Mercy After Dark –
November 30, 2019 – They’re a Christian ministry motorcycle gang that has spent seven years feeding the city’s homeless and others in need. The leather-clad, bandanna-wearing group, with its vans and motorcycles, meets at 8:30 p.m. in the parking lot of a McDonald’s at Lomas and Broadway NE every week. Volunteers gather around the bikes and line their cars up behind the vans as the group gets ready to head out. The operation, which the group calls Mercy After Dark, starts with a briefing to volunteers telling them what they should expect in the coming hours. Doug “Bishop” Anaya is the ministry’s president, he has helped people with drug abuse problems get into rehab centers, furnished apartments when his “homeless friends” get off the streets and even helped sex workers get away from their pimps. The group estimates it serves about 3,000 people every year, homeless or not. Natasha Lora has met the group almost every Saturday since 2015. She used to be homeless but now has an apartment, which Anaya and the group helped to furnish, near one of the routine stops.
