Unmasked: Inside the miraculous, mad, mysterious life of Dr. MooMoo

Unknown to his closest friends and family, it's been his secret routine every Monday at 3 p.m. for 35 years.

The rich man in Kansas City — raised in squalid poverty, abused and berated as a child, the keeper of the secret of his crazed but beloved mother's suicide — transforms himself, as Bruce Wayne does into Batman, into his own masked alter ego: Dr. MooMoo.

He gets up from the couch in his luxury apartment 16 floors above the city with floor-to-ceiling windows and a view to the horizon. On the wall behind him hang an original Andy Warhol, a Picasso sketch and a signed Annie Leibovitz photograph of Lance Armstrong biking naked.

The man's mask will be necessary, as even before he transmogrifies into an odd character who strolls the city's downtown streets doling out hugs, happiness, Little Debbie snack cakes and folded $100 bills to utter strangers, his appearance is unforgettable.

He is thin, small, age 60, gray-haired but with a bubbly boy's care-free energy. The points of his waxed organ-grinder mustache extend beyond his cheeks like airplane wings. His black-and-white-checkered baseball cap matches his checkered eyeglass frames. His voice cuts the air in a high-pitched Oklahoma twang.

"You'd have to be deaf, dumb and blind not to know I'm gay," he said at one point, although the realization of his own sexual orientation had actually come late to him, after a young marriage, after it was long suppressed by what he described as a "slain-in-the-spirit" Pentecostal upbringing that rooted him in God's love but also convinced him that gay people were bound for hell.

He moved beyond that long ago.

"I was created this way," he said, "and even if I do go to hell, I'm going to enjoy my life, having faith that there is somebody taking care of me."

He heads down the elevator to an apartment storage unit packed with bicycles, boxes, a wheelbarrow, a tiny Christmas tree under plastic. He eyes the concrete hallway, making sure no one is around.

For three-plus decades, the man has chosen to remain anonymous, but not out of allegiance to some comic-book notion of secret identities. He just believes that charity is supposed to be about the gift getters, those in need, and not the gift giver.

"I'm not doing this because I want a pat on the back," he said. "I'm doing this because I want to help. I know sorrow because of my life and, I guess, I don't want other people to experience that."

Until only a few months ago, he'd never told his friends about his ventures. He never told his neighbors. He never even fully explained how he spent his afternoons to his partner, Mark Sappington, a prominent Kansas City attorney. They've known each other for 25 years. They live together. But Sappington said that if he knew anything, it was "subliminal." He'd seen the odd clothes hanging in the storage space, "but I didn't really think like, 'What's he doing?' "

The only reason Dr. MooMoo — aka David McGee, a doctor of chiropractic medicine who this month retired from his practice in Platte City — is now willing to reveal himself is because, in January, he released a self-published book, "Snippets," with the author identified as Dr. MooMoo.

But the autobiographical stories he tells of growing up poor outside Tulsa, Okla., are so deeply personal he now feels it is only right to reveal his true identity. In actuality, the moniker Dr. MooMoo began as a nickname given to him by patients who, noticing he had a few pictures of black-and-white Holstein cows in his office, subsequently gave him all sorts of cow-themed things — jars, statuettes, bells — that came to fill his waiting room.

Plus, McGee reasons, even if he does identify himself, most of the people he approaches on the streets are unlikely to read his story in the news, let alone "Snippets" — which, written as a series of anecdotes, describes a life of almost breathtaking hardship.

There are snippets about McGee's mother, in and out of mental hospitals, haunted by severe schizophrenia, who eventually committed suicide when McGee was still a child. He would find her body, her pills lying on the floor next to a bag of candy she'd bought to make him happy.

From a very early age, I realized that my mother wasn't like other mothers, McGee wrote, telling the story of a car trip. She would see angels and frequently carry on conversations with all of our kitchen appliances. ... If she stayed on her medications, she would function pretty well. But the problem was — she didn't like to take them. ... She thought I was a spy and didn't want me to be near her.

The story ends with a broken transmission and his mother trying to leap from the moving car.

"I never felt I loved anybody after her for a long time," said McGee, who was 11 at the time. "Because I loved her so much, it was like my love died when she died."

There are snippets about his late father, bent toward discipline with a whirling belt and who resented his son, having been told by doctors that the boy's birth might have triggered his wife's illness.

Throughout my life, he NEVER acknowledged my birthday — Not even once. He would celebrate that day by going out and getting drunk. ... I honestly believe that Daddy had no control over not being able to love me on that one day of the year. Because the remaining 364, he loved me effortlessly.

He reveals his secrets.

I started being sexually abused when I was 8 years old. He was one of Mama's best friends. I knew that I could never tell anybody about it because it would send Mama over the edge. I would do ANYTHING to keep her out of the state mental hospital.

Two years after his mother died, McGee's father married a woman who became stepmother to him and his little sister, Pam, his only sibling. The new wife was hardhearted and lived a hoarder's life in a three-room shack in the country. Weeds grew through holes in the floorboards. She saved stacks of used eggshells and towers of ice cream cartons. She forced McGee to rummage through dumpsters for food.

In the living room there were two couches that were barely visible under all of the debris — one was my bed, the other was my sister's. ... A couple of goats would occasionally wander into the house and land on the couches — pissing and pooping on them.

With the new mother came a cruel new stepbrother: Curtis Salyer, currently identified in the Oklahoma prison system as Inmate No. 140786, serving 250 years for sexually assaulting a 15-year-old boy.

Late one night my stepbrother came home. He was out of his mind — high on who knows what. He yelled for us to get up and get into my parent's (sic) bedroom. ... Glaring at us with demonic eyes, he screamed, 'I'm sick of you (expletive)! It's time for you to die!!' ... After 15 minutes of torturing each one of us, he started staggering — his speech became incoherent — he fell to the floor. Daddy performed CPR on him until the ambulance arrived. ... Sadly, he was back home the next day.

"It's true. It's all true," Pam Brown, now 58 and living a happy life in Norman, Okla., said of her brother's snippets. "It was awful. My stepbrother? Oh, my God, he was a demon."

They endured as children often do until one violent act too many compelled McGee and his sister to run away.

I was doing my after-school chores when I heard a bloodcurdling scream. I ran to see what was happening. I saw my little sister curled up in a ball on the ground while my stepmother violently kicked her. I LOST IT! I grabbed a cinder block. ... I had every intention to bash my stepmother's brains out. When I got to them, I threw the block down to the ground. I bent over and picked up my sister.

With tears in my eyes, I looked over at my stepmother. ..."How do you live with yourself?! ... We're gettin' out of here!' She said — "GOOD! Get the hell off my property!"

I went to tell Daddy. ... His response was totally unexpected. He said, "Honestly, I think it would be a good idea for you kids to find another place to live." ... I HAD NO IDEA WHERE WE COULD GO.

I was only 14 years old.

He and Pam were suddenly homeless.

A calling

Downstairs at the storage locker, McGee unlocks the unit and tugs at the corrugated sliding door. It rises with a rattle.

His Dr. MooMoo costume hangs to the right. It is a bizarre outfit whose signature elements — black fishing hat, black sunglasses and a peach, yellow and blue mask that obscures not just his face but his entire head — lands somewhere between playful and menacing.

"Mostly people love it," McGee said, "although some adults will shy away. Kids are never afraid."

First things first. McGee turns on his tunes, and a tiny speaker yields the weak sound of Beethoven's Fifth Symphony, disco version.

He lays out a towel, kneels and rips open 10 boxes of Little Debbie Cosmic Brownies, Nutty Buddy bars, Swiss Rolls, Honey Buns and other cakes he will offer to strangers. They spill onto the towel. He places them inside a shoulder bag spotted like a brown-and-white cow.

Little Debbie snack cakes have always been one of my favorite treats — probably because they only cost $.99 for a box of 12 and daddy could afford them. ... As a kid, I would spend hours staring at Little Debbie's beautiful face on the Nutty Bar box, fantasizing about the day that we would marry. ... We lived happily ever after.

Then he dresses. The full effect is unmistakable — a whimsical version of The Invisible Man: Keds-style sneakers in a pretzel print, yellow bumblebee-striped gloves, dark jeans, red belt, tuxedo shirt, bow tie, suit jacket and a Dr. MooMoo lapel button declaring "Smile."

He slips on the mask, hat and sunglasses.

McGee has never kept count, but at $100 a week over three and a half decades, he has handed out as much as $180,000 to people on the street.

"I just think of it as $100 a week; I don't think of the big picture," he said. "It's like if you think of how many cups of coffee you've had over the years, you're like, "Oh, my God!' "

When McGee first started giving out money 35 year ago, $100 meant tons. He was living in Oklahoma then, running a gift shop. He and his wife, Glenda, had met through the Pentecostal church and married young. She was 18, he was 24. It lasted 10 years, and they remain great friends.

I truly loved my wife — as much as any gay man can love his wife.

"I was always on board for anything he wanted to do, " Glenda Moeller said. "I made his first mask."

In McGee's mind, the idea came as a calling.

A few months after we were married, God started bugging me about something. He wanted me to make a superhero costume, put it on, and go out and help the poor. I thought that was a crazy idea. ... I was lucky I had an understanding and supportive wife.

In Kansas City, the money has come from McGee's chiropractic practice, where billing was anything but common: There were no bills. He asked for nothing, charged nothing and took no insurance. If clients chose to pay, they were welcome to put a donation in a black-and-white Holstein cow cookie jar.

"They pay," McGee said. "They pay me real well."

Done dressing, he folds two $100 bills and slips them into his hip pocket.

"Last week was Memorial Day," he said, a holiday. He didn't go out. So this Monday, he'll give double. He snatches up his Little Debbie bag and a white cardboard sign. One side reads "Smile," the other "Are You Happy?"

He locks his locker, then bends to one knee.

"Dear God," he prays, "you know who needs a little boost today. Please direct me and guide me."

He struts to the street.

McGee believes that every individual has a God-given purpose. Sometimes the purpose is clear, at other times less so. People can choose to embrace or ignore their purpose. Sometimes God's purpose just embraces them. McGee had long felt compelled to write a book.

"The reason I wrote it was to try to make it inspirational," he said, "to show that from tragedy, from sadness, something good can happen — something positive."

So it happened with McGee, and with Pam.

The kids were forced to separate. Pam went to live with a neighbor lady. McGee, who recalls once sleeping outside under a staircase, went to live with a different neighbor, his longtime Pentecostal pastor, a man whom McGee was certain possessed Godlike power. He had witnessed it years earlier on the day after his mother died and when his father, too, was expected to die, lying gravely ill in the hospital with a rare condition.

Daddy called the preacher and asked him to come to the hospital. The preacher came that afternoon — he prayed for Daddy. After the prayer, the preacher said, "You need to check out of this hospital because God just healed you." Daddy wasn't a religious man. He didn't know what to say, because he couldn't tell that anything had changed. A week later, he was out of the hospital. Daddy lived another 40 years.

"It was such a cult when I look back at it," McGee said of his own idolatry of the preacher.

Years later, the same man who railed against homosexuality as an abomination would come out as gay and die of AIDS, he said.

"But he did instill in me a faith in God and that God can carry you through anything," McGee said. "That is honestly what he put in me: My faith is what got me through everything. And it is still with me today."

It was through that church that McGee also met a loving couple, M.L. and Dorothy White, both now dead, who took in an abandoned boy as their own.

"Oh!" McGee said. "They were my saviors."

Going to live with Mom and Dad White was the greatest thing to ever happen to me. ... I felt like I was starring in the story of the Ugly Duckling. ... I WAS FINALLY HAPPY! If it wasn't for Mom and Dad White, I would have never gone to college to become the doctor I am today.

They are my true parents!

'That happy moment'

Helped by strangers, Dr. MooMoo makes a left out of his apartment building and another left east along 12th Street to help other strangers. The Little Debbie bag dangles from his right hand.

In the old days, when he and Sappington had a house in Kansas City's Crestwood area, north of Brookside, he would drive downtown and burst out of the car to help others. Now, over the next 40 minutes, sometimes an hour, he loops around downtown, approaching people on the street, finding them at one bus stop after another, chattering as he goes.

"Smile! Smile, everybody! Happy Monday! Have a snack!

"Happy Monday to you! Snack time, snack time, snack time!"

People say "God bless" and "thank you."

Some look at him sideways, shy away or insult him to his face.

Today a well-dressed lady told me: "You're a creep. You need to get a life."

He greets them, nonetheless.

"Don't you have a nice smile?" he says. "Have a great day!"

He offers them a Little Debbie cake. He'll give away more than a hundred.

Then, at some point, inspiration strikes. It's just a feeling, he says, of when to listen.

He's given money to people who are hungry, without heat in the winter, too strapped to pay a bill, who have no money to catch a bus or buy a child a birthday gift.

Today, I gave a hug and $100 bill to this beautiful young lady that works at a fast food restaurant. She told me she is going to use the money to get her first haircut since losing her beautiful locks to breast cancer.

A woman walks toward him. She wears a gray T-shirt and carries a plaid blue blanket.

"Happy Monday. Snack time, snack time. You havin' a good day?" he greet her. She pulls out a snack.

"Actually," she begins. "I'm not."

The woman, Angela Gatlin, has never seen this odd man in the mask. But he was nice to her, gave her a snack cake. She tells him about a fight at home.

"Yesterday, it got real rough," she says. It involved a guy; she fought back. But he was the one who called the police. She was arrested and charged.

She has three daughters with family in Kansas City, Kan., she tells Dr. MooMoo. She's staying at a shelter for battered women. Wyandotte County District Court papers are folded in her hand. She's trying to catch a bus.

As he listens, Dr. MooMoo reaches into his right hip pocket.

She is about to leave.

"Wait a minute," he says. "Can you use a little boost?"

She eyes her papers, searching for her bus pass; she's not even looking at him.

"I could use a boost, a bump, a push, a shove, a pull," she says, gathering her papers.

"I said a little prayer before I went out —" Dr. MooMoo begins.

"Thank you, because I did, too," she interrupts.

"I said, 'If you know who needs help, show me, OK?' ... I think it's you," Dr. MooMoo says.

He hands her the $100 bill.

Jubilation.

"Stop it! God is SO good," Gatlin shouts. "Now that will tell you, right there! My prayer was, 'Carry me.' "

Within seconds, she is crying. They hug. Tears flow down her cheeks and fall from her face.

"Thank you," she says, overcome with emotion. But Dr. MooMoo tells her to thank God.

For McGee that is enough, what he calls "the spark."

Certainly, he knows that $100 won't change someone's life.

And whether some people lie to him, or misuse the money, is not the point. On this day, he would hand his other $100 to a man who said that he and his wife were homeless, living on the streets, and she needed medical help. The woman, supposedly nearby, couldn't be found. Dr. MooMoo handed him the folded bill anyway.

No matter how suspect the man's story, his beaming shout to heaven was real.

"Just that happy moment you get from receiving it, that's all I'm concerned about," McGee said. "I'm not concerned with what you're going to do with it. If you want to buy a gallon of vodka, if that's what makes you happy, I don't care.

"What makes me happiest and gives me the most joy is when I see that spark in their eye, and they shed a tear — seeing an emotion that knows their soul is touched. That's the whole purpose."

McGee has much that fulfills him in his life. On Tuesdays, he has his beginner's accordion lessons. As a child, he so admired the women in church who played. On Wednesdays, he tap dances, as he has for six years, because, in his boyhood house, tap or ballet was not for boys, nor was there money for it. Every day for years he has drawn tiny cameo pictures of moments in life. He has some 5,000 now, and the drawings illustrate his book.

But no days are ever like Mondays.

Dr. MooMoo has been a major force in my life. I honestly don't know what I would do without him. God knew what he was doing when he told me to create him.

I'm so glad I listened.

This story was originally published June 17, 2018 at 5:30 AM with the headline "Unmasked: Inside the miraculous, mad, mysterious life of Dr. MooMoo."