Speaker 1: This is the meat Eater Podcast coming at you shirtless, severely,
Speaker 1: bug bitten, and in my case, underwear listening podcast. You
Speaker 1: can't predict anything. The Meat Eater Podcast is brought to
Speaker 1: you by first Light. Whether you're checking trail cams, hanging
Speaker 1: deer stands, or scouting for ELK. First Light has performance
Speaker 1: apparel to support every hunter in every environment. Check it
Speaker 1: out at first light dot com. F I R S
Speaker 1: T L I t E dot com. Joined today by
Speaker 1: my neighbor but not Pottery Pat. Further down the road,
Speaker 1: Reverend doctor Shane Yates, CEO and co founder of Task
Speaker 1: Force Heroes, who, uh, send us his h upon our request.
Speaker 1: He's not bragging, send us his like military CV that
Speaker 1: goes on and on, Chilie, what's your take on that?
Speaker 1: He just, Shane says, just demonstrates that he's old.
Speaker 2: Yeah, we were talking about you know how they change
Speaker 2: things like for an example, like uh, for a lot
Speaker 2: up until like from two thousand and one, like I believe,
Speaker 2: like twenty fifteen, twenty sixteen, twenty seventeen, somewhere in there,
Speaker 2: like they called it Operation Enduring Freedom, which means like
Speaker 2: the campaign in Afghanistan and then in sixteen or seventeen,
Speaker 2: they change it to Operation Resolute Support. So like it
Speaker 2: just kind of signifies like things are constantly changing. So
Speaker 2: though I don't understand most of what it's on there,
Speaker 2: it's like I'm sure there's something similar that.
Speaker 3: I could probably relate it to.
Speaker 2: But like I look at it, I'm just like, yes,
Speaker 2: I would refer to him as stacked, soa which none's yeah.
Speaker 3: Yeah, so when I when I.
Speaker 2: Say st act, it's like you look at his like
Speaker 2: his his achievements and medals, and like your stack is
Speaker 2: like your your ribbons and medals, and so if you're stacked,
Speaker 2: you have a.
Speaker 4: Lot of them.
Speaker 1: Brown Star Medal with Oak Leaf Cluster, Combat Action Badge,
Speaker 1: I Raq Campaign Medal with two Brown Stars, Afghanistan Kane
Speaker 1: Pain Medal with two Brown Stars, NATO Service Medal, National.
Speaker 1: I could go on and on.
Speaker 4: He loves he loves it. I don't like it, what.
Speaker 5: I know, jumping out, but I'm not sorry at all.
Speaker 1: Born and barn and codyak Alaska. Let me let's take
Speaker 1: this approach. Born and cordyak Alaska. Uh A long career
Speaker 1: in law enforcement.
Speaker 4: Yeah, it was, actually I was born in that might change, Oh, sorry.
Speaker 4: I was born in Sino, Oh, California, but spent most
Speaker 4: of my life growing up in Kodyak got it.
Speaker 1: And then longtime law enforcement in l A. P D.
Speaker 1: Eli cheff l a shrif and then it don't make
Speaker 1: us up with LAPD A sheriff Yeah yeah yeah, and
Speaker 1: then long long time in the US Army. Yeah yeah,
Speaker 1: I went in a little older. Uh.
Speaker 4: And again I'm still in so I'm not here representing
Speaker 4: the army, but I went in after after law enforcement
Speaker 4: as a as a chaplain. Just kind of an interesting change.
Speaker 4: And and yeah, I've been doing that now for almost
Speaker 4: eighteen years.
Speaker 1: In that up the Shane lives up the road for me,
Speaker 1: and well it not lives, but Shane's organization, Task Force Heroes,
Speaker 1: is based up the road for me on a on
Speaker 1: a property. And I just became aware of Shane and
Speaker 1: wanted to have him on the show because of he
Speaker 1: does really cool work, which we're going to get into.
Speaker 1: Shane hosts. You tell tell everybody what you tell everybody that. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I wanted to do it like an intro, but I'd
Speaker 1: rather just hear it from you.
Speaker 4: Yeah. Yeah. So we bring up first responders and vets
Speaker 4: from all across the country. Uh, totally free. I mean
Speaker 4: guys and gals from various agencies. A lot of them
Speaker 4: been involved in some of the more major critical incidents
Speaker 4: that have gone on in the country. So we're blessed
Speaker 4: to do that. And then vets from all over the
Speaker 4: country as well, so police fire and either actively serving
Speaker 4: or veterans.
Speaker 1: Give an example, some of the groups you might have up.
Speaker 1: I mean, as much as you're comfortable. Yeah, you've at
Speaker 1: various times told me about groups you had in and
Speaker 1: it could be like a collection of officers who've been
Speaker 1: involved in a specific incident or how much are you
Speaker 1: comfortable talking about.
Speaker 4: Yeah, no, No, for instances, Yeah, we can talk a
Speaker 4: little bit about that. So we get a ton of
Speaker 4: for whatever reason, probably just something like connections in LA,
Speaker 4: but we get a lot of LAPD guys, a lot
Speaker 4: of Metro Division you know, Tier one level, you know,
Speaker 4: SWAT canine guys up, a lot of We've had a
Speaker 4: lot of hunted beach pilots, hunting beach PD folks, Long
Speaker 4: Beach fire from some incidents that occurred there and unfortun
Speaker 4: in an incident in particular where where a captain was
Speaker 4: killed on a fire by a pistol by a guy
Speaker 4: with the hang gun. And then you know, vets from
Speaker 4: all over the place and from multiple conflicts, mostly oif
Speaker 4: oef Iraq, Afghanistan stuff, a lot of pilots won, sixty
Speaker 4: of sore guys, just kind of all over all over
Speaker 4: the board.
Speaker 1: And these guys come up and they fish. You gotta
Speaker 1: shoot bows. You get outside. And as Shane puts it,
Speaker 1: he put it to me, the technical term he put
Speaker 1: to me, we shower them and love.
Speaker 4: Man. I mean, I think you know that. Here's here's
Speaker 4: the deal, right. The goal is to reach in and
Speaker 4: massage their hearts and love on them and meet them
Speaker 4: right where they are, not where we think they need
Speaker 4: to be, just just right where they are in their journey.
Speaker 4: And so we do fly fishing, right. We teach that,
Speaker 4: we do archery stuff. We used to do more mountain biking,
Speaker 4: but they seem to like the archery is probably their favorite.
Speaker 4: So we set up a course three D targets all
Speaker 4: at kind of long course and then uh, and then
Speaker 4: get them out fishing. And then we don't want them
Speaker 4: just to just to go have fun. I mean that's
Speaker 4: a that's a part of it, right, kind of decompress,
Speaker 4: get out of the concrete jungles that they're working in
Speaker 4: or wherever they're at. We want them to take home
Speaker 4: something as well for their toolbox and and uh and
Speaker 4: so we teach resiliency skills kind of the five pillars.
Speaker 4: We'll talk about spiritual resiency, whatever that looks like to them.
Speaker 4: You could also substitute the word resiliency for fitness, but
Speaker 4: spiritual resiliency, physical resiliency, emotional, social, family, mental, all those
Speaker 4: kind of all those kind of things too, So they
Speaker 4: learned something while they're there. And then we also give
Speaker 4: them a little shot of some leadership stuff. We talk
Speaker 4: about their core, their context, their capabilities, and courage. What's
Speaker 4: real courage look like? You know, where where are you
Speaker 4: going to stand up? And and and let's look at
Speaker 4: the times where you should stood up for what was right?
Speaker 4: And so we cover all those contexts. Would be where
Speaker 4: you're currently at in your life, your marriage, family, work capabilities,
Speaker 4: What are those God given gifts and talents that you
Speaker 4: have that maybe you're not using. What are the things
Speaker 4: that rob you of your energy man and drain you?
Speaker 4: And what are the things that you can do that
Speaker 4: give you energy. So obviously outdoors is one of those things.
Speaker 1: We're gonna dive into that pretty deep and then talk
Speaker 1: about your own background. But you got to hang tight
Speaker 1: with us. For men, we're gonna talk about a couple
Speaker 1: of other things. Yeah we have. This is a lot of
Speaker 1: times guys right in with like really arcane fish and
Speaker 1: wildlife rule breaking questions. Okay, all right, and so we
Speaker 1: gotta do a little listener feedback here. You're ready for
Speaker 1: this one, So this guy says me, eat or crew.
Speaker 1: I have recently watched your episode titled the Future of Waterfowl.
Speaker 1: The segment about how limits on waterfowl are decided remind
Speaker 1: me of a question I have had I have discussed
Speaker 1: with buddies while sitting in the blind. You're right for
Speaker 1: the Shane. I live in northern Kentucky, Alawn on the
Speaker 1: Ohio River. A lot of fishermen and hunters in this
Speaker 1: area purchase a Kentucky license as well as an Indiana
Speaker 1: license so that we can access the tributaries on both
Speaker 1: sides of the river. Most laws are pretty straightforward, but
Speaker 1: one area that is questionable are the limits for each state.
Speaker 1: For example, as a Kentuckian, we are allowed three Canadian
Speaker 1: allowed three Canada geese during the late season. As a
Speaker 1: hoosier in the Southern Zone, you are allowed five Canada
Speaker 1: geese daily for the duration of the season. My questions
Speaker 1: are as follows. As a Kentucky resident that holds a
Speaker 1: license for both states hunting on water that is legal
Speaker 1: for both states, what is my legal limit during the
Speaker 1: late season? Does it depend on which ramp you launch
Speaker 1: off or which states wildlife officer checks you?
Speaker 3: Can?
Speaker 1: I shoot a limit for both states. It's funny took
Speaker 1: it to a game warden, you did, Huh? I took
Speaker 1: it to a game warden.
Speaker 6: Well, yeah, it's funny though that he says that he
Speaker 6: purposely hasn't taken it to a game ward because he
Speaker 6: just loves talking about it and just wondering about it
Speaker 6: and riding into meat eater about it.
Speaker 4: Yep.
Speaker 1: It's like when I may go to the game warden.
Speaker 1: When I would send a question to a game warder,
Speaker 1: a game warden, it's like, uh, you know, well, let's
Speaker 1: say a fella, you know, just maybe.
Speaker 6: Happened before you give me answer. Can I take a stab?
Speaker 1: Yeah?
Speaker 4: I don't have.
Speaker 1: I have how a game warden, I asked a retired
Speaker 1: game recently retired game warden how a key were to
Speaker 1: handle it, and he gave me a couple of things
Speaker 1: to think about.
Speaker 6: Yeah, because they'll always tell you that it's up to
Speaker 6: their interpretation, right, But I would think I would feel
Speaker 6: like I would have a very strong case no matter
Speaker 6: which state I launched in, if I had the correct
Speaker 6: hunting license and he has both. If I went to
Speaker 6: the state where you could shoot more geese and I
Speaker 6: shot more geese there, not in the state where you
Speaker 6: could only shoot three, but where you could shoot five,
Speaker 6: which was in Indiana, and I shot five geese, and
Speaker 6: I came back to Kentucky. I was just over there
Speaker 6: hunting as a non resident hunter. As long as you
Speaker 6: could prove where you were and where you shot your
Speaker 6: five geese, it shouldn't be a problem. And it's a
Speaker 6: definite no on the question whether you can shoot two limits.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I'm gonna I'm gonna give I'm gonna offer and
Speaker 1: this I'm going to offer a couple little just a
Speaker 1: little color from different areas before I tell you what
Speaker 1: the game wardens said. He didn't say anything like you know,
Speaker 1: like like stunning, but like, let me give you a
Speaker 1: couple things to consider we might have discussed this in
Speaker 1: the original conversation. But like, for instance, take the Delaware River,
Speaker 1: which for a while along its course it forms the
Speaker 1: border between New York and Pennsylvania. They created a a
Speaker 1: sort of unified zone so that you didn't have New
Speaker 1: York law in that river, contradicting Pennsylvania law and that river,
Speaker 1: the two states come together and come up with a
Speaker 1: river bag limit. You can fish the entire river with
Speaker 1: either state's license, but then the river has a bag
Speaker 1: limit that sits aside. Like let's say New York is
Speaker 1: like six bassa day. Pennsylvania. I'm just pulling these numbers out.
Speaker 1: They're not real. Pennsylvania has four bassa day. And so
Speaker 1: instead of some guys saying, well do I get six
Speaker 1: or four, they go and say it in the river
Speaker 1: and that river we're gonna come together and say it's
Speaker 1: five in that river. That's one way to handle it.
Speaker 1: Another example that's totally different is if you go to
Speaker 1: the Saint Mary's River, which forms the border between the
Speaker 1: United States and Canada, particularly Michigan and Ontario. You have
Speaker 1: to like know in that river channel the international boundary
Speaker 1: runs up the river. You're obligated to know where you are.
Speaker 1: You're obligated to know like this line you can't see,
Speaker 1: it's your responsibility to know that you didn't drift five
Speaker 1: feet over into the US while fishing. Sure, and that's
Speaker 1: that's how they look at it. I had one more example.
Speaker 1: I thought it was kind of interesting about how they
Speaker 1: do all this. Well, here's what the warden said. The
Speaker 1: warden said, I'd be asking you. I'd be looking at
Speaker 1: two questions. Where were you what? Oh? No, one more color? More,
Speaker 1: one more bit of color. In Alaska, they do an
Speaker 1: interesting thing with this where it kind of pertains. Let's
Speaker 1: say that you have one air and you're lowed three
Speaker 1: black tail deer per year, and you have another area
Speaker 1: and you're allowed one black tail deer per year throughout
Speaker 1: the season. You can't hunt a place where you are
Speaker 1: over that place's bag limit, regardless of where you got them.
Speaker 5: Oh, collectively, So if you're in the three limit and
Speaker 5: you shoot one, you can't go hunt in the one limit.
Speaker 1: So so let's say like, let's say you are go
Speaker 1: down to the you go down to Sitka and you
Speaker 1: kill a black You kill a black tail, and then
Speaker 1: you go to your home and your home is a
Speaker 1: one bag limit. You're out in your home, you couldn't
Speaker 1: be like, well, I got my one there where it's three.
Speaker 1: It's like your possession limit follows you to wherever you go.
Speaker 1: So the warden that I brought this question to said,
Speaker 1: I would be looking at where were you when you
Speaker 1: shot him? Obviously, but then I would also be wondering
Speaker 1: I would be looking at too, is besides that where
Speaker 1: were you when you possessed them? So your thing of
Speaker 1: that you cross the channel and kill, you cross the
Speaker 1: channel in a place and kill five where you're allowed five.
Speaker 1: But then you're pulling out, you're still got your shotgun
Speaker 1: with you, and you're still look to be hunting, and
Speaker 1: you're and you're pulling your boat out in a three zone.
Speaker 1: He would feel that you were over your possession in
Speaker 1: the field, and it'd be like, well, I understand you
Speaker 1: got him over there, but here you're hunting and you're
Speaker 1: over your possession. And that's how that's his take on it.
Speaker 5: I feel like that's reading the rules in a way
Speaker 5: where you're, uh, you're trying to be like the most fair,
Speaker 5: like you're not trying to like advantage yourself in a
Speaker 5: little you know, like I think that's the right way.
Speaker 5: So I think that our our listener probably like deep
Speaker 5: inside his heart knows what the answer really is.
Speaker 1: So there. Yeah, and maybe the warden, like the warden's
Speaker 1: in a position where is he really got to go
Speaker 1: figure out where you were standing when you shot all
Speaker 1: these He's just like, dude, you're like, oh, in your
Speaker 1: boat hunting, you got your gun, you got five geese,
Speaker 1: you're here, Like you're here, you're over your limits.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 2: I also feel like it's a pretty pretty easy question
Speaker 2: to answer because I can I guarantee that he's not
Speaker 2: the first person along that river that has ever had
Speaker 2: that question and or maybe or not done that. No,
Speaker 2: so just called your f WP your game warden and
Speaker 2: ask him because I'm sure they've dealt with it before.
Speaker 2: So it's like I feel like he went out of
Speaker 2: his way to email us. What he could have just
Speaker 2: called the WP office and figured it out.
Speaker 1: Well, No, I think emailed because this is my favorite
Speaker 1: It's my favorite subject in the world, right, but like
Speaker 1: like just like weird game laws but.
Speaker 3: No, no, no, totally.
Speaker 2: What I'm saying is like he emailed with not knowing
Speaker 2: if he could get a response from you, but he
Speaker 2: could have certainly got a response from guaranteed response from.
Speaker 5: Yeah, but he's also contributing to our intent.
Speaker 1: I'm thank you very much, spite Chili. Spite Chili thinking
Speaker 1: that you like screwed up and yeah, man, come on, dude,
Speaker 1: good question. This next one we're gonna go to. We're
Speaker 1: gonna go to reverend, We're gonna go to our past.
Speaker 1: All right, here we go, because this is a this
Speaker 1: is an ethics one. Now, you got law enforcement background,
Speaker 1: so you could have definitely wighed in on law enforcement.
Speaker 1: We're going to bring an ethics.
Speaker 4: One to you, all right.
Speaker 1: We do a thing called We have a colleague called Chester,
Speaker 1: and Chester's the nicest, most fair guy in the world.
Speaker 1: So a lot of times we'll bring etiquette questions and
Speaker 1: we call hi, Chatticutt, and we'll bring him to Chester,
Speaker 1: who usually waffles. He's just like, well, you know, I
Speaker 1: can see both sides, you know. But here's an ethics
Speaker 1: one for you. All right, Hello, crew, you ready you're
Speaker 1: following chain.
Speaker 4: I'm following, Hello crew.
Speaker 1: I hunt rural South Carolina and my father in law's property,
Speaker 1: which is mostly open row crop fields with a few
Speaker 1: blocks of wood between fields you picture in it. My
Speaker 1: father in law in the late two thousands bought the
Speaker 1: land from his father in law. This sounds like a
Speaker 1: right thing for I haven't read this yet. This sounds
Speaker 1: like there might be a divorce brewing somewhere in this email.
Speaker 6: I don't think that fact is actually important to.
Speaker 1: The It doesn't wind up being about divorce. Okay, So
Speaker 1: just a little background. Father in law bought it from
Speaker 1: father in law. There's a guy that has half a
Speaker 1: dozen stands scattered across the property. It's roughly eight hundred acres.
Speaker 1: He also loans his spots out to his friends to
Speaker 1: hunt as they please. This guy theorizes that this individual
Speaker 1: is charging these people to hunt and has turned this
Speaker 1: land into a hunting club. My father in law has
Speaker 1: zero interest in hunting, so this is not really an
Speaker 1: issue for him, but it is for my wife, his daughter,
Speaker 1: and her brother, along with myself. So just to help
Speaker 1: people at home understand, the patriarch who actually owns the
Speaker 1: land doesn't care what this guy does. His children care.
Speaker 6: And this guy has no affiliation with the family other
Speaker 6: than he used to have access with the previous owner,
Speaker 6: father in law of his father in law.
Speaker 1: So let me continue on. He the patriarch does not
Speaker 1: want to complete kicked the guy off the land because
Speaker 1: he had permission to hunt there before my father in
Speaker 1: law acquired the property, so he feels that he should
Speaker 1: be allowed a couple stands, but only the one guy,
Speaker 1: not his buddies. Lots of feelings, lots However, the guy
Speaker 1: has never actually asked my father in law for hunting
Speaker 1: permission since he has been the landowner for seventeen years.
Speaker 1: I confronted the guy and drew on the map the
Speaker 1: one field about eighty five acres that me, along with
Speaker 1: my wife and brother in law were okay with him
Speaker 1: and only him hunting. He was not a fan of
Speaker 1: my suggestion and responded that he was gonna hunt the
Speaker 1: whole road, which is about four hundred acres. How can
Speaker 1: I handle this for the twenty twenty five deer hunting season.
Speaker 1: My wife is leaning towards calling the game warden. This
Speaker 1: guy points out, I don't know this will do much
Speaker 1: good because my father in law is not the guy
Speaker 1: kind of guy to press trespassing charges. Meanwhile, the brother
Speaker 1: in law wants to tear down the hunting stands. What's
Speaker 1: the cleanest way to avoid any larger issues, if there
Speaker 1: are any, it's pretty obvious.
Speaker 5: Its pretty dark.
Speaker 4: I think pop has got the last. Yeah, I mean
Speaker 4: that's about mine. He's barking up the wrong tree.
Speaker 1: He wrote the email to the wrong people.
Speaker 4: Yeah, he's yeah, I'm sorry, man. That's that's a that's
Speaker 4: an ethical that's a good one. I wish I had
Speaker 4: easy ones like that all the time. Yeah.
Speaker 1: It sounds like you gotta go talk to dad.
Speaker 4: And if dad's cool with it, then there. I mean,
Speaker 4: that's it.
Speaker 2: But isn't there like like if he got permission from
Speaker 2: you know, two owners ago, he.
Speaker 1: Would he would he's got his own problem.
Speaker 2: Well yeah, but he would also need to get permission
Speaker 2: again or every time, like under new ownership.
Speaker 1: Not a well not according to that guy, he has
Speaker 1: a task that he enjoys, a tacit permission from the
Speaker 1: father in law. Whatever's going on between the guy and
Speaker 1: the father in law. If the owner of the property,
Speaker 1: it's like, I don't want to mess with the guy.
Speaker 1: That's his call. Yeah, I got we got a funny
Speaker 1: story that's similarly similar to this where I probably I'm
Speaker 1: sure I've told this, but I'll tell it.
Speaker 5: Uh.
Speaker 1: A friend of mine had a friend of mine from
Speaker 1: school had a Her family owned some properties in California.
Speaker 1: I'm talking to her dad and her dad's like, yeah,
Speaker 1: you guys can hunt turkeys. He says, no one's ever
Speaker 1: hunting turkeys except for it. It was like, I'm not exaggering.
Speaker 1: Twenty years ago, twenty years prior, he had been trying
Speaker 1: to put in a water system he had. He had
Speaker 1: a pond, and he was trying to put in a
Speaker 1: wildfire water system of his own. So some guys from
Speaker 1: the local fire department came out and consulted with him
Speaker 1: about how to go about putting in his own pump
Speaker 1: system so that he could fight fire if his house
Speaker 1: was gonna catch on fire.
Speaker 4: Uh.
Speaker 1: And as a thank you, he extended a permission to
Speaker 1: one of these firefighters to hunt turkeys. He's telling me,
Speaker 1: no one's hunted it since that guy when I put
Speaker 1: the pumpin. While we're hunting. While we're hunting, we run
Speaker 1: into a guy and here's a guy hunting the place,
Speaker 1: and I'm and I you know, it's you always feel
Speaker 1: funny because like you're have permission too, but you can't.
Speaker 1: You got to like ask like, hey, what what's you
Speaker 1: know my understanding from the landowners. No one's hunting, but
Speaker 1: here's a guy hunting. So I'm like, hey, what what's up. Oh, yeah,
Speaker 1: you know, Glenn gave you permission. I'm a I'm a firefighter. No,
Speaker 1: you talk to Glenn lately. No, how is Glenn doing right? Hecks?
Speaker 1: This guy hadn't been hunting for twenty years off that permission.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I mean, I mean the right obviously. The right
Speaker 4: thing to do is you got you gotta be checking in, man,
Speaker 4: if you're hunting, some check in once in a while. Man,
Speaker 4: I mean, that's that's a no go. I mean that's like, Yeah,
Speaker 4: I talked to him when was last like, yo, it
Speaker 4: was back in nineteen seventy four, gave that's a bad deal.
Speaker 6: I think it's rampant though. Like we just I had
Speaker 6: a little bit of a wind fall with another property
Speaker 6: in Wisconsin that we just gained access to, and I've
Speaker 6: been kind of giddy about it. Then I started thinking
Speaker 6: about it. I'm like, you know, if everything's right according
Speaker 6: to these older Latvian gals that no one's been hunting
Speaker 6: this place for some time, it mean, and they haven't
Speaker 6: been there in years, and their kids don't have anything
Speaker 6: to do with it. Someone else is probably treating it
Speaker 6: as their hunting spot. Sure, like I will not be
Speaker 6: surprised when I go there this spring to find tree stance,
Speaker 6: maybe a camera, maybe some tire tracks.
Speaker 1: I think, yeah, it's the guarantee.
Speaker 6: It's the old uh you know, better ask for forgiveness
Speaker 6: than permission attitude.
Speaker 1: When we were little. Uh. It's stunning now to drive
Speaker 1: around where I live with with on X because we're little,
Speaker 1: if public meant you hadn't been yelled at there yet,
Speaker 1: and now to be like, oh my god, that's like
Speaker 1: a guy's place. I never really thought about what that
Speaker 1: place was. We just called it the woods.
Speaker 5: I'm surprised that isn't that people really don't check in more?
Speaker 5: And that's so common because you know you could get
Speaker 5: in real big trouble for trespassing, So don't you want
Speaker 5: to be I just feel like the excuse of you know,
Speaker 5: someone seventeen years ago gave me permission doesn't hold like
Speaker 5: the one consonant. Life has change, so you know, you
Speaker 5: don't want.
Speaker 6: To say real big trouble though, And it's just it's there,
Speaker 6: isn't the real big trouble. I mean, it's going to
Speaker 6: be a slap on the hand. It's like driving your
Speaker 6: ATV places you're not supposed to drive it on these
Speaker 6: public lands. People do it because what are they going
Speaker 6: to do. There's a couple hundred dollars fine, They're like, oh,
Speaker 6: I'd pay a thousand bucks and drive my Yeah exactly.
Speaker 5: Maybe they should. Maybe we should. Someone should think about
Speaker 5: changing the law because that's no.
Speaker 6: I don't know, criann more rules and regulations around these parts.
Speaker 4: People don't like that.
Speaker 1: Shane.
Speaker 4: You ready, Okay?
Speaker 1: Why'd you guys go to Kodiak? You were born? Where
Speaker 1: were you born?
Speaker 4: I was born in California, Southern California. How old I
Speaker 4: I'm going to fifty seven? How long you been married? Yeah,
Speaker 4: he's asked me these tough ones. My wife's gonna listen
Speaker 4: to this and make sure I get this right. I
Speaker 4: was married ninety two, so, uh what is that? I
Speaker 4: don't years?
Speaker 1: Yeah, thirty thirty three year gratulations.
Speaker 4: Yeah, yeah, she put up with me.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's the only wife.
Speaker 4: Rising, it's my only wife.
Speaker 1: Uh so why why Kodiak?
Speaker 5: So?
Speaker 4: My dad did contracts, some military contracts, was a builder, painter,
Speaker 4: did a lot of that. So, and and he had
Speaker 4: a buddy from uh, Vietnam. It was up there crab fishing.
Speaker 4: So he started doing construction stuff and then then he
Speaker 4: went crab fishing stuff.
Speaker 1: Yeah huh. And you were brought up around that. Yeah,
Speaker 1: had you finished? Had your dad been military he was
Speaker 1: in Vietnam? Yeah, yeah, yeah, talk about I've lost track
Speaker 1: of what it is. But but lay out your family,
Speaker 1: like you guys are a family of service man. Yeah,
Speaker 1: walk through that a little bit. It's kind of like
Speaker 1: when you're telling me it before I was like, I
Speaker 1: couldn't even follow all the people from your lineage.
Speaker 4: Yeah, so I'm not sure where you want me to start.
Speaker 4: But uh, grandparents served, you know, grandfather's, my dad served,
Speaker 4: I served. My three sons are serving, uh, two in
Speaker 4: the military, one in law enforcement, and then my daughter's
Speaker 4: in law enforcement, one of my girls. And then my
Speaker 4: other daughter. Ah, she's got two kids and she she's
Speaker 4: the only one that's not not serving. But she's she's
Speaker 4: low on the list for a fire department, so that's
Speaker 4: what she's gonna do.
Speaker 1: So that was a little bit baked in by your
Speaker 1: dad or no, Like he wasn't bitter about Vietnam.
Speaker 4: He didn't talk about Vietnam a lot. Man. I love
Speaker 4: my pops man. But he was always happy, right, like,
Speaker 4: always a happy guy, good mood, never cranky, never grumpy.
Speaker 4: Wouldn't really get too much into into Vietnam, but but uh,
Speaker 4: I just kind of watched him and in the little
Speaker 4: bits he would say just kind of always stood out,
Speaker 4: you know, to me as hugely important. He'd always talked
Speaker 4: about his buddies over there and different things like that.
Speaker 4: And he was a former law enforcement guy, so he
Speaker 4: started with California High Patrol way back in the day.
Speaker 4: So I watched that service a lot, and uh, yeah,
Speaker 4: that was kind of my my, my motivator, even even
Speaker 4: in high school, even a lot of Scott. I think
Speaker 4: I was only one of my buddies, and I'm tight
Speaker 4: with all my buddies from up there. Just a small town, right,
Speaker 4: you grow up island, right, I mean there's one stoplight.
Speaker 4: When I was growing up, we were excited to get
Speaker 4: a McDonald's and where I think in eighth grade or something.
Speaker 4: But I think I'm the only one that went into
Speaker 4: you know, military law enforcement type stuff. Out of that crew, yeah,
Speaker 4: out of that crew.
Speaker 1: And what was the first movie you made in that direction?
Speaker 4: Uh? What do you mean, what year do we go there?
Speaker 5: No?
Speaker 1: No, I'm sorry. When you were when you were young
Speaker 1: you got in law enforcement?
Speaker 4: Yeah, really young. So I left Alaska and I don't
Speaker 4: know eighty seven, but i'd go back up and fish.
Speaker 4: So the last place I fish was Bristol Bay Commercial
Speaker 4: gil Netty. You, Yeah, fish there. I fished kind of
Speaker 4: all over Alaska commercial fishing, salmon, harry and halibut openings,
Speaker 4: and then uh, and then after that went to school
Speaker 4: for a little while at Boise, stayed not long, and
Speaker 4: then and then went to went to La. I kind
Speaker 4: of wanted to see the action and and where it
Speaker 4: was kind of all happening, and I certainly got that.
Speaker 4: But yeah, got hired hired there in eighty eight.
Speaker 1: So what year? What year in La was the it
Speaker 1: was later the Rodney King incident and all that.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I was there for that.
Speaker 1: Ye did you specifically want to go there because of
Speaker 1: family ties into California just because you thought that was
Speaker 1: a place you were gonna.
Speaker 4: Well, it was, I mean it was. It's the largest
Speaker 4: sheriff's apartment, I believe, in the in the country, and
Speaker 4: it just advanced and I kind of wanted to see
Speaker 4: the inner city and and kind of go for the top,
Speaker 4: you know, toughest place. And uh, I was young and
Speaker 4: no responsibility at the time, so I went there and
Speaker 4: I was actually on Normandy when when the riots jumped off. Well,
Speaker 4: you know that Danny was getting kind of whooped up
Speaker 4: pretty good, just up at Florence and Normany. So I
Speaker 4: was just south on Normandy, south of Imperial, so we
Speaker 4: were fairly close. We didn't know he was up there
Speaker 4: getting whooped up on I was just handling the call
Speaker 4: guy get his car shot up this little housing project,
Speaker 4: and partner was down at the car. I was just
Speaker 4: getting the info and all of a sudden, doors started
Speaker 4: swinging open, and you know, certain things were being said
Speaker 4: to us, and so I just started jumping steps by
Speaker 4: every three or four steps you're back to the car.
Speaker 4: And immediately the riots just jumped off. So we were
Speaker 4: going south on Normy and the streets were flooding, and
Speaker 4: I mean it was like immediate. That's what was kind
Speaker 4: of wild to see just the immediate reaction of chaos.
Speaker 4: And I remember looking back and seeing just people in
Speaker 4: the streets, stores getting looted, and we were called back
Speaker 4: to the station to kind of gear up, and that's
Speaker 4: what we did. We geared up and they just said,
Speaker 4: do what you can do. Try to roll two cars deep,
Speaker 4: and so that's what we did for the next couple
Speaker 4: of days. So, yeah, it was different.
Speaker 1: Now it's just in your first few years of that.
Speaker 4: Yeah. Yeah, I had worked custody, you know, with the sheriffs.
Speaker 4: You got to work in the jails first, so that's
Speaker 4: kind of an experience. Yeah, I worked up at a
Speaker 4: super max facility and that's that's an interesting environment. You
Speaker 4: can kind of learn the streets a little bit from
Speaker 4: being in there, you know, talking to inmates and whatnot.
Speaker 4: But yeah, yeah, then you get you know, you put
Speaker 4: in your dream list or your wish list for I
Speaker 4: think back then it was six choices. So my first
Speaker 4: choice was to go down to South Central and work,
Speaker 4: and I got my first choice. So you can kind
Speaker 4: of watch your numbers as you get lower and lower
Speaker 4: to when you're going to go out. I did twenty
Speaker 4: eight months in the jail and then and then got
Speaker 4: to sign there. So then you go to patrol school
Speaker 4: and then you'll get your station and your trainee. For
Speaker 4: a while. That was an experience. I don't know how
Speaker 4: it is now, but it was humbling.
Speaker 1: Yeah, what was it like absorbing all that, you know,
Speaker 1: absorbing that hatred of cops at that time in l A.
Speaker 4: Yeah, man, you know, I guess it's it was. It's
Speaker 4: a little bit hard to understand. I mean when you
Speaker 4: roll into an area where you know it's it's painted,
Speaker 4: you know, spray painted certain words against the five oh
Speaker 4: or you know that kind of stuff. It was different
Speaker 4: from a kid that grew up in a tiny town.
Speaker 5: You know.
Speaker 4: That that that first night on patrol was it was wild. Uh,
Speaker 4: as a trainee, as a new new person. My f
Speaker 4: t O wasn there that night, so wrote to the
Speaker 4: different guy and and so back then it was you know,
Speaker 4: training was was hard and you're the new person, so
Speaker 4: you just keep your mouth shutting and.
Speaker 1: Do your work.
Speaker 4: And uh, but yeah, it was it was different. You know,
Speaker 4: I don't think it really affected me. I mean, you
Speaker 4: just do your job, just do your thing, support the
Speaker 4: community as best you can, support your your fellow fellow deputies.
Speaker 4: But it was definitely a different environment from what I
Speaker 4: had grown up in for sure.
Speaker 1: How do you how do you look at like if
Speaker 1: you if you look at the LA riots at that time,
Speaker 1: just it for for younger people don't remember this. There
Speaker 1: was an incident where it's like, if someone really wants
Speaker 1: to dig in on this made the documentary if you've
Speaker 1: seen it made in America that covers the l A
Speaker 1: Riots really care, it winds up being it's this very
Speaker 1: long ESPN thing about O. J. Simpson, but it spends
Speaker 1: a ton of time on the LA Riots. But right, so,
Speaker 1: a bunch of officers pull over a guy, Rodney King.
Speaker 1: He resisted to rest somewhat, they beat snot out of him.
Speaker 1: They got equated as that how it goes. Yeah, and
Speaker 1: then all hell broke lose, right yeah. Uh they chased
Speaker 1: him for for a long time. Yeah, yeah, somebody got
Speaker 1: on video.
Speaker 4: That's right.
Speaker 1: Yeah, back, this is back when everything wasn't on video.
Speaker 4: Yeah, no, it was novel. It certainly was after that.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Uh, how's that like? When something like that happens?
Speaker 1: For what?
Speaker 5: What?
Speaker 1: What's your attitude toward those officers? I mean, do you
Speaker 1: do you stay like, do you stay where you're going?
Speaker 1: You think yourself, well, I understand where they're coming from,
Speaker 1: I understand where they got pushed to. Or do you
Speaker 1: look at something like that when you're a policeman and
Speaker 1: you look at something like that and you'd be like, man,
Speaker 1: you guys should have known better, Like, like, how do
Speaker 1: you handle it? Internally?
Speaker 4: I think I think one of the biggest things is
Speaker 4: is you never know what's gone on prior to this, right,
Speaker 4: or or what the call was or or what's happening.
Speaker 4: I'm certainly not I'm certainly not justifying that the amount
Speaker 4: of force as used. I wouldn't there, you know, I don't.
Speaker 4: I don't know other than what I saw, But there
Speaker 4: there's always many details and conversations and things said and
Speaker 4: things done by the suspect as well as the as
Speaker 4: the cop that I think that that plays a huge
Speaker 4: role in all that you know, and and it's easy
Speaker 4: to you know, again, not that situation, but other situations.
Speaker 4: You know, you can see on TV and you can
Speaker 4: watch it, but who knows what happened prior to that,
Speaker 4: or what he was wanted for, or what his actions were,
Speaker 4: what he said, or what the witness said or all
Speaker 4: that stuff. Yeah, is a huge piece of the story.
Speaker 1: Yeah, And in those cases, that's the thing I always
Speaker 1: wind up thinking. I always wind up looking and him like, man,
Speaker 1: I would have to have like a documentary about what
Speaker 1: went on that day before I can really start putting
Speaker 1: together who did Right now that you see stuff and
Speaker 1: you're like it seems egregious, but then you're like, I
Speaker 1: don't know what the hell happened? Man?
Speaker 4: Right?
Speaker 1: Like, right, you know, I don't know the background, right?
Speaker 1: And why why is it being hard to weigh in
Speaker 1: on it?
Speaker 3: You know?
Speaker 4: Right?
Speaker 1: People are sure quick to right, But I always feel
Speaker 1: a little reluctant.
Speaker 4: Right, yeah. I mean and in the every you know,
Speaker 4: encounter with someone you don't know who you're encountering. I
Speaker 4: don't know what they knew about him or his background.
Speaker 4: I mean I've heard things, uh, but you know, all
Speaker 4: those things play a play a role. What was he
Speaker 4: wanted for? What was the crime committed? But again, I
Speaker 4: mean you do have to kind of kind of chill, right, Yeah,
Speaker 4: I mean you got to you gotta get to a
Speaker 4: point where you can you can function and take care
Speaker 4: of business without getting too caught up in the in
Speaker 4: the scenario. Yeah, I mean, that's that's my thought. But again,
Speaker 4: I wo wasn't there different department, So I don't, I don't.
Speaker 4: I don't judge any anything any anything going on there
Speaker 4: too much. I mean, it didn't look great right on film.
Speaker 4: It just it obviously didn't. So but not be there
Speaker 4: all I'll hold I'll hold my my judgment.
Speaker 1: So how long did you stay with LA Sheriff?
Speaker 4: So I was there from eighty eight to ninety six
Speaker 4: or so, and then transferred up to Washington State. I
Speaker 4: just didn't want to raise my kids down there anymore.
Speaker 4: You know, it's it's getting rough. It's getting rough. When
Speaker 4: I lived in a town and forgive me all you
Speaker 4: people from Palm Dell, Lancaster, but I was living ninety
Speaker 4: miles one way from from the station to my house.
Speaker 4: So you know, when you got court every day you
Speaker 4: got I was wearing graveyard most of the time. You're
Speaker 4: getting off in the morning, and then you got court,
Speaker 4: you're not coming home, you're sleeping in the bunk room.
Speaker 4: Then you're driving eighty nine miles home or you know,
Speaker 4: whatever you decided to do.
Speaker 1: That was a lot.
Speaker 4: And then when you're starting to get gangsters roll up
Speaker 4: in your in your driveway trying to oki dook the police.
Speaker 4: What I mean by oki dok is trying to know
Speaker 4: ack them or you know, not acknowledge them. Maybe they
Speaker 4: they're trying to pretend like they live at your house
Speaker 4: and you're getting woke up by someone trying to open
Speaker 4: your door and uh, and the deputies are hopper suit
Speaker 4: behind him or containments in your yard. It's probably time
Speaker 4: to hold And that happened randomly? Or does that happened
Speaker 4: to me three times?
Speaker 6: But they're not because you were a pot because you
Speaker 6: were a sheriff. It was just a coincidence.
Speaker 4: WHOA yeah, Then a different world. I mean at the
Speaker 4: station I work, we averaged about sixty six homicides a year.
Speaker 4: So it's a different environment, man, just different. But when
Speaker 4: that started happening, I mean, I I'd get message on
Speaker 4: my MDT, oh hey we got to containment. Guy just
Speaker 4: jumped your fence in your backyard and my wife's home
Speaker 4: with little kids. Nothing to do with you being a cop,
Speaker 4: nothing to do with it. He just happened to pull
Speaker 4: his caper somewhere close right, I mean, And that was
Speaker 4: his route that he that he took. So it wasn't
Speaker 4: the greatest area to live in, So I couldn't afford
Speaker 4: to live in some of the other other spots on
Speaker 4: a on a single incommon and so it was time.
Speaker 4: It was time a great apartment, great people, some of
Speaker 4: the best, my opinion, some of the best street cops.
Speaker 4: They're in this country, probably the world, you know, work there.
Speaker 4: What makes a good street cop, I think a guy
Speaker 4: that can communicate well, right, A guy that can I
Speaker 4: think also empathize, have compassion, but also be direct and
Speaker 4: can communicate, can kind of relate and communicate well with
Speaker 4: with the people in the community. Uh, you know, and
Speaker 4: that's I think those are those are huge. And I
Speaker 4: think there's also kind of a sixth sense, right, like
Speaker 4: you know, being able to see and watch and learn
Speaker 4: and pay attention to the small details and listen to
Speaker 4: the small details. And then time in the in the
Speaker 4: radio car, right, I mean you just you got to
Speaker 4: put in your time. And uh yeah, I think those
Speaker 4: are some.
Speaker 1: Of the some of the factors did things chill out
Speaker 1: When he went to Washington State.
Speaker 4: It was different. Yeah, it was different, a lot different.
Speaker 4: Cheaper live, you know, great department, great people, but yeah,
Speaker 4: police work done different, some of the laws are a
Speaker 4: little different. Uh you know, the environment's different, right, No,
Speaker 4: southwest Washington, Yeah, closer to Portland, so the whole environment's different.
Speaker 2: Was there like a big like mental shift from like
Speaker 2: working down in l A to like working up just
Speaker 2: like do your like combat mindset change and.
Speaker 4: Oh yeah, yeah, yeah yeah. I'm on a podcast, man,
Speaker 4: so I gotta watch what I said and have talked
Speaker 4: about this, right, what are we going to talk about it?
Speaker 4: Now we're sitting out of my place. I'd be telling
Speaker 4: you straight, huge mental shift, right, because you know, if
Speaker 4: you're working a known gang area, no narcotics area, there's
Speaker 4: there's things that are justifiable by the law that you
Speaker 4: can do in certain areas. Now I'm talking way back
Speaker 4: in the nineties. I don't know how it is now,
Speaker 4: so so forgive me. But you know you've made my
Speaker 4: ultiple rests at this location. You know there's no drug
Speaker 4: dealers in the area. There's all of these things that
Speaker 4: you can articulate that can help you deal with bad guys. Right,
Speaker 4: you don't you don't have that. Now you're in a
Speaker 4: you're in a town of where there's very few gangs,
Speaker 4: at least at the time. Drugs are everywhere, so so
Speaker 4: those are those are around. But yeah, you have to
Speaker 4: just your you have to slow down your role and
Speaker 4: you have to calm down, right, That's how i'd say,
Speaker 4: And I and I got told that.
Speaker 5: So, yeah, just a side question. When you were when
Speaker 5: you went from Alaska to California and then to Washington,
Speaker 5: did you pursue your outdoor activities as a you know,
Speaker 5: kind of release, release from what you were doing to
Speaker 5: have time to do that.
Speaker 4: Washington's great for I mean they got some good hunting there.
Speaker 4: Grouse of elkhonta there, deer hunt, all those things. I
Speaker 4: liked hunting grouse. That was fun. I mean, it wasn't
Speaker 4: Kodiak where when I think when I when I got there,
Speaker 4: I was really young, so I didn't start hunting right away.
Speaker 4: But before I moved there, i'd lived for a short
Speaker 4: time in Idaho, so you know, I started hunting with
Speaker 4: my dad. When I could hold he would tell me,
Speaker 4: when you're tall enough to hold on the belt loop
Speaker 4: with your finger of my belt area on my jeans,
Speaker 4: you can come with me. So I was like, all right, pop.
Speaker 4: So so I finally got to that point. It didn't
Speaker 4: take long because I'm pretty taller guy, right, So I'd
Speaker 4: hold onto the belt loop en roll with him. I
Speaker 4: had this old US Army canvas backpack and uh, and
Speaker 4: I'd have the lunches in there and a b begun
Speaker 4: and be rolling around, and for years the story about
Speaker 4: a b begun. I thought I actually killed this chucker
Speaker 4: one time with this BB gun, and I thought I'd
Speaker 4: heard my dad shoot too. But I was pretty young,
Speaker 4: and I got this thing with my BB gun. It's
Speaker 4: like forty yards away or something. My Dad's like, oh yeah,
Speaker 4: you smoked it. Great. For years, I believed I made
Speaker 4: this crazy shot. But as I got older, I realized
Speaker 4: he shot that doug thing. Let me think, all these
Speaker 4: years I shot that chucker. Yeah, I think staying involved
Speaker 4: in in in outdoor stuff. California's mostly quail. I dear
Speaker 4: hunted a little bit, a lot of bird huntings, just
Speaker 4: a little more accessible in time. You know, I'm so
Speaker 4: busy down there.
Speaker 5: Did you Did you ever come across roller pigeons? No that.
Speaker 4: I know a lot of animals too.
Speaker 1: I mean like it's street like, you know dudes that
Speaker 1: are into street pigeons.
Speaker 4: Oh right, but ye whole I got you.
Speaker 1: We were introduced. It's like pigeon fanciers Tyson Mike Tyson.
Speaker 4: Oh yeah, okay, yeah I didn't see I saw a
Speaker 4: pigeons in the city, but uh not.
Speaker 1: These are dudes that keep pet pigeons.
Speaker 4: Yeah, pigeons, chickens. He'll be on calls and in the
Speaker 4: inner city and chickens and will fighting chickens. Yeah yeah, yeah,
Speaker 4: running all over the place. The other crazy thing about
Speaker 4: being down there, which was I always thought this was odd,
Speaker 4: And some guys that are listening to this that work
Speaker 4: down there can relate. But when I get together with
Speaker 4: the LAPD Southeast guys or some of these guys, we
Speaker 4: have some fun or seventy seventh division. But they have
Speaker 4: these dogs, man, and I don't I don't know a
Speaker 4: better term, so I hope this doesn't come off crazy.
Speaker 4: But like we just call them ghetto dogs, like inner
Speaker 4: city dogs, and they're just wild. But they know the city,
Speaker 4: like like I've literally washed a dog. Go up to
Speaker 4: a major street, look both ways and cross like they
Speaker 4: just know and they're out. They're all over the place.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's wild. Or you'll see a.
Speaker 4: Homeless guy, which you know, obviously I feel, you know,
Speaker 4: I've got a hard for some of the homeless. But
Speaker 4: cruising down with a shopping cart and about eight dogs
Speaker 4: by him, huh, But they're season. There's season, vets man.
Speaker 4: These dogs, I'm telling you, they just they know the city.
Speaker 4: They know, gunshots, I'm out, like I'm going, I'm going,
Speaker 4: it's just just wild. This is just wild. Different world, man,
Speaker 4: different world.
Speaker 1: So walk me through how you went from police work
Speaker 1: into the military and then how'd you become how'd you
Speaker 1: become a reverend?
Speaker 4: Yeah, that's a wild one.
Speaker 3: Man.
Speaker 4: I had to really saw. I had to soften up.
Speaker 4: Moving to Washington helped me help me kind of soften
Speaker 4: and I glory to the Lord man. That's uh, I'll
Speaker 4: just be bold about that. I had to I had
Speaker 4: to slow down, soften up, and uh it was good
Speaker 4: for me, yes, personally and family wise. But towards the
Speaker 4: end of my career, I knew I wanted to be done.
Speaker 4: As I got close to twenty, I want to be done.
Speaker 4: And politics and garbage that goes on at some of
Speaker 4: these agencies, and it's still happening.
Speaker 1: My heart.
Speaker 4: I hear it all the time from guys. It's it's
Speaker 4: unfortunate for these these uh officers and that are out
Speaker 4: there just grinding, you know, working holidays, facing the stuff
Speaker 4: they face, especially the last you know, four years, just
Speaker 4: the stuff they're having to deal with. But yeah, guy
Speaker 4: hands me a book and uh, it's called A Table
Speaker 4: in My Presence written by Kerry Cash.
Speaker 1: It's about a marine, A table in my presence, A
Speaker 1: table in thy presence.
Speaker 4: Right, it comes from a psalm and uh, navy chaplain
Speaker 4: a sign of the Marines first push into Iraq. And
Speaker 4: he just talks about his ministry to these these military
Speaker 4: folks and the dangers they faced, and and seeing some
Speaker 4: of the miracles that that God did over there. And uh,
Speaker 4: and we can we could talk a lot about some
Speaker 4: of some of the stuff. I'm sure we'll get to that.
Speaker 4: But it was amazing to me. And I was being
Speaker 4: pulled in that direction. I was in seminary, working on
Speaker 4: a graduate degree and just doing stuff in the church
Speaker 4: and a lot of youth stuff. And man, it was
Speaker 4: just it was an amazing book. And uh and and
Speaker 4: and he give it. He gives it to me. He says, hey, man,
Speaker 4: I know you're thinking about going into a full time
Speaker 4: ministry at some point. He goes, this might be a
Speaker 4: good fit with your background. You know, you kind of
Speaker 4: have this sort of sort of tactical side. Again, any
Speaker 4: guys have done more than me and gotten more awards
Speaker 4: and all that. It's it's not about that. It just
Speaker 4: his point was this might be a good fit in
Speaker 4: this that environment. And of course it was the height
Speaker 4: of Iraq, A lot of stuff was going on, and
Speaker 4: I thought, yeah, I don't know, maybe maybe so am
Speaker 4: I being called there? Right?
Speaker 5: Like?
Speaker 4: Do I have this this internal burning desire to go
Speaker 4: serve in that environment? Well, I'm going to be separated
Speaker 4: from my family right five kids, I'll be separated. Wife
Speaker 4: won't be there at that point. Initially they were like
Speaker 4: eighteen months with the Army of deployment with the two
Speaker 4: weeks of R and R. Then I went to twelve
Speaker 4: with two weeks. Then it went to twelve three at
Speaker 4: the mod platform nine in theater with no rn R.
Speaker 4: So that was kind of the cycle. So you've got
Speaker 4: to be, you know, mentally tough against not it's not me,
Speaker 4: it's it's I think the Lord preparing you, preparing your family,
Speaker 4: preparing your wife and kids for that separation, and and
Speaker 4: and so I took it to her, and I don't
Speaker 4: know the timeframe, a month or so after I've read
Speaker 4: the book, and I said, hey, what do you think
Speaker 4: about this as we're you know, getting close here and
Speaker 4: and and she said, no, no way, like you're going
Speaker 4: to be gone, and I'm like, well, just you know,
Speaker 4: pray about it and see. And so then about two
Speaker 4: weeks later, I remember coming home with my motor and
Speaker 4: we rode motorcycles here around up there, police police motors
Speaker 4: in the rain and the whole deal. And I'd usually
Speaker 4: go up and get warm, take a bath or something,
Speaker 4: you know, to heat up, and h and I went
Speaker 4: upstairs in the bathroom. This is a true story, and
Speaker 4: she's up there in tears, and I'm like, what's going on? Yeah,
Speaker 4: you guys, you give me emotional and she said this,
Speaker 4: she said, Hey, if God wants you and a downrange
Speaker 4: environment or wherever he's calling you to, he's got us
Speaker 4: here and we stand behind you and I support it.
Speaker 4: And then that shocked me, you know, kind of rocked
Speaker 4: kind of rocked my world a little bit. And uh, yeah.
Speaker 4: Then they didn't make it easy. You know, you've got
Speaker 4: to have all this stuff to to go in as
Speaker 4: a chaplain right to serve in that way. You've got
Speaker 4: to be endorsed by a department of a Department of
Speaker 4: Defense endorsing body. You've got to have so much ministry experience,
Speaker 4: you've got to be ordained, you've got to have your MDV.
Speaker 4: You've got to you know, past your secret clearances, you've
Speaker 4: got to be in physically fit, your medical stuff, you know,
Speaker 4: all of those things. And and then you got to
Speaker 4: get through base Officer Leader course, which is at Jackson,
Speaker 4: South Carolina. So you've got a lot of that going on.
Speaker 4: So I remember going to Maps and I had had
Speaker 4: a back surgery. I had hurt my back doing some
Speaker 4: jiu jitsu stuff and h yeah, and I was trying
Speaker 4: to shrimp this guy off of me and blew a
Speaker 4: disc so because I was tired of him pounding on
Speaker 4: me and anyway, blew the disc out. That's a whole
Speaker 4: nother story. But I had to get a waiver. So
Speaker 4: I remember going to Maps. I'm like the old guy
Speaker 4: in there, right, like most Chappins are a little older
Speaker 4: because you got to go through all the school and
Speaker 4: you got to do all these things. But yeah, I'm
Speaker 4: the older guy in maps, in minder where I won't
Speaker 4: run around in maps with all these young eighteen nineteen
Speaker 4: year old guys doing all this stuff, you know, duck
Speaker 4: walk and all these different things. And and I get
Speaker 4: to the end and everything went well, and he goes,
Speaker 4: he goes, hey, you gotta get a waiver. I can't
Speaker 4: pass you. And I'm like, I remember looking at this guy,
Speaker 4: super nice guy. I think he was about ninety nine
Speaker 4: years old, but super nice guy. And and he goes
Speaker 4: a guy. I'm like what, And I said, hey, man,
Speaker 4: I just said, you don't understand, Sir. I said, God's called.
Speaker 1: Me to do this.
Speaker 4: I need to and he kind of looked puzzled, and
Speaker 4: I don't you know, you got to get a waiver.
Speaker 4: So eventually I got the waiver and then deployed pretty
Speaker 4: quick after that. I went to a calve squadron, Calvary's unit.
Speaker 4: A lot of cool traditions in the calve, and I
Speaker 4: was over there. And the funny story, it's not funny,
Speaker 4: but cool. Part of the story is I went over
Speaker 4: there and my son, in the meantime, had joined right
Speaker 4: out of high school and he was also in the
Speaker 4: same calve. He was in Charlie Troop and we're both
Speaker 4: in Baghdad together for that whole time. So that was
Speaker 4: a little that was a little wild.
Speaker 6: But how together.
Speaker 4: Yeah, same squadron. He was housed a little ways away
Speaker 4: from me, not far. I was on Camp Liberty and
Speaker 4: he was down more on the south kind of the
Speaker 4: Victory Complex. The whole thing is Victory Complex. But I
Speaker 4: don't know if Chili's been over there, but.
Speaker 1: He was.
Speaker 4: If I took a little I don't want to. I
Speaker 4: gotta be careful how I say some of these terms
Speaker 4: here on a podcast, But they gives these little vehicles
Speaker 4: to drive, right what the locals would drive, you know
Speaker 4: what I'm talking about. Yeah, yeah, and uh so we
Speaker 4: called him, we had a certain name for him, but uh,
Speaker 4: it would take me maybe thirty minutes to get over there,
Speaker 4: not too long to get to where he was. So yeah,
Speaker 4: that was that was wild, wasn't it?
Speaker 3: Was it easy? Like I'm sure it wasn't.
Speaker 2: It's probably a rhetorical question, but like separating, you know,
Speaker 2: being a father in a combat environment, like having your
Speaker 2: son like they're like and knowing probably being pretty well
Speaker 2: informed about like what's going on, like what your son's
Speaker 2: going through like versus like what you're going through, Like.
Speaker 1: How is that like experience?
Speaker 4: Like yeah, yeah, it was, Uh it was different because
Speaker 4: you know, so so I was. So it's we use
Speaker 4: the term squadron in the cab, right, so in an
Speaker 4: infantry would be a battalion, right, And so you're the
Speaker 4: only chaplain though, for that whole battalion or squadron. So
Speaker 4: on that deployment, we had about six hundred and something soldiers.
Speaker 4: We weren't totally organic too, we weren't all calve. We
Speaker 4: had a group from Nebraska to helped supplement us and
Speaker 4: some other folks. So you're the only chaplin for six
Speaker 4: hundred folks. But you know you got to care for
Speaker 4: all of them, right that that's the sheep that God
Speaker 4: has said. Hey, here's the deal, Shade, I got this.
Speaker 4: This s ain't about you. It's not your deal, which
Speaker 4: I had to learn the hard way after we lost
Speaker 4: a couple of guys right away. But you know this
Speaker 4: is about my plan. You just go take care of them.
Speaker 4: You just go love on them, take care of your staff,
Speaker 4: your commander, you know, advise them, do your religious area
Speaker 4: analysis on on you know what what is as soon
Speaker 4: as it Shia and you work a little bit with
Speaker 4: the S two on some of that stuff. How do
Speaker 4: we deal with karans? Where's the Muslim burial ground? You know,
Speaker 4: you kind I can work through that part of it.
Speaker 4: Advising the commander on the moral and ethical ramifications for decisions.
Speaker 4: He's gonna make or she's gonna make in that in
Speaker 4: in your in your ao, right, So you have that responsibility.
Speaker 4: But you also have a three pong responsibility, which is
Speaker 4: honor the dead, care for the wounded, and nurture of
Speaker 4: the living. So you've got that and or in the trust. Right,
Speaker 4: we got six hundred soldiers. The worst the worst thing
Speaker 4: I can hear when I go to when I would
Speaker 4: go back then when I was just the first attendant
Speaker 4: a captain is they get to a unit and you, hey,
Speaker 4: who is you know, I'm the new chaplain. Who was
Speaker 4: your chaplain before they go I don't know. Okay, that's
Speaker 4: the wrong answer or I don't really see him or
Speaker 4: her wrong answer, right, So that means you don't as
Speaker 4: a chaplain. I was probably because of my pride, my background,
Speaker 4: and just just the different way I thought it. The
Speaker 4: best way to operate was be with them, right, take
Speaker 4: the similar risks, be with them. Get your butt out
Speaker 4: of your office. Don't need to read books all day, right.
Speaker 4: I know you got cubs and bubs and update briefs
Speaker 4: and counselings and sometimes memorials and caring for the wounded.
Speaker 4: You got all that, but you need to be out
Speaker 4: with the soldiers and that that's the place to be.
Speaker 4: And I was willing to take a take some asscheans
Speaker 4: to do that because you know, they lose you, and
Speaker 4: I mean, you're a great target, right, it's a great
Speaker 4: target for the enemy to take out the chaplain. He's
Speaker 4: the kind of the spiritual even though it's not you
Speaker 4: necessarily leading, it's it's God doing the work. But they
Speaker 4: see you as the spiritual leader. And you're you don't
Speaker 4: have a gun, right, so you're going on all these missions.
Speaker 4: You got an assistant, it's an actual mos that goes
Speaker 4: with you. Religious fair specialists they call him now. Back
Speaker 4: then it was chaplin assistants. So they're an enlisted person
Speaker 4: that's that's armed, that stays with you. But you know,
Speaker 4: you've you've got to cross on your uniform, you've got
Speaker 4: a no gun, you got all the gear, you're soldier, right,
Speaker 4: you're soldier first. But that's a that's a good target.
Speaker 4: Take take him out, you know, especially.
Speaker 3: Where come from?
Speaker 6: Where's the decision to not be armed?
Speaker 4: And need a convention thing? And it's been around a
Speaker 4: long term. I think Vietnam was I think the last
Speaker 4: and I could be wrong here, but I think the
Speaker 4: last war were they they gave you know, medics and
Speaker 4: chaplains guns. So yeah, no no weapon. So but that's
Speaker 4: where you're in the trust, right, Be with the Be
Speaker 4: with your folks, because if they don't know you and
Speaker 4: they don't trust you, they're not gonna come walking in
Speaker 4: your office and and and tell you what's bugging them,
Speaker 4: or get the counts in the need or hey, you know,
Speaker 4: back home, my wife's leaving me because I've been gone
Speaker 4: and she's cheating on with so and so and so,
Speaker 4: or I messing around with this person, or you know,
Speaker 4: whatever is going on in their life, or I got
Speaker 4: side ideations or you know, any of those things. You
Speaker 4: got to earn the trust, man, and the only way
Speaker 4: to do that is to get down in the trenches
Speaker 4: with them.
Speaker 3: And so yeah, that's pretty common.
Speaker 2: You know, in the eight years I spent, like I
Speaker 2: don't I don't remember a single chaplain's name, And but
Speaker 2: they would show up, like they would show up, like
Speaker 2: when we had like suicides and like when we were
Speaker 2: in country and like you know, injuries, and then they
Speaker 2: treated it like a like a check in the box.
Speaker 2: Like it's more like, hey, you know, your commander asked
Speaker 2: me to come down here and talk to you guys.
Speaker 2: It's just like you're the last person I want to
Speaker 2: talk to you, like just because I don't know you right,
Speaker 2: And I just find that like so like my I
Speaker 2: wouldn't say my experience with chaplains I have been negative,
Speaker 2: but I just it was I didn't know anything.
Speaker 4: Right or non existent right. And that's the and we listen,
Speaker 4: we got many many good ones out there, many great
Speaker 4: ones totally. But you know, to me, you want to
Speaker 4: earn your your bones or your stripes or whatever you
Speaker 4: want to call it, then you need to get out
Speaker 4: of your off us and get out on missions with
Speaker 4: them and spend time with them. And uh yeah, that's
Speaker 4: that's even if even if you know, sometimes the commander
Speaker 4: would be I had some great commanders. One of them's
Speaker 4: you know, still in is a two star now and
Speaker 4: just an awesome individual. Use an O five at the time,
Speaker 4: and uh, you know, I'd take a I'd take a
Speaker 4: whipping from it from time to time, especially if you
Speaker 4: got if I got stuck in Mama Dio or you know,
Speaker 4: fall loos or something because of the red air, you know,
Speaker 4: and he's like, hey, you need to get back here.
Speaker 4: I'm like, I'm stuck. You know, I can't. I can't
Speaker 4: a convoy ain't ain't rolling. But that that's where you're
Speaker 4: in your trust. And then then all of a sudden,
Speaker 4: you're in your offices. You keep going, uh as, you're
Speaker 4: going on your in your in your tour, and you
Speaker 4: get there in the morning and you you needn't sleep much.
Speaker 4: I mean, I'd be up till midnight one and then
Speaker 4: you're up at four or whatever. But go to your
Speaker 4: your update briefs and you know, go to your your
Speaker 4: sinks and stuff like that. Then you get to your
Speaker 4: office and there's eight people lined up outside your door.
Speaker 4: You know, that's when you know, Okay, it's starting to work.
Speaker 4: The trust is coming right now. What will those eight
Speaker 4: people be there for? Oh, a variety of things. Some
Speaker 4: suicidal ideations, some my girlfriend's breaking up with me, some divorce,
Speaker 4: some grandpa's sick, mom sick, you know, the similar things
Speaker 4: that you'd see here, but it just gets heightened, it
Speaker 4: gets intense, intensified being over there. Sometimes it could be
Speaker 4: they'd lost, you know, a friend, you had a ka
Speaker 4: and they want to work through that. We have special
Speaker 4: things we do for that similar to what we do
Speaker 4: up here, which are like a TAMES event or traumatic
Speaker 4: event management event, where we ask certain questions, give everybody
Speaker 4: a chance to kind of talk through what they saw
Speaker 4: or how they feel. It's not I don't run them
Speaker 4: like a big, warm, fuzzy Kumbaya thing, but it's a
Speaker 4: good time to sit down and just let some stuff out.
Speaker 4: You don't have to talk if you don't want to.
Speaker 4: We used to calm critical incident debriefs. So yeah, it
Speaker 4: could be a variety of variety of things, chain of
Speaker 4: command issues, you know, what, what whatever? I dealt with
Speaker 4: so many, I mean hundreds and hundreds of counseling sessions
Speaker 4: on on both deployments. But my first one, that that
Speaker 4: one had, that one had a lot, a lot of stress.
Speaker 1: You know, did you go into that work knowing that
Speaker 1: that I guess not knowing, but had it already? Was
Speaker 1: it already common knowledge at that time that the wars
Speaker 1: in Iraq and Afghanistan we're going to spin off this
Speaker 1: generation of of soldiers with like extraordinarily high suicide rates.
Speaker 3: Was that?
Speaker 1: Was that? Has that always been true of war? I
Speaker 1: think it's gotten worse.
Speaker 4: You know, there there was a lot when I was
Speaker 4: when I was in on my first first deployment, and
Speaker 4: then when I went on active duty up at Joint
Speaker 4: Base Lewis McCord, similar, similar, It was just seemed to
Speaker 4: kind of continue to get increase. I mean, we're a
Speaker 4: war a long time, you know, And I think that
Speaker 4: contributed to it.
Speaker 1: Like what what what do you feel?
Speaker 5: Is?
Speaker 3: Like?
Speaker 1: What is going on?
Speaker 4: Oh man? Uh? Yeah? Again, you know, Chilli and I
Speaker 4: could have this conversation and and and all of us
Speaker 4: off off my care, but uh, I think there is
Speaker 4: some generational things that could be going on. I know,
Speaker 4: we do seem to have quite a few that are
Speaker 4: currently happening. And again I'm just speaking up from my
Speaker 4: own personal opinion. I'm not speaking on behalf of the
Speaker 4: army at all here, but from what I see in
Speaker 4: my lane, we we do get quite a few that
Speaker 4: are not related to combat experience. And that's a puzzling factor.
Speaker 4: Is it Is it contributing factors that they had prior.
Speaker 1: To joining the military.
Speaker 4: Is it just the inability with some of the newer
Speaker 4: generation to cope with stress us and cope with embracing
Speaker 4: the suck factors?
Speaker 5: You know? Is it?
Speaker 4: Is it some of that, and I don't think we've
Speaker 4: really put our finger on it. The definitely, uh, you
Speaker 4: know a lot of the combat related stuff because you
Speaker 4: think about this. Man, here, here's here's the way to
Speaker 4: look at it. So I remember coming home on I
Speaker 4: was on leave for my first I think it was
Speaker 4: my first one. And I was at a Starbucks and
Speaker 4: in the US, in the US, so I'm home for
Speaker 4: like two weeks. I go into Starbucks and I had
Speaker 4: just seen you know, all this different, all this all
Speaker 4: these all this stuff, lost a couple of guys and
Speaker 4: and uh wounded, you know, kids eating trash, just different environments,
Speaker 4: third world stuff. Well, you're in a Starbucks and the
Speaker 4: lady in front of me is blocking the line and
Speaker 4: complaining about her caramel on her latte, right, and you're
Speaker 4: kind of gone, and and and Chile. I'm sure you're
Speaker 4: kind of get in your mind. Okay, is this this
Speaker 4: is really happening? Yeah. I just came and watched all
Speaker 4: this stuff. And here we are in America, spoiled again.
Speaker 4: Whatever we want. We got menus for everything. You can
Speaker 4: choose whatever you want. A lot of stuff's free depending
Speaker 4: on the programs, and you know, and I just came
Speaker 4: from a place where they're fighting on the street to
Speaker 4: dig out of a trash pile on the side of
Speaker 4: the road, and they're trying to kill each other, and
Speaker 4: you know there's a war going on, and you're complaining
Speaker 4: that you want more caramel on your lotte. And I
Speaker 4: just remember that hit me weird, like like I'm like, okay,
Speaker 4: do I does my flesh take over and the chaplain
Speaker 4: go dark here and snatch this lady up and move
Speaker 4: out of the wide or do I just you know,
Speaker 4: so I took some deep breaths and uh, or I
Speaker 4: went to get a haircut, same time, same time I
Speaker 4: was home and and the lady goes, oh, are you
Speaker 4: in the military? Yeah, I was just home for a
Speaker 4: couple of weeks, so I didn't know there was I
Speaker 4: didn't know we were still fighting over there, Right, so
Speaker 4: you kind of go to a ten like really, well,
Speaker 4: then you come home. So let's say you take the hours,
Speaker 4: young young guy, right, the young enlisted dude, they make
Speaker 4: the they make the military work. The enlisted one hundred percent,
Speaker 4: I'll say that right at the top. And they deserve
Speaker 4: a lot more than what they get awards, wise and
Speaker 4: everything else. These youngsters let's take guard or reserve. Let's
Speaker 4: take guard, all guards, all combat oriented units. Right, they
Speaker 4: supplement the active force. Fifty of the component in the
Speaker 4: in the army at least is guarden reserve. So they're
Speaker 4: working at McDonald's. Let's say they join the guard, they
Speaker 4: go to an infantry unit or caveoun And now he's
Speaker 4: on a fifty cal. He's rolling in an m wrap
Speaker 4: down some highway in Iraq, Afghanistan. He does his job.
Speaker 4: I don't know, maybe he smokes, maybe he's got a
Speaker 4: smoke some bag. I don't know, but he's he's over there,
Speaker 4: he's embracing the suck. He's a part of it. He's
Speaker 4: doing his party, serving his country. And he comes back
Speaker 4: a nice back at McDonald's. Like a month after he
Speaker 4: gets home and someone comes in it's complaining about you
Speaker 4: need to make burgers faster. I'm not saying he doesn't
Speaker 4: need to do that, but he just got out of
Speaker 4: a he was just operating a fifty for freaking you know,
Speaker 4: nine months or whatever. And that's the hard part. It's
Speaker 4: that reintegration, you know.
Speaker 2: I think, like to for your question earlier, like why
Speaker 2: does that happen? Like again, personally from like what I've
Speaker 2: noticed in like suicide rates. I think it's just like
Speaker 2: lack of purpose. You go from such a high to
Speaker 2: such a low, and like in such a dramatic way.
Speaker 2: Like I mean, similarly, it's like when I got back,
Speaker 2: like we flew out of Afghanistan, we're in.
Speaker 4: Kuwait for.
Speaker 3: A week and a half, two weeks almost, and.
Speaker 2: Kuwait is still I don't I don't know if they
Speaker 2: considered it a combat environment, but it was like it
Speaker 2: was like a hot there was hostiles around there.
Speaker 3: But like they add that base in Kuwait.
Speaker 2: I think it was a I can't I want all
Speaker 2: yash reif that sounds familiar, I don't know. I can't
Speaker 2: remember what the base is called. But there was like
Speaker 2: a there was a swimming pool there, and then there
Speaker 2: was there is like a Starbucks, but it wasn't like
Speaker 2: a Starbucks, and like you had all these army guys
Speaker 2: like rolling around just like have It's like completely oblivious,
Speaker 2: and then you fly out and then you know it's
Speaker 2: nighttime and you wake up and you're in Cherry Point,
Speaker 2: North Carolina, and you're rolling through the gates and you're
Speaker 2: like you just you're back in what we call Garrison
Speaker 2: and then you're like, oh.
Speaker 3: It's so good to be home. And then like you
Speaker 3: go to a cookout or to.
Speaker 2: A McDonald's, and then some heifers just like bitching about
Speaker 2: her her burger and you're just like, what is going
Speaker 2: on right now?
Speaker 3: And like it just makes it makes it makes you
Speaker 3: like irritable.
Speaker 2: And then like I think that stems into like you
Speaker 2: just you have a lack of one responsibility. You don't
Speaker 2: feel like you matter, and like when a lot of
Speaker 2: guys get out And maybe this isn't directly related to combat.
Speaker 2: I think a lot of people get this way from
Speaker 2: just doing their day to day job stateside as well.
Speaker 4: But yeah, you just don't have a.
Speaker 2: Like a like a calling, like you're not doing what
Speaker 2: you're what you kind of like initially may have wanted
Speaker 2: to do. Yeah, And then and that's just like you know,
Speaker 2: just a mental down spiral.
Speaker 6: You feel like they give you a heads up as
Speaker 6: to this because it's not like this is something new, right, No,
Speaker 6: they wrote songs about it in the sixties. Yeah, Like
Speaker 6: did they give you a heads up at all? Like
Speaker 6: be prepared?
Speaker 2: They they kind of tell you about like the culture shock,
Speaker 2: and like I wouldn't say.
Speaker 3: It's like a formal setting.
Speaker 2: Like it's like if you have your your old timers
Speaker 2: and like your your battle tested dudes that have did
Speaker 2: a few pumps, like they kind of like they'll they'll
Speaker 2: tell you about it.
Speaker 3: And like my brother, uh, he was deployed.
Speaker 2: With a unit called Turber Time Shit Marines saying in
Speaker 2: Afghanistan twenty ten eleven and they got I think they
Speaker 2: get they got messed up like this unit did, like
Speaker 2: they lost a lot of people.
Speaker 3: And so but when I joined, I've I had a
Speaker 3: lot of his friends like kind of like mentor me.
Speaker 2: And when I told a few of them like hey,
Speaker 2: like I'm doing a pump, They're like, hey, like everything's
Speaker 2: gonna be fine, like they coached you and they and
Speaker 2: then one guy I remember, I won't say his name
Speaker 2: because I know he listens to the show and he
Speaker 2: doesn't want to be spotlighted, but uh, he's just like listen, man,
Speaker 2: it's gonna be it's gonna be like really hard, like
Speaker 2: when you get back, like you're gonna be around a
Speaker 2: lot of people that like don't understand, and they like
Speaker 2: they're gonna ask questions and no matter what you tell them,
Speaker 2: no matter how long you spend telling them that, like
Speaker 2: they're just not.
Speaker 3: Gonna they're not gonna get it.
Speaker 4: And he's like you just gotta like roll with it.
Speaker 2: And so like in a way, yeah, people will tell you,
Speaker 2: but not the not the army or the Marines themselves.
Speaker 2: Like yeah, like they they treated as I mean from
Speaker 2: what I noticed, like they'll they're like when you when
Speaker 2: you get brought back, you have to do like a
Speaker 2: bunch of debriefing. So like before we could, like when
Speaker 2: we got back stateside, before we could go home, we
Speaker 2: had to go through like classes and like we there's
Speaker 2: like mental tests and like computer tests to make sure
Speaker 2: like you don't have.
Speaker 3: Any tv I S.
Speaker 2: I think we ended up talking to the chef Traumatic
Speaker 2: Brain injuries, so like you took a test. We took
Speaker 2: a test before we left, and then like when we
Speaker 2: got back, we took the exact same test and they're
Speaker 2: like compared results and just to see if we were
Speaker 2: like copstetic and and everything was kosher.
Speaker 3: So we did that. We talked to a chaps chats
Speaker 3: we always call them chats, not to be mistaken for.
Speaker 4: Not not leather chats.
Speaker 2: Yeah, but uh but yeah, we were like and then
Speaker 2: they we would you know, there was counselors and stuff too,
Speaker 2: and but like it was more like how you doing good?
Speaker 3: Like do you feel like you want to?
Speaker 2: Like they kind of I feel like the military deals
Speaker 2: in extremes a lot. Do you feel like you need
Speaker 2: you want to kill somebody? And like no, and like
Speaker 2: so they kind of prepare you the way.
Speaker 3: Yeah, they're just like you're going to say, They're like, yeah,
Speaker 3: like do you feel like you have PTSD?
Speaker 2: And I'm like, I don't know, I've never done this before,
Speaker 2: Like I don't know what that means and or what
Speaker 2: that looks like for myself.
Speaker 3: And so they kind of do it. But it's more
Speaker 3: of like a military has to do their due diligence
Speaker 3: so we don't get into trouble kind of thing. And
Speaker 3: I and that's that's what it felt like. That's what
Speaker 3: it felt like. I'm not saying that's what they're doing.
Speaker 3: I'm just saying like that's kind of how it felt.
Speaker 4: I mean, you know, we do demo stuff in classes
Speaker 4: like like Chili's talking about and and a lot of
Speaker 4: that stuff. You'll check out medically and do do a
Speaker 4: bunch of those things. But I don't I don't think
Speaker 4: that there's still the shock factor. You know, you haven't
Speaker 4: paid bills, right, you haven't driven a regular car or
Speaker 4: your car. I mean, if you were driving something it
Speaker 4: was an armored vehicle or one of those other vehicles
Speaker 4: we were talking about earlier. Or you've been flying around
Speaker 4: a helicopter and now all of a sudden you're back
Speaker 4: and you know over over there, you don't want to
Speaker 4: be stuck in traffic. Right, you're sitting duck. There's all
Speaker 4: these different things, or you're driving super fast and swerving
Speaker 4: on some roads and you know, making sure they're not
Speaker 4: They used to throw these things off the bridges. I
Speaker 4: can't remember if they are arcade threes or something, these
Speaker 4: these hand grenades or ied stuff. So you know you're
Speaker 4: staying in certain sides of land all those things. And
Speaker 4: now you're on the freeway and you're sitting traffic and
Speaker 4: you're like trying to you know, just a little little
Speaker 4: things like that, you know, just trying to digest.
Speaker 2: That your combat mindset does not go away, like as
Speaker 2: soon as your back inside, Like you're looking at everything
Speaker 2: as like a thread, right, and it doesn't.
Speaker 4: Matter what your mos was. It just if you were
Speaker 4: out there on missions and you were doing stuff it
Speaker 4: you know, even from a childing perspective, it's it's difficult
Speaker 4: getting back and as a dad, right, you haven't disciplined
Speaker 4: the kids. The wife has kind of set that all
Speaker 4: up and got a routine, and now you're coming into
Speaker 4: that routine and you're kind of blowing it up now, right,
Speaker 4: you're kind of the new guy in the house, and
Speaker 4: you don't know what they've been through the whole time
Speaker 4: you've been gone. And sometimes then you find out later,
Speaker 4: which is often upsetting about maybe they cried at night
Speaker 4: worried about you or this, but the wife kept that
Speaker 4: from you because you didn't need that when you were
Speaker 4: down range. There's all those little nuances intimacy, right, you
Speaker 4: haven't been intimate for a year, so you've got to
Speaker 4: earn all these things. You've got to work your way
Speaker 4: back into this and and that reintegration process can be
Speaker 4: can be difficult. So that's a contributing factor for sure
Speaker 4: with some of the stuff. And then and then it's hard, right,
Speaker 4: it's hard losing your your friends and and your life changes.
Speaker 4: I think there's something I'll say it like this, I
Speaker 4: think there's something that happens when you go to a
Speaker 4: combat zone. Regardless of whether you were a seal or
Speaker 4: an s F or infantry or whatever, whatever your your
Speaker 4: job was or your unit was, there's something that is
Speaker 4: taken away from you. And I'm sure there's probably some
Speaker 4: guys that might disagree with me, but there is something
Speaker 4: that changes in you. And then I think you start
Speaker 4: to spend your time trying to get that back. And
Speaker 4: I don't know if that's a sense of innocence, you know,
Speaker 4: you just the world is different, right, and then you
Speaker 4: become comfortable over there. You've learned how to kind of survive,
Speaker 4: and you're comfortable and you're you're in that environment. It's
Speaker 4: snake especially Afghanistan. I was in cobble in it just
Speaker 4: it's smell. The air is real bad, not good for you.
Speaker 4: Why guys are getting all this burn pit stuff both
Speaker 4: both both both countries Iraq as well. But little kids
Speaker 4: are you're driving by and they're they're doing this. They
Speaker 4: don't want you there. They're throwing rocks at the at
Speaker 4: the you know, a big hunk of concrete hitting the
Speaker 4: armored vehicle sounds like you know it's a problem. Uh oh,
Speaker 4: you know, different things like that. And now all of
Speaker 4: a sudden, you're you're back and you watch just the
Speaker 4: two year olds, you know, no diaper, no nothing, eating
Speaker 4: old rotten food out of the street, and that just
Speaker 4: it's so there's I don't know, there's just something that
Speaker 4: you know, I think you, I think you lose and
Speaker 4: that you're kind of constantly trying to get that back.
Speaker 4: Something changes in you. And I think the other thing
Speaker 4: that happens a lot with families, in particular married couples
Speaker 4: or or families. As you get back and you you
Speaker 4: think you're the same, Right, you're the same dude. You're
Speaker 4: you're you're happy to be home, you're thankful, you're blessed,
Speaker 4: you're all those things. And then maybe someone in your
Speaker 4: family or a relative or a friend says, man, you've changed.
Speaker 4: Well that's not what you want to hear, right, So
Speaker 4: it kind of hits you in the guy like, wait
Speaker 4: a second, what do you mean I've changed? What do
Speaker 4: you mean by that? And so then that starts as cycle.
Speaker 4: So there's a lot, I think a lot of factors.
Speaker 4: That's why I think it's good. I mean, you gotta talk,
Speaker 4: you got to get outside, you've got to do those things,
Speaker 4: and uh, you know, you know I wouldn't have said
Speaker 4: this to you twenty some years ago. You know, I
Speaker 4: was more of a hardened you know, street cup from
Speaker 4: who who learned how to do that job in a
Speaker 4: bad place, in a bad time. And I wouldn't have said,
Speaker 4: you don't need counseling whatever, go to this praph. Sure,
Speaker 4: I don't want to talk. I don't want to go
Speaker 4: there and hold hands and all this stuff. But I'll
Speaker 4: tell you what, man, I get a lot of those
Speaker 4: dudes coming through the door, the toughest guys from and
Speaker 4: I'm telling you I won't name names, but I mean
Speaker 4: guys have been through CQB shootings within a few months
Speaker 4: of coming up there.
Speaker 1: What's that mean?
Speaker 4: You know, close quarter contact shot type stuff, swat call
Speaker 4: outs where they've been shot. I had a guy up
Speaker 4: shot four times. I mean, all kinds of guys and
Speaker 4: some tough stuff. And uh, and they they kind of
Speaker 4: have that wall up. I get it. I was that
Speaker 4: way that, you know, coming in and they don't know
Speaker 4: what we're gonna talk about, they don't know who I am.
Speaker 4: They're trying to sniff it out. I told Krinn for
Speaker 4: lack of a better term just talking straight here. It's
Speaker 4: kind of like a couple of pit bulls sort of
Speaker 4: sniffing each other's butts, trying to figure out who's dominant,
Speaker 4: who's not. You know, that whole thing goes on. But
Speaker 4: then they realize, man, look, we're we're just here to
Speaker 4: love you. Man, We're here to give you something for
Speaker 4: your toolbox. We're gonna give you an injection of some
Speaker 4: some some biblical stuff. You're gonna get that. I'm not
Speaker 4: gonna proselyze to you. I'm not gonna beat you over
Speaker 4: the head with it, just like we don't do in
Speaker 4: the army. I'm not We're not doing that. We're gonna
Speaker 4: give you something that that that means more than just
Speaker 4: some of the other frivolous stuff that that's out there
Speaker 4: in the world and in life. Right We're we're gonna
Speaker 4: that's what That's what we're gonna do, and we're gonna
Speaker 4: dig in whenever you're ready. And I'm telling you one
Speaker 4: hundred percent of the time, by Saturday Sunday, you know,
Speaker 4: tears are shed, guys are opening up, guys are talking.
Speaker 4: But you gotta have the right mix of people there.
Speaker 4: You gotta have everybody there has got to have some
Speaker 4: legit put in their work, right, so there's that respect
Speaker 4: level we we we just call it putting in work
Speaker 4: and earning their trust and making sure it's a safe
Speaker 4: place to talk.
Speaker 1: Like the other guys want to you know, can you
Speaker 1: hold can you hold that thought? Mix you something I
Speaker 1: want to ask before your specific work. Something I'm not
Speaker 1: clear on. When I was laying we were talking about
Speaker 1: the suicide. Yeah, people having troubles reintegrating. I know just
Speaker 1: from being friends with you that that and you've mentioned it.
Speaker 1: You do a lot of work with police as well,
Speaker 1: another first responders. Give me the give me the version
Speaker 1: that is happening with cops who do go home every night,
Speaker 1: or they go home every few nights whatever, Like what
Speaker 1: is that? What is that version? Because I remember a
Speaker 1: buddy mine, not even a cop, a buddy mine, Greg,
Speaker 1: who's a firefighter.
Speaker 4: He told me.
Speaker 1: A firefighter has a greater chance of dying by suicide
Speaker 1: than he has a dying in a fire.
Speaker 4: YEP.
Speaker 1: I also said to Greg one time, kind of dumb
Speaker 1: like question. I'm sure he hates here, and I said,
Speaker 1: how many dead people have you dealt with? He said,
Speaker 1: what do you mean it's like how many how many
Speaker 1: human bodies have you interacted with? He goes hundreds. Right,
Speaker 1: you have to like there has to be a connection there, right,
Speaker 1: But from your perspective, like, it's not that you're reintegrating
Speaker 1: from another country. What is the reality that that from
Speaker 1: your from your work? What is the reality that these
Speaker 1: guys that are in American society like what becomes so
Speaker 1: hard for them?
Speaker 4: I think it's the trauma exposure you do, okay, and
Speaker 4: it's the having to compartmentalize that stuff. And then I
Speaker 4: think as you get older. I actually think as you
Speaker 4: get older, it hits you harder. And that's just more
Speaker 4: personal experience. Your mortality comes into the site. Pick quicker, right,
Speaker 4: starting to get older, you've seen all this stuff. Maybe
Speaker 4: you've been able to block it out. You just keep
Speaker 4: rolling high op tempo, block it out. Next call, next call,
Speaker 4: next call, baby not breathing, okay, had to deal with that,
Speaker 4: and the baby didn't make it okay, you know, besides
Speaker 4: the fact that you know you gave it mouth to mouth.
Speaker 4: Then you go to a fatal crash, just an accident,
Speaker 4: but kid gets run over and you're investigating that. Then
Speaker 4: you go to a shooting, okay, drug rip off Okay,
Speaker 4: I can kind of I can kind of compartmentalize that
Speaker 4: it shouldn't have been messing with dope, right, But you
Speaker 4: compartmentalize and go to the next one, the next one,
Speaker 4: the next one, and it just stacks up. I like
Speaker 4: to use the bookshelf example. Right, you take it, you
Speaker 4: put the book on the shelf behind you. You just
Speaker 4: keep doing that over the years, and you're rolling careers, great,
Speaker 4: everything's cool, family's cool. And then all of a sudden,
Speaker 4: the bookshelf falls over where you're gonna put all that stuff,
Speaker 4: and it's all coming kind of come coming down on you.
Speaker 4: Start thinking about things you got maybe a little more
Speaker 4: time as you get older, you know, you're having kids
Speaker 4: and grandkids whatever, and and that some of that stuff
Speaker 4: starts piling up on you. And uh, I think that
Speaker 4: plays a role as well. And and and then those questions,
Speaker 4: maybe it's a little guilt and shame. Maybe it's I
Speaker 4: wish I could have done more. Why didn't I do more?
Speaker 4: Or why is everybody killing each other? Oh? You know,
Speaker 4: these kind of things start start coming up, and law
Speaker 4: enforcement they lose folks too. I remember a young deputy
Speaker 4: getting getting killed when I early on when I was
Speaker 4: down working Lennox and we rolled leap Frog tried to
Speaker 4: get over he was working out a firestone station and
Speaker 4: and uh got shot up good and and I was
Speaker 4: just in patrol school with him. Good guy, great guy,
Speaker 4: you know. And it happened. It doesn't happen every single
Speaker 4: day necessarily where I was working, but it did happen
Speaker 4: enough to where it bothers you, you know. And Uh,
Speaker 4: I just think dealing with all that trauma, not having
Speaker 4: outlets and coping healthy coping mechanisms such as the outdoors,
Speaker 4: such as uh, you know, talking to people and talking
Speaker 4: to someone, I think spiritual fitness, spiritual resiens. He's huge.
Speaker 4: And I put it this way, Steve, I think this
Speaker 4: is important. You know, where do we where do we
Speaker 4: think about a carabiner? Right? You guys probably use carabineers.
Speaker 4: Everybody's probably used one at some point in their life.
Speaker 4: Where is that? In order for that thing to work right,
Speaker 4: you gotta screw it down. You gotta hook something stable,
Speaker 4: something you trust. So if we use that term, and
Speaker 4: we we say, okay, where's our hope. If our hope
Speaker 4: is the carabiner, what is it connected to. If it's
Speaker 4: to the world, it's gonna hold you. I'm just gonna
Speaker 4: screw you. If it's to yourself, you're gonna fail yourself.
Speaker 4: If it's to other person, usually they're gonna fail you
Speaker 4: at some point too. But if you've got some spiritual fitness,
Speaker 4: my personal opinion, if I that thing to the Lord
Speaker 4: and I study, I mean, not always understand why he
Speaker 4: does what he does. I mean I always understand the
Speaker 4: reasons or the timing or whatever. Uh you know. And
Speaker 4: I'm not I'm not here to preach. I'm just sharing
Speaker 4: this with you from my own personal experience.
Speaker 1: I real you were invited here to talk.
Speaker 4: I would rather hook that, to have my hope hooked
Speaker 4: to something like that. The one and only do that
Speaker 4: can they can truly help me? And in the end,
Speaker 4: when I when I'm not taking none of the stuff
Speaker 4: with me, nothing's going with me, right nothing? Am I
Speaker 4: going to roll the dice with eternity? Or am I
Speaker 4: going to try to spend my time in my life
Speaker 4: on things that have eternal value, things that are kingdom oriented,
Speaker 4: to make a difference, be a difference maker in somebody
Speaker 4: else's life, on behalf of the kingdom, Because I'm a
Speaker 4: sinner and jacked up just like the rest. Right, we're
Speaker 4: all trying to help you love each other and get
Speaker 4: get through stuff. And so so that's the question, the
Speaker 4: challenge I always ask my where's my hope hooked to?
Speaker 4: Is ain't trying to run his program and trying to
Speaker 4: control his life in every aspect. Sure there's days where
Speaker 4: I do that, and then I realize, Okay, let's see,
Speaker 4: this whole thing ain't up to me. But it's that faith.
Speaker 4: It's that it's that spiritual fitness. And that's why it's
Speaker 4: even what's taught even in the military as some of
Speaker 4: the resiliency skills is there's a value to that spiritual
Speaker 4: fitness or spiritual resiliency helping you overcome the challenges that
Speaker 4: you're going to face in your life. So doesn't necessarily
Speaker 4: even have to be you know, I'm going to tell
Speaker 4: you what I think is is a is a good
Speaker 4: way and what I believe. But if it's not and
Speaker 4: it's a different, different faith group or but you've got
Speaker 4: that spiritual resiliency, I think it matters, you know, I
Speaker 4: think it does. It can help you, you know, get
Speaker 4: rid of this bookshelf piling up and having that spiritual strength.
Speaker 4: I think is is a big deal.
Speaker 1: When you when you host a group of individuals, you're
Speaker 1: usually hosting a group of individuals who know each other.
Speaker 1: Is that true?
Speaker 4: Usually not in all cases. I'd say the majority of
Speaker 4: the time they know each other or of each other.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 4: Yeah, and sometimes with vets it doesn't necessarily work that way.
Speaker 4: But you know, depending on what they're involved with. We
Speaker 4: might have a team of vets come out that we're
Speaker 4: all involved in some major stuff in Afghanistan or Iraq,
Speaker 4: and then they'll know.
Speaker 1: Yeah, each other. I don't want to like violate what happens. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's privately, you know, up the road from my house
Speaker 1: when you're doing your work. But like a group of
Speaker 1: people come and they're they're using those probably using those
Speaker 1: coping mechanisms that you're talking about, meaning the coping mechanism
Speaker 1: might be like the bookshelf behind you. You know they're
Speaker 1: they're doing or okay.
Speaker 4: Right, alcohol or substance abuse or sex addictions or affairs
Speaker 4: or wherever they're getting there adrenaline.
Speaker 1: From there's got to be more like maybe at first
Speaker 1: you'd be like, well, let's cook some burgers. Them will
Speaker 1: shoot some bows. But I mean, how do you even
Speaker 1: how does the conversation start? You know what I'm saying.
Speaker 4: So the way I do it is I've got people
Speaker 4: I can trust in various agencies and various regions. For example,
Speaker 4: dudes that I know are legit, that have been through
Speaker 4: the storms, you know, put in their work that people respect,
Speaker 4: that are equally yoked with the mission. Makes sense? No, okay,
Speaker 4: so equally oak. They're on board, right, They're on board
Speaker 4: with our mission, they understand it, and they have access
Speaker 4: to some of these agencies more so than I do
Speaker 4: because I'm up here.
Speaker 1: Oh when you say they're yoked with the mission, your mission? Yes,
Speaker 1: mission right?
Speaker 4: Be equally oaked. Right, So it's a kind of a
Speaker 4: theological term. Right when you got two oxen, if they're
Speaker 4: not equally oak, they're not going to be able to plow.
Speaker 4: So everybody's equally oaked. And they're recruiting people to come
Speaker 4: up different struggles they they've heard about or know about,
Speaker 4: so they're hitting them kind of off the side. No
Speaker 4: one's getting spotlighted, No one's getting this is a very
Speaker 4: like in the Trenches program. We don't care, We're not
Speaker 4: looking at okay, we need two hundred people to come
Speaker 4: through this season. We have a steady take. We do
Speaker 4: small intimate groups so we can really make the most
Speaker 4: maximum impact in the time they're here. So the dynamic
Speaker 4: when they arrive, so they kind of have a little
Speaker 4: rough idea, but I'd say most of the time they
Speaker 4: don't really know how it's going to go. You got
Speaker 4: to earn their trust and that starts the moment they
Speaker 4: get off the plane. Right, you know, my job and
Speaker 4: they sometimes they don't realize I'm doing this, but my
Speaker 4: job is to size them up, and they're gonna size
Speaker 4: me up to figure out Okay, body language, what do
Speaker 4: they say, what are they wearing?
Speaker 5: What you know?
Speaker 4: And you're not judging, You're just trying to You're trying
Speaker 4: to get to know them on a little more intimate level, right,
Speaker 4: so you can better so you can better help them.
Speaker 1: And they have to know that, Like these guys have
Speaker 1: to know you've been there.
Speaker 4: Yeah, oh yeah, they know. Yeah, they'll know. They can
Speaker 4: go to the website, or they can ask around, or
Speaker 4: they can talk to these I mean.
Speaker 1: I'm sorry, not just knowledge, but psychologically it matters that
Speaker 1: you've seen the things they've seen.
Speaker 4: I think it matters for them. I think it matters,
Speaker 4: I think, and that goes back to that putting in
Speaker 4: work statement. It's the same with vets, right, you'll you'll
Speaker 4: you'll be more comfortable with someone that's been down range
Speaker 4: maybe than someone that hasn't, regardless of necessarily even what
Speaker 4: they did. But they embrace the suck. They were there,
Speaker 4: they were separated from their families, they were there. Yeah,
Speaker 4: so it's similar to that. They come in, Man, there's
Speaker 4: nothing tough. We're gonna give them a tour, We're gonna
Speaker 4: talk about schedule, We're gonna do introductions, and that's where
Speaker 4: I think the ice breakers come when we start doing introductions.
Speaker 4: You know, where do you work, you know, tell me
Speaker 4: about your family, those kind of things. But the funny
Speaker 4: part is, man, and I can't explain it any other
Speaker 4: way than this, as crazy as it sounds, And some
Speaker 4: of the listeners might be like, I don't know what
Speaker 4: he's talking about. But when they come through the door,
Speaker 4: first of all, when they make a decision to come
Speaker 4: up there, there's a sense of vulnerability that they have.
Speaker 4: They're showing up. They know at some point we're gonna
Speaker 4: talk a little bit. They're not gonna be forced to.
Speaker 4: But that's the deal. They're starting to recognize that they
Speaker 4: got to make some changes in their life right and
Speaker 4: step up. So some of that's already gone. And my
Speaker 4: belief is guys preparing their hearts well before they show up.
Speaker 4: I'm talking the toughest. Most of them don't even have
Speaker 4: a religious They don't have to have that to show
Speaker 4: up there. That's not a requirement. It starts before they
Speaker 4: get here. They get here, they come in, we relax,
Speaker 4: we give tours, and then I just open it up
Speaker 4: and explain, Listen, man, I'm down here to We're not judging,
Speaker 4: We're not We're here to let you get some rest,
Speaker 4: hopefull you'ld to get something out of it. We'll go outside,
Speaker 4: we'll do some fun stuff, get to shoot some bows
Speaker 4: and uh, and we'll dig in.
Speaker 1: A little bit.
Speaker 4: And it's a good time to do a self evaluation.
Speaker 4: And I just tell them straight, it's a good time
Speaker 4: to do a self evaluation and a gut check. I
Speaker 4: think it's healthy for us. And I can only speak
Speaker 4: from a man's perspective. Is you know we're most have
Speaker 4: been here in here a men, but you got a
Speaker 4: gut check yourself from time to time and figure out
Speaker 4: where where am I? What's the purpose of this life?
Speaker 4: Where am I going? You know, what's going to happen
Speaker 4: when I go to die? You know what? What does
Speaker 4: that look like? It's just over? Okay? You know how
Speaker 4: how am I with my relationships? How am I with
Speaker 4: my kids? All of those things? How am I with
Speaker 4: my job?
Speaker 1: My peers?
Speaker 4: Those are all all things that that we talk about.
Speaker 4: But it's a good time. I think it's important to
Speaker 4: gut check yourself once in a while. What kind of
Speaker 4: a man am I? Right? What do I really stand for?
Speaker 4: Because uh, you know, we're all going to get older,
Speaker 4: and then that's going to be the question, right.
Speaker 1: And you invite people to ask these questions of themselves.
Speaker 4: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, I'll pose the question. And a
Speaker 4: lot of times sometimes guys will jump in. Sometimes they'll
Speaker 4: just listen, intimately listen then and then when it starts
Speaker 4: to trust is earned, it'll open up. They'll talk about
Speaker 4: an incident. Maybe it was on a swat call. Maybe
Speaker 4: you know, one of the guys got killed and they're
Speaker 4: in a stick and they gotta step over him and
Speaker 4: keep fighting. Maybe they'll get into that. Maybe it's a
Speaker 4: family thing. Maybe it's something they feel comfortable to talk
Speaker 4: about about a bad situation with a parent or you
Speaker 4: know whatever. It's a safe place for that. And there's
Speaker 4: a lot of you know, so many people run by
Speaker 4: our place and drive up there, and I think if
Speaker 4: they knew the cool stuff there's going on down there,
Speaker 4: that's private. What goes on there stays there. But the
Speaker 4: I think some of the ministry work and the massaging
Speaker 4: of hearts and loving on people, I think I think
Speaker 4: they'd really be be shocked.
Speaker 1: You guys are incredibly low key.
Speaker 4: We like it that way.
Speaker 1: In our neighborhood. No one until I came on the show,
Speaker 1: and our neighborhood, no one knows. No one knows, right,
Speaker 1: no one knows. You guys don't have your trucks aren't marked.
Speaker 1: There's no sign we've got one you Yeah, oh no, no,
Speaker 1: I'm sorry.
Speaker 4: Yeah about being low key.
Speaker 1: I was like, you know that place up there, it's
Speaker 1: like they run that nonprofit for first responders and veterans.
Speaker 1: People like what, Yeah, I'm telling you right there, man, it's.
Speaker 4: About being low key. You won't see us in town
Speaker 4: drinking beers too much. You won't see us. Uh, you're
Speaker 4: not gonna see us out pushing this and pushing that.
Speaker 4: We're just here to put in work. His old school.
Speaker 1: How many how many guys come How many guys come
Speaker 1: through your place?
Speaker 4: We get about seventy sometimes a little more season yeap,
Speaker 4: And we usually run from May, depends on the snow
Speaker 4: and kind of what's happening. But is he made it
Speaker 4: November first? Yep?
Speaker 1: And we reset. We usually go every other week, reset.
Speaker 4: Clean kind of for us to kind of you know,
Speaker 4: for me emotion menally and emotionally, just also for me
Speaker 4: to kind of clear my head and my staff, my
Speaker 4: volunteers give him a break because you know, getting volunteers
Speaker 4: sometimes that came help out and teach stuff, and it's
Speaker 4: Sonny and Bozeman is and it's on a weekend, right,
Speaker 4: that can be tough. But and then everything's fund raised
Speaker 4: for and that that gets tough, you know, But every
Speaker 4: year we seem to just get enough to keep keep rolling.
Speaker 4: And so I just keep the faith, man, I just
Speaker 4: keep going.
Speaker 1: How much is doing that work its own you imagine,
Speaker 1: like you mentioned like having traumas, how much of that
Speaker 1: work does that to you and the people you work with?
Speaker 4: You mean, what effects do we get from here, And I.
Speaker 1: Mean, does it wind up being does it wind up
Speaker 1: being kind of circular where you not that they lay
Speaker 1: it on you, but like here, you are seventy people
Speaker 1: in a in a seventy people through the course of
Speaker 1: the summer lay on you all their horrific ship, right.
Speaker 5: Do you?
Speaker 1: I mean, does it does it feel burdensome or does
Speaker 1: it feel like it cleanses and something?
Speaker 4: Oh, I think I'd be lent to you if it's
Speaker 4: not burdensome, because I think our natural reaction is to
Speaker 4: take on to help people sometimes try to take those on.
Speaker 4: But it's not my deal. It's it's not it's not
Speaker 4: my caper, right, it's it's God's I gotta I gotta
Speaker 4: give it to him. I'm just there to facilitate that.
Speaker 4: And uh, and that's how that's how I treat it.
Speaker 4: But you your heart does break for some of them,
Speaker 4: and you think a lot about them, and you keep
Speaker 4: them on prayerless, and you stay in contact all those things.
Speaker 4: But to watch a you know, it's good for me,
Speaker 4: and I think it's good for my staff to hear this,
Speaker 4: to hear from them, and to give back in that way.
Speaker 4: I mean, we're serving those that serve us, right, So
Speaker 4: it's super rewarding, like it fills the cup big time
Speaker 4: and it and it definitely helps me personally, brings back
Speaker 4: a lot of memories sometimes for me that I have
Speaker 4: to sort through afterwards. But uh, I think it's circular
Speaker 4: in that way and in a positive But I also
Speaker 4: think if you don't, if you don't deal with the
Speaker 4: way you should deal with it, then it can be
Speaker 4: two burdensome to you, similar to down range. Right. I
Speaker 4: tried when I first lost those two guys, and for
Speaker 4: whatever reason, I would, you know, a lot of times
Speaker 4: I would stand when there was if I wasn't going
Speaker 4: on a mission. We had these secret briefing tents and
Speaker 4: then a convoy would go out. We have convoy security
Speaker 4: was kind of our primary thing, right, which is sketchy
Speaker 4: because you're rolling down all the roads and uh, and
Speaker 4: we had I was in there later at night and
Speaker 4: I'll try to work through this here, but late at
Speaker 4: night was one of my last ones. So I would
Speaker 4: go in this briefing tent for different chalks that were
Speaker 4: going out. I would sit in the back in a
Speaker 4: chair by the door. They'd give their secret brief on
Speaker 4: the routes. This one's black, this is red, whatever, and
Speaker 4: kind of go over the mission and how things are
Speaker 4: gonna roll. Well, this was the last one of the night,
Speaker 4: and I had a close relationship with some of these guys.
Speaker 4: I won't get into why, but with kind of these
Speaker 4: main ones that were involved in this particular incident. So
Speaker 4: at the end, I go chaplain, chaplain, stands up, everybody
Speaker 4: stands up. You give them a pep talk, You give
Speaker 4: them some encouragement, man, because let me tell you something,
Speaker 4: when you have an opportunity, I don't know of anything
Speaker 4: more humbling that's happened to me. Maybe birth, my kids
Speaker 4: and those kind of things, but my marriage to look
Speaker 4: in the eyes of a young soldier who could be
Speaker 4: sucking on a Starbucks latte, but they're down range, embracing
Speaker 4: the suck, serving their country, dirty and tired, and you
Speaker 4: get that opportunity to love on them. I don't know
Speaker 4: what's better than that. And so give them some encouragement,
Speaker 4: maybe read a psalm or verse, pump them up, because
Speaker 4: you don't know who's not coming back from that deal.
Speaker 4: I mean, just don't th roll the dice. Right In
Speaker 4: that particular night, I had for whatever reason. I usually
Speaker 4: will stand back by the door when they're done and
Speaker 4: they're leaving and just hug them, smack them on the shoulder,
Speaker 4: tell them I love them, and and you know, I'll
Speaker 4: see it soon or what you know, tomorrow or whatever.
Speaker 4: Everything will be fine. Well for whatever. That night, I
Speaker 4: was focused on these one truck and uh one we
Speaker 4: call him trucks, but one group. So you got a driver,
Speaker 4: TC and a gunner in that truck and H. I
Speaker 4: hugged them, shook their hands, and I was having a
Speaker 4: lot of interactions with them for some other things going on,
Speaker 4: and in a positive way and H and I told them.
Speaker 4: They're like, hey, chaplain, we'll see you tomorrow. And I said, yeah,
Speaker 4: I said, you're going to be fine. I prayed, everything's cool, guys.
Speaker 4: You guys go out there, do your thing. Man, We
Speaker 4: appreciate you serving the country. We love you, all those
Speaker 4: motivational things. And then two hours later, you know, I'm
Speaker 4: getting woke up one in the morning or whatever and
Speaker 4: running to the TMC and and uh they're hollering for
Speaker 4: me to get back there, and they're bringing one of
Speaker 4: them in on a gurney and he's all blown up.
Speaker 4: And turn to kid it out, and then I don't
Speaker 4: see the other guys. And then now I got a
Speaker 4: medic hugging me, crying because we lost those two guys
Speaker 4: we didn't know. I got company commanders. And two. I mean,
Speaker 4: it's just kind of melee that I'm trying to deal with.
Speaker 4: But the one, the one young man, he asked me
Speaker 4: something that was interesting. And he said, he's laying on
Speaker 4: his gurney and he said, he said, well, first he says, hey, chaplin,
Speaker 4: I said, and he's still still alive today, great, great kid.
Speaker 4: And I said, hey, man, I said, be asking you that.
Speaker 4: And then he realized what was happening and and his
Speaker 4: legs are in bad shape, and and I said, he
Speaker 4: asked me this, He said, why did God let this happen?
Speaker 4: And still to this day that question haunts me. Haunts
Speaker 4: me from a few perspectives. I don't have the answer. One. Two.
Speaker 4: He just he was sizing it up and realized he's
Speaker 4: in trouble and where's his buddies because he didn't know,
Speaker 4: and I didn't have it. I didn't have anything. And
Speaker 4: I was thinking, okay, Lord, you gotta give me something.
Speaker 4: So I just say, hey, listen, man, I don't know,
Speaker 4: I said, but God's got you. I got you, and
Speaker 4: I ain't going to leave your side. And I give
Speaker 4: you my word, I'm not leaving your side. And so
Speaker 4: I stayed with him until they shipped him to Germany.
Speaker 4: But what blogged in Germany? But I struggled with that
Speaker 4: the first few days in particular, I mean I still
Speaker 4: kind of struggle with it, just because I had said
Speaker 4: something that I don't think I should say. Again, did
Speaker 4: I give him a false sense of hope? Right?
Speaker 1: Yeah?
Speaker 4: Like maybe I shouldn't have said those things that way.
Speaker 4: So I had to change what I said. It's not
Speaker 4: up to me, sin, it's not my deal. Yeah, who
Speaker 4: comes home and who's you know, it's just not my deal.
Speaker 4: And so I had to I had to change that up.
Speaker 1: Like he gave him an assurance that wasn't used to give.
Speaker 4: It, right right yep. And I and that's the one
Speaker 4: that I still remember it everything about that night to
Speaker 4: this day. And there was other wounded people and other things,
Speaker 4: but that was our first one. And I said those words.
Speaker 4: So I just as a learning lesson, how did you
Speaker 4: change your words? Then you just would say, hey, you
Speaker 4: guys are doing great work. You focus on the positives.
Speaker 4: Go out there, take care of business. We're with you
Speaker 4: whatever you need, you know, more encouraging. I wouldn't promise them,
Speaker 4: even though I didn't realize I was doing that till
Speaker 4: after mortality, like promising them survival. Yep, this is not
Speaker 4: my call. And so I had to change that up.
Speaker 4: And there's a many other chaplains that have similar stories
Speaker 4: about you're just trying to give him some encouragement and
Speaker 4: that's why you're in there. But you know, they've got
Speaker 4: to trust that chaplain when that chaplain's praying. They got
Speaker 4: to trust when he you know, he stands up back there,
Speaker 4: she stands up. There's got to be a sense of
Speaker 4: all right, we're gonna be good. So there is some
Speaker 4: of that, But saying the words I think is was.
Speaker 4: I just didn't do that anymore. Figured out a different way.
Speaker 3: You know.
Speaker 4: I got last question for you.
Speaker 1: Your place where you work is just like this gorgeous property. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you guys got like a big creek, got looking off
Speaker 1: at the mountains, trout pond and yeah, big meadows and
Speaker 1: it's beautiful. Do you do you feel that? I mean,
Speaker 1: obviously do because you do your work there. But what
Speaker 1: is that what is that like natural environment, that natural
Speaker 1: beauty to be there?
Speaker 5: Is that.
Speaker 1: Is that helpful and getting people to want to go
Speaker 1: or is it helpful in getting people to getting people
Speaker 1: to open up you know what I mean.
Speaker 4: I think I think there's it's a yes to all three, right.
Speaker 4: I think I think one, people want to come to Montana,
Speaker 4: you know, they want they want to come up here
Speaker 4: and experience the beauty of it. I think they go
Speaker 4: on there and they see the place and they're like,
Speaker 4: you know, obviously enamored with that beauty. It's quiet, although
Speaker 4: you know sometimes now with some of the traffic in
Speaker 4: the winter, but we don't run as main groups in winter,
Speaker 4: so but it's quiet. It's away from the chaos, right,
Speaker 4: it's a it's a good place to gut check yourself.
Speaker 4: You can folks us on stuff and the beauty and
Speaker 4: and uh, you know, we've got a chef that comes
Speaker 4: in and cooks and make it comfortable. But yeah, the
Speaker 4: beauty is huge. And when they wake up and it's
Speaker 4: quiet and they're looking at trees and they're seeing animals
Speaker 4: and a lot of times those moose, I don't know
Speaker 4: what it is. They're fighting in the front yard, and
Speaker 4: guys were like, you know, I had one fireman, long
Speaker 4: beach fireman, great group man. Every person that's been through,
Speaker 4: it's just been fantastic. But we were sitting out there
Speaker 4: and we do like campfires at night, like a little
Speaker 4: bonfire and just kind of get to know each other
Speaker 4: more every night. And we had started early, so it's
Speaker 4: still like and we look over in this foxes jumping
Speaker 4: just like you see on nat geo. Right, he's jumping.
Speaker 4: He's snatching myself and out of the grass, and I'm like, wow,
Speaker 4: that's cool to see that, you know. And this young
Speaker 4: guy was so pumped. He said, I almost see how
Speaker 4: close I get. He gets his camera out and he's
Speaker 4: and he must have got within fifteen yards of the
Speaker 4: oh oh yeah. And that sucker just kept doing it
Speaker 4: over and over. Those are those kinds of things that
Speaker 4: really add to or bears will walk up. We've had bears.
Speaker 4: I've been doing a chapel service, so we do chapel service.
Speaker 4: It's optional, you don't have to go. I'm gonna offer
Speaker 4: to you, right, it's gonna do a quick ten minute,
Speaker 4: fifteen minute good word of the day. If a guy
Speaker 4: needs communion, you know, get communion as well. But ninety
Speaker 4: nine percent of the people come to those. We've only
Speaker 4: had maybe one or two that weren't of the same
Speaker 4: faith group. And that's fine, and they were cool about it.
Speaker 4: And this happened a few different times. One time in particularly,
Speaker 4: I'm doing the service and all of a sudden, everybody's
Speaker 4: I lose everybody, and I'm like, I look out, and
Speaker 4: this black bear is looking through the window.
Speaker 1: He's watching.
Speaker 4: He's watched it be he's watching the ever of course
Speaker 4: everybody mag you know, went right then that sucker got
Speaker 4: he was comfortable, he was too comfy. He cruises around
Speaker 4: the backside and he comes up to the front door.
Speaker 4: I mean, just like he lived in the joint. I've
Speaker 4: had a lot of bear issues, as you know. As
Speaker 4: you know, I had a lot of bear problems over there. Yeah,
Speaker 4: scared off cubs at night, used to get in my cans,
Speaker 4: drag a can forty yards into the brush, tear it
Speaker 4: up my barbecues of the back patio. I mean, just yeah,
Speaker 4: a lot of bear issues. But yeah, that's it. I
Speaker 4: think that the natural beauty, the wildlife, I think the
Speaker 4: montana feel, all those things are play a role in
Speaker 4: calming people down.
Speaker 2: Ye.
Speaker 1: So if if people out there, first responders, service members, like,
Speaker 1: if there's a group that feels that come and to
Speaker 1: see you might be good for them, Like, how do
Speaker 1: they proceed? And if people that are outside of that,
Speaker 1: they're just listeners that want to help, what you guys do?
Speaker 1: How do they how do they proceed?
Speaker 4: Yeah? The best way is they go to the website.
Speaker 4: All the stuff's on the on the website. If they've
Speaker 4: got a group they want to put together, there's apps
Speaker 4: they can fill out on there, or they can just
Speaker 4: go to task Force Heroes, Taskforce Heroes dot or YEP
Speaker 4: donations the same way they put it.
Speaker 1: But a group of guys, group of active like active
Speaker 1: people can go and say, hey, you know, me and
Speaker 1: some of my colleagues or whatever, YEP would like to
Speaker 1: check on the possibility of coming out.
Speaker 4: YEP.
Speaker 1: They could do it that way.
Speaker 4: They can. There's an email through there that comes directly
Speaker 4: to me that they can say, I got seven guys
Speaker 4: or like I said, we try to try to make
Speaker 4: it intimate and smaller. We fill up real quick, and
Speaker 4: we fill up real fast, and we're dealing with some
Speaker 4: maintenance issues right now that we're we're fixing because we
Speaker 4: had a water leak over there and some other stuff.
Speaker 4: But yeah, that's the that's the best way to the
Speaker 4: best way to do it.
Speaker 1: And how about people that want to support you and help.
Speaker 4: That that's another best way. Send an email, make a
Speaker 4: connection with me. I mean, they can get hold of you.
Speaker 4: We're right there. We see each other quite a bit.
Speaker 4: So any of those ways that that's the biggest. You know,
Speaker 4: it's one hundred percent free for these these folks, and
Speaker 4: you know, flying them and feeding them and cleaning and
Speaker 4: getting them here and all that. It's operation are fairly
Speaker 4: steep at a place like that, but we want to
Speaker 4: make it a once in a lifetime experience for him.
Speaker 4: Good food, cooking, wild game. A lot of them never
Speaker 4: tried elk or deer, turkey, any of those things. I mean,
Speaker 4: it's it's been a it's been amazing. I mean one
Speaker 4: time we we we we got a turkey right there
Speaker 4: on the property and smoked it up and and uh,
Speaker 4: they got to eat fresh turkey. Man, it was great.
Speaker 5: Do you guys deal with your nuisance bears on the property.
Speaker 4: We deal with those. Yeah, we have dealt successfully a
Speaker 4: few times with uh with bears. One four hundred and
Speaker 4: four pounder over four hundred sixteen year old bear, A
Speaker 4: big sucker, And I sent that picture of that big
Speaker 4: fatty we had.
Speaker 1: Yeah, you were like.
Speaker 4: His response was, Man, a lot of good bear grease
Speaker 4: out of that do that area?
Speaker 1: Want those cherries down along there, you know over there,
Speaker 1: like all over the place? Man, they just vanished the
Speaker 1: harvested a bear.
Speaker 4: Maybe yeah, well you have they stand up and you know,
Speaker 4: they reach up and pull them down and they'll just
Speaker 4: suck them all right off that yeah, right off the limb, man,
Speaker 4: that whole.
Speaker 1: Bottom end of that canyon. When the choke cherries come in,
Speaker 1: it's just bears all over. Choke cherries go away. Bears
Speaker 1: are all gone. Yeah, they take off, and then those
Speaker 1: wax wings show up clean up the choke cherries and
Speaker 1: it's the end of the whole program.
Speaker 4: Yep.
Speaker 1: But it's a little rush. It's a little flurry of activity,
Speaker 1: except yep, and wounded deer from getting hit. And yeah,
Speaker 1: we got a lot of that.
Speaker 5: You know.
Speaker 4: My wife running out going you got to kill that deer.
Speaker 4: I'm thinking I got one tag here, you know, it's
Speaker 4: a little spike or something with three legs. She's like
Speaker 4: you gotta do something so we get a lot of
Speaker 4: that stuff. Yeah, any more other questions you had? Man?
Speaker 1: No, Man, I'm glad I came on and, like I said,
Speaker 1: I just said, you know, it's been nice to it's
Speaker 1: been nice to meet you. And then just the little
Speaker 1: bits I've picked up about the work you did, I
Speaker 1: was just really impressed by it.
Speaker 5: Man.
Speaker 1: And then one time you invited me up to meet
Speaker 1: a couple of your guys. Yeah, And I could just
Speaker 1: tell going there, you know, as short as I was there,
Speaker 1: I could tell going there, I just could tell you
Speaker 1: had like a very special program going on. Yeah, it's
Speaker 1: very I can tell that the guys that were there
Speaker 1: were I don't know, man, I could I could see
Speaker 1: why they're there. I could see what they were getting
Speaker 1: out of it, you know what I mean? Just you
Speaker 1: create like a really like a I don't know, man,
Speaker 1: like a just in that little bit of exposure I had,
Speaker 1: you create this kind of amazing bubble for people. Man. Yeah,
Speaker 1: but I could picture being hard people to get to talk, right.
Speaker 4: I appreciate that. And it's not just me, it's I
Speaker 4: got a great team. I got great board of directors.
Speaker 4: They're all either former or veterans that are still serving
Speaker 4: or active military folks or uh, you know, I got
Speaker 4: a lot of LAPD guys on there, and guys from
Speaker 4: different places in the country, and a great board, great volunteers. Man,
Speaker 4: we got we couldn't do without all them, all them folks.
Speaker 4: And and then you know, when we moved up here,
Speaker 4: we just went all in, all our furniture, all stuff.
Speaker 4: And you know, I'm not saying that too my heart.
Speaker 4: I'm just saying it was a huge commitment. We didn't
Speaker 4: know anybody really in Montana, and we got here about
Speaker 4: it almost eight years ago, and and uh we're just like, okay, lord,
Speaker 4: you gotta do. You do your work here. And we
Speaker 4: filled up that first season in like three months. And uh,
Speaker 4: it's just just amazing stuff. So it's all my wife
Speaker 4: for sure and kids that that sacrificed a lot to
Speaker 4: make it happen. So we'll just keep on pushing forward.
Speaker 4: And I appreciate my relationship with you man, just being real.
Speaker 4: It's it's been it's been good. And I mean this
Speaker 4: guy helped me for hours try to find my Hebrew
Speaker 4: inscripted wedding band.
Speaker 1: Found I lost. We're out there. The metal Detector being
Speaker 1: my kids and man, we found You don't realize how
Speaker 1: many twenty two casings are out in the world. I'm
Speaker 1: sure you know what's funny. I was actually one of
Speaker 1: the camera guys I'm working with on his History Channel show.
Speaker 1: He'd filmed, like he worked for a long time on
Speaker 1: a metal detecting show.
Speaker 4: Oh, man, we gotta find it.
Speaker 5: Oh.
Speaker 1: I was picking his brain about that, and he was
Speaker 1: saying that, like, these dudes that host that show would
Speaker 1: have no problem hopping up that ring. But man, we
Speaker 1: were we got, I got. Yeah, I'm not like a
Speaker 1: metal detector, but me and my kids were out there
Speaker 1: and we were more garbage. That's a nice looking place
Speaker 1: for so much garbage, sub surface shockgun shells, everything. It's
Speaker 1: like people could trying to find a ring here man.
Speaker 4: Made Israel, like handmade in Israel, and my wife's got
Speaker 4: the match you won, and I'm.
Speaker 1: Like, maybe someone who's out there's a real metal detecting enthusiast.
Speaker 1: It's like, you know, so Shane walked out of his house. Yeah,
Speaker 1: he journey walks along the side of his driveway. You
Speaker 1: walked three hundred yards.
Speaker 4: Yeah, well he left the pond. We're we're you know,
Speaker 4: we used the pond just to let guys most of
Speaker 4: them never fly fish, so just to get them to
Speaker 4: cast and catch something, just so they get the field
Speaker 4: before we go to the creek or we go off site.
Speaker 4: And uh, I kept getting hooked with stuff, and you know,
Speaker 4: just trying to get sometimes guys will get snagged. You know,
Speaker 4: guy's got something in his ear or something, and so
Speaker 4: you're working through that. So I took it off, I
Speaker 4: put it in my pocket, walked around that pump back
Speaker 4: to the house, and then I went to take it
Speaker 4: out in my room and I had a hole in
Speaker 4: my pocket. Yeah, and I'm like, so somewhere, Yeah.
Speaker 1: It's like it's like a ten it's like not three
Speaker 1: hundred yards long, and it's maybe a ten foot wide
Speaker 1: twenty foot wide path. Yeah, but thwarted us.
Speaker 5: If you know, if you if you think you could
Speaker 5: find it, if you are a metal detecting enthusiast and
Speaker 5: a professional, you can write us at the meat Eater
Speaker 5: podcast at the meat eater dot com to offer yourself.
Speaker 1: And if you find it, will put together I'm just
Speaker 1: gonna throw this out there. If you find that, ring
Speaker 1: will put together a generous care package.
Speaker 4: Yeah. But you got.
Speaker 1: Yeah, say we're gonna vat you first. We're gonna vet you.
Speaker 1: Make sure we're gone.
Speaker 3: Right exactly.
Speaker 5: You need a CEEV as long as chains the.
Speaker 4: Property owner check in.
Speaker 5: Uh.
Speaker 1: Reverend Shane Yates, Yeah, former cop, current military guy.
Speaker 4: Chaps.
Speaker 1: Well, I appreciate it, man, it's a task force heroes.
Speaker 1: Thanks for coming out. Man.
Speaker 4: It's humbling. I appreciate you got each of you, you know,
Speaker 4: it really is. What we do is humbling, and I'm
Speaker 4: just blessed to be able to do it. And uh, blessed,
Speaker 4: blessed for all the blessings I've gotten in my life.
Speaker 4: And I missed all my own struggles and own stuff.
Speaker 4: So privilege to come on. So thanks for the time.
Speaker 1: Thank you, Thank you,