Profile: Michael Baim

By Dawne Belloise  

You might know Michael Baim from the more than 30 years he’s been around town, or when he owned Blind Faith, the window shade business, or perhaps you’ve tuned into his Midlife Madness show on KBUT or heard him playing guitar at one of his music gigs around town. You might recognize him from performances at CB Mountain Theatre, where he’s recently joined the board. But you might be surprised to know this somewhat reserved guy has had many adventurous shenanigans back in his youth.

Raised in Wilmette, Illinois, Michael was an only child to his homemaker mother and a furrier dad who made mink coats to wholesale to large stores. From the time he was 16, Michael worked for his father, delivering coats in big cases on wheels to the different stores. “So while my friends were at the beach having fun, I was waiting to go on assignment and reading science fiction books.” Later he drove a VW bug, delivering medications for a drugstore.

Although he played football in high school as a center and middle linebacker, Michael laughs that he didn’t play very well.  “I didn’t have contact lenses yet. I couldn’t see who had the ball.” During this time, Michael also played guitar and had a band. He became interested in theater and participated in his school drama club. His school also had a radio station and he took classes in broadcasting. He graduated during the height of the Vietnam War in 1966.

With the high possibility of getting drafted, Michael was worried. “I wasn’t a good student. I was totally unengaged. The counselor told me I was an underachiever,” he laughs and adds, “I got terrible grades so I enrolled at what was known as ‘Dropout University,’” which was Parsons College in Fairfield, Iowa. There he joined a fraternity and did well enough to transfer to the University of Denver in 1967. “I had friends there from high school. I majored in mass communications — radio, TV, film and journalism, with a concentration in cinematography.” 

He worked at the DU radio station and got a job as an audio control engineer at Denver’s Channel 9, an NBC affiliated TV station. “I was hired because they expected a strike and they were looking for people who would scab, so mostly college students.”  He worked about a month before he was approached by the union boss and asked to join. “I didn’t know what to do. I didn’t know that the strike was going to be happening or that I was hired to be a scab.” So he talked to his boss about it, who promptly fired him.

It was those fabulous late 1960s and Michael got a job working at Your Father’s Mustache, a 3.2 bar where he was one of the singing waiters in a barbershop quartet. “It was 1890s music and peanut shells all over the floor.” Michael also had a show at the DU radio station. “Underground radio had just started up. My show was from midnight until 2 a.m.…not sure anyone ever listened to me though,” he grins. 

“I thought I was going to move to L.A. and break into the film industry but just before graduation, after driving to L.A. and realizing how fake it was, I decided I didn’t like my major anymore.” 

Once again, the draft lottery for young men to go to war was looming and Michael’s number was 94, which was a certain trip to Vietnam. Additionally, to pile onto the anxiety of definitely being shipped out, he received a letter from his draft board that stated they didn’t think he was making sufficient progress on his college endeavor. “But what they didn’t know was that I had a probation officer, because I had been caught smuggling contraband back from Mexico during spring break of 1969.”

Michael explains, “Three of my friends and I went to Mazatlan for spring break and we had a really nice place on the beach, but the police came by and found a little bit of pot.” He continues, “The guy who sold us the weed was an English guy who was in cahoots with the Mexican police and he would assist them in busting his own clients then recover the same weed and resell it. The police wanted $250 from each of us.”

To recoup their investment, they bought a stash of legal over-the-counter meds in Mexico that they could sell in L.A., and headed to the notorious border crossing at Sasabe, Arizona, which closed at 6 p.m. so they could cross without inspection. “We hung out in a bar waiting for 6 o’clock but were too impatient because we were exhausted. We hid half the pills in a headlight and the other half we buried in a plastic bag with a blanket.” Around 5:30 p.m. they decided to go for it, “but the border patrol found the drugs. We were whisked off to Nogales and spent a few days in jail there.” 

His uncle bailed him out and Michael flew back to Denver. He hired a really good lawyer. The Youth Offenders Act allowed him to be on probation instead of in jail. “With no other offenses, your record would be expunged because so many congress people’s kids were getting busted for drugs.” His probation officer was anti-war and he informed Michael and his draft board that he was now considered an undesirable, “Not the kind of person who would make a good soldier.” He was then declared ineligible for the draft. Michael graduated from DU in 1970.

Michael was living in Evergreen when he was hired as a lift operator at Aspen Highlands for the winter, so he moved. “I loved Aspen but knew I needed something more substantial than being a liftie.” He relocated to Wondervu, just outside from Rocky Flats, and enrolled at CU Boulder to become a veterinarian. He did great in biology but got lost in organic chemistry. “I dropped out and decided to go for a teaching certificate in speech and theatre.” 

Michael, a couple of friends, and two dogs decided to drive up to Ketchikan, Alaska, in August of 1971. They stopped at Sunrise Ranch, a commune in Loveland, and were encouraged to stop at a sister commune in British Columbia where Michael fell in love with the place and its residents. He decided to get involved with their spiritual program. “You experience what you express. If you don’t like the experience, you’re having to change what you express. It wasn’t meditation or dietary. It was on a 40,000-acre cattle ranch,” he tells. 

The following spring, Michael returned for a couple of months, then went to their Loveland commune until the summer of 1973, after which, they asked him to help run their new communal house in Phoenix in 1974. He stayed to teach vocational broadcasting in radio and TV and in his spare time he taught the commune’s outreach class, The Art of Living, at the junior colleges. He was then hired as a news director at NPR station KMCR and stayed in Phoenix for three years.

In 1976, a friend of Michael’s stumbled upon the Glen Ivy Hot Springs just south of Corona, CA and let them know it was for sale. “A group of us living in Phoenix put up the money to purchase it in December of 1976 and I moved into the place in April of ‘77.” 

 He had an outside sales job for two Christian radio stations. “As a Jewish kid, it really was a stretch,” he smiles. 

The new communal property was 54 acres with citrus groves, a hotel complex and just barely viable. “It was really trashed but that’s why we could buy it. Twenty-five of us moved into this place to rebuild it.” Michael became the manager of the spa, named Glen Ivy Hot Springs, where he met his wife, Mary Shannon Keating, who moved there from another commune in Oregon in 1977. They married in 1980, their son Trevor was born in 1985 and Megan came in 1989. The family lived on the commune until November of 1992.

In June 1993, they moved to the Gunnison Valley. He had skied Crested Butte, and they wanted to live in a ski town. After exploring different ski towns, “We found ourselves comparing CB to every other place. We were there literally only half a day, but we had fallen in love with CB.” But when he couldn’t find work, they went to Oregon, moving in with Mary Shannon’s folks. However, CB was calling them, so they drove back and rented an apartment in Gunnison where Michael got a job with the Gunnison radio station selling ads. “You couldn’t give ads away. Nobody wanted to advertise on radio in Gunnison.” So when he was offered a job in Denver by a friend dealing in jet engines, the family moved to Conifer, but again, they missed CB. They moved back and bought a house in CB South, where they still live today. 

Michael was hired as a property manager at CBMR in 1994. “One day, I was approached to get new window coverings for the meeting rooms in the Outrun Condos. I had gotten a really expensive quote from a company,” and that was the impetus for him to start his own window covering business, Blind Faith. Michael sold the business in 2014 when he felt he could retire. 

Of late, Michael and Mary Shannon travel a lot since their daughter Megan lives in Portland, Oregon, and Trevor lives in Maryland with his wife and two kids. Michael says, “I wouldn’t even begin to know where else I’d want to live. I feel my being resonates in this location. I feel like I’m in harmony with where we live. One of the reasons CB really works for me is because the people here march to a different drummer. It’s a place where there’s a lot of acceptance for who you are. To me, CB is like a giant commune.”