MUSCATINE, Iowa – After nearly 12 months, Mike Shield remembers March 31, 2008, as the day that forced him to start over — a good day.

In the rush of that morning,

however, Shield, 41, said all he felt was shock. He had barely hung up his coat before losing his job of 10 years. The numbness he felt in his last minutes at Bridgestone Bandag Tire Solutions darkened the office into which he was led at 2905 N. U.S. Highway 61.

In the time it might have taken to get a cappuccino on his way to work and start his computer on a normal Monday morning, his boss and a human resources person explained Shield’s severance package and he was escorted from the building. It was a dark, rainy and gloomy morning in Muscatine, the town in which Shield had grown up and where he was raising daughters McKenna, 12, and Elise, 8, with his wife, Lori, 45.

“I knew something was up, but it took me by complete surprise,” said Shield, who now runs a graphic-design business in the basement of his Muscatine home. “It wasn’t funny. Nothing was funny that day.”

His experience made Shield somewhat of a canary in the economic coal mine as a national recession began to seep into Muscatine County over the past year. In the month when he lost his job, Muscatine County’s unemployment rate was 3.8 percent, according to Iowa Workforce Development data. There were 1,130 unemployed workers in Muscatine and Louisa counties in March 2008, according to the state statistics.

By December 2008, the last month for which data is available, that number had climbed to 1,790, giving the region an unemployment rate of 6 percent. That represents an increase of 54 percent since December 2007, when the region had 1,160 unemployed workers and an unemployment rate of 3.9 percent.

After the shock wore off, Shield, who has a Bachelor of Arts degree in computer graphics from the now-defunct Marycrest College in Davenport, did what many workers would do: look for another job.

He applied in Muscatine, Iowa City and the Quad Cities, finding there wasn’t much available and that he was considered over-qualified for some of the jobs. In the back of his mind, he kept thinking about starting his own business.

“The thought was there immediately, but I never would have quit,” he said. “I kind of talked myself out of it. I thought I needed a full-time job with benefits … I was kind of wishy-washy.”

A career counselor hired by Bridgestone Bandag helped convince Shield to listen to his heart. And a month after losing his job, Shield bought a new Mac Pro computer, put up a cubicle in his basement, registered his business, Shield Design, and decided to give himself six months.

In the months since he rolled the dice on himself, he has worked for Simply Sweet Bakery & Café and Musser Public Library in Muscatine and the Missis-sippi Valley Regional Blood Center in Davenport. Among the more than a dozen other clients he has worked for is Indiana-based Speedco. The national chain of quick-lube stores is a Bridgestone Bandag subsidiary and Shield’s biggest customer.

“That made me say, ‘I can make this happen,’ ” he said of starting a business and landing the work for Speedco. He estimates he will finish his first year earning about 75 percent of what he was paid at Bridgestone Bandag.

“It seems like the quality of our life hasn’t suffered,” said Shield, whose wife works as a para educator at McKinley Elementary School in Muscatine.

And that isn’t even the best part for Shield, who has begun taking his daughters to school and gained a greater appreciation for the things his wife used to do before they both left for work in the morning.

After dropping off the girls, he wanders down red-carpeted stairs to the basement and the beige walls of his cubicle. There he has surrounded himself with awards he has won, a dry-erase board and other accouterments of corporate America. He is joined most days by Molly, the family’s golden retriever, or Max, the golden retriever  Shield watches now during the day for a friend.

“By the time the kids are home, I’m about finished up,” he said, adding that he likes the flexibility he has by working for himself. “It put new energy into what I do.”

Details:

Who: Mike Shield, 41.

What: Owner of Shield Design

Where: Business he runs out of an office in the basement of his Muscatine home.

Why: Shield started the business after he was let go from his corporate job in March 2008.

Oscar Perales is an entertainer who tries to keep his audience from going down the path he originally chose.

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Oscar Perales is an entertainer who tries to keep his audience from going down the path he originally chose.