In this heartfelt episode, Suzi talks with Tyler Corcoran about family, incarceration, redemption and new beginnings.
Tyler's remarkable metamorphosis, from a 17-year-old staring down a near life sentence to a man who dared to redefine his destiny, shines as a beacon of possibility, reminding us of the indomitable human capacity for change.
Music credit to Kalvin Love for the podcast’s theme song “Bee Your Best Self”
Tune into our CHW Streaming Radio and the full lineup at cominghomewell.com
Download on Apple Play and Google Play
Online-Therapy.com ~ Life Changing Therapy Click here for a 20% discount on your first month.
Contact Suzi at suzigma@gmail.com or (818) 470-2013 and share your story.
suzilandolphi.com
vetsandplayers.org
wildhorserescue.org
Thank you for listening! Be sure to SHARE, LIKE and leave us a REVIEW!
In this heartfelt episode, Suzi talks with Tyler Corcoran about family, incarceration, redemption and new beginnings.
Tyler's remarkable metamorphosis, from a 17-year-old staring down a near life sentence to a man who dared to redefine his destiny, shines as a beacon of possibility, reminding us of the indomitable human capacity for change.
Music credit to Kalvin Love for the podcast’s theme song “Bee Your Best Self”
Tune into our CHW Streaming Radio and the full lineup at cominghomewell.com
Download on Apple Play and Google Play
Online-Therapy.com ~ Life Changing Therapy Click here for a 20% discount on your first month.
Contact Suzi at suzigma@gmail.com or (818) 470-2013 and share your story.
suzilandolphi.com
vetsandplayers.org
wildhorserescue.org
Thank you for listening! Be sure to SHARE, LIKE and leave us a REVIEW!
I'm Susie Landolfi and welcome to Be Crazy. Well, you know, I have to tell you something, stephanie. So you can't say the S word now that you're going to be a mother. So the S word so when I said that to my grandson no, so I'm sitting here with Stephanie and Tyler and they're about to have a baby. Any minute, I mean I may be delivering this to step into the camera just a bit.
Speaker 1:Oh, there's the baby.
Speaker 2:So my little grandson is in nursery school and he comes home and I realize he's going to hear a lot of stuff that we don't say in our house. So I said to him one night I said hey, logan, I got to tell you something. Now that you're going to nursery school, we don't say the S word in the family. And he has this big grin and he goes you mean shit. And I go no, no, no, we say shit.
Speaker 1:Yeah, no one's allowed.
Speaker 2:We can't say stupid, You're not stupid. You just said I'm so stupid when you did that.
Speaker 1:No more.
Speaker 2:That's the last time you guys can say you're stupid, something stupid, an idea is stupid, a person stupid, because that little kid will eat that right up. I think, susie, you're such a kid there.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:But we say shit all the time. I'm a good therapist because I'm crazy. Well, yeah, you have to be crazy. Well, oh, that's what the name of the podcast is.
Speaker 1:I love that name.
Speaker 2:Isn't that a great name.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:Yeah, my daughter wants to sell merch. I love saying merch.
Speaker 1:We need to have a merch.
Speaker 2:That sounds so young and hip Merch.
Speaker 1:Well, I'm all about merch. I think that we should have more merch in our life?
Speaker 2:I think so too. More shit just not more stuff but not more stupid.
Speaker 1:No, no more of that. No, merch, that says stupid on it.
Speaker 2:Tyler, when was the time I asked you to be on? Be Crazy? Well, how long ago.
Speaker 1:Oh, it's been months. What about six months, eight months, maybe even?
Speaker 2:before that baby was conceived?
Speaker 1:Yeah, I've had a lot that's happened since that point. Yeah, I don't think you even knew Stephanie then no, but I'm glad to finally be on.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so I'm so grateful you're on because you have a story and a fucking half. Oh, we do say that here because I am a licensed therapist and it is a clinical term. I want you to know that. Good, and I'm from Boston, fucking it.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I need to pray. The moment I found out I could cuss is when I actually came onto the show.
Speaker 2:That's right.
Speaker 1:You did that. I feel like that I could just throw some good four letter expletive out there.
Speaker 2:Exactly.
Speaker 1:Well, I've got you probably get a few.
Speaker 2:You know where you were raised. Yeah, All right, so I'm going to do it this way. I'm going to just ask you to start your story, tell your story.
Speaker 1:Sure.
Speaker 2:And we can go for an hour or longer, and because I want people to understand something it's not what's wrong with you, it's what happens to you. Then it is what you do after what happens. That's where you're the expert right, because shit happened and happened to you and then, once the shit hit the fan, you had to take 20 years.
Speaker 1:Almost. Almost 20 years and still going, though, because the lesson it's a life, it's a life journey right Of understanding the power of our own choices and how they can either empower us or how they can impede and block us from improving or growing or at any point just changing the circumstances of our situations in our lives.
Speaker 2:That's right, and even if we can't physically change the circumstances because of your situation I'm just so excited when he lets you know what I'm talking about you can change what you do in that situation.
Speaker 1:Absolutely.
Speaker 2:So I had a friend. I have a friend he's still alive who's POW of the Hanoi Hilton from the Vietnam War and he lived for eight years in an eight foot cell. What he did in those eight years was nothing short of miraculous and he survived and thrived and came home. Yeah well, good for him, yeah.
Speaker 1:You know, and for those that go through that situation and come out on the other end, seeking health and being balanced in our life as opposed to letting that be the sole description of our stories. That's right, yeah.
Speaker 2:So, Tyler where did you spend a lot of your life?
Speaker 1:Yeah, so well, I'm 38 years old, and the majority of that 38 years was spent incarcerated. I was 17 years old when I went away. I attempted an armed robbery. Fortunately, nobody was physically hurt, but the consequences of that choice cost me the next almost 20 years of my life, and longer if it had been what was initially told to me when I was sentenced, because I was sentenced to the equivalent of life without in prison, and growing up in the system was a very difficult thing, because I initially felt extremely powerless and that my life was no longer within my control and that I was going into an environment where every choice was going to be made for me. And yeah, so that's how I spent the next 19 years. So, from the age of 17 until 36, almost 37 years old, I spent incarcerated within the California prison system.
Speaker 2:What happened the first 17 years of your life. So you know, because you've talked to me before about I'm a huge believer and now we have all the science to prove it and you're about to have a child. What happens to us pre-birth on? I say pre-birth because what Stephanie puts in her body right now and how she feels and what's going on with her is affecting the growth of that son of yours, and what you say to that child.
Speaker 1:I hope you're talking to it now because it's important to know your voice.
Speaker 2:So to know what happened to you that led up to that attempted armed robbery, which tells me you weren't very good at it.
Speaker 1:Yeah, no, it was like. I mean, you know, I not to minimize it, you know, or to make light of it in any way, but I was not cut out for a life of crime and you know, when I went in, nothing went as planned. We did anything that I told them to do. It was chaos. A person ran out the side door this was at like 10 o'clock in the morning and I got scared and I ran out and then I was arrested, probably five minutes later, walking down the street a few blocks away and an officer pulls up, you know, and I was meeting the description that had been put out.
Speaker 1:So yeah, not sophisticated in any way More of a desperation for acceptance and for a certain lifestyle.
Speaker 2:Yes, because of what happened from birth. Yeah, some of that, yeah.
Speaker 1:So, um, I grew up in a very toxic household. My parents divorced when I was probably about five years old. I have memories of them being together, but it's one of arguments of anger and a lot of shouting, a lot of name calling, things like that. When my parents split apart, my dad pretty much took on the role of being a single parent because my mother my biological mom was very neglectful and abusive, and so, um, my father was the more responsible parent. He was always kind and empathetic, although very strong and stoic in a lot of different ways. Um, so uh. So I kind of grew up in the, in this dichotomy right, and where my father was responsible, my mother was irresponsible. Where my father was kind, my mother was sometimes cruel and um and uh, and that was in the uh. In another rough part of California called the Antelope Valley right, lancaster, palmdale for those of you that are listening or that and we're watching, know it Um, and if you don't, it's an environment of drugs and gangs and crime and and uh poverty and um and anger.
Speaker 1:I just remember, uh, how angry everybody is out there, you know, angry about something. Angry either about what is uh you know what they feel is being done to them, or angry about what they see being done to other people. Either way, um and uh, even though it wasn't directly in my house drugs and and crime and gangs. As far as my father went, it was in the school system. It was uh, it was uh, friends, houses and things like that, and so I grew up in that type of environment, uh, when that was really unhealthy and toxic.
Speaker 2:Well, you uh in the sibling lineup, cause we actually have some science about that. Where are you in the sibling?
Speaker 1:Yeah, so I'm the middle kid. Right, there's four of us. I have my older brother, Pete love them little brother Pierce, and then my little brother and my little sister, page, and, uh, very close to all of my siblings, but I was the middle.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I have the middle kid too.
Speaker 1:There's a whole bunch of science about that, and we're wild, you know, we're the wild ones.
Speaker 2:We are with the disruptors.
Speaker 1:You know, everybody goes.
Speaker 2:Okay, there's mom, there's dad, there's oldest. Okay, go in the other way, yeah.
Speaker 1:But you know, what's funny is being the middle kid, and this is, I feel, really thankful for it, because, uh, I always had uh two best friends, my older brother and my little brother, because I was right in the middle of them so and my little brother was two years younger and my older brother was two years older. So to this day, um, I have a special relationship with the both of them and I'm connected to both of them in different ways, because I was my little brother's older brother and my I was my older brother's little brother. That's right, yeah, and it's taught me in my life right In ways that are like so beneficial, where sometimes I have to be the little brother in life and sometimes I got to be the older brother and it's kind of cool that I grew up understanding those roles and what that feels like.
Speaker 2:Yeah, what was it like for them when you got arrested?
Speaker 1:Uh well, I mean it shock one, I had already been. So when I was arrested, I was brought to the substation in Lancaster. I was shipped off to a camp called Challenger um in Lancaster. It happened on a weekend where, on Monday you catch a bus where you're shackled and chained with other kids and you're brought down to the juvenile hall system because the camp is a is a place where you get sentenced to um uh, when you're a juvenile. So they just housed me there briefly for a couple of days and then took me down to, uh, the detention center in Silmar and I was there for about three months before my family even knew right. So to backtrack a little bit, when I was 15 years old, uh, I decided that I knew all the answers to my life and that I was gonna go in search of those answers and I ran away from home. And two years later is when I committed the attempt to robbery.
Speaker 2:So they didn't really have a lot of connection with you for those two years.
Speaker 1:No, so for those two years I was busy. For those two years, within probably about six months, I was hanging out with a local gang, another crew of kids whose parents were either not there or were abusive in some form. They were like me. They were just kind of like the lost kids of the town. And then one of the kids' older brother had got out of prison and this family had moved from South Central LA up to Lancaster to try to create a better life for their kids. But their kids still kind of continued and then they just expanded the gang out in Lancaster that was originated in South Central. So I was hanging out with this kid, his older brother gets out of prison.
Speaker 1:I was about 15 years old. I wanted his older brother to really like. I wanted to impress his older brother because I felt like his older brother was like really from this lifestyle that him and I were trying to live as these runaway kids. And so, anyways, make a long story short, the older brother starts grooming me basically for a life of gangs and crime and stuff like that and takes me down to South Central where I spend the next probably about eight months to a year down there, and I got initiated into a street gang down there. I was a Crip and from a very old, very serious Crip or street gang and then I was back and forth between Los Angeles and Lancaster and my family just they were out there even at times looking for me and my dad and my brothers and stuff like that, but I was completely just in the streets.
Speaker 2:You know, your mother ran away too.
Speaker 1:In my way.
Speaker 2:So when parents get really mad at kids or they're abusive and they blame them, the child believes it. They believe everything that the parent says about them and does and doesn't do for them. So when your dad became a single parent so she abandoned you, she was not really there. If the only reason she's there is to blame you or to get mad at you or abuse you.
Speaker 1:I think this is the complication of what abuse looks like and how the victim of an abuser, and how complicated it is to discern. You know you feel like this person loves you, but at the same time this person hurts you, right? And so it was a very confusing thing that for many years, I had to disentangle in order to be able to, kind of like, have some clarity in my life and break habits that I had developed because of it.
Speaker 2:It's training.
Speaker 1:Yeah, so I understand, I get. What you're saying is is that in some way the child feels abandonment and how my mother really ran out on us, and in a lot of ways that's true. I think she did more than that. I think she ran away. My mother was born and raised Jackson, mississippi, right In the deep South, during a time of segregation, civil rights, all these different things. She passed away recently. Alcoholism, she drank herself to death and her parents my mama and papa, were very of that place, racist, racist, abusive. Back then they used switches and stuff on their kids. You beat it into them and if not that, then you pray it away. So my mother was a renegade inside of that and she was the only one that left the South and came to California.
Speaker 2:So, Emma, let me get this straight your mother ran away.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2:And then you ran away.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, my mom. I remember recently, before she passed away. I hadn't seen her in about 15 years and when I came home I was on the inside. I'd always put it away as something that I would get to if I came home, because I had to keep her at arm's length. She was so toxic and so lost in all of those.
Speaker 2:Of her trauma.
Speaker 1:Of her trauma, that's right. That, out of self-preservation, I needed her to be removed and had some distance and some boundaries between us. That's painful.
Speaker 1:That's painful. It was one of the hardest moments in my life. I was about 21 years old when I made it. It was also at that same time that I started to believe in the power of my choices and the reality that I had made choices that created all of this unhealthiness and destruction in my life. That was incarceration and all of that. And if I had made those choices, well then why couldn't I make choices to do it differently?
Speaker 2:Oh, pragmatic young man, it's all choices Right, it's all great.
Speaker 1:I was about 21 when I realized this. I'm proud of it because I followed through with that in my life, even up to the point of where I had to make a choice of whether or not I was gonna have my biological mother, who I loved so much, be in my life, and I had to say that she couldn't be through the pain and it never got easier, even to this day. Now that's right, but I am okay with the choice because I understand now what the difference is between healthiness and unhealthiness and the importance that comes with, even when it comes to family, deciding healthiness for your life over unhealthiness.
Speaker 2:Safety and danger.
Speaker 1:Yeah, safety and danger for sure, right, you know so. Yeah, so she had ran away. I ran away. And where I was going with that story is that when I walked into the hospital room after having not seen my mom for 15 years and saw her for the first time, and she was emaciated and the disease had just completely destroyed her and she was always a beautiful woman, you know like beautiful hair and beauty, and I told you once that you reminded me of her. I see in your eyes and in your hair. There's so much of her in you.
Speaker 2:I'm glad.
Speaker 1:Yeah, no, it's a very, but it's the lighter side of her right, it's there.
Speaker 1:There's a look in your eyes that I remember in hers, but without the fear attached to it that I used to get. And when I walked into the hospital room and I saw her and cried and I crawled into the hospital bed and I held her and she was just this little old woman now, you know, and when she looked at me I had this feeling that she loved me so much and that what she saw in me were the best things about herself, without all of the twisted, warped things that had been created from the trauma in her life. And then her not facing the trauma, you know, and choosing a different path. And I like that because there's a part of me that's like her, that's wild, you know, in how I view life, and excited and curious, and I love being able to explore all of what life has to offer, and without, though, the things that trauma attaches to it right, like manipulation or selfishness or you know or hurt or dishonesty, or being motivated by ego right, trying to always-.
Speaker 2:Which always sits on top of lack of self-worth.
Speaker 1:Oh man.
Speaker 2:So you're a little boy looking for value. You wanted to be valued, cause she didn't was incapable of helping you feel valued. And there's always one kid in the family that takes it harder than the others, and the middle child is also the emotional child. Yeah, yeah, yeah yeah.
Speaker 1:I saw it as my duty in my family, with my siblings, as the protector in a lot of ways, and so I was the one that voiced a lot and I was the one that ran away and I was the one that stood up. And it's funny because I asked my brothers and stuff like how did you guys feel when I ran away? You know, like, were you mad? Because I wanted to? I wanted, I know that that was really hard on them to lose their brother in that way, and so I wanted to let them know that I was at a place in my life that I understood that and how sorry I was for that. And I asked him and he said oh, you know my little brother and my older brother. He said, no, we're never mad at you. And I went how could you not be? And they said because you did what we all wanted to do, that's right. And so like I was championing them in a lot of ways, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2:You know you have something else besides. We talk a lot about trauma and unfortunately, as a therapist, I'm only trained to talk about the negative effects of trauma. You know all the anxiety, depression bipolar whatever. There's something called post-traumatic growth, of which you have tons of, tyler. I like Dr Bruce Perry. He talks about post-traumatic wisdom. So everything that you're saying right now and we'll get into the prison.
Speaker 1:So we'll talk about what you did there.
Speaker 2:That idea that you started to understand that you had some superpowers, some strengths and you have some self-destructive because, children, everything we think about ourselves was either done to us or told to us. Remember that every thought, every feeling was either done to us or told to us, and we are at risk of doing to ourselves and others what was done to us. Yeah yeah, yeah yeah, absolutely.
Speaker 1:I think that that was.
Speaker 1:You know, that's a huge portion of why it was so easy for me to fall into resentment and anger and fear and all of these different things is because that's what had been done to me, that's what had been told to me, that's what had been done to my parents and told to my parents, that's what had been done and told to the community that I lived in, and everybody experienced in some way.
Speaker 1:And so for me, it's like those emotions are such a slippery slope though, because they're bottomless. There's no bottom to it, it's a pit, and the longer you allow yourself to be in that and it's I wanna say, allow yourself, because I also think it's important to recognize and witness the trauma. Yes, Right, and for me, I never liked to think of myself as a victim ever, even when I was a little kid I mean from an early age of like 10, 11 years old, all of these other things I always responded to my fear with this impulsive confrontation, right, and so for me, so much of just continuing that type of behavior and that type of response over and over and over again just reinforced it and then kept me on that path.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so you walk down the street and you get picked up because, like we said, you're really bad criminal. You're just not good at it at all. I never would have got caught, so I didn't ever do it.
Speaker 1:but oh my God, I would have said he went that way, you would have had it all organized. Yeah, you know, this is I mean. You're from Boston.
Speaker 2:though Not only am I from Boston too, and my dad was so abusive that I became such a good liar. I tell everybody I could have been a triple agent.
Speaker 1:Right right, right right. Double agent, double agent, double agent, right. Weaponize your ability to deceive. Exactly, it did make me and it did make me a very good actress. So that's the other good news.
Speaker 2:The other thing, though, then, that when I crashed and burned and started to rebuild myself and we're gonna get to your part, and how are you doing that? Honestly, it was the first thing I wanted to learn how to do Cause.
Speaker 1:I was so terrified of it.
Speaker 2:Right, I was terrified of being honest to myself and other people, because lying to my dad meant that if I was a really good liar and I said what he needed to hear, he wouldn't abuse me. So there was always that. Okay, what does he need to hear?
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, so yeah, isn't that funny, though, how those that come from abuse learn how to be very. Learn how to be very careful with your steps.
Speaker 2:Absolutely Very careful with that Read the room.
Speaker 1:You read the room, take a temperature and then start to like make an adjustment. I still do this to this day. Sometimes I have to challenge it because it's a skill at times.
Speaker 2:It is a skill at times, and you then get to choose, cause you're all about choice. You get to choose and say okay, I could say it this way, so that they feel more comfortable in everything or I could just fucking tell them, because they need to hear it direct. So you have choices.
Speaker 1:Yeah, you get right. Yeah, right, Right right.
Speaker 2:I don't have to always make everybody happy. I don't always have to calm everybody down. I can just say that doesn't work for me. I'm not doing that.
Speaker 1:You know, it's funny because that very behavior of responding to trauma, where I'm careful, right With everything and I always leave myself an exit strategy right and those types of things, and it was really reinforced and went into probably a level of artistry while I was in prison. That's right At 17 years old.
Speaker 2:That's right.
Speaker 1:In an adult men's institution and I'm there, yeah, and this is, you know, I mean the system at that time was so unprepared for trying juveniles as adults. And I don't know about now although I'm reconnecting with that side of advocacy and stuff like that I feel like it's important and I don't wanna. I feel ready, but where I was going with that is what were we talking about. I lost my train of thought.
Speaker 2:I was just gonna say that you went inside and you had a manipulator yeah, this is what right.
Speaker 1:So I come into the institutions. The institutions were not designed to house juveniles in the adult system and so when at that time you come into the California Department of Corrections and this is before it was corrections and rehabilitation, it was just called CDC, which stood for California Department of Corrections you go to what's called a reception center or a guidance center and what that is is that's like a way station of where you're gonna be housed from that point and you see counselors and all these different things.
Speaker 1:And when you hear counselor you think like therapists, like somebody there to counsel you, but it's not that, it's more of a caseload worker who has a file. And then you get asked like your name, your race, right? You're like your gang affiliations, if you have any right. Do you have any enemy concerns? Do you have like? All of these different things comes into play and then what happens is you get assigned to an institution based off of a point system that is determined by how you answer those questions. So, as an example, you'd be asked things like how many children? Do you have any children? Have you ever served in the military? Were you working? Are you married? So these are all questions that are asked that are relevant to an adult life but not to a juvenile's life. When you answer no to those things like let's say, for example, I don't have any kids, never served in the military, I didn't have a job, I didn't graduate high school All of these things against me because of my age you get points given to you and the higher your points go, the higher security prison you go to. So when I was 17 years old, just to be sentenced to life, I had what's called a hard 19, which puts me automatically at a like a level three or a higher security and then, based off of me answering no to a lot of these adult's questions I was I ended up being sent to the highest maximum security prisons that you can Wow Right from the beginning, at 17 years old Actually, I was 19 by that time because court proceedings and all of these different things Two years had passed by of me being in county jails and courts and stuff like that.
Speaker 1:So 19, never been to prison, never been incarcerated.
Speaker 1:I have no record. I definitely deserved to be there, to be honest with you, right, because of how dangerous I was living, and less about me, but more about me being dangerous to everybody else, even through my recklessness, even through my impulsivity as a kid, and all of that. I'm so happy that I was actually removed because at any time somebody can just be hurt in a way that they lose their life or that they, and then now this permanent thing has taken place that can never be undone, and I witnessed a lot of people that were there for that, that committed that, that continued to commit crimes that were of that severity, and it's so hard of a place to find purpose in after you've done something like that. So my point out of that is here. I am 19,. Never been through this system before, have no idea what's really going on. I'm a white young kid from a black gang in South Central LA, which immediately put me as a target, where I was what's called green lighted by the entire white race.
Speaker 2:That's right.
Speaker 1:And then sent to the highest, maximum, most dangerous prisons right away and um.
Speaker 2:And they knew that. I think that.
Speaker 1:I mean, I get that, I get this.
Speaker 2:I get that. They got the point system that got Out to ask everybody the same questions.
Speaker 1:They just didn't give a fuck exactly. They knew it's not even that there was, even because I want to give a shout out to so many of the staff that were a part of CDC and then CDC are, which is what it became California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation. But I want to give a shout out to a lot of those guys right and they helped you.
Speaker 1:Oh, mr Bishop in Cali pad right, he's retired now, but car and Jacobs and I mean I can go on with so many different people from juvenile all the way up that Were the ones that made me feel a sense of responsibility to, because of how kind they were to me and because of how they treated me like what I was, which was a shit little kid.
Speaker 2:Were you surprised when that happened? Did you expect, I wasn't?
Speaker 1:surprised, but it was. I was comforted by it is what it was. Yeah, so by the time it came, when I allowed it in right, for my first initial few years, I wouldn't even allow it in, I was just so.
Speaker 1:I just didn't even, you know, I didn't even recognize it, didn't allow it, lived a completely different lifestyle. And then, once I was into my 20s and deciding this new direction in my life, without any excuses, I didn't care that I had life in prison. I felt like living a life of purpose and of Empowerment over my emotional experience as well as my physical experience. That that was valuable.
Speaker 2:So you're in prison, yeah for life, yep, and at 20 years old roughly 21 you decide you're gonna have a life of purpose.
Speaker 1:Do you know?
Speaker 2:how crazy that fucking sounds to people out there right now that have everything and can't find purpose. Yeah who are free and have money and have a nice car. Well, I'm gonna tell you.
Speaker 1:I'm gonna tell you this right here in the two years that I've been home, I've had Monumental success. I've had. I have broken all types of statistics and stereotypes From the moment that I was in in many different ways, both in the destructive side as well as because I also was the only Juvenile my case was published and all these things. I was the only juvenile in the history of American law who was sentenced to the equivalent of life without where no firearm was discharged, nobody was physically hurt, nobody lost their life. I was the only one. So even in you know, there was just these monumental things taking place. But my success in coming home and all of that To me has to do and is completely interwoven in a foundation of living a life of purpose.
Speaker 2:I agree.
Speaker 1:I look at the people out here in a lot of different ways and many people that are Struggling to find that content and to find or the contentment, to find that that sense of fulfillment and purpose in their life, and that are unhappy and and at the highest levels right of success and money and talent and and and support and like every different thing, and one of the most interesting things to me has in coming home has been that living the way that I did in Prison once I started to have those realities and those realizations come into my life Now is such an asset to me out here.
Speaker 2:Oh my god. Yeah, you were like in a 20 year Buddhist retreat, basically a violent one.
Speaker 1:Finally, I love the last. The last, probably this is what I was talking about in social navigation and in and in, like situational awareness and how living a life of, of having been Nurtured in an environment of abuse and trauma, led me to Toe that, that line and like test water and temperature. And that got reinforced while I was in prison, because now I had to learn how to survive and I did that and I thought about it only in the physical sense for my first, probably about five years, and then, when I started to have that realization of choice and empowerment and all those different things and wanting to feel, to feel like in remorse yeah, I mean remorse was so interwoven into all of that where I was like, how can I give back? I want to give some form, I want to live some form of amends. And if I can't give direct amends, right.
Speaker 2:Right to the people, to the people that I actually heard with the people here.
Speaker 1:I could in the way that I lived my life, right for the rest of my life right.
Speaker 2:What'd you do what? What are some of the things you did in prison. How did that man?
Speaker 1:I went on a minute. Well, first thing is is that I started to Take therapy ser-serious and even though it's not something that's available inside of prisoner, readily available I did whatever I could in order to touch it as closely as possible. So I entered into whatever self-help groups they were right, 12 steps, all that. I've been a part of executive bodies, of all of these things. I've been a part of them for many years. Anger management, creative conflict resolution, wonder woman, wonder writers of America, right, like all these, I would just take workshops and just and just be around Self-help and and and betterment. Then I started to.
Speaker 1:Then I then, well, first I denounced gang membership and and I Became what's called a non-active Active gang member in the state of California prison system. And what that means is is, when I denounce my membership and I become non-active, that means that one You're no longer accepted by the active members of the, of the of the gang or of the prison system, and then you go over to a yard that is created right for those that have denounced their gang memberships and are trying to create a new life. Now, over there, I started to realize that many people just fall back into their own habits anyways. They create new gangs on these yards, continued drug abuse and all of these different things. But for me, what it did was it gave me the freedom to make the change to no longer be a gang member in this life, and now it was up to me to stick to it right Now that I have been given the space for it. So it first manifested right in me, denouncing gang membership and being open to a new path. Then it led into me discovering self-help groups and attending those.
Speaker 1:That then led into, like, an appreciation for education. So I went back, got my GED, went on to college all of these different things right and this love for learning. From there I went on to be of service. I wanted to give back some of the things that I learned.
Speaker 1:So I started to be of service in prison and I looked at it less of a place that was either didn't. I started to look at it less of a place that didn't matter, because my real life had been taken away from me and now I was incarcerated. So none of this matters. And I stopped looking at it from the perspective of I'm not a part of it, that I don't relate to anybody, because I no longer want to, you know, think or act in ways of abuse and criminality, and I started to look at it as my community and the fact that I have a Ripple effect In wherever I'm at, and what type of effect do I want to have. So I started to be of service in ways that were beyond, like you know, being a sergeant of arms in an AA program right or an NA program right, and and more of how can I do the things that I love and use them as vehicles of being of service to others?
Speaker 2:So you weren't just doing time. There's so many. No, I went on to yeah.
Speaker 1:No, I became a. I went on to a budding art career. I became a fine artist, had gallery showings on the outside. I have a curator in Laguna. Shout out Suzanne Wall. She's amazing. I I I created boxing programs where I I had camps of people that I trained as though they were gonna compete. I I went on to I was a barber right where I barbered and I cut hair and I was. You know, that was my actual job assignment for my last, like probably six, seven years in prison. It was my current job assignment when I was released, because my releases also was unexpected.
Speaker 2:On how did that happen?
Speaker 1:So Okay, so I had lost all of my appeals, pills were done, I had life in prison, life actually the equivalent of life. Without I was never gonna be able to meet the you know 80 to life that they had given me, or whatever. Okay, I.
Speaker 1:Was just living a life of purpose and service and things like that and self-improvement, the stuff I was just talking about. I was being of service to my community. I was, you know, just Living my life without the expectation of really ever coming home, not in a hopeless way, just in a way that if I compare it always to to the outside, it's just too painful. Yeah, you know what could be right and instead just being thankful for what is. And and Then an attorney who had worked with us for many years and who is a leading voice in in the Conversation of juvenile justice, justice reform within the country. A lot of different things shout out.
Speaker 1:Joe Pertell, he's another one. I love this guy to death. We're supposed to be getting dinner here pretty soon been two years and I can't wait to see him out here anyways. He hears of a program in CDCR where CDCR as an organization, if deemed fit, will send a brief down to the sentencing courts For an inmate requesting that inmates file to be looked at for consideration to be resentenced. So when we heard about this we got really excited because I hadn't had I Mean, I think, probably I hadn't had a disciplinary infraction for like 15 years and I had all of these accomplishments, quiet accomplishments not ones where I was doing it for this purpose, but just one where it was for me and then for the, the way in the belief system I had in life, and and.
Speaker 1:So he Tracked it down. This officer a lieutenant, I believe it was up in Sacramento whose job is to review inmates files for the purpose of potentially recommending a resentance, and Contacts the guy and goes, hey, I got an inmate that I represent in in you know the institution that I was at and I think you guys should look at his file. You know and and and think about maybe sending down a recommendation for him. So the lieutenant goes he knew Joe enough to where he was like, okay, cool, and he looks at my file and when he looked at my file they decided they were going to, they were gonna send down a recommendation. So they send a recommendation down to the courts and you're hearing all of this.
Speaker 1:No unbeknownst to me unbeknownst to you.
Speaker 2:Yes, he's not getting your hopes up by telling you the files been sent.
Speaker 1:It's not that he's not getting my hopes up, it's that what happened was COVID. Oh, and so this breake. This file sat on a desk for the next like three years while COVID was getting figured out.
Speaker 1:Tyler yeah, the courts had been completely shut down. Nobody heard anything and what happened was was this this is where the story gets really fun is the paper, the, the, the brief, the brief gets denied, unbeknownst to anybody right during COVID and pushed off to the side and gets lost in the system. We don't know about it. I Now in the process of that. Gascon gets elected as the district attorney in the county of Los Angeles and one of his first things was to look at corruption within the LA Sheriff's Department and within the police department and within the district attorney's office, the county of Los Angeles, and to look at like overzealous sentences and like juveniles that were tried as adults. To put it in perspective, I think right now we probably try maybe 100 juveniles as adults right now, currently probably in the county of Los Angeles. When I was tried as a juvenile they got all the way up to like 2000.
Speaker 2:Oh, my God.
Speaker 1:Yeah, like they were. It was really, really out of control at that time. So Gascon is combing through these cases and my case comes up, and when my case comes up, right, he goes this is we have to do something about this. So what he does is and this is a person that's working for him and some type of you know, of course somebody has been delegated these tasks and stuff like that. But what happens is is this is they decide that they're going to contact all these I wasn't the only one, there was others they're going to contact them about potentially being resentenced, right? Their file is going to be sent to judges and it's going to be looked at again to see if any of us deserve to be resentenced in what happened In the process of that.
Speaker 1:Loyola Maramount has this nonprofit organization called the Juvenile Fair Sentencing and Innocence Project and is head up by Miranda Sacks I can't remember her name. Shout out to the fucking Loyola Maramount, because these motherfuckers showed up in a way that was so amazing and they came across my case through Joe and through and my case was used in the state of California to tackle these life without sentences, right, and what that looks like and things like that. So my case comes up. Loyola Maramount is nonprofit organization. These studs that are law professors and stuff like that Find it, see it, decide that they want to be a part of this, and so they become my counsel. And now I have no resistance from the district attorney, right, because they're backing us. And now I have Loyola Maramount who is pushing the briefs forward.
Speaker 1:And then what happens is that then they find the brief from CDCR. They found it had been denied and all of this. But when they found that right, because it had been denied during COVID and all of these different types of things it was able to be re-brought back up and reintroduced into the overall brief for me to be considered eligible for recensing. So they get all of these things together, all of this. They put together this brief. They do that. I'm talking to them. My family's super excited. My parents are really excited, all of these different things. This is the closest that I've ever been to a real conversation of coming home, except for the parole board, which is a whole other thing. We'll get into that another time. But this is like the most real feeling of that. Somebody with the ability and power and authority to look at my case from that perspective is actually at the judge looks at. It's not the same sentencing judge. He had moved on.
Speaker 2:I just have to say this I'm excited for the ending, even though I know it. This is how powerful this story is.
Speaker 1:Keep going. So the judge. So they approach the judge and the judge gets my case and stuff like that, and the judge says flat out she is not removing the life sentence. I can't wait for the movie yeah.
Speaker 2:This is.
Speaker 1:Yeah. So she says she's not going to remove the life sentence. She says that she feels that what was done to me was wrong and that it was too harsh of a sentence and that she's going to make me immediately eligible for the parole board, which is I wouldn't have the life sentence removed. But what I would do is I would go in front of a panel that that's appointed by the governor in the state of California and it's a very, very rigorous interview process to see whether or not you are eligible to be paroled back into society.
Speaker 1:And anytime you hear 15 to live, 10 to life, seven to life, 20 to life, that's what that means. You're 19 years off the 20, and then you go to a parole board and then you begin this parole board process that includes three, five, seven, 10 and 15 year denials. So if you go to a parole board and the parole board finds you unsuitable for seven years, you don't even go back for another seven years to see that parole board. It used to be only a year, but what happened is I Megan's lie, I believe came into play and so you have these terrible acts against people and that motivated for them to take away the person was on parole when they did this atrocious thing, and what ended up happening was they said that this person got parole when they shouldn't, and so they need to up it from one year to a minimum of a three year denial. So if you're not ready, then you do three years before you go back.
Speaker 1:And there's all these other things in there, and all these get super complicated and bogged down. This is what she's going to make me immediately eligible for. Now I was already eligible underneath a Senate bill that had passed some years prior, and I was, but I had to do 20 years in order to go to this parole board, and now I was like a year away, I think, at this time. So I was, I was heartbroken because I was like it doesn't really make a difference, I'm going to the parole board any year anyways. So she's only going to just it's. It's. It's not changing anything other than what is actually written down on paper. And so my I was devastated for about two weeks, you know, I just, I was, yeah, my family and it was just, and I just said, okay, you know, life goes on you know, back to the box.
Speaker 2:Yeah, exactly, back to life. Back to life to my community.
Speaker 1:And. But she said that she was going to give me an opportunity to speak in court if I wanted to, and so it would be over the phone or no, I'm sorry it was going to be. It was going to be through zoom, which I had never done, I had never even seen, I hadn't all these things had come in, you know, technologically, over those almost 20 years that I was like what the fuck is a zoom?
Speaker 1:But so, anyways, it was going to be zoom because of COVID, and she was giving me an opportunity to speak, and my council asked me if I wanted to, and so I thought about it for a little bit and and I decided that I wanted to speak. And the reason why I wanted to speak wasn't because I was trying to change your mind. I'd already decided this is just what it's going to be, and I'll go to the parole board and I'll get another chance at another time and and and I'm okay with that. But instead, what I'm going to do is I'm going to see this as an opportunity to do what I should have done from the very beginning, and one of the things that I wished when I was beginning and embarking on this journey of amends, that that I would have had a second chance to do, and that's just to just tell people openly in this forum how sorry I am, because I, of course, I denied it all the way along, you know. So I was like you know what.
Speaker 1:This is a time to be brave in a way that I wasn't brave when I was 17. And I need to just let everybody know how sorry I am for the choices I made at that time in my life, for the impact that those choices had, for wasting resources and time and money and dragging people through the traumatic events that I had created right through my choices to participate in this and that, if nothing else, they deserve and many of them, they had moved away. Some of them passed away. Right, you know, like all these different things, Nobody you know was there physically as far as like the direct victims, but even to the courts and to the community and say listen, you know, for all the people out here that are paying taxes, that are doing the right thing that are, and for me you to, own it.
Speaker 1:That was. That was where I was leaving at the end right it was and finally for me to be able to do this thing that is really important, which is to just say you're sorry when you fuck up with no excuse none Allow the, the, the judgment or the consequences of that choice to be what they are.
Speaker 2:Don't try to control them, that's right, I call it own in your shit.
Speaker 1:There, it is right so. So I decided that this was a opportunity and I was thankful for it and that I was going to approach what I wanted to say in that way. So I spent weeks this is months ahead of when my court date is so I spent weeks and weeks and weeks writing and rewriting, and writing and rewriting, and what are all the things I wanted to touch on? You know, I wanted to touch on remorse, I wanted to touch on empathy, I want to touch on insight, right, and the things I had learned about myself. I want to talk about, you know, the way that I thought then compared to the way that I think now, and all of these different things. And I wanted it to all be brief and I want to waste everybody's time by bogging down about how much I've changed and all these different things. Right, I just wanted to be able to say it and people to know it as much as my apology. So so I put together this speech and I started to think like damn, you know what's it going to be. It's going to be on the zoom thing. Well, I am always hearing about these things glitching out on people and stuff, so I might end up being on the phone. So I start, like you know, practicing my speech over the phone to my family, right, because I just was so important to me to do a good job with it, you know, and just and just like represent myself in the best way that I could, of like, hey, you know I fucked all this shit up, but you know anyways. So here comes the court date and and sure enough, the judge it's on the phone.
Speaker 1:The zoom thing doesn't work out. I just end up being on this phone in the program office, right, and sitting there looking at a you know a caseload worker, you know who's, not even knowing what the fuck's going on. He's just like, hey, you got a phone call right here with court date or something, and he's like eating his lunch and and I hear it on speaker, the judge, you know, goes through all of the legal proceedings and stuff. And my dad and my sister are in the courthouse and they're the only ones in my council and I'm on the phone and everybody else, my brothers and everything, everybody's got work and stuff, like that is all these years later, and so the judge is going through everything and then she confirms that she's that the sentence is going to hold, that she's just going to resent me to the possibility of parole, is she's not going to remove life sentence and things like that?
Speaker 1:And then she says that she's agreed to let me speak, and then I've agreed to speak. And then all of a sudden she goes. I mean even seemed like I was really a part of it all the way up into that point. And then she goes you there, mr Corcoran, and I go yes, ma'am, I am. She says you've agreed to speak. You say you want to, and I say yes, and she said what do you have to say? And I dropped into my speech. I spoke for maybe two to three minutes and in the beginning of the speech I could hear papers ruffling. I could. I could hear people clearing their throat in the courtroom and conversations and and the judge doing whatever she's doing. And probably about 30 seconds into that everything started getting quiet and I could feel the silence in the courtroom and I knew that I had their attention.
Speaker 2:Right.
Speaker 1:And I finished my speech with my head up, proud of how I got through it. I said a bunch of stuff that I didn't even in my speech.
Speaker 2:Right, right. Yeah, I knew that was kind of a big gap.
Speaker 1:The only thing about practicing that it helped do was it helped me to keep it within a certain boundary so I didn't ramble and lose my train of thought. She took a deep breath, she said she needed a 20 minute recess and she just got up and left. Oh my God, and now we just sat there and I'm hearing all these noise again and stuff like that and everybody's kind of like I could hear, like, and then the line goes dead. And then I sit there and the counselor looks up at me and he goes what the fuck was all that? Right Cause I'd been crying and I'm like it was this whole thing. You know, it was this.
Speaker 1:It was me just being bare and vulnerable and open and honest, and honest and so, anyways, he dives into my story and next thing, you know, he goes, oh shit, 20 minutes up and he puts me back on the line and the judge comes back in and she clears her throat and she reintroduces everything into the courtroom and then she says that you know, this is a very serious thing and she takes her job very serious and all of these different things. She was amazing. And then she says she is going to remove the life sentence, she's gonna send me, she's gonna resense me, to time served. She tells me that she believes in me, that she that yeah.
Speaker 2:Where's the Kleenex?
Speaker 1:And that a lot of people believed in me. Yeah, and it was the most amazing thing I've ever experienced in my life. And you're just even even leaving, even actually walking out didn't feel as impactful as when she told me that she was gonna send me home.
Speaker 2:And I was oh, thank you, so am I, and so is this newborn son that's almost here, and Stephanie and your family and all of us at Craft Boxing.
Speaker 1:But this is the funny thing too is that it wasn't over, you know like. So she tells me she's doing all of these things and everything and that I'm since the time served and I'm free to go. And the phone hangs up. Me and the counselor look at each other and he goes. What happened? And I said so you're not gonna fucking believe it. He goes. What I said she just removed life since and sent him home and he went, are you?
Speaker 1:fucking serious. I see it, he goes. How long did you do? I said I just did almost 20 years and he hold on are you Cause?
Speaker 1:he looked at me and he goes you're not even old enough to do 20 years in here. And I said not been in here a long time. You know, I've, I've, I've, I, I. I came in with no facial hair and left with a full beard, you know. So anyways, but then nothing happened, and one day turned into two, and two days turned into a week, and a week turned into a week and a half, and now we were getting close to Thanksgiving and I'm going fucking crazy. I'm wondering is this even real? Yeah, and at the same time, the emotional roller coaster, because when I, when the call was done and I walked out, I had two of my friends that had known me since I was like 20 years old, Like we had. We had. We rocked through some stuff together Right.
Speaker 1:Active and not active. For those that are listening, that know those terms. Uh, you know what that means. So, anyways, they see me and they go. What happened? And I break down into tears just like I did. Right now, my face crumbles there's gonna be hope, right. And they threw their arms around me and then word spread throughout the yard and hundreds of people poured out from the buildings, people that I didn't even realize that all the things I had been doing over all the years, people that had been. We were on a level two now. I had worked my way from a 180 level four, from a shoe program all the way down to a level two, and some of these people had been with me along the way and to watch me grow up, and we're so proud of the fact that I had stuck to the way that I believed over all these years. Right, yeah.
Speaker 1:And that I was just you know. And now this was happening. And so they sit. I walk out and hundreds of people pour out of their hand at me like ice creams and chips and this and that and I'm talking to everybody, everybody's. It's a symbol of hope, right For everybody on the yard, that Tyler had been released. You know this guy that they knew had been a kid and you know growing up in here. And then, about three days into it, I was like I just wanted my life back. It was an emotional rollercoaster. I was waking up at two in the morning crying. I was like I didn't know what the fuck was going on. I was like my body didn't even it's a shock.
Speaker 1:Oh, I didn't even eat for like three days. I couldn't, I couldn't even. And then the week goes in and the counselor calls me in and says I got some bad news. And I go what's the bad news? And I said, well, you know, I got resented. So he goes, no, that's all there. But we, the state of California, has to contact victims before your release and there needs to be a certain amount of time to do it. So you're not going to be released for like another four months. And I went in my mind, I went you motherfuckers, like four months man of. And I went, you know what? It's cool, I'm just going to grow my beard, grow my hair. I don't even get a haircut, I'm just going to box all day. I'm just going to like, I'm just going to give, I'm going to, I'm going to worry about anything, I'm going to, I'm just going to be fine. And I get on the phone and they tell my dad which was the hardest part he goes. What?
Speaker 1:Cause no she said time served. I don't know, man. They're talking about all these different things with this and that and then, like this was a ground that we had never gotten to before, you know a release.
Speaker 1:We were like what? So we didn't know this process, we'll come to find out what happened. So they, they. So my dad goes there's something right about this. And he contacts Loyola Maramaunin in my council and they go hell, no, that's not how that's supposed to be. Something has been wrong. So they contact the judge. This is like right before Thanksgiving. If not, I'm going to be gone. I'm going to be in there like another week waiting for this to get fair. So they contact the judge. The judge is furious because of the clerk made a mistake on the way that he typed up the written statement and then went on vacation for a week. Oh my God.
Speaker 2:If someone wrote this, they'd go well, that's too much, it was like, and it all happened.
Speaker 1:All of it.
Speaker 2:All of it.
Speaker 1:So the judge goes that's not. It Immediately has her clerk type up a new minute or send it to the institution. The institution has like 24 hours to do this. So next thing, you know, I'm on my bunk. They start calling me over the loudspeaker like crazy and they start zipping me around the institution doing all of the pre-release stuff because they got to get me out now. And I remember just feeling like, oh yeah, finally, like I'll take my time. You know, like I was just milking it in the way of, like, you know, loving the fact that the institution was having to like cater to me and be honest and be just.
Speaker 1:And be honest and be just, and the fact that now I was a free man, that's right. The same staff that treated you a certain way now sees you as something different because you're a free man now. And so now all of these different, you have all these rights that have been reestablished. They got to get you out of there, you know, otherwise they're in deep shit. You can just keep a free man in prison, you know when they've been deemed free, and so, anyways, they, they, they, they bust me all around it, right, I sign everything and the next day I walk out. Yeah, and I was there, everybody. I have my dad, I have my mom, not my biological mother, but my mom, who, who is my stepmother, who came in when I was 10 and, you know, just did her best at filling that void, who I love very much. So my dad, my mom, my older brother, my little brother, their two wives, my little brother's son, my little sister and her son, cause now there's all these nieces and nephews. Now you know, over all, these years.
Speaker 1:And they come in this. You know, mercedes van that.
Speaker 2:You see those Sprinter, vans Sprinter, sprinter.
Speaker 1:They come pick me up, you know, and I walk out of the institution and I, you know, they had these big old, you know hand drawn signs welcome home, tyler, we love you and like all these different things. And they usher me into the seat, drive off and I roll the window down. It was the first time that I had been in a car with the window down in 20 years just about 19 years and what date was this and what year? Yeah, so I was released 11, 24, 2021 now.
Speaker 1:It's been two years now. November 24th made it two years.
Speaker 2:So people, are you hearing this?
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:This is just two years.
Speaker 1:Yeah, this is two years ago. A lot happened in that two years. A lot happened in those two years, yeah, and I've been into some amazing places in those two years.
Speaker 2:You have. So here's what I'm going to ask. Yeah, I know they're going to hear more and we want to hear what happened those two years, but I'm not going to give it to them right now.
Speaker 1:Let's keep this suspense going.
Speaker 2:We're going to do another one, Because I get to see you not every day, but I get to see you whenever I want.
Speaker 1:That's right. So, and now that you've been over here to my home and all of these different things Right so. Thank you so much for coming over to Of course Of course.
Speaker 2:And to meet Stephanie and the new baby that's coming in this wonderful home.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:That you've helped to create. Yeah, so just so people know they know iBox and they know about George. We had George on the my podcast.
Speaker 1:Love George.
Speaker 2:George Foreman Yep. The third Make sure you always know the number.
Speaker 1:That's right. There's so many of them, there's so many, you won't know which one. All George's too, that's right, or George Eddas?
Speaker 2:Exactly, and I was there, yeah, and I didn't know this story.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:Until I don't know, maybe eight months ago, Something when I first asked you. I was just going to have you on.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:Right. And then somebody said well, you know, he just got out of prison. And I went what the fuck?
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2:I said this is a Buddha, this is a walking Buddha. You're telling me he just got out, yeah, about a year ago, yeah, and I was like, okay, okay.
Speaker 1:I love you, susie. Thank you very much, I love you.
Speaker 2:And I'm so grateful that you're in our community.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:And there I want everybody to know the next two years, because that could have been, that could have gone wrong.
Speaker 1:Yeah, definitely. I went recently and picked up my best friend who just came home after doing 24 years and he has followed me for the last 13 years, sell to sell institution to institution as we were dropping down, splitting apart him, being sent all the way up to the different institution way up north and everything. I'm gonna see him again and seeing him again and I went and picked him up. And not everybody is, not everybody's experience of coming home is the same, that's right, you know, and I'm happy to be as much help and continue to give back to, especially my brothers and sisters that are formerly incarcerated, that are coming home. But for my buddy, ronnie is like you know, it's a reminder and and you know he's super thankful, but it's not always the way that it has been for me. That's right, that's the thing.
Speaker 2:So, Tyler, anytime I get a phone call and I answer it, or I get a text and said Tyler gave me your number.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:I'm there for that person.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:And I just my number to any guy coming out.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, anytime yeah.
Speaker 2:And I'll take that call and I'll work with them as much as they want.
Speaker 1:Yeah, well, we need to find him. He's right now he's, he's working and stuff, but it's only through temp agencies working at like a hose manufacturing thing. But Ronnie's a good guy and he's an amazing worker. So if we can find him some work, that'd be great, great. And I'm free Shout out to Ron, I was gonna say I'm free. Yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2:I was gonna say I'm cheap, but I'm not cheap.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I'm a little salty but I'm not cheap. Yeah.
Speaker 2:Oh, my God, I'm so grateful, thank you. Thanks For sharing this. Yeah, thanks for making the therapist cry. It's always good when you make the therapist cry, and so maybe next week we could do it, and so they air these on Mondays, okay, so they'll let people know about it, yeah. On this Sunday, and then they'll air it Monday, and then it will be in our library forever.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:And then what we can do is we can re-air them back to back so people can get the full story of what you've done in the last few years, cause that's pretty remarkable as well.
Speaker 1:Thank you and thank you for the platform. You know, just in general, like I, we talk like this all the time me and you and these are the types of conversations that I have with everybody that's close in my life. Right, yeah, is having that is going deep, and so I'm always, you know, willing and ready to do that. To go deep and to be able to talk about my story in this way makes me feel in this. It's one of the components that I get to carry with me from my life in there, and there's a comfort that comes from that, because I spent a lot of time talking about my story in there and about where I'm from in this net amongst everybody's cause. Everybody has a story. That's right and but yeah, but I'm super thankful as well.
Speaker 2:So Thank you. Talk about fucking crazy. Well, his motherfucker is about as crazy Well it's possible. Thank you so much I don't know how to stop.
Speaker 1:We'll turn it off.
Speaker 2:I'll go get Steph, yeah, I don't have to push the button over there.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:I know how to do that. All right, everybody Be crazy. Well, okay, I'm talking about what they do. It's probably why they beat you. Your best, love, love yourself, then love. I'm talking about what they do.