Evel Knievel's granddaughter is no daredevil

Chicago: September 9, 2008 - She is Evel Knievel's granddaughter and Robbie Knievel's daughter, which makes Krysten Knievel the heir to not only the legendary motorcycle daredevil family name but also certain expectations. And it turns out, a girl can't escape those expectations just because she grew up hundreds of miles away from both of them, right here in Chicago.

"People automatically assume that you're rich. People automatically assume that you're crazy. They assume that you jump things with a motorcycle," Krysten tells me, pausing to make sure it's registering that none of these applies to her. "They definitely expect you to be rich. That's for sure."

I'm not sure what I had expected, but what I found was a poised, ladylike 22-year-old working on a social work degree who didn't seem at all crazy and definitely not rich, though she won't rule out a motorcycle jump, which means I probably ought to reserve judgment on crazy.

We were in a sandwich shop on the Far Northwest Side near the modest home of her mother and stepfather, a Chicago policeman. She was squeezing in the interview between classes at Northeastern Illinois University and her job as a bartender/waitress at a neighborhood sports bar.

Running marathon to raise money

When Evel Knievel died last year at 69, I wrote about how the once world-famous showman used to hang at a Summit tavern when he passed through our area, giving the patrons stories they tell to this day. I learned recently that Knievel's granddaughter was a local girl and that she was planning to run the Chicago Marathon next month to raise money for the Pulmonary Fibrosis Foundation, the lung disease from which Knievel suffered. She was looking for publicity. We agreed to meet.

Krysten was born in Phoenix, Ariz., and was 3 years old when her mother split with Robbie, Evel's equally accomplished but not quite so famous daredevil son. Mom and daughter moved in with family members in Oak Lawn. When mom remarried, Krysten came north with her new family and attended Resurrection High School.

One result was a sometimes distant relationship with her dad, whom she'd visit during summers, and an awkward one with her grandfather. "He kind of scared me," she said of "Grandpa Evel." "If he liked you, he was the sweetest guy in the world. If he didn't like you, you knew in two seconds."
Yet you get the impression Krysten wasn't sure where she stood with him until his later years, when she got involved with the Pulmonary Fibrosis Foundation, taking a job there for a year after high school as events coordinator. [You can learn more or make a donation at http://www.pulmonaryfibrosis.org.]
Her interest helped them bond.

Might as well jump?

"He talked to me more. He said keep calling. He told me he was proud of me, and he was proud of my dad and he loved my dad."
For the Knievel men, long locked in a father-son rivalry, that was significant.
"As showmen, they were similar in some instances, and they were very different," Krysten explains. The differences?
"My dad's choices in involving himself with drugs and alcohol and handling certain business matters," says Krysten, hesitantly at first, for fear of hurting his feelings, then making up her mind. "I love my dad so much. The truth is the truth."

She'd actually covered the same ground on Robbie Knievel's short-lived reality television series, "Knievel's Wild Ride," which aired for seven episodes a few years back. Krysten appeared in four of the episodes, including one titled "Daddy Dearest," in which she confronted him about his drinking. Krysten had hoped her involvement with the show would jump-start a country singing career. It got her a short stint in Los Angeles with an indie label that quickly folded -- and a hard lesson learned.
During summer visits with her dad as a child, Kristen would occasionally accompany him on tour and go to his jumps. She thought it was cool to have a father involved in such an exciting line of work.

"When I got older, I realized it was more of a curse. Part of me wished I had a dad with a normal job who picked me up from school and carried a briefcase."

So far, Krysten hasn't inherited the curse of jumping motorcycles. When visiting family members in Montana, she'll ride dirt bikes and four-wheelers, "nothing crazy." She said she has never jumped anything bigger than a small dirt ramp in somebody's back yard. But she thinks about it. She said she's been considering a "small jump" that would be a "quick way to make some money."

"Not far," she says, "A 50-foot gap. Thirty feet. Something that would attract attention but wouldn't kill me."

So maybe she is a little crazy.

Or maybe she just inherited the Knievel gene for knowing how to get attention.

BY MARK BROWN Sun-Times Columnist