Rainbow Man says he despised sports

IONE, Calif. — For more than 10 years starting in the late 1970s, Rollen Stewart was the nation's most celebrated sports fan, a wig-wearing, wigged-out self-promoter who showed up at virtually every major athletic event worldwide and always managed to plant himself in front of a television camera.

He was known as the Rainbow Man, for the multicolored Afro wigs he sported, or Rock 'n' Rollen, for the party vibe he exuded. Later, after finding religion, he morphed into the John 3:16 guy, for the Biblical messages he espoused.

Stewart, who once owned a ranch near Cle Elum, Kittitas County, said he drove about 60,000 miles a year to attend events, and he got more TV face time than the network announcers who sometimes left him tickets.

He found fame, as planned, simply by showing up.

"I despised sports," he said.

Stewart is 63, no longer wears a wig or does anything else to mask his baldness, and last attended a sporting event about 20 years ago.

Serving three life sentences for hostage-taking, he has been imprisoned since 1992. The punishment was the result of a bizarre incident in which an armed Stewart locked himself in a hotel room near Los Angeles International Airport and kicked off an 8 ½-hour standoff with police, demanding a three-hour, televised news conference to air his views.

Earlier, he had driven two day laborers — who later escaped — to the hotel, and encountered a frightened housekeeper who locked herself in a bathroom.

Serving time at Mule Creek State Prison, Stewart has been denied parole three times in the last six years, most recently in March.

"Jesus will come back before I get out," Stewart told a visitor from Los Angeles, his startlingly blue eyes revealing little emotion. "To justify their own unbelief, they use me as a scapegoat so they can sleep at night.

"But they've still got their Rolaids next to the bed."

Stewart said his "final presentation" in 1992 was mistimed — the end of the world was nigh, he believed — but otherwise does not regret his actions.

"It was a crime to prevent a greater harm," he said, explaining that it was his duty to warn the world of the coming apocalypse. "If somebody's standing in the way of me going into a burning building, I'm going to knock them on their butt."

When Stewart, a former marijuana grower, conceived the Rainbow Man in the late 1970s, it was to draw attention to himself.

He carried a battery-powered television to see where the cameras were pointed, sneaked into the best seats and positioned himself for maximum exposure.

Stewart said he is a "very quiet, shy person," and matter-of-factly added, "The Rainbow Man was not me; he was a character."

In order to play him, Stewart noted, he needed to be stoned.

"Sex, drugs and rock 'n' roll," he said. "That was my thing."

In time, Stewart said, he tired of "chasing the Hollywood high," though he continued smoking marijuana.

Making his way through an estimated 80 rainbow wigs — "They got dirty, and I told people it was my real hair," he said — Stewart continued traveling into the late '80s, this time showing up at sporting and other news events wearing T-shirts and carrying sheets touting Bible passages, most frequently John 3:16.

"Sports was only a vehicle," he said. "Because to a lot of people, that's their god."