Speaker 1: Welcome to This Country Life. I'm your host, Brent Reeves.
Speaker 1: From coon hunting to trot lining and just general country living.
Speaker 1: I want you to stay a while as I share
Speaker 1: my stories and the country skills that will help you
Speaker 1: beat the system. This Country Life is proudly presented as
Speaker 1: part of Meat Eaters Podcast Network, bringing you the best
Speaker 1: outdoor podcast the airways have to offer. All right, friends,
Speaker 1: pull you up a chair or drop that tailgate. I
Speaker 1: think I got a thing or two the teaching thirty
Speaker 1: two years and seven months. Thirty two years and seven
Speaker 1: months is how long I've been in law enforcement. At
Speaker 1: the end of this month, I'm going to retire. It's
Speaker 1: been quite a rewarding and costly journey, and as I
Speaker 1: reached the end of my career behind the badge, I'm
Speaker 1: going to share a little bit about what that's meant.
Speaker 1: So this one's gonna be a little different than my
Speaker 1: regular episodes. It's such a significant milestone in my life
Speaker 1: and one that I felt I should address, even if briefly,
Speaker 1: just a lessen or two that I learned along the way.
Speaker 1: But first, I'm going to tell you a story. I
Speaker 1: feel it necessary to give a warning on this episode
Speaker 1: This first story may be a little intense for the
Speaker 1: young folks that normally listen, so mom and dad, y'all
Speaker 1: check it out first before the little ones do. It's
Speaker 1: very important to me and I take a lot of
Speaker 1: pride in hearing from y'all that listen with your kids,
Speaker 1: so I would never do anything that might upset them
Speaker 1: or you. With that said, here we go back in
Speaker 1: the mid nineties. I was working uniform patrol late one
Speaker 1: week and got a call from the dispatcher that a
Speaker 1: lady was being held against her will inside a gated compound.
Speaker 1: Now this was a rural area and there were only
Speaker 1: three of us on duty that night, and I was
Speaker 1: the supervisor. I called the other deputies from their assigned
Speaker 1: patrol areas and we met in the small community in
Speaker 1: the south part of the county where the nine to
Speaker 1: one to one address was listed. Dispatcher was on the
Speaker 1: phone with a caller and she said she was hiding
Speaker 1: behind the living room couch while her kidnapper was in
Speaker 1: the other end of the home. She said he was
Speaker 1: armed with a shotgun. He said that he was going
Speaker 1: to kill anyone that came inside, and he was going
Speaker 1: to kill her if she tried to call for help.
Speaker 1: These are the kind of situations you trained for. You
Speaker 1: don't ever want them to happen, but when they do,
Speaker 1: and you're the guy that's responsible for making the immediate
Speaker 1: decisions that are going to affect everyone involved forever, he
Speaker 1: can get a little teen. Now, we've got someone calling
Speaker 1: for help that's scared. We've got someone who's saying that
Speaker 1: they're going to hurt us and her if we come
Speaker 1: in and help her, or if he catches her calling
Speaker 1: nine one one. So what do you do. You have
Speaker 1: to make the decision right then and there, and that
Speaker 1: decision you have to make in the blink of an
Speaker 1: eye will be judged forever at everyone else's convenience. If
Speaker 1: you're the guy with the badge that took the oath,
Speaker 1: you don't have that luxury. Also, I had the responsibility
Speaker 1: of ordering the two other officers to follow me in
Speaker 1: that house, and if they got hurt, that was going
Speaker 1: to all be on me. Now, in the time it's
Speaker 1: taken me to go this far in the story, I
Speaker 1: briefed those officers on what was going on and that
Speaker 1: we were going in to get this lady out, and
Speaker 1: they never hesitated. We parked just down the street from
Speaker 1: the reported eye dress, and we could see that the
Speaker 1: residents had an eight foot chain link fence around it
Speaker 1: with three strands of barbed wire on the top. There
Speaker 1: was a double gate that was locked with a big
Speaker 1: chain and a padlock that would have had been cut
Speaker 1: off with a torch. Even if we could have used
Speaker 1: a set of boat cutters, the night light had that
Speaker 1: part of the yard illuminated, and we would have been
Speaker 1: in easy range of the front door with no cover
Speaker 1: or protection. We also didn't have any boat cutters in
Speaker 1: our patrol cars and didn't have time to go get any.
Speaker 1: We had to go right now for her safety. I
Speaker 1: told the dispatcher to tell the lady that we were
Speaker 1: coming in and to stay hidden. The dispatcher said that
Speaker 1: the lady told her that she'd unlocked the back door. Well.
Speaker 1: I told her we were going radio silent, and we
Speaker 1: turned off all our radios so the bad guy couldn't
Speaker 1: hear them, and two of us walked beside one of
Speaker 1: the troll cars as the officer pulled up to the
Speaker 1: edge of the yard furtherest away from the house, right
Speaker 1: beside the fence, which it was about twenty five yards.
Speaker 1: We took a blanket out of the trunk of the
Speaker 1: car and laid it across the barbed wire, and one
Speaker 1: by one we crawled on top of the patrol car
Speaker 1: on top of the bar lights, climbed the fence, over
Speaker 1: the barb wire, and dropped into the yard. I went
Speaker 1: first while they covered the house. I let go of
Speaker 1: the wire, and before my feet hit the ground inside,
Speaker 1: I realized I'd forgotten to ask if they had a dog.
Speaker 1: Now this was about to get really loud if they did.
Speaker 1: But the only sound I heard was the other two
Speaker 1: sets of boots hitting the ground behind me, almost at
Speaker 1: the same time. As I held cover on the window
Speaker 1: at the end of the house. The lady said the
Speaker 1: kidnapper was in no dog. That was a plus, but
Speaker 1: we still had a hostage situation to deal with. The
Speaker 1: house laid north and south, and she said she'd unlock
Speaker 1: the back door, which was on the west side of
Speaker 1: the house, opposite from where we were. From what she
Speaker 1: told the dispatcher, the man armed with a shotgun was
Speaker 1: in the south end of the house, so the back
Speaker 1: door was on the back third of the house, and
Speaker 1: if we'd breached that door, we could have been walking
Speaker 1: right into his lap. As bad as I hate to
Speaker 1: say it, if you want to hurt a police officer,
Speaker 1: you don't even have to leave your house. All you
Speaker 1: have to do is call them. They'll drive right up
Speaker 1: in your yard. Things like that have happened before. And
Speaker 1: all of these things, along with what was reported, was
Speaker 1: going through my mind. Was this an elaborately playing damn
Speaker 1: bush or a legitimate hostage situation? I didn't know, but
Speaker 1: I didn't know. I wasn't going through the back door.
Speaker 1: None of us knew either one of the people involved
Speaker 1: in this call, so we were dealing only with the
Speaker 1: nine one one operators out version of what was happening.
Speaker 1: I could do a whole year of podcasts about dispatchers.
Speaker 1: They've kept me alive more than once, and this dispatcher,
Speaker 1: she was one of the best. We slipped up to
Speaker 1: the porch and eased up the steps, everyone covering a
Speaker 1: different window that could have seen us in the glow
Speaker 1: of the nightlight. I told the other two officers that
Speaker 1: I would take point, and when we made entry, we
Speaker 1: weren't stopping until we secured everyone in the house, regardless
Speaker 1: of what that entailed. I placed my hand on the
Speaker 1: doorknob and slowly turned it, and surprisingly it opened. As
Speaker 1: I slowly opened the door, I could see the top
Speaker 1: of a woman's blond hair in a bun behind the couch,
Speaker 1: and I could hear her whispering on the phone to
Speaker 1: our dispatcher. The room was lit by dim light over
Speaker 1: the stove in the kitchen, and for whatever reason, that
Speaker 1: lady poked her head up, and when she did, she
Speaker 1: saw me standing in the door, pointing my pistol down
Speaker 1: the hallway toward where she'd said her kidnapper was. She
Speaker 1: dropped a phone and ran straight for me, with her
Speaker 1: arms outstretched to hug me. And I grabbed her with
Speaker 1: one hand and passed her back to the officer behind me,
Speaker 1: who did the same. And the third officer grabbed her
Speaker 1: and ran her across the yard and took cover with
Speaker 1: her at the other end of the house. Hostage safe
Speaker 1: check that box. Now we got to go get the
Speaker 1: bad guy. The officer behind me that handed her off
Speaker 1: to the last officer asked her, as she was going by,
Speaker 1: where the suspect was. She said, in the back, and
Speaker 1: pointed in the direction where we'd expected him to be.
Speaker 1: He also confirmed from her that there was only one
Speaker 1: weapon in the house. He walked up behind me and whispered,
Speaker 1: only one weapon. He squeezed my shoulder to let me
Speaker 1: know he was with me, and we went in the house.
Speaker 1: We moved through the small living room and I stopped
Speaker 1: at the edge of the kitchen where the hall began,
Speaker 1: taking cover against the wall. While looking down the short
Speaker 1: hallway into the darkness that was the bedroom and where
Speaker 1: the suspect was supposed to be, I could see the
Speaker 1: barrel of a shotgun lying on the floor at the
Speaker 1: foot of the bed, and a man's bare right foot
Speaker 1: on top of the bed, as if he was laying
Speaker 1: on his back. The light that came into the room
Speaker 1: from the kitchen was cut off beyond that, and I
Speaker 1: whispered to my partner to turn his flashlight on and
Speaker 1: secure the weapon when we entered the room, and I
Speaker 1: deal with the suspect from that moment. When we squeezed
Speaker 1: my shoulder and we entered that room, it was slow motion.
Speaker 1: I crossed the threshold and was holding cover on the
Speaker 1: bed in the darkness. Time stood still, and it seemed
Speaker 1: like it took forever for him to turn on that flashlight.
Speaker 1: In reality, I hadn't stopped moving when my partner was
Speaker 1: standing on that shotgun and blinding the man that was
Speaker 1: sleeping in the bed with his flashlight. That man bolted
Speaker 1: upright in the bed and his arms went straight out
Speaker 1: in front of him. His hands were empty, but it
Speaker 1: was like he was reaching for something. I quickly hosted
Speaker 1: my weapon and using his momentum my monkey, flipped him
Speaker 1: out of that bed and onto the floor, with me
Speaker 1: right on top of him. When I did that, I
Speaker 1: was immediately tangled up in a mass of wires and tubes,
Speaker 1: and a man was screaming, what's going on, What's going on?
Speaker 1: Where's my wife? Is she okay? I handcuffed him and
Speaker 1: I untangled myself from all the wires. I turned my
Speaker 1: radio on reported that the hostage and suspect were secure
Speaker 1: and all the officers were okay. I started reading The
Speaker 1: Man who Writes, and after I finished, he kept asking me,
Speaker 1: is my wife okay? What's going on? And I told
Speaker 1: to me he was under arrest for kidnapping. He asked
Speaker 1: who he kidnapped. I told him the blond lady that
Speaker 1: was in the house. He said, that's my wife. Is
Speaker 1: she okay? I said she's fine, But it doesn't matter
Speaker 1: who she is. When you hold someone forcibly against their will,
Speaker 1: that's kidnapping. And I asked him what all these wires
Speaker 1: and hoses were for they were hooked up to him.
Speaker 1: He said, I'm taking dialysis dialysis. Well, this is weird.
Speaker 1: I said, what about this shotgun. He said that it
Speaker 1: was supposed to be locked in a closet and that
Speaker 1: he didn't get it out. It was his father's and
Speaker 1: there weren't even any shells on that property for it.
Speaker 1: My partner checked it and it was unloaded. He was
Speaker 1: starting to make sense, but this whole situation was far
Speaker 1: from making sense. I set him up on the bed
Speaker 1: and he said, my wife is off her medication. All
Speaker 1: you have to do is talk to her and you'll see.
Speaker 1: Just go talk to her. I told him, buddy, we've
Speaker 1: been talking to her for almost an hour on nine
Speaker 1: one one. She's the reason we're here. He was calm
Speaker 1: and collected. He said, just go talk to her and
Speaker 1: ask her who her parents are. So that's what I did.
Speaker 1: I had the other officer bring her inside to the
Speaker 1: other end of the house, and I told her we
Speaker 1: needed to get some information for the report. So I
Speaker 1: asked her her name, and she told me. I asked
Speaker 1: her her day to birth and her address, and without
Speaker 1: missing a beat, she said it. I didn't expect her
Speaker 1: to look at me sideways when I asked her this question,
Speaker 1: but I did it anyway. What are your parents' names
Speaker 1: and their address? Well? She told me that they were
Speaker 1: both deceased, and she looked sad when she said it.
Speaker 1: I didn't know where this was going, but I said, well,
Speaker 1: tell me their names and where they used to live.
Speaker 1: She looked up at me and with the most sincerest expression,
Speaker 1: she said, my dad's name is Elvis, and I said Presley.
Speaker 1: She said, yes, sir, and my mother was Grace Kelly.
Speaker 1: She was killed in a car wreck. Now some may
Speaker 1: find some humor in this, but it's really not funny.
Speaker 1: According to her husband, this lady had done irreparable damage
Speaker 1: to her brain while abusing drugs, but it finally beat
Speaker 1: the addiction, but the effects had lasted forever and would
Speaker 1: last forever, apparently, and he was struggling to keep her
Speaker 1: on her medications at times and also take care of himself.
Speaker 1: That big chain link fence around their house was to
Speaker 1: keep her from wandering off and being in the shape
Speaker 1: he was in. It was the only way he could
Speaker 1: keep her safe. He had an emergency contact for a
Speaker 1: clinic that she was a patient of, and we contacted
Speaker 1: them and provided her transportation to that facility that night.
Speaker 1: There were a lot of things that could have gone
Speaker 1: wrong that night, and I thought about them a million times.
Speaker 1: What if we'd arrested him, took him to jail, ignored
Speaker 1: him about what he was saying that his wife had
Speaker 1: mentally issues. What if we left her there alone, thinking
Speaker 1: we'd saved her, only to have her harm herself because
Speaker 1: her husband wasn't there to help her. Or what if
Speaker 1: she'd laid that shotgun across his lap instead of in
Speaker 1: the floor. When that she finally admitted to and he
Speaker 1: sat up with that when I entered the room, What
Speaker 1: if this happened? Or what if that happened? But I
Speaker 1: told her the lesson away from there that night, the
Speaker 1: lesson that you can't take everything at face value, and
Speaker 1: giving people the benefit of the doubt can lead you
Speaker 1: to what's really going on. Sometimes I wish I could
Speaker 1: tell you how that story ended, but I don't know.
Speaker 1: That was the last time I saw either one of them.
Speaker 1: And in this job, you run across people in situations
Speaker 1: that are fleeting. Most are sad, and when the report
Speaker 1: is done, you may never see that person again ever,
Speaker 1: but you always wonder. I do anyway, and that's just
Speaker 1: how that happened. I got into this job to help people,
Speaker 1: one hundred percent. That was my goal. So a couple
Speaker 1: of weeks into the police academy, when an instructor posed
Speaker 1: a question to the hundred or so cadets in the class,
Speaker 1: why did you choose this profession? He followed it up
Speaker 1: with before any of you say because you want to
Speaker 1: help people, you need to save it, because that's a lie.
Speaker 1: You want to do it for the power and the authority,
Speaker 1: He said, you get called to preach, you don't get
Speaker 1: called to enforce the law. I just looked at him
Speaker 1: and thought, this guy's an idiot. I was telling Clay
Speaker 1: Newcombe about that the other day. He said, maybe he
Speaker 1: was making you evaluate the real reason that you were there. Well,
Speaker 1: maybe he was, but I still think he was an idiot.
Speaker 1: I absolutely wanted to help folks. It's all I ever
Speaker 1: wanted to do. And it had nothing to do with
Speaker 1: kicking in a door, or driving a car fast or
Speaker 1: putting someone in jail, and there were people in this
Speaker 1: world that needed help and protection and I was going
Speaker 1: to do both. Now, don't get me wrong, I did
Speaker 1: all that stuff. It was fun driving cars fast, it
Speaker 1: was fun putting bad guys in jail, and it was
Speaker 1: fun kicking in doors, except for one time that comes
Speaker 1: to mind. I was selected to be the breacher on
Speaker 1: a drug house warning we were running, and it was
Speaker 1: my first search one. I was a little pumped into briefing.
Speaker 1: The order was reeves breeches the door and everyone enters
Speaker 1: the house, detains anyone inside, and we searched for drugs
Speaker 1: in a contraband Brent, I want to take the ram. No,
Speaker 1: I'm good. I'm finna go through that door, like y'r
Speaker 1: Simony Sam. By the time y'all get in there, I'll
Speaker 1: be sitting on the couch watching TV with the dope dealers.
Speaker 1: Well they all laughed. We loaded up and drove to
Speaker 1: the address, piled out of the cars like I stepped
Speaker 1: on fire in bed, and stacked up at the door.
Speaker 1: I got to nod to breach it. I looked at
Speaker 1: the door and I could see it was a metal
Speaker 1: so instead of kicking it in, I backed up about
Speaker 1: five steps and hit it with my shoulder, going as
Speaker 1: hard and fast as I could go. To my surprise
Speaker 1: and to those around me, I went through that door
Speaker 1: like it wasn't there. For a split second, that seemed
Speaker 1: like an eternity. I was the only guy in that
Speaker 1: house full of drug addicts and dope dealers that wasn't
Speaker 1: one of either. I shouted, search Warrn. I took a
Speaker 1: running step toward a table where several bags of narcotics
Speaker 1: were piled up and the people were sitting around it,
Speaker 1: and I tripped over a ten speed bicycle that was
Speaker 1: laying in the floor that I didn't see. I was
Speaker 1: watching them watch me as I nose dived into that bicycle.
Speaker 1: It was like a scene out of a comedy. Time
Speaker 1: was frozen, and they were looking at this clown that
Speaker 1: had just knocked the door off their hinges, hollering search
Speaker 1: Warrn that was now getting his butt kicked by a bicycle.
Speaker 1: They didn't move, they were just staring at me. Now,
Speaker 1: the rest of the troops came in and secured the
Speaker 1: house and the folks in it, and helped me get
Speaker 1: out of that ten speed booby trap. Someone to sit
Speaker 1: in the kitchen I took the ram on the next one.
Speaker 1: There's so many stories that I could tell. Unfortunately a
Speaker 1: lot of them are sad. But for the better part
Speaker 1: of my life, my job was seeing even the best
Speaker 1: people on their worst day, and it's been a pretty
Speaker 1: heavy burden at times. Memories of things I wish I
Speaker 1: could forget and not knowing how things turned out for
Speaker 1: people that still haunt me to a degree even today,
Speaker 1: especially the children. I've seen so many little folks that
Speaker 1: didn't deserve the hands that they were dealt, and it
Speaker 1: was for them that I dedicated my life's work. It
Speaker 1: was ingrained in me and early age that you take
Speaker 1: care of the folks that can't take care of themselves
Speaker 1: and children before anything else. At the height of the
Speaker 1: methamphetamine epidemic, it wasn't uncommon for us to arrest parents
Speaker 1: with malnursed children that had no stable family members to
Speaker 1: look after them, so they became wards of the state
Speaker 1: and temporary homes where vetted volunteer families took these children
Speaker 1: in and cared for them until their parents could get
Speaker 1: squared away, which rarely happened. There were a few, but
Speaker 1: we had a lot of return clients. After Social Services
Speaker 1: were called. We never knew what happened to the children.
Speaker 1: It was for their protection, and while I understood the
Speaker 1: need for secrecy, it was still hard not knowing how
Speaker 1: they ended up. I don't know how many I dealt with,
Speaker 1: but at one time I was told I held the
Speaker 1: record for removing the most children from meth labs and
Speaker 1: drug homes in the state. I did the parents eventually
Speaker 1: get them back. You just never know. I'd ask the
Speaker 1: caseworkers and they couldn't tell me, so I just wondered.
Speaker 1: One of the last cases I worked that involved removing
Speaker 1: a child from a drug house would keep me up
Speaker 1: at night for years. I remembered how scared she looked
Speaker 1: and how quiet she was while I tried to comfort her,
Speaker 1: waiting on the social worker to come get her. She
Speaker 1: looked at me for help, and I wanted to take
Speaker 1: her home forever. So she sat in my lap at
Speaker 1: the Sheriff's office while we waited for the social worker
Speaker 1: to get there. A couple hours went by. I entertained
Speaker 1: her as best I could, telling her stories and drawing pictures,
Speaker 1: and finally the caseworker came and picked her up, and
Speaker 1: I never saw her again. I'd call the social worker
Speaker 1: and asked her, you know, how she was doing, and
Speaker 1: all she would say was she's doing fine. And that's
Speaker 1: how it went. For years. I relied on what she'd
Speaker 1: told me, She's doing fine. I thought about her often,
Speaker 1: and anything and everything would make me think about her.
Speaker 1: I realized that I'd really never know her fate. I
Speaker 1: didn't live anywhere near where that happened anymore, and didn't
Speaker 1: work remotely in law in a law enforcement job that
Speaker 1: would allow me access to even ask anyone about her.
Speaker 1: And then one day, far away from the city where
Speaker 1: it happened, my wife Alexis, met a lady and a
Speaker 1: young girl in a most obscure way, and they started talking.
Speaker 1: Alexis was supposed to have left work for the day,
Speaker 1: but she and this lady and young girl having such
Speaker 1: a good visit that she stayed late. She even called me,
Speaker 1: said she'd be a little late leaving working getting home
Speaker 1: because she was helping some folks with some information. Now,
Speaker 1: one thing led to another, and they started talking about
Speaker 1: where they were from. I told Alexis about this little
Speaker 1: girl many times and how I wish that I could
Speaker 1: see her and how she was doing. In about five minutes,
Speaker 1: into their conversation of talking about where they were from
Speaker 1: and what they'd been doing and how they became a family.
Speaker 1: Alexis told me she knew she was looking at the
Speaker 1: little girl I had been telling her about all this time.
Speaker 1: We connected on social media and for the last eleven years,
Speaker 1: I've gotten to watch her grow up. I've worked a
Speaker 1: lot of cases, some of them covered in the national media,
Speaker 1: some records setting, drugs, seizures and arrests, apprehended some high
Speaker 1: profile criminals. But that little girl is the pinnacle of
Speaker 1: my career. There's never been a doubt in my mind
Speaker 1: that all I had to go through all those years
Speaker 1: was only preparing me for the day that I got
Speaker 1: to take her out of where she was and help
Speaker 1: her get to where she is, and she's in a
Speaker 1: good place. I think about thirty two years and seven
Speaker 1: months and what that means, and it brings to mind
Speaker 1: an old Jimmy Buffett's song that has a line in
Speaker 1: it that says, some of its magic, some of its tragic.
Speaker 1: But I had a good life all the way and
Speaker 1: I did. I told you this one was gonna be
Speaker 1: a little different. I hope it gives you a little
Speaker 1: insight the cat and overalls. It's telling you all these
Speaker 1: tales every week and until next week. I thank you
Speaker 1: so much for this. This is Brent Reeves signing off.
Speaker 1: Y'all be careful the