Biker Mike’s Fashion Eye Helps Turn Around a Small Town : Entrepreneur: Shop opened by thug-turned- Christian draws people from a hundred-mile radius for all-black motorcycle attire.

When Mike Grieshaber opened his store in January, some of the first visitors were police officers with questions. They wanted to know what this burly, bearded, longhaired, earringed, tattooed biker and ex-gang member was up to in their city, population 1,900.

“I’d probably been open a week and I’d met every one of the police officers,” Grieshaber said with a gravelly laugh. “ ‘Just come over here to check you out.’

“But as soon as they saw my Christian Motorcyclist Assn. banners hanging on the wall, it was ‘Oh, Christian Motorcyclists!’ . . . They were all for me.”

Meet Mike Grieshaber--former thug, prosperous businessman and ebullient evangelist. Only a few years removed from his days as a Harley-riding roughneck, Grieshaber has cleaned up his act, put away his guns and knives, sworn off booze and drugs and rejoined the mainstream society he once scorned.

He and his wife, Carol, own Biker Mike’s, a leather clothing and accessories shop catering to motorcycle enthusiasts.

Grieshaber, 42, has become a respected member of the business community in this former lead-mining boom town on U.S. 60 in southwest Missouri, which produced bullets for the Civil War through World War II before the mines closed around 1960.

Bikers and non-bikers from a hundred-mile radius head to Granby for jackets, vests, hats, gloves and other all-black attire sold at a discount at Biker Mike’s.

Along with a new floral shop and a bookstore, Grieshaber’s business is credited with breathing life into the downtown district, which fell into decline after the mines shut.

“He’s been real good for Granby,” said Mike Chesnut, president of Community Bank & Trust. “He’s doing a great business over there. It’s exciting to see someone who’s had a rough life and is trying to make a new start.”

It’s an unlikely turnabout for a man who spent seven violent years as a member of the Straight Satans, a California biker gang.

“I’ve had, oh, half a dozen times I should have been dead,” Grieshaber said as he sat in the shade on a bench outside his store. A silver crucifix earring dangled from his left ear, and a small gold cross was pinned to the center of his black leather cap.

“Overdosed on drugs, shot, stabbed, run over by a semi-truck once and was in the hospital for 14 months with virtually every bone in my body broken,” he said.

Grieshaber was born in Neosho, Mo., and attended high school in Miami, Okla. He said he was born into a solid, religious family, but the movie “Hells Angels on Wheels” changed his life.

“I guess I was just rebellious,” Grieshaber said. “I had motorcycles in my blood. Then I saw that movie, and boy, that was it.”

After two restless years at an Oklahoma Bible college, it was off to California to join a gang. He said he ran cocaine, methamphetamine and marijuana between Bakersfield and Fresno, using as well as distributing. He said he also robbed and stole to support his drug habit.

Getting run over by that truck in 1978 was a blessing in disguise. As he spent months recovering, he realized he had to quit the gang or end up dead or in prison.

About five years ago, he came home to Missouri to straighten out. One day he stumbled onto the Christian Motorcyclists Assn.’s booth at a motorcycle show. The group counts 43,000 members in about 400 U.S. chapters.

“I saw their banner, and it was like a light went on,” he said. “This is what I was put on this Earth for, this is why I’ve gone through all this stuff.”

Grieshaber is road captain of the association’s 25-member Neosho chapter. He packs a Bible as he travels to motorcycle rallies nationwide, preaching about Jesus to the same tough crowd he once ran with.

He also speaks to youth groups and at churches.

“I feel like if I tell people, I plant the seed: ‘Hey, I was there, I got away from it, I’m lucky to be alive, I follow Jesus now, he’s the guiding light in my life and look at me, I’m fine,’ ” he said.

Grieshaber was working at a Neosho nursing home when he met Carol, a nurse. She persuaded him to turn his interest in leather clothing into a full-time job.

Grieshaber leases a storefront for $100 a month. Business is booming because of low prices and word-of-mouth advertising. For example, he sells for $108 American-made cowhide leather jackets that normally retail at $275, and Grieshaber said he still makes a decent profit.

He proudly mailed off a $500 state sales tax payment recently and hopes to do $100,000 in sales his first year.

“It’s gone far beyond my expectations,” he said.

Most customers aren’t bikers but just like the clothing, Carol Grieshaber said. Even the police chief plunked down $250 for a jacket.

Grieshaber has helped raise money for a new ballpark and donated merchandise for local fund-raisers. He’s also helped collect money and gifts for charities like the Muscular Dystrophy Assn.

“I’m trying to do just as much good as I can because I took and took and took for so many years, and it’s time for me to give back,” he said.