Retired DEA special agent Rocky Herron has embraced a new challenge an anti-drug and alcohol ambassador for the San Diego County Office of Education. Rocky joins us to unravel a gripping story of his transition from the front lines of the drug war to the classrooms of San Diego County and beyond (he’s delivered his message to students in 17 countries) where he's on a mission to shield future generations from substance abuse. The conversation journeys through his personal evolution, revealing the real-life impact of narcotics on communities, the cross-border ramifications of the fentanyl crisis, and the crucial and often overlooked role of drug education in schools.
Learn more about Rocky.
Read a story about Rocky in the San Diego Union-Tribune.
Retired DEA special agent Rocky Herron has embraced a new challenge an anti-drug and alcohol ambassador for the San Diego County Office of Education. Rocky joins us to unravel a gripping story of his transition from the front lines of the drug war to the classrooms of San Diego County and beyond (he’s delivered his message to students in 17 countries) where he's on a mission to shield future generations from substance abuse. The conversation journeys through his personal evolution, revealing the real-life impact of narcotics on communities, the cross-border ramifications of the fentanyl crisis, and the crucial and often overlooked role of drug education in schools.
Learn more about Rocky.
Read a story about Rocky in the San Diego Union-Tribune.
What I try to do is make them understand this is you, these people, these pictures that I'm showing. That's you, that's your friend. This is not somebody else. This is what happened to them. Sadly, it probably will happen to you if you go down this road. I'm not afraid to go there.
Speaker 2:In this episode I sat down with Rocky Herron. Rocky is a retired DEA agent. He served in that capacity for over 30 years, served in the United States as well as abroad, in Bolivia for a period of six years. He raised his family there. Rocky and I talk about a fascinating range of topics related to his work as a DEA agent, but, most importantly, his current work as an employee of the San Diego County Office of Education, as an anti-drug and anti-alcohol ambassador in the county's schools. We touch on the fentanyl crisis in America, what preceded it, his take on what he defines as a pill-popping culture in the United States, and much, much more. This was a fascinating opportunity for me to sit down with someone who is passionate about his job and, most importantly, passionate about protecting children. He has done this work not only in the United States but abroad, in 17 countries, and ironically, he shared that the reception that he receives in Mexico, for example, at the federal level, is a much warmer reception than he has received in the United States. So lots to unpack in this interview. I hope you enjoy listening as much as I did having this conversation.
Speaker 2:Welcome to the Superintendent's Hangout, where we discuss topics in education, charter schools, life in general, and not necessarily in that order. I'm your host, dr Sharedda. Come on in and hang out. Welcome, rocky. Thank you so much for coming in this afternoon in the middle of a winter storm here in San Diego. I'm happy to be here, dave. I was wondering if we could start out where I start all these conversations, with you sharing a bit about your background, where you come from, what your history is and what inspired you to ultimately pursue a career in law enforcement, and then bringing you to your current work in schools.
Speaker 1:Well, I'm a retired DEA special agent. I did that for 31 years. I now work for the County of San Diego Office of Education doing drug prevention talks in schools. But I grew up here in San Diego. I went to Francis Parker, grew up privileged, but I had seen what drugs had done to people around me and at an early age I had a kind of a chip on my shoulder. I was offered weed when I was 12 and made the decision that you know don't need to find out what that does for me. But when I was 18 in high school, kiki Camarena was the DEA agent who was kidnapped and murdered in Mexico, and he was a San Diego guy. His next posting after Mexico was going to be San Diego and what happened to Kiki really shocked me. It shocked the country and started a whole red ribbon concept. But at 18, I began to ponder like, well, maybe that's something I could do someday, not believing I could ever actually get the job. But I went to college up in LA and I came back from college and everyone told me I needed to go to law school, except the only problem was I didn't want to be a lawyer. So I threw a crazy Hail Mary application in with DEA and they hired me at 23. So I came out of the academy, came back to San Diego, spent eight years doing cases here on the border with Tijuana plenty of work and after eight years I was given rewarded with a transfer to Bolivia, in South America, and spent six and a half years for DEA in Bolivia. And then I came back to San Diego and finished my career here and I'm in education, really accidentally.
Speaker 1:So about 17 years ago now, two things happened almost simultaneously. One we discovered the Oxycontin epidemic here in San Diego and it had been here, we just weren't paying attention to it. We were focused on cocaine and meth and heroin. But we discovered in 2008, roughly, that we had a significant youth Oxycontin problem. And in the DEA we don't chase drug users. But the problem with Oxycontin, it's so addictive, it was so expensive that a large number of kids who got addicted in high school ended up as young adults being dealers. They had to sell Oxycontin to be able to afford their own. So we'd arrest these kids and often I would offer to drive them to jail. That's an amazing period of time when even the hardcore drug dealers are seeming willing to talk that last drive before jail.
Speaker 1:And I'd ask these beautiful kids from the best families and the best schools and best communities in San Diego, and not your traditional drug trafficking population. I'd ask these kids why did you start? When did you start? What made you think it was safe? Who offered it to you?
Speaker 1:All of these kids, young men and women would start crying, all of them. And they all said something like if only somebody would have warned me, if only somebody had told me how bad it was going to be, maybe I wouldn't have started. And I'd look at them and say shut up, you wouldn't listen to anybody, because at that time I didn't think anybody would listen. And almost simultaneously I just discovered my own daughters here in elementary school in San Diego were not getting any organized drug prevention. I didn't know that DARE had been driven out of the schools and not replaced. And those two issues kind of collided with me and made me realize we're failing our kids. I mean, we're not educating our kids about the risk of drug abuse. And so that's where I am. I don't really quite know why kids listen to me, but they do. And half my time I spent here in San Diego and half my time I was spending traveling in the US and Mexico teaching.
Speaker 2:So, as you mentioned to me when we were chatting before hitting record, there are a number of folks obviously around the country who do similar work. Except to your knowledge, none of them are employed by a school district or a county office of education. They're mostly freelancers. How did you come to this position and how did? I'm assuming Dr Goddall reached out to you or you met him somewhere, or how did that work?
Speaker 1:Well, it was interesting to me. Several years ago the assistant superintendent reached out to me a new assistant superintendent in San Diego for the county office of Ed and said Dr Goddall thinks the world of you, and who's that? And she was shocked and I said I don't know who he is. And she goes. Well, he talks all about you. And I found out later that he had been hearing from other education leaders in San Diego about the work I was doing in the schools, even though I never met him.
Speaker 1:And when I retired two years ago and I want to give him enormous credit for this he saw an opportunity to bring me inside his school district. So they created this position and it's an outward facing position and Paul Goddall has empowered me to speak to any school charter, military, parochial, public, doesn't matter, any community group, any church group, anybody in the community that will listen. And that's my job to get out in front of the community and share this message. And, as you said, you know I'm connection on social media to other people doing this and I'm not aware of anybody doing it from within a school system and that surprises me, you know, given the extent of the drug problem today.
Speaker 2:You talked about. I think it was in one of the podcasts that I listened to in preparation for today. You talked about when you came back to the US after having spent the time in Bolivia, and your daughters I think their first language was Spanish and they were immersed in Bolivia. That was their home country, essentially. And they came back and they asked you about some TV commercials that they saw. Can you talk tongue in cheek? It's a funny anecdote, but I think it has a very serious message. Can you share that with me? Sure, Sure.
Speaker 1:So we went to Bolivia in 1998 and my family went with me and we came back in 2004. And my daughters were nine, seven and five and we'd spent six and a half years in Bolivia and none of us had really been exposed too much to American culture in those six years. And we've been back for several months and my little girls came up to me one day and said Daddy, daddy, what's erectile dysfunction? And the question shocked me and I tried to explain what it was in a way that was acceptable to my kids. And then I asked them why would you ask me about this? And they explained that they were seeing all these commercials on TV. And I didn't understand and I started watching some of the shows they were watching and I was not happy because there are times of the day where almost every commercial on TV is for some prescription drug and we didn't have that before.
Speaker 1:I left for Bolivia and I did research later, in the late 90s, everything changed the advertising. The federal government said you can change the rules in the advertising. They made it much more voice overs. You know that used to be those Star Wars texts at the bottom of that. They were not attractive right.
Speaker 1:And years ago I saw figures that the pharmaceutical industry was spending about $300 million a year on direct to consumer marketing of prescription drugs.
Speaker 1:at the late 90s and by the early 2000s they were spending $3 billion a year a tenfold increase and we're one of just a couple countries in the Western Hemisphere that allow that direct marketing. Every other country is not a good idea and unfortunately the pharmaceutical lobby in Washington is, if not the most powerful, it's one of the most powerful. So we're stuck with that advertising. But what it's made me realize is that as a society, we have created a reality where everybody born in the last 20 years was raised on a steady diet of. This pill will solve your problems. This chemical will make your life better. And, yeah, you hear in the background that, yeah, it might also kill you. But that's not what people hear and they just see the solutions. They see the happy people sitting in bathtubs for whatever reason, or walking through a park and they come to believe. As a society, we've come to believe that there's some chemical that's going to solve our problems.
Speaker 2:And the notion that ask your doctor about Ozenbik or ask your doctor fill in the blank right is just that's no joke.
Speaker 1:If you're a doctor, that's no joke. And when my dad was a doctor here in San Diego and people would come with a hurt back and he would suggest what he thought was the best series of solutions, now and for many years, the patients show up I want this, I want this opioid, not that opioid, right, and if you don't give it to me I'm going to complain about you. In the emergency rooms years ago they changed the patient satisfaction surveys. And question number two how did this emergency department address your pain issues? So if the doctor denied somebody's pill seeking behavior, the doctor got shredded on that survey and the doctor's job became in jeopardy. So we put all this pressure on the medical profession to prescribe what people wanted. And then, certainly you know, through the popular culture, recreational drug use, illegal drug use, has been glamorized, far too glamorized. And then you know we legalized marijuana and I don't. That's changed a lot of things for our kids as well.
Speaker 2:So bring us forward to the present moment with fentanyl. I think there are misconceptions about what it is and what it isn't. We were talking about things that are laced with fentanyl and how you take exception to some of those, that terminology. So could you paint a picture from the perspective of someone who worked in this for 30 years and then bring that into your work today in schools and in the US as well as abroad? Absolutely.
Speaker 1:So there's a clear series of events for me that explain how we got where we are. Oxycontin was licensed in the mid-90s and Oxycontin essentially, if it's abused, has the same effect on the user as heroin. So we were beginning to prescribe pharmaceutical grade heroin, just called it Oxycontin, and many, many people lost control of their consumption of it. And when you use an opioid, any opioid too much, you build tolerance. It's a risk for any prescribing of opioids. So as people began to abuse Oxycontin, they needed more Oxycontin. To get the same high as the body gets used to it, you'd have to take more of the drug. And Oxycontin is expensive.
Speaker 1:And so we had this unfortunate dynamic where people who never would have used heroin ever, because they knew heroin was a nasty back alley street drug, they started using Oxycontin, mistakenly thinking well, it looks like safe because it came from a pharmacy got so addicted they had to start using heroin to avoid going over the draw sickness. So you had this population of people, people who never would have used heroin, all of a sudden using heroin. And then finally the government told Oxycontin, you can't make the pills like that anymore. You have to make them harder to abuse. And they did.
Speaker 1:They changed the formulation of Oxycontin, but the active ingredient in Oxycontin is Oxycodone and that comes in percocets, and Oxycodone comes in many other forms and we saw a very, very fast transition to this pill called Oxyroxycodone, a 30 milligram Oxycodone tablet, and that's what the drug abusing population started using. Well, unfortunately, this is around 2015 or so. The cartels in Mexico saw how much money Americans were willing to spend on prescription drugs and these pills were going for $30 a piece, these Roxycodone tablets, $30 a piece. And in the DEA we began to see counterfeit Roxycodone tablets that were coming in from Mexico and the quality was laughable. It'd be like Dave, if, like you and I, tried to fake an M&M and then convince our kid is real.
Speaker 2:We're not gonna be able to pull that off right those first pills were laughable and the color would come off them.
Speaker 1:And well, very quickly the people making these things figured out and make them right and they're perfect copies. They're perfect copies. At first they made them out of heroin and then somebody discovered that if you use fentanyl you can make these pills much less expensively. Fentanyl is an opioid. Essentially the same interaction on the body that heroin had, was gonna have essentially the same addiction risk. It's just 50 times more potent and it's completely synthetic. So to manufacture heroin you have to have poppy fields somewhere, you have to have farmers harvesting the poppy, you have to transport the poppy gum to other laboratories. It's a very big operation, labor intensive, labor intensive, lots of ways for people to steal from you, for you to get caught by the cops.
Speaker 1:Fentanyl is made with chemicals from drums, industrial chemicals, and can be manufactured in very, very small, either underground or industrial park labs. So there's no footprint on it and it's dramatically less expensive. And they began to sell. The cartels began to sell fentanyl in America and realize Americans liked it and so they began to fake these counterfeit pills with fentanyl. And the country's never been the same and these pills used to go for $30 each. I'm hearing now anecdotally, they're selling for a buck or two in San Diego.
Speaker 1:So there's no price barrier to it. And the pills? In my calculations, these pills cost the cartels just a few pennies to make. So when they were selling the pill that they built, they made for a couple pennies for $30. I don't think there's ever been a product that's been more profitable in the history of the human history. But even at a dollar or two, they're still making more profits selling fentanyl than they're making selling anything else, and so essentially, for me it's the most powerful, cheapest and most profitable drug ever invented. And it's flooding across our border in a tidal wave of fake pills and also in powdered bricks that look like a kilo of cocaine. So that's the two main ways it's coming in the country are in these counterfeit prescription pills that are made to look like a Xanax, made to look like an ambient made to look like a Vicodin, made to look like a Roxycodone or in powder, and we're struggling as a society to deal with this because there's no cost barrier.
Speaker 1:It's gotten so inexpensive that the dealers can literally give this stuff out to get people hooked.
Speaker 2:Now, am I right in understanding that the raw materials for these come from China?
Speaker 1:Or most of the chemicals that currently come from China, also India, I think the Chinese government has done at times, taking steps to clamp down on shipping fence and all. I don't know if it's. Some people think it's an organized effort by the Chinese government. I'm inclined to think it's more just corruption within the Chinese economy. It's just so much money, there's so much money and these are industrial chemicals and the problem is that the people making this stuff, the drug cartels they've hired the breaking bad guy. They've hired PhD chemists. So even if we in law enforcement effectively cut off some chemical for them, they know how to manufacture that chemical from other non-controlled chemicals, right. So, tragically, in my mind, there's no way to stop this. We cannot stop this, the production of it.
Speaker 1:There was a time when we would literally fly around and look for the poppy fields. We'd eradicate the poppy fields with fence and all that. We can't do that anymore and I don't think we're really adjusting to that reality. I totally believe in the law enforcement mission. I'm a law enforcement guy. I don't want to lock up the drug dealers but at the same time I can look at the reality and go that at the moment law enforcement isn't making a difference. You know if, historically, if we had some huge seizure of cocaine or methamphetamine or heroin or something, you might see a drop in supply, you might see a rise in price. You're not seeing that now, these massive, massive seizures of fentanyl and methamphetamine at the border here, san Diego, mexico, and the price just drops.
Speaker 2:Which would indicate that those are maybe 10% of everything. Well, it's hard to estimate.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I spent many years on the border and many of us who work the border think there's no way to prove this. But we think we get about 10% On a good day. The government's stopping about 10% of what's coming in. So every giant drug seizure that I see in the headlines, I think man, what happened to the other nine or 10 that big that got through? But fentanyl, it's a miracle drug. The legitimate form is a miracle drug. It's used in burn care, cancer care, surgery. It's a fabulous, super powerful. The medical form Too many adults don't understand. That's not the problem. The problem is now they clandestinely manufactured fentanyl, which is mostly being made in labs in Mexico, some labs in Canada. Also there are people ordering it through the dark web and they're manufacturing here in the US.
Speaker 2:So you've made reference to this kind of global not gonna call it global malaise, because that would be downplaying the significance of it but use the term that you talked about a global sense of unhappiness.
Speaker 1:Well, people are paying attention to fentanyl because it's causing so much sudden overdose death. It's tragic and many, many people say we're in a fentanyl crisis. I disagree with that, because we have huge numbers of people suffering from meth. Marijuana is causing a whole series of problems in our kids. For me, we're in a drug crisis. Fentanyl is the most alarming of the drugs out there at the moment, but four or five years ago it was heroin and four or five years before that it was OxyContin and there are, unfortunately, other synthetic opioids worse than fentanyl that are coming down the pike right.
Speaker 1:But I think we have a drug problem because we have a self-medication problem. We talked about the advertising of the pharmaceuticals and we have come to be a society that tells all of us hey, if you're hurting, if you're having anxiety, you have stress, take something for it, Take something for it. And we've come to accept that in our culture that if we're uncomfortable, sad, lonely, depressed, whatever, but we should take something to solve that. I think we have a self-medication crisis because we have a mental-unlawless crisis. I don't call it mental illness, I just think we have a lot of disconnected, confused, anxious people, and it's been verified. The CDC did some national surveys a couple of years ago and the data is horrifying. One of the questions they asked high school students was do you feel persistently sad and hopeless? And 44% of American teenagers told us they feel persistently sad and hopeless and I saw and that was pre-COVID.
Speaker 2:No, that was after COVID.
Speaker 1:They did another survey shortly after COVID and it was 44% of American teenagers. And my take on that is rather it depresses me and saddens me. We're the richest country in the history of the world by far, and essentially half of our future generations telling us they are persistently sad and hopeless. And when I saw those headlines and I actually read about them and I realized, okay, that data is kind of scary, I was expecting and hoping to see some sort of societal reaction. I was hoping to see school administrators and school systems and legislators get together and say we can't accept this. And I saw nothing. That's on no exchange.
Speaker 1:And so our kids are telling us they're in crisis right, our adult population is obviously in crisis, and yet we sit back and we scratch our heads and go what can we do? And well, my belief is, when it comes to youth drug consumption, well, let's go out and educate them. Let's at least give them an accurate assessment of what's out there and what it could do to them personally, by showing them what it's done to all these other people. And so that's my program is called I choose my future. I've been teaching the same message for 17 years and I get in front of kids and I said look, you are the architect of your destiny. You will make the choices that determine who you become. Let me talk to you about drugs and what all these other people just as cool and unique and special as you did to themselves when they either didn't know and didn't think about the consequences of using drugs.
Speaker 2:What makes your approach different? I know I grew up with dare. I think when I first started teaching we still had dare in the schools, and this is not to cast aspersions, but I think there might have been some research that actually showed that in the long-term, dare might have had the opposite effect. Yeah, I really I disbelieve that. I'm not sure that's true. That might be part of the popular, oh no those claims were made.
Speaker 1:Yeah, people did claim that. I've met a lot of adults who told me a dare worked for them.
Speaker 2:Yeah, but what do you think explains the fact that your message resonates with young people? You don't look like them, obviously age-wise, and you and I go to the same barber, so we don't. We stand out and you're a big, tall guy, so generationally you don't match. You probably don't look like their parents in many of the schools you go to, so how do they connect to you?
Speaker 1:Yeah, it's interesting. I started doing this from my first talk was to my daughter's fifth grade class and I talked to her class like I would talk to her. I talked to all the kids as if I were a father and very direct and my style of parenting is very blunt. I don't sugarcoat things and that's what I brought into schools and I had no intention of doing anything more than that. First talk. I was very nervous People laugh now because you can't shut me up, but back then I was actually very shy about public speaking, but it was word of mouth.
Speaker 1:Other teachers talked and then I got invited back and I got invited back and everything I've done now I've done 1,200 presentations in 17 countries now. It's all been word of mouth. People like you see the reaction in the kids and go, wow, the kids actually listened to Rocky. So it's my style as a dad. That kind of opens the conversation and then I don't look like I was a DE agent, whatever that means. I got that throughout my entire career. I'd go to court and the jurors would say well, you don't look like a.
Speaker 2:DE agent. Yeah, that's a good thing, right.
Speaker 1:But that kind of shocks the kids. I made a mistake when I first started. I started in fifth grade classes. That's when I got in my first several years. I was just talking to elementary school kids and then I got an invitation to speak to, I think, the 10th grade of Sarah High School and TR Santa, and I didn't know that some of those kids had been coming in from the Boston, from San Diego, so it was a mature audience of 10th graders and I made the terrible mistake of bringing my fifth grade presentation into that gym and I got crushed. Kids were heckling me and mocking me and I finished and I did what I could but I left licking my wounds and I thought about okay, all right, game on. So I added what I call my Rambo pictures. You know pictures of me chasing guys through the jungle and burning down drug labs and things that you know that these kids will never do, and so I think it's.
Speaker 1:I talk to them like I'm a dad. I try to. I make it clear from the beginning. I don't care if you like me or not. I'm here to give a message and I demand respect. I say you know you may think I'm an idiot, but you're gonna listen to me, You're gonna respect me. If you don't, there's the door. And then, once I explained my history, then all of a sudden the kids like, oh, this guy actually knows what he's talking about. And so I believe that you know, you or a school counselor or a psychologist could give exactly the same educational message. I don't think it would resonate the same way because you haven't lived it in the way that I have. So it's a combination of things, Do you?
Speaker 2:think that the shows that like Narcos and others there's a proliferation of these shows on TV that talk about Narcos and the drug trade and international drug trade, all these things, and do you think that has a side effect or an impact of glorifying and making this, these lifestyles, seem really glamorous? Does that help or does that hurt? Do you think?
Speaker 1:I really have a hard time with the anti-hero. You know I grew up on Adam 12 and Lone Ranger and Batman, you know, and the plot line was about some guy or some woman trying to overcome. You know be the bad guys and I don't know when it started, but Sopranos is a great example. Right, incredible show, incredibly well produced, great acting.
Speaker 1:Great acting, great script. But I was watching it and I went. Wait a second. This guy is a drug dealing pimp and this show has us caring about his success. And caring about this is the man who subjects women through violence and drugs for profit. I can't think of anything. There's very few crimes in my book that are worse. Now, father, three daughters and the whole prostitution pimping industry for me is really ugly. And here's a TV show glamorizing this guy, breaking Bad Right. After seven or eight seasons, yeah, it finally ends badly for the guy, but for the first, however many seasons again for extremely well produced.
Speaker 1:I enjoyed the few episodes I watched. But they have you rooting for a guy who's producing a poison, destroying Absolutely destroying countless lives to solve his own personal problems and we're supposed to cheer for him. And I do think that those shows have a very, very toxic effect on our kids. Ironically, there's a there's a DEA educational foundation and they gave the producers of breaking bad and award for drug education and I saw that, like you got to be kidding me, I don't see any drug prevention education happening. And breaking bad Because the kids aren't gonna. The kids don't associate with that. They see that seal on TV? They're not. What I try to do is make it, make them understand this is you, these people, these pictures that I'm showing. That's you Right, that's your friend. This is not you know, somebody else.
Speaker 1:This is the what happened to them Sadly, probably will happen to you if you go down this road. I'm not afraid to go there, but it's. Our kids are living in very confusing times and it's it's interesting. There. I've gone some very hard places. I go.
Speaker 1:I teach in the juvenile halls here in San Diego. I've had some some opportunities to teach there and those kids hate me when I show up, when that when I'm introduced, because I definitely don't look like them, right, I'm an old ball, white man and and then they find out I was a fed drug cop. They don't like me by the time I'm done. It's amazing. I'm a different hour, 75 minutes. Those kids are talking to me and asking questions because I've made them understand I care, I care about you, I care about your brothers and sisters, I care about your kids and it's interesting out. So one of the what, another one of the collateral benefits that I think my work does, is it in today's toxic Times around the police, I think my work actually helps break down some of the barriers between society and the cops, because these kids get to hear my perspective and A lot of them have never talked to a cop who actually cares.
Speaker 2:Why aren't more Police departments and law enforcement agencies Doing some of this work and in partnership with educational entities? Or I again thinking about Paul, kind of pinging you after you retired and going hey, you know, let's Can I bring you on. Why is this so unique?
Speaker 1:every police department I would say every major police department is doing something. They have some kind of community resource people. They have a school resource officer doing something. I have a really interesting history. Right when I started doing this, dea didn't ask me to do it, I didn't get permission to do it, I just started doing it and so were you at. You were still.
Speaker 2:I was still doing your other stuff.
Speaker 1:I tried to be a good cop. I was very busy doing my investigative work but I really believed in this. I started doing more and more and more of this on the side and DEA does education efforts and some of the management I was under thought. What I was doing was great. They let me do it, and and then I had other managers who came in who didn't like it and didn't like me at all and tried to stop me. But by then I had such kind of momentum and a personal belief in this that I kept doing it.
Speaker 1:But the message I taught from start 17 years ago to now, it's my message. I've never gotten approval from anybody. I've never asked for permission from anybody. It's I teach the kids what I think they need to hear and that kind of makes Me unique inside of a like a school district or an organization. Because what's taught by by you know, police department, it's going to be approved by management, it's going to be committee designed.
Speaker 1:There's going to people very concerned. Hey, we don't want to trigger the students. You know, we don't want to upset anybody. Schools 10 years ago. I would go give a briefing to high school counselors 10 years ago and Some of them would say Rocky, you're, you're going to talk about these things. You're going to trigger some of our students emotionally. You know we can't have you come in and my response is if I don't trigger every student emotionally, then I failed. So if you're not, if you're not down with me triggering your students emotionally, teaching this in an emotional way, that's cool. I don't don't invite me, and by these other people there's great people doing it differently than I do but I Routinely get kids crying, running out of the assemblies and and the schools that use me understand that's we agree. The schools that use me, we agree. If for this kind of teaching to be effective and to stick with the kids, then it has to be taught in a very powerful and emotional way, and many people in society aren't on board with that yet. I.
Speaker 2:Thought it was interesting in my research to see, as you mentioned, 17 different countries I think you you've worked in and clearly, depending on which country you're in the perspectives on the drug crisis and whose quote-unquote fault it is, or different, right, I could imagine in the US there's a lot of finger-pointing south. Yeah, how does that work when you go to Mexico? Well it's interesting.
Speaker 1:I, I 2018. I hadn't done any teaching in Mexico and teaching in Central America, and I speak Spanish fluently sound like a gringo, but I can. I can communicate effectively. But I wanted to teach in Mexico and I I tried to organize something in Tijuana, which that year, I think again, was the most violent city in the planet yeah, san Diego sister city, most violence in the planet. And when I mentioned to people in DEA that I wanted to do that, most of them mocked me. They said that's ridiculous. You know they're gonna not gonna let you. It's during the Trump years the wall. They're gonna hate you. They're gonna hate what you represent. No one's gonna let you talk to any kids. Well, I got a guy to loan me a gymnasium in Tijuana and two universities sent 1200 students and I have a picture of those 1200 students. You know cheering and shouting.
Speaker 1:I choose my future because, guess what? If you're living in Tijuana, you know you're tired of it being the most violence in the course. Yeah, and what I do in Mexico? I'll ask my Mexican youth audiences high school, middle school and college. I asked them who's responsible for paying for all the drug violence in Mexico? And They'll all say the American drug user as Consumio de gringo. They all say that instantly, but if I ask that same question of a youth audience in San Diego, I get a bunch of blank stairs Because we're not having the conversation.
Speaker 1:Many people in our society are pointing the finger at Mexico and blaming Mexico for our drug problem, pointing to point the finger at China, blaming China for our fentanyl problem. And, yes, mexico and China must do much more. However, I don't see how it's China forcing our high school kids to choose To use a counterfeit pill or to choose to buy some powder drug that could kill them. That's a choice that our population is making and that choice is financing the drug violence across the planet and unfortunately, we don't want to take ownership of that reality. And I feel very lonely saying that publicly because I don't hear anybody else really saying it. Certainly nobody important is saying it, and yet for me it's not even an arguable point. I mean that the that I have a picture I use the 27 million dollars that was on a cash, us cash. It was on a boat going to Columbia and a DE agent took that off the boat away from a cartel, and that money was gonna cause a lot of violence in Columbia, every piece of money, every single bill of money, came from the pocket A some drug buyer somewhere in America, and yet it.
Speaker 1:So if we're not, david, we're not only have that honest conversation. Are we really being honest about trying to solve it, mike? My answer that's no, we're not being honest about trying to solve it. In the 17 years I've been teaching, I've been desperately waiting for society to kick me to the curb Seriously, and I still wait for that. I'm waiting for society to say you know what rock we got. We're gonna do something much better than what you do for the kids. We don't need you anymore. I'll be so happy if that ever happens, but you know what and what? I don't think we're any closer to it now than we were 17 years ago, even though that the statistics on death and suffering and overdose are just skyrocketing, is it?
Speaker 2:Is it apathy and thinking it's someone else's kid? That won't happen to someone who looks like me, or is it? Are there other forces? I'm not a big Conspiracy theorist. I I tend to think that big entities are dysfunctional and are not, are Fundamentally unable and incapable of conspiring chaos theory. Yeah, exactly, but what are the forces that are arrayed against this? Because it's it's just a puzzling thing for me. I think there's three.
Speaker 1:I think the three come to mind right now. One is that I'm too good of a parent. My kids are too smart. You know, this is just isn't gonna happen to my family, right? I think that, unfortunately, then that dynamic is really pervasive. I'll do parent events and and nobody shows up and, with all the headlines and all the suffering, the parents just don't show up. Free event that's catered and parents don't show up. Right? I think we have that's number one.
Speaker 1:Number two I think we have a societal stigma against drug users. I Think we have a very ugly stigma where we blame the user, right, even very young ones, because if, but for that stigma, I can't explain our lack of reaction. I mean, it was 10,000 Americans a year were dying from overdose when I started DEA 1990. Just under 10,000. When I started teaching in 2017, it climbed to 37,000 a year. Was shocked me, and Every year after that that it kept climbing five or six thousand a year.
Speaker 1:I kept wondering what society would react and I didn't see a reaction, and I used to say rhetorically Does they have to reach a hundred thousand before we care, right?
Speaker 1:And well, three years ago we did go for a hundred thousand and there was no change. So now it's not 10,000 a year dying, it's almost 10,000 a month, and Society hasn't reacted, and so the only way I can explain that lack of reaction is sort of just like well you know, shail on them or something which I don't agree with. So, number one, number two and number three we want quick solutions. We have become a society that demands quick fixes, and there is no quick fix for this. The current drug crisis that we're in started with really everything changed in 1995 with Oxycontin, you know. So it's taken us 30 years to get here and, tragically, it might take us a very, very long time to get out of where we are. But I have been saying every year, and I'm saying it right now if we don't collectively start doing a whole lot more To educate our kids to not start using it, we're gonna be very sorry in a couple years or five years.
Speaker 2:I heard a Statistic and I'm not sure of the exact numbers that but that we're approaching the same number of overdose deaths as Number of individuals who died annually in the US during the height of the AIDS crisis.
Speaker 1:Oh, I don't know. I mean there's there's a lot of comparisons, you know yeah but, but it's an it's interesting right.
Speaker 2:It's like what triggered.
Speaker 1:Well, we shut our economy down, we shut our economy down, we shut our schools down for COVID and I don't, I don't know that the actual death numbers from COVID, but I don't with was it was a 10,000 a month, I don't know. But this, this problem is growing. We're not, it's not static, it's getting worse and I think, because it doesn't offer an easy solution, we don't have a lot of politicians really interested in trying to find the solution.
Speaker 2:Are there other countries around the world where fentanyl and and the other precursor drugs are, where the Abuse and the the death is at the same level? No, no. We, the global leaders.
Speaker 1:We're the goal we want to. It's my belief, my opinion, that we drug ourselves more than any other culture. Right, and to me, you can't make these Apple to Apple comparisons between the US and other countries, because we have a lot of Weird things about our culture. Yeah, other countries don't share, sure, but there's unum is Mexico's biggest public university, and they put a study out Claiming 90% of teenagers in Mexico are suffering emotional distress right now. And as I was in Uzbekistan teaching a couple months ago, and kids there are feeling anxiety and stress, so this youth mental unwellness crisis that's so big here in US is not just here, it's everywhere. Everywhere else I'm going, it's happening, and so you have a youth population that's watching the same movies and TV shows and tiktoks and popular culture telling I'm hey, if you're hurting, take something. There's a chemical solution and A lot of controversy around fentanyl consumption in Mexico. I personally think it's much greater than the government it admits to, but less than here. Well, that's in here, but growing, growing growing.
Speaker 1:I just two days ago did a webinar for a bunch of doctors in El Salvador that they organized because they're seeing fentanyl now show up in their clinics in El.
Speaker 1:Salvador. I was teaching kids in Guatemala two years ago and in my presentation I showed pictures of some of the the counterfeit pills and the medical staff of the region of Guatemala I was in had never heard it, never even heard a fentanyl. And yet when I showed the kids these pictures of the fake pills, the reaction of the kids made it clear they've seen them Right. So there's no way for this tidal wave of fake fentanyl, fake pills, this fentanyl pills will be pushing up to the United States without a whole bunch of it also, you know, flowing back down into Mexico and in other countries. So with many of the drug trends you know what starts in the US spreads. I've got some friends in Australia who understand that very deeply. They're very worried because they know that you know what starts here 10 years later shows up big time in Australia and Nobody's really. I mean everywhere I travel.
Speaker 2:Drug prevention is, if it happens at all, is sporadic, certainly not a priority one of the things that I think was effect has been effective in in Conversations that I've heard you have on podcast is where you talk about your own kids and that you know they, like many teenagers, experimented with smoking pot and trying it, and and I think that's that's something that probably resonates with kids and with audiences. Right that you're not coming from a judging perspective. Right like your kids are human and my kids human and they do things, they try things and, especially Because the brain doesn't fully develop Until, whatever, it is, age 25 and I sometimes wonder if 25 is the right number on that I think that's that probably lends some Credence to the things you say to kids, because you're not coming from a judging perspective?
Speaker 1:Yeah, no, absolutely not, and I try to be as the thing. If I did two, one thousand student assemblies at Elko in high school last Friday and it's not easy right now, that's not for the faint of heart. Yeah for 90 minute assemblies. Yeah, yeah, and I in. There were some hecklers, but for the most part I keep the kids engaged and it's my belief is the teenagers are the world masters at smelling BS.
Speaker 2:Oh yeah, and instant BS no right.
Speaker 1:So I'd be very careful. What I teach isn't easy because I'm challenging very powerful assumptions in the kids, but I I've done 1200 of these things and I know what I'm talking about and and I believe that I successfully get through my presentations without setting off the BS meter. And you know, I'll never know how many kids actually listen to me or believe me, but I do believe that most of the kids who sit through my assemblies at least believe that I believe when I'm teaching. But yeah, I'm willing to talk. I'm willing to talk about my daughters and each of my three daughters made some really stupid decisions along the way.
Speaker 1:One of my Daughters graduated college not the long ago and my heart froze because she she was anxious and being prescribed Xanax and she Explained to me the one time she ran out of Xanax and her prescription ran out, she bought some from a dorm mate. And my heart froze because I just met a teacher of Invista whose whose son is gone because he did exactly the same thing. So it's just, it's a miracle, my own child, you know, it's still with me. So I'm and I talk about. I talk about my own mistake and being too engaged in my work and not paying enough attention to my kids.
Speaker 1:Right and I say many of your parents are making the same mistake that I made.
Speaker 2:So, yeah, so I think it's that willingness to be authentic with the kids that they keep some listening to me if your own kids wanted to pursue a Career in law enforcement and follow your footsteps into the DEA, would you be in favor of that? Not that you can control your kids that much, because I'm a parent and I get it. They don't listen to us sometimes but would you? Would that be something you'd be proud of them doing?
Speaker 1:my oldest did my Okay was a sandy kind of sheriff and then she became a patrol officer up in her town in Idaho and she resigned this year, her last year, and Just didn't like how the job was changing her, her. Several of her mentors in law enforcement had decided to retire early or leave early. That's brutal, you know, when the people you bond with yeah, the veterans that you bond with when they, when they bail out and I got mine of bass fishing.
Speaker 1:I'm gonna be in my garden or whatever, and and you, you're looking forward and she's like you know what, dad, I did it and she was worried that I would judge her but honestly, I I stopped losing sleep. You know she was doing graveyard shifts so she would call me six, six thirty in the morning and share with me things that had happened. And, and you know as much as I was worried about her Leaving law enforcement, I sleep better.
Speaker 2:How did you maintain your Sense of humanity and hope and optimism, especially working six years overseas? I mean, I've heard you describe it as I mean, there's some pretty great fringe benefits of being a Federal law enforcement officer in a foreign country kind of standard of living, benefits and perks that come with that but the end of the day you're doing work that's that Exposes you to really tough, tough things. Right, law enforcement in another country, probably seeing really tough things. How did you maintain your humanity so that Years later even though at that time you weren't planning this, but that you could come and work with kids?
Speaker 1:Yeah, that's interesting question. You know, I guess, one of the things that our society does, they give federal law enforcement more credit than we deserve.
Speaker 2:Right because we're playing clothes.
Speaker 1:We can investigate. You know we go out with a group of people if we need to to arrest somebody that you know I have mad respect for uniform law enforcement. You know my daughter working in the jail or driving a squad car by herself in the middle of the night, yeah, and she was my daughter and just a few years she was caught, saw more ugliness than I saw in my okay, years, right, and that's just such a paramedics and the fireman today, the things that they have to see every day. And and then the cops and you know, with all the conflict around the job now and all the complications of the job, and so I I Don't feel it was that hard to keep my humanity as a federal agent, compared to the struggle that I think a lot of you know uniform first responders have.
Speaker 1:But I took this job because I wanted to help our country. I didn't take this job to arrest bad guys. I thought by doing this job, you know, I'd be helping our society. Hard to see that we made any difference at all. I mean, the drug problem is ten times worse now than it than it was. I rested some bad guys but they're all out of jail now, you know I was giving a talk at an immigrant event in San Isidro. In this Fairly new immigrant from Central America came up to me afterwards in Spanish and he hugged me and he goes rocky. That thing you did for 30 years, that was your training for your real job and they give a big hug.
Speaker 1:I laughed good. Never thought about that, you know. But I say I couldn't do the work I'm doing now if I hadn't done. You know, and I like my career, I'm not unhappy with my careers. I just wish I could look back and say, wow, we made a difference. And I don't really feel personally that I did it's interesting.
Speaker 2:This is my 30th year in in education and you know you get to a place in your life where certain themes start recycling right. Challenges that you Face 30 years ago seemed to have gone away for a while and then they come back, or sometimes they never went away and they just you seem like you're just beating on the same thing and then you start to question, you know, was it all worth it or not? Or, and and I think we're all gonna have impacts that Hopefully are positive and we won't even know about them. Maybe, right you, you get People coming up to you and thanking you for things, and there are probably a lot of people who you impacted won't, who never get a chance to say Thank you.
Speaker 1:Yeah, well, as a D agent, it's a pretty destructive job, right, I'm just taking people to jail, right, and but a lot of people taking to jail they have children who love them too. Yeah, and you know and I do my search warrants I'm traumatizing the kids in these houses and it's there. Just, it's an important job, but it's it's a destructive job. And, yeah, now I, at this high school in San Diego last week, I had several dozen kids come up crying and hug me, and the kids share with me this horrible sadness. They live, but they want to share with me. Right, and I had to go to therapy. I was going to therapy last year because these kids would come up and just sharing horrible things with me.
Speaker 1:One little girl, 11 years old. I was at an elementary school here in town and a bunch of kids came up and I I've done enough these. Now when I see the kids who are kind of standing back, I have to harden my heart a little bit. You know, there's a bunch of kids want to come up, shake my hand. I picture a selfie or something and there's kids waiting. I'm like, oh no, they're waiting for a reason. So it's a little girl waits for everyone else to leave Um school, left me alone with her, which they shouldn't have done. But anyway, she comes up and she says rocky, thank you. I said what are you thanking me for? And she goes. You taught me, the abuse is the beers fault, it's not my fault.
Speaker 1:And she explained her dad is actively you know, an abusive drunk, this beautiful 11 year old little girl, and I didn't know the kids, the kids name, right, so I take a selfie with her and it's like. It's like I make sure this the school district, your mandated reporter, right, but if I don't know her name, of course, yeah right so my solution for that is I make sure the school knows.
Speaker 1:Right. But my Instinct as a man, as a dad, as a cop, is to look at my watch and go. Well, I've got some free time. Where does he park his car? Seriously, my instinct is I'm gonna go have a conversation with him right now. Right, Another little girl came up to me. San Oceano Cedro came up to me, 11 years old, crying and goes rocky. I have a brain tumor and my stepdad won't stop smoking weed around me and I had the same kind of.
Speaker 1:You know, I want to own that. I want to fix it and of course I can't. So anyway I did. I went to some therapy and I figured out how to kind of not absorb that and I get. I have a line I use with the kids.
Speaker 1:This little girl last week told me how she was born drug addicted and I almost wish she would stop. As she was sharing with me her life, I wish she'd stop. It was so horrible and this beautiful child you'd never know by looking at her. And then, when she's done, I said look, I can't even comprehend the suffering you've gone through. It's so unfair, so unjust what you've gone through.
Speaker 1:But I'm gonna tell you something you have a superpower and I pointed her heart in your heart. You have a superpower because you and I gesture to the rest of the kids. You understand human suffering and frailty and brokenness better than anybody else here. And if you decide to turn that into something that helps other kids who suffer, you will be an amazing healer. And it's incredible, dave, to see the look in their eyes as they're crying. Their eyes are flickering as they're processing. I'm telling them this horrible thing you just shared with me can make you an amazing healer if you go that route. So I try to leave all the kids a little bit hopeful when I'm done talking to them.
Speaker 2:Do you run into conflicts or get pushed back from educators? You don't need to mention names or names of schools or anything, but law enforcement is not always a welcome presence in schools or on campuses and even if maybe administration gives permission, are there other educators who you have some friction with? Or do people just do the adults kind of step back and let you work with the kids?
Speaker 1:Well, the schools that I visit. It's been approved by management.
Speaker 2:Right right.
Speaker 1:So whether the staff agrees with it or not, but I've had people over the years tell me to my face that they disapprove because of my background. I've had a lot of people come to me and share with me things they've heard others say when I'm not present. So it's a very real thing. I can't speculate, but a significant percentage of people currently in education in America have a belief that cops really can't bring anything of value to students. I used to get invited to lecture the master's in social work program at San Diego State University until I was uninvited.
Speaker 2:And some years ago a young woman asked I won't ask you why.
Speaker 1:Well, I talk about the bad guys, right, when I'm arresting the bad guys and I'm putting the bad guys in jail, and this young woman goes well, to whom are you referring me to say bad guys? I say the drug dealers. And man, it all went downhill fast, right, because how dare you call them bad guys? I'm like they're selling poison in their communities, right? So we got this big argument and I realized that this class of 30 students getting a master's in social work, all of them had this very powerful bias against the profession that I represented. And the reason I was uninvited, I believe, was I said to them look, you're clearly sharing an anti-law enforcement bias with me, which concerns me, because in your actual social work, in your case work, sometimes law enforcement will be the only solution to that problem and the abusive father, whatever's going on, right, there's gonna be solutions where law enforcement has to solve it. And I said if you're dogmatically opposed to ever engaging in law enforcement, you're gonna be doing a disservice to your clients. Man, they were not happy and I didn't invite it back, but I absolutely believe that, 100% believe that, and, unfortunately, ideology is a powerful. It's still difficult for me to get into many schools. So but I'm done fighting the world.
Speaker 1:For years I would fight and argue and triangulate and I don't know. I'm very, very busy and I wish someone like me could get in front of every kid. But I can just do what I can do and I don't have the energy to fight. So I give every audience of kids in front of me, I give them the best show that I can give. I joke that I'm the Willie Nelson of drug prevention. I've done 1,200 of these. I have to show up and make every audience of kids think that they're my favorite audience and I tell them the same jokes and same stories, and all that every single time.
Speaker 1:But at the same time my product is evolving. I mean, I've done 1,200 different presentations. I'm always listening to the kids. I'm always looking at what's going on in society, always looking for better ways to express the message. So another reason that I'm successful is like it stays very relevant. I never, ever leave an assembly going. Oh, that was great. I'm always leaving. My assembly is going. Oh darn, I didn't mention that. Dang it, I forgot to do that. I could have said that better.
Speaker 2:Yeah, the whole question around the role of law enforcement in schools. It's obviously complicated, and the times in my career when we've had to engage law enforcement to come and keep our campuses safe whether it was having the police come or whether it was hiring private armed security because we had a threat or we had graduation and someone had said they were going to do something at graduation people are universally thankful and so it's an interesting thing, right that the same people who I've had this experience where I had teachers actually come up to me and say thank you so much for having some armed presence at graduation. That way I could relax and I thought cops were bad and so a lot of people are disconnecting.
Speaker 1:They're just not connecting the dots. But there are many people who look at me and there's no way you're going to be able to engage this group of students. So I have one story that I talk about a lot. Some years ago, we have two juvenile prisons in San Diego One in Coney Mesa and one out in Nota Mesa and one of my friends worked in the probation department where it was like a guard at this juvenile prison in Nota Mesa, and in the middle of the night she's doing an overnight shift. She sends me this email and it was just the saddest email. Like Rocky, I don't know what to do. This is the worst group of young men we've ever had. That's saying something. This is a veteran. She's been in this 20 years.
Speaker 2:Yeah that's a low bar, yeah.
Speaker 1:And this long email. She goes they'd benefit so much from your message but honestly, they hate everybody. She's just like emoting, not just telling me. So I woke up and I read it the next morning and I wrote it back, put me in coach and a week later I was in front of those kids, dave, and years ago I had a chance to go teach in the MS-13 neighborhoods in El Salvador and the general of the police gave me his personal bodyguards and there was a guy with a machine gun in uniform standing next to me in front of every audience the kids to keep me alive.
Speaker 1:And those gang kids treated me more respecting these kids here in Ohtai, and they were cursing at me, dropping F-bombs and flipping me off. And you can't do that in juvie, right, there's strict rules, but nobody was stopping the kids. It was bad, it was bad. They were absolutely committed to driving me out the door with verbal abuse and I went to one of the guards Can I get some help here? And the guard goes hey, you volunteer for this? Good luck. And I realized, snap, the guards have given up, everybody's given up on these kids. And so I'm like, ok, all right, so I'll do this. There's a video I show. That's pretty powerful. This show's overdoses and I thought they'll calm down. They didn't.
Speaker 1:The verbal abuse continued the whole time. It was unbelievable and I don't quit. Anything I set out to do but my inner voice was like dude, this is just dumb. But I didn't quit and that was the magic, because by the end it was different. By the end I managed to convince all these 15, 16-year-old kids locked up in a prison for and this is not a camp, this is like cell blocks these kids are in a prison at 15. I convinced them of something I'm trying to prevent them, because it's not an accident that a 15-year-old ends up in prison for violent crimes. Things were done to him we're not done for him Repeatedly, and all of that connected to drug abuse. So in this hour I was able to convince these angry young men of that and make them realize that I'm trying to prevent the future versions of them.
Speaker 1:And you can't take pictures in juvie, right? But I said guys, if you believe in my message, will you stand for a picture? And I have a picture of these guys standing at attention, arms behind their backs, and they all volunteered to stand to show support. These are guys who respect nobody. But at the end of my session they were shown respect for this message and I'm very proud of that and what I explained. When I showed that picture in a comprehensive high school, I said look, if I managed to get these angry, cynical, wounded, incarcerated young men to find some value in what I'm teaching, I'm optimistic that somebody here today is going to get some value from this Are you ever afraid in foreign countries traveling?
Speaker 2:I mean, the irony is not lost on me that you're doing anti-drug messages in Mexico and clearly the mafia that controls all of this knows you're there in some capacity. It's probably hard to go anywhere with that message that they don't know you're there. I mean, maybe you're untouchable a little bit because of the federal agent piece, but how do you feel when you're there? Well, there are places I won't go. Ok, right, I'm not insane. Yeah, I'm not going to name some of those states, but I think I know I'm thinking, probably thinking the same place.
Speaker 1:Well, even in Tijuana. I mean, there's places I'll go in Tijuana and there's parts to Tijuana I won't visit you won't Right. They're just too far out of government control. But no, I am the only former DE agent that goes, stands up publicly. I don't have cards, I don't have any official status.
Speaker 1:And there is a tourist, I stand up publicly and say, yeah, I was a DE agent, but I'm not worried. I won't ever say it's zero risk. But honestly, the drug cartel bosses, they don't want their kids using drugs either. That's right, right, and that's a great irony that many people don't understand. The people who actually run the drug trade don't use it. No, and they don't let their people use it, because anybody who uses hard drugs or even like an alcoholic, right, they're not reliable. No, and if there's one business in the world where you're going to make sure your people are reliable, it's the drug trafficking.
Speaker 2:It's why the mafia used to have those strict rules.
Speaker 1:Absolutely.
Speaker 2:They fell apart. Well, I don't know.
Speaker 1:I think the people in charge you're done If you become unreliable they'll take care of you. It's a very unforgiving business.
Speaker 2:Yep.
Speaker 1:So, but also I do think when I was overseas for the six years, everywhere in the world people still remembered Key Merena, who was murdered, and they remember the very, very aggressive reaction of the US government to that and I honestly think that still keeps us kind of safe today. And I think even if there were somebody out there that thought, oh, I'm going to go shut that guy up talking about me, might have some concern Like, shoot if I hurt that guy, I don't want DEA coming after me. Yeah, but I'm supported by prominent people in Mexico. I don't set the stuff on my own.
Speaker 2:People create these opportunities for me, they bring me down, so it's not so bad for me.
Speaker 1:You know and this may sound crazy, but I mean if, if that's how I have to go, because somebody decided that my talk was intolerable well, okay. Yeah, you know, but this is. The kids are telling me that they're listening. Kids are telling me that I'm making a difference for them, and so I'm going to keep doing it.
Speaker 2:You've been very, very generous with your time. I just have a couple more questions I wanted to ask you about fencing.
Speaker 1:So Redwood Cedar. What are you talking about here? This kind of fencing, sword fencing?
Speaker 2:sword fencing. You've talked about it previous and it's just. It just intrigued me the lessons in fencing you've. You were competitive.
Speaker 1:Yeah. So I started fencing in college, started when I was 18, got very good Best I ever got, came out 20th in the US, which, you know, not too important, but you know, after just a couple of years I got pretty good and then I went. You know, I came in DEA right out of college. I regret that. I wish I'd taken some time to try to compete you know, go to the Olympics or something but I didn't. I was just too eager to get my career started. But I went to Bolivia and I took my fencing gear because that was my main hobby, not even aware if there was fencing in Bolivia. But I took my stuff and think well, maybe I'll find some. It turned out they have a small but very active program and I I entered and I won. I became the Bolivian National Fencing Champion. So, as an American diplomat, law enforcement officer working in Bolivia, I was twice asked by Bolivia to represent them in South American Championships. I still have my sweatsuits with the Bolivia that's awesome On the back, yeah, but you know, it's just my main pastime and hobby.
Speaker 1:And in 2011, here in San Diego, I saw how many Marines were coming back from Afghanistan just destroyed. We had two battalions of Marines that just got really crushed in southern Afghanistan and they're here at the Naval Hospital. And I started thinking about these guys and you know, the one day they're Rambo, the next day they wake up and diapers you know, innovated in some hospital somewhere and how brutal that's going to be on their psyche. And I looked around, different, you know pair of sports and the only combat sport that really made sense to me was fencing, because there's there's wheelchair fencing and you're not jousting, the wheelchairs are in a platform and you fence off the side zone. So I went to the local native hospital here in San Diego and I asked if I could teach it and they let me. So my friends, stu Lee and I went in for three years and we worked with guys who had been blown up just six or eight weeks before and that that has a lot to do, I think, with where I am today.
Speaker 1:I got a lot of accolades for that. Oh, you're such a great guy, you're going to work on these vets. I got so much more back from those guys. Two of my students were triple amputees Wow. And one of my friends, this guy, andrew Blotrell, triple amputee, and I saw him a few years ago and he had a new truck, really nice new Toyota truck, and I noticed there was no handicap plate, triple amputee. And I said, andrew, where's your handicap? He goes, I'm a handicap, right Like dang, you know that's so working with all those guys kind of helped me. You know, realize that I was taking a lot of things for granted, right, right. And while I have my health and while I have my mind and while I have people like you giving me a chance to spread my message, I'm not going to let you know too many obstacles you know, defeat my motivation and my spirit.
Speaker 2:Is there anything that we have not touched on today? That's kind of rattling around in your head?
Speaker 1:Well, if anybody's listened this long, I want to thank them, yeah, but a message I have for every parent who's listening you're not safe. You're not safe from the drug problem. The drug threat cuts across every demographic, doesn't matter where you live, doesn't matter your income level, your racial background, what you do for a living. You're not safe. And this, this is striking families across America and I think too many parents somehow think that they can insulate themselves from this problem. And maybe you can, but at some point your kids are going to be out there in the world and initiate the conversations. You know, while going to school I'll get an hour or 90 minutes in the year. Well, that's not very effective, right? The true conversations need to happen in the home, and I think too many parents are unwilling to have those conversations.
Speaker 1:So one of the things the County Office of Education has done, dr Gotthold created this amazing project. We created six chapter videos of my message. It took about a year to do it, but they are pretty high quality and they're about 15 to 20 minutes long. They're freely available on our website. Send you a county office of Ed.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I'll give you the link. I'll put it out with this podcast but the link is actually wwwsdcoenet.
Speaker 1:And my advice to any parent listening to this start young. Don't wait to your kids in high school. Don't wait till our middle school. Many schools in San Diego are bringing my presentation down to fifth grade my presentation that used to be considered too strong for high school. There are elementary school that ask me to give it to fifth graders now because they understand that's when drug use is starting in their student population. So sit down with your kids, watch these videos and when the video is over say hey did that guy Rocky's, and make any sense is actually what you were seeing, you know, and make your home, make you a safe place to have this conversation, because your kids aren't probably going to start it and they don't know what they don't know. So I don't lean into the problem. We've got a lot of resources. My contact information will be involved here.
Speaker 2:I'll show anybody's questions.
Speaker 1:I'm here as a resource for anybody who's listening.
Speaker 2:Thank you so much, rocky. It's been a real pleasure. I saw you present in person a number of years ago, pre COVID, here at Albert Einstein academies, and then, for one reason or another, we kind of took a break and we're going to definitely have to have you back and I've really appreciated your message today and learning about your work and just this kind of second career that you've got right. That came after your first 30 years of preparation, as the young man said in sunny Cedro. So thank you so much. Thanks for the opportunity to thank you for listening to the superintendent's Hangout. You can follow me on Twitter at DVS 1970. Please be sure to share this show with friends and family on social media and in the real world. Thank you to Brad Bacchial for editing and production assistance and to Tina Royster for scheduling and logistics. Thanks for hanging out and have a great day.