Speaker 1: Welcome to the Good Stuff.
Speaker 2: I'm Jacob Shick and I'm joined by my co host
Speaker 2: and wife, Ashley Shick.
Speaker 3: Jake is a third generation combat Marine and I'm a
Speaker 3: gold Star granddaughter, and we work together to serve military veterans,
Speaker 3: first responders, frontline healthcare workers, and their families with mental
Speaker 3: and emotional wellness through traditional and non traditional therapy.
Speaker 4: At One Tribe Foundation, we.
Speaker 2: Believe everyone has a sword itself, not only about the peaks,
Speaker 2: but also the valleys they've been through to get them where.
Speaker 1: They are today.
Speaker 3: Each week, we invite a guest to tell us their story,
Speaker 3: to share with us the lessons they've learned that shape
Speaker 3: who they are and what they're doing to pay it
Speaker 3: forward and give back.
Speaker 2: Our mission with this show is dig deep into our
Speaker 2: guest's journey so we can celebrate the hope and inspiration
Speaker 2: their story.
Speaker 1: Has to offer.
Speaker 4: We're thrilled you're joining us again.
Speaker 2: Welcome to the Good Stuff. Our guests today is my brother,
Speaker 2: Joaquin Ramiro. He's not only a fellow Marine, but he's
Speaker 2: a father, husband, and avid gamer. His work as a
Speaker 2: Chief operating Officer of One Tribe Foundation puts him squarely
Speaker 2: in the trenches regularly of helping a multitude of people
Speaker 2: not die by suicide.
Speaker 3: Yes, and his journey provides us so much inspiration on
Speaker 3: the daily as we have the privilege of working alongside him.
Speaker 3: He's here to tell us his story about how being
Speaker 3: raised in a strict religious household and getting sent to
Speaker 3: a boarding school in Mexico helped shape him to be
Speaker 3: the marine and executive that he is today.
Speaker 2: We're so proud to bring this conversation to you because
Speaker 2: I know for a fact he dug deep and there
Speaker 2: were no boundaries to his vulnerability. And this is the
Speaker 2: first time I've known him to open up in a
Speaker 2: public form.
Speaker 4: Yes, it definitely felt like a family affair.
Speaker 3: We're actually here in the One Tribe offices today, which
Speaker 3: is exciting because this is where the magic happens.
Speaker 2: Happy to be here. It's honor I have you here. No,
Speaker 2: are you a marine's marine, but you're you're a leader
Speaker 2: of humans. And just saying I love he is not
Speaker 2: enough like it's not enough justice. Oh, I appreciate it.
Speaker 2: It's an honor to be here. As you guys know,
Speaker 2: I love you too.
Speaker 3: Marine Corps was part is a part of your story,
Speaker 3: but it's by no means.
Speaker 4: The whole story, the whole story.
Speaker 1: Right.
Speaker 3: It's one thing to say, you know what, I want
Speaker 3: to serve my country, I want to don the cloth
Speaker 3: of my nation. But then what makes you go the
Speaker 3: extra mile and say, but I'm not just going to
Speaker 3: join the armed forces. I'm actually going to join the
Speaker 3: Marine Corps.
Speaker 5: So Marine Corps. It was all about the uniform. I
Speaker 5: mean honest, the first thing I saw was the dress blues,
Speaker 5: and I was like, all right. I didn't have really
Speaker 5: a background on any of the branches to say that
Speaker 5: one was harder than the other. All I knew was
Speaker 5: that my grandfather was a marine. As a matter of fact,
Speaker 5: I walked into the wrong door because I wanted to
Speaker 5: be in the branch that flew airplanes, air Force marines.
Speaker 5: That's exactly what my recruiter told me. But yeah, no,
Speaker 5: I went in with zero knowledge of any branch. I
Speaker 5: just knew that I was going to serve. Walked into
Speaker 5: the first door, the red one with the ego globe
Speaker 5: and anchor, and I was like, all right, well, I'm
Speaker 5: here to join. And my recruiter, well, I told my
Speaker 5: recruiter was like, hey, I want to join the branch
Speaker 5: that flies jets.
Speaker 1: He's like, well we have jets, Well sign me up.
Speaker 5: That's how I ended up in the Marine Corps recruiting office.
Speaker 4: We'll find jets.
Speaker 1: They have them. They do, they have jets.
Speaker 2: I don't know about you, but it sounds like your
Speaker 2: recruiter probably didn't have the same integrity as my recruiter,
Speaker 2: which is kind of the mo for recruiters, right. I mean,
Speaker 2: my recruiter was great. He was got me out of
Speaker 2: jail like he was awesome.
Speaker 1: I mean he tried talking to me out.
Speaker 2: To go on the infantry. He's like, Jake, you don't
Speaker 2: do that. Living conditions are gonna suck, like you don't
Speaker 2: eat great. And I was like, exactly, need too mature
Speaker 2: to be in college. I need to grow mentally, physically, emotionally.
Speaker 2: Marines were a great, great place for that. And I
Speaker 2: don't know about you, but my Marine Corps boot camp
Speaker 2: experience was there's a reason they say they have more
Speaker 2: mind games in Milton Bradley.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, that's a fact. Mine was different. Though.
Speaker 5: My boot camp experience didn't feel as rough as I've
Speaker 5: heard a lot of people talk about it, and I
Speaker 5: think a lot of it had to do with my upbringing.
Speaker 5: You think maybe I just felt like it was and
Speaker 5: I'm not going to say easy. It was by no
Speaker 5: means easy, but looking around at all the other recruits
Speaker 5: in my platoon, some were struggling, they were on the
Speaker 5: struggle bus, and I just felt like, you listen to
Speaker 5: your orders, you do what you're told, and this is
Speaker 5: going to be good.
Speaker 1: Love fast, loved faster, and with purpose. That's right.
Speaker 3: Yeah, being a United States Marine it is one of
Speaker 3: the most challenging things that you can sign up for.
Speaker 3: Everything from going through boot camp and then and you're
Speaker 3: both your experiences, you know, deploying and seeing the things
Speaker 3: that you saw, experiencing what you experienced, and then coming
Speaker 3: home and then the transition of getting out of the
Speaker 3: Marine Corps. Transitioning back to civilian life not an easy thing.
Speaker 3: It's something that we focus on every day here at
Speaker 3: One Tribe Foundation and trying to help our fellow veterans,
Speaker 3: first responders, law enforcement officers, frontline healthcare workers, and their families,
Speaker 3: you know, transition from going and doing what they do
Speaker 3: on a daily basis and service to living a quote
Speaker 3: normal life, whatever that might look like. But most Marines
Speaker 3: begin their relationship, you know with that struggle in training.
Speaker 3: Your story is different. You had some things in your
Speaker 3: toolbox already that kind of helped you prepare for that experience.
Speaker 4: Tell us a little bit about your story so.
Speaker 5: Early on, I mean young teenager. I have a twin brother.
Speaker 5: We were raised out in the middle of nowhere. I
Speaker 5: think that's originally where everything just started for us as
Speaker 5: far as our resibuilding braziliency. We lived out in California
Speaker 5: in the mountains. It was caretaking some three thousand acres
Speaker 5: of property for some rich old guy. We lived way
Speaker 5: off of like the highway, like it was out there.
Speaker 5: There was no electricity, no lights. We lived in a
Speaker 5: fourteen foot trailer. We took bats in buckets of water.
Speaker 5: We were homeschooled and we were allowed free rain to
Speaker 5: this three thousand acres of property where we would leave
Speaker 5: in the morning go exploring in the mountains, hunt rattlesnakes,
Speaker 5: maybe not find rattlesnakes and strike that I'm kidding. And
Speaker 5: there was like he had this man made lake out there,
Speaker 5: so we'd like build little boats out of like inner
Speaker 5: tubes and stuff. My mom probably would have had no
Speaker 5: clue if one of us drowned that lake just putting
Speaker 5: it out there. That's how that's how we were raised.
Speaker 5: We loved it. We didn't know anything different. We didn't
Speaker 5: know that we were.
Speaker 1: What people would call poor.
Speaker 5: It was just part of our life to be able
Speaker 5: to have complete full rain of acres and acres of mountains.
Speaker 1: It was just fun for us.
Speaker 5: It was that's initially where you'd go a big boulder,
Speaker 5: rolls over on your foot. Nobody knows one of us
Speaker 5: could run back and get some help. Maybe, but I still,
Speaker 5: you know, look back at it back on it today,
Speaker 5: and I'm like, that's kind of nuts. Like if it
Speaker 5: was my daughter, I don't know that she would have
Speaker 5: been given that much freedom.
Speaker 3: But because it sounds like little house on the Prayer,
Speaker 3: like or like Texas in the eighteen eighties, like no electricity,
Speaker 3: no running water, you're taking baths and buckets.
Speaker 4: I mean, what year was.
Speaker 5: This, So this was what early nineties. Yeah, we were
Speaker 5: probably thirteen fourteen years old at the time. Obviously home studied.
Speaker 5: We didn't, you know. I want to give some praise
Speaker 5: to my mom. She did a pretty good job educating us,
Speaker 5: keeping us educated because we were able to transition into
Speaker 5: public school at the time. But we didn't go to
Speaker 5: public school until we were in the eighth grade. And
Speaker 5: this is where it became problematic because you know, my brother,
Speaker 5: he was born without an ear, not very used to
Speaker 5: interacting with kids or people our age, so he got
Speaker 5: bullied a lot for it, ended up doing this surgery
Speaker 5: and they messed it up even worse than what it
Speaker 5: was before. He ended up leaving the school. I stayed there,
Speaker 5: so we've always had a really close connection. So it
Speaker 5: was difficult for me to not have my brother at.
Speaker 2: School, especially because y'all are identical twins.
Speaker 3: We are what they say is true about twins, right,
Speaker 3: you have that crazy strong bond.
Speaker 5: It's very difficult for us to be not especially identical twins, right, yeah,
Speaker 5: more so than fraternal.
Speaker 1: Yeah. And you and Francisco or your type, Yeah, very close.
Speaker 5: And so that was a difficult time because we'd never
Speaker 5: been raised around kiddos. We were very you know, kept
Speaker 5: in a bubble most of our lives. So having that
Speaker 5: interaction bullying, we weren't used to what bullying was at
Speaker 5: the time. That was also something that just I want
Speaker 5: to say, looking back on it now, just built on
Speaker 5: that resiliency. And then after graduating school, eighth grade or whatever.
Speaker 5: Our parents decided our home. Stepparent and parent decided that
Speaker 5: they would wanted us to go to school in Mexico.
Speaker 5: And I think that was an extremely rough transition, at
Speaker 5: least it was for me.
Speaker 4: How did that come about?
Speaker 5: That came about from the religion that we practiced at
Speaker 5: the time, or that they practiced at the time. It
Speaker 5: was they were very conservative, I guess. I guess I
Speaker 5: could say we were all conservative Christian not by choice.
Speaker 1: As far as kids, he just you raised how you raised.
Speaker 5: Stepdad at the time, he was extremely conservative Seventh day Amtist.
Speaker 5: My mom in her prior life was very much into
Speaker 5: gangs and very violent and things like that. When they met, however,
Speaker 5: they met, she converted over to this religion from Catholic.
Speaker 5: We used to live in the Bay Area, moved down
Speaker 5: to San Diego with this guy stepfather, I guess at
Speaker 5: the time, knowing no one all of our family was
Speaker 5: up in the Bay Area, so we didn't have anybody.
Speaker 5: I think that also serves as a lot of the
Speaker 5: connection between and my brothers. We had each other our
Speaker 5: whole lives, like through everything. In any case, it was
Speaker 5: this religion. I didn't really have a problem with the
Speaker 5: religion until we got to our teen years and myself
Speaker 5: and my brother were appointed as the bad kids of church.
Speaker 5: And this is something also that I look back and
Speaker 5: I was like, well, what is a bad kid? Because
Speaker 5: we wore baggy jeans and went to the movies and
Speaker 5: I think the first movie we went to was a
Speaker 5: Titanic and somebody from church saw us and they're like,
Speaker 5: all these sinners are at the movie theaters. And so
Speaker 5: that was really what labeled us as bad kids in
Speaker 5: the church, right, so, you know, in order to get
Speaker 5: us on the right path. I don't know if a
Speaker 5: recruiter was going around to all the churches in the
Speaker 5: area or what, but my parents caught wind of this
Speaker 5: school down in Mexico that, you know, was great at
Speaker 5: transforming the lives of bad kids or something. I don't know,
Speaker 5: because that's how we ended up down in a boarding
Speaker 5: school in Mexico.
Speaker 4: What are the beliefs of this church?
Speaker 3: Like, because you going to see the Titanic at the
Speaker 3: movie theater? And I grew up in a very conservative
Speaker 3: church environment as well, where we weren't allowed to listen
Speaker 3: to secular music and you know, you couldn't wear revealing
Speaker 3: clothes and couldn't celebrate holidays and all of that same thing.
Speaker 1: No secular music.
Speaker 5: I mean we listened to hymns, and I mean that
Speaker 5: was the music that we grew up with, not Metallica
Speaker 5: or led Zeppelin or anything. The other thing that I've
Speaker 5: talked about a lot. We weren't allowed to do any
Speaker 5: kind of intramural sports. I consider myself fairly athletic. I
Speaker 5: think we probably could have done well in any sport,
Speaker 5: but we were never given the opportunity because games fell
Speaker 5: on Saturdays, and Saturdays are the day of rest.
Speaker 1: You don't do anything. You don't watch TV.
Speaker 5: From the time the sun goes down Friday evening to
Speaker 5: the time the sun goes down Saturday.
Speaker 1: You don't do anything.
Speaker 5: No TV, no video games, no sports, no nothing. So
Speaker 5: that was one of those roles. Movie theaters off limits
Speaker 5: to a certain extent. Meat eaters were also looked at
Speaker 5: as like, oh, you know, you guys are kind of bad,
Speaker 5: like you should be vegetarian. Yeah, no makeup for the
Speaker 5: women jeweler. Jewelry was pretty much one of those things
Speaker 5: that you're not a medic center and this specific church
Speaker 5: because they're not all the same. This specific church was
Speaker 5: very conservative in its ways.
Speaker 2: So how did you feel that even at that age,
Speaker 2: you know, you're early teens, you're one of those people
Speaker 2: that you're very intuitive anyway, you're a good read on energy.
Speaker 2: And did you even know then, like, yeah, this is
Speaker 2: this is a little crazy.
Speaker 5: No, it was at that point when, you know, because
Speaker 5: most of the other churches that we had gone to
Speaker 5: was hitting mess. It was like, you know, but this
Speaker 5: specific place, the people in it were very judgmental individuals
Speaker 5: and this.
Speaker 1: Is on its face hypocritical. Yeah, you know, absolutely, I
Speaker 1: agree with that. It was. There was a lot of hypocrisy.
Speaker 5: And I'm not going to call anyone out here by name,
Speaker 5: but there were other other teenagers that were far I
Speaker 5: don't want to use the word worse, but let's just
Speaker 5: call it worse. At the time that nobody was saying
Speaker 5: anything because you know, their father was a head deacon
Speaker 5: and maybe they kept it hidden how to do senority.
Speaker 5: So it was it was definitely identified as what is
Speaker 5: this like this place?
Speaker 1: Do I even want to be here? Yeah?
Speaker 5: And we went Wednesday evenings and Saturday all day long time.
Speaker 5: You have your friends in church, and I think that's
Speaker 5: really what kept us. There is that we get to
Speaker 5: interact with our buddies, but for the most part, it
Speaker 5: was like, I'm not I don't want to sit through
Speaker 5: a sermon like especially these moments.
Speaker 3: And I do think for some people, this environment, the
Speaker 3: structure works. For some people, they're so desperate or they're
Speaker 3: longing for the belief, for the atmosphere, for the family,
Speaker 3: and this is what they cling to. And in my experience, again,
Speaker 3: because you know I share this, I understand exactly what
Speaker 3: you're talking about, because it's very similar to a period
Speaker 3: of my childhood where we went to a church that
Speaker 3: was very similar. It's almost like they want that to
Speaker 3: be your whole world.
Speaker 4: This is your.
Speaker 3: Family, this is your world, this is your environment, and
Speaker 3: we've got to make sure so as you're when you're
Speaker 3: a child, if it's your parents seeking out that environment,
Speaker 3: seeking out that religion, you know, as a child, it's
Speaker 3: like that's just what you grow up in. It's almost
Speaker 3: the norm. It's well, this isn't weird, this isn't odd,
Speaker 3: this is just my environment.
Speaker 4: And you don't know until you get labeled.
Speaker 1: And I do agree with you.
Speaker 5: Religion and especially church, one of the positives is the
Speaker 5: fellowship right people getting together.
Speaker 1: I absolutely agree with that.
Speaker 3: How was that when you got the call like, hey,
Speaker 3: we're going to this boarding school in Mexico?
Speaker 4: What was going through your head?
Speaker 5: We didn't have a choice, so I wouldn't be able
Speaker 5: to tell you how I felt about it at the time,
Speaker 5: because it was like, this is what this is what
Speaker 5: you're doing.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and you were probably pretty accustomed to that at
Speaker 2: that point.
Speaker 1: This is what we do, how we do it, when
Speaker 1: we do it, and you don't question. We obeyed the rules.
Speaker 5: If you didn't, then you get your ass whooped and
Speaker 5: a lot of weird punishment too. It used to be
Speaker 5: that we'd get spank that we used to live out
Speaker 5: by an orange grove. I remember this in our stepfather
Speaker 5: whenever we did something bad. Some were some justifiably we were.
Speaker 5: We weren't always angels. You'd take us out and you know,
Speaker 5: ten trees in and you'd hold our hands above our
Speaker 5: head by our wrists and hit us with the belt
Speaker 5: and just depending on the severity of the of what
Speaker 5: we did, it was anywhere from three to ten that
Speaker 5: we'd get I have to sit there and watch my
Speaker 5: brother get spanked, and then it was my turn, and
Speaker 5: my brother would sit there and watch me get spanked.
Speaker 5: So I remember there was one time when we started
Speaker 5: getting too old for getting hit, we had to dig
Speaker 5: a hole like three feet deep, drop this fifty pounds
Speaker 5: rock down in it, take it back out, fill the hole.
Speaker 5: And it just random discipline that that sounds.
Speaker 2: Like a marine corps. You see all those big rocks,
Speaker 2: go make them a little rock.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 4: Yeah, So tell us about when you went down to Mexico.
Speaker 5: So Mexico was interesting. It was one of those things too,
Speaker 5: where the way we were brought up, it was just
Speaker 5: like you just do what is ahead of you. So
Speaker 5: if they say you're going to school in Mexico, just
Speaker 5: go to school in Mexico. It's not necessarily that I
Speaker 5: wanted to be there, but at the time it was
Speaker 5: just like make best of a shitty situation kind of deal.
Speaker 5: And it was an interesting time. We graduated because in
Speaker 5: Mexico you graduate in the ninth grade. So we graduated,
Speaker 5: stayed the next year. That's where things started getting rough.
Speaker 5: I started getting into what they say would call trouble.
Speaker 5: I guess being a smart elect to the teacher if
Speaker 5: they didn't like you anything that you said, and so
Speaker 5: they give it's called then monastasion, but it's I guess
Speaker 5: the equivalent to like a demerit or something here. I
Speaker 5: guess you get so many of those. They pull you
Speaker 5: out of school and they make you work. I remember
Speaker 5: there was a time where this was when I was
Speaker 5: actually pulled out of class and made the new manual labor.
Speaker 5: All day they were redoing the whole basketball court concrete,
Speaker 5: and so my job was to handmake bricks. Well it
Speaker 5: was a machine, but we'd like hand mix the contry.
Speaker 5: I remember they drove us out way out to the coast.
Speaker 5: This is in Baja California. So we went out to
Speaker 5: close to some Philippe, which is on the inside of
Speaker 5: the Baja California, to this gravel pit. And it was
Speaker 5: like three three of us guys. We were all in trouble,
Speaker 5: so we were, you know, serving out our sentences in
Speaker 5: manual labor. They take us to this gravel pit. We
Speaker 5: loaded up on this dump truck. Very safe procedure, by
Speaker 5: the way, driving one hundred and fifty miles on the
Speaker 5: back of a truck full of gravel. I remember, we
Speaker 5: loaded up, bring it back, and our job was to
Speaker 5: make concrete and bricks and then we had to lay
Speaker 5: out all this concrete on a new basketball court. So
Speaker 5: you have that that work, and then you know you
Speaker 5: you then go to your dorm and finish out, and
Speaker 5: on top of that, you do your you do your
Speaker 5: school work, you go to school, and then you work
Speaker 5: at this at this school, so in order to stay
Speaker 5: in the dorm and all.
Speaker 1: Of that, pay in your own way.
Speaker 5: But through many Yeah, they had a labor piece of
Speaker 5: it and then the school the education piece of it.
Speaker 1: So if you get enough.
Speaker 5: Of these demerits, you just do manual labor all day
Speaker 5: long while everybody else goes to school.
Speaker 1: And I got to that point. I got enough of
Speaker 1: those where I got to that point.
Speaker 5: So I think it was like seven after ten you
Speaker 5: get kicked out of school completely. And I remember this
Speaker 5: time it was on me. I'll admit it. There's a
Speaker 5: girl's dorm that's a couple of football fields away from
Speaker 5: the guy's dorm. Keep them separate, right, One night, I
Speaker 5: snuck out with my girlfriend at the time, and a
Speaker 5: couple other buddies went with their girlfriends too. Keep in
Speaker 5: mind the way I was brought up, I had not
Speaker 5: kissed a girl before. Holding hands was you know, saying yes. So,
Speaker 5: you know, me and this girl were hanging out in
Speaker 5: the South Alfa field by this water pump. I remember,
Speaker 5: we didn't do anything. We went out there, we were
Speaker 5: talking all night, you know, and these two other couples,
Speaker 5: who knows what they were doing. I mean obviously by sound,
Speaker 5: maybe you know what they were doing, but I was
Speaker 5: very oblivious. So, you know, somebody ritted us out.
Speaker 4: But it was completely innocent.
Speaker 5: And what adult are you going to tell that we
Speaker 5: didn't do anything and they're going to believe you exactly,
Speaker 5: So somebody dined us out. The group of us that
Speaker 5: had gone out there, we were all from the United States,
Speaker 5: and so six of us got suspended. Five of us
Speaker 5: went back to our homes in the United States. The
Speaker 5: one that had the opportunity to stay back in Mexico
Speaker 5: was me. My parents. I think their mindset was that
Speaker 5: it was going to be a more of a reward
Speaker 5: than a punishment if they allowed me to come back
Speaker 5: home on a suspension. So they decided they were going
Speaker 5: to send me to an orphanage, which was quite a
Speaker 5: distance away from where we were at at the boarding
Speaker 5: school that hadn't been started yet. It was his family
Speaker 5: that you know American family that started this orphanage down
Speaker 5: in Mexico. They were trying to build it. It wasn't
Speaker 5: up and running, but I guess I was their first
Speaker 5: orphan because that's where I got sent for a week
Speaker 5: week or two weeks or something like that to serve
Speaker 5: out my suspension for sneaking out my girlfriend.
Speaker 4: So where was Francisco at this time?
Speaker 5: He was still in school here, He's still the boarding,
Speaker 5: had not been in trouble.
Speaker 4: So was he staying out of trouble for the most part.
Speaker 5: There was a time where my brother, I don't know
Speaker 5: what he had done, but he had a a heart
Speaker 5: this heart thing, and the principle of the school in
Speaker 5: our dormitory punched him in the chest and I found
Speaker 5: out about it, and I immediately went in there. And
Speaker 5: this guy could tell that he was going to have
Speaker 5: a rough go at it. My brothers obviously, you know,
Speaker 5: he was wheezing, he was in pain, and I had
Speaker 5: some choice words for the principle of this school to
Speaker 5: the point where he got he was you could tell
Speaker 5: he was visibly scared, like he knows he probably should
Speaker 5: not have done that, especially to one of the American
Speaker 5: students that like actually paid for their schooling, to the
Speaker 5: point where he told me go ahead and just I'll
Speaker 5: give you a you can go ahead and punch me.
Speaker 5: I was like, I'm not going to hit you, you know,
Speaker 5: but I just want you to know that it's not cool.
Speaker 5: And you know, so obviously it didn't come out in
Speaker 5: physical violence. It just I was extremely defensive of my
Speaker 5: brother at that time, and he.
Speaker 1: Could tell.
Speaker 3: I know, you said that they would make you do
Speaker 3: manual labor if you got in trouble. But where the
Speaker 3: kids subjected the violence, See.
Speaker 5: That was not that I was aware of, but he
Speaker 5: had and that was what struck me as you know,
Speaker 5: very very different and odd for us being the American
Speaker 5: kids in Mexico school. Yeah, we certainly always looked down
Speaker 5: upon as like the pocho, so the you know, the
Speaker 5: that's what they called this year of poltr like a
Speaker 5: you know, we we weren't Mexican. And then I still.
Speaker 2: Want to know what that means, Like I don't know
Speaker 2: that mean, what's.
Speaker 5: Like it's an American Mexican but like less than really
Speaker 5: so growing up too, that was another thing. And here
Speaker 5: in America, a lot of people look at you as
Speaker 5: a Mexican kid, right, some illegal alien. I was born
Speaker 5: in the United States. I was raised in the United States.
Speaker 5: Proud to be an American.
Speaker 1: Grandfather served for the United States.
Speaker 5: Yeah, and so you get looked at like that here
Speaker 5: in America and then you go to Mexico and you
Speaker 5: get looked at the same way by Mexicans and who
Speaker 5: are these American little American kids? So yeah, we were
Speaker 5: treated differently, for sure. But that that punch when he
Speaker 5: decided he wants to physically assault my brother, I don't
Speaker 5: know what. I don't I'd have to I have to
Speaker 5: double check my brother. I don't remember what he did,
Speaker 5: but yeah, I was It was.
Speaker 1: Certainly one of those things.
Speaker 5: I was like, no, no, Actually, now that I think
Speaker 5: about it, that was the first time that I felt real, true,
Speaker 5: like anger to the point that I wanted to get.
Speaker 1: Physical gum starts any one, all of it.
Speaker 5: You know, your face is burning, you can't see anything
Speaker 5: but the anger that you have, and you just want
Speaker 5: to do something extremely hurtful to someone. I want to
Speaker 5: say that was probably one of the first times where
Speaker 5: I actually experienced that much anger.
Speaker 4: So when did your time in Mexico come to a close?
Speaker 5: I think I got kicked out. I was looking at
Speaker 5: my files the other day and I think I got
Speaker 5: kicked out, But I know I didn't want to be there.
Speaker 1: My brother stayed there.
Speaker 5: Longer, and I want to say it's because he had
Speaker 5: a girlfriend, but I came back.
Speaker 1: I couldn't stay there anymore.
Speaker 3: So how do you feel like your childhood prepared you
Speaker 3: for this Marine Corps boot camp experience?
Speaker 5: So that's where I can, you know, give a little
Speaker 5: you know, pat on the back to the how conservative
Speaker 5: Christian religious we were raised. I think a lot of
Speaker 5: that discipline had a lot to do with it, because
Speaker 5: we did we were disciplined. We got our asses whooped
Speaker 5: if we did something wrong. We were always obeying. If
Speaker 5: we didn't obey, we knew we were going to get something.
Speaker 5: The resiliency piece came from just the outdoor living. You
Speaker 5: know how we'd go hiking. Even when we moved away
Speaker 5: from that place, you know, we still I've always enjoyed
Speaker 5: just being outdoors in the mountains. The mountains for me
Speaker 5: are where it's at. Yeah, we had the beach half
Speaker 5: an hour way, but for me, it was like, let
Speaker 5: me go up to Palmer Observatory up in the mountains,
Speaker 5: So I think that was the resiliency piece there that
Speaker 5: like for me crawling through mud, artillery stuff going off
Speaker 5: in the shooting.
Speaker 1: That training they put.
Speaker 5: You where you're going through the barbed wire and they
Speaker 5: have this sound system with a you know, it was
Speaker 5: more of an adventure. Yeah, it sucked, but it was
Speaker 5: just like I'm going to do this. You know, I'm
Speaker 5: low crawling through there, through the mud, getting dirty. I
Speaker 5: didn't care. It wasn't anything I wasn't used to running. Yeah,
Speaker 5: you know, suck, but like, just get it over with.
Speaker 1: You're a lot more aerodynamic than I was.
Speaker 2: It had to translate though, for you had to have
Speaker 2: regard good batter and different from your childhood. You were
Speaker 2: able to translate so much of the way you were
Speaker 2: raised into that environment because it's so much the same.
Speaker 5: Yeah, and that's that's why I don't know that I've
Speaker 5: ever been resentful to a certain extent with certain things
Speaker 5: I do question, like the religious piece, but as far
Speaker 5: as how I was raised, it made me who I
Speaker 5: am today. So for me to come down on my
Speaker 5: mom or my stepdad or anything like that, you know,
Speaker 5: I wouldn't do. I have questions for them, and some
Speaker 5: sort of explanation, yes, but more so to have an
Speaker 5: understanding as opposed to creating like this hostile like, Oh,
Speaker 5: I'm so pissed at you guys for raising me this way.
Speaker 5: It's at the point where I met in my life.
Speaker 5: It doesn't have anything to do with that. Just that
Speaker 5: is I'm here now because of the way that I
Speaker 5: was raised. That's really what it comes down to, regardless
Speaker 5: of all this.
Speaker 3: So you get through boot camp and then experience combat
Speaker 3: through two deployments in Iraq. Tell us about your first deployment.
Speaker 5: We flew into Kuwait. We are artillery, so we have
Speaker 5: to tow our stuff everywhere. So we had to tow
Speaker 5: our guns from Kuwait all the way up to Fallujah
Speaker 5: and that was that was a joy. It was a
Speaker 5: multi day convoy. There was one point where, you know,
Speaker 5: we stopped and we were fueling up and providing security.
Speaker 1: They made a group of us go up on this.
Speaker 5: Berm and I remember the sergeant that was in charge
Speaker 5: of our team. He did not like me at all.
Speaker 5: He was an asshole to me. And you're telling me
Speaker 5: to do so, I'm going to do it, like I'm
Speaker 5: not going to backlip you or anything. We go up,
Speaker 5: we do the security call us back and as we're
Speaker 5: coming down this berm, it's long filled before MSR mobile or.
Speaker 1: Whatever it was.
Speaker 5: He gets a call over the colms and he's everybody stop,
Speaker 5: you know, stop, they're telling him whatever.
Speaker 1: He's like, Romero commune.
Speaker 5: So I go over there and he's like, walk up
Speaker 5: to the trucks, watch your feet right, Like okay, you know,
Speaker 5: I'm thinking this guy's being an asshole. And to this day,
Speaker 5: maybe maybe this whole thing was.
Speaker 1: I don't know.
Speaker 5: I still don't know if it was true or not.
Speaker 5: But in any case, they said there was mins lamb
Speaker 5: mines in this open field because of the way that
Speaker 5: he treated me. I was not looking at my feet.
Speaker 5: I was dragging my feet through that and I heard
Speaker 5: him everybody following Romero's footsteps, don't step anywhere he doesn't step,
Speaker 5: And I did walk right through it up to the trucks,
Speaker 5: get there. The CEO comes over, you know, with the
Speaker 5: battery gunny and they're like, hey, thank you Merrinaah okay,
Speaker 5: and I'm like, yeah, you know, and I don't remember
Speaker 5: how it came up, but something about my daughter and
Speaker 5: my wife and battery gun He's like, you know, Sergeant
Speaker 5: x y Z. You know, he's like the last time
Speaker 5: that you have a married marine, do that, right. So
Speaker 5: I don't know if it was a huge prank or what,
Speaker 5: but I remember being extremely pissed about it after, not
Speaker 5: even at the time, after, I was like, out there.
Speaker 1: What an asshole.
Speaker 5: It just made me hate him so much that I
Speaker 5: could care less about like him telling me like I
Speaker 5: thought he was messing with me. Like I seriously thought
Speaker 5: this guy was just being an asshole to me. I
Speaker 5: still to this day don't know if it was a
Speaker 5: massive prank or not, but it just it was one
Speaker 5: of those things where I.
Speaker 1: Was like, okay, just go with it.
Speaker 2: But do you think looking back now, knowing how many
Speaker 2: I mean in the minds you're talking about that they
Speaker 2: were probably Russian minds. I mean they were all over
Speaker 2: the place, They're everywhere. Well, I mean it was just
Speaker 2: stay in the tracks. It was one of the things
Speaker 2: you always heard every single day. Stay in the tracks,
Speaker 2: Stay in the tracks, Stay in the tracks, to the
Speaker 2: point to where like you you were nervous without trying
Speaker 2: to be nervous because of how much it was, like
Speaker 2: it's such a big deal, and it's like, look at
Speaker 2: some point you just get so tired, hungry, and there's
Speaker 2: see an exhaustedge. You're like, I look, I don't care
Speaker 2: if I deviate from the tracks for a little bit.
Speaker 1: Oh well, like, who cares?
Speaker 2: It's gonna And then I mean they weren't even talking
Speaker 2: about the improvised explosive devices. These were Russian minds left
Speaker 2: over by Russia that are all over that country.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 5: Again, it was one of those things where it's like
Speaker 5: I didn't take them seriously, so I just trudged it
Speaker 5: right through.
Speaker 2: That's one of those things where you know this why
Speaker 2: the saying goes ignorance is bliss.
Speaker 1: Well, I'm glad that you didn't trigger one, you didn't
Speaker 1: trip one like that, being an MPT and that cool.
Speaker 1: Yeah I believe that. Yeah.
Speaker 5: Well, we are artillery, so as far as like us
Speaker 5: being tight, I guess you could say it was a
Speaker 5: different dynamic because in artillery you have your own guns.
Speaker 1: So we have used six gun.
Speaker 5: Paws, right Hautzer, Yeah, one, nine or eight at the
Speaker 5: time she got switched out to a triple seven. But
Speaker 5: your gun, your section, your gun section was extremely tight.
Speaker 5: That group of seven, six people very very closely connected
Speaker 5: with one another, everybody else will You don't really have
Speaker 5: time to interact because you're on your own guns. I
Speaker 5: think we were the first Alpha battery first pause, like
Speaker 5: static pause in Fallujah to get set up and dug
Speaker 5: in that we shot out of. So we provided security
Speaker 5: sixty security around the camp Fallujah, and so yeah, I
Speaker 5: was really close with with my my section, with the
Speaker 5: exception of our section chief. He didn't like me or Sanchez.
Speaker 1: Either a different battles.
Speaker 5: You know, I didn't care it just at the time,
Speaker 5: it was like do this, do that, I'm going to
Speaker 5: do it. What I do remember is in that static
Speaker 5: pause we took income in mortar fire all the time,
Speaker 5: not close, but over the months that we were there,
Speaker 5: they were walking it closer and closer to us.
Speaker 1: You could tell.
Speaker 5: One rocket did hit in front of our gun, gun six,
Speaker 5: but it didn't. It was a dut It didn't blow up,
Speaker 5: big tang. It was all twisted up in front of
Speaker 5: but it didn't. It didn't blow up. But there was
Speaker 5: time when we first got there, I'm talking fresh, we
Speaker 5: had just planted. We just got our the one nine
Speaker 5: erra planted. All the other guns were set up. We
Speaker 5: had the three sixty going. So we were setting up
Speaker 5: our space, you know. So we were digging our foxhole,
Speaker 5: and I remember me and and my buddy. We were
Speaker 5: standing and we were digging our foxhol This evening now
Speaker 5: was pretty dark. Mortar had hit a fuel bladder in Camphallujah.
Speaker 5: Because it just started getting really bright. We both stood
Speaker 5: up and there's more mortar fire. It's like exploding. This
Speaker 5: was a distance off. It wasn't like like danger near
Speaker 5: or close. But the corporal comes and grabs both of us,
Speaker 5: throws us in our house.
Speaker 1: What are you guys doing? Get in your hole and.
Speaker 5: We're like, you know, we're watching it like the fourth
Speaker 5: of July. We had no clue. So yeah, that was interesting.
Speaker 5: One of those other other things. It's like kind of
Speaker 5: I guess ignorance. At the time, we're just like, well,
Speaker 5: it doesn't register that we're in a combat zone kind
Speaker 5: of like it did, but at that time it didn't.
Speaker 5: It was weird, and I would consider us our first deployment.
Speaker 5: We had it semi easy. Really, we were on a
Speaker 5: static pause. They started moving us over a month's in
Speaker 5: because obviously we had we were providing initial security when
Speaker 5: we got there, all six guns. But then they moved
Speaker 5: it to two guns at a time, so they put
Speaker 5: us back on in the like they had little houses
Speaker 5: like trailer kind of set up, so we had to
Speaker 5: stay in these things. We get to go to the cafeteria,
Speaker 5: the PX and stuff. So probably more like an O
Speaker 5: three eleven job, like where you guys are constantly out there.
Speaker 1: We sometimes had it easy.
Speaker 5: We would be able to shower and stuff, but it
Speaker 5: was still sucked, you know, with fire, and then we'd
Speaker 5: have to go out and you know, do recon on whatever,
Speaker 5: you know, whatever we did, and then they put us
Speaker 5: on security for Fallujah, this little like little base that
Speaker 5: they had before you went into Fallujah. Interestingly enough, I
Speaker 5: believe it's where the army was doing their thing out
Speaker 5: of there, and it's where people who probably got their
Speaker 5: stuff destroyed by us would come and get money to
Speaker 5: repair their stuff. So we were providing security there, which
Speaker 5: is interesting.
Speaker 2: Tell me about your second deployment and what it was
Speaker 2: like transitioning back into civilian sector after those experiences.
Speaker 5: Yeah, so the second deployment was a lot more difficult
Speaker 5: because we went as provisional rifle. We were no longer artillery.
Speaker 5: We weren't doing our jobs. They give us the training
Speaker 5: to do provisional rifle, but we were infantry at that point.
Speaker 5: We were providing security for the border on Jordan and Syria.
Speaker 5: So our platoon got split up, so a lot of
Speaker 5: us were really close. You know, half of us ended
Speaker 5: up on the Jordan side, half of us ended up
Speaker 5: on the Syria and all on the Iraq side.
Speaker 2: But like Georgia, I was about to say, like you
Speaker 2: need to probably clarify that right now, the Iraq side,
Speaker 2: but we were split up.
Speaker 1: Be good.
Speaker 2: I just want to, you know, because I mean that
Speaker 2: just two Avoulden International incident.
Speaker 5: Yeah, no, no, yeah, we were on on Iraq side.
Speaker 5: We're doing border security for those borders there people coming
Speaker 5: in from Syria, people coming in from Jordan, so that
Speaker 5: was a lot more difficult. That was where you know, I.
Speaker 1: Think those boarders were very active. Yeah, we saw.
Speaker 5: That's where I saw a lot of like the more
Speaker 5: you know, things that we didn't see in our prior
Speaker 5: But we were just shooting ship far away here.
Speaker 1: Now we were in it.
Speaker 5: You know, we were pulling people out of their houses,
Speaker 5: doing sword searches, cording and searches, closing off highways, doing
Speaker 5: searches on cars.
Speaker 1: You're grunt, You're stuck in deployment, You're a grunt.
Speaker 5: Yeah, so that I think was a little more tense.
Speaker 5: But that's when after coming back from that second deployment
Speaker 5: more so did I remember in you know, conversing with
Speaker 5: my buddies, I started to really feel the effect of
Speaker 5: you know, didn't call it trauma at the time, or
Speaker 5: PTS or anything at the time.
Speaker 1: It was just I knew there.
Speaker 5: Was something different about me to cope with that. I
Speaker 5: was the only marine in our group that lived off base.
Speaker 5: Every single weekend, everybody was at my house. Probably not
Speaker 5: good for my marriage. I'm pretty sure that's probably why
Speaker 5: we ended up splitting.
Speaker 1: You get that close with people.
Speaker 5: At least for me, it was very difficult to not
Speaker 5: be with them anymore once you get back. In order
Speaker 5: to continue having that, we'd all be at my house
Speaker 5: and drinking, having a good time. You know, never really
Speaker 5: did anything crazy on lawful or anything like that, but
Speaker 5: it was just really us, you know, in the camaraderie
Speaker 5: that we had. We just always wanted to be close.
Speaker 5: Of course, your spouse doesn't understand that, so they want
Speaker 5: to understand that you're back with them and their family
Speaker 5: unit I had a daughter at the time, and I
Speaker 5: remember I have I have pictures of everything, like every
Speaker 5: she got along with all of my buddies. She was
Speaker 5: always there until she had to go down to bed.
Speaker 5: I'd be making hot dogs. She'd come and just kind
Speaker 5: of everybody just we'd goof around and so she wasn't
Speaker 5: part of it. Like the drinking part that came usually after,
Speaker 5: but that happened a lot, almost every weekend. It was
Speaker 5: almost every single weekend, I remember, and I think that
Speaker 5: led more into the drinking on my own, you know
Speaker 5: where It wasn't just the weekend drinking with the buddies
Speaker 5: until you puke. It was every evening you have to
Speaker 5: drink something in order to feel okay.
Speaker 1: It continued.
Speaker 5: I went through a whole program in the Marine Corps.
Speaker 5: I don't know if you know, but they offer a
Speaker 5: program for people drinking. You go meet with the staff sergeant.
Speaker 5: He makes you, he gives you, assigns you these tasks.
Speaker 5: You have to go to AA They give you a
Speaker 5: certificate after saying that you're no longer an alcoholic.
Speaker 1: I did.
Speaker 2: I knew that they offered something, but I didn't I
Speaker 2: know that like three quarters of my company should have
Speaker 2: done whatever program is.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I went through it.
Speaker 5: I don't know that it helped, but I did it
Speaker 5: more so because they had made me a section chief.
Speaker 5: I had picking up a meritorious corporal in my first deployment,
Speaker 5: meritorious sergeant in the second deployment, and so now the
Speaker 5: next step was section chief. I was an excellent marine.
Speaker 5: I excelled at being a marine. I worked really hard.
Speaker 5: But there was that drinking thing that was for me,
Speaker 5: and you know it was I did it on my own.
Speaker 5: Nobody told me I had to go do this. I
Speaker 5: was like, hey, I think I have a problem with drinking.
Speaker 5: I'm going to go do this was a section chief.
Speaker 5: We went out, we did a training shooting and they
Speaker 5: called a ceasefire.
Speaker 1: To the rear.
Speaker 5: The peace fall in on my gun and I was like, okay,
Speaker 5: well we shot out. And when they called that, you
Speaker 5: can't touch your knobs on the guns or anything. They
Speaker 5: send people to investigate to see what angle and what.
Speaker 5: You know, we're all, you know, have my gun up front,
Speaker 5: and and I'm already a wreck mentally, you know, not
Speaker 5: enough that I would make some disastrous mistake. But you're
Speaker 5: in Camp Penalton, you're like, our guns can certainly reach
Speaker 5: to the surrounding cities.
Speaker 2: Now, what's the max Just to give the audience an idea,
Speaker 2: what's the max effective range?
Speaker 5: Thirty kilometers I think on a nature round. Okay, so
Speaker 5: fifteen sixteen miles long. Yeah, and so you know, they
Speaker 5: go check it out. And at that point I checked
Speaker 5: out in my brain, Like I checked out. I was like, Okay,
Speaker 5: turns out I didn't shoot out. It was another another
Speaker 5: battery up over some other hill. They ended up they
Speaker 5: were the ones that shot out, and I was kicking
Speaker 5: myself in the ass about it, but it was still
Speaker 5: some mental thing that checked out for me. After that
Speaker 5: training being out in the field that got back. I
Speaker 5: went in and I told battery gun. I was like,
Speaker 5: I can't continue doing this. I don't want to be
Speaker 5: Section chief anymore. I'm you know, I'm not being a pussy.
Speaker 5: I guess you could say, right, because that's the stigma.
Speaker 5: If there's something wrong with your mind, you're a little
Speaker 5: bitch yep. But I was very honest about it. I
Speaker 5: was like, there's something going on. I don't know what
Speaker 5: it is. And they were to a certain extent understanding
Speaker 5: about it. Really now that I think about it.
Speaker 1: You know.
Speaker 5: I went and I talked with the psychologist, but they
Speaker 5: were going to put me on a very low dosage
Speaker 5: of something right, and so an opportunity to go out
Speaker 5: to Horno on the range presented itself. Go figure this
Speaker 5: guy that thinks he may have a mental issue, it.
Speaker 1: Was, find another spot for him.
Speaker 5: Yeah, at the range with a one hundred target man
Speaker 5: front and you're going to be one of the range
Speaker 5: person all over there. Any case, it wasn't. It wasn't
Speaker 5: to that extent. I didn't feel psychotic or anything like that.
Speaker 5: It was just something different about me was happening. But
Speaker 5: I really loved working at the range.
Speaker 1: It was. It was an awesome job.
Speaker 5: That was close to the point where I was due
Speaker 5: for reenlistment or time to get out.
Speaker 1: I had gotten my paperwork.
Speaker 5: I was in line to be promoted for staffsh sergeant
Speaker 5: if I stayed in. But my spouse at the time
Speaker 5: was willing to work on the relationship if I got out.
Speaker 5: I don't think she was now I think about it,
Speaker 5: and I'm to blame too. There was, you know, some
Speaker 5: infidelity stuff that we were working through, but I did.
Speaker 5: I got out to save my relationship. Mostly because I
Speaker 5: didn't want to lose my daughter. And it all happened anyways,
Speaker 5: I got out, and you know, it wasn't long after
Speaker 5: that we ended up separating and divorcing, and so my
Speaker 5: daughter I got to see her often at the beginning,
Speaker 5: but the individual that she met, this guy she was with,
Speaker 5: they ended up getting married and moving very far away
Speaker 5: with good three hour drive, and so that was extremely
Speaker 5: difficult for me because I no longer had my daughter
Speaker 5: and felt like a lot of this was my fault
Speaker 5: because of you know, stupid decisions that I had.
Speaker 3: Made during this time. What was your relationship like with
Speaker 3: your twin brother, Francisco.
Speaker 5: So this is a difficult period in my life, and
Speaker 5: I'm sure it was difficult for him to see his
Speaker 5: brother in the state that he was. Wasn't the same happy,
Speaker 5: go lucky guy that he was before he joined them course,
Speaker 5: so I know it was a difficult transition for him
Speaker 5: for my family. I remember there was one night I
Speaker 5: had been extremely intoxicated. I want to say I don't
Speaker 5: I don't know that he was drinking, but I was
Speaker 5: for sure, and I was down in the kitchen and
Speaker 5: it all blew up that night. I think as a
Speaker 5: matter of fact, now I think about it, I think
Speaker 5: my mom was living with us at the time too,
Speaker 5: and so there was the clan match. You know, she
Speaker 5: was there, he was there. They were blaming me for
Speaker 5: some stuff that was happening, and you know, I was
Speaker 5: extremely frustrated and visibly angry. I remember to the point
Speaker 5: where my brother was frightened and he pulled a knife
Speaker 5: out of a carving block knife thing, and I don't
Speaker 5: know if it was the Marine Corps instinct, but it
Speaker 5: automatically kicked in and I slapped it out of his hand,
Speaker 5: and I remember his face. He was extremely surprised that
Speaker 5: that had happened so quickly, that he had drawn a
Speaker 5: weapon and it had been you know, had and I
Speaker 5: think a lot of it had to do it, like
Speaker 5: he was scared that, like I had injured myself or
Speaker 5: cut myself on this blade. So I remember that it
Speaker 5: wasn't a fun night, you know. After the healing and
Speaker 5: all of that, you know, there was a lot of friction,
Speaker 5: I guess the best way to say it, for a
Speaker 5: while because of the whole family dynamic thing. It didn't
Speaker 5: last long, of course, but there was a point where
Speaker 5: my mental health had really affected my relationship with my brother,
Speaker 5: and so I had to live with that, and the
Speaker 5: drinking just kept getting worse and worse. Ended up meeting,
Speaker 5: you know, in a couple of relationships, but ended up
Speaker 5: meeting one girl a lot younger than me as far
Speaker 5: as maturity too, and we ended up getting married. She
Speaker 5: had her things as far as being young and wanting
Speaker 5: to still live. Whereas I was, you know, in my thirties,
Speaker 5: she was mid younger twenties, twenty two twenty three at
Speaker 5: the time, I think, And so I don't know that
Speaker 5: she would have not cheated on me if I had,
Speaker 5: you know, because there was a lot going on with me,
Speaker 5: just a lot with the drinking, the depression. What I
Speaker 5: didn't know was PTS at the time, but was you know,
Speaker 5: certainly presenting itself. We'd bought a house together, but the
Speaker 5: drinking was really bad. Our relationship Chip was very a
Speaker 5: lot of turmoil. Never any physical abuse, but a lot
Speaker 5: of you know, mental psychological stude soxic. Yeah, and I
Speaker 5: know it was hard for her for sure. This is
Speaker 5: when I hit rock bottom.
Speaker 1: Was this whole.
Speaker 5: I wasn't really aware of her cheating at the time,
Speaker 5: but I was a mess. And then we had separated.
Speaker 5: She said, well, I just need my space. I'll stay
Speaker 5: in the house. Okay, I'll go find something else. I
Speaker 5: ended up coming back to my house and caught her
Speaker 5: with this guy in my house. That was really like
Speaker 5: the rock bottom for me. I had gone out on
Speaker 5: a motorcycle ride up in Pelamar Mountain, very curvey roads
Speaker 5: back there. We were headed up the back route to Julian.
Speaker 5: I was lead coming around a really tight corner that
Speaker 5: I completely figured out about.
Speaker 1: I'd been up this way before.
Speaker 5: Ended up, you know, trying to figure out how to correct,
Speaker 5: ended up in the wrong side of the road, and
Speaker 5: there was a car coming and head on with this
Speaker 5: vehicle threw me off my bike. My buddy in back
Speaker 5: of me was filming it on go Bro. He won't
Speaker 5: show he'd never showed me the video. He wouldn't showed
Speaker 5: me the video, he says it's too graphic. And I
Speaker 5: was in the hospital and this was a god moment
Speaker 5: for me. One more foot to the left, I would
Speaker 5: have been inside the car for sure, Like I hit
Speaker 5: the front driver's side corner and got launched out into
Speaker 5: the road.
Speaker 1: But it could have been a lot worse. Are you so? Yeah?
Speaker 5: I was sober. I was sober, but I was I was.
Speaker 5: I think I was probably being reckless. I would probably
Speaker 5: going too too fast, if you know, thinking back on it,
Speaker 5: I don't. Suicidal ideation is hard to to identify in
Speaker 5: the past, right. I can identify it now, you know,
Speaker 5: as a as a thing. When I'm talking to individuals
Speaker 5: and experiencing, you know, suicidal ideation or thoughts, you can
Speaker 5: identify it. I can't look back on my life and
Speaker 5: think that, like, oh, maybe that was you know, intentional
Speaker 5: as far as you know, some form of ideation of
Speaker 5: not being around anymore. Right, the recklessness driving on your
Speaker 5: bike too fast, there was probably some of that going
Speaker 5: on in my mind. I can't pinpoint it. But it
Speaker 5: was a god moment. I was in the hospital. I
Speaker 5: had ready known that my wife was cheating on me.
Speaker 5: She didn't come see me, her sister and her mom
Speaker 5: came out, and so after I got out, they told
Speaker 5: me I had to spend a month in bed, and
Speaker 5: I did. And this was really my time to connect
Speaker 5: with God. It's when I started seeking help, mental health,
Speaker 5: professional help, and really started getting things on track. But
Speaker 5: I stopped drinking cult turking like nothing, and that lasted
Speaker 5: quite a long time, and things just started connecting for me.
Speaker 5: At that point, I had been working this job. They
Speaker 5: were actually very gracious about giving me the time off
Speaker 5: for my accident.
Speaker 1: But I hated it. I hated the job it was.
Speaker 5: It was fine because it paid the bills. I didn't
Speaker 5: mind like working, right. It just took me a really
Speaker 5: long time to realize that finance like banking was not
Speaker 5: my world. I don't mean I hate like, I just
Speaker 5: it wasn't my world. So it took a really long
Speaker 5: to eight eight years or something like that. And so
Speaker 5: after the divorce and all of that is when I
Speaker 5: started talking to my now wife, Yay, who was living
Speaker 5: in Texas. We had, as I had mentioned before, we
Speaker 5: had gone to school together, and as a matter of fact,
Speaker 5: before that ninth tenth, eleventh grade, we actually had gone
Speaker 5: to middle school, like second or third grade together years ago,
Speaker 5: and so known each other for a very long time.
Speaker 5: We started talking, and you know, she had always had
Speaker 5: a huge crush and she'd admitted, but she wasn't wanting
Speaker 5: to come back. She had come out to Texas when
Speaker 5: she was like eighteen, she'd been here forever. I wasn't
Speaker 5: really enjoying my job, and so obviously the right move
Speaker 5: was going to be me coming out to Texas, not
Speaker 5: her coming to Californ. We talked about it, but she
Speaker 5: was a school teacher. She was very you know, she
Speaker 5: had her shit together, you know, good head on her shoulders.
Speaker 5: She'd fly over here, I'd fly over you know, or
Speaker 5: vice versa. Right, And so I came out here with
Speaker 5: no clue what I was going to do. I had
Speaker 5: a lot of my credits already, and I was studying
Speaker 5: for international business. I needed one more class to graduate
Speaker 5: with my international business degree. But I went in and
Speaker 5: I talked to the veteran counselor or whatever the at TCC,
Speaker 5: this community college, and I was like, here's the deal.
Speaker 5: This is what I want to do. I want to
Speaker 5: help people. How can I help people? And she and
Speaker 5: I told her, I said, I think I'd love I'd
Speaker 5: love to do, you know, teach. I would love to
Speaker 5: be a teacher. Not the younger grades, maybe high school
Speaker 5: or something, you know, where the minds are a little
Speaker 5: more mouldible. And she's like, well, have you ever thought
Speaker 5: of social work? And I was like, oh, the guys
Speaker 5: that work in hospitals, right, I get so much more
Speaker 5: than that. There's so many different things that you can
Speaker 5: do with a social work degree. Started talking and she
Speaker 5: brought up veterans working with veterans, and I was like,
Speaker 5: I'm in I tell this people all the time. Yeah,
Speaker 5: it sounds cliche, but I'm I'm working my dream job.
Speaker 5: It's not easy, it's challenging, af but it's rewarding to
Speaker 5: know that you're working for something that's saving lives.
Speaker 1: I think that's.
Speaker 5: Really what it boils down to.
Speaker 1: At the end of the day.
Speaker 5: There's going to be challenges, but that resiliency that we've
Speaker 5: built and built over our lives, it's really coming into
Speaker 5: play because it's not easy leading.
Speaker 1: I think it's to a certain extent, it.
Speaker 5: Does take a toll. It's taxing, but is it worth it.
Speaker 5: Absolutely it is. To be able to be a part of,
Speaker 5: you know, making a change in mental health and breaking
Speaker 5: stigmas and helping our first responders and our heroes out there,
Speaker 5: it's just an amazing feeling.
Speaker 2: It's one of the reasons that I believe you're exactly
Speaker 2: where you're supposed to be. I believe that you're a
Speaker 2: gift to humanity, and it has everything to do with
Speaker 2: the scars you can't see, you know. I mean that's
Speaker 2: why I think, even though you're a self proclaimed introvert
Speaker 2: and that you're a gamer and you build your oll
Speaker 2: computers and crap like it's you're exactly where you're supposed
Speaker 2: to be. And everything's happened is and we've talked at
Speaker 2: length about this. Everything's happened exactly the way it's supposed
Speaker 2: to happen. And you know, I'm just I'm honored to
Speaker 2: do this alongside you. Thank you so so actually, and
Speaker 2: our fortunate not to get to work with you and
Speaker 2: Francisco and we see it. But for the people listening,
Speaker 2: what's your relationship with your with your brother and your mom?
Speaker 1: Now, it's good.
Speaker 5: With my brother. I don't know that there's a day
Speaker 5: that we don't talk to each other, not just because
Speaker 5: he works here, even outside of work, but we're always
Speaker 5: texting back and forth. You know, we we're tight, We're
Speaker 5: really close. As a matter of fact, it didn't take
Speaker 5: him but a year and a half maybe two years
Speaker 5: to leave California and come to Texas after I came
Speaker 5: to Texas. So just see, you know, to explain the
Speaker 5: gravity of our relationship and how close we are.
Speaker 1: That's that's what happened.
Speaker 5: Is his spouse now jokes about it and she's like,
Speaker 5: I knew it, Like I knew that as soon as
Speaker 5: as soon as Lucky in Mo he's gonna leave, He's
Speaker 5: gonna leave too, So to be expected, we're really close.
Speaker 5: I me and my brother have an amazing relationship.
Speaker 1: He's helped out a lot.
Speaker 5: Yeah, my mom's always been an amazing woman. Granted, I
Speaker 5: think she was pulled into something a lot further into
Speaker 5: something because of her past and what she needed out
Speaker 5: of this religion that I don't know that it was
Speaker 5: ever in a vindictive type way, sending us down to
Speaker 5: Mexico or I think it was really what she knew
Speaker 5: at the time was going to be the best for us.
Speaker 5: She's always taken care of us and still that working
Speaker 5: spirit in us. So she's an amazing woman. We're close.
Speaker 5: She's still back in California. I haven't I need to
Speaker 5: go visit her, but you know, we're close because of
Speaker 5: some of the stuff that she'd been through. I know
Speaker 5: there's been some challenges that she's faced and struggles that
Speaker 5: she had, but we talk often as well. As a
Speaker 5: matter of fact, I think she's talking about a move
Speaker 5: out to Texas, which would be great. I'd love to
Speaker 5: have her here. But we're good, weird good, Okay.
Speaker 4: So why can we ask every guest three questions? The
Speaker 4: first being.
Speaker 3: Looking back on your life's journey, is there a person
Speaker 3: or an organization that's really made an impact on you?
Speaker 5: That's a tough question. I don't know how to answer that, honestly.
Speaker 5: If we're calling it an organization, the Marine Corps, for sure,
Speaker 5: that's at one of the biggest impacts of my life.
Speaker 5: I don't think it defines my life being a marine,
Speaker 5: it's certainly a big part of it. An old pastor
Speaker 5: that I had, ironically, was very supportive, I guess you
Speaker 5: could say, of everything, because he married me, he did
Speaker 5: our wedding, and then he was who I went to
Speaker 5: when I was talking about our divorce. So I think
Speaker 5: when I associate that religion, he was a pastor of
Speaker 5: this religion. To his complete non judgmental attitude about everything
Speaker 5: in my life, I think he was probably pretty pivotal
Speaker 5: as far as that's concerned, ironically, because religion. Yeah, so yeah,
Speaker 5: my daughter, for sure. I think if there's anything that
Speaker 5: I can draw a ton of inspiration from it's just
Speaker 5: the love that I have for her and what i'd
Speaker 5: like to say, and that the love that she has
Speaker 5: for me, because we have a really good relationship.
Speaker 4: So it's amazing.
Speaker 1: What do you do?
Speaker 2: I already know it's not enough of and I'm guilty
Speaker 2: as charge as well. You know I've been on each
Speaker 2: other boat for quite some time. But the second question,
Speaker 2: I just I'm going to own the accountability.
Speaker 1: You got to own it. What do you do to
Speaker 1: recharge and relax?
Speaker 5: What do I do to recharge or what do I
Speaker 5: wish I could do to charge and relax? Are two
Speaker 5: different things? Yeah, either or So for me, it's nature.
Speaker 5: I really love being out in the mountains. Of course
Speaker 5: in Texas, you don't see many of those out here,
Speaker 5: so that part's difficult, so hiking or whatever I can
Speaker 5: do here. The other big one is gaming. Of course,
Speaker 5: should be no joke to anyone out there. I'm a
Speaker 5: huge gamer. That's really something that I can do. That
Speaker 5: is kind of a way for me to get out
Speaker 5: of my mind sometimes get myself into another world or
Speaker 5: whatever the case is. I'm a huge rem player World
Speaker 5: of Warcraft, Final Fantasy Online and first time ever in
Speaker 5: my life. This past weekend, I actually was able to
Speaker 5: enjoy my first Dungeon and Dragon session with the group
Speaker 5: that we finally were able to get together for this.
Speaker 5: So I'd been wanting to get into it for a while.
Speaker 5: I just we've never had the people that do it.
Speaker 5: I met somebody not too long ago via my wife
Speaker 5: who was a big fan of the game, and he
Speaker 5: was like, oh, we should totally. I built this whole
Speaker 5: game table around it. I'll show you a picture later,
Speaker 5: but we actually got to play on it last night
Speaker 5: for our first ever Dungeons and Dragon session.
Speaker 1: Was amazing.
Speaker 5: I had a whole bunch of fun.
Speaker 2: And you've opened up my eyes, our eyes, yes to
Speaker 2: there's even a therapeutic element that comes into play with it,
Speaker 2: so much so that we're developing a gaming program.
Speaker 4: That's right with one tri foundation.
Speaker 5: Surely I believe that strongly in it, that yeah, that
Speaker 5: there is a therapeutic component to gaming and not just
Speaker 5: sitting in front of a computer, but you know, getting
Speaker 5: around a table with your friends and with your family.
Speaker 5: It's part of that holistic mental health care that people
Speaker 5: need out there. That maybe it's tailored to you so right,
Speaker 5: and I know it's tailored to me.
Speaker 4: So our final question is what feeds your soul?
Speaker 5: Good people feed my soul. Being around people who are
Speaker 5: as passionate as I am feeds my soul. Being able
Speaker 5: to help people and being able to watch the transition
Speaker 5: in people is amazing for me. And on top of everything,
Speaker 5: my relationship with God. I'm not going to bring up
Speaker 5: the whole religious piece. It is the spiritual relationship that
Speaker 5: I have with a non judgmental God that knows that
Speaker 5: I mess up on the daily but still you know,
Speaker 5: understanding that I do my best to be a good
Speaker 5: person and he knows that if it's not enough and
Speaker 5: I don't, you know, get to be with him, well
Speaker 5: maybe God isn't for me then, But I choose to
Speaker 5: not believe that.
Speaker 1: I choose to believe.
Speaker 5: That my relationship with God is really something that is
Speaker 5: important for me. I maybe it's not for everybody, but
Speaker 5: it is for me. It helps me wake up in
Speaker 5: the morning and it helps me sleep at ease at night.
Speaker 3: So well, Keene Rameira, thank you so much for being
Speaker 3: on the good stuff. You truly inspire us on the
Speaker 3: daily basis, and we're just we're grateful to call you
Speaker 3: brother and friend.
Speaker 1: Thank you.
Speaker 2: I know that you know because I've told you, but
Speaker 2: so the listeners know you've been there for me in
Speaker 2: a way that most people can't. And I'm very, very
Speaker 2: grateful for that, appreciated and it's something that you know
Speaker 2: and that you know I don't take lightly. You truly,
Speaker 2: in every sense of the phrase, have.
Speaker 1: Made me a better human.
Speaker 2: So thank you, bro, and thanks for taking time out
Speaker 2: of our work schedule for you to do this.
Speaker 4: Absolutely, absolutely, that's the good stuff.
Speaker 1: Thank you.
Speaker 2: Because of the scars of this man in the victory,
Speaker 2: he finds in his vulnerability he is able to empower
Speaker 2: people to live healthy, well lived lives.
Speaker 3: Absolutely from his rough beginnings too, now he is just
Speaker 3: leading the charge and helping people on the daily basis.
Speaker 2: He's absolutely channeled his pain into power and now it's
Speaker 2: affecting in a great way in the best way. Pop
Speaker 2: School the borders well outside this great state of Texas.
Speaker 4: Thank you so much for listening.
Speaker 3: If this episode touched you today, please share it and
Speaker 3: be part of making someone else's day better.
Speaker 1: Put on your bad ass caves and go be great today.
Speaker 2: And remember you can't do epic stuff without epic people.
Speaker 2: Thank you for listening. To the good Stuff. The Good
Speaker 2: Stuff is executive produced by Ashley Schick, Jacob Schick, Leah
Speaker 2: Pictures and q Code Media, Hosted.
Speaker 1: By Ashley Shick and Jacob Shick, Produced by Nick.
Speaker 2: Cassolini and Ryan Countzouse Post production Supervisor Will Tindy. Music
Speaker 2: editing by Will Haywood Smith, edited by Mike Robinson.