Welcome to The North Idaho Experience podcast, hosted by Seth Horst, Dave Faller, and Eric Boardman. This engaging show delves into the unique and vibrant community of North Idaho, a region reminiscent of a time when values and character mattered deeply. Each episode brings forth the compelling stories of homeschool moms, hunters, homesteaders, business owners, veterans, and first responders, all united by a shared love of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.
Listeners are treated to heartfelt discussions and personal anecdotes that highlight the essence of living in North Idaho. Seth, Dave, and Eric, with their diverse backgrounds and deep connections to the community, navigate through various topics that resonate with both locals and those curious about this picturesque part of the country. The podcast is more than just a collection of stories; it’s a celebration of the people who choose to call North Idaho home, showcasing their resilience, spirit, and dedication to maintaining the region’s cherished way of life.
Whether it’s sharing lessons learned from their fathers in honor of Father’s Day, reflecting on the challenges faced by first responders, or simply enjoying the camaraderie that comes from shared experiences, The North Idaho Experience podcast is a testament to the power of community and the enduring values that define it. Tune in to be inspired, moved, and connected to a place where the past and present harmoniously coexist.
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This podcast is brought to you by Your North Idaho Agent. YourNorthIdahoAgent.com Our team is comprised of Former First Responders and Veterans and we have years of experience in all aspects of Real estate purchase and sales.
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North Idaho is a throwback to a better time in American history, the time when values and character still mattered. From homeschool moms, hunters and homesteaders to business owners, veterans and first responders. We are a unique community held together by a common thread, a love of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. These are the stories of those who choose to call North Idaho home. Welcome to the north Idaho experience. This podcast is brought to you by your North Idaho agent. We are a full service Real Estate Team serving all of North Idaho. We don’t just sell homes. We sell the North Idaho experience. Hey, welcome to the north Idaho experience. I am here with my partners Dave and Eric. We got the three boys in the house today. Because yours to that. No, yes, yeah, it is pride month. So you know, just leave me alone. I’ve got some burden. Which one is this? I can’t remember the name. It’s it’s something funny. It’s the bibs and Tucker. Oh, grab it. Yeah. Ben Tucker vivan Tucker, that is donated to us by our dear friend Pat Krantz who was just on the podcast, a local lifeflight medic. Well, he does some management now too. But good, dude. So thank you, Pat. And, you know, I have this whole vision today. So we’re gonna dive into a little bit gentlemen. And in honor of Father’s Day, and I stole this from the Patriot poor the other day, because we have the same topic. It asked everybody like, hey, you know, what’s the lesson that you learned from your dad? And I think you’ll have a great relationship with your dad. So this deck could go any number of ways, right? Maybe there’s a lesson there in that, I don’t know. But I’ll start out with with mine, because you know, we’ll give you guys some time to think about it. Because I sprung that on you. So grown up. My dad always always told me he’s like, everybody has a story to tell. You just got to figure out how to get it out of them. And it drove me nuts as a kid, right? Because I’d be anywhere my dad will talk to anyone, like the grungy is homeless dude, the biker like anybody he has no filter does not care. And the grumpiest person in the world within two minutes is like the happiest person with mud out. I’m like, that’s impressive. So that I think I inadvertently got that ability from him. And it’s really, like, dictated the path of my life. Right? Like, I I love stories. And I love to get stories out of people. And that’s what drives me to podcasting because like, I get to sit here and like, get in your head for an hour and pull these stories out. And so that that’s like, the greatest lesson that I got from my dad and I and I’ve, you know, I guess I’m like, I’m selfishly a collector of stories now. And I love that. And I record those stories, and I keep them I know, I know. Everybody does. All right, like, my dad was right, everybody has a story to tell. If you don’t, if you’re young, and you’re listening to this podcast, you might not have stories yet. So go out and live your life and do cool stuff. And get the stories right that’s where they come from. They don’t come from sitting in your basement playing video games. They come from experiencing life and going out and being a submarine or cat some good stories or being a second. Like Karina gonna do tug of war responder a good answer rockin you know, I never made BC when I was with county fire, but when I left I went to the I don’t know what that means. Battalion Chief. Oh, yeah. So I never tested so he’s thrown rank out is never made battalion chief. I left as a captain. But when I was leaving, I was turning in all my gear. I was in the warehouse. And like, I was like, Guess my sell me one of those BC hats. Yeah. So that’s why I got a black hat. Oh, I don’t know. You weren’t just excuse me. So. So that’s my, that’s my, you know, I’ve got some other lessons from him for sure. But that’s that’s like the one that that he inadvertently taught me that was just by example, right? And like, wow, you can use and I’m not I don’t always want to talk to people. You know what I mean? But sometimes I do and like, every time I do, I’m surprised and the stories are sometimes tragic, right? You got somebody in the backseat of patrol car like one that comes to mind. I should preface by the way, if you have kids listening, there may be some inappropriate content in this podcast. Just keep that in mind as we go on to stories, there’s gonna definitely be some inappropriate for me, I’m 100%. You ready? Because you know, like, I can’t explain it. But I collect those stories right now. You know, I can think I had this chick in the back of my patrol car one time and, you know, I hooked her up for the math or something. And I’m driving her to the jail and she’s telling me you know, we’re just talking like we do. And she’s telling me how she got pregnant by her dad when she was 14. And they all still live and their deaths a loser there. No baby. And I’m like, wow, it like changes your perspective, right? You hear something like that? You’re like, holy shit, man. Like, yeah, that’s heavy. Wow, me a story like that maybe it just makes you thankful for your own life. Right? Like, well, my life is pretty damn good. Right? I don’t want to deal with that. So what? What’s the lesson you guys learned from your dad? Send it. Put you on the spot. No. Good. That’s funny. Like, my dad. You know, it’s funny. I’ll preface this by saying, you know, my dad and I don’t talk a whole lot. And we didn’t have a great relationship when I was growing up. But I never questioned that my dad, you know, my dad didn’t love me. You know, he always he always looked out for me everything else. But he just had. Unfortunately, we didn’t necessarily see a lot of things. And I and he was a single parent. And we didn’t do a whole lot together once I got a little older, right. But I will say that probably some of the biggest things I learned from my dad is that even though my dad and I had a very strained relationship, when I lived with my dad, that was his life, right? Like good, bad, indifferent whether or not we spent a lot of time together my dad when he was a poker dealer, so I would, I would come home, especially in high school. You know, I’d come home at three o’clock, every kid’s dream. You know, they got the house to themselves all day. Yeah, because I’d come home actually, I’d get out of school like to I’d have sports, a lot of times it’d be home four or five o’clock. Dad’s already gone. He works until two in the morning. I don’t even see him, right. So you don’t have to cycle but I do know like growing up is at a younger age especially. My dad spent a lot of time with me, right? A lot of time with me. And we didn’t have do enough shit. Like I look back, we were watching some VHS tapes with my kids the other day. And my dad was a big ol Yeah, big old cameras on his shoulder. And we’re walking around my room. And I realized how similar I was to the the show Stranger Things. You guys seen Stranger Things? Oh, yeah. Yeah, I love that show. You remember when they’re sitting there and, and I didn’t even realize it until I saw this video. But the two kids were sitting there, the brothers in the room and they’re just listening to the music and they’re just be bopping. Like there’s nothing else to do. They’re just music, but has it taken a film. And that’s what me and my buddy Kevin are doing. We’re just sitting there just Bebop. And like we didn’t, that was what we had. When you go around my room, I had a couple of football helmets a baseball glove, like I didn’t have shit at all. I hardly had toys, like we just didn’t have a lot of money. But my dad actually did do a very good job when I was younger, like trying to spend time with me. Now a lot of videos of us going out doing and I think that that’s probably the number one thing even though we don’t have a great relationship, and there was a lot of other turmoil. You know, communication was a huge issue with me and my dad is that with my kids? Now I’m like, do I want to spend a lot of time with them? You do a really good job of that. I mean, you you every day. Dave goes to the gym with his son like you do that religiously? Yes. Pull your guard that time you’re intentional about that. And that’s huge. Because I don’t want I want I want my son to feel the same way in terms of that. Turn right there. Yeah, so I like that. Because it’s something that you know, I want my son to feel that I was intentional with them. And I want my daughter to as well. It’s a little harder to connect with my daughter than it is with my son. But yeah. But yeah, so I think that was the probably the number one thing I just wanted to be intentional with my kids. And so I tried to have a better relationship and try to like really focus on him because I don’t want them to be like me one day move to another place and may not come visit them or anything else. Like I want to be there for him. So I think that was just the biggest thing is at a younger age. My dad really did you know, all the shit that he did, whether it didn’t cost money, or whether it was just going out and just playing catch, even if we got in a fight, right, because I wasn’t doing it right. Or you know, however, was he still maybe made the attempt to spend time with me. I think that’s really important and something that a lot of men don’t do with their kids. Yeah, Father’s Day. Is not what it used to be like you’re supposed to spend time with the kids. It’s very hard, especially for you right now cuz you’re still a cop. Like that’s hard. Yeah, yeah, he works three jobs. We only have one anymore. I know. So yeah. Yeah. Good. Good one did Eric quit? Yeah, man. I think mine’s kind of similar to that. And I’ve got a kind of a unique relationship I ended up when I got out of the military. The first time I actually moved to Florida to take care of him. He had a pretty major cardiac event. So I moved there to take care of him. So he lived with me for a really long time as an adult. And he’s still here local. I think a lot of it and I don’t even mind kind of breaking that down because I think he’d say the same thing. I think some of the most valuable lessons I’ve learned from him were probably mistakes that he’d made, which was eye opening, because as a kid, you look at your dad and you’re like, my dad’s incapable of making mistakes. He’s and everything about him. You know, you kind of idolize that role model. And, man, that dude would work, especially when it came to like hard labor doing stuff yourself, like working on cars, you can do all this and he taught all that which sucks now because I think dads don’t get that opportunity to teach their kids as much because everything’s available online. Whereas back in the day that skill set was valuable coveted and you spend time with your grandparents and they teach you how to build fences and dig ditches and run sprinklers and fix cars and all that. Yeah, he was construction due to he’s always really really good at that. But if I was being completely honest about the lesson that I learned from him, it probably be A man, undisciplined intelligence is worse than being stupid. Like you can, if you honestly walk in everywhere, and we talked about surrounding yourself with people that are better than you and certain things are smarter, but if you walk in and you automatically assume you’re the smartest person in the room, you don’t grow very much. Yeah. So that one just kind of watching some of those things manifest and watching some relationships dissolve and take ownership of a lot of that. That’s pretty valuable lesson. Yeah, me. Yeah. And that points out, what I was trying to say is like, sometimes those lessons are like, how, how you don’t want to be right, right. Right. And you’re right, you know, you hit a certain age where you start to see through that pedestal that your your dad’s on and are fallible. Yeah, you’re like, yeah, and especially now I’m in my mid 40s. And I can I look, you know, I’m like, Oh, wow, you’re missing. You’re missing these things. Here. It’s very obvious to me now. But as a kid, you know, nothing but gold. Right? Right. And then it gets me thinking like, Oh, what am I missing with my kids? And what are they going to see? Yeah, what do they see me? Like, he’s already thinking I’m a retard because of, you know, technology. Right? Kids are so much better at technology. Yes, I can even find the, the whatever app on your phone and I’m like, it takes me a minute. Okay, like, two seconds. Even when you ask that question, that was the first thing that came to mind is like, Well, yeah, what would my kids say? Especially my son, he’s same age as your daughter. And, you know, they’re gonna it’s that weird age where they still respect you sometimes, right? But they kind of keep you at arm’s length, and they’re trying to figure it out. I just don’t even shy away from being fallible anymore. Yeah, like, if I’m making a mistake, it’s not like I said it. So it has to be accurate. If I was wrong, I don’t mind going back and saying, Hey, look, I’ve thought about this. Here’s what my thought process I think I was wrong and saying this, or I think I messed up when I did this. I don’t mind doing that. Yeah, right. wrong or indifferent. There’s different ways to parent, but I’m okay if we get that infallible crap out of the way early. Yeah, I think that is important. Apologizing, knowing how to apologize your kids to like, Hey, I screwed I screwed up like that. I was wrong. There you go. That’s a good lesson for them. It’s my first time with a teenager. So first go to there’s no manual. I tell everybody, I’m like I know perfectly how to parent, an eighth grade daughter. But unfortunately, as of today, she’s in ninth grade. And I have no freaking clue where to go from here. Right? No idea. Yeah, so I got that down check. There was kind of push it and I’m we’re all of a sudden, we’re all of a sudden the old guys right? Like what? What is this trend with dudes wearing short shorts? All the dudes like teenage boys. That’s his shorts. Shorts. Like they’ll roll them up intentionally. So they look like 80s basketball players. Yeah, everybody’s rockin John Stockton shorts. Now. Don’t hate it, to be honest with you. Like when they showed her underwear underneath them like long boxers, silly. Right, right. And then they’re rolling them up. And all of a sudden were the old guys like, what’s up with these kids these days? And if you listen to their music, cargo shorts, not cool anymore. They’re very useful. Abercrombie had when I was in college, they were saying that’s all I had. Yeah, cargo sure has in my stuff all your shit in there. You just said it useful. You’re the old guy, bro. Yeah. pocket protector. Those are useful. I mean, I have gone to function over style. I agree with the fanny packs. I don’t buy my shoes at Costco yet. Yet. New Balance could happen. But you guys are about that age. Right? How old are you? 44 now I’m just the baby. He’s younger than me. A lot of mileage on this chassis, but you’re like eight days young Yeah, I legit I’m having a hard time finding shorts. I don’t know what to do. Like, I carry a gun every day. I need shorts that can carry a gun. Right? I can’t wear like really soft fabric II stuff because it’ll fall down. Yeah, like what do I do here? Do I just keep looking? I know what I’m wearing. Yeah, these are cargo pants like junk checking stuff. shorts or so. The shorter shorts testicles are hanging on the on the dangle. Yeah, yeah, it’s hard. All right. It’s deep work. Sheena. What’s next? Just get a gunfighters Kenai holster and wear that thing everyone? Total plugs right there. Yes, there you go by my own. Maybe they’ll call me back. I’m I’m carrying my bag and my fanny pack. You know my Hill people gear fanny pack. And I started carrying it like I carry crossbody sometimes because it’s just a shade cooler than wearing like a fanny pack. But that’s pretty useful way so I could do that with some. Some of the new shorts out there. There you go. That would work. Okay, good look right short shorts and a fanny pack talking to the wrong person to grow like a grown adult and have a 28 inch inseam. So when you’re talking about buying shorts, even when I tried to buy Dave shorty shorts, they’re still down on my knees. I would like them weren’t jeggings Okay, perfect. That’s good. There we go. I’ve made fun of myself. You can call me short, assholes. I look teeny back here by the way. You do. Dave is not that small. It’s the perspective on the camera. So if you’re listening, you don’t notice any difference. If you’re watching the video, he’s he’s not child size. It looks like he is full grown ish. I do have little hands. big hands, do you really have a little bit? I did little hands. I don’t want to do it. I don’t want to do it. On camera, I don’t want to put my hand on. This looks big. Let’s, let’s shift gears a little bit. A lot of it actually. And, you know, get back to the story thing. And I’m going to ask you guys to tell a dramatic story. And I’ll start to of course, because I think that, you know, I gotta give you a second to process but I was racking my brain all day, because I was like, you know, I want to I want to touch on some trauma. And then perhaps, you know, just just discuss it and kind of understand, you know, what lessons were learned from that too. And this is where it really where you need to give a disclaimer, if you’re not, if you if you don’t want to hear some of this stuff. I mean, these are a lot of stories that came from when we were on duty. When he was a highway patrol when I was a fireman. He was law enforcement. So if stuff like that makes you queasy. I mean, these things are, it’s the reality of what happens. Yeah, my, my stories, and I’ll give you a snapshot of a the worst day I had on the department. And I’ll give you one scenario from that. There’s a lot to it. It’s a whole podcast worth. But I’ll do that another day. So my story, and it was a moment, the moment that I felt the most helpless on the job that I have ever felt. And yeah, so here we go. So it was during the campfire, right big event, Paradise, California, the entire town burned down. And I lived in that town at the time. And I think around 10,000 homes burned down might have been 14,000 it was a lot 30,000 people displaced over 30,000 Within a matter of hours, right. So I was up there doing evacuations. This was prior to learning that my wife and kids had gotten out early, so there was a lot of stress. And I was at a very small intersection fully surrounded by vegetation. And you know, I got up there and the embers, like just to set the scene, raging fire 40 mile an hour winds. So it was spotting miles ahead of itself through fire everywhere. And I’m in this intersection. I parked my patrol car, you know, facing downhill because I was like, I’m gonna get run out of here hot. I knew it. But there were hundreds of cars backed up on this road. So speaking of traffic control, I was just getting people off the hill, that was the goal. And passing out of breath. Still bugs me obviously. So I’m in this intersection. It’s a dark now mind you it’s daylight but it’s dark, because of the fire was that intense. And you could hear propane tanks cooking off right? Constant and you’re like holy shit like that every propane tank that goes up as a house, right. And both lanes coming down the hill are blocked. We’ve got literally hundreds of cars backed up. And then fire trucks in the other lane. Like there’s 0% chance of getting into that area. And this car pulls up this guy, and he’s in a total panic. And you know, he’s got his windows down, he pulls up and he’s like trying to go up there and I’m like, dude, like, it’s physically impossible, I cannot let you up there. And he’s on the phone. And I hear this screaming on the other lawn on the other end of the phone. And he’s like, my grandma is up there. And like, I gotta go get her, her house is on fire and she’s invalid and she can’t get out. I’m like, okay. The radio, you know, if you’ve ever worked in a scenario like that the radio was like off the hook. Right? It’s impossible to get out on the radio at all. And even if I could, there’s nobody available to go do anything about it. So I’m listening to this woman screaming and this guy who’s obviously panicked and wants nothing more than to go save his mom. And he’s like, dude, like, can I go out there? And like, just there’s a can like I would let you but you can’t can you get somebody on the radio? I’m like, I can’t there’s nobody to go. And, you know, sit there for a second and I was like, I can’t fucking do anything for this guy. So I literally turned my back and I walked away. And that was like the moment that was stuck with me more than anything in my job of like, holy shit. I’m fucking useless. I can’t help this guy at all. And yeah, so I guess like my my point to that story is one that suck really bad to you Like, I’ve always wondered what his perspective on that was like, did I just destroy his faith in the public safety system? Right? Yeah. Because you wear this uniform, and people come up to you, and they expect you to solve their problem, and most of the time we can. And then there was that moment where I was like, I can’t, I got nothing. And I sure it was hard. And I’ve always wondered, like, what he thinks about it. Does he hate me? Does he hate all of us? Does he hate? You know what I mean? Or is he forgiven? I don’t know. I’m quite sure she’s dead. Like, I have no doubt. So that’s super hard. And you know what I think a lot of people don’t realize, like, you know, those aren’t the stories that you bring back to your family right away. Those are ones that that they surfaced years and years later, they’re not something that you, you run home and you tell your wife about you tell Kristen about anything else like that. And that was the same thing for me. Like, I would never go home and just tell my wife, those things, I would tell her, you know, we were in a recliner, we were playing video games like that was, that was what it was, you know, that. And those are hard. Because when that stuff happens, and I think that’s where people don’t realize that is, is the brotherhood and being able that brotherhood and sisterhood, like being able to have people that have experienced similar things like that, or understand that can actually be put in that that those are the people that that first responders have a tendency to seek, right? I could go to you and tell you my whole line of items, I could go to you and tell you every single bad thing that I’ve ever seen stuff that I wouldn’t even mention on here. And I would feel comfortable doing that. Because I know that there’s a resonance where you understand, you know, yeah, I’ve been there. Like I felt useless. where somebody’s crying out for their mom, their dad their kid, and you can’t do a single thing. And so I wonder, too, I mean, that’s a tough, that’s hard. Where you were at? That’s a That’s a rough situation. Yeah, it’s interesting, because it’s not, you know, I’ve got plenty of gory stories or other, you know, dangerous stories getting shot at or whatever. But it’s like, that’s the one. Yeah, yeah. I mean, and I have, I’ve always, I’ve probably pushed the limits on what I should tell my family. And I did tell my wife about that one, because that was just, like, just ate me up for a long time. But, uh, you know, and I, and maybe there’s some, I don’t know, maybe there’s some value in sharing that with, with the kids to, to some extent, you know, I kind of downplayed stuff that I tell them, but I did tell them a lot. And maybe that gives them a better awareness of the world. I don’t know why. comes back to what we said before. You’re talking about your fallibility, right? Because I think you can even recognize that if you break that whole thing down. There was nothing you could have done to change the outcome of that. And you almost have this irrational attachment. I’ve watched it with some of my best friends in the department where they know that the answer that they think they should have done isn’t the right one, and that there’s nothing they could have done to change the outcome. Your brain doesn’t, doesn’t let you go from that. Sorry, I should have done this. I could have done this, then it’s interesting. You go back to the How does you remember me? Because I remind our cops that all the time, sometimes to us, it’s just another Tuesday, this may be the most traumatic event that they’ve ever encountered and how you interact with those folks. Right? Yeah, just being decent, and just trying to explain it to him. Right. Like, but it’s, it is odd in our line of work, because you go back and say I should have done something I should have. But knowing that you couldn’t have Yeah. ACL right. Because most of the time, you might you can affect change, right? You can do something. Yeah, to have that scenario was like holy shit. Right? Having and nobody else knew. Like, there were other guys in the intersection. Like, they didn’t know, right? I mean, I get there. They’re all doing stuff. Like, there’s no chance I could tell him. Yeah, yeah, it was an interesting day. And like, Dave, and I talked about this the other day, we were talking about, you know, being able to trust your partners and like, are they going to be able to perform at that moment that I need them to perform? Right. And I was kind of saying, like, Hey, man, like, I fully believe that courage is it’s a, a force and energy that that can wear out to like, because I felt it that same day, like, I agree later on. You know, I hit a point. I had been up there for a while. And the fire burned over, you know, I got out but I was just like, I pulled my car down. Most of the people were out by that point at that intersection. And I pulled my car down, like, to the shoulder, just outside of the fire. So it was like right in front of me. And I’m sitting there and I’m like, I could hear I can hear people calling for help. Like the hospital was like, calling for help to evac and I’m like, I just came from there. I know what I gotta get through to get there. And I couldn’t do it. I was just sitting on the shoulder like flicking bombs. It’s It’s hard because people have a tendency they need somebody. Right? Yeah. So I mean, that’s why they call 911. You talked about I mean, people are calling them on once. It’s the worst. It’s the worst day of their life. It is a Tuesday for us, right? But it’s the worst day of their life and you get there numb to that. And I think it’s important to think of those things. But there’s also the courage and there’s also stupidity and years of being and CHP and years of being around those things and triaging and saying, What can I do? I really think like, that’s a situation where you were faced with what can I do? And the answer as you ran it through your head with everything else is that there is nothing I can do. You know, we had a story about some firemen back east that we studied, where they lost about eight firemen, they had guys go down inside this commercial building, and then they sent in their their rec team. That’s a rapid intervention crew. So I was part of a you know, I did a lot of rip training down there. And that was the big that was like the, that was like the ladder 49 movie, right? Like, that’s where you go get your own. It’s not you know, somebody else, you see all those. But no, this is like, where you go get your brother, right? Somebody’s down. So the rec team, although people hated being the rec team, because you literally sat there. I mean, your firemen didn’t go down. That wasn’t, it’s not something that happens routinely. Now. It nobody wanted to be assigned to a wreck, but they have the most important job because those are the people going into that place, or the big warehouse in to get to the point of like, not being able to do something. And I don’t want to say being stupid, but it’s a process, right, is that they sent in a wreck team, which is what they rightfully should do. Well, they lost contact with everything. So they sent out another routine guy, and they lost contact with those guys, and they sit in the third routine. Okay? Now you can imagine how you’ve now seen eight of your brothers go in there into that fire to go save these guys, right? To already in there and six people have gone in. And you can imagine what’s going through your head, right? I mean, you’re sitting there at that intersection, like, what can I do? And the chief had to get in front of the battalion chief on scene. I remember hearing this this article, he had to get in front of the doors and stop his guys from going in. Damn, that’s hard. Yeah, he had to, he had to actually use force and stop his guys from going in that in that structure, because they were gonna die. Like, that’s the point where there’s losses that happen and that’s I’m not saying it’s okay. I’m not saying you need to deal with it. But there’s a point where you have to realize as a first responder as a cop, a fireman, EMT, Medic, whatever it is. There’s a point where you have to make a triage decision to stop the bad things from happening. Yeah, Had you taken that guy up there? You very well, could. You could have widowed your wife and he could have not survived as well. It’s, it’s funny that you say that because that exact scenario happened. Not long after that. My, my partner, Sam rolled up, been a friend of mine for a long time. He lives up here now, by the way. And he rolled up to me on the shoulder. He’s like, Fuck you do and I was like, Well, I kind of told him. He’s like, Alright, let’s go. And I was like, Okay. And I followed him right up in there. And we got to the intersection that it was at, it had pretty much burned through and everything’s on fire. But it’s not like a firestorm at that point. And another chip, he had put out a call, basically, in 1199, which is like, you know, officer needs assistance, because he crashed his car. And I knew the road because I lived up there, right? And it’s like, this little hollow. And he crashed. He was on foot. And the last thing we heard was like, I’m on foot, and everything’s on fire, and like, he’s screaming, and I was like, Holy shit, dude. So Sam came up and was like, I’m going, and I was like, the fuck you already like? No. And I don’t remember this clearly. But he told me later that I physically restrained him from driving into that particular location because of that. Exactly. I was like, if you go in, I’m gonna go in that I know what it’s like in there. And you’re we’re both gonna die. And Patti? That should be ended up surviving. By the way, he jumped into California bulldozer Yeah. Crazy. Crazy and got out of there. But holy shit. Yeah. Yeah. That’s a hard call to that’s a really hard call. No, yeah. Fuck, what, what it seems like is in those moments, you tend to, like compartmentalize and you can make rational decisions. I think where, where it hits us later. Because you second guess everything that you do. And you’re talking about splitting seconds. Yeah. Well, if I’d done this, if I just recognize this, if I could have been there a little faster. Or if I would have known this part I would have if this person had done this, and then you play the blame game with yourself going? Well, if I worked a little harder if I’d stayed late, whatever it is that that turned into, you start to second guess yourself in that sort of, yeah, that that’ll eat you. Oh, it did erect me. I didn’t realize until literally this was five years ago. And I didn’t realize it until years later. Like, I could not go to patrol after that. I’m like, I just didn’t want I just didn’t want to do it anymore. And a lot of ways, and I don’t think I really went I don’t know, I went to the office after that. I went to background like I never went back to patrol after that. It was it was fucking rough. Yeah, it’s an ugly one. That’s tough. To get a lighten the load a little bit soundly. And the reason is, so this is actually a call that I dwelled on for years, but it’s a happy ending. This is a good one I like but nonetheless, it was one of the hardest things that I had to do. This is a crazy call. I had my buddy. I’ll tell him to watch us, Brad more. Brad and I were, there was a point where at station 41 in your family where where we lost some funding and stuff, we lost our limited term firefighters or EMTs. So they only came in for 12 hours. And then they go, so we’d run two ambulances, Brad and I were both medics. And we would run an EMT, they resort we’d run to medics during the day, and then they’d go home at eight o’clock at night. And then Brad and I would would jump in and then we would rotate call, so we’d have a dual medic box. And anyways, so we got a call one night, and we get it we got a call for I think it came in as a shortness of breath or, you know, something like that. And there’s some sort of either unconscious shortness of breath, whatever, for this 12 year old girl, and like anything, right? Everybody ramps up when it’s a kid. Oh, of course, because you’re like, holy shit, like the kid shouldn’t be having these medical issues, right? It’s a 96 year old, you’re like, not taking anything away from 96 year old, but they’re meant to have shortness of breath at that age. Right? Right. So we, we jump in the ambulance, we head to this call, and we get there. And I remember Brad and I walked in. And so this girl was God, I wish I could remember her name. And I remembered her name for so long. But she’s 12 years old, and she has some major disabilities. I used to call her mom every year on the anniversary tour. She was amazing. But anyways, so we get there for this 12 year old girl. And I walk in and right when Brad and I walk in, we start getting vitals and I’m looking at her and I’m like, you know, kids are resilient. They if you don’t think about kids, medically, they kind of they kind of shut off all the bad things until the very end, and then they drop. So kids have a tendency to just be really resilient, you know, they can handle a lot. So this girl has some major medical conditions. She was partially blind. She had some she had some mental issues, a lot of different things, some developmental issues. She was in a wheelchair part time anyways, so she already had a lot of health stuff anyways. Well, we get there and this girl’s on the floor. And it’s just as a medic, there are certain times when you look at people and you’re like, man, there’s something wrong with you. I don’t know what it is. But I can tell you right now there’s something wrong with you. And I can’t pinpoint it. Well, that was this right? We get there and we we tried to get her on a blood pressure cuff we put SPO to honor we’re trying to get vitals and she’s just squirming and I’m like, dude, something is something is wrong like this. Something bad is happening. So now mom was used to this girl going to hospital and having a lot of treatment because of her disease and everything else. So it was kind of a another Tuesday for mom, right? She was like, Hey, can you guys take her and I’m like, yeah, we’ll take her and so I remember, we get her into the ambulance, and mom’s there and I’m like, Hey, we’re gonna get her there right away. Okay, so we’re going, we’re going code. And it’s like two o’clock in the morning. And mom’s like, Okay, I’m gonna run, grab some food and a couple things. I’ll meet you guys at the hospital. Okay. So we get in the back, and within two or three minutes in the back, she dumps. Okay, now we’re at the point where we’re like, ready to do CPR on this little 12 year old girl. And I’m like, fuck. So we are driving as fast as we can obviously, I mean, endangering everybody right up to the morning. We’re going like 90 miles an hour down to the highest. The hospital industry. We’ve done that together. Yeah, yeah, we have. But that’s one of those things. Right. So it was a triage. I mean, we’re like we’re moving Hall and asked to get down there. We have to start CPR on her daughter in the back of the ambulance. And nobody likes to lose a kid, right? That’s like the data. I mean, that’s the thing that we never come home and tell our family. And so anyways, we get rid of the hospital. And there’s nobody in the hospital. I mean, it’s like bed one through eight is empty. They take a ride to the trauma room. I mean, we call it and we’re like, Hey, dude, we got 12 year old CPR progress, like we need, we need shit going on. So every doctors that I was amazing, like, I mean, we had probably 30 hands, we get her in there. And everybody’s in there working her, Okay, we got her intubated, we got everything going on, and they’re fully working on her. And all of a sudden, you know, we’re outside. Oh, my gosh, shit. Like this is you know, we gave them a report. Now they’re all working on or they got everything going on. And I’m watching this girl just, I’m going Oh, no. And then all of a sudden, the front desk girl, I remember she comes up and she’s like, Hey, Mom’s here. And I look around, and there’s no doctors available. Everybody’s in there, right? There’s no doctors available. There’s no nurses that are on full. I mean, they’re everybody’s in there working. And I’m like, Oh, God, dang it. I just saw this lady five minutes ago. So I go to the front, I get to look at her. And she’s out there with a big goal. She’s out there with her food. She’s just waiting to come in. And I had to take her and I remember going to get her. And I had to walk her past as you’re working on her daughter. And I’m like, and she has no idea that that’s her in there. Right? So I have to take her to this consultation room. And I’m like, I sit her down from it and I go back and there’s there’s nobody’s available, right? Everybody’s working on this girl. They got everybody on oh my god dang it. So I had to go in there and tell mom, like, hey, they’re, they’re working CPR and your daughter right now. And I’m like, I don’t know what’s going on. This is where we’re at. You know, they ever animated everything else. I watched mom obviously break. And I have no support. I’m like, Oh my God. Like, this is rough. My partner’s even in there working on it. It’s just me and I’m like, it was crazy because he turned to me and she’s like, we like Will you pray with me? And I’m like, Yeah, let’s do it right. So we sat down we prayed super hard. You know, I had to tell her I’m like, I don’t know what’s going to happen. I can’t let you in there with your daughter right now. I don’t know what’s going on. And so they worked her for 30 minutes flew in a bird. And this is where it becomes happy, right? She had 16 strokes. In the time she coded, I think eight or nine times. Wow, all right. How to go down to Loma Linda. And she ended up surviving. Same I think she she had a little bit of deficit from some of her strokes. But for the most part, she was still she you know, she’s still from what I know, she’s still around today. Dude, being in that situation. Because you know, doctors do it a lot. And we’ve had to do it on scene. I know every one of us has, but there was something about the the age, the expectation that this is normal. She goes to the hospital all the time and see and mom walk in with the Big Gulp and, you know, chips like, Oh, I’m just you know, I’m just here to do the night at the hospital. Right? Right. I hadn’t been trained for that I like that’s not something that I necessarily did all the time as a as a medic, or at least by myself. And so having to be in that situation with her was like, devastating. Like I said, it’s a happy story, right? I’m psyched. It’s a happy story. And God Yeah, I should reach out to Brad and ask them about how they’re doing. They still I think they still live in yaka. But it was amazing to see her faith and to see that stuff come out the right way. But kind of people don’t realize, you know, we put so much pressure on these law enforcement and military and firefighters, we have this expectation that they know what to do. Yeah. And there’s, I’ll be clear, there’s no fucking training at all for that. I don’t care what you say. And I used to check in with my guys all the time. When I was a captain, we’d have calls like that. And I’m like, Hey, are you good. And I’m all about getting people PTSD train, you know, CSI CSM, everything else like getting you taken care of. But there was also a lot of me that would turn to my, my guys after that years later and say, Listen, I’ve been there, and it sucks. And I’m here to help you. But I need to know that your heads in the game? Yeah, when we go back out there, and we have that call. And then two minutes later, we have the exact same call. I need you to be able to step up and save a life. I need you to be able to do this stuff. If you can’t, this may not be right for you. There’s a lot of suppression. There’s a lot of stuff that goes in every single one of us. But that was a tough one where even though we came out on the positive side, right, it was like, it was on me for a long time. That wasn’t something that I went home and told my wife I told her Oh, we have this 12 year old and you know, she went into cardiac arrest. But she’s safe. She’s good. Like, that was the story. It wasn’t this. Yeah. So anyways, while there’s a theme there, though, right? Like, we’ve all seen dramatic stuff. And I know we can talk about more gory stuff, right, and things that are just ugly that most human brains don’t have to see and process. What you guys are talking about is the most dramatic is that human interaction and experience because that works. It’s because you naturally if you’re any kind of decent person, I think you empathize and you put yourself in their shoes. And how did they perceive my interaction with them in that moment? Because you’re you’re wrecking the world again, there’s just no way around it. And that’s your job. And that that to me. Mine’s the same way. Right? Like, we have some ugly ones but your interaction with people in that worst moment, like that’s what sits with you. Right like ours was not kinda keep locations out, I guess. But we had a I was on dive rescue with county and guys down fishing, and he sees something in the water. And he says, I think there’s a car in the water. So we go and three or four of us suit up. And there’s weird little things that you don’t forget, like, don’t just stick in, you see, like, hair and it’s murky and nasty. And it’s shallow. It’s not like it’s technical diving, but you see hair and then hair moves. And you see kids and it’s human children looks so much different than adults, when they’re gone, especially in the water looked like dolls and it’s just one of those things that you can unseen, we recover them and pull them out and there were circumstances around that one that made it even worse, because it was intentional. And it was ugly and holding hands in the car and all of that but we recover them, pull them out and I had young kids at the time. You know, pull them out and you take them up and they recover them and you know, put them in the ambulance and I was on duty that day. Sorry. back and start to take off my stuff. And you’re just starting the process. And it was interesting watching how different how the guys processed it differently because fire was there too and so was so as law enforcement, law enforcement ran the dive team, but there are some guys yelling and some guys processing a different it was pretty bad. But I’m kind of more internal, I’m just laying it up against my car, similar to what you’re talking about. But when a different way, a supervisor came up to me as I’m getting my dry suit off, it was kind of leaned against my car, and he said, Hey, are you are you good? And I kind of expected that. And I was like, Yeah, then I’m good. He goes, alright, I need you to take that off. You gotta go do notifications. Like, all right, so give myself a couple minutes, get out of my stuff, put on my uniform, and then go notify dad, there he was, you know, late 20s, early 30s. And I think he’d say made some mistakes, they’ve done some things, and we’re familiar and all that. But then have to go give that notification. And I remember, everybody goes through this disbelief, but you’re telling them that is one and three year old songs are dead, and they don’t believe it. And literally saying, Man I I had my hands on, man, like this isn’t me getting notified, this is me. An hour and a half ago, I pulled him out the lake. Providing that finality and then his reaction was a physical one. And it’s I didn’t even mind. Like it’s weird being in uniform and have somebody physical within wood. Of course, you know, it’s odd. But it was immediately after that it was go tell grandpa, which was probably even worse. I mean, if there’s one way you can make jury duty worse, it’s pulling the guy in a dirty jury duty for that reason. Oh, but I think what bothered me the most is like the way that trying to figure out what my brain does, because while I’m telling dad right after this really hard notification, and this really crappy day, I’d had a grand theft burglary call the day before. And all they had was like this snapshot of a surveillance camera, the fun front of this Chevy Suburban, but it had a weird rim. And that stuck out to me and this is a call the day prior. And as I’m sitting there, and I just got back in my car, I’m processing what happened. And I’m tearing up and all that. I see this taco in my brain went right to the room I go holy crap, that’s that room from that Grand Theft yesterday. That’s the same car. So in the middle of all this, I write down the license plate, right? Like, that bothered me. It bugged me like that’s one of those I warned my wife, I was like a farm in the garage for a little bit, just let me be because we had take home. So it’s like, just give me like 1015 minutes just to get your mind, right, you know, just to kind of clear it before you walk back in. Because your kids are going to jump on you what you want. They’re going to do know what you just did. And you want them to do that. So it’s like give me a few this long and short of it. So important to have a good support system at home. But I kind of got my mind right, went back the next day. sure as heck, it’s the same car from the Grand Theft, but I was able to go recover it and it was a stolen cell phone. And the woman who got it taken from her was literally bawling in my arms at her place to work because she had the last pictures of her dad who died on that cell phone that she never would have got back. It was like I was mad at myself for my brain went because why would it even why would it do that? You know why in the middle of that moment does? Oh crap. I like they’re still like this. We do joke about our add all the time. Oh, yeah. Rampant ADD or ADHD that we all have. I was like, What is wrong with me that I’m not processing it or prioritizing? Right? It was just weird. It was a weird reaction to that. But that’s law enforcement. Those notifications are difficult. Oh, yeah. It was. Yeah. That one was that one was tough. Did I get my alarm going off on my phone? It’s kind of movies that grab grab the bourbon on your way back? The the human toll. I think that I mean, that’s kind of what I wanted to point out, like, have of where I was going with this, right? Because it’s not. I know, we don’t like to share these stories necessarily. Like my hands are still sweating from telling mine and then yeah, you’re like my voice was all shaky and it’s like five years after right. But I guess I just wanted to point out the human toll and you know, if you’re in that world if you’re listening and you’re a first responder I imagine this resonates with you and I apologize it for dragging up some some memories but maybe they need to be dug up to I don’t know, but if you’re not from that world, and you’re in you and you want to understand that world like these stories are important, I think right and that’s a you know, it’s a hard thing because you know, I I’ve been a big proponent for for counseling for people. They get done and I tell this my wife all The time and it’s my own fault. I mean, I’m gonna admit, like, I’ve made this mistake, right is that I’m a huge proponent on people getting counseling, but I’ve never gotten it. And know, somebody I know. Right? Right. And I, but I don’t think I’m the only I’m the only former first responder, military, whatever else that hasn’t received it and says that they should. I think that’s super important. But the truth is, is that you find solace in being able to sit down with guys like you and say, Hey, like, here’s my story. Here’s the stuff that I did. Like, the problem is, is that we’re all dumb as shit. And you guys don’t have any tools for me to fix it. Right. So like, we’re, we’re really good tools. Yeah, right. We don’t we don’t have the tools. And I’m really excited. Jordan, Jolene, you know, Jordan, right. Yeah. So Jordan is actually getting her she’s going through the process right now to become a therapist. And I told her, I’m like, Man, when when you get those tools, I’ll come sit down with you. Because she’s, she’s walked the line. She’s done it. And when I talked to her about the things that I won’t tell my wife, she’s not just a therapist, she’s somebody that can also go like, I know, what you what you’re going through. It’s, I’ve been to therapy actually after. So after the fire, I, our whole family went right. My kids went there. It was bad day, right. And they all needed it. My wife needed it. And I did. And it was hard. Like, I didn’t want to do everything in my body was like, I’m not sitting down with this woman. And then I start telling the story. And like, she did good. She didn’t tear, she teared up, but she wasn’t like breaking down, right? And I would expect that she teared up a little bit. But then like, she spoke my language, right? She started dropping F bombs. And like, we were cool. And I was like, okay, like, I can tell you this. And I went back many times. And it was hard, because I remember the first time stick out our little book. And she said, Hey, let me read you the definition of PTSD. And I’m like, Fuck, no, we’re not going there. Hey, and, and then she did. And I was like, okay, like, cool. Now what? You know, yeah. And multiple times later, just just talking, just go in and just talk like, whatever it was, whenever it came out, and I found it to be useful. And in the end, it was like, okay, like, there was value in that now, because I can share the stories with guys like you that and that’s valuable for me too. But you don’t always have that some guys can’t do that. Right? There are plenty of departments out there where it’s still taboo. Like, don’t be a bitch, or shut up, or what they’ll say is, yeah, man, I’ll go out, let’s go get drunk. Yeah, dude, that there’s nothing about that. That’s gonna, that’s gonna help. And as we as we sit here, getting drunk. Yeah, no, the whole the whole point that there’s no recovery. And, like, at some point, you just got to hit it recognize what the human brain does? What’s traumatic and why there’s certain like, just like, on the positive side, there’s certain smells and sounds and feels like, oh, there’s some girls from your past, you’re gonna smell perfect. Be like, man, that’s going to take you back to a place in time, right? Or a certain song that’s going to take you back to a place in time. It’s the same way with trauma. Yeah, we’ve got some here that, you know, it’s that the crunching of snow, you know, it didn’t take God see that. Just that he’s saying that takes me immediately to a call up here. Right. Gosh, right. Yeah. And it you know, that’s kind of the same. Like I had some car fires, like back to back and just bad, right, bad. And, you know, smell barbecue for a while. Yeah. wrecked me. And I was like, I can’t even every time like cooking row or a barbecue with my kids. I know. Yeah, I get it. And, you know, I mean, some time heals some of that for sure. And some of it goes away, but some of it never goes away. So I’ve got my own. I’ll share mine. And then I’m curious how you guys used to pick what do you do to cope? For me? Cheers. For me, like talking about it with the right people? You know what I mean? And I had some people in my life that I could talk to about these, you know, some partners that I worked with that were there for all of these incidents. And it’s like, you know, we’re alone in a patrol car and midnight working graveyard. And it’s like, I can tell him, right? It was there too, right? My buddy Sam, like, he knows he went through all this shit with me. But like other ways that I coped, like I like to write like, I have put all of these stories into like, a some version of a poem. I went college, I was an English major, and I did a lot of poetry classes. That’s like my thing. So I boiled a lot of these stories down into like, a page. And it captures you know, the emotion and I put that shit on paper, and it comes out of my mind. Yeah, that’s that’s big for me. And that’s not for everybody. I get that but like, what uh, you know, and then the obvious ones like, you know, being healthy in life like that helps to work now. jujitsu. What do you guys what do you do? I’m more fascinated. Every time we talk. There’s some other weird layer of sets that if The Most Interesting Man in the World your stories and put them into effing poetry dude, like come on. That’s how the hell do you manage that? Some of that should start dude and it’s like I don’t share with everybody because you read it and it’s fucking traumatizing right? Yeah, it’s almost like you put it there and leave it like that’s gotta be almost liberate. He’s hugely liberating. Yeah, you know, and I have those I had a great book of poetry prior to the fire I lost everything in the fire I literally other than the clothes on my back when I went to work that day. So that was a bummer. But I guess that’s a poetic way to lose things like your poetry is to have it burn up in a fire. But, you know, I started over and I have dozens of, of poems that kind of capture that all shown to somebody I was like, different chapters of your life and what you’ve done with it. That was almost like a symbol, you know, was a symbol of what you didn’t realize, yeah, it was like, chapters over. And that kind of circles back to like me being selfishly, like capturing stories, right, like a capture. And so these are, these are other people’s stories. These are their worst day of their life. Right. I was just there. And I captured that and I stolen and put in put in writing. Yeah. And that’s been good for me and like, David’s probably faith for you, right? Like how I cope. Yeah, you know what, actually, I probably have the most common and unhealthy coping mechanism is burritos are huge. Those actually, if there’s like a disease that comes from eating Doritos, I haven’t. Like you can name it after me. I’ve eaten so many three of my wife bought me five burrito bags and frame them in the basement of our house. Like nacho cheese spicy Nacho Cool Ranch. I did not know that. He literally was just throwing Doritos out round. And I don’t know Okay, real quick sidenote. All right, when I was a kid, no. Here’s a real quick sidenote. I tell my kids this and they tease me out time like You’re that kid with a rat tail. I’m like, Shut the hell up. And I forget. And so here’s where it stems from. So when I was a kid, this is a Doritos comp. This is right off. I’ll get back to my coping in a minute. But when I was a kid, I tell my kids about the story, right? My mom would. So we lived in Joshua Tree they owned a locksmith shop. So every day I’d ride the bus to the locksmith shop. This was like pre sixth grade. I’d ride the bus to the locksmith shop. Like fifth grade. I’d sit there do my homework, get all that stuff done. Five o’clock, we’d lock up we drive to Joshua tree which is about 10 minutes away. We lived in a really small like 800 square foot home has one bedroom my my mom and my stepdad lived in the living room and I have the one bedroom and then we had a guest house that was like 300 400 square foot like small little like literally like kitchenette you know bedroom studio and then bathroom. And on the way home we would stop at Mike’s liquor in Joshua Tree I would get we get a bag of Doritos. I’d get either a king size Milky Way or king size Reese’s. I’d get like a big ol thing a Dr. Pepper or Mountain Dew we go next door to Paladin video I’d get some sort of like R rated like Steven Seagal like beat your ass movie. And then we’d go back home my wife, my my mom and my wife. Thankfully, she didn’t know me that little chubby kid were Husky shirts. So and she would go she like hey, do you want a dinner? I’m like Nah, I’m good. So I go to the back house and I’d pull up I pull up my pet rat Come on. Yes. So I had a pet rat named Splinter Yes, right. So imagine like fifth grade overweight me sit in a beanbag with my pet rat splinter and turn on my movie and just chow dude so I would just eat these Doritos whole batch as you feed them to the rat to I don’t know probably. But it was a badass rat anyways splits so I know that was that came from coping. I’m sorry. But anyway, no, I find it fascinating. There’s multiple layers of things I find fascinating. You as well it’s in a different direction. I still find it very fascinating and I had a rat tail at the time. That’s how back then in your defense I don’t know if you’re ever Cool. Well, they were effect they’re coming back they were a thing. I think you should regrow school it right. So anyway, is my coping mechanism either either way has been a lot of depression my whole life. Like I’ve really I’ve gone on these calls. I’ve done this stuff I’ve turned glorified firefighting into we don’t really do a whole lot to my family. I come home be like, oh, yeah, like they know. I love recliners. I know I love hanging out watching Netflix net binging? You know, I’d tell him hey, we watched the whole nine seasons of the office and three days like it was awesome. They know I go to the gym, they know I do those things. I tell him about some calls. Oh yeah, that’s cool fire. I didn’t tell him that. I pulled this kid’s cat out of the fire and had to throw it out to him. You know, throw it out in front of him. That was a bad one one time but like I didn’t talk to him about those things and how that meant stuff to the kid or how we lost somebody or how we had a family that just retired and had a rollover in a in a seminar and a u haul and they you know, they die. inside a fire inside a U haul, like I didn’t give those things they said, Oh, we had a vehicle fire. Oh, we had this like it was exciting, right? So for me, I suppressed a lot of it. And I just held on to it. And for you guys like I will tell you this is the first time I’ve like ever opened up to other people. But nobody’s sitting here. It’s just a camera. But for you guys, I’d open up and I’d tell you about that. That was the only time that I would unsuppressed anything as with my friends, a lot of times it came out as jokes, right? You’d go on a fire you deal with a dead family member or something. Maybe Maybe it wasn’t as traumatic. Maybe there’s somebody died in it, but there wasn’t somebody there to claim them. Right. And then you get back in the fire engine. And I’ve told people this a ton of times is that the things that I’ve said in a fire engine with my buddies, with Grant and Josh lot, Hauer coming back from you know, fire and needles. If people heard me say that, I think there’s a lot of people that wouldn’t like me. Same here, right? I’ve said stuff that. I wouldn’t say that I regret because it was my coping. It was my way of dealing with it, because it’s my burden to bear. But I know there’s people out there, they heard what I said, or the jokes that I made about somebody the slander or whatever it was, that they would be like, you know what you’re not, you’re not a person that I that I want to be around because that because they don’t understand. Right? But it was my way of saying like, hey, like, I gotta get over this because I gotta go to work. Yeah, I got shit to do, I got people to take care of, we’re gonna get a call in 30 minutes, and I gotta be on top of it. And if I don’t make light of this terrible situation, then I just have to suppress it. And I suppress it to the world. And I come home happy smiling so my kids can jump on me. But that was I mean, it’s an unhealthy thing, right? You trick yourself. You’re minimizing something that is traumatic in order to say, Hey, I’m good. I’m good. How many times you’ve done that? I’m good. I’m good. I’m good. I’m good. Like, I’m fine. I’m fine. I’m fine. Right? In reality, maybe not so much. But you’re convincing yourself. I attribute it to when I’m looking at the mirror and I drink way too much. It was like you’re not gonna throw up. You’re not gonna do it. Stop being a bitch. Throw up right now. Don’t you dare do it. Right. But you’re really it makes life better, rough parallel, but that’s the truth. You’re, you’re telling yourself, you’re okay. And sometimes it’s alright, as long as you got an outlet, right? Because I think if all that stuff sits, then all of a sudden, like one small thing is what breaks it and you’re like, Why am I being such a bitch about this thing or not? It’s like, you’ve you’ve held on to this for so freakin long. Though at some point in time, that’s going to have an impact. It took me a long time to decompress after like retiring. And getting out. Like I had to shut my brain off of like, I stopped carrying a gun for like six months. I was like, I got it. I couldn’t shut it off. Right? Like I moved up here. And this place is great for healing. Like I think a lot of guys retire and they come here. And they’re coming here looking for that like that solitude and place to heal. And I think North Idaho is great for that. Because there’s so much support, you know, it’s naturally beautiful. You can get outside you can do stuff. But it Yeah, took me like six months, man, I just I just like, I didn’t want anything to do with it. Stop carrying my gun, nothing. And then some time went by and I was like, okay, like, I think I’m good. I can come back to the world. And you know, now I carry a gun again. And I don’t like obsess over. Like constantly like, like I’m about to get into shooting because it was so engrained in my brain. Like, every second watching everyone playing the what if game what if this guy does that would have Holy shit. debilitating, crippling? Sorry, no, you’re still in the world? No, no, no, I get it. No, but what you’re describing I think a lot of there’s a lot of people that are probably listening to our podcasts that have that same thing where you’re walking around in the red, you know, your time you talk about threat levels, and that’s not healthy either. No, that’s not a position where you can actually respond accordingly to the threat that you perceive. Right. But if it’s wired that way, and it’s created a spot where you can’t be in anything but red when you’re conscious, like that’s that’s dangerous, too. You know, you can’t like it’s hard. It’s hard. Your family. Yeah. Like I’ve been my entire adult life. I’ve been like, surrounded by violence. Like, you know, I was I was a bouncer for six years. I was like, I was in that world con like fights constantly. Right? And, and so in my mind, my brain was just queued up for it, like all the time, just like shits about like always, like real violence is about to happen. And I’m not like naturally. Like I always tell people my parents are like hobbits do they’re really just good kind of people. I’m not I don’t come from that world. I didn’t have a hard childhood. So like I had to, I had to change my my life, my whole persona to live in that world. And it frickin took a toll on me, right? It’s hard. Yeah. No total shift from what it was totally. But I will tell you that, you know, it doesn’t necessarily go away. I can tell you that because you’re still in it. But I can tell you that, you know, it’s funny when I go out to eat with my wife and I always sit facing the door. Or I get somebody that comes up to me and inside a bar Nashville north. someone’s like, What are you staring at? Like, I don’t know, man. I’m just surveying the area and you were there and you have a face tattoo. When I don’t know, I just, it’s really like a you know, it’s one of those things that you are when I was. My kids say that my son said all the time, why are you staring at everybody because I don’t know these people. And I want to know what the hell they’re up to. Because I’ve been trained to walk into those places, even if it was only brief as a law enforcement officer buddies, and even as firefighters, right? PPE, personal protective equipment, environmental hazards, a number of factors mechanisms are additional reasons like all this stuff, where you’re like surveying the scene and you’re counting stuff out. Yeah, it doesn’t go away. It doesn’t. I cannot shake that I cannot go into I spent six years in the bars like that’s all I did. I didn’t you know, I don’t drink when I’m working at a bar. I’m standing in the corner and I’m serving a crowd waiting for some shit to pop off. Like, that’s all I did. And that’s what I did as a cop. That’s what I did it right. It’s like, and it’s I can’t shut that off. Yeah, sometimes when I want to get a little risky. I intentionally turn my back to the door. Like, let’s go. I’m gonna live on the edge. Aren’t you trying to get somebody while you’re showing homes? Are you getting real estate agents? So yeah, that’s a funny point. Right? You see those emails come out where like a female agents like this weird interaction. I’m like, I wish my fucker would try that. Daydream? I do. Going to single bathroom. And you’re like, maybe somebody’s hiding behind the door. Like, in this little part. Me. That’s like a walk. Yeah, right. You’re waiting for you’re waiting for a little girl walk in, but I’m walking in motherfucker, let’s party. Okay, there’s a partner. There’s a part that I’m walking in. Yeah, okay. Um, you know, what’s funny is like, I don’t, I wouldn’t trade it for the world. No, I cherish. I cherish these experiences I cherish in a weird way. Not like I’m creepy or anything. But I cherish those experiences like, people that do these jobs. People in the military, like, you, you literally walk on the edge of chaos, like that thin line between order and chaos on the daily basis. Yeah, and like, that’s a section of the human condition that most people don’t get to see maybe once or twice in their life, but we’d see it every day. And I fucking tears that a little bit. Like, you know, that kind of kind of makes me think like, we talked about, I used to have people say, Oh, dude, you’re wasting my taxpayer money. And when you Fuck you, man, check it out. I get paid for what, and you guys have heard this, I get paid for what I’m willing to do not what I am doing. If you see me sit in my fat ass in a recliner. That’s not what I’m getting paid to do. I’m getting paid from when your daughter’s inside a house. And you’re too scared to go in there that I’m gonna go. I’m gonna give it a shot. I’m gonna I’m gonna put my all at it. I’m going to be trained, and I’m going to be ready and I’m gonna go do those things. And, you know, that’s, that’s one of the hardest things for me is when, when people for what you’ve done and everything else on what everybody in the military done today’s D Day, right? June 6 1944. Like, today’s a D Day, people don’t have an understanding of what their freedom is and the things that they have in this world because people were willing to go die. 16 year olds were signing up for World War Two to, you know, to providing fake IDs that they were they were 18 years old, so they could go fight for their country while the country would live like, I mean, as as a man of faith, I look at it and I’m like, I always put everything on Jesus, right? I’m like somebody that died for you. Like owes you. You owe those things. You look at it, and you go like, man, you did something for me to sacrifice yourself so that I could live free. It’s the same thing with our men and women in uniform that have gone over there and done those things. Like they have. They have literally put their lives on the line and we forget you know, we watch all this stuff and like, Oh, dude, some people died and training and Twentynine Palms. Are you kidding me? Like, I don’t give a shit. If it wasn’t a war, those people were out there training so they can protect your freedoms, and they died. Yeah. But but instead we glorify you know, the dude that became a woman so he can win all the swimming competition, and I was so brave. He’s not brave. No, because everything that he has, he she, whatever the fuck it is. Everything that that person has is because there’s people willing to protect that freedom. And it’s been, it’s been a terrible experience in this time of life, especially for our kids, man, because people don’t realize how important it was to stand up for something that you believe in that’s almost shunned on to walk around carrying an American flag. That shouldn’t be the way it is. No. I think bravery is one of those words that has just been completely butchered. Right? Like when you think about what a hero is, we have such a glaring definition difference than what there’s then what’s put out on like mainstream media. I think it’s so important because it’s comes full circle, we were talking about being dead. Like how do you impart that on this generation, where their sources of influence are so heavy with with social media and all these different sources, telling them who heroes are like trying to reestablish what that word actually means? Because what we’re all talking about is somebody that’s willing to sacrifice something for your freedoms, right? How do you reestablish that in today’s climate, and just what you were talking about before with like, everything that I wouldn’t change Anything is weird looking back, there’s things that I’ve changed about what I’ve done. Right? And I’m sure all of us correct that. So there’s things that change about what I’ve done. But I wouldn’t change any my experiences because it’s makes me who I am. And I think it gives me a lot of perspective. So I tell kids, say, Get off the couch, stop playing video. Go out and make some damn mistakes. Make some fucking stories. Yeah, make some stories, make some mistakes go on fail. Failure and mistakes are a function of growth. People are afraid to fail nowadays. Yes, go do that. There’s just some things you can’t write f of femoral. Right. And don’t make that mistake. But there are some other ones. There’s some other ones, man, go out there and stay out a little deer, I’m gonna get in trouble. But go out there and stay out a little too late. You’re gonna mean go out, ride your dirt bike a little too fast. Right? Those that’s that’s live and go make a couple of mistakes. So it’s Father’s Day. Isn’t that the time that your son stays out a little too late gets trouble. And he comes home and you rip his ass? And you’re like, hey, you’re grounded for a week. Your wife’s there, right? I gotta I gotta set the tone. So your wife’s there and you’re like, You are grounded for a week. Don’t ever do that again. And your wife’s like, Yeah, you, you’re in trouble. And she walks into the room and you’re like, Oh, that’d be bro. Yeah, you know what I mean? Like a little bit in there, it’s bumped to like, Hey, if you’re not man enough to make a mistake and deal with the consequences, then you will account for very little in this world. If you’re not willing to challenge the system, if you’re not willing to step out and do something and say, yeah, there’s gonna be consequences of this. But you know what? I’m gonna do it. I’m doing it. I had this conversation recently with my kids because I was talking about Superman, because neither not I need to drive good. I was talking about courage. And I was like, do you guys think Superman’s courageous? And they were like, well, yeah, I was like, well, he’s not right. He can’t be hurt, right? It doesn’t take courage to do shit. When you have no nothing on the line. There’s no skin in the game, no skin in the game. I have seen count. And I’m sure you have to countless times where people that are myself and I feel like I should take a little more where people that like had no business. They are not suited for whatever they’re about to do and have stepped up and I’m talking about like civilians. Say it’s like a DUI crash with injuries like a felony DUI crash. And these like this skinny little nerdy old guy, right? He like detains a 300 pound freaking biker. Like, no business doing that. Yeah. But he stepped up and did the right thing. That’s fucking courage, right? He’s not suited for that task. He doesn’t have the tools on the tool belt. He doesn’t train, he doesn’t do anything. But he’s like, this is the right thing to do. I’m gonna step up and do it. And I’m willing to risk it and be willing to risk it. That’s freaking courage. You know, it’s an it we just had I just called a couple guys today. I couldn’t get a hold of him. But I’ll, I’ll keep trying. Just FaceTime him on here. Travis, Hey, Gary, John Miller, Jeff Allen, all these guys just promoted to BC battalion chief gun, so you didn’t forgive me for saying thank you block. Hey, I tried to call him today to congratulate them. And in the meantime, I got on. I got on FaceTime with my buddy Scott Abraham and Chris Snape today, both from county fire and these guys were on there. And Chris promoted to an heir to a captain and Abraham is also a captain. And it’s funny because it hit me because when you’re talking about this, like, being prepared for those positions, and those types of things, and having courage is that a lot of times it has to be it has to be something that is learned on the job. You don’t hire somebody because like, Man, you’re really courageous. I agree. You learn this on the job. And it was funny because these guys are all taking positions now where I’m like, Holy shit, like Travis, Gary’s a battalion chief, like, Dude, that’s crazy to me, because when I knew him, he was a firefighter. He wasn’t even a medic, right? Like he just he was the lowdown guy, and he was just the spaceship. Pretty good looking dude. Unfortunately, it was based off of that many ways. You know, Travis was just a fireman. And all these guys now promoted up into these positions of no authority within the fire department. I remember when I did, I promoted it like 3630 and a half since 2015. And I promoted up and I remember getting on a fire engine and all of a sudden were taken off to a call and I’m like, I’m in my hometown, right? I’m looking around I’m like, and I remember that the other guys that are all captains are Jay demoff. Steve Lasseter, Wayne Thompson, all these guys that don’t make sense to you. But they’re all older dudes, right? They’re all in their, their late 40s, early 50s. They’ve been around forever and they’ve been in charge and all of a sudden I’m in charge on an engine and I’m like, What? What is the city of Yucca Valley and Joshua Tree know that I’m like the person that’s going to pull up on scene and make a decision for them because if so, you know, like, there might be an issue and seeing all these guys take off. It’s like man like they’ve they’ve learned through the process and they’re now stepping into new positions where they just have to be courageous. They have to make those decisions based off of something they don’t know. They think they know by a book by They’re now going to have to be the person to make those decisions. And not only that, they have to look like it. Everybody else out there needs to believe that they are confident in what they’re doing, even if they don’t know shit. So good thing about me and Eric, is that we’re both small. I know I look smaller on here, but honestly, I’m half an inch taller than Eric. So they’re not that small. Just to give you an idea how the camera angle works, but you know, I grant my buddy, he’s six, four. He looks like Ivan. I’ve told him though the same person just Oh, yeah, yes. Yeah, grant. So we would pull up on calls and everybody I remember. Collins in the guts screaming at us. I hear my arms just screaming at us. And he walks right past me and goes right to grant starts screaming because I’m the engineer. And I’m like, no, no, you’re the captain. Right now. You’re in charge. It’s big dudes. And bald guys. Like bald guys. Get that same material. It’s weird. It’s like, there’s sorry. I know. You’re not bald. But you could join the Club. We can do that. But there’s there’s an Instagram story. Try it. i It’s definitely. BC has reminded all the time daddy look bald. Thanks. Thanks. Your phone’s gone for another week? Should I just gratulations thank you for promoting me to achieve. Deal with it. There you go. After retirement? It is what it is. Man. Did my phone’s on silent. Who says that? About that was? Yeah, I guess like, part of my intention here. I don’t know what my intention was. But I apologize if you’re out there. And you’re traumatized from this talk. But I think this is good information. And like, if kids are listening, or young adults, at least, like go out there. And like these experience, like we said, These experiences are traumatic, but like I wouldn’t change. I wouldn’t trade for the world. No, I like I live in life. I stood in Oakland, California and watch that city burned and like sea otter dev in there for that right. But what perspective that gives you, you’re actually talking intelligently about where you want to live. Right? Right, where you want to be in the community, you want to be a part of, yeah, because you’ve seen all that. And I wouldn’t have half of that without the perspective that I’ve got from some of the things I did some things I saw some of the things that I went through. And that’s why I tell kids, whatever it is, like you’re 1819 years old, if you were like me, and you had no idea which I still don’t know what I want to be when I grew up, but you know, if you’re 1819 and you don’t know that’s okay. Go out and see the world. Go out and get a job. Get up at 5am. go bust your butt all day and then go maybe make some poor decisions that night, nonfederal, but make some poor decisions that night, right. But go out and live a little bit. Give yourself some perspective. So when you make that decision about where you want to raise your family, you can actually talk intelligently about it because you’ve lived places and you’ve done stuff. Yeah, I disobeyed everything. My dad told me because when I was young, he’s like, man, don’t, don’t get into construction. He’s like, just don’t do it. Don’t do this. Don’t do that. And I did all that. I told my son, I’m like, man, here’s all the things I did. And I like, I shouldn’t have done them. But I tell him the same thing. Don’t do that. Like there’s a better path. But in reality, he’s probably gonna do all that. So really good idea. I’m gonna go and tell my son. Hey, you what you should do? You should definitely go get arrested. Yeah. All right, you should go get arrested. super low paying job. You know, I mean, like, That’s it, you should definitely talk back to your mother and be like, I’ll show you. Straight pain. I do want to say something, though, for all like, we’re probably talking to our base where everybody’s got some stuff. I know what story you want me to tell them away? I’m not ready for that one yet. But I truly, there are some tortured souls out there from these professions. Huge shout out to those that stayed with them through 100% I would not be where I am without the support system that I have at home and her ability to check me or call me up and say, Hey, you’re on a bit of a bad one. Yes. I think a lot of us what I’ve come to realize that I don’t think I’m unique. And that when I go down that path, you get self destructive really quick. Yeah. And you’ll start to erode or try to destroy things that you built. Right? And if you got that partner that to me, like, whoa, hold on, hold on. Yeah, you’re you’re good dude. Because sometimes I think you just start torturing yourself. And you’re like, how good am I right? Like, what have I done? I failed at this. I failed, right? Sir, I’ve messed this up. I could have saved that person, whatever that is, man, huge shout out to the spouses and those that then that support system, whether it’s a spouse, or whether it’s a parent, I’m extremely lucky to have a good one, dude, like good support system where they can, they can call me up. That goes a long way. And if you don’t have that, you know, rely on your brothers and sisters from that world. And honestly, I’ll put it out there. And I’m sure you guys feel the same way. Like, I don’t care if you live in Texas, and you’ll never buy a house in North Idaho. If you got some shit and need to talk, like, shoot me an email call me. Yeah, so we’re all the same. I’m 100% happy to help out in that regard. Because I think we’ve all just established that like, we’ve been there mentally, and we’re not perfect, and there’s plenty of these that I didn’t handle the right way. And it’s taken me a while to figure out how I can, how I can internalize and handle them the right I would be interested. Yeah, you know, spouses are so huge. I’d be interested to see if we put all three of our spouses on here. And they talked about the difficulty of having to deal with us coming it’d be like a four hour podcast. It wouldn’t be a super interested and they probably all handle it in different ways. I know Kristin, my wife, she, she just tuned it out. She like, pretty much shut out my job. She never asked about it. She didn’t like and, um, you know, I tell her stuff. And if I needed to or not, but like, you know, I worked graveyard seven years straight. And it was like, she just was like, I just, I just wrote it off. In my mind. I didn’t even think about it. Yeah. Because if you if you as a spouse, go down that road and start thinking about it. You’re like, Oh, my God, like, what are they doing? Like, if you only frickin knew, right? You’d be freaking out. And I will say like, how to spousal advice or anything else. But for the guys, especially. Something that I remember I’ll tell a quick story about my my wife is that I used to come home and right, I’d be gone for six to eight days, right? I’d miss birthdays and miss all sorts of stupid shit. This is why I’m not a fireman anymore. But I would miss all this stuff. And I’d come home after, you know, six or eight days, my wife’s been dealing with the kids do the running rampid like the house is freaking destroyed. Like, it’s just chaos. And I’d come home as a husband as a doer, right as a fixer. If you guys have ever seen the nail video, I’m here to fix things and make it right. So I come in in a loving way. And I would I remember I’d come home and my wife tells the story completely differently, right? She says it from our side. Sure that I’d come home and I’d be like, Hey, dude, this house looks like shit. My wife has got her ass kicked. Yeah, for four days, six days, eight days, I’d come in and I’d start vacuuming and start picking up books or doing laundry to start doing all this stuff. And I know you guys are like, how do you I’m helping my wife. Oh, you’re not? No, no, you would tell me she’d be like, am I not? Am I not good enough? And I’m like, What? What are you talking about? She’s like, You got to come home and you got to fix everything. Like I haven’t been doing a good enough job. Like Lloyd every day. up like, holy shit. Like I didn’t realize that at all. Like I’m coming home trying to help right? Yeah, dude, for for those men, especially that are coming home to law enforcement, military wife, I don’t care if you’ve been gone for four days or four months, you come home to your family. It is so important to live in the chaos, to just walk in and say everything is okay. And I’m okay with the way that this life is. Because your family has lived and learned to live without you. for X amount of days for X amount of months. They’ve learned to become accustomed to not having you around to make decisions, to clean things to help things to fix things. And now you’re coming in in your mess and shut up. Okay. Schubert right. You’re preaching to the choir brother. Like there are people out there hearing that and they’re like, holy shit, that’s exactly what happens. So you’re right, because you think you’re helping right? You think you’re Hello, come home and sit down with your wife and be like, Hey, how was your five days of chaos while I was gone? Yeah. What do you need? How can I help? Hey, can we just spend some time together? You know what? Take your wife on a date before you start cleaning shit and fixing everything in the house and you just know they’ve How many times have you regretted that three minutes of absolute ecstasy? Or since I’ve been gone? How many times have you regretted your decisions? Your poor choice and you’re welcome for my service. That that was literally the best marriage advice you could give anyone that is in that world? Yes. 100% you because I have I didn’t understand. I’m like I did the same things. And you know pretty much cleaning to be honest with you but my wife does does that really well. But still same like going in and trying to like parent the kids or do this and it’s like it’s exactly the same thing. Same reaction to and I was wrong. doesn’t even need it. Oh this big? Oh god, I get accused of mansplaining frequency. Oh, I know that clearly. So we can hear you mansplaining never heard that before I got Oh, I get I get an 100% guilt. Shock everybody. I’m a talker. Okay, all right. So my wife’s dropping stuff on me. I’m like, what what mode do you go into when she’s like, Oh, this happened this happened this I’m fixing that. Yeah, fix it. Felix right here. Here I go. I’m gonna explain the shit out of some stuff. I’m gonna fix all your problems. Guess what it doesn’t do doesn’t fix goddamn thing. Sometimes just shut up. Be like, I’m sorry, babe. I know. It’s tough. Like I can only imagine you know what I mean? But I do that all all time doesn’t help. Still do it. Looks like I’m then another tip, don’t accuse them of low mansplaining because you think it’s pithy and you don’t do that? Good read torque. These are good luck don’t do it. Whoa man. Hey, babe, you’re well mansplaining this to me. It sounds funny. Probably not to hurt my mind designs. Yeah, yeah. Okay, so it has saved I can’t remember. Well that was just a thank you. Thank you. Oh do it what not to do that is yeah that is awesome but anyways there’s some marriage advice advice for everybody Yeah cuz there’s I mean we could we get we deal with a lot of young obviously you new young cops yeah we get a lot of our people moving up here like ladder rolling to the departments up here I think we’re probably the number one recruiter for all the departments up here are real estate team just by the way that’s good advice for them. So if you’re out there and you guys are listening like and you’re young you get you’re in your marriage and your cop like freaking pay attention. It was a really good dude that listens to this podcast I’ve been in conversation with for the last week dropped his it dropped his app two day Oh, super pumped for not gonna see from SEO. My bad boy. Jack, if he’s watching. Yeah, we want you up here on a sidenote like, I think we are. We are very responsible for stalking the police departments with solid people up here. Yeah. Which is great for the community. By the way, if you are like a hard charger, you know, a good human being and want to do police work and affect your community in a positive way. Come on up. Do you want to hunt felons, like get be creative and continue to push crime out, man? Well, I love the fact you know, as real estate agents, you typically only have some things to offer. Right? Yeah. Hey, how can I help you get into out so like a cop? Would you like me to post trash sale? But the truth is, is I love the fact like the guy, you’re talking about the fact that he called us about moving up here. And then we were to say, Hey, so what are you looking to do while I’m looking to transfer? You know what? Let us put you in contact with Eric real quick. We talked to Eric right and then finding out what he does. And you’re like, Oh, hold on. They are Claire’s are quite the email he sent me the other day, it was just like, dude, Eric has me pumped about Cordyline PD. And I’m psyched. And I’m putting in nap like that was cool. Yeah, it was, it was cool. Because you know what to sell in houses? Who cares? Like the fact that you can see people come up here and do a freaking badass job as and somebody that’s willing to do the job that we don’t do anymore? Right? You still do it. But the job that we don’t do anymore. There’s so many that come up here and to fill the gap to be willing to do those things. It’s good, dude. That’s badass. Yeah, like that is worth every bit. Well, you guys are truly still impacting the community because obviously, the following for this podcast is a lot of first responders and a lot of retirement and even when you’re retired, that’s still bringing really good people up here. What I’ve noticed is we are the number one retirement place for military and first responders in the country per capita. Right? It’s not really 100 per se, I keep saying yes, it’s on the internet. It’s totally true. If we ever defund the police. This place will be the safe area. I’m like, Alright, let’s define them. I mean, I’m sorry, Lee. But yeah, if everybody leaves, criminals would be way less comfortable. Yeah. Like we’re the ones keeping the wolves at bay. All we need. All that’s left is to get me and Dave deputized. Just no no, I asked him today I asked you for an assignment What was you wanted to go do Capitol was a Pio traffic recruitment graphic. Yeah, I know. You want to run traffic. You just wanted to sit there and run through me and David, no, no, hold on, hold the car together. I don’t want to be shit, bro. I don’t want to be a traffic guy. But I told you I’m so tired of driving to work in the morning. I got this because I come to work in the morning because I want kick ass and I want to do good. And I’m driving to work in the morning and to see these people that I can 100% say that if I was a cop, I could get you for a misdemeanor reckless driving. Right? And to see these assholes drive down the road. I’m like goddang give me an an unmarked patrol car. Sheriff PD I don’t care what it is. I will go back to work and I would gladly how many I don’t care. I don’t care. But it kind of decreases competition. So I might be I might might be ready to get back just tell you that but I will tell you what these people that are assholes that drive like idiots down here. I would love to be an unmarked car and just get them and just be like, you know, hey, I could just give you a misdemeanor citation, but I’m gonna take you to jail. Yeah, we’re gonna go to jail because you’re a piece of shit. And we don’t want you here. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve reached up for the lights that are not on my dashboard. Like some crazy happens I’m like, and my kids like what are you doing? I’m like I was getting I was gonna change radio. Just changing. I’m trying to get as deputize I am like I want to have Norris has not listened to I haven’t hit him with it yet. But like I have this whole plan as far as like we’re like, we’re like number one. Recruiters do like it’s fine. I already sent Norris made. He was like, hey, I’ll recruit you guys today. And I’m like, I actually still have my special deputy card that you It’s not unexpired. I still have it. Yeah. Doesn’t say expired. It’s so special deputy. It’s a terrible photo. My wife got so mad at me when I told her that this plan of me getting deputized. She’s like, What is wrong with you? I’m like, I don’t know. Like, it’s in my blood. And I like I miss it. I don’t want to go work patrol all the time. But I just want the badge and like, if shit goes down, like I’m gonna go, yeah, just like That’s stupid. You gotta take care of family. I’m like, yes. Yes, one Hudson is old enough. Now he can he can run a gun and he can handle business. And do like, if I’m not willing to step up, then why should I expect anybody else to right? It’s funny. I think there’s a part of me that might just be a little bit different still, like caught up in my earlier years? Because I still catch myself. Tell me if any of you do this. I’m in a marked patrol car on patrol. Right? And I’ll look in my rearview mirror and see a cop car behind me. I got my first like internal react. I still catch myself as like, you can’t You’re not only a cop, you’re the sergeant. But I still see a cop or a seatbelt on. Always words policy always. pulled over by SB I didn’t know the guy really sat me down. I’m like, God, dang it. And he stopped me and he’s like, Hey, license registration proof of insurance. I go you know, honestly, I said my license in the middle console with my firearm. So I said I don’t want to reach in there. I don’t feel comfortable. And he’s like, Okay, you might give me information. I hear ya. I go it’s male out of Idaho. Alaska Father Frank Adam Lincoln. They didn’t ever Robert. First of David middle Michael common said in 1983. It’s like God, who do you work for? I don’t work for anybody anymore. I’m just giving you the information. He’s like, Have a good day. Thank you. I was not accurate. Dave’s like hey, by the way, you’re looking for a house where you really creative. I’ve never thought of doing it that way. It’s phenomenal. That’s reach for my firearm. I don’t think that’s a good idea. That one like okay, but the whole phonetically selling out your name? Absolutely. Genius. Breakout. I’m like, I’m like, Robert. Not kidding. We are not going to shameless business plug here. The dude is a straight up hustler. Like, when you get one of us, you get all three of us. David’s like the closer and the hustler admin negotiator. He’s doing that right now. It’s ridiculous. If you’re watching this, and you wonder what we do, like we all do real estate now. And I would love to say that we all were still serving in some capacity. And as a first responder, Eric’s the only one doing that. But the truth is, is that we have a passion for people that are first responders, and that are military and veterans. And we go out of the way to make sure that we take care of you. I mean, if we weren’t good at our job at what we did, then we wouldn’t be successful in this in this business. But we are. And that’s something that we really tried to do. And honestly, so when I met Seth, I’m just gonna go into the story right now. When I met Seth, we did a deal together. And they were both law enforcement. You had account, couldn’t you county die, I had a quarterly PD guy, and I sold the house to you. And I called Seth and I’m like, Dude, that deal was really smooth. Like you were great at communicating. That was awesome. Then he had this random idea to move to Alabama, which you’re an idiot. But you stayed here in Alabama. And later on, we decided to join to join forces and make this group your North Oh, agent. And I told him I said, Hey, dude, I got this guy. That’s at PD. And I go, he doesn’t know shit about real estate. He doesn’t know anything about real estate. Little more now know, one of our trailers. gave us some really, some really good lessons. So yeah, but I was like, Hey, I got this guy, Eric. And I’m like, he was my FTO. And I’m like, the guy’s one of the top, the top law enforcement officers around here. He’s just phenomenal. He did a great job. He was, he’s one of those people that I would trust, right? And I told you about that. I’m like, Dude, this guy will bring value. Even if he doesn’t know about real estate, he will learn about it. And he will have the desire to be good at real estate. So that’s what we’ve kind of formed like we have we’re all we got active duty military, active duty law enforcement, former fire a former military, former California Highway Patrol, ticket writer. So be honest, but the truth is, is that that’s our passion. Like we want to work with families and with people that are military veterans, first responders will work with anybody. But that’s the type of integrity that we try to have, we try to have people that are that understand that we’re gonna go the extra mile form that we’re going to work as well as we can, even if it means that we have to do something that is against, you know, financially, not in our best interest, or at least in in the client’s best interest that we’re going to do it. And then we’re going to look out for people and I think that’s really important. And people I want people to know who we are and the fact that you know that life experiences and everything else translate into something that we can do a really good job in another area because we competed for our jobs. Yeah, you had to you weren’t you didn’t know how to be a cop. You didn’t know how to be a cop. You didn’t know how to work on a nuclear submarine. You didn’t know how to do those things. But you have the you had the mentality where you could go to work and you could be trainable and you could do a good job and you were aggressive. And you know in this job in the same thing, like we do our very best to be aggressive and to be top of the market and do a good job. So that is one thing like if you’re a military, military law enforcement, first responder, anything else, like we want to connect with you, regardless of whether or not you want to move here, or whether you have questions about this area, or whether you just want to talk with us, like, come talk with us. We’re 100% down for that. Yeah. 100% I couldn’t say anything better myself do. Thank you. You’re welcome. Here’s what’s cool about this, we get a lot of you guys to call us and reach out. And you’re just talking about moving up here potentially, sometimes that turns into homework, just so badass. But if not, not that big of a deal. I think we take that personally, we take personal ownership of each of those interactions. Yeah. So there will be like a vigorous pursuit of representing you, to the point of sometimes people, not always complimentary calling Dave a bulldog. That works out in your benefit. So he’s talking about other agents that have to deal with us. Yes, it’s a good time. Well, gentlemen, it’s been an hour and a half on that note. I know. It’s, it’s 547. So we get you out in time. I don’t know what about your to have softball with a bunch of guys from Kern County Sheriff right now. Beautiful. But before we go, honestly, D Day. Thank you. I don’t know how many of you are left out there. But I know I was in the ambulance. One day was a guy that, you know, he he was missing a leg and I asked him, What did you lose that like, and I remember this, he said February 23 1945. The reason I remember that is because that was my dad’s birthday. And I’m like, you lost your leg, protecting this country and building this country. On the day that my dad lost is the day that my dad was born. The only reason he was able to be born in hospital and taken care of, and that I’m able to survive is because of what you did in the military. So today, for June 6 2023, we just want to say thank you to everybody. 2024 sorry, house, correct? Yep. Thank you. I don’t want to ruin the moment though. That’s fine. Okay, we’re in the moment. For any of you that were in the day, if there’s any of you listening, or any of you that had somebody that was in that time, or, you know, around, and by the way, February 23 1945, was the day that they that they raised the flag that that symbolic day where they raised a flag on Iwo Jima. That was the day my father was born. And that was the day that I had a father to where I could be born to where I can live the way that I do. So thank you to every single veteran, everybody that’s in military that served for us. That was that’s listening to this, obviously, you made it home to your families, but so many didn’t. And I just veg I just visited Arlington National Park, National Cemetery cemetery. And it was breathtaking. So for every one of you that has served every one of you that is that had been a first responder that has served your communities. We appreciate you so much. So thank you. Yeah, I hope you guys got something out of this. I, my intent today was to talk about things we talked about and kind of share some of these stories. And like, I think I think they’re important to hear. And like I told you earlier, I’m a selfish collector of stories. Thank you was awesome. They may end up in a poem someday. And I’ll say this, if you guys when you talk, talk about DJing. That’s a lot of that if you’re trying to like me, and you get a little bit of that sick feeling in your stomach because you’re concerned about where the country is going. If this venture with you guys in this podcast and the conversations we’ve had tells me anything, there’s a lot more out there like us. There are a lot more than you think. So appreciate those guys that were real true true Americans and made this country what it is. Still those of us out there. Hell yeah. Fight. Keep fighting the good fight. Thank you all. Thanks, guys. Yeah, thank you kitchen. So this podcast is brought to you by your North Idaho agent. We are a full service Real Estate Team serving all of North Idaho. Our team is comprised of former first responders and veterans and we have years of experience in all aspects of real estate purchase and sales. From bare land to new builds condos, commercial and resell. We have your back. To ensure a safe, smooth and profitable transaction, be sure to subscribe to our real estate YouTube channel called the North Idaho experience and check out our website at your North Idaho agent.com. It’s an excellent resource to learn more about North Idaho. So if you’re looking to move right now, or 12 months from now, give us a call text or email. We don’t just sell homes, we sell the North Idaho experience. Thank you for listening. If you enjoyed this podcast, the greatest compliment you can pay us is to like, subscribe and share
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