Steven Omar Hindi (born ) is an American animal rights activist and businessman. He is the founder and president of the animal rights organization Showing Animals Respect and Kindness (SHARK).
Born in St. Paul, Minnesota, Hindi grew up in a hunting and fishing culture. In 1985, he caught a 230-pound Mako shark in a feat that received a writeup in the New York Daily News. He ceased hunting and fishing after witnessing a live pigeon shoot in Pennsylvania on Labor Day, September 4, 1989. Shocked and disgusted by the sight of thousands of pigeons getting shot after flying from boxes, Hindi vowed to give up his hunting hobby and fight against it instead.
Hindi founded the Fox Valley Animal Protectors, which evolved into the Chicago Animal Rights Coalition (CHARC) in 1993 and is currently called Showing Animals Respect and Kindness (SHARK), to document animal abuse and disseminate information. Hindi's animal rights activism with the organization has involved lobbying legislators to pass laws against animal cruelty and documenting and protesting against rodeos, live pigeon shoots, geese shoots, bullfighting, horse slaughter, and deer killing. He posts video footage of animal abuse on SHARK's YouTube channel.
Hindi served a stint as shipping and receiving clerk at Carol Stream, Illinois-based Allied Rivet (then called Allied Tubular Rivet), a company that manufactures tubular rivets, before purchasing the company in the mid-1980s, becoming its president, and moving it to Geneva, Illinois. In 1992, he ran unsuccessfully in the Republican primary for a seat in the Illinois General Assembly against Tom Cross.
Personal life Born in St. Paul, Minnesota,Page, Bill. (March 25, 2001). "Conscience Driven: For This Anti-rodeo Activist And His Video Van, A Picture Is Worth A Thousand Discouraging Words" (pages 1 and 2). Chicago Tribune. Archived from the original (pages 1 and 2) on 27 August 2014. Retrieved 2014-08-27. Steve Hindi grew up in a St. Paul housing project with his mother, Esther, and younger brother, Gregory ("Greg"). While he was a young child, his father deserted the family. His mother took care of him and his brother with the help of welfare. They initially lived in the slums and later moved to the housing project Roosevelt Homes, located at the east of St. Paul. When he was bullied by another boy in junior high, Hindi fought back and discovered that "often when you stand up to a bully he backs down". Hindi said, "But then I became a bit of a bully myself." He lived in several foster homes and had brushes with the law as a teenager, committing petty theft and getting sent to a youth detention center.
Upon graduating from high school, Hindi served as a bus driver for United Cerebral Palsy of Minnesota. He later became an aide at St. Paul's Union Gospel Mission. When he was in his early 20s, he traveled to Chicago around 1978, to become a rock musician. Hindi was the guitarist and was frequently the singer in a group that played at clubs near and in Chicago. According to The Morning Calls Susan Todd, Hindi led a "down-and-out life as a struggling rock musician".Todd, Susan. (September 2, 1990). "One Man's Pigeon-shoot War A Concerned Steve Hindi Pleads, Bullies To Halt 'Senseless Killing of Birds'" (pages 1 and 2). The Morning Call. Archived from the original (pages 1 and 2). Retrieved 27 August 2014. Hindi told the Chicago Reader in 1993, "I got the nagging feeling that this wasn't going to work out as I had planned" and decided to change careers to work as a shipping and receiving clerk at Allied Rivet.
In 1995, he resided in Kendall County, Illinois, with Jacquelyn ("Jacquie"), his wife, and his two daughters, Meghan and Eva. The family had five dogs and seven cats. Hindi and Jacquie met in 1979 and around 1999 had an amicable divorce, continuing to be friends and business partners. Hindi's animal rights activism caused his marriage to end. His repeated traveling and imprisonment turned away his wife, who said in a 2004 interview with the Daily Herald, "It was the downfall of our marriage. I was just thinking 'I'm raising these kids alone' and 'I'm out.'" She said that after they separated, she grew closer to Christianity. She forgave him and backed his purpose, saying in 2004, "A lot of people will say animal activists don't care about humans, but that is not the case with Steve. He just feels this is where his calling is and this is where his drive is. He's a great person and a great father, too." Jacquie died on May 27, 2014, at the age of 56.
Hindi has a black belt in karate and a pilot's license. Hindi said in a 1994 interview with the Chicago Tribune that he supports the People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA).
In 2001, Hindi lived in Kane County, Illinois. He stored hundreds of videotapes of animals in a "floor-to-ceiling cabinet" in his living room, assigning them titles like "Rodeo Cruelty", "Making Foie Gras", and "Pennsylvania Pigeon Shoot". Some of the videos were shot at bullfights, circuses, and roadside zoos. Shelves held small cameras, stun guns, and walkie-talkies. In 2012, Hindi lived in Elburn, Kane County, Illinois. Hindi's girlfriend, Janet Enoch, is a member of SHARK.Vaisvilas, Frank. (November 2, 2012). "Hunter goes hi-tech in finding animal abuse" (pages 1 and 2). Suburban Life Media. Archived from the original (pages 1 and 2 |date=August 27, 2014 ) on 27 August 2014. Retrieved 2014-08-27. In a 2014 interview with The Oklahoman, Hindi characterized himself as a lifelong Republican.Ellis, Randy. (September 24, 2014). "Inhofe fundraiser event causes flap" (pages 1 and 2). The Oklahoman. Archived from the original (pages 1 and 2) on 8 September 2015. Retrieved 2015-09-08.
Allied Rivet Instead of attending college, at age 23 Hindi switched to being a shipping and receiving clerk at Carol Stream, Illinois-based Allied Tubular Rivet (later renamed to Allied Rivet), a company that manufactures tubular rivets. The company made millions of rivets for air ducts, toys and other products. He became the operator of the company's manufacturing shop. His father-in-law bought the company in 1982 and sold it to Hindi about five years later. After paying $240,000 to buy the company, Hindi became its president.
After reading a newspaper series about the homeless in April 1990, Hindi employed several homeless people at the company; the project was unsuccessful. In the early 1990s, he moved Allied Rivet to Geneva. In 1993, Allied Rivet had $2 million in annual sales and employed around 20 people, including his brother Greg, a "supersalesman", Hindi said. In 2007, Hindi's former wife Jacquie said that Hindi transformed their company Allied Rivet into a "very successful, multimillion-dollar company".
1992 political campaign Hindi ran a campaign in the Republican primary against Assistant Kendall County States Attorney Tom Cross for representing Kendall County in the 84th district of the Illinois House of Representatives. His campaign platform called for school vouchers and "responsible" economic development that focused on "good jobs" rather than "a zillion jobs".
Hindi said about a challenge to his campaign, "The farmers, being hunters, hit me up real good on animal issues." Fatal to his campaign was that he was self-funded and was not supported by an organization. Hindi "lost badly" in the primary.
Hunting and fishing Raised in a culture filled with hunting and fishing. Hindi said, "My mother brought me up to be kind to animals and to care for them, but I didn't make the connection between abuse and hunting until years later." His mother taught him to nurture cats and dogs, taking in abandoned pets even though this violated housing project policies. Fish, on the other hand, were not considered sentient beings, so Hindi "killed them with abandon". In addition to striking carps with rocks, Hindi as a child once placed an M-80 firecracker into a strangling carp's gills, lit the waterproof fuse, and placed it back in water. Hindi wrote in an Animal People piece, "Seconds later the water erupted in a red spray. When the muddy water cleared, we saw the carp's head, blasted away from his body."
Having read the book Sport Fishing for Sharks and watched the movie Jaws, Hindi drove from Illinois to Long Island Sound, New York, planning to catch a shark. Hindi received coverage from the New York Daily News after catching a seven-foot-long, 230-pound Mako shark in 1985. After wrestling the shark for five hours to move it within shooting distance of his bass boat, Hindi shot its head with a .357 Magnum. By the time he defeated the shark, there were 32 shell casings on the boat's floor.
Owing to the shark's heavy weight, Hindi was unable to pull it onto his boat so instead fastened a rope around its tail and headed back to shore. But towing the heavy shark was more fit for a 30-foot boat than Hindi's 17-foot one. He discovered that his boat was not moving much after throwing a shred of Styrofoam into the water which turned from even to ripply. Unable to get a freighter to stop and help him, he refused to let go of the shark. Hindi reasoned, "I'd taken the shark's life. I couldn't let it go. And nobody in the world will believe it if I cut it loose." Two people in a sailboat saw Hindi and asked the United States Coast Guard to help him. The Coast Guard captain asked Hindi to get rid of the shark but Hindi declined. The captain sent a deputy to help Hindi move the shark onto the Coast Guard ship.
Inspired by Jaws, he set a great white shark as his next target, purchasing a 23-foot boat, but changed his mind after witnessing an event that turned him towards animal rights activism. In a 2004 interview with Garrett Odower of the Daily Herald, Hindi called his struggles with the shark "misguided".
Fred Coleman Memorial Shoot Hindi hunted until Labor Day, September 4, 1989. He was coming home from shark fishing on the East Coast when he witnessed the Fred Coleman Memorial Shoot, a live pigeon shoot in Hegins, Pennsylvania, that happened yearly. He decided to attend the event after hearing about it three years prior from the group Animal Rights Mobilization (ARM). The sight of 7,000 to 8,000 pigeons being "shot right out of a box" convinced Hindi no longer to hunt.
In August 1990, Hindi challenged Robert Tobash, a Fred Coleman Memorial Shoot organizer and businessman, to a fistfight that would end when either of the men could not continue fighting. If Tobash won, Hindi would donate $10,000 to the Hegins Park Association. If Hindi won, the shoot would be discontinued and Tobash would donate $10,000 to the park. Tobash declined to respond to Hindi's fistfight proposal, telling the Standard-Speaker that Hindi's "challenge is crazy in the first place. He can't call the shoot off and neither can I, because neither one of us has control of it." Tobash said that the pigeon shoot was organized by a 200-person group, the Hegins Labor Day Committee.