By Karen Parr-Moody
CLARKSVILLE, Tenn. – When Leah Hulan, the blonde and sexy “Bond Girl” and owner of Grumpy’s Bail Bonding LLC, calls to chat with ClarksvilleNow, the interview gets cut short due to a bail bond “jumper.” This jumper, she says, is out on a substantial bond and is hiding in a Hickman County trailer, she informs me in her singsong Southern accent. So she needs to get back to working with a SWAT team to catch this criminal.
“People run on all types of things – big things, little things,” she says later, when we continue the interview. “But this one was a rather large thing. Fugitive recovery is a whole part of our business that is stressful.”
Bail bonding can be dramatic. Hulan talks for a few minutes about the more crime-addled counties of Tennessee, where a jumper might be found in a meth lab surrounded by 10 pit bulls.
But anyone who has seen Hulan’s glamorous photos would think she’s on her way to a fundraiser or a Faith Hill concert, not working with SWAT teams. Those glamour shots are familiar to many Clarksvillians, who see the former beauty queen splashed across the bright pink bus that rolls around town advertising Grumpy’s.
Grumpy’s Bail Bonding, which operates in 24 counties, has been located here at 126 Franklin Street since October 2012. Last fall, the Clarksville Transit System unveiled a pink bus wrap advertising Grumpy’s, complete with a curvaceous Hulan in a tight black dress. Since then, folks have been rubbernecking to get a better look at this blonde who was Miss Tennessee in 1992 and Miss Tennessee USA in 1994.
Hulan’s glamour shots are splashed across the pink bus that rolls around Clarksville advertising Grumpy’s Bail Bonding./Karen Parr-Moody
She’s more than a pretty face. The native Tennessean graduated from Middle Tennessee State University, where she was enrolled in the ROTC program to finance her education.
“I excelled at it,” she says of being in ROTC. “I guess after growing up on a farm, I was a lot tougher than I looked. Because it was a hard-working beef farm I grew up on – it wasn’t just a ranch.”
After college, she worked in U.S. Army military intelligence, but despite a vibrant career and pageant wins she was hiding a secret struggle with bulimia, which she details in a book, “Pain Behind the Smile: My Battle with Bulimia.”
In fact, it was after leaving the last of several bulimia treatment facilities that she met her husband of 18 years. After their marriage, they bought a house in the upscale area of Franklin, Tenn. Soon afterward, her husband lost his job.
“I was panicking a little bit,” Hulan says. “I was working several little waitressing jobs.”
At the time, her husband volunteered with troubled and delinquent juveniles through the YMCA. This led to an unlikely career idea.
Hulan explains: “We really were down to our last dollars when he came home and said, ‘I know what we’re going to do: We’re going to be bail bondsmen.’”
This was 2009. Hulan didn’t even know what a bondsman was, but they used her money to found Grumpy’s, so it remains her company (her husband operates a different bail bonding agency.) She named it Grumpy’s because her husband had such a grumpy attitude about the names she suggested for
the business (including “Second Chance” and “Blessed Hope”).
Through her dual experiences of struggling with bulimia and working in bail bonding, Hulan has gained insight into the people who land in the criminal justice system.
She says: “It’s just an observation, and there are no statistics to support it. But I would guess that the numbers are as high as 80 percent of the people who go to jail are either addicted to something – whether it’s alcohol, drugs, gambling, food or a bad relationship. Or they are experiencing some type of major dysfunction in their lives.”
Hulan considers her bulimia to have been an addiction, so she understands how addictions can ruin lives.
PHOTO: Hulan grew up on a “hard-working beef farm,” then attended MTSU through the ROTC, then became Miss Tennessee in 1992 and Miss Tennessee USA in 1994. She also worked in military intelligence through the Army./Contributed
“I have a lot of empathy and sympathy for anyone who suffers,” she says. “But I also know that you can get over and it. And I know you can make a decision in your life to move forward.”
Recovery begins, she says, when people get an opportunity and then take responsibility.
“In this business we’ve seen so many heavy, heavy, heavy situations where people are turning themselves around.”
Of course, she says, there’s the other side, too. People die from their addictions.
“You see it all,” she says. “I don’t think that all people need to be bailed out of jail; I do think that some people need to stay in jail. If there’s any hope for changing their behavior and moving forward, then I do think bail is a wonderful opportunity for people to get out and work on themselves while their case is going on.”
Hulan tries to work in positive ways through her company by matching people with drug addiction programs. And she hosts AA meetings every Sunday night at her Franklin location.
“We still try, in in our small way, to be a help to the community.”
Karen Parr-Moody began a career as a New York journalist, working as a fashion reporter for Women’s Wear Daily, a beauty editor for Young Miss and a beauty and fashion writer for both In Style and People magazines. Regionally, she has been a writer at The Leaf-Chronicle newspaper and currently writes about arts and culture for Nashville Arts magazine each month.