CHEYENNE — Don Ohlin likes to talk. Perched on a recliner in his downstairs living room, Ohlin described his raucous past, beginning with his early teens in rural Wisconsin where he was a prolific drug user.
He started smoking pot at age 10, followed by taking meth, until he landed on his drug of choice — LSD. By 13, he estimates he was taking between 15 to 20 hits several times a week.
After getting his driver’s license, Ohlin became legendary for driving his souped-up 1967 Rambler Rebel around town at more than 150 mph. His motto back then was, “I’ll do anything once, and if it doesn’t kill me, I’ll do it again.”
And then keep doing it, even if that meant shooting heroin or driving his motorcycle off a cliff into a river just to see how it felt.
When given the choice by a judge at age 17 to join the military or face several years in prison, Ohlin enlisted in the Army just before his 18th birthday. He was sent to Fort Carson, Colorado, where started his own criminal enterprise as a loan shark.
A big guy, then and now, Ohlin was his own “enforcer.”
His specialty was breaking arms like wishbones, which he demonstrated by angling his arm on top of an end table and making a cracking motion.
He tried to deny it to his superiors in the Army, but a lie detector test gave him away.
“I thought I was a better liar than that,” Ohlin said with a smile.
Most of these tales about Ohlin’s “crazy years” begin and end with a bottle of bourbon and a fight. He used to like fighting, he said. He’d get hammered and tangle with upward of six guys at a time if he was feeling “frisky.”
He always won.
Just Call Him ‘Velcro’
At this point in his story, Ohlin’s wife Janet gives her husband an eyeroll. She’s heard all the stories before, and like everyone else, marvels that he’s still alive at 69.
A big guy with tattooed arms and long white, wavy hair, Ohlin could be a dead ringer for Santa Claus. In fact, that’s one of his nicknames — “the Tattooed Santa” — along with "big, hairy guy" or "fat old, bearded man.”
Most people know him as "Velcro," though. He got the nickname from a guy in his outlaw biker club.
Initially, the guy wanted nothing to do with Ohlin because he was a Christian.
But one day, the biker’s teenage daughter had taken a massive overdose of crystal meth and was airlifted to Denver. The guy called Ohlin from the hospital and asked him to pray. The doctors said she wasn’t expected to make It through the day, and if she did, she’d spend the rest of her life incapacitated.
Ohlin left work and picked up his wife to go to the hospital to be with the man and his wife. He thanked God for the doctors and staff, but told God he denied the diagnosis.
Ohlin prayed for the girl to sit up and talk to her parents, then stand up and walk. By the end of the day, she’d done both.
From that point forward, Ohlin and the biker — both then non-drinkers — would hang out together in bars with the other bikers in their club. They talked about God sometimes, but not much. A few months later, the man said he was leaving Cheyenne. He told Ohlin he had friends where he was going but none quite like him.
“He said, 'You're kind of like Velcro. People attach to you real easy, and leaving is like ripping away from Velcro,’” Ohlin said. “I wasn't sure how to take that. It's a little poetic or something, but he was not a poet.”
Like Velcro, the name stuck.
In It For The Long Haul
Janet, too, has long white hair and a smile to match her husband’s. They just celebrated their 50th wedding anniversary, which Janet commemorated with the pink T-shirt she’s wearing that sardonically reads, “Just Married,” over a pair of interlocked rings.
She’d been a “good Christian girl” when the couple met in their late teens, she 16 and Ohlin 19, and she had no idea about his drug use.
Both of their families were dead set against the marriage, and Janet joked that they stayed together all of these years mostly out of spite because both were too stubborn to give up and have anyone say, “I told you so.”
Ohlin exudes an open kindness, which takes the bite out of some of his grittier stories, which all have a point. He’ll get to that, but first he needs to lay the groundwork of why he’s a changed man.
It started with Janet, who quickly grew tired of Ohlin’s partying and recklessness. The couple had been living in Hawaii at the time, where Ohlin was stationed, when Janet put her foot down.
She wasn’t a partier even though she initially went along with it. She described being at one of Ohlin’s notorious house parties where she drank too much and got deathly sick. She asked Ohlin to go to church with her and give up the booze and drugs.
He met her halfway. Ohlin went to church but hid his partying. Finally, he was assigned as the chaplain’s assistant on base, and the gospel started sinking in.
It further took hold when Ohlin met Bill Tolson, a Marine major, at church who invited the couple over for dinner. Soon, Ohlin was going to Tolson’s house every Monday until it finally sunk in.
Ohlin remembers the exact date and time he was baptized: Nov. 24, 1975, at 11:35 a.m. He was 20 years old when he decided to devote his life to spreading God’s message.
Don and Janet Ohlin on their Honda VTX motorcycles. (Courtesy Don Ohlin) 
Don Ohlin at a motorcycle event in 2007 where his photo was taken for a national motorcycle magazine. (Courtesy Don Ohlin) 
Along with preaching, Don Ohlin also seconds as a biker Santa during the holidays. (Courtesy Don Ohlin) 
Don Ohlin, aka Velcro, likes to use mottos in his videos because people remember them better than sermons. (Courtesy Don Ohlin) 
Don Ohlin reaches his congregation at the Iron Horse Church and beyond through videos on YouTube and social media. (Courtesy Don Ohlin) 
Don Ohlin, aka Velcro, likes to use mottos in his videos because people remember them better than sermons. (Courtesy Don Ohlin) 
Don Ohlin, aka Velcro, was featured in a national biker magazine. (Courtesy Don Ohlin)
Biker Church
That desire took a circuitous path, however. After he served his five years in the military, the Ohlins moved to Oregon to be close to Janet’s grandmother, who was dying of emphysema. He tried his hand at divinity school but found himself instead drawn to computers.
Ohlin spent his career as a computer programming consultant, a job that took him all over the country until the family finally settled in Cheyenne in 2003.
“We pretty much settled on Wyoming because of the people,” he said.
He told a story of running out of gas while riding his motorcycle through the Bighorn Mountains outside Sheridan after they first arrived in Wyoming. Despite being a huge guy with long hair dressed in leather, two little old ladies stopped to pick him up and drive him the roughly 20 minutes back to town.
Then, when he started to walk back to his bike from the gas station, another guy in a pickup offered to drive him back.
“I’d never met nicer people,” he said. "We'd finally found our home."
Though he was medically forced to retire in 2008, Ohlin has a bevy of milestones under his belt as a software developer, including helping to code part of the AS-400 operating system for IBM as well as the first follow-the-sun technology that allowed businesses to connect to databases across different time zones.
Another constant in Ohlin’s life is his love of motorcycles.
Ohlin said he has been and always will be a biker.
He caught the bug when his parents gave him his first pedal bike as a kid. From there, he bought his first motorcycle and just kept riding.
Even sober, Ohlin hung out in biker clubs but made sure to always bring his wife or daughter along to keep him out of trouble. Some were rougher than others, but he helped keep the peace and didn’t affiliate with the “1-percenter” outlaw motorcycle clubs.
Throughout his life, he was always involved in churches in the various cities in which the family lived.
In retirement, he became an ordained pastor of his own at Iron Horse Church, which he runs out of his upstairs living room. The church used to have its own building, but due to rising costs, they moved into his home where he also livestreams services and Bible studies on social media.
He takes his Bible study seriously and estimates he’s put in more than 100,000 hours of intense study, including learning both Greek and Hebrew. Right now, he’s working on a 13-week Bible study series that he taught at a Laramie church class about 15 years ago.
His church — like Ohlin — has a big heart for helping people, and he estimates it gives away about $7,000 a month, of which 75% goes to people who can't make it financially without help. They also run a small food pantry out of their home, given the skyrocketing inflation that makes it hard for people on the edges to survive.
His generosity frequently gets him in trouble, Ohlin admitted, including giving away four of his own vehicles as well as three of Janet’s.
This is where Janet holds the line: “You’re not giving away my car,” she said.
Ohlin shrugged.
Getting Tattooed
Along with his congregation, Ohlin — aka Velcro — also frequently helps ex-convicts get back on their feet and visits with inmates in prisons in Wyoming and other states.
This is where his own past comes in handy as well as his associations with motorcycle clubs that give him “street cred” when conversing with those with criminal pasts.
Ohlin used to travel the country speaking at motorcycle club private parties and biker churches but stopped in 2012 due to his limited mobility. He’s also done substance abuse and relationship counseling and is still involved in a local Celebrate Recovery group.
He spends a lot of time communicating with inmates.
Over the past year, Ohlin has been contacted by 78 inmates from prisons in Wyoming and other states and is still communicating with 29 of them. They typically find him through word of mouth, and Ohlin speaks to everyone who contacts him.
He’s got a big heart for anyone trying to change their lives and even went so far as to ink his arms after visiting with an inmate at the Wyoming Honor Conservation Camp in Newcastle. The inmate told Ohlin he wanted to be a Christian but couldn’t because he had tattoos, and his daddy had told him that anyone with tattoos is going straight to hell.
That baffled Ohlin, and he said so to Janet when he got home later that day.
Janet told him he needed to get his own tattoos to make that man and others feel comfortable. After debating about what to get, he settled on "Attitudinal Christian" from Philippians 2:5. It's his life verse that suggests, "Your attitude should be the same as Christ Jesus.”
His second tattoo was a watch face with the word "now" written in the center. He was inspired by this design because he thinks Americans worry too much about time and are always trying to rush. When someone asks him about it, he responds: "Now's a good time to change your life. How can I help you do that?"
Once a guy told had a few choice words about his desire not to be a Christian.
"That's OK," Ohlin told him with a smile. "How can I help you in other ways?"
The rest of the tattoos are part of his ministry, Ohlin said, and are designed so people ask him questions.
Surrogate Parents
The Ohlins also help recently released inmates with the transition back into the “real world.”
Right now, 41-year-old Daryn Patterson is staying at the Ohlins after being released from a Wyoming prison. They’ve even provided a home for the eight pit bull-boxer puppies recently birthed by his dog two months ago.
The home also shares property with their daughter Ruth Dowell’s Cowboy Sanitation business that Ohlin helps manage.
This job, along with his ministry, accounted for the steady stream of traffic in and out of the house as Ohlin fielded minor problems, including finding things for Patterson to do.
Patterson is still in that critical phase of recovery from meth addiction but is determined to stay clean, he explained. He refers to the Ohlins as “Mom” and “Dad,” despite having no biological connection. He's one of several who have claimed the Ohlins as surrogate parents.
Patterson, like Ohlin, started using drugs in his teens, he said. He hugged his arms and sat down on the couch briefly before jumping up again. He wants to stay busy, Patterson said, because he’s committed to finally overcoming his addiction and getting a job and his life back on track.
Providing a home and the means to find a job is vital to that transition, Ohlin said, because of the stigma of being an ex-convict that makes it hard to find jobs. The Ohlins also want to provide more than just a home, but rather a community that embraces people like Patterson who are trying to change their lives.
“We help them get back on their feet, because that’s what this is all about,” Ohlin said. “One of the biggest reasons people re-offend is because they give up hope.”
Ohlin wants to provide that hope for everyone — no matter what they’ve done in their past. He held up his cellphone, which constantly rings or dings with incoming messages. There must be more than 1,000 contacts in that phone, he said, but anyone is free to call.
“I always answer,” he said with a big grin. "Call anytime."
Jen Kocher can be reached at jen@cowboystatedaily.com.
