mean, I, it was, I took

wrestling last seriously. Unfortunately, I never ended up wrestling in college because I started

missed that semester. I was more into, you know, had this image of the tough guy and, and also the same time, but we were doing the political aspect of it, too, right? Like, my mom was was like going to the PTA meetings talking about that the school wasn't doing anything about this in the Nazis. They were putting like leaflets and pamphlets all over, all over the school and on lockers and like, um, so there was like this community, uh, it was an organization called communities

against hate that I was like riding for a news letter four and we were like, you know, we'd have meetings to like educate people on who and who the Nazis were and what they're involved in. So it's like, if we weren't on the streets fighting, we were doing this like a political piece or like,

“but it was, it, it was my identity by then. Like, it took my whole time because I remember senior year”

when they're like, what are you going to go to school for? What's everyone doing? I was like, I don't know what I'm going to do with my life. Like, you know, I was like, I'll probably play, like, by then, I'd start playing guitar and look like Jam with some of the friends and stuff. And so sort of after high school, I joined a pump rock band. But so it's like, that was kind of, I was like, oh, well, I was in Salem. The big skit I gang was in Portland.

And I was like, yeah, when I graduated, I moved to Portland. I'm going to join the big dogs. Maybe he'd been a punk band. I mean, who were you living with? We're living with your mom or your stepdad? I was living with my grandparents. So your grandparents? Yeah, yeah. My grandpa was like a very, very big whole model in my life. Fat in World War II. You know, he was that generation of tough guy, but he was such a kind of caring person. He taught me amazing ways, amazing thing about the way

to treat women. And he was so good to my grandmother. And, you know, he was singed or they would dance and I, like, he would come and tear before bed. You know, because he's going to bed with his wife. I keep taught me some amazing, just amazing things. He was just a kind and caring person. But, you know, he was a boxing champion in the army. And, you know, he's fought in World War II.

And so he was the tough guy, too. Even though he was, he was a real tough guy because he never

acted like a tough guy, right? He would defend himself or his family, I guess, have needed, but it never came to that. But, so I just, I mean, I hung on everywhere he said. Like, I just, he was, he was, the man I looked up to. What do your grandparents think when they've got a gang full of skinheads banging on the doors trying to get you to come out? So that, when that had happened, that was at my mom's, when I was with my mom and stepdad. And it might be one of the reasons we

moved to, um, didn't happen when I was my grandparents. But, my grandpa knew of what was going on.

“'Cause I remember one time my brother got jumped and my grandpa was like, "All right, who are these guys?"”

You know? Um, but I remember more, like, my grandpa memories are more like the disappointment and me when I get in trouble. Like, that, well, when I got my felony, my adult felony, I was still in high school. She was like the end of my, my high school year. And then, I went out, gotten this fight and then went to a concert in Portland. And when I came home the next day, he said, "Hey, the concert here, looking for you." And, um, um, and cops came and they were trying

to interview us and we waited till we got an attorney and we ended up going to jail. And, so now we're on probation and I'm why I'm out on probation. I get in another fight and the cops come back by and I said, "I'm out of here. I'm going to go on the run." 'Cause that doesn't, you know, young kid, I thought I'm going to go to prison. And I just remember my grandpa sitting down, and just crying and saying, like, "When's this going to stop?" Like, "You can't run for

everything." And that, I mean, that's something I've never forgotten. Wow. What was that fight over?

kidnapped a month before that. And when I said that, I said, "Yeah, so we were out one night,

“trying to buy beer." You know, young kid, or I think we were, yeah, we were 18. And there was this older”

skin I do in town that would buy beer for us if he was around. So we went to his house. He wasn't there. And one of the guys with me was one of the guys from the Portland gang, the older guys. So we were trying to be cool and pressed the older guy. And the kid, there was a guy also going to the studio house. And we said, "Hey, man, can you go buy some beer?" And he said, "Yeah, sure." And he was just, kind of, I don't know. We thought he's been sketchy about and we already came back, didn't give us the

correct change. And so to us, we were like, "He's trying to rip us off, so we beat him up." And until I was like, "Hospital or anything," but, you know, we beat him up pretty good and took his stuff. And of course, he told the guy that live there because they're friends. And, you know, I'm in this like, untouchable mold in my mind. Like, you know, we're hot shit. And, um, this guy that live there had called the mutual friends and said, "Hey, man, I have that money.

Oh, you want to come by and pick it up." So, him and I went over there and we're not going to do our things. Yeah, come on in. And as soon as we walk in, around the door shuts behind us,

“there's about 15 people in there. And they pushed it up against the wall. One guy's got a gun on me.”

The other guy had a cue ball in a sock and he was hitting my friend. And because of my affiliation with the gang in Portland, they just kept saying, "Don't touch him." But if, you know, if I would have done anything they would have. And I kept denying it denying it. And my dumbass, they took my wallet. And this was back in the days of renting video. So I had a blockbuster video card in this kid's name because, you know, I was such a gangster that I was going to go rent movies in this

name and never bring him back, you know. And, uh, they go, you don't know them, huh? And they look

and I say his name and I just go fuck me. And one of my friends was in the card down the street. And he always driving my grandpa's car, of course, because I was messed up my grandpa's car. I was in my grandpa's car down the street. And, and some lookouts, he had come up a stairs and I said, "Hey, he's got somebody out front." This was all around right at the same time and they pulled my ID. And so my friends and his underwear by now, because they're taking his clothes off

for their hidden them. They had my wallet. As the door opened and said that, so here's our chance. So we just started swinging and running out to the door. So we're running down the stairs, people are swinging bats and it's going up the stairs. And I'm running to the car and I'm yelling my friend like, "Start the car, start the car." And right as I get in the car, they shoot at us and they shopped a window at my grandpa's car. And my job was senior in high school band,

like, you know? And, uh, my buddy that had to get hit with the pool ball. He was all bloody, he was in his underwear. He's running down the street within his boxers, his wings hanging out, he's all bloody. And a family and a many van are coming home from church and they open the door and they told him to just get in. And so they got us out of there. Wow. So there's that piece to it. Another piece is one day after school. There's this kid that she's dating some girl in my

high school. I didn't know if she was, but he started dressing like a skinhead. And of course, that was my territory. So I had to ask him who he was and where he's from. And I didn't like his ad tubes, so I hit him. And she, she turned it, obviously, she had to grudge over it because I was being an asshole. And so she hadn't rounded up some friends, I guess, to try and beat me up. So they started calling me at my grandparents house. And this was a week after that kidnapping situation.

And because the window of my car got shut out, I don't know if they had heard about it or what, but I, because I didn't know who's calling me, right? They just kept making threats and they said, "Well, you're going to meet us at the park or we're going to shoot up your house like we shot up your car." Well, that's my grandparents. It's the last thing I want to happen. So me and my brother and two other guys, you know, I had a car up there early to see who was going to get there and how

many people there were, because I mean, you know, these guys that kidnapped there was a bunch of them. They were older, so I wasn't like super confident in it. So I had some guys that got there early to scout the spot and then me and my brother showed up. And when I walked up, it was these like nerdy kids from high school, like, I don't even pay attention. I knew they were, but I like,

they were never on my radar. And they started trying to act tough. And I was still like trying to

comprehend, like, "Look, like, wait what?" And so there was four of them and it was just me and my brother at the time. And so I was carrying a pistol, so I took my pistol out and I handed it. Oh, there was a third friend there, because I took my pistol out and handed it to my third guy, because I'm like, "I'm not going to use it." And I didn't want to fall out when I'm fighting. And I just, we just start hitting these dudes. And one of them I'd hit with the ball. I felt,

“there was like a Henry Weinhard's orange cream soda, always remember, because it was an empty one sitting”

there on the ground. And I had picked it up and hit this kid with it. Well, they had the girl that had called and started all this. She was at top already on the phone with the cops. So as we're fighting, once they started losing, she called us. And we hear sirens and we take off. And this is embarrassing, but it'll date me, but I dropped my pager on the run out of there. So they're in the many van getting ready to leave, and they get stopped by the cops, but the cops didn't have enough

information yet, what was going on. They let them leave. I'm on foot. So I have my, I had to run off their neighborhoods, all the stuff, once I got my pager. But of course, they grabbed the bottle, they fingerprinted the bottle. So I don't know any of this, I'm going to port one of them, but a concert, 10-A-L-O-L guy. Elder guys, how cool we are. I would just repeat these guys up, you know.

what they called measure 11, which was mandatory minimum sentencing, like the tough on violent crime act. And so my charge was assaulting the second degree, I saw with the weapon. So it would have been, if I, if I took it to trial and got found guilty, it's a minimum of five years, 10 months. No matter previous record, no matter the fact that it just turned 18. And I was guilty of it, right? Like, there was circumstances, and there was four of them, and three of us, or whatever, but still,

I was guilty of it. So I took a plea bargain of assaulting the third degree. And I, so we did,

“I think two or three weeks in jail, when we first got arrested. Then I had to go back over Christmas”

break. It's been a whole Christmas break in jail. And then I had to go back into a month after everyone was going on their senior vacations and graduating. I had to go to County jail. It's been about there. And then I did five years of probation off of that. Holy shit. So how many times have been to jail before you were 18? That was those two, two. Yeah, yeah. But going, here's the other thing, two is being 18 years old, only knowing of the jail prison system for me, they're visiting

my dad and prison, or just popular culture, TV and stuff. And in my mind, these were all the racist skinheads are in there. And I'm this 124 pound anti-racist kid. So I was scared to death of jail when I first went in there. The first couple of days weren't bad at all. Well, it wasn't none of it was that bad once I got there. But the first couple of days they had me and my twin brother on the same cell. And I was like, well, that's like a sleepover. It's can't be bad, you know? And I'll remember

because he had they gave us slippers and his zipper had a hole in it. So whenever he stepped

it goes, so he was always making fun of him for it. And one night they came at the guards came

into our cell and split us up because they said, well, if your parents are someone's in a bail one of you out, we don't know if you guys are going to swap ID cards, like get the hell out of here. Like, I'm like, oh, you go ahead, bro. But so they split us up. And they're like rushing me and he's like, hey, here's your stuff. And I put my slippers on and I stepped out the door and I hear, he's just laughing at the cell. He gave me his his holy slippers on my way out.

Wow. There was a, there was a time where someone stole a razor, a razor blade. And so they were doing cell searches and person searches. So they called you out of your cell one and time you had to walk across the whole tier and then go out and get fresh and then come back. So I'm coming back to the

“tier and it's quiet. And I hear someone go, they checked his ass. He's walking funny. I'm like, what?”

I look over and it's my brother. Holy shit. Wow. So you and your brother were, I mean, even after they split you guys up in the different towns, you're still running the same gang doing all the same stuff. Pretty much. So when I got into that skinhead stuff, he listened to the music. But he was, went to this country school. He thought he was going to be a rope or he was in a cowboys and he practiced rope in in the backyard. And he had a cool belt buckle with a spare on it that spun around when

you felt like they, you know, he was really cool. But those Nazi dudes that were always looking for me

didn't know how to twin. And they jammed him up at like a circle K. And I think kind of from then, he'd realize he's going to be assumed it's him. You know, it just he became his beef too. And then so he was like, well, as we'll join too. So then he got kind of into it. And we started doing stuff together. So what did you, what did you guys had to pour it on? Right after high school, I went after got out of jail in high school. I moved to Portland. And part of it was good for me in the

“fact of probation. So when I'm on probation in Salem, which is a smaller town, it was a very strict”

probation. When I went to Portland, I'm on gang probation. But I'm a skinny white kid and a gang probation is in the Northeast part of Portland. And my PO, it's this bigger black guy and he's like, what, what'd you go to jail for? He's like beating up Nazis? Yeah, I mean, I just don't get in trouble. You're going to get it. You know what I mean? They, they would visit me at work or anything

to do during samples and stuff. I never really did drugs back then. I didn't really drink.

So it's like, it was all fine for me. You knew what gang you guys wanted to join. Yeah, yeah, there was a gang. They're called the Rosity Bawver Boys. I have Rosity on my knuckles and my arm. And they had started in 1995 right in the early era of Portland. I was the same thing as Salem. There was a lot of neo-Nazi skin and gangs there. And they had, it would reach national news when the neo-Nazi group there. You saw Dwight Pride, which became folks from head killed in Ethiopia,

and immigrant. I'll get us her off. Beat them to death with baseball bats. And so there was a big trial with a family of the deceased. Had sued Tom Metzger and Widerian resistance. So there was a big political trial going on. You know, and so it was all over the media and stuff like that. So there was like three or four anti-racist skin-head gangs there and kind of the main ones from each one aside, well, let's just have one and they kind of either beat up or ran off the guys and weren't

down and they go form together and they started row city. So by the time I was coming around, they were lonely, not only like, anti-racist gang of Portland. So any punk rock show I went to, they were there. You know, and you go all the different concerts that they were there, because they were showing up to make sure Nazis weren't there, plus we all like the same music. So for me, I'm 18. These guys are probably 22, 23. So to me, they were the older guys, you know.

So when I moved up there, that was like my first thing. I moved in with one of them,

No, so they were like type of gang that, so and I say gang in this extent too, other than we weren't, there was no monetary value, weren't like hustling drugs or anything, but they were very territorial. So even if you weren't anti-racist skin and if you came to a concert or who are you where you from and you'd probably get beat up and if you came back, maybe you'd get beat up again, maybe not, but then if you come, then you cannot like earn your way in by seeing like you're not a pussy,

because it sounds crazy, but it was a very violent time. And so it's like, if everyone's going to me around, we want to make sure they're not going to run off or you're not soft, so there was a lot of challenges improving yourself coming up through that. Would they instigate things,

“where they would just, I mean, they would beat you up, but would they, would there be an initiation?”

Yeah, yeah, there was a jump in. I had to get jumped in like a traditional, like they just beat your ass and what's a jump in? So we're everyone in the gang surround you and you're supposed to fight and they fight you and they're like, I see stuff on TV, we're like, oh, you only punch and stomach or it's only 10 seconds but ours wasn't, ours until somebody called it. If you hit the ground or colonial pussy and I'm like, dude, I'm getting hit by 12 tough guys, what do you mean?

When I got jumped in, so there was one of the dudes that was kind of like the shot color for the crew. I think early on, once he, once, you know, got comfortable and kind of start coming around

more, I've always been like vocal about my opinion and, and always been good at kind of drawing

people in it and always really rise to leadership positions and I think there was this weird tension between him or he had some insecurities about me, I think and so he had made it. My brother was already in and my friends, I couldn't move up there with me, it was already in before they jumped me. I could, they, I had to wait like two extra years or something. It's good extra years. Yeah, I was a year or two extra that, but they were all, I mean, I got to hang out part of it

everyone but I wasn't a member so I couldn't go to the meetings and couldn't claim to be in my mirror, you know. And you think it was an insecurity? Yeah, absolutely, especially after like when I joined and stuff too because he had given me some talks and it was like, you know, he had, I had brought like a lot of the younger guys up with me and then, as I was in, I was a very active dude, you know, I'm out spoken, I'm pretty sociable, so I was bringing people around and so I

think he kind of was seeing that that sphere of influences is changing. What, I mean, what are you on your brother's side about this? You guys seem, well, so it's times of gets. Yeah, yeah, and you're not a couple years later, you're still not in. Yeah, so him and I fought twice physically over it

“when he was drinking and stuff because he would be like, that's why you're not in or whatever. And”

I'll also say part of it was eat my ego. Basically, I wasn't ready to be in cockiness. You know,

I mean, it wasn't all his fault, but yeah, I think it was a year after my brother got jumped in and then I got jumped in. That dude, I'm talking about the leader guy. We had been in a concert one night and this dude was saying a bunch of racist stuff and was grabbing on some girls. We beat him up. Well, apparently he was friends with this leader guy and he told them that we were saying, racist, you know, some dumb like to get a support and it was this guy's chance to finally beat

me up, right? Like, now we had a reason. So my band was playing a concert and he had been driving around town all the guys when he saw me. He was going to break my jaw and he's a big dude and he's very tough fighter and I'm sitting at the bar next door to where my band's playing it. I was 20 years old, baby. So, you know, probably, you know, yeah, because I'd have to fake at these. I'm sitting the bar and he comes walking in and I just remember my stomach dropping. This is the leader. Yeah,

yeah, your leader. Yep. So he walks in and he goes, hey, me and you got to go for a walk, which I know what that means. I mean, we're going to go fight. So we go into this alley and he starts fighting me and I didn't fight back because I was like, hey, I'm sure he can win. Be whether I could or not. I didn't want to like make things worse or like he already kind of had fragile ego state and then I don't know. I just didn't want to make things worse and I just wanted to be over as quick as possible.

“And I remember he was slamming my head against this brick wall and I put my hand up and it broke”

my thumb. That's one of my thumbs on that. He looked in my the bone was sticking out of my thumb and I had to play a concert then. So it's like, I had it all taped up and I remember when I was strumming the guitar every now and again, the strings would get up underneath it. Oh, it was an early day. No early. But so my point is when I got jumped in was two weeks after that. So I'm in a cast. So I black eyes from him beaten me up and then I supposed to fight 12 guys. So that

didn't go well. Did you ever make a mens with this guy? Yeah, actually within the last few years we've we've gotten within the last few years. Yeah, he called it apologized about four years ago. I mean,

he was always shit because why I was in I left that world when I was 25. So it was only I was only

in for about five years. He has stayed in it, right? So there was those years where we were like, we had to coexist, but we didn't always get along. And then when I left, he was trying to rally everyone to jump me out and you know, which didn't happen. What does that mean? So you're in the

And I did it. The reason they, well, he wanted to jump me out as he said it, like once you're in,

“you're not allowed to be in any other gangs. And I joined a motorcycle club now. Now,”

obviously you think knowledge and that's not a gang. It wasn't the same thing. But at the time, it was just him using his influence trying to get me beat up, I guess. And so years later, you know, he had reached out and we had pretty deep talk. And then now we stay in touch and talk pretty often. Wow. If you've been listening to the show for a while, you know this is something I care about. We've had regenerative farmers and health experts on. We've talked about soil health,

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“All right Justin, we're back from the break. I think we're just talking about getting jumped out.”

Yeah, so I was in for about five years and what was cool about that time too is I was in the band then too. So I guess that I'd played some music with people in high school. We'd made up after

school to build it just gets house, you know, I played guitar and we never liked to chose or anything.

In high school, my or when I moved to Portland, my first job was at the hot topic. That's during the moment. It's embarrassing. But there was a guy that moved there from Connecticut. That was in this other smaller punk rock band and he was trying to get a band together. And so the system manager hot topic, her boyfriend played bass. So I was like, well, I played guitar and he's saying so we just kind of put this band together. Because that first it was still the guys I was playing

with in high school and then my friend from Zack that I met a hot topic. I would have him come and kind of jam with us, but he was like more kind of misfit soundy and he was like, well, I was seeing about vampires in shit. So he wanted to do more like a street punk thing and so we kind of built this band

and at first, well, I feel like everything I do, I go like all in. So when we were doing the band like

next thing, you know, we're touring several months. Like we were we've fur four of those five years. We were on the road for a month, home for a month or on the road for two months. Hold on, hold on. You were touring. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. We were that good. You were good. We put out three. We had back then you had to be on a record label. If you wanted to music out there, right, for distribution and all that stuff. So we had three. We had an EP come out. Then we did a full length on a bigger label and then the last one was another EP on a bigger

like, bigger for punk rock. They weren't like-- What was the name of the band? The escaped.

There was a compilation called, given the boot on Hellcat Records and we were on that. So that was like the most mainstream we got. But we played like some warp tour dates. We played CBGBs in New York City. We played Gilman's tour. Holy shit. You guys were playing the warp tour? Yeah, we did a couple warp tour dates. Cleveland, Ohio, then Oregon. And then, you know, the famous CBGBs in Portland were the remones and everybody played and then Gilman Street, which is where like Rancid and Green Day and

“those bands first played. So we got to play a lot of those venues. We can beat all these guys?”

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah. I'm still friends with like, so like dropkick Murphy's or like some of those bands are you serious? Yeah, I'll bar the singer and Ken Casey base for a really good friends of mine. Who's your favorite punk rock bands? Man, that's going to be probably clash.

It's always been that. I think as far as like authentic old school punk rock, the clash.

I recently saw the misfits when they got back together and I just out in the style, Joe, it was cool, you know? Right on. And they're more like mainstream stuff, probably Rancid because they sound like the clash. Wow. I've been damn, dude. Quite the, uh, quite the experience by the time you're what, 20, 20. Yeah, 25, 25. I think was around the time I left, 24, 25. When we broke at least, we stopped playing in 2005 and then we did a reunion show in 2015 and that was it. I was the last

time to play guitar. That's the last time you played guitar. Yeah, and I went in between. I never really played guitar either because I got the time I played it all through high school and then I was in this band for five years, but I just played power chords. There was a punk rock. I'm not good guitar players jumped around a lot, played power chords. And so like once I wasn't playing it to like play music, I wasn't that guy would sit in the room and play guitar or play along to the

radio and sort of that's lost interest in it. What's it like? I mean, there's a young man

“going out into a warp tour. I mean, that's how many people are there of them? It was great. So”

warp tour wasn't one of our bigger shows because there's so many other bands playing at the same time. So like Lars Frederikson from Rancid, he was an aside project called Lars and the bastards and they had played right before we did and they were telling everyone, hey, go see the escape. I don't want to say like AFI or some other big band was playing at the same time of us. So you know, it wasn't our biggest crowd. Gotcha. But you know, the crazy thing I remember

about tour that is funny looking back on now is this was pretty pretty internet and definitely pre navigation. So like when I was booking our tours, there was a book called Book Your Own Life and it was a tour managing it. Yeah, I wrote the songs and book the tours and everything and so there is this book called Book Your Own Life where it's like look up Cleveland and say, okay, here's the venues you can play, here's the maybe house houses you can stay at and here's the

promoters and how everyone's like, you know, phone number and address and this was in that era email was just starting. So really you'd make a press kit and I'd mail out packages and I'd mail out

demo CDs and record labels and so I booked this a very first U.S. tour I was 20. We booked this whole U.S.

I booked this whole U.S. tour off of this book and it was a trip and then then now we're navigating the country. We're going to trip away to get road maps, you know, I mean, this is not the date myself but I remember we had a cardboard box between the driver and passenger seat full of cassette tapes, you know, mixed tapes and then we had bring, you know, I'd have a pocket full of quarters and case you get lost, you got to go use a pay phone and then I remember like map quest was kind of

starting to come out. So then we could build at least an idea of where we're going but if you got off route, you still had to have a map or I was just crazy for me to think of a bunch of kids in the early 20s navigating the country with no navigation, no cell phones. Yeah, different world plans. Yeah, it must be about the same age. I mean, were you, I'm just,

“were you drinking, drugin, party in? No, not really. So like, what were your grades like?”

When I applied myself, they were decent but around Haskell's high school, I was getting like B's and C's. I mean, I graduated but I wasn't like, and when I went back to college years later, I was on a roll and I've been a thawner society and all that stuff for like, just put all your potential under the gangs and punk rock. Yeah, I mean, it's pretty fucking impressive. I mean, organized an entire gang got into another one, managing and playing and promoting the band.

I mean, that's a lot of shit. Yeah, it's the active. I like to stay active. Yeah, I'm too. I think I've been really blessed with networking, like I've been very good at aiming people on deep maintaining relationships. Like I said, allow those bands who played with, I'm still friends with. I was just an Austin Texas last week and got to see some friends I haven't seen in 20 years.

So on our first US tour, our drummer was a mechanic. He's like, this band's going to be great.

It's going to make it golden. And we had issues all along the West Coast. In fact, our van broke down right outside of Compton and, you know, this is like, like I said, we're 20 years old. And I'm skinheads and punk rockers. Guys, Mill Hawks and stuff. And the California, I don't know if they still do, I'm sure they probably do. But if you break down on the interstate, they just told you off the interstate. So they drop us off and Compton to find a car battery at

And then, you know, everything worked out. We got to the venue. But we were just outside of Austin,

“Texas, and the van broke down. And when we were out of the van trying to figure out what was going on with”

the car, the carburetor, it caught fire. And then the van burned to the ground. Right. And so we had to call the bands we were supposed to be playing with. We called say we're not going to make it. Well, that morning, they came and picked us up. All the equipment that we that we had salvaged and gotten out of it. And most of our bad. I mean, we were able to get most of the stuff out of it because, you know, it started the front and worked it back so we could get

most of the stuff out. But we ended up staying in Austin, Texas for I was there for two months. Because we would play shows. And then we got enough money. We'd send one guy home on a gray home. And then we'd have some other local bands guy fill in. And then we'd send the next kind of gray

home. And so, you know, I made some great friends there. And so when I was back there last week,

I got to hang out with all those guys and catch up. And it was really, really cool. That's awesome, man. Wow. Wow. So were you in a gang in the pump rock band at the same time? Or was it one of them? Yeah. No, I was. And it was one of those things where like each, especially in the skin had seen, but also in like the hardcore punk rocks in the hardcore music scene. A lot of the bigger cities had their own crews or gangs. And so it was actually for me a good networking piece.

Because I met a lot of dudes from these other crews and kind of was just a network yet to know each other. So they'd come to our shows because of their shows. And it was cool. I mean, I met a ton of people that way. So it was going. And years later, when I got into club life, some of those dudes did too. And so there was like these connections I had with other national clubs because I knew this guy from the hardcore scene or the punk rock scene. Why did you want, what did you want,

jumped out of that gang? What was the name of that gang again? The Roast City barber boys? Yeah, CBB. Yeah. Um, so towards the end for me, I was dating this girl for the last five years, for much whole time as in the band. And she was, she had won some thing where she was like, trying to be a VJ for a fuse TV. So like some contest. So she was in New York City for the final list. And she said, hey, where should I go, what large should I go to? And I said, hey, there's this,

I won't say the name, but I was like, hey, there's this really cool bar down there. All the bands hang out there. So she went down there. And one of my favorite bands was there at the time. And she went up, she's talking to singer. And he was wearing the shirt for this promotional company that I really liked. And he'd taken it off and gave it to her. And of course, the other night they ended up picking up. And I don't hear this for months and stories vary on

whatever. But either way, my brother had called me and said, hey, there's this thing on the internet because this competition, like, you had to vote for who you wanted to win. And these people are like, well, at least I wasn't like Kristen and Slepto so and so. And these, we didn't like, we played warp tour together. And we maybe met a few times. We weren't like friends, but we knew of each other. And like I said at the beginning, he knew me enough to go, hey, there's this t-shirt. And so

there was some ego involved for sure. But the biggest place was I want to know, like, she was at first saying it happened. So I was reaching out to this guy and he wouldn't hit me back. He wouldn't answer. So I started reaching out to mutual friends. And my thing was, I just wanted man to man to talk to me. Did it happen? Why, you know, whatever. And he's involved in a pretty big gang out of their crew out of New York. And so I don't know if she probably would

stop. He could cool guy me or tough guy me. I don't know, but he was married at the time. I don't know if he still this or not, but some of my mutual friends had called and said, hey, I was like, hey,

“I just want this guy to get hold of me and they say, yeah, you need to stop pin people up or”

you're going to get hurt. And I was like, hold. So now I'm getting threatened after all this happens. So I said, well, hey, if he doesn't call me, before he plays in Portland, it's not going to go good

for him. And never heard from him. So I had some means of scouts watching him and boys the

Idaho. We watched him in Seattle. And when they came to Portland, we jumped him and beat the band up. And they're a bigger band. And they were a bigger crew. So all these other skin and crews were only West Coast that initially were cool with it. People were picking sides and there's this drama. And his brother was an even larger band. And they were going to come back to play Portland. So his brother reaches out to our gang and he says, hey, this issue seems

between my brother and his brother. So why don't me and then my brother germ? So why does the him and Jeremy meet transquash this? And when we had planned when we jumped him, you know, we had planned it like a full military army, you know, we had our spotters over here in the shooters in the back. And cars down here. Because we these those are very reputable crew. And we weren't sure what to expect. Hold on. Go ahead finish. I want I want to I want to ask you afterwards,

“you know, what all goes into what what planning goes into what are going to jump somebody?”

Okay. Would you talk about spotters, shooters, all kinds of shit? Yeah. Yes. It sounds pretty intricate. Well, and I can't lean into that because so when they were when we were, I had people watch them and in Boise, because I wanted to get a headcount on who they had with them, how many they had on the road? You know, who had secured, did they have security with them? Where do they post

all the information. And because we watched Boise do the same thing and Seattle. And then we kind of lost them and Seattle because I was trying to have them tailed. And there's only one, you know, interstate five goes from Seattle, Portland. So my brother was on the side of the road with his Harley and pretending like it was broken down until they came by and then he just got in behind them and called us. Then we knew where to expect them, which way they were going. But because they were,

like you said to us, we thought to a reputable guys that we didn't know if they had guns on and we didn't know. You know, they were on tour to other bands, so they had a good amount of people. So we had people there all day super early, see if you know who they had coming down there. We did have guys that were stationed to just stand in the back with firearms in case they pulled firearms. Otherwise they don't get involved. We had spotters up in the high array, which

next door was the parking garage to see who was coming and going. If lawn were law enforcement was, you know, because you can see the ins and outs. And then we had, we all came down. So we went there the day before and dropped vehicles into leave. And then we came in at different vehicles. So we can separate and go somewhere else. So I mean, we planned it pretty well, you know. And then it went off of that hitch. Got out of the before law enforcement. And so then they want to schedule

this meeting to make up with us. And I wasn't allowed to go anywhere in the area, because I figured my presence there would just make it worse. And I don't know if it was leadership on my end for not impressing the importance enough, or I was just people comfortable or cocky, but we didn't do any of that the second time. We took the guide as word, and this was going to be a meeting. So there was like three or four guys with my brother. But my brother walked. They said, okay,

here's what they've got to call. He walks up. And as he's walking up, there's these three guys that

come up to him two of which were friends of ours. One had saved him my house. And they were both

“in bigger bands. And just as a caveat one, one became a house angel later, but not important”

until later. But anyways, some of the three are from there. And then up jump in my brother. And they beat him with a club or he said it was a table egg. But he was beaten so bad that he was an ICU for two weeks. His job on had broken into his ear canal, destroyed his ear drums. Equilibrium has interstem brain damage. Like had to wear and had to walk again. His ear fell off. Like it was in his fucking hand. So he couldn't get a hold anyone for like the check-ins. You know it went.

And all said he calls me. And I'm like, where do you at? And he's like, they got me. They got me. And I was like, who got you? And he, you know, he's just had all this brain damage isn't what's going on. And he said, I'm in a bush. And I was like, where? I'm just like trying it. And he had walked up to a clothing store. The buffalo exchange. And they just saw him covered a blood and they locked the door. So by the time I get down there, there was ambulance. He was already in the ambulance.

They had brought a busload of people up from different crews, from down from Seattle and up from LA and Sacramento. So they had probably 30 dudes with them. So the other guys were getting they were fighting too. But no one got it like my brother because he got single down jump, you know. So, you know, I now am dealing with my faith. My heart already lost a little brother, right? Now my twin brother is in the hospital with a brain bleed. Families freaking out, you know,

and things got real serious. And it got to the point where he finally got out of the hospital.

But he, you know, his PTSD was bad. He was because of the the interstem or because of the equilibrium. He had spins all, you know, he couldn't get comfortable. He was sick. And he, we had like he had this walker that had like tennis balls on it. But if it wasn't even, he would go like this. And keep him on now he's deaf and he's getting used to being deaf. And because of everything spinning, he's there at the floor, but you're supposed to take him out to practice walking.

So I'd take him to like the store, you know, friendlier or something. And he'd be doing this. And if it was crooked, he'd like start doing this and go after the left. So I'd fuck with his walkers. I'd walk crooked. But he couldn't hear you or anything because you know, he's staring at the ground.

“So that's what he's spinning. He couldn't hear. But it got to the point where once I'm”

so then we have a meeting with the gang and and so the rest of that guy that I talked about before the leader guy and then another dude I looked up to and the crew and they brought in his pillowcase and they empty out some, you know, dump out some pistols out of it and they said, hey, you know, we need to have revenge. We got to rectify this. This is for the name of the crew. This is for retribution. And they said, so we got to go that we knew where a couple of those dudes that

city they lived and they could we got to go down there and take care of these guys. And I said, thanks. So you guys take the bus down there and take these and it was me and little Zack. So

if you guys went to high school with wrestling team then he was in the first crew with me

he joined and so yeah, he ended up being among with me for a while too. So he'd kind of done everything with me and so it was me and little Zack and we okay when we when do we leave and this guy says, no, no, we're not going. You guys gotta go. And I said, I mean, I feel like it's pretty obvious if something happens to these guys. We're going to go to prison. He's like, okay, if that's what we got to do for the reputation of the crew. And you know, it's still pretty locked in. So I was like,

“I guess that's what we're doing and I go home and I told my brother and he lost his mind.”

He's like, why the F would you do that? He's like first first I get jump to take me and then you guys are going to go to prison and he's like, for what? Like how's that going to help again?

fact that my presence in that gang was the issue at this point, right? My band couldn't

“do it anymore because of these guys were like a more of a national gang on a bigger level.”

They were a bigger band. So like the guys from Ransid were one of them in that gang. So they dropped us, kicked us off the label. Like there was all the guys that were my mutual friends. I was trying to reach out to you. They was all everything was done after that. Everything got cut off. Sure. And so around this time right before he got jumped, we grew up writing a Vespos, like from the skin and scene. So we had to like, you know, two stroke, three four

speed Vespos. We were cruising with that. We were cool as fuck on them. And one of our buddies, an older skin and duty on a tattoo shop that I'd worked at, he was started right. He went from

Vespos to Harley. And he let me ride as Harley. It was like, game overdue. I was like, you know,

just the torque, the power, everything. So my twin brother went to the Harley dealership and finance us both sportsters or coastline to my sportsster. And within about two months we traded a man for big twins. And as soon as we had bikes, you know, we were still doing the the crew stuff. He couldn't ride after getting jumped. Harry wasn't supposed to. He couldn't even walk like he was so dizzy. And I remember being at work one day and him called me saying, I need to come pick

him up. I go, where are you? And he tried to ride to a friend's house. And he got there. But he's like, no way. My ride back right now. And so we started hanging out, you know, more interested in hanging out with the guys little Zach had bought in Harley. So like, you know, now there's like a

group of three or four of us riding around. And anything I've done, whether it was a skin and

gang or the band, I was like, if I'm going to do it, I want to do the best of it. So I already was like, cool motorcycle club, you know. And so that was kind of my transition where I was started, you know,

“kind of put one thing behind me and moved on to the next. When did you get your first tattoo?”

I was 16. What was it? I had the Laurel Reef like the Fred Perry logo on my chest. It's covered up now. But I had it to my, and dude did it in the backyard with a guitar string. Homemade like prison style tattoo machine. And then that 17 like me, Jeremy Little Zach. We guys from our old crew got this brother still the end tattoo. It's like a straight razor has stuff behind it now. But and then when I turned 18, I just started getting professional ones thankfully here. Do you have a

favorite? No, I don't think so. Do you have a couple favorites? I mean, I've got a lot of memorial tattoos. That's probably the most to me. But no, I don't know if I have any actual favorite. I lack a mole right on, right on. What's this one? Illinois, I owe. So when we were, I don't know if it's going to get me a shitter enough. But when we, when we started going out with another club to say that, I did another club in Illinois. They said we're going to be there and they were going to kind of

take our rockers from us and they weren't going to have stuff that said Illinois, so I had tattooed on my face. That's a statement. Yeah, out there, workout. Still got it. Still here, huh? Yeah, right on. So you're interested in motorcycle gangs. That was it, right in the Harley. Yeah, yes, there was a club in town called the outsiders, which was like they'd been there since the '60s. They had a chapter in Portland, Antikoma. So a very old school like chopper club. Even at the Valentine mine joined,

most of them didn't even have newer Harley's. They all had custom choppers. If you wrote a sports story, you had a park across a street. That was one of the reasons we traded them in pretty quick. But one of the guys had a dyno and they had called the store bot Scott because he didn't have a chopper, you know, like that was before everyone was riding backers and like it is now, you know. So they were super old school and I didn't know, you know, I read all these books about it,

guess I could. I was skinned and everything else. But I didn't, you know, I didn't know that, like being in it, I didn't know the culture. And so to me, these guys might as well have been Hell's Angels, right? Like to me, I'm like these are some outlaw bikers, you know, they're old school. They were that long-haired, like a biker look, you know. So I was super enamored. So I was like spending as much time with them as I could. I was going to ride some stuff with them, hanging out the clubhouse and ended up prospecting for them for,

“I think, two months. But there was this moment where I kind of looked past the shininess of it.”

You know, and I looked around the room and I was like, and this is a great club and great guys. But I was like, I don't have anything in common with any of these guys. Like, you know, you know, they're listening to the old classic rock and they're like 50, 60 years old. I'm 24 or 25. You know, outside of riding motorcycles, these aren't guys that I would like go to the movies with or take to them. It's barbecue. And I remember just that I was really thinking that and like even questioning, like,

club life, if that was what it's like. You know, I loved the structure of it, the military aspect,

riding in a pack, just the feeling that that was incredible. So there's a lot of aspects I like to it.

“But there was this lingering piece where I was like, I don't know if I fit in here.”

And I was the young guy trying to impress everybody and prove myself, you know, so I was trying to show that I'm tough and I could fight. And the two opportunities I had failed miserably, there was a, was that a bar with one of the members and some dude that was at, you know, some local MMA guy that was drunk and wanted to pick a fight, you know, and he's like, you guys think you're tough because you ride Harley's and you know, it's trying to pick a fight.

He's like, I do this for a living and typical drug bar stuff, you know, and so him and that him and the member of the outside are start fighting and I'm like, here's my chance. Hell yeah, I don't press this dude. I don't pay attention to anything. I don't do anything.

I normally do about who's he really is. Where are they standing? I walk right past his friends and

head in. And next, you know, I'm looking at my feet as I'm flying through the air. So I go back to the clubhouse and they think they may chuck for a while because I got chucked across the room. I said, oh, that's not the reputation I want. And then as I was prospecting, there was out. And so a lot of prospects do the security falling around the members paying attention to what's going on. So normally you're not sitting down. You're not drinking.

So I'm kind of posted up in this guy kept calling me prospect, but he wasn't in the club. And I'm still learning the rules and protocol. And I knew he wasn't in the clubhouse process for, but I know he was like in another club with the friends way. I was, because I couldn't figure out why he was being so blatant. And he just kind of kept poking at me and I had done outside. And one of the outsiders told me to go back inside. I don't know, I was grabbing

him a drink or something. And I was going back in and this guy stood in the doorway and he wouldn't let me pass. And I said, I didn't even get out of the way dude. He was like, so move me. So I hit him. We kind of fought a little bit. And there was an older member there that was visiting from Tacoma from the outsiders. So it was just me and him. And the dude didn't know how to fight. So he kind of like doubled over and I upper cut him and he dropped. And when he hit the ground, my sponsor, so the one that

had like brought me in, he comes running out. And he starts kicking the guy. And it gets broken up. We go back to the clubhouse and I'm thinking they're going to say, yeah, just to knock this dude out. You know, it was so cool. Well, the old timer is with goes, yeah, he was messing with the prospects. So I knocked him out. Like, I can't challenge his opinion. I'm a prospect. He's a member. I just was like, cool, that was my shot. So yeah, and then right around that time. So that was when

the stuff was going on with me and my ex Christian, we had broken up. I was managing a porn store at the time. A porn store. Yeah, one of the members owned a porn store. And so I like, it was a good job for me on tour because I could leave for two months, come back for months. You know, those types of things. Um, and I worked at shift, those managers, I didn't like the ordering and the hiring. But, um, I know I'm 24 years old and I, and I was trying to figure out, you know, what I wanted to do.

So because I left the band, I'm leaving the club, we're the skin and gang. And, um, when I was a senior in high school right before I got my felony, me and my best friend at the time did delayed entry for the Marine Corps. Well, I got the felony. So I couldn't go in. So around 24ish, see, I, I, they had relaxed the felony rule for certain branches. And the National Guard was, I tried every branch that would take them in the National Guard so they could take me.

So I started lasering off some tattoos on my neck, but then like the day before maps, they said,

“hey, we couldn't get the waiver. So then I, so that was initially that was my goal, right?”

I'm going to go in the military. But no, no, brands would take me. Why did you want to go in the military?

I think first structure for some sort of semblance of something to do. Like, I, you know, it's like,

I, I just left the gang and I was looking for some sort of direction. Then I thought, that might be it. And I mean, I was really interested in sewing high school when I was getting in trouble. My grandpa had called a Navy recruiter. My grandpa was in the army, but some reason called a Navy recruiter. And I got home from school. He goes, hey, this guy wants to talk to you. And they were trying to get me to join the Navy. So it's like, my uncle was in the army. My

grandpa was in the army. And so it was like, you know, I was like, okay, it's an option. And then when my best friends and he wanted to join the Marines, I was like, yeah, that would be cool. Let's do that. But he got in and I did it. And then when I was trying to do the National Guard, when the band broke up, three of my friends joined, like, we're all going to, you know, I was talking to these guys and doing it too. They're all still in. And I didn't get in.

And so my cousin lived in Nevada. And all right, inside in Carson City in Reno. And her husband worked for this gas company. And they were hiring people like to teach how to work on gas meters. And then his buddy was also said that he could help me get into electrical unions something. Okay, here's an opportunity to go do one of these two things. Maybe I have more of a career. So I left the outsiders and I moved to port to Rink to Carson City, Nevada.

“I had, and I didn't really have much. I think I mailed a box of UPS close to my cousin's house.”

And I got on the Harley and I rode down there. And went to work for the gas company and was all

I was want to hang out with motorcycle clubs. And I started hanging out with clubs there. And there was a local club called the Booze Fighters that they were going to this thing called the Confederation of clubs. So heard of the Booze Fighters. Yeah, you have some. They've been around since like 40s. Robert Patrick's a member. Like there's like a lot of like they're a very big national club. And but they're not like a 1% alloy club. So there's a lot of great guys in that club. So I was

hanging out hung out with them a little bit. And they were going to this thing called the Confederation of clubs which each state essentially has. And it's where all the clubs in that region meet up and talk about legislation or politics, you know, helmet laws and stuff like that. So I know I'd see all the other clubs there. So I go up there with them. And at the time, you know, I'm not in a club. So it was like, it's a fashion biker. You know, I had a leather jacket with a denim vest over it.

There was a club there called the Vagos that I don't maybe seen on the internet. This was like

early bikers just started having websites and stuff. And there was the first time I've ever met a

house angel like all these clubs are there. And I'm standing outside of this meeting, just meeting people, you know. And I remember these Vagos kept looking at me because I'm wearing a jeans

“a denim vest. And that's what they wear with their patch on it. And I'm thinking, man, I hope they don't”

think I'm trying to be one of the ever something. I didn't even know them. But there was a lot of younger ones. And I was thinking, that's kind of cool. You know, these guys have a little different look. And a lot of them were in a punk rock and skateboarding. I found out later. But this meeting ends. And I was hanging out, I stayed a little bit longer to try and meet some more people and the booze fighters said, "Hey, meet up with us after." And it was one of those like, you know,

go three blocks this way. Take a ride, go here in this street. You'll see us all. So I'm trying to navigate this on my own, you know, driver downtown. And I see a bar with a bunch of green out front. So I assume it's the booze fighters. And as I pull in, I pull in past two prospects. Like I can had a block. And as soon as I pull in and realize, fuck, this is Vagobar. But I'm already here. So I back in my bike up to the curb. And I put my kicks down down and I'm just kind of reading the

rooms. Look, I mean, you know, go outside. I'm looking around like how many they have where they are. And there's probably 30 of them. Everyone's looking at me. And now I'm looking. I'm dressed like them. You know, as I close can be good. So I want to look at the pussy. So I said, fuck it. And I walk into the bar. And I wasn't drinking that time. But I'd order to beer to stab a bottle. And I sat in the corner. And the president came up to me and asked what I was doing there. And we start talking.

And in two hours later, we're still talking. And he gives me his business card and asked what I was doing. And you know, he asked what I was doing there. I said, I was there for work. And the next day was my

first day work. And in my lunch break, I checked my boy's mail and I had a call from him. I asked

him how my first day work was coming. And I was like, well, that's pretty cool. You know. And I'm poor. You know, I just started working out there and moving my cousin. So he invited me over for dinner. So I go over there for dinner. And next next, you know, like every week and go another for dinner. So I started hanging out more and more. And I was like, man, he was older. But there was a lot of

“younger guys. And like, you know, it was, this was Reno. We're nothing closed bars don't close, right?”

So I wasn't really drinking at the time. But we'd stay out late. We're riding bikes fast. I was like, this is, this is it. This is for me. And he was building a new chapter called border town right there on the border of Nevada, California. And said, hey, if you join this chapter, you won't have to prospect. You can just be a full patch member because they need the members to join

the chapter. And so I ended up joining. That was the first like big motorcycle club I got into.

Where's your brother out at this time? So my brother had chosen to start prospecting for the outsiders after I left and moved and moved in Nevada. So he's in Oregon. But I'm now I'm calling him up. Tell him about, hey, there's this club here and he's got a great and a younger guy. So he came around and visited a few times. And I talked to him and moved in down there with me. So when we joined, we joined together, actually. No, sure. Yeah, run on. Yeah, we had what we wrote in Nevada.

We had to ride to Las Vegas to a big run where they handed us our patches. And then

“they're like, you know, put these on. But they said, you have to make sure that they don't peel off,”

right? Like no one can, no, no, no, no, remember, can't grab it and peel it off. And you've got a needle and thread and they're giving you like 20 minutes, you know, come on, come on, we're getting right to leave and we're trying to sew it. And I sewed it to the ironing board. So my best in the ironing board. And what sucks is that was the second time that's happened because with the outsiders when I started prospecting, they had a tradition which they'd asked me not to share. But the protrusion got me

a little buzzed up. And then they go here. So your prospect rockers on, so it was the top rocker to sit outside or some of the bottom one that said Portland. And I'm trying to sew it under the pool table and I sewed the top of it into the, the felt of the pool table. So sewing was not my thing. A lot of people don't think about cholesterol until they get blood work back and the numbers are not what they want them to be. And then it becomes real fast because now you're looking at

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month of subscription by going to dosedally.co/SRS or entering SRS to checkout. That's d-o-s-e-d-a-i-l-y-dot-c-o/SRS for 35% off your first month subscription. Anything significant happened with the botanical. Yeah, yeah. So this is now this is a much bigger club. I'm starting to, you know, in Oregon there was four major clubs there and they all got along. So there was no clubs at war and it wasn't the violent thing. Like every club, everyone thinks their clubs are the best, right? But they all

party together. They worked together and there was no, you know, a big war stuff going on. And when I joined the Vagoz at first, it was like just a fun party stuff. But they were starting to kind of butt heads with the Hells Angels already. And they had, there was some old agreement that I didn't know of, you know, obviously it was new, where there was a club called the Renegades that the Vagoz told to couldn't be in Nevada anymore. And the Hells Angels agreed to it. Well, the Renegades

came back and now they've got support from the Hells Angels, the Vagoz and Matt. So it was, you know, these meetings about what's going to happen. And I'm sitting there thinking like, I was like excited to join a club to ride bikes and party with my friends and I were talking about fighting Hells Angels, you know. And I didn't even know much about Hells Angels. Like so to me, I was like crazy. That's the next level stuff, right? Like a suicide, I imagine. Yeah, and in fact, one of the first

times we thought we might actually have to fight him up is when I saw how structured and impressive they were is we were going to one of those confederation of clubs where those are supposed to be like neutral ground. But there's still a flex there, you know. And the Vagoz had some out of state guys come and we were like, hey, we're going to go here. And if those Renegades guys are there, we're going to tell them they can't be here. And we think we're smart by going an hour or two

early. And when we get there, the Hells Angels were probably going their four hours early. And they had guys and trucks and cars that already blocked off the exits. The guy up, you know, we're in this parking lot. There's guys up on this parking lot. Like they had guys that were roving up and down the

aisles. Like they had a lock. And I'm never being super impressed about their security. Because I've

always been into that, especially from the gang stuff, like that structure and the security and the protocol piece of it. And, you know, they had guys at the back door in the front door and

“I remember thinking, man, if something kicks off, we are screwed. And so we had walkie talkies, I”

think at the time. I remember correctly, or maybe it was next till two ways. It was the next till two ways. But some of the guys in our chapter were inside the meeting. And we, so we don't know what's going on. We're waiting for a call. And then we were in a spotter car and there were some other spotter cars. But it was me and my brother and two members of the Vagoz. And this hell's angel car, they kept pulling up next to us and stopping and then driving off. And one of

the guys said, hey, if they pull up next to us, if they roll that window down, we're going to have to shoot. Like we don't want to shoot them before they shoot us. And I'm sitting there and they're like, okay, this is getting crazy. And sure, shit, man, they pull up next to us. And the window starts coming down and they start yelling, shoot, and I'm just like, and if they got nobody should think, right, when the window comes down, the guy just reaches out, he was like, does this

“on the side of his car, then they drive off? But I remember that was one of those moments where”

I was like, that's how quick these things can happen. And so there were some situations like that, some standoffs. There was a club in Northern California that called Hellbent that I had met their chapter. And they were all younger guys and it was really impressed because they had a president that was like 27. I was like, well, you can be a president of 27. You know, like, cool. And they were getting into what they were Los Angeles and so they ended up joining the Vagoz.

So now I'm going over to Sacramento and reading, it's just can't even imparting what these guys all the time. Because, you know, I mean, Reno, so it's like, I think two, three hour ride. And maybe a brother was so new that we wanted to get our name out there. So we were riding everything.

We would go, Reno to Vegas to LA, Sacramento. We were going back to Oregon. Like, we were always

under bikes. Like, every weekend we had in fact, I got fired from the gas meter job because I was taking time off to ride all the time. Started selling bikes for Harley Davidson, but you got to do that on the weekends. We got fired from that because my whole focus was just, you know, I wanted to be in this club and I wanted to like start earning a name for myself, which is when I got my nickname, Mooch, how'd you get that? We were on a club run to Hollister, California. And

man, it was like 114 degrees going there. It was brutal. Like, we had to pull over every 20 miles

those terrible, biker parties that's out in the field. There's no women. There's nothing. We're

just sitting out. There's no shade even. There was no trees, no water. And everyone was just miserable. And normally, like, in these events, you normally stick with your chapters. Like, our chapter had our own, like, where are our tents and campground food were. But we kind of all

“mill around together, too. And I remember just being exhausted and asking that my chapter president”

if I could go back and camp for a little bit. Because yeah, yeah, we'll be back in a little bit. So I go back in the camp and I'm sitting there and I'm eating the sandwich or a burger and the president walks back up and he goes, man, where'd you find a chair rack? Because there was barely even chairs. And I was like, oh, it's Glenn's chair. And he goes, you're cooking. I was like, yeah, Barry's cooking. I was like, where'd you get that hat? I said, I'm so giving it to him.

He was, didn't I give you that shirt? Yeah. He goes, man, you're a fucking mooch. That's like, all right? And he goes, he goes, that's your new nickname. I was like, whatever. And he goes, I want you to go around and introduce yourself as mooch. So, you know, it was new. So I to go chapter to chapter. He would set my vlog a mooch from board town. And every time I said mooch, they go mooch, huh? We went like a beer or a burger or something. And I go, well, yeah, this is going to be all right.

And that was it, man, stuck with me ever since. That's right. It wasn't that I ever asked for things. Or, you know what I mean? It just things worked out. Man, they came my way. And I say, okay, right on, right on. But yeah, so we did that run. We had a couple of other like, runs with housing just that didn't turn violent. Or, we got there too late. You know, those types of like, there was a time that the housing just had rated the virus clubhouse and

and redding. So we're like, you know, we got a call. We had a rush over the hill to get there. But of course, by the time we were there, it's over. So we're just there to help us security and support.

“So there was these like, almost cold wars. Like, that we moved. What do the beef's over?”

Territory drama. And when I, here's when I say territory, everyone thinks it's like drug territory, your money. And I, I, I like to say that I wish that was true because it would at least make sense.

Right. But it's not. It's we were here first. This is our city. This is our state. You can't be here.

And or like in that instance, first it was, they were supporting the renegades and the bogus of the kind of renegades here. And then in Shasta County, hey, that's a hell's angels territory. And we're not going to let bogus start a chapter here. So it's just this ego of who was their first or who's area it is. So when you have a, help, I mean, how big were the bogus compared to the hell's angels? A lot small. I mean, they're, they're, they're pretty big now. But at the time,

the bogus were mainly in southern California. They just moved in an northern California. They had two small chapters in southern Oregon. And then in Nevada. So I guess what I'm asking is are these like, but I don't know any other way to describe it, but were they like feeders into the, the bigger clubs? Got like a minor league ball team. You know, you have the, I don't know, the St. Louis Cardinals and then the farm team. So there's, they are a lot of clubs that are like that. The bogus, so there's like

and depending on who you ask, some are six or eight clubs that stand on their own. And then there's a lot of these other clubs that are support or farm teams. Like the, like the renegades, for example, they would have been like a feeder club for the angels. The bogus are on their own. They didn't answer to another club, they didn't support another club. They were quite a bit smaller at the time, but they were their own independent club. Why would a, I mean, why would, why would somebody in the

renegades want to be a feeder to the hell's angels? Why wouldn't you just want to become a hell's angel? So that's a very good question that people ask often and to answer, I'll tell you that I had I wanted to start the support club for the Mongols, but I didn't want to have like 12 different months. I just wanted one, right? So and this was yours later, but it had answers to questions. We developed this club called the Raiders, but it actually already existed, but I changed the program,

so it could be national. And what I noticed was there's a lot of people, especially now, the motorcycle clubs are a lot more mainstream and popular culture that look at Mongols or one

percentage and go, I can never do that. That's crazy. But I want to ride it and have a patch,

and hang out with the boys and go the parties. So I'll do this one, and they take the smaller one. And then once you get into it, you're riding and realize it can't put into the same amount of work, the rules are pretty much the same. Then people kind of step up. It's an introduction to the lifestyle. Yeah, but a lot of people don't necessarily do it, so they could say, oh, I'm going to go from here to here. A lot of people say, oh, that's a better fit for me, because maybe you got a good

job and a family and you're trick yourself on a thing. It's a club that engineers, they engineer it. Is that what you're saying? The club engineers, it's so that it's like a baby step. When it comes to direct sport clubs for sure, when it comes to some of those smaller clubs, there's a lot of people that want to wear a patch and we're all going to club, but don't want to be involved in a major club. They don't want the the wars and the drama and the stuff that goes with it,

but they still want this brotherhood and wear a patch. And in order to do that often,

“you have to be affiliated with whatever clubs in that state, wherever the dominant club is in that region.”

So if you want to say you want to, guys want to start a chapter in Nevada, you're going to have to

permission to have the time they're going to say, yeah, but you got to wear the support patch or you

know, you got to know our parties. What about something like the booze fighters? Do they fall

“under it? I mean, that's a national club. Yeah, I'd be an international club, huh?”

I think so. That's a good question. They're definitely national. They're big. So I think A they've existed longer than most clubs, so maybe there are already in some of these regions, but what I have seen, they definitely don't answer it any other club where they don't support in their club, they stand on their own, but due to politics and because of the levels of work, club stuff goes state by state, they're probably aligned. Like if you go to Washington,

maybe they're aligned with the angels and then over here they're aligned with the banditos. And when I say aligned, I don't mean like they're following their rules, but those are their friends, like they're friendly with. Because it's the politics of that state and these major one percent clubs operate on a different level, so they have to have these cordial relations. Like the booze fighters don't want to go with the word of the hell's angels, right?

So they want to keep things cordial, so they keep things political, other meetings, but they don't stepping on each other toes and taking each other's members or you can all those things that stir the pot. All right, where do we go from here? Okay, Vago. So I'm getting ready to leave the Vago's because I had just moved back to Orian

and I had transferred to a Vago chapter there. One of the Vago's there had owned a tile company. And so I was learning how to lay tile, saying okay, maybe this is still searching for this career I can do where I can be a biker, still work, right? And popular contrary, people think you can join a motorcycle club and make money, but it just costs money, man. You're getting your ping dues, you're on the road all the time,

you're going to advance. And at least every club I've been in discourages any sort of major legal activity because if I mean you're in a chapter and you're selling a bunch of drugs and you get busted, it's an effect. Me, it's an effect, everyone else in the circle. So there wasn't like an opportunity

“where you joined this club and you're like, "Cool, that's what I do for a living now," right?”

I was like, "That gives on sons of anarchy and all this stuff." There's individuals sometimes

in different clubs that do illegal stuff. I always chose, I known a lot of people and I networked

a lot, so potentially maybe I could have gotten to drug dealing if I wanted to, but my watch might go to prison for it. And I always said, you know, I would rather be poor and free than be the guy with the flashing cash around and a quick money and then end up going to prison over it. So it just to me, I was always looking for a career like a, you know, an actual paycheck. But trying to balance that where you're on the road and trying to be active and especially in the

young age, I've got a lot of work experience outside of being in a band, it's some retail stuff, it was a challenge and so when I got off for that tile position, I was like, "Okay, they got the ownsets of August, so he can, he makes it work, he's still active and he and he, you know, a lot of those trades, you make good money too." So I moved up there to work for him. And as soon as I moved there, I saw that the two chapters in Oregon didn't like each other.

And at first, I was thinking, you know, we're all the same club, right? So it's probably just some

egos or whatever. But around this time, one of the vloggers that actually met that Hollister run Wild Bill when I got my nickname, he got shot off his bike and killed in California, so I didn't California. And there was rumors that it could have been from the club. He was a member and it could have been from another chapter. And that didn't sit right with me. Like I was, again, I joined the motorcycle to ride bikes and party, you know. And if we have to defend ourselves,

I'm down. But being in a club where you might have to worry about your own club killing you, I couldn't even fathom it. Like there's no brotherhood in that. And I'm not saying that that club does that. But what I'm saying is, at that time, that is what had happened. And now here we are in Oregon. That club that had patched over in Shasta County. They were having a big meeting with the state leadership. So like the Northern California boss arrived for the vloggers was coming

to his meeting. And they'd asked us to show up, like I support, to be there here, what's talked about, maybe support him. And as I show up, I'm here, you know, in my vest. They're what the writing guys were all in our patches. And then this, the state boss comes in with all these guys from this Sacramento North Sacramento chapter. And none of them were wearing anything that says vloggers, none of them were everything. Anything that says anything green, they're wearing leather gloves,

and they're frisking everyone going into this meeting. And I was like, man, this is how we treat each other. You know, like this, A, it's emboly shit. But B, it's like, this supposed to be our brotherhood. So it was already, those two things were already on my mind. And then the final straw was, I mean, we're in church talking about, which is our weekly meetings. And because of what we just saw in Shasta County, that state boss said he was coming up to try and work things out between

the two chapters in Oregon and working along. And we saw how they worked things out in Shasta County, right? So my president's talking about where we're going to stash guns in the clubhouse,

“if we have to defend ourselves. And I remember thinking like, what the hell am I doing here, man?”

We got to defend ourselves against the chapter that's crossed town. And so that was kind of the

who turned out to be a confidential informant the whole time, which I hadn't known. But

you know, he was going to church there. I remember when I moved there, my cousin goes, oh, we know a Mongol goes to our church. And that wasn't something I had heard over the top of forest. Okay. And then he would do this stuff where he was into martial arts. He was a fighter. And he would do those demonstrations where he would break through ice or punch coconuts and stuff like that. And had a reputation as a tough guy. But I wouldn't say he was that cool, even.

“But he was cordial. And when I told him I was moving to Oregon, he said, I think we have members up there.”

If you ever need a thing, you can call. So I had his business card. And there wasn't any up there. But I had his card. And then right when all this is going on, the Mongols had a new website.

I'm just funny to say, I'll allow. But either way, they had this website.

And Doc Kavos was an national president of Mongols in the time. And this was in a period where he was really pushing expansion across the country. So they were, they were starting new chapters all over. And he had put on the website, you know, Mongol Nation welcomes the Oregon chapters. Well, I know now that there was, I think, one guy. They didn't really have an Oregon chapter. But at the time, I'd call them up and say, hey, you know, I'm from here. I know a bunch of people.

If you guys mean anything, let me know. We can write around together. I'll introduce you show you around places. And it was kind of like my introduction to that club. And now we're talking back and forth. I'm talking to their national leadership. What drew you to them originally? What about that? Specific club. They have a rule that Mongols can't fight Mongols. There's nothing too brothers can't sit down and talk about. And that, that was the biggest piece for me.

Is that the only club that has it? The outsiders had that rule too. But as far as national clubs,

“I believe so. What are the, what are the, what are the, maybe the top five clubs?”

Well, there's Hale's Angels and Outlaws, which are some of us well known. Now to the Mongols are up there now. The pagans, sons of silence. And probably five of us now. And Banditos is a big one, probably one of the biggest actually. What, what are the, what are they known for? We're the characteristics, the culture. In the early era, I mean, even, right before I joined, it was more a read like, if you went to Texas or down

south, it was likely Banditos. If you're in the Midwest, then it was outlaws. If you're on the East Coast, it was pagans. If you're in California, it was, you know, Northern California, it was Hell's Angels. If it was Southern California, it was Mongols, August, Hell's Angels. Banditos were also up in like Montana and up there. So it's kind of like, they had their own little regions. And that was the big dominant club for each region. Any specific characteristics?

I mean, the Mongols were primarily Hispanic. The Mongols, because they came from Southern California, had that more kind of gang culture, Hispanic culture, kind of like that car clubs slash streaking culture. The pagans, at least that era of the pagans were like, still really grungy old school bike or dudes. So yeah, it just kind of depended on like what that region was like, but it was more the, a result of a reflection of the culture, right? Southern

California versus Texas, right? The Banditos looked like they came from Texas. They had a hand, I mean, they had a good amount of Hispanic members too. And then a lot of the club, the most other clubs are all pretty predominantly white. Okay. Many, any, anything like this was the most

“ruthless club. This is, I think every club will say they were, but you know, at the time,”

the Mongols were known as the most violent motorcycle club, because of all the public stuff that had happened. You know, Laughlin had happened in 2000, was it 2002? What was that? That was when the Hell's Angels and Mongols got into a shoot out at the casino in Laughlin, Nevada, and Mobs at three, one Mongol died in two Hell's Angels. Yeah, three people I think were killed. But you know, it was a huge public shooting, it was all over the news.

Were you a part of that? No, I joined 2007. Okay. But that was like the first, one of the first

big, like, nationally known fights between the two. And so also when the Mongols started, they were very small. And they went, they, the war started with the Hell's Angels in the early 70s, and we're talking bombings and shootings. And the Mongols didn't get wiped off the map. In fact, grew and got bigger and are still here. And so they were known as just this violent club that, you know, took care of themselves, took care of each other, supported each other. So it's a big

brotherhood piece, but there was also like they can stand up on their own, because even the Hell's Angels kind of wipe them out. What is the, what's the history of the Mongols? How did it start? So the Mongols started in 1969, Monbella, California. There was a group of, I don't know, I want to say there was nine guys, but it could have been six. But there was, there was a small group of guys that come from the car culture. They wanted to get into motorcycle clubs. And they had met, you know,

out with this club called the Molox, which were big in that area at the time. And as they hung out,

the Molox wanted to, you know, told them what prospecting was like and hanging around. And they wanted to treat them a certain way. And the Mongols thought they were above that treatment of these guys. They wanted, and so they said, well, we just started our own club. And so they got together and they called their club the Mongols. You know, the misconception is that we hear in the media a lot is that the Mongols, the guys that started the Mongols weren't allowed into the Hell's Angels, because they're

Hispanic. But the Hell's Angels had plenty of Hispanic members, especially back then. I mean, not even especially, but I mean, if there was plenty back then too. And so I mean, there's just some

“false narrative that I'm honestly not even sure it came from other than, it's like Coke versus”

Pepsi right at the Mexican club in the American club. Like, I think it's just more of an easier way to describe the two's adversity. But it was like we're a lot of club started, which isn't that era of group of guys. Got together, we're riding bikes. And they saw the booze fighters and the popular culture of the Hell's Angels on wheels and all these different movies that were coming out. And they wanted to start their own club. Right on. I am, I'm, I'm a little curious to have

many of you, I know your, your, crave in the brotherhood, create a brotherhood. But why didn't you go with something that was not a 1% club? So at first I did with the outsiders, they weren't a 1% club. But like said to me, they were at the time, right? Because that's all I knew. The Mongols weren't a 1% club when I was in at the time. They are, they are now, but they weren't considered 1% or club when I was in. So to me, it was almost like a step, like I was learning the

“process, learning the program and it was kind of a step up. Yeah, that would be the best way to describe”

it. And also like, like I said, I've always when I get into it, I just want to want to be,

to me, like I, it would be especially young me with the ego. It would be hard for me to be at a bike event. If they can, they, me and my club were top shit. And then the other club comes later, like, you know what I mean? It was like, so this is my personality. I think attracted to me to want to be in the more dominant club. The, the caveat to that is when I did join the Mongols, there was no Mongols in Oregon. So I started the first chapter there. So we weren't, this, they

might have been really big in California, but we were unknown, no one really even knew what Mongols were at the time. And we were severely outnumbered. So it was almost like starting from square one in your own club. Right on, see, shit. So there was one Mongol in Oregon at the time. Yeah, yeah, we kicked him out pretty shortly after that. He wasn't our type of dude. No, he was a truck driver. He didn't have a bike. He didn't have a bike. No, he was from some club called

the Loaners. And I don't know if he was between bikes or what his two was. But he was a truck driver.

So he was never around. And I think, I don't know how they brought him in for why, but when we

started, they were like, oh, yeah, we got this one guy up there and we went mad with them and were like, yeah, now this ain't going to work dude, same for you. But yeah, so I had was making these calls trying to, you know, introduce people, see, we can meet and I had talked to my time, my whole chapter, which was the South Valley Vagos, were not cool with all the stuff that was going on. And again, I'm new to the Vagos. Yeah, so that like the internal fighting. Okay. And then

there was just the, you know, the politics, club politics and stuff. They weren't happy with certain things. And I was still new and naive. So I didn't really know much about it or be involved in any of that. I know it was only in the Vagos for just shy two years. So, you know, I'm still learning. But I was telling my president Magpie that, hey, I know guy in the Vagos, like we had gone out to lunch and I remember him saying he had been in a smaller club that became Vagos. So he said,

man, I was already in another club. The only other club I joined is the Mongols. Otherwise, like, I guess, club wise not for me. And I was like, well, hey, I know a Mongol. And I've been talking to these guys. So I reached out and asked to get, I reached out to that informant and coconut tan. And it asked him, hey, who's your boss? Like who can I talk to, you know, and so someone from there, the Mongols governing body is called Mother Chapter. So someone from their mother chapter called

“me and we're kind of shooting this shit. And I said, well, hey, man, you know, here's the thing,”

we're interested in patching over. And I said, you know, initially, it was supposed to be my whole chapter. But if we Paul takes some stuff, goes, you know, people were talking behind each other's backs. And these guys are deciding, okay, well, Magpie was the president of he goes. That means if I stay, I could be the president. And there was this stupid Paul takes stuff. So, but initially, I thought there was going to be, you know, six or eight of us. And so the president, or the

they do from other chapter on the Mongols, he says, well, I'll tell you what, we're going to be at Daytona Bike Week and I don't know something like say a month. This was in March. No, it was October, it was because it was Biketoberfest. So he goes, why don't you fly out here, spend the week in

crazy. So I fly out there by myself. No, no, these guys didn't bring anybody with me. Never even been

“there. I'm still wearing a vago t-shirt for who knows why. I thought that was a good idea.”

Because in club life, in theory, I was supposed to tell my chapter, hey, I'm going to be out of state. And if you're in another, there wasn't vago's out there at the time, but still that means I should have told national leadership. I'm going to be over here. Like anytime you're going to wear your patch somewhere, we're not at, you've to get clearance in all that. But I was, you know, cocking young me and care shortly before, maybe a few months before that, the vago says started

to try to start a chapter in Georgia in the outlaws that shut it down. And so there won't be vago's out here. I don't know, paying attention to any of this, right? I'm just a cool young guy. So I fly out there in my vago shirt and meet up with these Mongols and we're going out and we go to the strip club to Shark Tank. And as soon as I walk in, I saw two outlaws and they were sitting in the corner.

And I'd never seen an outlaw in my life, so this time, right? There were out on the east and Midwest

and south. And there was two older guys in that sort of thing. And this is this bad ass club here, the outlaws, these are two older guys, you know. And these bigger, all the bouncers, they were really big dudes. And they were kind of, I noticed they were kind of corralling us to a certain spot. And they kept going, "Hey guys, got weapons." If you do, we'll, we'll stash them back here, like they were trying to take our weapons from us. And I started paying attention and they were

wearing like 1% or necklaces and rings. And these guys were outlaws. And what I didn't know is that

“outlaws in that Mongol boss that I was with were having a scheduled meeting. And that's why we were there.”

So, you know, I'm there as a guest, so I can't ask all these questions. You know, I'm just like, "Oh, there, we're cool. We're going out." The Mongus had just started a chapter in Florida and that allows them to really happy about it. So they were meeting to kind of discuss this, unbeknownst to me. So I'm standing there and just now figuring out, "Hey, these, all these guys that are corraling us here, they're outlaws." And I just hear this roar of bikes. And I'd say 15, 20 outlaws

come rolling in. And at the time, their national president was there. He's up front. He's wearing overalls, this big tall guy. And he's wearing overalls, no shirt. He's covered in white power tattoos. He had like, his head was big bulb, but his sideburns were growing out. And he had these swastika beads in them. I mean, like, he was a presence, you know. And I just remember feeling this real tension and him and the Mongol boss walked down the back of this strip club. And they

wouldn't let anyone else go out there. And next, you know, it's five minutes, 10 minutes, 20, 30 minutes. And I noticed these Mongus, I'm with her, starting to get uncomfortable. The outlaws are posted up all around, like, security, you know, they got her hasn't cornered. And anytime that informant coconut Dan, he went to go check on the president, because he was the sergeant of that chapter. And first they told him he could go out there and then they pulled him out there and then he didn't

come back. And you know, everyone's starting to think, "Fuck, did this pretty sketchy." And so I got up just to take a leak and then outlaw pushes me and says, "Go back to your chair, go back to your table." So now it's me, there's three Mongus with me. One of them has since passed, but it was me and Dozer and then two other guys. And I remember them thinking, like, this isn't good, dude. Like, I don't know if we're going to get out of here, you know. And I remember texting my twin brother

going, "Yeah, I don't know if I'm coming home from this one." You know, and I remember the Mongols look to me and they said, "Hey, listen dude, you're not a Mongol, you're a guest. You can leave." And it just wasn't in me to leave. I showed up with them, I was going to leave with them. So I suck it up in state and things looked worse than they were. And we ended up leaving, but because I stuck by, I had a meeting with them and they said, "Hey, man, you're welcome to join a club with

“that's what you want to do." So I went home and rounded up the guys I had and then we had to go”

to Nevada and do like a formal interview where we met with some like old school, the leadership guys and then they do a background check and all that stuff and then we got the okay to join. A background check? Oh yeah, yeah. If you join the Mongols, there's like an application packet. And like, I mean, you go back to where you went to. Where you went to grade school, who your high school friends were, where it was your first job because they were private investigators

that look in all this stuff to make sure you are who you say you are. And another important part, too, is make sure that you're not a child, sex offender or an informant or a snitch or someone told any of those types of things. So they do this detail background check. But what's crazy about it is, you know, feds can figure things out. And there was when I joined in 2007, 2008, it was Operation Black Rain, which was a, I think, five-year-under-cover investigation from Mongols and they

had six undercover HTF agents, three were males that were members. They were three were their wives. Their wives, um, and they had all gone through the same background checks. In fact, to pass a lie to take your tests in the whole time they were under cover federal agents. So the background check can really catch. I guess my argument with the background check stuff was

always that, right? Like, A, I can find out someone's an informant, because a lot of times they

get caught doing something while they're in the club, but then they start telling on people,

these guys got made up secure social care numbers, background checks, everything else.

And so if they really want to, they're going to figure it out. I know, like, for me, it was easier in Oregon, because I grew up there. I knew it. Even if I didn't, someone starts coming around, if they grew up there, I can find someone I know that went to high school with his friend. You know what I mean? Or something like that? But as the club got national and bigger, you know, they couldn't really do that. And so when Doc was bringing all these people into the club,

they were, you know, he was letting whoever join in. And so with for the idea of hey, we're being all these new states, but it brought in those three undercover guys. There was three ATF agents out, I mean East Coast, that later became outlaws before they ended their investigation. And they were, they were started as Mongols in Virginia and Baltimore. So, like, you know, through this expansion, brought in a lot of, a lot of undercover agents.

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“What kind of stuff were they asking you for the interview? Or onboarding? What did you call it?”

An issue. Yeah, it was an interview. It was for much an interview. It was one of the most serious students and clubs on our respect very much. And you know, why do you want to join? What were you doing before? What was it? Well, I had told them I would really like that the brothers, you know, brothers kind of kill each other. I'd really shouldn't even allow to fight each other. So the Mongols had a really good reputation for my brotherhood. Like the focus was Brotherhood.

And I don't mean the word. I mean everyone stuck up for each other. Like we instead of being like Portland chapter or Salem chapter, we were the Mongols. Like everyone, especially once Oregon grew, like we rolled as one big chapter. So it's just the support and the, you know, riding in the big groups and the packs and the big parties. But on top of that, the Mongols had a reputation known mess with them, right? And the hell's angels didn't even fuck with them anymore, right? So that was obviously

attractive and also the fact that if they did, we have all the support. And I think too, it helps is, you know, so when I started it, I was the president because there was no one else there, right? I mean, I was elected by the group of guys we started with, but you know, I had to be your head at it, so became the president. And it didn't take long before I realized that the Mongols have a constitution and a, and a whole booklet of bylaws. But as long as you follow those,

“you can kind of run whatever program you want. And I remember that it was an opportunity for me.”

Like everyone goes, "Why didn't you join on the local clubs, or are we in Oregon?" But these dudes were back then at least two. There were that old school biker, like these dudes. There was guys that were doing math. These guys are stealing bikes. And even outside of that stuff, there were just that different culture of people. You know, where the Mongols gave me this opportunity where I could come in and kind of build a chapter. And then eventually a region based off more of

my morals and values and still be clean cut. And, you know, but do all the same stuff. But I had more freedom to do that. And if any of the other clubs told me we can be here and try to stop us,

we'll now get the backing of a national motorcycle club. I always thought that was interesting.

I actually looked into doing this, but it didn't get very far. But when I was contracting, for CIA, I was looking at this. And I kept reading about it, watching everything. I could get my hands on. And I saw a bread a bunch of different times that it was one of the ways to make money was stealing other people's bikes. And I just never, I was like, "Why the fuck are a bunch of motorcycle enthusiasts stealing each other's fucking bikes?" It's never meant any damp sense to me. It makes no sense

bikers, and I think probably even through the 80s, maybe 90s, whenever that's why, you know, I won't ask custom choppers, right? So you take pieces off this bike, put them on that bike, they swap me sort of selling parts. But now, I mean, Harley and they've all gotten, you know, every piece of that motor, you've got over there has a stamp on it. A serial number or anything,

“you know, on the outside of the cases. And then you have to get, you know, everything has to be registered.”

And like, so if you say you steal a bike, $15,000 motorcycle off the showroom floor, it's probably two grand worth of money, and it's like, what's the point, you know? But yeah, that was a thing back then, for sure. And it was kind of probably dying out by the time I was around, but it was, there was still clubs and dudes that were known for doing it. And I think to go more towards what you're getting at is, there's this elitist mentality in the motorcycle club, right? Like,

where you guys are all, you guys are all want to be, you know, you're the rich bikers, you're the yuppies, you know, the Starbucks bikers. So you're trying to bite our culture. We're going to dance in the attorneys. Yeah, exactly. You're going to write down a Starbucks. Well, watch this. We're going to steal your fucking bike. Okay. So I, and I'm not saying that morally that it's okay at all, but I can imagine that was that mindset, you know, like we were the ones

living in this life. We weren't stealing each other's bikes, you know? I mean, I want to clear, I never sold

“anybody's bikes when I say we had this mean that culture, you know? What are the kind of questions”

were they asking you? Um, that was, I mean, because I had come from the Vagos, you know, there was obviously the why would I choose one club over the other, which I had explained, if was there going to be any issue, which there was, what are their clubs were in, what are their clubs were in Oregon, where they're going to have an issue, which they did, but kind of seeing like, is it worth bringing these guys in? Is everybody going to,

is it going to be a headache? Is it going to be more trauma? Um, what I do for a living, because they, you know, they don't want to bring in a bunch of drug dealers and, um, you know, those types of things. Like to get a sense of a, my background would be like what we're going to do, like what our priority is, or goals, or are we going to come in and create a bunch of drama, or are we going to come in and be able to run a good program and be successful and grow, you know? I mean, I understand why

they would have put you there because of the network, but at the same time you're new to the program, at least this one, the Mongol program, it was not immersed in their culture. Why would they have not taken somebody that was deep in their program to, to, to bring that exact culture to Oregon

versus somebody like you? The way that it worked, would never worked other than that time period,

and by by that is exactly, it's a normally for like when I moved to the Midwest, then I start helping chapters there because I already been in the club ten years, right? You normally wouldn't start a state with guys that weren't around the club, didn't come from the area, didn't know the history. I just happened to come in under that last ten month window of Dock of Austin being a president where they were just letting people join so they can plan to flag

in a new state. Any other leadership would have allowed it. In fact, because I came from the Vagos, most of the time, most of the clubs, and the Mongols had agreements later on with the Vagos that we couldn't take their ex-members, a lot of the big clubs don't take members from other big clubs, so I've probably been denied for that too. Why is that? Why won't they take

“a member? I think it's a Mongol or something? Potentially, but no, it's one of just the drama that”

comes with it, right? Like when I left the Vagos, there was a contract out on my life. I never

believe in the, I never used to believe in those things, but the ATF came to my house and from my mom, it's the intercepted some letters in prison where there's some Oregon Vagos, we're trying to get somebody to come kill us, because we'd left, right? We used this respect when we left, and not only did I leave, but I took about 12 guys with me, because I had the Oregon guys. I took, eventually, all those guys in redding that I was telling you about their Vagos, I brought, we came, made them all

Mongols, I brought two guys in from Vagos, a guy from Reno, so, you know, we, we poached out of their pond, essentially, and so there's this, again, goes to Eagle, but it's also disrespect, so especially with other national clubs, right? Like, say we take a member of the outlaws, for example, and on East Coast, we're all close friends, but now we did this, so this, this states matter to us, and the Mongols, every club runs a little different, but the way the Mongols

work is if you put hands on a Mongol and Oakland, you have B for the Mongols everywhere, you know, it's not like, oh, that's a Florida issue where that's everywhere, and so taking someone from other club, and then stirring up problems like that, now the whole club is finding another club, because of you, or because you're guys, and so it's, it's usually discouraged, got you, so you make it, I make it, yeah, send you back up there. So I was already back, you know,

back in Oregon in this tile thing, they sent me back up there, I get the guys together, at the time the Vagos had a rule, I don't know if it's the loser, but there used to be this old school rule in all those school clubs that you had to sign your title over to the club, and if you ever

back when people owned their motorcycles, their choppers, or something, you know, by the time I was

“around most people were financing their bikes, there isn't a title to sign over. And I also think they”

found out later that if you try to leave the club and me and six guys keep having, how did you and try to steal from you, we're just pushing you into the arms of law enforcement anyways, right, like it's, it's, I don't know, I just don't think it was a good, a good rule, but either way, the Vagos were attempting to take my motorcycle because I had lived at the supportment with other tile layers at all, worked for this Vagos company. So I had to go get my bike back

before they got it, and then we just kind of separated ties and started trying to build our own program, and it's crazy to think about man, because everything worked out in these like right times otherwise it wouldn't exist. Like to gypsy jokers of the biggest club in Oregon, they're a very reputable gangster as 1% of club, and they had a rule, or so they probably do, that there's no other black and white, no other clubs with the colors of black and white in Oregon,

“and they no other 1% of clubs in Oregon. And then here comes my 25-year-old ass, and”

her, obviously by now, in 27, like me and four or five other guys, and they probably got 80 in the whole state, and we're like, yeah, well here we are. We started in Eugene, Oregon, or this club, the free souls have been there since the 60s, so they were the only one that got to claim Eugene, and here we are. So we kind of, you know, put our thumb in the eye of all these disrespectfully these clubs that were, hey, we're established, here's the rule, we all get along fine,

and then we show up, and no one was getting along anymore. You show up with four or five other people.

So six of you? Yeah, we started with six. I did. What is your first when they tell you,

you're going to stand this up in Oregon? What is your first move with these four or five other guys? Well, at first I thought we're going to have closer to 12, and then I come back and find up that chapter, was like, no, we're staying with the bogos, and you're on your own, and in fact, my president, when I was in the bogos, my chapter president was this guy named Magpie. He's the one we had the lunch together, you know, but I had, like, I went out and put in the work,

but it was, you know, we were on board with it. When he found out the whole chapter, wasn't going to go, he wanted to stay in the low to his chapter, so he did the right thing and stayed with the bogos, and to reward him, they made him a, took his presidency away, they made him a prospect. They had him running like, "Megual errands." This is a guy that started, you know, helping run that chapter, disrespected him to the point that, you know, I went and picked him up and said,

"Hey, come on dude." They, they obviously, you know, they don't want you here, and it should come of us from the beginning. So that's interesting, too, because you'd mentioned that during the interview, they don't want you pulling from other clubs and starting all kinds of fucking drama. And here you are, going right back, going to the bogos. Well, come on boys. So at that time,

“there was obviously immediate issues because I don't, a handful of us already came from there, right?”

So I mean, like that, there was already that beef we talked about in the other chapter. Now, so I don't even think of anything as stoked to fires. I think it was already going, and on top of that, they were running them off, by the way, they were treating them. So I think they kind of assumed that was going to happen anyways. But our issue wasn't bad with them at the time because they were down in Southern Oregon, and we were up in the valley, you know, sailing

Portland area. And so there were three hours away. So like, we didn't really bump into each other bars and stuff like that. So it was more of a rumor mill thing, or if we were passing through

type stuff, but as far as people put hands on each other, it never escalated to that.

Okay. And what do you think about other than personnel? Not getting shot of forpikes. Well, so these other clubs are telling us we can't be there. And then at the same time, now law enforcement, they don't want a new national club in the area. So we got, now we're going to follow it everywhere we go. We can't go to a bar without eight cops out front. You know, first time I've ever met an ATF agent, you know, we're standing in front of a hotel. It's ATF

agent comes to walk up to warn us that these other clubs are out looking for us. And so it's like things get real intense real quick. And again, it's so easy to get caught in the shuffle from going, hey, I want to be in a motorcycle club to hang out with brothers riding party. And now it's like if we want to be doing this, we have things are serious. Like it's a wartime club and every club here wants to kill us. So, you know, we were no longer just a party mode. It was a militant mode.

Do you have an HQ or headquarters? So, Mongols are different for the fact that they've been out war forever. Having a clubhouse is a dead give away of where you're going to be at. It's a target for the enemy. And so no, I mean, we ended up having clubhouses in Oregon 10 years later when

you know, meet for rides and throw parties. But at this time, it was better for us not to have one.

“So, where would you meet different people's houses, garages? I mean, we moved in around a lot.”

I didn't want anyone to be able to, I did this optics game where we'd have a lot of my friends from a punk rock and skin had seen and stuff like that would support us and hang out. And at that time, we were allowed to have support shirts that said the word Mongols on it. Like every club is different, how that goes. But like the Hell's Angels, for example, they don't have any support shirt that says support Hell's Angels. It'll say support red and light.

It's a poor big red machine. But if you see a t-shirt that says Hell's Angels, they're a member. Gotcha. Mongols would have support Mongols or stuff like that, different logos, and especially back then it wasn't as strict. So, you know, most people wouldn't be able to look at and say, "Oh, that's a member or a supporter." And so I was putting support shirts on all the homies. And so, and if we went to a bar, sometimes we wouldn't wear our patch because I don't want to say

hey, there's three patchholders and eight friends. We would just all wear t-shirts. But that said Mongols

honored or support stuff. So I was always trying to make us look bigger than we were.

You know, obviously for safety reasons and optics. And then on top of that, I started I learned this going through it kind of as a go, but it was this low risk. I reward is what I would call it. Is that these clubs say that the Gypsy jokes, for example, they're definitely we're at a warrior club. I'm not saying that they weren't at this time, but a lot of the members either hadn't had any altercations or beef in a long time,

or were a newer guy that hadn't lived through it. So although they were the dominant club, their program or their structure wasn't the same as say a wartime club. And what I mean by that is like one guy would go to a bar over here. This guy hangs out over here. Like when the Mongols will go out, we'd go out together. We'd have a chase vehicle. We'd have, I mean, we were running a program. We walked into a bar and someone had already scouted it before we got in there.

When we were in there, there's people watching. We go to the bathroom and payers. No one's like, if me and you were talking, there's someone watching our backs. And a lot of it

“was the optics of those guys have their shit together. I don't want to mess with them, right?”

Which kept people, especially when it came to drama from fret, boys and fronts, hard target. Yeah, and especially for the clubs that notice exactly. And so I was doing a lot of that, but also what I wanted to show these people is that. If you notice that club's going to war isn't just like cool. When you guys are all together to swap me, we're all together to swap me. We're going to go heads up, right? It goes on and spills onto the streets. And so I wanted these guys to know,

if you're going to put hands on any of my guys, this is going to change the way you live your life. And so for example, if I knew one guy from the other club was going to the same bar every once they had six, three or four of us might show up and have a drink and they'll leave. But we'd see us. I knew this guy wrote a certain, his bike a certain way, two of it from work. We might be hanging

out at the stop sign when he crews through. Never did anything to him, but they had to have that

piece of mind where they go. Okay. So one of my guys attacks these guys, they know the way I ride to work. They know the bars. I hang out now. I can't go here. Now I can't go there. And it really made people rethink getting involved, right? Or escalating. Because they saw they're going to have to change the way they live. We were already living this way. We already went out and grew up

“and did it. We already had this program set up for it. And so I think that kept the violence”

at bay. Right on. Right on. Wow. Shit. How fast did you grow it? Pretty quick. So pretty quick. I would say so it was November of 2007. It was our first chapter. We started the second chapter about three months later, a component. What's there? We're still smaller chapters. You know, but you know, and also I lived here, right? So I know a lot of people. I know a lot of younger people that were just getting into Harley's that didn't want to be riding around the older groups.

A lot of us were all from the same circle and punk rock. So, you know, the connection piece helped quite a bit. But then in April, I got busted. And it was all over the news. Mongol leader is going to jail. Mongol leader attempts were law enforcement out the road. Mongol leader attempted kidnapping on feral agents. It's everywhere. And man, media plays a lot. We're also in all people go, oh, do the Mongols are here. And especially, as I fought my case,

and it was all the news about me speaking out about that it was BSKs. And I was getting targeted by law enforcement. People that supported people that saw that law enforcement was targeting us or didn't like that. They made them want to support us. And so it wasn't just that our name got out there. It was the mission or the image where they were like, wow, these guys, because, you know, a lot of the stuff that I was arguing eventually in my trial was that we're not, the working,

especially we weren't a criminal organization. Like, we chose this club because of the support in the back up, but we're running our own program. And, you know, we had like a no-math and fetamine

week and when I'd visible means of income. Like, we were trying to make this a positive thing.

“Everybody had to work out three days a week. Yeah, yeah. And once I got into regional leadership,”

I'd rules that everyone had to work out three days a week. So you implemented an entire program.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. And, you know why? Because when I first started coming around with those one

percent of clubs, even outsiders, these old timers go, hey, you know, welcome to the nightmare, you're going to lose your old lady, you're going to lose your job, probably going to lose your freedom, and I was singing a little bit of the fuck man. That sounds like this is sounded like a good deal. And then I'm bringing people in too, right? And I'll have these people going with the high school with whatever. Like, I wouldn't go, hey, what's up, man? You want to join my club so I can ruin

your fucking life? You know, I wanted people to say, and maybe it's ego, or maybe it's personal accountability, but I didn't want to even go, oh, man, I started hanging out of the mood to my life went downhill. So I wanted to try and make this, like, bring as much positivity to a good and how don't you keep me wrong? There's violence, there's threats of getting killed all the

“timers, that's going to prison for violence. So there's threats there, but I want to tell you,”

very least, make it that man, these guys got me on a workout program, or, I mean, by, you know, eventually, I became a therapist, so the UK got guys sitting in church, tell me how they feel, we're talking about men being no expressive motions, like, trying to make this a positive thing, you know, we had a no-matham phenomenon role because you implemented that. The no-mathro was just in my regions. How many people did that piss off? Man, see, my regions were different because I

started a lot of those chapters, so there was a lot of guys that, like, I resonated with, I got a long list, so we were on the same page. We didn't have a lot of the old time or

dudes that were into that. But, I mean, here's the other thing, there's always going to be people

fight back, because we're outlaws, one percenters, so we got a shitload of rules, and I have even more rules. But before we go into all the rules and stuff that you implemented, what is, what is the mission? This is like, I've talked to, you know, mel about it. I've talked to, George Christie about it. It kinda clicks, but it kinda doesn't. I mean, it sounds like it's, I just don't fucking get it. The mission gets a lifestyle, not an occupation, absolutely. And

the mission gets lost in a shuffle. You know, the mission for me was, and went from a street gang to wanting to still have that, you know, sense of that, that sense of belonging, and people to go to go out with and party with and ride bikes with, and it goes from that, to all of a sudden, now you're defending yourself, now all these other clubs want to kill you,

and now you're kinda thrust into this other life, and now you got these blinders on, where,

now we're militant, now we're running a certain way, now we have this new program, like, it, it just keeps it, I don't want to see even say evolving, because it's not, it's escalating. Well, nobody can, I mean, nothing will create a brotherhood fast, so that a bunch of people trying to fucking kill a group of dudes. Absolutely. Like, in a test of that. Yeah, and, I mean, that's a lot of, you know, a lot of the guys that come to motorcycle clubs come from military,

and then they get out, and they're seeking that A, the brotherhood, but where a lot of people miss, it sounds like that, that's the real, right? The adrenaline, and especially that shared, like a shared trauma, a shared adrenaline, like we're on the road together, man, two of us just got shot at over here, like, we're still here. Whoa, you know, those types of things, and it's like, hey, unless you've been through, you can't describe it, but it's one of those things

that it obviously makes everyone tight. I mean, imagine a group of six guys where every other club in that state wants to kill you, we got pretty damn close, you know? And there was, you know, we're so, we were still young kids and even as adults, there's so many times where we're just fucking around with the clubhouse laughing to what jokes and, you know, talking shit. I mean, that's the other thing that, you know, I mean, you'd mentioned earlier, you were, you were, maybe it was the

party too, right? It was the party. Absolutely. I'm sure there's plenty of method parties, plenty of women at parties, plenty of booze at parties, there's a party in every night. No, no, because, you know, and I guess that's part of that too, there's some that stuff I implemented. So, you know, we're now a club, we can't, we're not supposed to be able to tell you we can't

“can't do so. Telling someone to can't do drugs is crazy, right? That's what I think. But, and I had”

initially had no hard drug policy at all, but I just found out people were doing cocaine behind my back, because it is a lot of party, you know? The reason that I struck with no meth and fedamine and thankfully, like I said, a while the guys that I was around were, guys I did meth anyways, was because if, if you're doing the any type of drug, say it's coke area, even when we'd, we've sent guys to read, the Mongols have their own rehab center, like in Pasadena, it's own,

own and run by Mongols. I mean, the public can go to it, but that's like if you're a Mongol member and you're struggling, that's where we'll send you. If we have a member of that struggling with addiction, we don't kick them out, we try to help them. And when we, what we say to us, struggling is we notice if, now you're not paying your dues, you're not showing up to meetings, you're not eating your workouts any eventually, we're going to work out rules. But, you know,

you're being a flake, all the things that come up, being a drug addict, right? Then we're going

shouldn't affect everyone else, as long as you're not, you know, there was always a no needle rule

from like since the '60s because, you know, we can't be strong out and ride a bike, but also, for me, when it came to meth and fedamine, I've seen the lives at ruined, I'd seen that it's not something people do recreationally. Next thing, you know, you know, they're stealing, they're lying, or whatever, right? And then a lot of those, I don't know if those piss people off or not, but it is what it is, a lot of people that are living that meth and fedamine lifestyle

become snitches, informants, like there's, it's still not a trust, there's no, there's, it's a moral value, right? It becomes, it becomes a personal trait and it brings no benefit to the

“group, like if a guy is spun out on anything like that, what value does he bring to the group?”

I agree with him. And so that was my thing, if we're all at a party and some dudes are doing Coke so they can stay up later tonight for a night, like whatever dude, to me it's no different

everyone drinking alcohol, right? The flip is because we're at a wartime club, we didn't get drunk at

bars, we weren't allowed to, we had a two drink limit everywhere we went. If we want to get drunk, it was at the house or the club house, but we want to be drunk in public, there's no way. And in fact, I was the most sober I've ever been in my life from that in the early years because I was in charge and it was in charge of a lot of people on a leadership and the last thing I wanted was anything that was going to affect the way my mind thought and being slower, you missed the guy standing

over here or that car that passed the pie. So we had to be on point. So I think there was that piece to it too, where if we wanted to go, we went out often and it may look like we're parting all time because a lot of going out and flying the flag means you're going to bar to bar to bar, but that's because that's where you're going to be seen. But we didn't get drunk at bars, we get drunk in the club house, we get drunk in the homies house, we got home, but outside of that

or you know, big national runs, but even then, especially early on, I'm still learning everyone on the club and this is a club full of killers and gangs, we're sure we're not allowed to fight each other, but it's also not a, it's not a shield, I can't walk up to some OG and come a bit traffic and punch to the face. And so I didn't want anyone getting drunk and being too comfortable either. So it's like, hey, if you went to national run, if you're going to party hard,

you stay in your room. Like, I mean, how, how horrible does it to enforce the rules of not beating each other up, fighting each other, killing each other? I mean, you've got a handful of degenerates, you know, all grouped in who probably don't like being fucking told what's on it. Alpha male mentality. Yeah. And, and here you come, barking all these orders, no math, get your ass up and work out.

So, I think the way it worked is going to be each other, other than the no fighting each other, none of that out of stuff came overnight. So it wasn't like I'm coming in and just trying to change the call everybody's culture, right? The fighting thing to me,

“what you have to change their culture because now it's mongol culture. Exactly. But those,”

those were rules I instituted as a mongol. So initially, we, they're like, we worked our way up to those things, right? And like the, like I said, I, I, at one point I said, if you know drugs, I found out that I didn't fly. I don't know math. People, people resonated with that. They understood why they got behind the mission, working out. It was a vote. I can't just say, hey, everyone's got to work out, but I could persuade and talk and have a voice and then everyone

votes. Well, if you voted, now you're into it, everyone's doing it. So it's like, I did this in steps, right? But as far as the no fighting thing, so like in the skin and gang, if, if you were late to a meeting, you got beat up. If a guy was mad at you, you went to the backyard and you fought. And there used to be, you know, they had this added of, oh, two brothers can fight. We can share beer after. But what I saw, first hand,

especially now being a therapist, everything else is the ego and everything else that goes into this. Sure, we might shake hands, but also the guy that beat me up calls and asks her back up. I'll show up, but I'm on my move a little slower. Or hey, we're having a vote. You think it's going

to go your way? If, you know what I'm saying? There's always the guy that got beat up that's,

it wasn't fair. He put his thumb in my eye. You know, whatever, right? There's always sure brothers. But I saw how I'm much in undermined the brotherhood. And so, in order to have these

“rules and enforce them, you have to explain to them why we have these rules. Why we, this isn't”

acceptable. And I think the other piece, too, like in Oregon, we started as one chapter. Those two guys moved, two of the guys from our chapter moved to Portland. They start. So we were like branching off from each other. So we weren't Eugene in Portland chapter. We were Oregon Mongols. So we ran as a unit. So we didn't have this internal beef. We're in California. You know, the gang culture, neighborhood culture. This chapter is things are better than that chapter. And there's this,

there's still weren't fighting, but there is this internal beef. And it takes strong leadership. You know, when Little Dave was a national pee, if one chapter, when we found out that one chapter was talking shit, right, we'd make him sit down and talk about work and out of getting involved. And, you know, discipline would be, instead of you can't discipline people of violence. So you can find a money hit him at the pocketbook. If you really get in trouble, you have to

reprospect for the club. You know, so tell a 10 year member that if he does this, he has to go back to prospecting. He's probably not going to do it, right? So it really came down to leadership, strong leadership can enforce any of those rules. I mean, strong leaders to have strong leadership.

I think just being, um, I mean, you're, you're dealing with a bunch of guys that I'm sure fucking can't stand authority either. Absolutely. Absolutely orders at him. Is it what 20, what year old? Yeah, 27 at the time when I first started doing it.

“And I think the piece with that was to get him all body in on it, right? To understand the program”

and why we have leader, I didn't just start out saying, I'm the boss and you're going to do this. That would, I would have got my ass kicked and sit down the road. So, you know, explaining what the route, why we have these rules. And then like you said, the building that bond through the violence. You know, now, oh, man, I saw, I saw how he, a pre-account in a situation or how he maintained his cool role. I get why he's in this leadership. Now they respect you in their listening to you. So

I was always a lead from the front guy. In fact, to a fault where I'm the one that ended up in jail,

when it first hit, you know, six months in. Because I would never ask God or someone wouldn't do.

And I wouldn't be like, I'm the backing. All right, you guys got to go fight these dudes.

“Like, I went through that, that's going to end. That's one of the reasons I left. And so, I think,”

you know, also got respect because I was practicing what I preached and the rules were consistent for everyone. Like, I had to swallow the same rules. I couldn't, you know, I wasn't doing math and telling you you couldn't. So, just, I guess, the personal pieces. This is where the Brotherhood comes in the most because if you love your brother, you're going to support your brother and you respect the program, you're going to follow the rules. Because it's what's not what's best for you.

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We never did finish what the mission is. I don't think. Yeah. No, well, kind of what my mindset

on it was, the mission initially was the brotherhood, riding bikes, traveling, being a part of something. And then I feel like it gets lost when it turns into the violence, the defending yourself, the ego, the just getting wrapped up in that world, you know, and I think the mission gets lost to that extent. I mean, the brotherhood hopefully is there and stays there. But as far as, like, hey, the good times on bikes, it all, I mean, we still have a lot of fun. We had talked about the

parties and stuff, but, you know, it kind of gets swallowed up by this constant, essentially being

started up in other states, now we're up, you know, Gypsy Joker, so we can't get there or when

I moved to the Midwest, the government grew, so we can't be there and then moved to Illinois. I lost, we can't be there, so it's a constant state of somebody else telling you what you can't do. And then, you know, by then, after you start building the reputation or the name or

“you're in, you're like, who the hell's going to tell me what I can't do? Yeah. And so I think”

we get further and further away from the initial goal of hanging out with the boys, riding bikes, and having good times. Yeah. Did you just say the Hell's Angels in the Mongols have been a war since 1969? Well, yeah, so I've been spoken to date, so the Mongols started in 1969. It was the mid-70s, since the Hell's Angels Mongols war first started, and then as continued on, back and forth, since, I mean, I don't know to this day. To this day, I have at least three close friends I know in the club

that were murdered by Hell's Angels. I have a close friend, is in prison for life, for killing a Hell's Angel. You know, it's something that started back then and has continued, there would be

roles, there would be times where there was a little bit of peace here and there, but then it always

kicks back off. How did it start? So that's a good one because I don't think publicly, not a lot of people know the story. You know, what a lot of us were told going into it is that the Hell's Angels

“told the Mongols, they couldn't wear a bottom rocker that said California. They said that they”

were the only club that could claim California, and we weren't allowed to. And although that did happen a little later on, turns out that's not quite what instigated it. And, you know, we talked a little bit earlier about how the public perception was. Angels wouldn't let the Mongols join because they were Hispanic, but we already talked about how that wasn't true, and there really was no beef between the two clubs. The Mongols back then were a small, pretty small club, and the angels were

much larger, and from what I've been told from some of the old school diseases, they're path in across a lot early on, or occasionally they would party, you know, see to their bars and stuff. But, um, I want to say it was in the mid-70s, there was a famous Hell's Angel up in Northern California, George Wagers, Wagers, Wedgren, I don't know, I don't know, I don't know, George from the Hell's Angels, North Cal Hell's Angels, and the story goes here. There was two people, they were visiting the Hell's Angels

“up there, and the Hell's Angels were parting with them, and then they dosed to these guys with”

acid, or they got their on LSD, or getting crazy, and the angels ended up killing them, and they threw their bodies in a George had this big ranch, and they threw the bodies in the well of this ranch. Well, this investigation comes out, George testifies, and there was another member, but, well, I don't know, his blood's brother, um, who had testified as well. So this was active active Hell's Angels that had testified about this murder trial. So they got that had testified,

he moves, he leaves the Hell's Angels, and he moves to Southern California. And, you know, this is pre-internet, right? So the information isn't traveled as fast, he can't be like, hey, here's, here's someone so's paperwork, everyone knows, um, you know, he moved far enough away that I don't know who knew where he was or what, um, but he moved him with his brother, bud, and in date, the two of them started Chester Green was his name, so Chester was the Hell's

Angel that turned in for me, and moved to Southern California, moved him with his brother, bud, him and bud had started their own club, and that club didn't get absorbed by the Mongols. So now Chester and bud are Mongols. On the other side, there's Keith Ball, who was a worked for Eezerider Magazine, writer for Eezerider Magazine, well known Hell's Angel, and like that George Christie era early on, um, his wife and his son, his wife leaves, and she starts dating bud.

So essentially, the son Frank is a good friend of mine, Frank Ball, it's for lack of better terms, this is dad and step dad, right? Dad's a Hell's Angel, step dad's Mongol. So we all hear about or people that know the history, often hear about there was a big swap meet where the angels

and Mongols clashed for the first time, and I haven't gotten a fight. But what, earlier was transcribed

or what used to what used to be told was that the Mongols, there was more Mongols and angels, which I still believe is true, but the Mongols were just being cocky and arrogant, and one of the members of the angels was mad at it and said, "F" this and punched them. But the more the truth comes out, the more we've dug into the story, bud recently passed away, and since he passed away, a lot of these family secrets are coming out.

Frank's getting out starting to feel his story, and like he's been on my podcast and some other one, or just mine, and then George Christie's been talking about about it a little bit. So people are just starting to hear this actual story, where bud, who is now a Mongol, and then Frank's back, dad, Keith, they see each other at this spot meet. Keith punches bud, begin to a fight. Mongols start fighting angels. Everyone's hitting each other at motorcycle parts and

sporckets, so it's this big fight, right? After this fight, as George Christie would say,

wild club back then, or like, who the f or these guys? We have to make an example out of these

guys. They think they can just stand up and you attack us. And essentially, if you think about it from a strategic standpoint, if they let some small club get away with who else, everyone else are going to start challenging them too, right? So they thought they need to make this big statement. And so two Mongols, Redbeard and Jingles, who actually both had their lives in the back, were riding back from Los Angeles to San Diego at another time, and they were machine gun off

“their bikes and killed with their wives on the back. Yeah, I believe one of the wives died in”

the other one was paralyzed if I remember correctly. But they were machine gun off their bikes and killed by hills angels. We could too later, they had their funeral, and Red and White car shows up, which is the hell of angels color, colors. They leave Red and White roses at the funeral, and the car blows up at the funeral. So they bomb the funeral of the two Mongols ever killed. So obviously things escalate. Then there was a motorcycle shop, it was a motorcycle shop,

and they need to stop saying it was called the frame up. A couple Mongols worked there, and the Hell's Angels George Christie had talked about it, some of some podcasts, but the Hell's Angels had had a guy go in and drop off a motorcycle tire, and said they needed it switched off a wheel, but there was a bomb in it. So when they took the tire off, it blew up, killed some people. So now there's this tit for tackling back and forth, and then junior, who was a member of the San Diego

Mongols, shot and killed Ray Pilts, who was a Hell's Angel in San Diego, and ever since then, they just been killing each other. And you know, I feel like when this violence and stuff happens,

both sides always feel justified, right? The both sides are the ones that are getting through the

victims. They're getting bullied. These people tell us we can't do. So the Mongols are feeling hey, the angels are trying to tell us we can't can't do this, or in the angels are saying how these guys are trying. There's too many of them. They're being cocky, and you know, everyone thinks they're doing the right thing, and then when people start dying, everyone starts standing up for themselves. When that happened, that's when the Mongols said, well, why are we, why don't we wear the California

bottom rocker at this point? Because one of the Hell's Angel would go to work them, they're already out more, right? And so then they ended up switching over to the to their bottom rocker reading California, where before it was like long beecher, you know, what San Diego or whatever the city was. Yeah. And it's been going on since then. You know, I've had a little pk was a close friend of mine. He was pretty close to my age. And he had shot a Hell's Angel in Northern California on that

“Hell's Angel survived. And I think less than a year later, he just disappeared without a trace.”

He was a heavy set dude. He was running a big, full dresser motorcycle, which has never been found.

He left the party, told some guys he was going to go meet up some girl. And a couple months later, he was found in the mountains of the Santa Hills, the Santa Cruz Mountains. And he was half bird and a bullet in his head. My brother Rambler, who was a very close friend of mine. He was we were both a bit of Mongol. Well, I was a Mongol and San Diego when he was hanging around. He and up joining San Diego, but I'd move back to Oregon. He was up there visiting for work

and in Oregon. By now, things were pretty chill with all the other clubs. So we wore a patches everywhere. I mean, we slaughtered our program, but it was pretty relaxed. In fact, he said, this is like Disneyland up here. We can just go to the strip clubs. Or we can go to the bars, you know, because in San Diego, if we wanted to go to a bar, you had to, you could only stay for about 30 minutes, good and drink. You had to have a chase truck. You had to have X-Men members

like in Oregon. I mean, we still try to run off those rules, but in general in Oregon, you could let your guard down and he was visiting. So he, you had to walk to the strip club, you were here. And so he was getting right in a move home. He was getting right in a move Portland. So he went to San Diego. He bought a truck from one of the brothers. He drove it to San Diego. He was loading it up with stuff. The night before he was moving home, he went out to a bar with his old lady in San Diego.

Two hells angels approach him. They kind of should shove each other. Ramburg decides he's going to leave. He gets on his bike. He leaves, pulls over to talk to a place with his wife to get some food. The hells angels had to follow them. He comes out and talk to a place. They stab him in the throat,

“arm pit and groin. He bleeds out right there. That's shit. Did you ever have any runs?”

Yeah, but I mean, nothing, obviously not to that level. But you know, um, I had a tattoo. I have since covered it up. But after Ramburg, after Ramburg got killed, I got a tattoo of the Hells angels center patch. But it was hanging from a news with X-out eyes on a tongue hanging out and said FTAHA blood dripping off of it. Wow. It caused some controversy. But that's where our mindset was. And that's the problem with this war is, A, no one knows why it started. But B, once

you're in long enough, you don't care because both sides, or right, both sides lose members. And now they're the enemy. And you know, people are dying and going to prison and and most people don't even know why. So it's been, it's, it's after leaving the club and getting to know Mel and some other former Hells angels. My co-host for patched Jason, he was a former Hells angel. You know, that kind of initial goal we had was we wanted to show that everyone in this life

I joined the Mongols because I knew a Mongol, all my friends that were in like the hardcore

“crew FSU embossed in, they joined the outlaws and then some of them later joined the Mongols.”

And then the Northern California Skinhead and the Hardcore crew is they joined the Hells Angels. Because it was what was there in their region or who they knew it wasn't, we chose one because we hate the other, right? We all came from the same thing and we were the same people that just wore a different name and then it turns into people killing each other. And so, you know, getting into that why did it really happen piece and then trying to explain how much

we have in common and I even know if that'll help at this point. Because I mean, you've got to think that's a years and years of war. Yeah. I mean, how long did it take you to get over it and start talking to Hells Angels? I mean, you, you co-host a fucking podcast on the one. Yeah, and you know, it's a little different than former National President Mongols had introduced me to Jason and that former Hells Angel and he had read my book and really liked, you know,

kind of my philosophy on things and and he was like, hey, dude, let's do something where we can try and help. Let's try and the initial goal of that podcast was to show all the similarities. It kind of transformed into more of a mental health podcast on what it's like when you leave and refining identity and purpose. But it started as this, like, trying to show peace. And so

initially, it was really, mentally, it was really hard, man. You know, like the first time I met Jason,

which was the first time I met any Hells Angel X former Hells Angel in person. We were at a motorcycle rally in North Carolina called the smoke out. So I was riding up for Savannah and I was, you know, six hour ride or something. And he's given me address this Airbnb. He's going to be there with to a couple like two or three other former Hells Angels and then a guy met my friend Lauren from a company called Streets and they can't, he used to be a Hells Angel and he was going to

meet us there. So I'm riding up there at first. Happy to meet these my new friends. We've been talking and also the sun's going down. I mean, I'm riding, and I next time I'm running this country and I'm riding down this gravel road to this dark house and I go, fuck, do you think they're playing the long game? I'm going to walk in and there's plastic on the floor. But, you know, conversation

was a little guarded at first and just the trigger of seeing like some of them still have their club

logos or tattoos and just seeing that death at even was like, it was hard, immensely was tough, man. But the more we talked to the more we saw in common, we had in common and then hearing the other sides of stories where we were both at, you know, like there was a moment where Lauren's like, oh, shit, that was you or you know what I mean? Things like that where I was like, we were both

“there from the same things and had different perspectives and I think, can you go into one of those?”

Yeah, yeah, the one he was talking about is I had helped start a chapter of Mongols in Spokane and the Hell's Angels were really strong there. But at the time, most of them were imprisoned for a racketeering case and murder case, so it wasn't very many left. And the ones I started came from that hardcore crew FSU and a lot of the dudes in MMA and Jitsu, server tough dudes. And I knew we'd be able to hold it down. But once we opened up there, obviously there was

push back and that guy, Junior, I talked about, he had come back to the club and he was like kind of oversaw our area at the time. And he had called and he said, hey, the Angels, they have a bunch of guys coming from out of town. They just had this running with the Mongols last night. We need you to send everybody up there. And at the time, I'm on, you know, I was on non-association probation because I just got out of jail a few months before that and I wasn't allowed to fill it with the

club or leave the state. But again, I always been a lead from the front guy. So I said, all right,

so I'm going to call him to everyone. I got to go up there. We're all going. So we go up there.

“And we get, I think I left in the middle of the night, we get up there early in the day and”

more and more guys from, you know, Idaho is coming Oregon. And everyone's like, what's the plan? What's the plan? I keep going. We got away from Junior, you know? It's finally a call Junior just for a chain of command. And finally called Junior and he goes, I can't show up there. Man there's too many cops. And that was my first falling out with that guy. But from that, so I can okay, well then I guess that if I guess we're putting this together. So we had developed to meet up spot and essentially

the goal was we were just all going to go out and fly the patch and make a presence. And if they want to come get it, they could. But we're going to show them that A, we had support that we can show back up with a swiftness and that we all stuck together. And we were at one of the guys owns a tattoo shop up there and we were at this tattoo shop. It's going to kill in time waiting for more people to show up. And the FBI was outside driving around and stuff. And remind you, I can't leave the state

coming in so stuff to be there. So I'm down in the basement of this tattoo shop. You're ready to get tattooed. And the prospect comes running down stairs and he goes, "Moo, it's mooch. We got to get you out of here. FBI's in here and they know you're here." And I'm like, "Dude, I'm going back to jail." Well my twin brother had just had a baby so he couldn't even come with us. And he's in the club. So I call my twin brother. I guess they said, "Yeah, well we know Jeremy's

down there." Which is my brother's name. So I call my brother. I go, "Don't answer your phone, don't go outside if anyone asks you in a spoke can." And when the sun got down, I got out of there. But there was a stand-off at one point where we went to one bar and all the angels were at the

having this big stare down. And it turned out Lauren from streets and he was standing on the other

“side of that road. So we were like, "We're telling a story and I was like, "Yeah, he was like,”

you were there for that." I was like, "Yeah, I was there for that." Or there was a, I wanted that he got upset about is there's a former hell's angel had lofts, had left the club, he was the national secretary. So he had this spreadsheet that had every hell's angels chapter, address, and members, names, and phone numbers on it. And I could also, I shouldn't say it on the air, but whatever, it's nothing illegal. But I had this app where, you know, I can text people from

other people's phone numbers. And there was a time, it was during Sturgis. And we were, that was what the St. Louis chapter of the Mongols. And we were writing into St. Louis to go to some bars. We were coming from Alton, Illinois, and we're writing in St. Louis. And as we're coming down the highway, there's hell's fast-edits. That's where we were coming from,

was that fast-edits area? Yeah, absolutely. That was a bar we went through a lot. But we were

heading into, we were going to go to Shady Jackson, St. Louis. So we actually know we were going up to a solar area. But anyways, we're going down the interstate, or is it the highway, and also in this hell's angels flying past us by himself. And I've got nine guys with me, and then a chase, you know, we had a crew called the Reckon crew, which was like our support club.

“It didn't ride. It was a security guys. They're behind us. And I remember watching them and thinking,”

"Fuck, man." And I go whatever I do this. The whole pack whip's a bit, so we start chasing this guy. And we're probably doing a book 10, you know, 105 miles an hour at least. And this guy, he's flying, he's looking at his mirrors and he pulls into the gas station. And he was far enough ahead that I could seem to do it. But like, we weren't right there. And I remember thinking, well, I mean, that's smart. Some are public at least, you know. But we're pulling the gas station.

Everyone's all hot, ready to roll. And we can't find them. Everyone's kind of, they're all

in bike still. So everyone's weaving them out, trying to look around for them. And as I call it, to leave, we're pulling this, you turn. And I look in, there was like trailer park right there. And I look down, and I see this hell's angel. He's like peeking out from behind his mobile home. And so like a lot of it, well, there he is. So we pull into the trailer park, but we most of us had stopped, because it's the middle last night, we're all with someone's front door and that's something

to get you ready to get shot, right? So we could stop. And one of the members, that was actually from Kansas City, he had something to prove, because he was the older guy that was just kind of got in trouble at church, at church for like not falling through a shed or, you know, just kind of being soft. And so he wanted to prove some. So he comes rolling up and jumps off his bike, he starts walking, walking up a heart in the freezes. And I want to get this. Why is he freezing? I go,

the other people must have a gun. And then all of a sudden, the Kansas City guys starts back back. And one of the mongos goes, as he thinks he's the only one. I'm like, whoa, dude, it's like three in the afternoon at this trailer park. So this hell's Andrew comes out and he's got a pistol in his waist, but he's holding a iPad and he kept yelling, "Call 911, call 911!" And obviously, I was like, all right, dude, this dude ain't going to do shit. He's in the right,

if we go jump or whatever the cops are going to come. So I said, let's wrap it up and get out of here. Well, the more I was thinking about it, kind of like I had said before about the low-risk category award, I was like, this situation I kind of fuck with these dudes. So I got off that list, I got a number from a San Fernando Valley Hills Angel and I started texting this L's Angel from his house, we were at convincing him I was another house angel and I said, "Hey, brother,

we're in possession of this video of a bunch of mongos in front of your house and you're yelling, call 911." And he's like, "Brother, bro, that's not how it happened. That's not quite how it happened." And I said, "Well, I'll tell you what. We're going to have an officer's meeting and I'm just guessing at this point. You know, we're going to have his officers meet this weekend. So in the meantime, while you put all your club property in a box, we're going to come out there and decide if you

could still be in this club." And for two days, he's texting me and blowing me up, like, trying to stay, and Brother, it's not like that until he figured out, well, I wasn't, you know, eventually. So I guess they had to have like two or three officer meetings about it because I was doing that, and then there was a dude, both from Al'Archives, where he like collects old Hell's Angel Mountain but he had like, preserved the history of it. And a lot of the new members don't like them.

So every now and again, he was sending texts and messaging with a messing with him. And his national organization had to have this whole like West Coast meeting about not answering texts unless you know for sure who it is or answering the phone. And so Lauren was like pissed that he had to keep on his meeting. So when he told us where he goes, "That was you dude, you're the reason I had to keep going to this meeting." Damn, wild, wild.

Yeah, my wife said I was a nerd because there was another time where they were hosting a fight night in St. Louis, the angels and a galoping goose or the forest heroes. They were doing it together. So I was texting the angels from a forest heroes number. And like you guys need to step up security as she had soft. You're right. And then I was doing it back to the... You're just trying to stir the pot. So I'm just sitting there giggling on my phone. I get idiot.

“My wife's like, "What is wrong with you?" Wow. How long have you been married?”

We've been together 10 years. I've been married for five. How did you meet? She was working at a bar that we had stopped in. And we had rolled in there. It was really kind of funny because she's 10 years younger than me. She's not from that life at all. And someone at the bar said,

And then most of us, like I said, were sober at the time. I'm not drinking. So we walked in.

“We all were at Mountain Dews or something. She's like, "All these tough guys that came in an order”

Mountain Dew." And then we went back there another time. And when I do drink, I like fruity drinks. I don't give a shit. Taste good. I don't like taste alcohol. If it comes in a fruit or we got an umbrella, I'm in, right? So I walk in. And I order my tie. And apparently that she either didn't know how to make it at the time or didn't have the ingredients for it. So it was the worst my tie ever had in my life. But she was doing a relationship. And we didn't even talk then. But she

found me on social media and sent me a friend request. So maybe two months later. So right after new years, she liked to picture. And I was like, "Who's this chick like in my photo?" So I sent her message. And of course, she made me wait 24 hours to show me what time it was. And then we met up

starting to hang them out. And I was hit, man. Right on. She was not to sound cheesy, but this is the

facts is. So I was engaged a year before that. And we split up over mainly because, well, I come month before our wedding. I was in Thailand doing stuff with the club. And when I came home,

“wait, what? So I had helped start the Australian Mongols and the Mongols and Australia can't come”

here. And I can't go there. So we would meet in Thailand for meetings. So it's like, "Why can't you go there on that can't come here?" Well, I couldn't go there at time because my criminal record was felon, but also if you're known member of motorcycle club, Australia has crazy motorcycle club laws. A lot of the states you can't even more a patch or have club tattoos. So immigration on both sides, I want to let you in. Gotcha. And so Thailand we could because you don't need visas to visit.

You know, and it's also was like Mongols had just started in Thailand. So it was our chance like from leadership to go out there and meet the Thai guys. And so I spent 10 days in Thailand. And the club had paid for me to go because it was doing this meeting. And we're late paid for the flight, but still it's Thailand. Everything else is pretty cheap. And they'd offered to bring her. So I was like, "Baby, no, we're going to go to Thailand." And she was all against it.

It should have been a pretty big red flag because when I came, the minute I landed in Thailand, I got this dear John text. But how things were working out. And I was spending we're supposed to be saving for a wedding. And I'm spending money at motorcycle parts. But it really came down to she wanted to have a kid and I don't. So I come back to an empty house. And I spent a full year just being single. I mean, I was doing a Tinder thing and meeting chicks. But it's something I

talked to my clients about a lot too is I don't feel like you can be happy in a good relationship until you can be happy alone. Because so many people get codependent with others and they'll

“put up with bullshit or bad relationships because they're just the fear of being alone. Right?”

And so I spent a long time. Like I was dating. I was going out and hanging out with girls and stuff. But if there was any sort of red flag, I just moved on. Like why get serious? I was to the point where I was cool with what I was doing. So I really wasn't looking for anything serious when I met her. And she just got mad at a relationship. But when her and I started getting close, it was like, this light, I was like, this makes sense on why my other relationships didn't work out.

Like everything just fit into place so well. Like the way we thought and morals values. There's so many things that were so similar. There was no jealousy or possessiveness or argument fighting. And I was just like, this is Howard Lace. Like this is how it's supposed to be. And I wouldn't have known till I had it. But I wasn't going to let that go. So I put a ring on. Do you still not one kids? Yeah, correct. Why not?

Just I'm honest with myself, man. I'm selfish with my time. I like to be able to pack up and go. And I want, you know, I work with kids. I have amazing needs and nephew. I've got a sister that's 22. But as far as like the responsibility of children and the financial burden of children at this

point, you know, we rescue dogs. I used to foster English bulldogs. I've just always kind of been

more of a dog guy. And I love kids. And, you know, people say all the time, oh, you'd be a great dad or oh, your life would change or you'll see it. And I don't doubt that. But I also very honest with myself that it's not something I want. And so, you know, I'm 45 now. So I definitely don't want to start doing it now. And so that was something when her and I were getting serious. I wanted to make sure we were on the same page with. Right on. Right on.

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our show and tell them our show sent you. How the hell did you wind up in the Midwest?

“So I had, were we missing anything in Oregon before we go to the Midwest?”

Me going to Jim, I could trial my case. Well, that would be a pretty big deal. Yeah, yeah. So been in the club for about six months. There was this party in Eugene for the club the free souls and there was like their every chapter of the state was there and then all the outsiders, gypsy jokers, brothers, speed, all the clubs were there together. And they were going to make this big presence to like essentially show them all as we couldn't be here. And I didn't want to do this.

I wanted to show them that we were serious and we weren't going to coward down. So we took all six of us, plus we had some guys come up from Nevada and stuff. I think there was only 10 or 12 of us. And we just started going all the bars they go to. Like I knew where they were at. I had a eyes on their clubhouse and knew who was out and about. So we weren't putting ourselves in too bad of a spot. But we made sure to go make our presence and all of their bars around town. Not to

necessarily start the pot. I mean to some extent, but mainly to show like hey, we're still going to do what we're going to do. And we had just checked back in at the hotel and three of the guys that were in the scoop of 12 turned out to be informants. So it made sense. We were getting followed by the

ATF. And this ATF agent was the first time I'd ever, that's where we saw an ATF. In my mind,

from TV, you know, these guys were all military looking in shape. And this dude was looked at grimmins from McDonald's, it's wearing new balances of all flat and down on the sides. And he came walking up and he had to let you know and informed us that there had been a car that had gotten pulled over, that had a president of the Gypsy Joker's president of free souls and of president and brother speaking the president of the outsiders and they had a trunk with guns in it. And they said they're

out Mongol hunting. So what they told us, so they had a duty for two more. So they asked us to stay at the hotel, just don't go out. And the informants were dead said I'm not going out, they were scared. I mean, obviously we didn't know their informants, but now it made sense. But we said, "Fuck it, do you?" Plus, this may sound silly, but the fact of it is, too, is, "A, we were all going to go do it." But now we have, there's cops following us. Federal agent, like, the risk goes down pretty

pretty much after that, right? I'm not saying that someone's a wooden still do something,

it wasn't a shield, but it wasn't as threatening as if, you know, we were out there by ourselves in the middle of nowhere and these guys were coming to get us. So I didn't want to coward down, so we went out there and nothing really came of it. And a couple weeks later, this front page, back when the newspaper was the thing, the front page of the Sunday newspaper was, "Biker War comes to Oregon, police fear violence has motor side Mongols roll into town."

And it's this huge, like it was a multiple page article about how the Gypsy Jokers were going to go to war with Mongols and how the Gypsy Jokers have a rule that they could be no clubs with black and white colors in their state. And then they started talking about some of the different violence that happened with, not between the two clubs, you know, what they had done over the years. So we're on high alert, right? I mean, especially now it's in the paper. And my parents,

“like I said before, they own like a hundred and I always forget, I think it's 120 acres,”

but they live in this big, big property and they have a big house at the top of the hill and then there's a little house at the bottom where we used to live before they built a big one. And my brother lived there, so I stayed with my brother. And I'm getting ready to leave, I was going to portland and I was in my brother's pickup truck and binder my fell in on mom probe probation, so I can't carry a weapon, you know, I can't have a firearm or anything. And I'm coming down

their driveway, it's a quarter mile driveway and there's four no trespassing signs coming out, but every now and again, sometimes someone gets lost and turns around. So I'm coming down the driveway, and here comes an all blacked out SUV with Washington plates, the Ford Explorer, started coming towards me, and when it sees me, it stops. I mean, it stops at a distance where I could see, outline of two people, we couldn't see like who they were, what they looked like. And so

A, you know, I stopped to and I'm sitting here thinking, okay, I don't have a weapon, so I don't want to run up on them, but I do want to know who they are. So I'm just kind of waiting, thinking, trying to tell myself, okay, maybe it's someone that's lost and they kind of do this weird turn, you know, they have to do it by 12 point turn to turn around. And but as they're going on the road, they keep looking back at me and I remember thinking, maybe I scared them with their lost.

And so we come to the end of the driveway and I was going to go north, which would have been left

“and they turned right. And I remember I had this internal dialogue that I'll never forget that”

I decided to turn right. And I remember saying, is this one of those moments you're going to look back on and say what she would turn left? And I turned right and I followed them for about 10 miles through the country road, but every time I followed them, they wouldn't let me get close to them. So it was more of a warm flag as we're going on. And then we come back to the interstate, and now we're at the interstate, now they go north. So now my, like, now I'm definitely thinking

it sums off, because they would have gone north from the driveway, right? So they're trying to do in a circle. So now we're on the interstate, and as soon as they get on the interstate, they'd gone it. They're going in and out traffic. So I'm like, okay, it's on. So I'm chasing them. We get to north, the north part of Salem, and they take the exit, and they drive to the Gypsy Joker's Clubhouse. And in order to do that, you have to go through a couple of neighborhoods on a

down these neighborhood roads. So I parked in a gas station across the street that had eyes on them.

“So they pulled from the Gypsy Joker Clubhouse, but they wouldn't get out of the car.”

And I'm thinking, okay, this is all sketchy, right? The trapeziator side is window rolls down, and a finger comes out and does this to me from across the street. So now I say, okay, this is the enemy, right? So I call my brother, and the guy that was active, I talked about earlier from high school.

And I say, hey, here's what's going on. Where do you guys at? We want to meet me somewhere in this

area. So at least maybe you got, they don't know what you guys driving. Maybe you guys can get an extra. At least we just want to see who they are. So as I'm talking to him, they get back on the interstate. But now they're going back south again. So I'm worried maybe they're going back to my house. They know that I'm out there. So I get back to my kingdom. And for a while, I don't think they realized I was still following them. But when they did, they start speeding up. I followed them for 60 miles

after this. So this is like, now we're already an hour and a half into this. And as we're going into the city of Eugene, we had a chapter there. So I call something like Eugene guys. And I said, hey, told them what's going on. They said, why not? There's two different groups I call. I said, why don't you guys each get in a separate car. Meet me out the freeway and I'll call you when we come close. And I want you to jump on like Mergin. But they don't know who your guys are. So

get a good look at them. Or at least be with me if they pull over for gas. So we're following them.

And it gets to the point where I just said, fuck it dude, let's just kind of slow him, let's box them in. So I get up behind them. Someone gets next to him when I get in front of them. And as soon as we do that, they slam on their brakes. So the guy in this car swore of slightly and it was enough where they went from the center lane to the faceline. And as soon as they did that, they hit a siren. I was so locked in the moment that I started looking around when I heard the siren because I was

these are enemies, you know. And then they went from the faceline. Jay jumped over three lanes of traffic, took the exit. And as they were doing that, one of the other guys got in front of them and slammed on his brakes, which scared them. So when they did that, they hit their lights. And I go, fuck, these are cops. Holy shit. You're following a cop for an hour and a half. I got leather gloves on to cell phones next to me. But I started thinking I'm like, lavender, what have I done? That was

illegal, you know? Like, pollinated was follow somebody. I wasn't on the cars that swirped at them, you know. So now they're following me because like they had pulled over. And so I started using my turn signal. So they could see where I'm going because I know at this point I'm going to get pulled over. And I pull into the nearest parking lot. And they pull in and they pull around and they face me, but they wouldn't get out of their car. I'm already thinking, you know, now it's, I'm like,

“damn, I'm stupid. I think that's the car that that ATF agent had when they came up to us in”

your jean. I wonder if this is that ATF agent. But I was also thinking that when he came up to us in your jean here, he even said, I have your number. So my head was like, well, he could have called, you know what I mean? Like, yep. So I was like, I don't, I don't see anything wrong. And I look in my mirror. And there's like 30 cops around me, guns out, get out of the car, get out of the car, get out of the car, get fucked. But for sure, I'm going to get shot or beat up. So they pull me out of the car,

handcuff me. I'm standing next to the car. And I only know this now from trial from the discovery. But, you know, the car has, is recording. And the cop tells that ATF agent. So he gets out, he starts walking up to me. And the cop says, hey, we're recording. So he turns the radio up. And when he walks out to me, he was like, tell me they were playing a game of cat and mouse. It was funny. They were going to see how long, how long would take to my ran out of gas. He even said,

I don't, you didn't do anything wrong. We're going to cut you loose. My, I had called my aunt and because she lived in the town. And my brother and Zach who had been following me, they were

across street, and the cops never knew that they were following them. So they were recording it with

camcorder. And I was looking over at Quizz and I was thinking, hell yeah, I'm going to go get some lunch. I'm hungry when I get out of here. Next thing you know, I'm in the back of the cop car. I got police motorcycles in front of behind this cop car, like some presidential thing. And they'd take me to jail. So I sit and holding while they round up the other two guys. And because now again, there was an informant that was involved. So he had told everyone who was involved. And normally,

in this case, you're supposed to lawyer up, right? Like, I mean, even cops lawyer up at this point. But because I didn't think it was a risk. I didn't think I was risking any serious charges. I wanted them to be on tape admitting that it was a game of cat and mouse. What were they doing? And I had questions too. Why didn't you identify yourself? What were you doing? So I said, yeah, I'll do the interrogation. And in the interrogation, they said, this was a game of

cat and mouse. We were just out there to see if we can find out where you live, then you caught us.

“Ha ha ha. That's why you go to the Gypsy Joker clubhouse. Like, oh, it was convenience.”

Or it was, it was a mistake. And they were making these jokes. They were like, I had it on tape. So we're getting ready to, they now they say, okay, we're going to go book you and I said, for what? And they said, we haven't figured it out yet. But I think attempted assault. And at this time, to jail's were overcrowded, there was no funding due to this timber lab budget, that federal timber thing budget that was going on. So they were, they weren't holding

people. So I was like, whatever, dude, I'll be out in the morning. So I go to jail. In the morning, I go down to my, in my arrangement. And instead of bringing me in with everyone else, I'm sitting in a single cell by myself. And I see my codependence walk by and they're like pale white. I'm going to piece of paper. I'm like, fuck, just can't be good. And then slide my indictment over

unlawful use of a weapon, conspiracy to commit officers. There was like eight felonies.

“And the kidnapping was because they moved into direct, they moved from the center lane to the”

fast lane interaction. They didn't want to go. Yeah. Right. $14 million bail. And then I had a bail reduction where I went down to 1.4 million. So I $14 million bail. Front page of every paper, mom will leave her tries to run cops off the road. Um, the one of jail guards will let me out and watch myself on a zone of TV at night in the nightly news. And I was, um, because there was a high profile inmate. I was in the 23 and a half hour day single cell locked down for the two months.

I was there. Um, and every time I violated my back, it was the same. So I take it to trial.

It's like we can have trial. The CTF agent. I always knew that everyone knows that cops were

liar, but I never thought they would blatantly liar, right? I couldn't, it didn't make sense. This ATF agent's on the stand. And, and he says, he's talking about when he came up to talk to me. And he goes, I was screaming at him because I was in fear for my life. I thought, whatever you're doing, we got our guns out. And like try to make it like this whole thing that

“wasn't. You know, and my whole day, I was like, oh, when the interrogation tape comes up,”

I have them saying this and this. They fought and somehow got the interrogation tape out. They weren't allowed to introduce it as evidence. Holy shit. The judge was against me. Like, I don't want to sound like I'm a victim because I did chase these dudes, but the system was fucked. Thankfully, my family helped me with a very expensive attorney. And I won.

You know, cost us $25,000 in a lot of time. But what I did get found guilty is this reckless

driving, you know, misdemeanor and a misdemeanor charge called menacing. The maximum for that is a year and a year in jail and then five years of probation, they gave me the max. A year in jail, five years of probation. And it was essentially fell in a gang probation because I had a non-association, so I wasn't allowed to fill it with anyone from the Mongols, including my twin brother. Knightly curfews couldn't go to bars.

Everything. I tried to appeal the part about not hanging off my brother, but they didn't. And so now I go to jail, go back to jail. And I get released after a day of being sentenced. So I was there for like two months in a day or something because they have the sentencing guidelines in the matrix and they're like, okay, no longer my risk. Like, when I'm there for,

because they're just commit kidnapping, I'm high in a risk, right? And if I'm there for

reckless driving and they need to make room, so who's gonna get kicked out? So I only knew I'm getting kicked out because I look out myself and there's this media crew everywhere, reporters, and someone goes, it's probably for you and I'm, yeah, right. It was. Oh, and thankfully I asked it one of the cops, let me go up the back door after I was processed out, so I don't, instead of the media exit, so I avoided that stuff. But due to even in trial, they did just

so many crazy things. I got one point. They put the whole jail on lockdown and someone goes, watch, they're gonna, they're gonna say this is you tomorrow at trial, and I'm like, yeah, right, how? And sure is shit. They said that a motorcycle had mongol had ridden by and left us a suspicious package up front, so they had to call a bomb squad and put the jail on lockdown. They had credible information and mongol were trying to bust me out like this was some wild

less movie dude, like, and because they convinced the judge that the mongol were trying to break me out, they allowed extra cops in my trial, so at the time of the day, 12 are uniform officers in my, in my court, in my hearing. You can imagine what, how that influences the jury, right. So it was an uphill battle, but I, but I won. And so I get out after road crew everything else, I get out. And now I'm, you know, I've been a mongol for seven months, eight months now.

“And I mean, yeah, and I'm being, and I think there's eight months in, and I'm being told I can't”

hang out with the club for five years. And so I was like, I can't do that, man, fuck this. I said, I'm going to move to San Diego, and that guy that interviewed me, he was the president of that chapter. And so I'm going to move down there to the heart over the mongols are, I'm going to learn to be the best mongol I can. I go, they're not going to come, I mean, I'm going to have a probation violation. I'm going to have a warrant, but you think they're going to extract me on the misdemeanor

warrant, you know. So, and I moved to San Diego and joined the mongols there. And then in October of 2008, is when that operation black rain, and I talked about concluded, and everybody got rated. Yeah, every house in Oregon got rated. I, I woke up to a text 20 texts that said, are you okay? I was like, what was there earthquake or something? And just like out of the movies, man, I turned on the TV, and it's like mongol's motorcycle club, national raids, and are showing

swap teams going in houses, and all these mongols and handcuffs. And I'm thinking, well, fuck, I'm a warrant, peeking out the window. And I stayed up in the Yucca Valley mountains with my aunt for another month or so, and then I drove home and turned myself in. And did two months, and then for about that whole year, man, I'd be out for a couple months to get caught hanging out, go back for a couple months. And every time I went back, was a 23 and a half hour day lockdown.

And that kind of life changing moment for me was the last time I got went in there, when a guard said, hey, man, I lost the bed. And I go, what do you mean? You know, and he goes,

And I remember just looking around the jail, and nothing against the people that there, but I was like,

“I didn't feel like I was a criminal. I was there for violating probation, but I wasn't a drug dealer.”

You know what I mean? I was like, you're right. I don't belong here. And I was getting really tired and burnt out of this, that was my life, made it out of jail, in an out of jail. And I was trying to think, what if it's something I can do as a career, you know, what can I do to break this cycle of going out of jail? And there was a mongol out of Hollywood chapter named Rich Eritch who had his PhD in clinical psychology. He looks like he just walked off the prison yard. He's a big dude, blasted neck tattoo and

great shape, and he was involved in an incident with the Hell's Angels in Mongols and Sturgis, where a Hell's Angels got stabbed. He wasn't in it, do it, but he was around there. So he got fired for being involved. And the students are clinical psychologists, right? And this is 2008 to 2008, yeah, 2008 to 2009. And he goes, man, I'm having a hard time finding a job after that. He goes, I can't find anything that pays more than 100, he goes everything they're offering. He only pays

100 a year. And to me, especially back then, I was like, that's your problem. I want to have that

“problem. And, you know, by now, I've got Mongols tattooed huge on the back of my head. I've got”

felony. Now I'm on probation, you know, probation. And I was like, what's it? What's a field that I can

get into? Where I could help others give backs. I always wanted to be a teacher, but I couldn't

once I got my felony. And I said, I'm going to start drug and alcohol counseling. So I went to school, I got my associate's degree in drug and alcohol counseling. Then I stayed because I fell in love a psychology. I went to a wittier college in Los Angeles for a while and then went back to Oregon. And I completed my bachelor's degree in social behavioral studies. And then in 2017, I got my master's degree in social work. And at my last semester of graduate school, I had to do an internship.

And the internship I really wanted, an internship I interviewed for and got was to be a counselor at the Oregon youth authority for the kids that were in jail. I was really excited about it. And I was getting ready to start. And they gave me, I did the interview and I said, there was hired. And they gave me this like information. And I had to go, go to this address for training on these four days or whatever it was. So I wake up the morning, I'll dress up, I'm excited. I follow the GPS.

I pull it apart and it's the fucking Oregon State Police Academy. So we're everyone from the youth authority gets trained, even the counselors. So I ended up calling my wife, I was girlfriend of the time, but it's my wife and I said, man, I know I have a little bit of ego, but maybe no one here knows who I am, right? I got out of the car and the cop stops dead in his tracks and stairs that mean. And now looking back, I know it was the Oregon State Chief of Police, saw me walking in.

And I was even told, I don't know what's true, not that they were teaching a class about me,

somewhere, you know, about them always in Oregon, somewhere in those halls. So when I would

get out of the class to take a leak, it was like someone farted, you know, like everyone just stopped and stared at me. So I got pulled out of class really quick. I got accused of infiltrating and they thought the government's perspective was that I was, I went to school for eight years and spent $150,000 at school so that I could go recruit kids from my gang of the youth authority. You know, 15 to 6-year-olds, they don't write motorcycles, that I'm going to waste all my time to do that.

“So they fired me. Well, I found that beyond constitutional, I think it was just, I explained to them”

like I would explain to anyone that my history and the club and my background as well, I thought would make me a good therapist for kids. And so I filed a lawsuit against the state of Oregon for, for like, it's youth authority for wrongful discrimination and I won. But when I won, again,

it's all, I won $1,000 and $1,000. You know, that $1,000, so everyone always remembers. But, you know,

it wasn't a paid internship. There was no monetary value. They paid the attorney fees and the thousand bucks. But it was all over the paper. And at the same time, I just fell in love with you, Jitsu and found you Jitsu. I was 10 years in the club by now. I was overseeing all of the Northwest and all of that estate out of, out of, out of country chapters. I helped start Australia. Like, I was, I had a lot on my plate, you know, my two years ago, my fiance had left and now I'm

dating Ashley. Like, you know, it's just, my life had changed a lot. And when I really, really got right before I fell in love with Jitsu, my, all my buddies were doing Jitsu. And so I was, I'm sure I don't want to do something everyone else doing. So I started doing Kramagha, my first night class. And I walked in and, you know, it was pretty law enforcement, heavy activity. And so there's a lot of cops in there. And all I could think is, hey, listen, if I'm good at martial arts and, and I don't

like you and you come to my gym, I'm probably just going to beat you up. So I was like, I worst case, they're going to kick my ass or maybe they're going to get trying to get to know me. But instead, they went to the police union and made this big deal. Since I had the victims of my crime or law enforcement. And I got kicked out of the gym until I couldn't train there. So then I started training at Jitsu. And I fell in love with Jitsu. And it was traveling for Jitsu. And I was down

in Los Angeles, training with Orlando Sanchez, Rest in PC, passed away recently. But he was a friend of the Mongols. It was the ADCC medalist and a big, big name in Jitsu. And because I was in the club, I was getting free lessons with him and training with him all the time. And at that gym, I met these guys from a team called pedagosimission fighting, small team out of Illinois. And at the time,

living at the living on the mats. Most of them came from nothing. They were the each other's family.

And it reminded me of everything of punk rock and being in the bands and traveling, being on two or, you know, it just, I was like, this is awesome. I can resonate with this. Like these dudes, they weren't like the high-end gym that had the money and the rich kids there. These were all kids that were, you know, they were training for free. But they were living on the mat. But they were winning tournaments and they were kicking ass. And I was like, man, as much as I

loved Jitsu, I want to get into us. I'm going to train. I want to train with the best. And at Orlando's gym, you know, I was beaten a lot of these guys. You know, obviously at my age group and stuff. But I was still a new, new blue, but I do wipe out. But I grown up wrestling. And so I had to kind of advantage. Everyone on the pedagosimission fighting team had beat my ass dude. And I'm talking

“like, submitted me six times and one round. And so I was like, oh, yeah, that's what I want to be.”

You know, so I went home. I'm trying to find a job and I can't because of all this stuff that's

going on a paper. So I started talking about life about maybe moving out there, trying to start fresh. I had also considered kind of stepping away from the club because there was no mongles in the Midwest. There was two members in Kansas City chapter and one chapter in Indiana. So essentially, there was no mongles in the Midwest or definitely wasn't any in Oregon. I mean, in Illinois. So I could go out there. And I would still be somewhat involved in the club. But I wouldn't

have to be as active. I kind of take a break. I could really focus on Jitsu and then getting into my field of work. He said, you, you, you haven't done much social work for therapy sessions up to this point. Now I was in a little bit with kids and then I had I had done some internships working on like advocated from the homeless community and stuff like that. Did you like doing it? Social work. The advocate for homeless community was difficult. I had done some drug and alcohol

“counseling, which I ended up down the road not caring for because like my guys were cord ordered and”

didn't want to change. But it wasn't like I'd say Illinois that really just started doing traditional mental health therapy. Kind of said on my couch talk. And then I was doing perpetrators domestic violence couch on the counseling, which I fell in love with. That was really cool. But my wife was about to start Oregon State University for her master's degree in dietetics and nutrition. And as it turned out, SIU had a dietetics nutrition program. And it's right by where I wanted to move. So we decided

to we were going to get the two years. I can't believe we were talking to pick up and moving across the one year. And we picked up and moved across the country, packed the dogs and stuff and two cars and drove out there, sat on scene and rented a house and I started training and she finished she went to school and I started doing therapy and going to therapy or I started working in social work and being at their epist. And I was really heavily focused on jujitsu and I talked to our

national peel a little Dave about retiring from the club. And he said, "No, just just go out there and you can show up to what you want. You can be as active as you want." But you don't, you don't have to be alone. And I was in the club's mother chapter by then, national governing so I didn't have to, I didn't have to have a chapter near me. But man, it didn't take long. I was out there and heathed pedigo from pedigo submission fighting the coach. His brother Randy pedigo had grown up doing

MMA and he's when I got heathed into it, but he had just bought a bike. And he was this local legend that area, this tough guy and a little crazy. And I mean him lifted way to the same gym and so he introduced himself and he goes, "Yeah, you know I know you know you're trying my brother and he goes, "If you ever want to start a chapter I heard a little prospect and he walked off." I don't know if I walk shit. And I still wasn't necessarily in my mind. But there was a group

of guys from this hardcore crew called BDC that were in Alton and St. Louis area. And they were friends with the Spokane Mongols. So the Spokane Mongols are calling me, "Hey, since you're out there, we got this great group of guys. They want to hang out." Well, I didn't have friends early outside of jujitsu. So now hang out with these guys and one was tattooed or some getting tattooed and they were awesome. So much fun to hang out with. And then they approached me and said, "Hey,

we want to be Mongols." And I had this kind of conflicting moment where just because I didn't

“want to be in anymore, should I stop other people from being in? And I think looking back there”

and somebody had been yes. But at the moment, you know, I was at the blinder zone. I'm in the club. And so I said, "Let's go." And like I said, when I started there, there was two guys in Kansas City. So I was the only guys in Missouri. No one in Illinois, one chapter in Indiana and none in Tennessee. When I left that area, we had four chapters in Missouri, two in Illinois, five in Indiana and one in Tennessee. Wow. I spent some time growing the chapter out there, which created a lot of conflict with

a lot of other clubs. And then yeah, I spent one time out there before I ended up leaving the club.

Wow. Oh, and in 2009. Ever had a million fucking years, what I think I had.

1% by your gang dude would become a therapist. Inside the fucking club. And like I said, I wasn't the only one. You know, Richard, he's so an active member as far as I know. And he's got his PhD in clinical psychology. I mean, that was one of the main reasons. Did you ever do therapy for the club member? I mean, not traditional therapy, but like I said, have said before, is that I got to this point.

I was able to institute like these guys working every, you know, they're workout rules. And I mean, we had that in the Northwest too, but it was later on when I had this authority. So in the middle, as I'm creating all these chapters. So as I get, you know, it's fallen

“the clubs bylaws and stuff. But I also was able to kind of institute my own program, right?”

And so this was my opportunity to start doing these more positive things and I wanted to do. And one of the big things that I did do was in opening up mandomank communication, man. Sitting at church and how do you feel about that? You know what I mean? Those types of things. And it seems counterintuitive to a bunch of alpha males, but man, I'm telling you the guys loved it. And now, instead of just going to the bars, we're hanging out at the gym.

We're lifting weights together. We're doing jutsu together. I know before I left Oregon, man, we bought wrestling match and we had them down on the clubhouse and we'd have our meetings. And then we'd all fight new jutsu. And so it's like we weren't just drinking at the bar. We were like creating these bonds, doing other activities that were positive. And had a positive influence on top of that. Now the members, instead of that,

adage of these peerbelly to our shape bikers, man, everyone's in good shape. You know, we're training most of the guys at least know how some basic fight experience. I got in a stick and I fight in and I was teaching some of the guys that. So it was like, especially in the Midwest when I told their, like, we all voted the whole region.

I had them all vote on everyone had to work out. And there would always be, you know, that

the old time where they go, so I need to work out my trigger finger or whatever. And I go, cool. Show me you're going to the range three days a week. Show me what you're training that three. There's a week or the old guy that's not a great shape. Cool. Go walk at the park three days a week. But do something active. And I really saw that the changed it. I mean, if you go, like,

“the Mongols have a role where you have to have meetings or church once a week.”

If you run out of things to talk about once a week, what do people do? They start talking about other people. And then there's drama. But if we had church and we had nothing to talk about, we don't go live together. Or we do jutsu together. So we're still getting that weekly, face to face time. But we're doing positive things. And I noticed the more people are lifting and training, the less people are partying. And the less people are partying,

less drama there was. And so there was all this cool positive things coming out of it. You know, positive outcomes. And it was, it was really, really cool for a while. Wow. Man, that's interesting. Very interesting. Why did you want to believe in the club? So there's a few factors to it. Our national peel a little Dave had just gotten thrown out of the club of our allegations of being a federal informant, which he wasn't. And later went to trial.

And it was proven that he wasn't not a shred of paperwork. But he had had an infidelity and his wife called him when he was drinking and kind of set him up for some statements that made him look bad. And you know, he was used against him as a political move.

“By now, I've been in 15 years. I had, when I first joined, there wasn't a lot of out-of-state chapters.”

By now, and I didn't start all the out-of-state chapters. I'm not saying that. But by now,

the Mongols had grown all over. And when I first came in, like that guy, Junior,

I've told you about from California, and was supposed to be in charge of Oregon. But he didn't know the politics of other clubs there. You know, the history of other clubs. He didn't even know how to have the members. So I was like, that doesn't make sense. So as the club grew, and I got into positions of leadership, I developed this program called the regional rep program where, like, for example, someone like me, someone that started in that area and been there the whole time,

gets elected to oversee the region to make sure everyone's following the same rules of protocol. And then there are the ones that answer to mother chapter. So it's since you're like a liaison from other chapter, your part of mother chapter, you're not the national boss, but you're kind of that in between, right? Because now, say, you got to sit down with other clubs in that area. It's not some guy from LA coming up and sitting down with some club from Oregon. It's some local

that knows the history, knows the people. And so I developed that program and we kind of rolled it, well, we rolled it around the world, eventually, but I rolled it across the country. And then when I was telling you about that support club, the Raiders, I developed a program so they weren't, they weren't their own independent club. And each one of them had was a tied to a Mongol chapter. So there was a really turned out to be like,

you said before, more of a farm team, where a lot of these guys joined the Raiders think and they didn't want to be a representative of the time. And the more time they were doing,

they're like, this is always same shit. And I as well be a Mongol. So by now, there's a lot of

Mongols that came from this program that I had started to. So politics are involved. There's a new national pee, but they have elections are coming up. And a lot of people start saying, well, we should run. And I had said a hundred times that I wasn't interested in. And what I used to tell people is, at the next all members meeting, stand up and say, raise your hand if you've ever been a national pee. And I go, not one hand, it'll be raised because you either get kicked out of the club,

where you go to prison. That's not how I want to leave this club. And at a president's meeting, before that, someone had asked, can you be a president if you live? Because there was always this idea that you had to live in Southern California to be a president. Because for the most part, back then, at least, most of the club was California centric, the majority of the club was in California. And at that time, they said, no, you can be a president from anywhere. Then they took a inventory,

if how many members were in the country. And they realized that there was more out of state than

defend his clearance name. And it was about him and his clearance name. But the host had asked him, like, what do you think should be done that would help the Mongols? And he said, they should have a new president, someone from like Oregon and Missouri. So you can imagine a single in you out. Yeah, I don't. He says it wasn't intentional. But you can imagine a target that put on my back. So our next national run is my Emmy, which ended up being the very last national run I went to,

before I left. And I'm there. And I have everyone there. Tell me, you know, you can't be president. You know, you can't run. I know. I know. They come up with the national meeting with a

“rule of hate. As everyone knows, there's rule. You have to live in LA. Like, I was even as much”

as I expressed that didn't want to be it. That was a threat. So I go back to the Midwest and here, I, you know, I've seen these five states. And also, and I get a text message, or a text message, it goes out to the regional representatives that says, you know, so and so in California is in charge of Tennessee now. And I go, wait, what? And they go, oh, no, no, no, it's both of you're doing it. And then all so and so from California, in charge of Indiana now. So they were trying to take away my influence,

right? So I saw the writing on the walls to that. But the big piece was, you know, when I started up there and in Missouri, it was the Galloping News might as well. They were like the Gypsy Oaks of Oregon. And they said we couldn't be there. There would be issues. And then when certain Illinois was the outlaws. And at this time, two people close to me were murdered. You know, one of them,

he was the president of the Southern Illinois outlaws at the time. And when I first lived out there

and him and I developed a really good relationship and we got really close. And he'd been thrown

“out of the outlaws and he kept hit me up on to be a Mongol. And we were still had pretty good relationships”

outlaws then. And we had an agreement. We wouldn't take each other's members. And so I told him, hey, dude, I'd love to have you. But unfortunately, we have this rule. And on top of that, they say he was thrown out for drug use. And I don't like excessive drug use. And so if that was the case, I wouldn't have wanted him anyways. But at this time, the only other club in the country that was accepting ex-outlaws was the Pagans. And I knew a guy from Gigiitsu that I did trained with. That was

starting Pagans chapters around the country. And I put the two of them together. And he is showing the P joins the Pagans. He's part of doing a chapter in Marion of the Pagans. And some of more other were ex-outlaw guys are out bad outlaw guys. And we had this run coming up on a Saturday to like, because by now, things be all I was getting pretty tense. And so we figured, well, us and the Pagans will ride around together a show that we're united, and I'm kind of show this

united front. And he calls me Friday night, and he's outside working on his bike. He hangs up the phone, someone pulls up and shoots him like 14 times. And he gets killed the day before our ride. Yeah, at this shortly thereafter that, I get visited by the FBI. Let's say they have credible information from an informant that there's a threat on my life. And apparently, some member of the outlaws was saying things like, oh, we got tug, we're getting mooch next. And

I'm going to be very clear that I don't believe the outlaws killed tug, but at the time that was what it looked like, or the speculation. And, um, do you know who killed him? No, but he was involved. No one's been busted for it, but he was involved in this like stolen bike grade thing. And, I don't want to say anything that would look bad about him, but there was things outside of club life that he was involved in that I think likely played a role. But at the same time, so I,

you know, the outlaws had told us we can never have a chapter in Chicago or in Illinois. And I was very

quarterly outlaws for a long time. I sat down with them and did all the major meetings with them. I would go to there, and I went to talk about my funeral. I was going to there. I was like sitting down with their national peas for several years, national presidents. We were very close. And I partied with all the ones in Illinois. And so much, so in fact, that they had four chapters down there that didn't really do anything together or get along. And I was meeting with them like once

every two months helping them be more structured. Wow. Um, and so we were friends. And so I had started telling them I go listen, a lot of the guys here in Illinois are St. Louis Mongols out of respect for them. I put them more of us or is I go, you know, we're partying with you guys all the time. We're all friends. We hang out. Why can't we just call it Southern Illinois Mongols?

“The only thing different is what says on a rocker, right? We all lived in the same place, same city,”

but when tug left, they got thrown out. Someone else took over that chapter that didn't like us and tension started to flare. And they started saying, well, if you're a Mongol and you're in Illinois, you need to call and check in before you ride anywhere. If you're going to go to a bike night, you got to let us know. If you're going to go to Harley, you got to let us know. And we sure are shit. We're going to do that. We'd already been there for years.

And my thing is when I was trying to talk to them about starting Southern Illinois,

I still always said the same thing from the minute I moved there is,

I have no intention of ever starting in Chicago. Dave had told me we wouldn't. We had a lot of members that lived in Chicago, but they were running out of like Gary, Indiana, or, you know, chapters around Chicago. It's so rough town. Very rough. And they have a big chapter there. Well, she all asked us to start because they like them. He's so fucking old. I went there twice and

That's a tough call, but it could be, man. It could be. Did you spend a lot of time when he's

“saying, "No, I wrote through there once and said, "Never again." Damn, I used to spend a lot of time”

and he's saying, "Yeah." Now, you know what? It's for all the strip clubs. There is, but the hell's angels owned a lot of them. So I sure, shit, wasn't going to get caught going to those. They owned those? I didn't. Yeah. Are you serious? Yep. What year? I was there 2017 and left in 2024 and up into at least 23. Not enough. There was 23 fucking strip clubs over there. I thought I'd been to all of them.

No, no, no, I'm in to end when up until 2023. But there's a bunch in that area. That's where they all are, right, right there. Shit, where was I? strip clubs. You got me to start. Anyway, so yeah, so that I had said how we wouldn't start in Chicago. You had members there. Our national P was still a little day at the time. Gary and D. Yeah, so we had that. Gary chapter. And a lot of the Gary guys lived in Chicago. And again, out of respect for the outlaws, we, they could live there,

but they, their patched their Gary and they would go to their meetings in Gary and they would

“if they were in bar hop, they'd generally do it in Gary. Same thing with Illinois guys. We went out”

in Mount Vernon a lot, but if we were going to go out otherwise we'd either go to the outlaws clubhouse or we'd do out in St. Louis. So there's already some tension building now because this dude and Marion outlaws is talking to much of shit and making threats. And then there was issues between the Mongols and outlaws in Florida that were, and then Mongols and outlaws in Pennsylvania. There was like, we went from supposed to being friends to like these friction.

And a member in Utah was getting a little Dave's ear about how many members he had in Chicago that would join if we started Chicago chapter. And he just kept getting on Dave about it. And they kind of gave him a sales pitch that wasn't true. And Dave knew I was trying to start southern Illinois. So Dave calls me goes, hey cool, green light on Illinois. We're going to start southern Illinois Chicago. And I go fuck, you know, I just told all these guys, we're not,

I never said we wouldn't do it, but I definitely said, I have no interest in it. We don't

have any interest in it, which is pretty much saying it, right? Just in a box of myself in the corner. So when we started Chicago, they started. They tried to attack a pack in Chicago and a couple of them got shot and ran over and then they tried to walk into a bar and shoot at some Mongols, but they got shot. So things started going pretty heavy up there. And I was getting in the blame for it, because I had told these guys when we were going to do it, or at least we had no tension.

And now we did it, which I understand, but also the way clever works is when the boss says that you're doing it, you're doing it. And so when Dave says, hey, we're doing it, I was in charge of it, but it wasn't my decision. So anyways, now Dave's out, I get this threat on my life from, you know, ledgerly from the outlaws, tell guests to get killed, and the new leaders call the outlaws and say, yeah, we didn't, we didn't authorize Chicago, that was Muge and Dave.

So my own club against this club is supposed to be going to kill me, throws me under the bus. Why the fuck would they do that? He's, at this point, they were Paula taking, I mean, well, hey, this new leadership, he, this dude is not very intelligent. I mean, he's definitely not leadership material. He doesn't even like writing motorcycles, he even straight up said like, I don't go, I don't go, I don't go, but 55 miles an hour,

I'll just meet you there. I'm like, why the hell are you in a club, let alone in that?

“Why do you need to join a gang at that point, but we know I don't want to see her in bad”

mouth, so all digress, but in Texas, I think to 2019 or so, the national club, they're big club

there's the bandedos, they've always been the only one percent of club there. I was very tight with them,

I used to go to meetings and party with them often, and a bunch of their Hispanic members in leadership had defected and ended up wanting to join the Mongols, and we put it up to a vote, and I had argued and voted against it, but I lost a vote, and they ended up joining that. So now bandedos and Mongols are going after it. The same guys in leadership tell the bandedos, that was Muge and Dave. So I, what's it like when you're partying with these guys and you

have good friends and another club, but then it comes down, there's a mandated war. It's awful, man. Talk to them at all after that, or you like, hey, like, the hard part is they stop talking to me because all the blame got put on me. Right? So these dudes that I was tight with, they feel they've been wronged by you. Yeah, and they took it personal, because I was, I was at the funerals in their club houses, and we party together, you know? Gotcha. And so

I went from a year before that, being able to party with almost every club in the country, other than the Hell's Angels, all of them want to kill me. So we got that going on,

but the final nail in the coffin is, and this is a tough one. But when I moved it, when I first moved

Illinois, there was a member dealer Dan, he'd been in a long time, he used to live in Illinois, now he's in Oklahoma. So he knew a lot of people in that area. So when I started saying Louis, he kept going, this is his chance, right? Hey, I got guys here, I got guys here, but everyone he sent to me were not people that I would bring into the club. They weren't the type of people I was bringing into the club. So whenever he would suggest I was start blowing it off after

And two of them were relatives of his, and I just had this picture of my mind, so I was like,

“"No, no, no." Well, we went to this event called the Boogie, this big motorcycle rally,”

Indiana, and those are guys that were going to come out meet me, and I figured, okay, I'll even give him a chance to meet us. And they showed up in majority of them were just awesome guys, and there was a father son that was in it that everyone was related to dealer Dan. And the son was 25, 24, 25. He was in the army, I'd left the army, he was a done MMA before he knew what it was, he was doing jiu-jitsu, we had so much in common, man,

but this kid, he was like a young, right face, a good kid, you know what I mean? He had a lot going for him. And they had so much fun that they ended up staying in the night, and they had nowhere to say, so they slept on the dirt, and then I'm in a motor, I'm in a camper, and I come out these had to sleep in the dirt, and I started spending time with them, I'm like, these are good people, man, you know? And so eventually they kept calling me, and I called me, and we did some meetings at

Shady Jackson saying, "Lewis," and finally I said, "I'll tell you what." There was no chapter from the prospect out of, and I know that the forest aeros golfing goes to the water there, so I said, "Well, let's start you guys as raiders." This, you know, this motor club, I go if you could sustain that chapter of the raiders for a year, be active, support the other functions in the area, and grow without getting in trouble, I'll consider making you guys all mongles in a year.

So we start the raiders there, things are going well, there's a lot of rumor mill with the golfing goose, there's some shit talking, a couple of little fist fights, but nothing major,

and the golfing goose say, "There's never going to be mongles in this area."

And so I made a bunch of phone calls, and we had it going to, like those arcs bike festival in year, 180 motorcycles, and over 210 mongles, and keep, I had my brother came out with me, and me and

“him are leading the pack, so remember when I said I used to ride with six guys, I had 180 motorcycles”

behind me, and man, there's video footage of it, it's insane. There's video, but yeah, yeah, I'll send you something, dude, it was wild. It's probably the peak of my career, you know, and we made this presence, like, "Hey, you say we can't be here, look at this." And so there are still some threats made back and forth, but it finally had chilled out, and at one point, some of their leadership guys called, and I talked to the leader there, and we just kind

of agreed to ignore each other. There's going to be no beef. And I was out to eat with my chapter one night, and they were out of bike night, they were these guys were out of bike night, like at the back long day, I'm during the day, and the galping goose showed up to try and fight them, and I didn't, normally they would have to tell me they were going to something like this, and I don't know if he knew I would have said no, but they went, and the goose were outside, they were going bar to bar,

“looking for them, and they come in to the bar where the Mongols are, and they all buy beer, so they”

have bottles, and they stand outside and wait for them. So, blame decides, you know what, this isn't the time or place, like essentially like a what would mooch do, let's leave and deal with another time. So, they all walk out, and he's all the way up to his bike, and I turned his bike on, when they attacked someone in the back. So, he runs up there, starts fighting, he starts hitting us to with his helmet, gunshots start going off, and he gets shot, killed on the spot.

So, I'm out to lunch, I'm out to dinner with my chapter, and I get a call from his dad, and he says, "Blaine's been shot. Blaine's been shot." And it was one of those moments in my head, it just didn't make sense yet, you know what I mean? Sorry, but it didn't make sense, I was like, "What do you mean? You know, he's okay, right? He's okay." And because I don't know, normal tell us, we don't know. So, I call my wife to pack me a bag, and we're in my chapter, grab our bags,

we get in the car, we're rushing over there, see what's going on, no one's telling us anything, and we start to keep pictures on the news. And there's a body there under a tarp, and it's arms hanging out, if the wrist pan from the bookie is on his arm, and it was Blaine, and he was he was killed, and, you know, because of decisions I made, because of a chapter I agreed to start, because I fought against my intuition of letting him join any did, and that hit me heavy enough that

that was it for me, man. I left shortly thereafter that. I'm sorry, man. Yeah, I'm sorry, let me

take a second. Sorry, man. It's all good, brother. But so between that, the politics that we're going on,

the reds home my life, I saw the writing on the walls, and I saw that I was likely going to get kicked out or pushed out, so I had retired in good standings initially, which means I could keep my patch, I could keep my t-shirts, letting my club stuff, I could still have contact with the club, 'cause you know, I've been in 15 years by then, and one of our members after Blaine got killed, you can imagine that tempered people were pretty pissed off, and one of our members was at a bar,

and some outlaws came in, and they identified and he beat them up, and it was smacked him around

I'm going to have the paperwork to it, which is not something we do in one percent world,

but the sale of press charges, and so this member Mike, he's facing this court case, and he ends up taking a plea bargain of a three-year suspended sentence, so if he gets caught hang out at the Mongols, he goes to prison for three years, so he wants to step away from the club, for obvious reasons. Well, I had retired, he was supposed to be the president, the other members and that club were his brother, his co-worker and best friend, and then the other guy from

“our gym, and then a homie that just moved in with him, that's how tighten it, our chapter was, and the”

Mongols have a rule after Blaine and everything, they had a rule that you can't leave, you can't retire unless you've been in for ten years, so these guys have only been some of them one year,

two, three years for these guys, and so they'd asked for permission to leave in good standing,

and then they were going to come back when Mike can come back. I think leadership saw this as their opportunity to get rid of me, so they kept saying they're advocating for them to be in good standings or advocating, but then I get this phone call and they said, hey, you know, we're sorry, but the club decided those guys are out and bad standing, so rules are rules, we got to follow the rules, they're out bad, which means no contact, which means you can't have contact with them,

and you know, our homie just died, we went through the ship together, we started this chapter together, we were doing the juts together, we were working out together, and I'd say that way, I'm not going to lie to you guys, I'm going to keep hanging out with these guys too, and a lot of the brothers I was tied with around the country saw it as I was taking, picking them over the club, but it was the principle for me, right? Like those dudes that that I fell in my sword for,

I went with, I wasn't like there gonna be my best friends forever, I didn't know, but it was the purpose of the principle, right? Like you're going to throw these dudes out when this dude just damn their ruined his, went to prison for years over this, and they're being loyal to their brother, and we're going to kick him out. So I said, I'm going to keep hanging out with them, and they said, well, you know what that means? I mean, you're out in bad standing sound, and I said, well then,

so be it, and a message went out to everyone in the nation that Mooch has chosen to move on with his life, there's no ill will, but he's on no contact, and that was it, that was in my club career, fuck man, but you know what man, so it turned into a was that was the big very beginning of 2022. So the blessing in this guy's was, if I was still retired, I would have to answer to them still, follow the rules, and when we were able to be on podcasts, I couldn't wrote my book, I couldn't have been

doing, definitely couldn't have been going on podcasts with Excel's angels and trying to push this piece message, and I needed that shove out the door to move on, I really needed it, so it ended up being a positive. Do you spend a lot of time looking over to shoulder? No. There's people and other clubs that don't care for me, and I just says what it is, man, that's life, but I mean, you know, I pay attention on the people that don't like me, and I know where they're at,

but I don't let it affect what I'm going to do with my life. And I'm not saying that like I'm

“sort of badass or anything like that, but it's just, to me, it's not, I don't have beef, right?”

So if they want to, that's on them. But I'm not going to let it interfere with where I go and what I do. Maybe process your friends' death. Not as much as I should have apparently. I mean, so I have stayed since then. I became best friends with his mom and dad. I talk to them every week. We can't, we hang out with vacation together. I've gotten really, really close with them. His mom just is having a very tough battle with cancer right now, which

is terrible. Their family has already been through enough, but it brought us very, very close together. I mean, are some of my best friends to this day? Good. Are you a Christian? I'm not. Why? From Italian family. My family is, like I grew up, I was baptized at Piscopeilian. I found, well, my grandpa's Christian or I saw us were Piscopeilian. We go to church.

I never found religion to an extent. I do believe my morals and values in line with Christianity

“and religion for the most part. I believe in higher power, but I just, I'm in this fundamentals of”

do good, be good to unto others, and I really value that. And what I do like about religion, and I've seen as a strong role, especially in this age. A lot of my friends have found religion, and it's put them on a positive path. It's helped improve their lives. It's helped them to become better people because it gave us something to believe in that aligned with their morals and values. If that makes sense, what do you think happens when you die?

I don't know, man. I grew up saying nothing, you know? I thought that's it. But I think it was just like to help. That's it. Yeah, that's, I mean, that's, it goes my thought for years. I don't know where I'm at with it at this point. You don't know where you're at.

Not necessarily like, so more and more of my friends have gotten into religion, and I've seen

it be a huge positive impact on their life. But the things that are positive are things that I ever feel that are part of my life as far as that, the feeling of the greater good and not yourself and giving yourself others and giving back and helping, and those types of things, you know? But as far as afterlife, it's not something I really consider or haven't considered. You haven't considered what happens after you die being around that much fucking death?

“Probably because that's why I haven't probably considered man. I was just always in the moment.”

There wasn't a lot of time for reflection when you're in there, you know? I do know.

'Cause I've been a part of shit like this. A little few is just legal. But yeah, I mean, I've only been out a couple years, and you know, been on this mental health mission, and this mental health journey, and it's exposing me to more of it. Are you shutting it out? No, I'm not opposed, but you know, Mel sends the way, his devotionals and, and some of my homies talk to me. I'm not against it. I don't, I love what it's done for my friends. My friends

that found it, and I've seen the positive. I love it. I'm all about it. I just don't know if it's for me only, and I couldn't even tell you why. I'm not sure, because I, maybe it's just the structure.

“I don't like, which is funny, since I'm a guy who's structured, right?”

I don't know. It's structure. What's structure? Well, I just mean like to go into church, and I guess that's it coming to church. Because I, I guess that I feel like I already have all of those values, and, um, I don't know. I just have a lot to consider. I guess when it comes to that, I haven't really done a lot of reflection on it. How many friends do you think you have that are dead now? Let me show you something, my book, is in memory of two full-body

friends. And this was three years ago. There's more. So a lot. You don't think any of those guys have visited you. I do, I do as far as the lessons they taught me and the, and the, the feelings, those types of things, absolutely. Like the presence of the lessons I learned from them,

“the, the kindness that they share, or the connections that we have. I definitely feel that.”

100%. I don't know. And, you know, same, like my little brother that passed a long time ago. You know, there's, I just don't know if I've equated it to like their presence is here, or it's something I carry with me and in me, because I learned it from them, or that's something they, I'm pressionally left on me. You get a dive in, man. What's that? You get a dive in. Okay. There's a ton of shit that you're not telling me.

And we're listening to what? All the shit you've done. Yeah. Yeah. Oh, and you have the violence. There's only so much time, right? And they, yeah. I mean, I get it. I know you can't go and everything. Yeah. Especially since it was only what four years ago. Yeah. But. If there was, if you do believe, if you think there's even an inkling of Jesus or God, or heaven or hell, where do you think you're going? Good question. Good question. I, I, I don't have

and that sort of inkling heaven and hell, and I, for me, I see it as more of a way to enforce morality, social control, but more of the enforcement of morality. If you don't do these things, here's the bad things that can happen. And the, the thing I like about my friends that have found it in a good stuff is that, being forgiven and moving on and a lot of people have to unload those things to feel better. And I, I don't mean that to be disrespectful. I'm just trying

to, like, process as hell out, but I've seen it be good for people. I just have a hard time believing in hell, especially with shit I've gone through here. So, and you, you got your masters. I do from Christian college, from Christian college. Oh, the irony. I figured you'd like that. Wow. We're at George Focke University. It's actually where I got my finished my undergrad, too.

Have you ever looked at psychedelic therapy? Yeah, and I'm a strong proponent. I've never done it.

who's actually forced to become a Marine as well, and then became a Mongol, and got into addiction from the club and went through a lot, got out. And now advocates for, for, that type of therapy. Well, he's, he's doing psilocybin mainly because he's doing stuff in the United States, but he's really advocating it for vets and treatment like that. And I've, you know, as a therapist, I've read the studies and I, and I know people have done it and that the outcomes have been amazing.

I mean, one of my close friends that was also a Marine and was a Mongol. He was probably one of the grouchiest men as people I'm at, man, and he actually took him to meet Mel back in March, and I was like, dude, what is change? Like, he was peppy and happy and he went to Mexico and did one of those treatments and said it helped him put his life in the focus, and some of his more confident with himself, and he was, it meant it changed him in the most positive of the way. That

amazingly. Be talked to Cody about it. Cody allford. And I've seen him post and stuff about it,

but I've never, like sat down and talked about it. But I'm all for it. I think it's great.

I've done it. I loved to do it. I changed my whole fucking life, man. Yeah, I bet, I mean, I'm better. It's awesome. And I feel like the stuff I have to process would be great.

“But, you know, there's always barriers to treatment like that when it's expensive. You have to go”

to the country and there's things like that where it's like, it's that that social services in a nutshell, right? Like there's a lot of people that can benefit from great services, but it's getting them connected to the services as the challenge. Do you want to do it? I'd love to do it. It's a financial thing. Absolutely. I'm a social worker, bro. I don't want to freely. What if I get you a slot? Let's go.

I love it, man.

All right. I think I can probably get that done. That'd be amazing. That would be amazing. You

can go to the same place I want. MBO. Okay. That'd be awesome, man. All right, again. That's why that's what a lot of the new stuff the studies are coming out that I've read about. I think if you do that, you'll realize there's a lot more after that. Yeah, they said I'm open. Can I give you something? Yeah. It's easy. Okay. It's called the Jesus Calling. One thing a day takes about 60 seconds. Okay.

I'll give you my word. I'll read it. Just give it a shot. Okay. See if it speaks to you. Absolutely. I'll let you know. I appreciate it. Thank you very much. We're welcome, man. And I'm serious. I'll talk to Trevor at MBO. And I will see if I can get you a slot. That'd be amazing. Thank you so much. You'll go. Yeah, so 100%. I'm all in. Welcome to MBO. Give me great. So don't be about being a therapist. It's been incredible, man. And like I said, so I initially

had started. One of the things I really resonated with that first was I was doing a group therapy

“for perpetrators and domestic violence. And a moment I will never forget is it was me and a woman”

co facilitator. And you know, essentially we're breaking these generational habits and that learned behaviors and all sorts of cultural stuff, right? And we're sinister in with all these guys that are court-ordered. And the topic is of possessiveness or control over how women dresses

and this guy was like, yeah, I would never let my woman go out and address that short. He looks

to me. He's like, right, brother, because he thought I was in the class. And I was like, nah, man. You know, and then class went on, whatever. Six months later, he's getting ready to go out. And new guy comes in. The new guy says, damn, they're the same thing. And this guy goes, that's not cool, bro. I'm like, yes. And I remember being at Walmart and a guy from class going, "Hey, babe, this is the guy that's telling you about." And then I was like, the other girl

started doing this with his homies. Like, bro, this is the dude I was telling you about. And like, so seeing the positive outcomes and the change, like not only did it change his life, but obviously the women that come in contact with him really, really motivated me. And then I got into doing therapy. I do now with with that risk youth. And I do multi systemic therapy. So I work with kids from 11 to 17. There are at risk of being being placed outside the home. And so either

correctional settings or foster care. But the goal of keeping the youth in the home. And although it's called therapy, I'm not really sitting down with the youth and asking about how he feels or even addressing his trauma. What we look into is what all the systematic factors that are driving this behavior. So for example, say the youth smoke can weed, which is this easy example.

“Well, find out, where's his access? What's his supervision like at home? Like where's his smoke?”

Because he's being supervised. Does he go to his friend's house? Does his mom know that does the caregiver know who the peers are? How he's paying for it? And then out we meet with the

supports, so if moms at work who's watching the youth, if youth is going to friends

“house, does mom know who friends are? They talk to the parents. So we teach these parenting skills,”

so to speak to parents. So that when we're no longer in the home, they can continue this. And we see

amazing, amazing results. It's, you know, it's a scientific approach to it. So the evidence is

supporting as long as we adhere to the model. And it's really, I mean, it's powerful, man. You know, seeing these kids are, because I know firsthand, right? What it's like to be on paper and be involved in the system and having a hard time getting out. And so teaching these positive skills to both parents and kids, because a lot of these parents are, in this day and age, especially in that reality, that's a lot of single parent households. And the single parent

is working at time. And, you know, maybe didn't have good role models growing up in their lives, so not knowing how to parent. So these, all the other these different things where we're going in and we're, because it's, it's an intensive service where we meet them in the home, then we come to us. And we go two, three times and on four times a week, we only see five or six clients at a time. So it's a very intense sentence for 120 days, 120 days. Yeah. So anywhere between the highs,

we can go up to 150, but it's generally the average of 120 days of us in the home. Wow. And seeing, because that way, you know, when we say, okay, here, let's develop save bedtime, nighttime routine. So because the youth is not sleeping, or you know, not waking up in the morning. So, okay, well, what's access to the housing computer or their phone or, you know, whatever, all the stuff we look at it, we'll do it in the home. Like if they say, you know,

Johnny won't wake up at seven a.m. to go to school. I've tried this this and this. So I'll cool up next sessions at seven a.m. and I'll be there with you when we try and wake them up.

“See what happens. And now, for there, and we see it, we can see what's driving that behavior, right?”

And then we could systematically attack which driver we want to do what interventions we're going to do. And essentially, a lot of those interventions will generalize to the other behaviors. So once those things increase, sometimes, you know, leaving the depromission might get better, or the back talk, or verbal aggression, all of these things. And so that's been really cool. So I'm a clinical supervisor of that now. So I don't normally see clients anymore,

but I oversee two teams. So I anywhere from three to six therapists. When I do that, and I help them develop treatment plans. And then I also shadow, go to the home and make sure they're here into the model. And then another thing I started about a year ago, you see yourself in a lot of these kids when you were, yeah, for sure. I mean, yes and no. So like, you know, there's that

edge that people could join gangs wherever because of poor family life. And I never, I had an amazing family, you know.

And a lot of what I see is single family households and different generations, different cultures. You know, I'm on the east coast versus back in Oregon. But a lot of things are the same. And what I see a lot is that the role of pro social activity, sports clubs, the role that plays and keeping a youth out of trouble and teaching and positive lessons, where there's so many budget cuts, funding, or these role areas that I don't even have, you know, the have the, the, the means to do this.

So there's, there isn't a lot of sports or after school programs or all these things that I had as a kid, right? It's like schools out and kid goes home until eight o'clock in mom gets home and who knows what's happening between. And they're not getting this pro social

“activities, they're not having these positive peers in the same environment. You know what I mean?”

And so they're often left unsupervised with, what do you think teenagers do when they're left unsupervised? Man, usually not good shit, right? So there's those similarities that I think you see with a lot of youth. But what I do see is what it's like to be in the system, to be on probation and the pushbacking and so authority once you get there, you know, all those things that come with it. But they can relate with you a lot. Yeah, yeah. I mean, that was my argument from

the very first day with that Oregon youth authority, is that, you know, part of therapy is

we don't self disclose. But I don't have to tell them my story from them. I look at me and go this guy gets it, you know, and that's been a big strong suit. Man, it's been awesome. And then I started the Syncled Devils advocate, which is right now, it's just a one day a week, man's group, it's Monday nights. But a lot of the men that come to us, they're either former motorcycle club members, military members, some of them have been in prison. And we really address this piece, which we

I could talk to about. We also know in the patch podcast of when someone devotes, the majority of their adult life to something. And they leave it, whether it's a club or a gang or the military, even law enforcement, the struggle of finding your identity and who are you, what's your purpose, right, what's your goals and helping people align with that. By hearing the stories of others, there's been so much of situations. By hearing what worked for other people or what didn't work.

So it's like this group collective of, you know, helping each other and then another big, you know, we do, we have, we'll do anger management stuff. This is something stand through that way, emotional regulation and, you know, the parts of not letting other people control your emotions, right? Being confident with who you are as a person, knowing who you are, you know, get another people think like all these topics we discuss on. And that's been really,

has been something where I definitely want to grow that program and see what I can do about getting to them, getting through to more people with that. It's fucking awesome dude. Thanks, man. Yeah, it's been, it's been rewarding, but it's just been really cool. You know, the connections I made, that the people I've met, especially when we're going through these journeys together, like the men's group and stuff, like, far outweighs the brotherhood that I thought I missed

leaving the club. You can miss it. I don't. And people asked me often, you miss it, I would go back and I would be a strong note to both of those. Not in a negative way. I'm a majority of what I enjoyed. And I learned a lot of great lessons. But my life, my morals, my values,

“my life is no longer aligned with that life. I feel like I'm on a different path. And like when”

people ask me a lot, hey, I want to join people hit me up on social media all the time and ask

questions, and I try and respond to everybody when I can. And I always say, well, if you're

thinking, they say, I want to join a club, you think it's good. I say, well, right down all the positives, it could potentially bring your life. How could it make your life better? And how can it make your life for us? What are the risks? And then you tell yourself that it's going to be good for you or not. Because I don't want it. Talk to anyone out of it, you know? But, you know, the risks a lot of the times these are guys that are in there, like where I was. My mid 20s, early 30s, trying to figure

what am I going to be doing? What am I supposed to be doing? And I'm like, well, you know, I'd love to be a part of something and have these brothers. And it's an attractive lifestyle. But if you start thinking of the risk of death, prison, you know, all stuff that comes with it. Especially if you're married and you're a family, I'm not saying there's a lot of members that are good members and good husbands and have good jobs. So I'm not saying that you can't do it.

But I'm saying it makes things challenging and it's an extra stress in your life. And it's not for everybody. Is your wife a Christian? No. No. I don't think her, I don't know, her family is not very, really just in general. What's the next for you? Man, so, you know, I'm doing the patch podcast where, like I said, we initially were pushing the piece between motorcycle clubs, which we're still really working on, but also just helping guys that are now leaving that life.

You know, I see a lot of these podcasts about motorcycle clubs and it's X members that get on there. And I want to air their grievances and talk bad about the life and talk bad about the club.

“And I don't see a therapeutic process in that, right? I think it's just like a validation of why”

they're no longer in. I want to help the guys that are ready to put it behind them and move on. And there's a member from the Hell's Angels name, P.E. that started this Facebook group called Brothers for Life and it's a lot of X members of the major clubs around there. And, you know, it's just a Facebook group, but they meet up once a year and I went to their meet-up last year, which was wild. One of them asked me, so I'm actually still got that tattoo.

But, um, there was a guy on there that posted not that long ago. He was a member from Cleveland. And I don't know if it was his blood brother or if he said brother because it was the club, but his brother from the Hell's Angels was murdered by a Mongol. And he wrote on there, he said, that his brother was murdered by cowards. And normally I think that might have triggered me, because if you think, like I said before, both sides feel vindicated, right? So I wrote him back and

I said, well, first of all, do you just, you know? I mean, sorry for your loss. But I said,

this group is for guys that put that life behind them and it sounds like you might still have some strong feelings towards that club. I said, secondly, it's terrible what happened to your brother. But we could go back and forth. I could say the same thing. I've had members murdered by cowards, right? I go, what you really need to do is take a step back and you're going to be mad at the soldiers, we're mad at the war. We'll cause that to happen. And they sent me the longest,

niceest message in our friends and we talked a lot because it really changed the way he thought, you know? Instead of blaming someone else or calling someone a coward or anything else, it was the situation. It was this ongoing war or people are fighting over, but piece of cloth.

“And I think the more people that start recognized that, hopefully maybe that will help it stop,”

but I'm not arrogant enough to think that I'm going to be the change to make it happen, but if I can help a couple people, man, then it'd be great. Thank you for already helped a lot of people, man. Thank you so much. You're welcome. You're welcome. How's your brother doing? My brother's doing good, man. My brother's doing good. Was he still in? No, he retired in good standing, he's right before me, but he is in good standing. So we're not supposed to hang out together,

hurt like post pictures together because he still follows the rules of the clubs and he's in good standing. But you know, he's on the other side of the coast. He, you know, he's got two awesome kids and his wife, who he's been with since we were on the boggow. So, 20 years now. He's wow. Yeah,

they've worked. Yeah, yeah, she's awesome. Their kids are amazing. He owns a house for adults at

he owns a group of adults who are adults with developmental disabilities. So he works kind of

“in the field too and he's helping others and yeah, he's been doing really well. Good, man. Good.”

Life's gotten good, man. I've been good. I'm happy for you, dude. Thank you so much. You're a good person.

I appreciate that. My pleasure. Thanks so much for having me on. Man, this has been great.

“It was an honor. I'll be praying for you, man. I appreciate how definitely read the book”

and let you know how I feel for sure. You don't have to. I like to follow up. It'll give me a accountability. Cool. You know, Mel's going to be on your ass after he sees this. I'm sure

“we will. I'm sure he will. He talked to me a little bit about it before I came on, so. Cool.”

Well, Booch. It was an honor, man. Thank you so much. I love the story and I know there's a lot more,

but I want to start focusing on the second half more. Good for you. So I appreciate it.

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