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Wounded Warriors Charity Chopper built by Illusion for Sons of Anarchy
Chopper Supports The Wounded Warrior Project
Written By Gerry Ashley
San Diego, CA - San Diego’s “Chopper The Biker Dog” has long established his support for the military. So when he became aware of the Wounded Warriors Project, he knew he just had to do what he could to show these heroes just how much he appreciated their efforts. At the same time, Chopper wanted to help spread the word to the public about this worthwhile organization along with the size and scope of their efforts on behalf of these men and women who have given their all in service to their country… and now, because of their severe wounds suffered in combat, need our help in return.
So from May of this year until his 2nd birthday (August 3rd), Chopper decided to donate $1 from the sale of every “Chopper The Biker Dog” Patch to the Wounded Warrior Project. At every appearance during this 3 month period, Chopper made it a point to bring the Wounded Warrior Project to the attention of his fans. And it worked.
On the morning of August 3rd, Chopper appeared on KUSI to do a live interview discussing the Wounded Warriors with Marcus O. Barnes, manager of the "Warrior to Work at Wounded Warrior Project". Then, Chopper and his owner, Mark Shaffer, rode over to San Diego Harley Davidson to hook up with riders in the local HOG (Harley Owner’s Group) chapter who proudly escorted him to the Wounded Warriors Office in Liberty Station (the old Naval Training Center Facility).
There, Chopper, Shaffer and the HOG members were greeted by the staff of Wounded Warriors. KUSI was present to record the event.
Chopper rode his little Harley Davidson bike right into the office and presented a check for $300 to Norberto Norbie Lara, Spokesperson for the Wounded Warrior Project.
One HOG member was so moved by Chopper’s efforts, he pulled out a one hundred dollar bill out of his wallet and added it to the pot, making a total contribution of $400.
Chopper would like to extend this challenge to the public: “I’m just a biker dog, but if I can raise $300 to support the Wounded Warrior Project, I wonder what all of you can do to show your appreciation of these wonderful young men and women who gave their all and now need some help getting back on their feet? I ask you: Please show your support.
Beaming in on Illusion Motorsports
The HOT BIKE office
is headquartered in Orange County, California. Let's just say that within a 30 square-mile radius there are plenty of motorcycle manufacturers, fabricators, custom builders, shops-whatever you want to call them-that it's hard to keep track of who's doing what. But we kept hearing about Illusion Cycles in Westminster, California, over and over, from this guy and that guy, so we
decided to head over to the Illusion Cycles compound with our cameras and notepads. When we arrived we were more than pleasantly surprised with what we encountered: bikes, motors, trannys, belt drives, and more bikes!
Read
more: http://www.hotbikeweb.com/features/0906_hbkp_beaming_in_illusion_cycles/viewall.html#ixzz1duPao8fQ
is headquartered in Orange County, California. Let's just say that within a 30 square-mile radius there are plenty of motorcycle manufacturers, fabricators, custom builders, shops-whatever you want to call them-that it's hard to keep track of who's doing what. But we kept hearing about Illusion Cycles in Westminster, California, over and over, from this guy and that guy, so we
decided to head over to the Illusion Cycles compound with our cameras and notepads. When we arrived we were more than pleasantly surprised with what we encountered: bikes, motors, trannys, belt drives, and more bikes!
Read
more: http://www.hotbikeweb.com/features/0906_hbkp_beaming_in_illusion_cycles/viewall.html#ixzz1duPao8fQ
Sons of Anarchy | 2011 Illusion
Hellrazor
SOA Creator Kurt
Sutter’s New Bike and New Season
From the October,
2011 issue of Hot Bike
By Eric Ellis, Kurt
Sutter
Photography by
Tim Sutton
Read
more: http://www.hotbikeweb.com/features
SOA Creator Kurt
Sutter’s New Bike and New Season
From the October,
2011 issue of Hot Bike
By Eric Ellis, Kurt
Sutter
Photography by
Tim Sutton
Read
more: http://www.hotbikeweb.com/features
Black Beautiful Sleekness | 2011 Illusion Hell
Illusion Cycles Turnkey Bagger
From the August, 2011 issue of Baggers Mag
By Rusty Coones
Photography by Ernie Lopez
What is it about a guy who has to have it his way? Is it always the right way or is he just so picky about the details that he can’t see any other way to do it? Some could call this a good thing and others would call this a bad thing. If you are shopping for a car, it’s easy to find what you are looking for at the right dealership, you just need to pick the make and model. However when you are talking about custom motorcycles if you want it right then you better end up in the right shop. And when it comes to custom baggers then it’s a must to find the right shop that knows how to not only make it look good, but makes it run and handle even better.
From what we hear Mike Boone is that kind of guy; he wants it to be the best and done his way, which is the only right way. He was in the market for a custom bike for a while and had been kicking around the idea of a custom Softail done up with bags and a windshield or fairing. After thinking about how much work it would take to customize a Harley Softail the way only he would find adequate to call his own was not the way to go. Mike did some more research on time to build, money to spend, and style of bikes he liked, and wanted when he decided to build a custom bagger. Once Mike made up his mind to go with a bagger, he didn’t want just any bagger though, he wanted it to be fast, functional, and look hot.
Lucky for Mike he has been a long time friend with Rusty Coones one of the owners of Illusion Cycles in Westminster, California, where some of the coolest and cleanest custom motorcycles are built. No stranger to the bagger world, Rusty was ready to take on this build. Rusty knew going in that if it was for Mike, it had to be top-notch, sparing nothing to meet Mike’s high standards. Mike’s other vehicles are all high end and this wasn’t going to be any different. It had to be as cool as the Lamborghini that would be sitting next to it in his carpeted garage. Once Mike worked out all the details about the bike with Rusty, the crew at Illusion Cycles went to work on the concepts for Mike’s kick-ass bagger.
Rusty wanted to point out that baggers are a different breed from the custom choppers and bobbers they have been building for years. Inherently, baggers are fat and stubby in appearance. He said that if you rake the frame a little and rake the triple trees, stretch the neck area a few inches, eliminate the engine guard, stretch the saddlebags, use a clean rear fender, and put a 23-inch wheel up front these bikes can really look cool. The kind of bike any age guy would want to ride. It started with a frame built for Illusion Cycles with 33-degrees in the neck, 2- ½-inches added to the downtubes and backbone and a set of 7-degree triple trees. The powerplant was also a big deal they used a de-stroked 124ci S&S built to meet Rusty’s specs. The heads are the B145s and the engine has the short 4.25 stroke with the 4.125 bore to make it run as smooth as silk. To feed fuel to this monster they used a 42mm Mikuni carburetor and a 520-lift cam. This combination still turns out around 120 hp at the rear wheel yet there is no low rpm lurching as a big cam might have. The transmission is a Baker six-speed with a 32T trans sprocket and a 70T rear pulley so the bike is only turning 3,200 rpm at 100 mph keeping it smooth. Getting the trans and motor to work together a slim 2-inch BDL primary drive belt system was installed. When it came to the sheetmetal Milwaukee Bagger handled the rear fender, saddlebags and side covers and the handlebars and front fender were from Bagger Nation. Mike wanted to be able to rack up the miles on his bike so Rusty went with a six-gallon fuel tank from RWD and added Arlen Ness foot controls, boards, and fork sliders. But where all the real style and lines of this bike start from is the H-D Road Glide Fairing with all the H-D gauges needed minus the fuel and air gauges so that it could hold tweeters for the stereo. What would a cool ass bagger be without tunes? That is where Clarion comes into play, with speakers, amp, and an interface that has everything from GPS to DVD. Hell, the only thing missing is the launch key. To get comfort on those long rides a custom made Danny Gray seat rests atop the frame.
The guys at Illusion Cycles made sure to cover every detail and not cut any corners when it came to building this bike, and you can see it. This is the bike that could be ridden hard and look great doing it. When it was time to pick a color black was the only way to go. At first Mike was thinking of adding some flames or graphics to the bike but when he saw it just black Rusty knew that is how it needed to stay, black. Mike felt the same way calling it the Black Beautiful Sleekness. You could say that the bike was a hit just having it in the shop and being seen has gotten a few chopper customers to want to trade up to a bagger. So Illusion Cycles has come up with a bagger model called the Hell Razor Touring, check them out. B
Read more: http://www.baggersmag.com/features/1108_hrbp_2011_illusion_hell/viewall.html#ixzz1ewefLY8K
Illusion Motorcycles chosen to build Sons Of Anarchy Charity Chopper Illusion Motorcycles chosen to build Sons Of Anarchy Charity Chopper September 29, 2011 | |
Illusion Motorcycles, Rusty Coones and Rod Requejo chosen to build Sons Of Anarchy Wounded Warriors Charity Chopper www.illusionmotorcycles.com
Check this out!!
youtube.com/watch?v=wOUy2Mjw_CQ&feature=youtube_gdata_player
Kurt Sutter, producer of SOA initially came up with the idea of building a SOA charity bike to be auctioned with all sale proceeds going to The Wounded Warriors Foundation. Much of the bike's design is a direct reflection of Sutter's input and based on the show's unfilterd insight into the tight knit family culture SOA has managed to capture and craft into one of the most compelling true to life and heavily watched television series ever. Sutter's choice of Rusty Coones and Rod Requejo (T-Rod) at Illusion Motorsports to put his vision to metal couldn't have been more dead on. Coones and Rod are the real deal and have the credentials to back it up.
An imposing figure, Coones has been down the road more than a few times and in doing so has become legendary in the motorcycle community as has Rod with notoriety as one of the most skilled metal craftsmen in the business. Their state of the art facility, Illusion Motorsports, in Westminster California has a long history of producing real world custom bikes and was one of the first to offer complete rolling chassis kits. Illusion is also the source for a full line of custom built, EPA certified big inch engines and the revolutionary BAR 6-speedtransmission.
Rod and Rusty were given the task to build the SOA /Wounded Warriors charity bike in 14 days while being filmed by FOX. The footage of that build is available in SONS Season 3 DVD Collection" Illusion really nailed the soul of Sons Of Anarchy with this Bad 'N Black scooter and it is a fitting tribute to our men and women in uniform. This is SOA's way of saying "thank you for your unselfish service to our country."
ATTIKA7, Coones' Metal Band has songs in Episode 8 'Greed & Power' and Final Episode Season 3 'Crackerman'. Rusty is also the founder of and lead guitar for ATTIKA7 and will be playing at the Whisky A-Go-Go in West Hollywood on November 10 2011 at 8pm.
www.attika7.com
Read more: http://www.motorcyclistonline.com/newsandupdates/motorcycle_news/122_1109_illusion_motorcycles_chosen_to_build_sons_of_anarchy_charity_chopper/index.html#ixzz1ewhhvhvy
ILLUSION UNVEILS EXCLUSIVE WCC STYLE CAPT. AMERICA COMMEMORATIVE CHOPPER
As Godfather to the production chopper industry, Illusion Cycles is responsible for some of the most stylish yet brutally hard core production choppers ever. In keeping with their flare for running on the edge, Rusty Coones and Rod Requejo, co-owners of Illusion, just announced the availability of a limited number of Capt. America Commemorative choppers.
Working closely with West Coast Choppers, the bikes will have an unmistakable WCC look and feature many of that company’s exclusive components. Each Illusion Capt. America will be hand fabricated at the Illusion factory in Westminister, California to meet personal the requirements of each customer.
As with Illusion’s much sought after line of in-your-face HELLRAZOR bikes, Capt. America Commemoratives will feature driveline components that are CARB certified to California specifications and 49 state EPA compliant. Additionally, each machine is covered by a full one year factory warranty and qualify for extended warrantee coverage from aftermarket companies.
If you’re looking for a truly unique scooter that is as dependable as it is visually striking, look no further. In this economy, where you spend your money is as important as what you spend it on. At Illusion you get exactly what you pay for; quality, performance, longevity and image. It should be noted that a testament to Illusions continued high regard among professional manufacturers, is the fact that Illusion motorcycles continue to be listed in both the Kelly Blue Book and NADA directory.
For complete detail call Illusion Cycles at 714-894-1942. Be sure to visit them on the Web at www.Illusionmotorcycles.com
'02 Illusion Softail-Style Chopper - This Is An Illusion Hellrazor From the September, 2002 issue of Street Chopper By Howard Kelly Photography by Jeff Deasey
| | If you look back almost 10 years into the history of American V-Twins, there was just one alternative to Harley - the Illusion Motorcycle Company. Born from the sweat and determination of Donnie Bittman, Illusion was an innovative company offering customers a V-Twin with twice the power of a stock H-D, better looks, and high-end suspension and brakes. On top of all that, Illusion bikes met all D.O.T. and EPA requirements.
Bittman fought the battle to keep his bikes in the public eye for quite a few years, but eventually slowed his business down to building a select few bikes for even more select customers. During that time, K.O. Coones was looking for a new home for a Motorcycle company and struck a deal to purchase Illusion.
Since that deal was struck, a line of Illusion dealers have filled showrooms with production machines that thrill its customers. K.O. felt it was time to venture out on a limb and design a radical departure from the current lineup - a Softail-style chopper that Ralph Aguirre would build for Coones.
It took no time for a Daytec frame to be selected as the basis for the bike. With 40 degrees of neck rake and 5 inches of upward stretch, the stance of the Hellrazor would be aggressive. K.O. met with Willie and Bill at Spyke to get some frontend advice. When the meeting ended, a 10-inch-over inverted fork and triple trees were attached to the Daytec frame. To smooth out some of the damage potholes provoke, a set of Progressive Suspension shocks was installed out back.
Rolling the new machine around is easy thanks to a pair of Advanced Performance Components 3-spoke billet wheels. The 21-inch front is covered up with a Metzeler tire while the 18 out back gets a 180 Avon, and both are slowed by Legends calipers and rotors.
At the heart of the Hellrazor is a 97ci motor built by S.T.D. to Illusion EPA specs. The cases are S.T.D. and they hold Truett & Osbourne wheels, S.T.D. rods, and JE pistons. The cases are topped with Axtell cylinders, S.T.D. heads, and S&S rocker boxes. The air/fuel mixture is created with a Mikuni HSR 42, an Illusion cam, and is sparked by a Spyke ignition. Samson pipes take care of the burnt exhaust gases.
Backing up the potent 97 is a Sharp Eye five-speed trans-mission. The case is an extremely polished unit filled with Spyke gears and topped with chrome covers. A BDL clutch and chain primary make a positive connection between the motor and transmission.
When it was time for Ralph to figure out the sheetmetal, K.O. went to Jesse James for some help. James stepped in and built the rear fender and internal struts for her, while Ralph was busy fitting a Fat Katz one-piece tank and
Wide Glide-style front fender to the bike. Once everyone involved liked the fit and finish of the metal, it was all shipped to Danny Scholz for the Hellrazor red basecoat and the 3-D graphics, while California Custom took care of the powdercoating.
To get the bike out on the road, a set of Wild One handlebars were mated to Legends hand controls and CCI mirrors. Foot controls from Legends were used along with a head- and taillight from CCI. H-D-style turn signals are mounted at both ends, but the rear signals are almost hidden near the axle. The final part of the equation was a HighEnd seat and the bike was ready to ride. Since its introduction, Illusion dealers all around the country have been calling K.O. to get one for each showroom. Maybe going out on a limb is a good idea once in a while.
Read more: http://www.streetchopperweb.com/features/0209_stcp_illusion_softail_hellrazor_chopper/viewall.html#ixzz1ewrDDaeF
Speedway Sidecar Illusion Cycles RACING TEAM!! April 11, 2011 | |
PICTURES and a Face Book link for the FIRST TEST RUN of the Illusion Cycles SIDECAR. This is THEEE ONLY Harley-Davidson Speedway Sidecar in the United States, AND in the world! This custom build is also internationally compliant within all the regulations for A.S.R.A. -which will allow this team to compete on ANY RACE TRACK IN THE WORLD. The goal is to compete in the WORLD FINALS, with 'world class' speedway sidecar racing teams. This Illusion motor is 1000 cc's, the guts of which are proprietary>> known only to a special group of friends: the BEST of the BEST in the v-twin motor world who pitched in their time & talent. BIG Thanks go out to Wink Eller, Billy MaCahill, and FAST EDDIE, Joe Jones and sooooo many more people. We will keep you updated here for the 1st Speedway race dates & locations. ILLUSION RACING TEAM can be found on Face Book: 'Trod N Stone' OR 'Rod Requejo'.
TRACK RUN video link from Face Book below:
http://www.facebook.com/?tid=1869026358177&sk=messages#!/video/video.php?v=197255040315126&comments
Read more: http://www.streetchopperweb.com/hotnews/1104_stcp_speedway_sidecar_illusion_cycles_racing_team/index.html#ixzz1ewsvvhKi
Ready To Stop, & Roll | 2009 CFL-II Illusion QTM's Showpiece From the May, 2010 issue of Hot Bike By Eddie Budinko, Ernie Lopez, Hot Bike Staff Photography by Ernie Lopez, Hot Bike Staff Videographer: Hot Bike Staff
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If you're a true motorsports enthusiast then you tend to take in all the minor details on any vehicle, no matter if it has two wheels or four wheels. And when it comes to four-wheeled vehicles you may notice that many of the top manufacturers use the same braking components from one company, Brembo. Brembo braking components can be found on high-end cars like Ferraris, Porches, Alfa Romeos, Aston Martins, Land Rovers, and Corvettes, just to name a few. While Brembo is known for its performance brake systems, the company didn't do any chrome parts or parts that fit onto traditional heavyweight cruiser motorcycles. Therefore a former Brembo employee and an engineer, Tara and Kevin Para, decided to start up QTM, to make the brackets and disc centers necessary to fit Brembo brakes onto cruiser motorcycles, as well as add the finish many motorcycle owners desire most, shiny chrome. As the exclusive supplier of Brembo brakes for cruiser type motorcycles, over the years QTM has continued to evolve adding Marchesini SuperMoto wheels to its distribution line, and has stayed abreast of both the custom and OEM markets to outfit bikes with high-quality brakes. To showcase products at the trade shows and events they attended, co-founders Tara and Kevin had the idea to build the company project bike you see here.
"As a brake component supplier to West Coast Choppers, an obvious starting point was to go with the new WCC CFL-II frame for the cradle," said QTM Engineer Eric Budinko. "From there we contacted S&S Cycle and Baker Drivetrain to work out the other major components. With the 2009 V-Twin Expo as the target debut, serious effort finally started in September." That is when QTM's in-house engineering department, Eric and Kevin, realized they knew a lot about race cars (Kevin) and sportbikes and dirtbikes (Eric) and braking systems, but not a whole lot about what goes into building an American V-twin chopper from a bare frame. Luckily, longtime customer and friend of the shop, Jim Overman, who has overseen a few bike builds answered the call to help out. Rusty and Rod from Illusion Cycles came out to visit and somehow buying them lunch turned into a custom gas tank to match the CFL-II's sweet lines and hug right over the top of the CARB legal 100ci S&S engine. From that point on the direction was to make a DOT and California legal custom motorcycle that could actually be ridden.
The hot rod look of the bike was based around the Marchesini forged aluminum wheels and the Brembo brakes. Ohlins forks completed the sportbike frontend, and one-off custom triple clamps were CAD modeled and CNC machined by QTM (an additional WCC billet oil bag was incorporated as the headlight bucket). In addition, the mid-controls (with Talon motocross footpegs), caliper brackets, rotor carriers, and handlebars were all custom designed in-house for this project. Troy Lee Designs was given a blank slate for the paint and graphics, and did an amazing job with the company logo and colors.
With the V-Twin Expo date looming, January was crunch time, with parts still out getting painted and anodized the week before the Cinci show. The QTM van was set to leave Monday morning for the drive to Ohio, so Super Bowl weekend consisted of 16-hour days at the shop finishing the company's first project bike. "As we were loading the bike into the van, I asked Kevin when we were going into production on these bikes...'Never.' was the fastest response I have ever received from him," Eric said. "Special thanks to our project partners West Coast Choppers, S&S, Baker, Ohlins, Illusion Cycles, Troy Lee Designs, Corbin, RK/Excel, Talon, Dunlop, Goodridge, Joker Machine, Bassani, and Wiring by Pops."
Read more: http://www.hotbikeweb.com/features/1005_hbkp_qtm_2009_cfl_ii_illusion/viewall.html#ixzz1ewyHttC1
Pure Evil | 2002 Harley Davidson Softail Deuce/Carlini A Bike Built Out Of Emotion From the May, 2010 issue of Hot Bike By Eric Ellis, TJ Carlini Photography by Timothy Sutton
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"I'd been working on those... read full caption "I'd been working on those wheels for like a year. Actually the entire bike has been a very long process."Let your emotions inspire you, not ruin you. This was one of the first thoughts that came to my mind as I was listening to TJ Carlini of Carlini Designs tell me the story of how his bike "Pure Evil" came to be. We've all been in bad places in our lives emotionally, whether it was the loss of a loved one, getting fired, or the break up of a relationship. For some people negative emotions can get the better of them and drag them down. For others, they are able to channel negative emotions into positive constructive energy and actions, which can then become a turning point in their lives.
With a father who was highly recognized as one of the prominent bike builders dating back to the late '60s, years of experience helping with the family custom parts business, and influences from personal connections from names like Willie G., Jesse James, and Arlen Ness, TJ knew early on he wanted to create his own mark on the industry he grew up in and loved but just needed the right motivation to help set his path in motion. Then several years back, while working through a bad spot in his young life, TJ used the raw emotions he was experiencing to not only help him get through his struggle but help him find himself as a motorcycle designer and further define his personal style.
With just the right lighting... read full caption With just the right lighting you get of glimpse of the name TJ came up with for his emotional inspiration. Notice how the white gold under the red pin striping helps it light up like an LED strip?Here is an edited version of our hour-long interview with TJ. HB: The bike started out as a Deuce right? Did you buy it brand new?
TJ: Yeah, brand new. I bought it from Glendale H-D.
HB: When did you decide to start customizing it to where it is now?
TJ: It started...well, let me back up a bit. I had to find my style first. When I bought the bike back in '02,I was going to do a few things to it and add to my parts line. I just had a lot of distractions. My marriage was falling apart and it was taking up all my time. I was really mad, frustrated, and it was a big nightmare. I had a lot of aggression built up and I just channeled all of it. I got into the gym and started training with MMA fighters and focusing on my designs. All of that aggression, all that bad stuff in my personal life helped me hone my style. It's like I had writer's block when I bought the bike and didn't know where I wanted to go in terms of style. The only thing I was 100 percent sure of was I wanted to be true to myself and be original. I can't stand being copied. I was reading HOT BIKE and all the other bike magazines, I went over to Jesse's [James] place and picked his brain, but I'd say my biggest influence was just living in my dad's garage. I spent so much time with him, you can see a lot of his influences in the bike, but it's definitely me. That's the whole reason I did this. I needed my own original thumbprint. I didn't want to rest on the laurels of my dad. When I'm done with motorcycles and the industry I want to leave my own unique scar on the face of it. That's so important to me. It's more important than the money, than anything. To be true. That's why I'm in this. I love motorcycles and it's a true representation of my own unique style and it tells the story of my influences, between the fighting, the surfing, and my dad growing up. There's been a lot of big names come through my garage. Willie G., Arlen [Ness], Jesse, they have all helped me hone who I am.
Read more: http://www.hotbikeweb.com/features/1005_hbkp_pure_evil_2002_harley_davidson_softail_deuce_carlini/viewall.html#ixzz1ex08AZHu
Hell Raisers
Nick Schou
FOR RUSTY COONES and RODRIGO REQUEJO of Illusion Motor sports, life has been one wild ride
The backroom of Illusion Motors ports is full of bikes: some are set aside like museum pieces, others are jacked up on work tables, here a line of stripped-down and refurbished Harley- David sons, there the odd Triumph or Victoria. But two motorcycles in particular stand out inside the construction-in progress custom-motorcycle shop in a Garden Grove business complex just off Interstate 405 at Golden West. They’re distinguished less because of their physical appearance than for what they say about the store’s owners, Rodrigo Requejo and Rusty Coones, and the amazing turn of personal fortune both men have experienced in the past few years.
The first bike, an Illusion Hellrazor with a 114-cubic-inch engine custom manufactured exclusively for the shop, belongs to Kurt Sutter, the creator of the biker drama Sons of Anarchy that airs on FX. Requejo and Coones built the bike for Sutter earlier this year, but Sutter sent it back in for a custom fender and a one-of its- kind aluminum fairing. It’s the second bike Sutter has purchased from the store; the first was custom-made for the show in 2010, and then donated to the Wounded Warrior Foundation, a San Diego charity that benefits wounded and disabled veterans of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.
A Sons of Anarchy camera crew filmed Requejo and Coones building the bike from scratch for a special feature for the upcoming DVD release of the show’s third season. Coones’ heavy-metal band, Attika7, for which he plays lead guitar alongside vocalist Evan Seinfeld of Biohazard fame, also contributed two songs to the second season, as well as one (so far) for the upcoming fourth season. Sutter and his wife, actress Katey Sagal (who plays Gemma on the show), met Coones a few years ago on a toy run in the San Fernando Valley.
“My first impression: ‘Fuck, he is big,’” Sutter says. “Then I was struck by his enthusiasm and genuine love of bikes and the motorcycle subculture. Plus, he was a huge Sons fan. We became friends when he started talking about bikes.”
Sutter says that although he has been riding motorcycles for 20 years, the Hellrazor was his first custom-built motorcycle. “The bike is an incredible mix of art, power and comfort,” he says. “Beautiful to look at, a force of nature on the road and easy to ride. I fucking love it.”
While Sutter’s Hellrazor symbolizes the success Coones and Requejo now enjoy, the other bike in question speaks to the dark days the two men shared in the not-too-distant past. It’s a 2004 West Coast Chopper Dominator, gleaming with a spotless, satin black paint job, resting on a rack high up on one wall of the shop. It was a surprise gift to Coones from his pal Jesse James, who personally built it in celebration of Coones’ Dec. 27, 2004, release from federal prison for his alleged role in what police, prosecutors and newspaper articles at the time described as Orange County’s biggest drug-smuggling network.
Even as Coones walked out of prison a free man that day, Requejo was behind bars, having just been arrested for murder. For weeks, Requejo sat in jail, facing Either the death penalty or life in prison without parole until finally being cleared of any wrongdoing. Both men look back at their pasts with a healthy dose of humility.
“You have to make the best of the bad,” says Requejo, whose burly frame belies his soft-spoken, philosophical nature. “Every day, we’re here making people happy, working on their bikes and having a good time. Life’s been good to us. You have two guys who could have gone way down the wrong path and somehow made a U-turn.”
A 6-foot-5-inch tower of tanned flesh and muscle, Howard Irvine Coones, known to friend and foe alike as Rusty, has piercing hazel eyes beneath his black-nylon skullcap. Scrolling down the back of both of his bulging biceps are flaming letters spelling out “Hells Angels.” Coones is president of the Orange County chapter of the club, which he refuses to mention by name, much less discuss in detail, because its rules preclude members from doing so.
Coones was raised in the small Sacramento- area farming town of Madera in the 1960s. His father owned a crop-dusting business, and Coones began flying as a youngster, which is also when he began riding Harley-David sons. His dad wasn’t too enamored of the hobby, and after a girl crashed into Rusty, totaling his bike but leaving him miraculously unscathed, his dad gave him an ultimatum. “He told me, ‘If you get another Harley, I’m going to kick you out of the house, and I’m going to fire you,’” Coones recalls.
With nowhere to stay and no work to speak of in rural California in 1974, it seemed as though Coones’ riding days were over. “But once you get a Harley, you get kind of hooked,” he says. “So the day I got the insurance check, I went out and got a bike.” Sure enough, Coones’ dad both fired him and evicted him from the house on the spot. “So I rode my bike down here to Orange County and got a job with my uncle doing plumbing, and I’ve been here ever since.”
By 1982, Coones was firmly entrenched in Southern California’s outlaw-biker scene. He’d also developed a penchant for dealing drugs and collecting firearms, which were confiscated from his mansion in Laguna Canyon when police busted him there on drug and gun charges that year. After getting out of prison two years later, he returned to Laguna Beach and operated Lords of Limos and Custom Inc., a business that custom-built cars, limousines and motorcycles. A 1988 Los Angeles Times article about a local car-show appearance by surgically enhanced Playboy model—and mistress of disgraced televangelist James Bakker—Jessica Hahn describes Coones as a “33-year-old bodybuilder” who picked Hahn up at John Wayne Airport and drove her to the event in his “$75,000 gleaming silver limo truck with a computerized bar.”
In 1986, Coones met his future wife, Katherine, a half-Italian, half-Mexican firecracker of a woman who goes by the nickname KO; he immediately began courting her, hoping she’d move into his million-dollar mansion. “Rusty is very kind and generous, a cement-covered marshmallow,” she says. “He’s never hurt me or lied to me and treats me like a princess. I remember when I met him, he had one of those $3,000 cell phones that was as big as a shoebox. He built me a walk-in closet in his home. He showered me with gifts and jewelry, and he had an airplane, a Cessna 210, all black and custom-painted, and would say, ‘Let’s fly up to San Francisco together.’”
Despite the bling, Coones insists that he went straight after his prison stint. Besides operating a successful bike shop and limo service, he opened First Step Treatment Centers of California, a rehabilitation facility for recovering drug addicts and alcoholics. Coones’ younger brother was a heroin addict, and Coones had spent years trying to save him. “Even though I was into a lot of illicit-drug stuff, I wasn’t a user,” Coones explains. “But he was, and I would get him off the drugs and clean him up, and then he would go right back to it. It went on like that for seven or eight years.”
In 1981, his brother shot himself in the head. “Rusty always carried that guilt,” says KO. “He felt that it was his fault that he couldn’t save him.”
Local police, however, remained determined to put Coones back in prison, even going so far as to put local informants to work, trying to lure him into drug deals. One Sunday afternoon in 1991, Coones was drinking a beer at a biker bar in Laguna Canyon when a stranger asked if he could buy him a beer. Coones pointed at his own bottle and declined the offer. The following week, the same man showed up and once again offered to buy Coones a drink. Again, Coones, who already had his own, refused, at which point the man began to ask him for advice on how to invest cash from a court settlement he’d just received.
“I’ve got all this money I want to invest,” he began. “What would you do with it?”
“Me, personally, I buy used bikes and sell them—that’s my thing,” Coones responded. “And real estate; I’ve never lost money on real estate.”
“I’m thinking about something more lucrative,” the man said.
“Like what?”
“You know, coke...”
Coones didn’t let the stranger finish his sentence. “Get the fuck out of here,” he commanded, leaning over the table. “I’ll beat your ass.”
For the next month, Coones watched the same helicopter hovering near his house and following him around town. He knew the cops were suspicious because of the size of his house and the fact he’d just taken a loan against the property for $400,000 cash. “So I’m flush with money and doing cars and bikes and trying to remodel the property and sell it, and all the time, I’m legit,” Coones insists. “They didn’t know that. They thought I was good for 100 kilos of coke.”
Coones knows that number for a fact because it was in the search warrant police used to raid his house one morning in 1991 while he was meeting with a city official about his rehab program. A 60-man task force led by Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms (ATF) and Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA) agents backed by two helicopters surrounded his house and blew open his unlocked front door. They wrestled to the floor two guests who were sleeping in different rooms and had to call a fire truck after one of the explosions set off a small fire. One of the hapless house guests, who, like Coones himself, was never arrested, later told Coones he overheard police saying that 21 bullets had been discharged inside the house as police went from room to room, rifles at the ready.
As it turned out, the police claimed to have an informant who said Coones had a house safe full of cocaine and machine guns, thus they were expecting armed resistance. “They looked like idiots,” Coones says. “There wasn’t anything to find. I told them they were years too late. They could justify that on the search warrant in front of any judge because, back in 1982, when I did get arrested there, I did have machine guns in my room. I had quite a collection.”
The next time the cops surrounded Coones’ house didn’t go so well, although the search came up empty for guns and drugs once again. Appropriately enough, the raid took place on D-Day: June 6, 1999. Under cover of darkness early that morning, Coones slipped out of his house in Garden Grove, having long since sold his Laguna mansion. He knew he’d been under surveillance for weeks by FBI agents driving everything from Dodge Intrepids to beat-up Volkswagen buses. Coones drove to KO’s house in Orange. He knew his time was running out: The helicopter hovering somewhere nearby told him the feds were closing in on him.
“Man, it’s coming down this morning,” he said to himself. He told KO to get dressed. It was like a scene out of the film Good fellas’ climax, in which a coked-out Henry Hill becomes increasingly paranoid about the helicopter following him— except Coones wasn’t on drugs. As the noise from the helicopter grew louder, he looked out the window and saw a California Highway Patrol car pull up three doors down. Several officers from the multiagency task force that was hunting him crouched behind the vehicle, while others began to surround the wrong house. Not wanting any neighbors to end up dead, Coones calmly walked out the front door, his hands raised.
Seconds later, just after 6:30 a.m., Coones was arrested in a massive operation targeting what authorities billed as a Hells Angels-tied smuggling scheme that brought untold quantities of methamphetamine from California to Hawaii, much of it stashed inside Harley-Davidson motorcycles, netting profits of $1 million per week. Among the 15 people arrested that day were John Ward, a 31-year-old drug kingpin from Orange who was known in Las Vegas as a flashy whale with a $25,000 Rolex on his wrist and whose fleet included Porches, Mercedeses and Ferraris, and Bryan Kazarian, an ambitious young deputy district attorney whose job was targeting street gangs in Orange County. Unlike the other defendants, all of whom tried to work out plea deals, Coones refused to talk to the police or even his lawyer, who made the mistake of telling Coones he could get his bail reduced if he talked to the feds. “I had been taught since I was a youngster that you maintain your right to remain silent,” Coones says. “It doesn’t matter if you’re innocent or guilty. You don’t talk to them, and that’s that, and that’s what I did. I never cooperated, never interviewed, and they didn’t expect me to cooperate because they knew that wasn’t going to happen.”
Coones eventually pleaded guilty to a single count of drug conspiracy for providing Ward with 108 pounds of ephedrine, a component of the highly potent methamphetamine known as “ice” that Ward was trafficking. “In actuality, I did have involvement in ephedrine and hooking people up,” he acknowledges. “I introduced one party to another, and I never actually had my hands on it, but I was involved in that conspiracy.”
After 21 months at the Metropolitan Detention Center in Los Angeles, Coones was sentenced to just more than eight years in federal prison; a jury later convicted Ward, who received a term of life in prison without the possibility of parole, while former prosecutor Kazarian, who was promptly fired by DA Tony Rackauckas, got off with a relatively lenient 33 months and a disbarment that was later reversed; he now works as a defense attorney in Westminster. While Coones admits to knowing Ward, he says he never met Kazarian.
“But according to the police reports, the prosecutors and the papers, I was supposed to be associated with him, ” he says. “It was so outlandish, and most of it was trumped up. They brought up every expert on the Hells Angels they could find.”
Although Coones insists the club had nothing to do with his predicament, his status as a high-ranking Hells Angel turned him into a minor celebrity in the war on drugs while he was behind bars. After his arrest, KO took over Illusion Motor sports, selling motorcycles and other gear to pay Coones’ legal bills and to keep the business’ various state and local licenses current. To raise cash for Coones to use at the prison commissary, she sold “Free Rusty” T-shirts, and she set up a website to keep friends updated on his case and on which she published occasional essays by Coones about the hypocrisy and ineffectiveness of the drug war. While in prison, Coones took up the guitar and began writing songs, including “Lockdown” and “No Redemption,” which he still performs with Attika7.
One of Coones’ biggest supporters was fellow bike-builder Jesse James, who had worked with Coones on motorcycles and befriended him years before his arrest. During the four seasons that James appeared on Monster Garage, he wore several different “Free Rusty” T-shirts during taping in a quiet tribute to his friend. Then there was the motorcycle James built for Coones just days before Coones got out of prison. Actually, James gave the bike to KO because he wouldn’t be able to do it in person.
“He told me that he and Sandy were leaving for Cabo,” KO recalls, referring to James’ then-wife Sandra Bullock. “‘We won’t be here when Rusty comes home, so you have to give him the bike.’” James knew that Coones had lost all his motorcycles to legal bills and would have nothing to ride. “He had tears in his eyes when he handed the keys to me. He said, ‘KO, a Hells Angel needs a motorcycle.’”
Just six days before Coones walked out of prison a free man, Rodrigo Requejo was driving his battered Ford Dually truck home from a long day at Twisted Metal, his now-shuttered bike shop, when he took his eyes off the road for a few seconds, fumbling for his cell phone. When he looked up, he’d pulled up close behind a pickup. The then-31- year-old Argentinean immigrant and self employed bike builder swerved around the vehicle and kept driving, unaware that his maneuver had antagonized its occupants. After exiting, he was sitting at a red light when two angry young men rushed his car and pulled him to the pavement.
What happened next is a blur in Requejo’s mind. “They beat the hell out of me, man,” he says. “I was in a big fog. I got hit so hard in the head and chest and everything. I thought I had pulled out a knife and scared them away. I didn’t have a drop of blood on me.” Covered in bruises, Requejo managed to fight off his attackers and retrieve his truck, which had rolled away. It wasn’t until he saw the news the following day that he realized he had in fact stabbed both men, who turned out to be twins, and that one of them, Justin Ammann, died from his wounds.
The surviving brother, Jason, told police that Requejo, who was a Hells Angels prospect at the time, had forced them off the road and attacked them, yelling the name of the motorcycle club. Based on that version of events, police arrested Requejo, who was charged with murder and attempted murder, with a special circumstances enhancement alleging the crimes were carried out for the benefit of the Hells Angels. Because of his status as a club prospect at the time, Requejo refused to give his side of the story to police; he even denied being involved in the fight when he was arrested.
“Who’s going to believe me?” he wondered. “I’m a Hells Angels prospect. They are going to hang me for this. Had this happened at another place, where there were no witnesses, I’d be gone.”
Indeed, at his arraignment, the judge coolly informed Requejo that, if convicted, he’d be eligible for the death penalty, despite the fact he’d never been arrested for a violent crime. In the end, Requejo was spared by pretrial media coverage. Eyewitnesses who saw what really happened came forward to contest the official story, saying it was the two brothers who started the fight and that Requejo had acted in self-defense.
On Feb. 3, 2005, after more than a month behind bars, prosecutors dropped all charges against Requejo. He had been living with two death sentences hanging over him, given that the Ammann brothers were members of the Orange County Skins, a violent white-supremacist street gang that had green-lighted a hit on Requejo. “I don’t have a problem with them now,” Requejo says. “But while I was inside, I had to watch out.”
One inmate had torn a gang rival in half with an AK47, Requejo recalls. Another had murdered his probation officer; stolen his badge, gun and car; and led police on a freeway chase that ended in a shootout. When the cops caught up with him, they found the probation officer’s ears in the man’s pocket. “I was locked up with dudes who were nuts—you could see right through them,” he says, “but there were dudes who were swearing their innocence up and down, and I could honestly believe a couple of them.”
Requejo had first met Coones when he was 18 years old and Coones and another hulking Hells Angel showed up at his dad’s motorcycle shop. He ran into him again at a bike run not long after he left jail. Requejo reintroduced himself. The two began talking about bikes, and before long, Requejo had shuttered Twisted Metal and become Coones’ business partner in Illusion Motor sports. “We’ve been going at it since,” Requejo says.
There was one hitch in the promising partnership, however. On July 27, 2008, several Hells Angels, including Requejo, were drinking beer at Blackie’s By the Sea in Newport Beach when they got into a brawl with members of Phil Aguilar’s Set Free Soldiers, an evangelical-Christian bike club (see “He Shall Be Set Free,” Nov. 25, 2010). Requejo says he threw the first punch when a friend of one of the Set Free Soldiers “disrespected” one of the Hells Angels at the bar. Requejo told the man to mind his own business. “Fuck you,” the man responded.
“For me, one ‘fuck you’ is one too many,” Requejo says. “I wouldn’t have cared if the president of the United States was there or 100 cops; if somebody tells me, ‘Fuck you,’ I am going to punch him in the mouth, and that’s exactly what I did.”
What happened next is well-known, and the security-video footage has since gone viral on YouTube: A dozen or more massive bikers explode in a blur of fists and flying pool cues before, just as suddenly, both sides withdraw and calmly leave the bar. Although he wasn’t arrested, Requejo was already on probation for carrying a knife—he claims it was of legal length—so police charged him with seven felonies, including assault with a deadly weapon. They also raided his house; while officers ransacked his home, Requejo’s mother suffered a heart attack and had to be taken to the hospital .
The first thing she did when she recovered was to beg her son to quit the Hells Angels. “I didn’t want to quit,” he recalls. “These were my friends, but she’s my mother, man. If she had died in that hospital, I would have blown my brains out. I couldn’t have lived with that on my conscience, her dying over me doing something stupid. So I did what I thought was right at the time.”
Following the infamous Blackie’s bar fight, Requejo pleaded guilty to one assault charge in return for probation, which is now just weeks from running out, at which point the charge will be expunged from his record. Nowadays, he divides his time between his two daughters, age 7 and 15; the bike shop; and racing the only sidecar bike with a Harley-Davidson engine in it at Costa Mesa Speedway on weekend nights. Not a day goes by when he doesn’t regret killing another person or that he doesn’t ponder the possibility of things working out differently. “What if I had my seat belt on and I could have hit the gas before they pulled me out?” he asks. “What if I had locked my doors? The fate of that poor guy—I am never going to live that down. I took somebody’s life. I’m going to have to answer to the man upstairs for that someday.
Nevertheless, Requejo is grateful for how well life is going now for both him and Coones. “It’s a hard life we both have lived,” he says. “At one part in both our lives, we had the great potential to be gone away forever, and I was thinking, ‘I could never eat a steak or get a cup of coffee from Starbucks in the morning or lay down with a woman again.’ Those things go through your mind.”
Coones is also a busy man. Besides his work at the shop, he’s often up halfway to dawn practicing with Attika7, who have played venues ranging from the Galaxy Concert Theatre and House of Blues in Anaheim to Irvine Lake. He was recently offered a principal role in a three-part film trilogy that has yet to be formally announced.
Thanks in part to his continued membership in the Hells Angels, police love to keep tabs on his movements. When Coones showed up for a Boys & Girls Club toy run in Santa Ana several weeks ago, police wouldn’t let him ride with his club patch on. Coones refused to take it off as a matter of principle.
He doesn’t complain about such incidents. “I’m just glad I’m where I’m at now and not having to go through the hard times I had,” he says. “It’s pretty exciting. We have a lot of things going on these days. We get to create art that rolls. Our work is fun; our play is fun. It’s a good life.”
Although it has been years since he was a member of the Hells Angels, Requejo says the police haven’t forgotten about him, either. “I tell Rusty all the time, ‘No matter how well we’re doing in life, you always have one foot in the successful life and one foot in a prison cell somewhere,’” he says. “It’s a balancing act. You have to put more weight on the good foot than the bad because it’s easy to put more weight on the other foot and be gone. It’s like you have a sidecar of doom.”
Requejo is the first to admit he still has his “wild side.” One Christmas Day a few years ago, he was eating brunch with his family at Costa Mesa’s now-closed Omelette Parlor when he heard a familiar voice behind him. He walked around the corner and saw a table of police officers, including the one who had previously arrested him for carrying a knife. The cops stopped talking, and the one whose voice Requejo recognized walked up to him, facing him nose to nose.
“So I heard you quit,” the cop said, referring to Requejo’s resignation from the Hells Angels.
“Yeah, you heard right,” Requejo responded.
“So you’re done, huh?” the cop continued.
“You quit. You’re done?”
“Let me tell you something,” Requejo answered. “I quit, but I’m not done. I’ll never be done.”
The cop walked back to his table, and Requejo rejoined his family.
Nick Schou
FOR RUSTY COONES and RODRIGO REQUEJO of Illusion Motor sports, life has been one wild ride
The backroom of Illusion Motors ports is full of bikes: some are set aside like museum pieces, others are jacked up on work tables, here a line of stripped-down and refurbished Harley- David sons, there the odd Triumph or Victoria. But two motorcycles in particular stand out inside the construction-in progress custom-motorcycle shop in a Garden Grove business complex just off Interstate 405 at Golden West. They’re distinguished less because of their physical appearance than for what they say about the store’s owners, Rodrigo Requejo and Rusty Coones, and the amazing turn of personal fortune both men have experienced in the past few years.
The first bike, an Illusion Hellrazor with a 114-cubic-inch engine custom manufactured exclusively for the shop, belongs to Kurt Sutter, the creator of the biker drama Sons of Anarchy that airs on FX. Requejo and Coones built the bike for Sutter earlier this year, but Sutter sent it back in for a custom fender and a one-of its- kind aluminum fairing. It’s the second bike Sutter has purchased from the store; the first was custom-made for the show in 2010, and then donated to the Wounded Warrior Foundation, a San Diego charity that benefits wounded and disabled veterans of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.
A Sons of Anarchy camera crew filmed Requejo and Coones building the bike from scratch for a special feature for the upcoming DVD release of the show’s third season. Coones’ heavy-metal band, Attika7, for which he plays lead guitar alongside vocalist Evan Seinfeld of Biohazard fame, also contributed two songs to the second season, as well as one (so far) for the upcoming fourth season. Sutter and his wife, actress Katey Sagal (who plays Gemma on the show), met Coones a few years ago on a toy run in the San Fernando Valley.
“My first impression: ‘Fuck, he is big,’” Sutter says. “Then I was struck by his enthusiasm and genuine love of bikes and the motorcycle subculture. Plus, he was a huge Sons fan. We became friends when he started talking about bikes.”
Sutter says that although he has been riding motorcycles for 20 years, the Hellrazor was his first custom-built motorcycle. “The bike is an incredible mix of art, power and comfort,” he says. “Beautiful to look at, a force of nature on the road and easy to ride. I fucking love it.”
While Sutter’s Hellrazor symbolizes the success Coones and Requejo now enjoy, the other bike in question speaks to the dark days the two men shared in the not-too-distant past. It’s a 2004 West Coast Chopper Dominator, gleaming with a spotless, satin black paint job, resting on a rack high up on one wall of the shop. It was a surprise gift to Coones from his pal Jesse James, who personally built it in celebration of Coones’ Dec. 27, 2004, release from federal prison for his alleged role in what police, prosecutors and newspaper articles at the time described as Orange County’s biggest drug-smuggling network.
Even as Coones walked out of prison a free man that day, Requejo was behind bars, having just been arrested for murder. For weeks, Requejo sat in jail, facing Either the death penalty or life in prison without parole until finally being cleared of any wrongdoing. Both men look back at their pasts with a healthy dose of humility.
“You have to make the best of the bad,” says Requejo, whose burly frame belies his soft-spoken, philosophical nature. “Every day, we’re here making people happy, working on their bikes and having a good time. Life’s been good to us. You have two guys who could have gone way down the wrong path and somehow made a U-turn.”
A 6-foot-5-inch tower of tanned flesh and muscle, Howard Irvine Coones, known to friend and foe alike as Rusty, has piercing hazel eyes beneath his black-nylon skullcap. Scrolling down the back of both of his bulging biceps are flaming letters spelling out “Hells Angels.” Coones is president of the Orange County chapter of the club, which he refuses to mention by name, much less discuss in detail, because its rules preclude members from doing so.
Coones was raised in the small Sacramento- area farming town of Madera in the 1960s. His father owned a crop-dusting business, and Coones began flying as a youngster, which is also when he began riding Harley-David sons. His dad wasn’t too enamored of the hobby, and after a girl crashed into Rusty, totaling his bike but leaving him miraculously unscathed, his dad gave him an ultimatum. “He told me, ‘If you get another Harley, I’m going to kick you out of the house, and I’m going to fire you,’” Coones recalls.
With nowhere to stay and no work to speak of in rural California in 1974, it seemed as though Coones’ riding days were over. “But once you get a Harley, you get kind of hooked,” he says. “So the day I got the insurance check, I went out and got a bike.” Sure enough, Coones’ dad both fired him and evicted him from the house on the spot. “So I rode my bike down here to Orange County and got a job with my uncle doing plumbing, and I’ve been here ever since.”
By 1982, Coones was firmly entrenched in Southern California’s outlaw-biker scene. He’d also developed a penchant for dealing drugs and collecting firearms, which were confiscated from his mansion in Laguna Canyon when police busted him there on drug and gun charges that year. After getting out of prison two years later, he returned to Laguna Beach and operated Lords of Limos and Custom Inc., a business that custom-built cars, limousines and motorcycles. A 1988 Los Angeles Times article about a local car-show appearance by surgically enhanced Playboy model—and mistress of disgraced televangelist James Bakker—Jessica Hahn describes Coones as a “33-year-old bodybuilder” who picked Hahn up at John Wayne Airport and drove her to the event in his “$75,000 gleaming silver limo truck with a computerized bar.”
In 1986, Coones met his future wife, Katherine, a half-Italian, half-Mexican firecracker of a woman who goes by the nickname KO; he immediately began courting her, hoping she’d move into his million-dollar mansion. “Rusty is very kind and generous, a cement-covered marshmallow,” she says. “He’s never hurt me or lied to me and treats me like a princess. I remember when I met him, he had one of those $3,000 cell phones that was as big as a shoebox. He built me a walk-in closet in his home. He showered me with gifts and jewelry, and he had an airplane, a Cessna 210, all black and custom-painted, and would say, ‘Let’s fly up to San Francisco together.’”
Despite the bling, Coones insists that he went straight after his prison stint. Besides operating a successful bike shop and limo service, he opened First Step Treatment Centers of California, a rehabilitation facility for recovering drug addicts and alcoholics. Coones’ younger brother was a heroin addict, and Coones had spent years trying to save him. “Even though I was into a lot of illicit-drug stuff, I wasn’t a user,” Coones explains. “But he was, and I would get him off the drugs and clean him up, and then he would go right back to it. It went on like that for seven or eight years.”
In 1981, his brother shot himself in the head. “Rusty always carried that guilt,” says KO. “He felt that it was his fault that he couldn’t save him.”
Local police, however, remained determined to put Coones back in prison, even going so far as to put local informants to work, trying to lure him into drug deals. One Sunday afternoon in 1991, Coones was drinking a beer at a biker bar in Laguna Canyon when a stranger asked if he could buy him a beer. Coones pointed at his own bottle and declined the offer. The following week, the same man showed up and once again offered to buy Coones a drink. Again, Coones, who already had his own, refused, at which point the man began to ask him for advice on how to invest cash from a court settlement he’d just received.
“I’ve got all this money I want to invest,” he began. “What would you do with it?”
“Me, personally, I buy used bikes and sell them—that’s my thing,” Coones responded. “And real estate; I’ve never lost money on real estate.”
“I’m thinking about something more lucrative,” the man said.
“Like what?”
“You know, coke...”
Coones didn’t let the stranger finish his sentence. “Get the fuck out of here,” he commanded, leaning over the table. “I’ll beat your ass.”
For the next month, Coones watched the same helicopter hovering near his house and following him around town. He knew the cops were suspicious because of the size of his house and the fact he’d just taken a loan against the property for $400,000 cash. “So I’m flush with money and doing cars and bikes and trying to remodel the property and sell it, and all the time, I’m legit,” Coones insists. “They didn’t know that. They thought I was good for 100 kilos of coke.”
Coones knows that number for a fact because it was in the search warrant police used to raid his house one morning in 1991 while he was meeting with a city official about his rehab program. A 60-man task force led by Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms (ATF) and Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA) agents backed by two helicopters surrounded his house and blew open his unlocked front door. They wrestled to the floor two guests who were sleeping in different rooms and had to call a fire truck after one of the explosions set off a small fire. One of the hapless house guests, who, like Coones himself, was never arrested, later told Coones he overheard police saying that 21 bullets had been discharged inside the house as police went from room to room, rifles at the ready.
As it turned out, the police claimed to have an informant who said Coones had a house safe full of cocaine and machine guns, thus they were expecting armed resistance. “They looked like idiots,” Coones says. “There wasn’t anything to find. I told them they were years too late. They could justify that on the search warrant in front of any judge because, back in 1982, when I did get arrested there, I did have machine guns in my room. I had quite a collection.”
The next time the cops surrounded Coones’ house didn’t go so well, although the search came up empty for guns and drugs once again. Appropriately enough, the raid took place on D-Day: June 6, 1999. Under cover of darkness early that morning, Coones slipped out of his house in Garden Grove, having long since sold his Laguna mansion. He knew he’d been under surveillance for weeks by FBI agents driving everything from Dodge Intrepids to beat-up Volkswagen buses. Coones drove to KO’s house in Orange. He knew his time was running out: The helicopter hovering somewhere nearby told him the feds were closing in on him.
“Man, it’s coming down this morning,” he said to himself. He told KO to get dressed. It was like a scene out of the film Good fellas’ climax, in which a coked-out Henry Hill becomes increasingly paranoid about the helicopter following him— except Coones wasn’t on drugs. As the noise from the helicopter grew louder, he looked out the window and saw a California Highway Patrol car pull up three doors down. Several officers from the multiagency task force that was hunting him crouched behind the vehicle, while others began to surround the wrong house. Not wanting any neighbors to end up dead, Coones calmly walked out the front door, his hands raised.
Seconds later, just after 6:30 a.m., Coones was arrested in a massive operation targeting what authorities billed as a Hells Angels-tied smuggling scheme that brought untold quantities of methamphetamine from California to Hawaii, much of it stashed inside Harley-Davidson motorcycles, netting profits of $1 million per week. Among the 15 people arrested that day were John Ward, a 31-year-old drug kingpin from Orange who was known in Las Vegas as a flashy whale with a $25,000 Rolex on his wrist and whose fleet included Porches, Mercedeses and Ferraris, and Bryan Kazarian, an ambitious young deputy district attorney whose job was targeting street gangs in Orange County. Unlike the other defendants, all of whom tried to work out plea deals, Coones refused to talk to the police or even his lawyer, who made the mistake of telling Coones he could get his bail reduced if he talked to the feds. “I had been taught since I was a youngster that you maintain your right to remain silent,” Coones says. “It doesn’t matter if you’re innocent or guilty. You don’t talk to them, and that’s that, and that’s what I did. I never cooperated, never interviewed, and they didn’t expect me to cooperate because they knew that wasn’t going to happen.”
Coones eventually pleaded guilty to a single count of drug conspiracy for providing Ward with 108 pounds of ephedrine, a component of the highly potent methamphetamine known as “ice” that Ward was trafficking. “In actuality, I did have involvement in ephedrine and hooking people up,” he acknowledges. “I introduced one party to another, and I never actually had my hands on it, but I was involved in that conspiracy.”
After 21 months at the Metropolitan Detention Center in Los Angeles, Coones was sentenced to just more than eight years in federal prison; a jury later convicted Ward, who received a term of life in prison without the possibility of parole, while former prosecutor Kazarian, who was promptly fired by DA Tony Rackauckas, got off with a relatively lenient 33 months and a disbarment that was later reversed; he now works as a defense attorney in Westminster. While Coones admits to knowing Ward, he says he never met Kazarian.
“But according to the police reports, the prosecutors and the papers, I was supposed to be associated with him, ” he says. “It was so outlandish, and most of it was trumped up. They brought up every expert on the Hells Angels they could find.”
Although Coones insists the club had nothing to do with his predicament, his status as a high-ranking Hells Angel turned him into a minor celebrity in the war on drugs while he was behind bars. After his arrest, KO took over Illusion Motor sports, selling motorcycles and other gear to pay Coones’ legal bills and to keep the business’ various state and local licenses current. To raise cash for Coones to use at the prison commissary, she sold “Free Rusty” T-shirts, and she set up a website to keep friends updated on his case and on which she published occasional essays by Coones about the hypocrisy and ineffectiveness of the drug war. While in prison, Coones took up the guitar and began writing songs, including “Lockdown” and “No Redemption,” which he still performs with Attika7.
One of Coones’ biggest supporters was fellow bike-builder Jesse James, who had worked with Coones on motorcycles and befriended him years before his arrest. During the four seasons that James appeared on Monster Garage, he wore several different “Free Rusty” T-shirts during taping in a quiet tribute to his friend. Then there was the motorcycle James built for Coones just days before Coones got out of prison. Actually, James gave the bike to KO because he wouldn’t be able to do it in person.
“He told me that he and Sandy were leaving for Cabo,” KO recalls, referring to James’ then-wife Sandra Bullock. “‘We won’t be here when Rusty comes home, so you have to give him the bike.’” James knew that Coones had lost all his motorcycles to legal bills and would have nothing to ride. “He had tears in his eyes when he handed the keys to me. He said, ‘KO, a Hells Angel needs a motorcycle.’”
Just six days before Coones walked out of prison a free man, Rodrigo Requejo was driving his battered Ford Dually truck home from a long day at Twisted Metal, his now-shuttered bike shop, when he took his eyes off the road for a few seconds, fumbling for his cell phone. When he looked up, he’d pulled up close behind a pickup. The then-31- year-old Argentinean immigrant and self employed bike builder swerved around the vehicle and kept driving, unaware that his maneuver had antagonized its occupants. After exiting, he was sitting at a red light when two angry young men rushed his car and pulled him to the pavement.
What happened next is a blur in Requejo’s mind. “They beat the hell out of me, man,” he says. “I was in a big fog. I got hit so hard in the head and chest and everything. I thought I had pulled out a knife and scared them away. I didn’t have a drop of blood on me.” Covered in bruises, Requejo managed to fight off his attackers and retrieve his truck, which had rolled away. It wasn’t until he saw the news the following day that he realized he had in fact stabbed both men, who turned out to be twins, and that one of them, Justin Ammann, died from his wounds.
The surviving brother, Jason, told police that Requejo, who was a Hells Angels prospect at the time, had forced them off the road and attacked them, yelling the name of the motorcycle club. Based on that version of events, police arrested Requejo, who was charged with murder and attempted murder, with a special circumstances enhancement alleging the crimes were carried out for the benefit of the Hells Angels. Because of his status as a club prospect at the time, Requejo refused to give his side of the story to police; he even denied being involved in the fight when he was arrested.
“Who’s going to believe me?” he wondered. “I’m a Hells Angels prospect. They are going to hang me for this. Had this happened at another place, where there were no witnesses, I’d be gone.”
Indeed, at his arraignment, the judge coolly informed Requejo that, if convicted, he’d be eligible for the death penalty, despite the fact he’d never been arrested for a violent crime. In the end, Requejo was spared by pretrial media coverage. Eyewitnesses who saw what really happened came forward to contest the official story, saying it was the two brothers who started the fight and that Requejo had acted in self-defense.
On Feb. 3, 2005, after more than a month behind bars, prosecutors dropped all charges against Requejo. He had been living with two death sentences hanging over him, given that the Ammann brothers were members of the Orange County Skins, a violent white-supremacist street gang that had green-lighted a hit on Requejo. “I don’t have a problem with them now,” Requejo says. “But while I was inside, I had to watch out.”
One inmate had torn a gang rival in half with an AK47, Requejo recalls. Another had murdered his probation officer; stolen his badge, gun and car; and led police on a freeway chase that ended in a shootout. When the cops caught up with him, they found the probation officer’s ears in the man’s pocket. “I was locked up with dudes who were nuts—you could see right through them,” he says, “but there were dudes who were swearing their innocence up and down, and I could honestly believe a couple of them.”
Requejo had first met Coones when he was 18 years old and Coones and another hulking Hells Angel showed up at his dad’s motorcycle shop. He ran into him again at a bike run not long after he left jail. Requejo reintroduced himself. The two began talking about bikes, and before long, Requejo had shuttered Twisted Metal and become Coones’ business partner in Illusion Motor sports. “We’ve been going at it since,” Requejo says.
There was one hitch in the promising partnership, however. On July 27, 2008, several Hells Angels, including Requejo, were drinking beer at Blackie’s By the Sea in Newport Beach when they got into a brawl with members of Phil Aguilar’s Set Free Soldiers, an evangelical-Christian bike club (see “He Shall Be Set Free,” Nov. 25, 2010). Requejo says he threw the first punch when a friend of one of the Set Free Soldiers “disrespected” one of the Hells Angels at the bar. Requejo told the man to mind his own business. “Fuck you,” the man responded.
“For me, one ‘fuck you’ is one too many,” Requejo says. “I wouldn’t have cared if the president of the United States was there or 100 cops; if somebody tells me, ‘Fuck you,’ I am going to punch him in the mouth, and that’s exactly what I did.”
What happened next is well-known, and the security-video footage has since gone viral on YouTube: A dozen or more massive bikers explode in a blur of fists and flying pool cues before, just as suddenly, both sides withdraw and calmly leave the bar. Although he wasn’t arrested, Requejo was already on probation for carrying a knife—he claims it was of legal length—so police charged him with seven felonies, including assault with a deadly weapon. They also raided his house; while officers ransacked his home, Requejo’s mother suffered a heart attack and had to be taken to the hospital .
The first thing she did when she recovered was to beg her son to quit the Hells Angels. “I didn’t want to quit,” he recalls. “These were my friends, but she’s my mother, man. If she had died in that hospital, I would have blown my brains out. I couldn’t have lived with that on my conscience, her dying over me doing something stupid. So I did what I thought was right at the time.”
Following the infamous Blackie’s bar fight, Requejo pleaded guilty to one assault charge in return for probation, which is now just weeks from running out, at which point the charge will be expunged from his record. Nowadays, he divides his time between his two daughters, age 7 and 15; the bike shop; and racing the only sidecar bike with a Harley-Davidson engine in it at Costa Mesa Speedway on weekend nights. Not a day goes by when he doesn’t regret killing another person or that he doesn’t ponder the possibility of things working out differently. “What if I had my seat belt on and I could have hit the gas before they pulled me out?” he asks. “What if I had locked my doors? The fate of that poor guy—I am never going to live that down. I took somebody’s life. I’m going to have to answer to the man upstairs for that someday.
Nevertheless, Requejo is grateful for how well life is going now for both him and Coones. “It’s a hard life we both have lived,” he says. “At one part in both our lives, we had the great potential to be gone away forever, and I was thinking, ‘I could never eat a steak or get a cup of coffee from Starbucks in the morning or lay down with a woman again.’ Those things go through your mind.”
Coones is also a busy man. Besides his work at the shop, he’s often up halfway to dawn practicing with Attika7, who have played venues ranging from the Galaxy Concert Theatre and House of Blues in Anaheim to Irvine Lake. He was recently offered a principal role in a three-part film trilogy that has yet to be formally announced.
Thanks in part to his continued membership in the Hells Angels, police love to keep tabs on his movements. When Coones showed up for a Boys & Girls Club toy run in Santa Ana several weeks ago, police wouldn’t let him ride with his club patch on. Coones refused to take it off as a matter of principle.
He doesn’t complain about such incidents. “I’m just glad I’m where I’m at now and not having to go through the hard times I had,” he says. “It’s pretty exciting. We have a lot of things going on these days. We get to create art that rolls. Our work is fun; our play is fun. It’s a good life.”
Although it has been years since he was a member of the Hells Angels, Requejo says the police haven’t forgotten about him, either. “I tell Rusty all the time, ‘No matter how well we’re doing in life, you always have one foot in the successful life and one foot in a prison cell somewhere,’” he says. “It’s a balancing act. You have to put more weight on the good foot than the bad because it’s easy to put more weight on the other foot and be gone. It’s like you have a sidecar of doom.”
Requejo is the first to admit he still has his “wild side.” One Christmas Day a few years ago, he was eating brunch with his family at Costa Mesa’s now-closed Omelette Parlor when he heard a familiar voice behind him. He walked around the corner and saw a table of police officers, including the one who had previously arrested him for carrying a knife. The cops stopped talking, and the one whose voice Requejo recognized walked up to him, facing him nose to nose.
“So I heard you quit,” the cop said, referring to Requejo’s resignation from the Hells Angels.
“Yeah, you heard right,” Requejo responded.
“So you’re done, huh?” the cop continued.
“You quit. You’re done?”
“Let me tell you something,” Requejo answered. “I quit, but I’m not done. I’ll never be done.”
The cop walked back to his table, and Requejo rejoined his family.
