When Family Breaks Bad

A single phone call can be the difference between burning your life down and finally growing up. I’m Gary Wise, and I’m telling one of the most personal stories I’ve ever shared: my relationship with my little sister Kristina, from childhood closeness to years of conflict, and the grief that followed her death.

I walk through my background as an adopted kid who moved constantly, the money stress that shaped our home, and the choices I made as a teenager that pushed me out of school and out of my parents’ house. Then the U.S. Navy becomes my reset button, but family problems don’t magically disappear just because you put on a uniform. When Kristina becomes a teen mom, the pressure on my parents explodes, and my own immaturity keeps turning every conflict into something bigger than it needs to be.

The turning point comes when my sister steals and pawns my belongings while I’m home on leave. I’m angry enough to make a life-altering mistake, and my dad stops me with one sentence: a normal person calls the police. Later, I share what it’s like to get the 2013 Facebook post while boarding a flight, rush home, and say goodbye as Kristina is placed on life support after a drug overdose. We also talk about funeral costs, GoFundMe, and how my Navy Chiefs Mess stepped up when my family had nothing left.

If you’ve lived through addiction in the family, complicated sibling relationships, grief, or the need for real boundaries, this one will hit close. Subscribe, share this with someone who needs it, and leave a review with the lesson you took from the story.

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Transcript

Welcome And Milestones

Gary Wise 0:07

All right, everyone. How are you doing? Welcome back to the Words from the Wise uh podcast. My name is Still Gary Wise. I am the host. I am the person that gets the chance to share this time with you. That the people that listen to the podcast, people that tune into the YouTube channel, super exciting right now. As of this day that I'm filming, we've crossed over 550 subscribers on YouTube. We're closing in on over 2,000 downloads on the MP3 podcast or the online audio podcast. And it's just super exciting. I thank you all very much for taking the time to share in the journey of life, to follow, to subscribe, to share with your friends. If there's ever anything you'd like to talk about, or if there's ever anything in particular you'd like me to discuss, just let me know. I'm super excited to continue to film these videos and to just share uh life with you all. Today, uh

Why Kristina’s Story Matters

Gary Wise 1:05

the story for the story for today's podcast is going to be a little more of a context builder, a little another story out of my background, my personal journey, uh, some of the things that are one of the things that made me uh who I am today, right? A lot of you know that I am a retired U.S. Navy Master Chief, Command Master Chief. A lot of you know I am a high school teacher now that teaches Navy junior ROTC. I live in Ocala, Florida. Uh I'm a husband to my wife Erica. We've been blessed to be married uh since 2002. We've been together since 2001. And then I'm a dad, you know, I've got an 18-year-old son and I have an 11-year-old son. Um, but not a lot of people know about my background, uh, I would say previous to all of that. So one of the stories I'm gonna share, or the story for today, is gonna be uh me sharing the story of my little sister, Christina, right? And uh of course I'm gonna be sharing it from my perspective, uh, and there's nuance to that because you know that people have opinions, uh, but this is going to be my version of the my what I remember about not just my little sister, uh, but how God played a role in my life and pivot a pivotal moment in her life.

Adoption And Early Family Life

Gary Wise 2:24

Um I was uh uh adopted at birth, right? I was born to a teenage mother who was not able to have a child, like to keep the baby. I was born three and a half months early and I weighed like three pounds when I was born, which is going to be a whole separate video about my birth story and how that's affected my life. But I was adopted by my mom and dad, Gary and Nila Wise, at really, they got me about two months after I was born because I had to stay in the hospital uh in the NICU for a couple of months, right? And then three and a half years later, my parents, Gary and Nila, my mom was not able to have children of her own due to some medical complications she had had while she was a Navy spouse. My dad did about eight years in the Navy on active duty. He went from being an undesignated seaman to being a hospital corpsman. He eventually rose to the rank of petty officer, second class, hospital corps. And my mom was having a bunch of medical complications, and it just it was not conducive uh to her, her, I'd say, mental health and spiritual health and physical health for him to continue on with the service. And so they made the decision for him to get a discharge out of the Navy and to be full-time, to be able to be with her, which is really what they both needed to do. Um, a big part of their goal for the future was to have a family. And back in the 70s, early 80s, my dad said he did not have the opinion that the adoption agencies looked at military families as being good opportunities for adoptions to be placed. So he felt like they would be better, more advantageously uh situated for adoption if they were no longer in the service. So there were multiple reasons why they wanted to let the Navy go and get back to Utah and be near family. So they adopted me in 1977. I was their first. And then four years later, they adopted my little sister, Christy. Um, you know, and we had a we had a great, we have a great family, you know. I was uh again, four years older than my little sister, right? Which it's interesting because my little sister and my wife are almost the exact same age, a month apart, right? She was born in September of 81. Erica was born in October of 81. Um great family. We at the time we lived in Twilla, Utah, and my dad was a paramedic at the time at the Twilla Army Depot. And we that we were there uh until I got to through with kindergarten. So I was probably about six years old. Christina was about two. We moved down to Arizona because my dad decided he wanted to go to um Devry, which was essentially an electronic technical school that would hold my dad was in medicine, right? He was a nurse, he was a hospital corpsman, he became a paramedic, he became an LPN, but he was not happy in medicine. It really was not what he wanted to do with his life. It was just kind of what he felt like he got boxed into from his time in the service. And my dad, looking at the future, he saw that computers, again, early 80s, about 1983, computers were going to be the way to go. Right. And so my dad decides hey, I'm gonna move my family down to Phoenix, Arizona. We're gonna sell this house that we bought brand

Moving Constantly And Money Stress

Gary Wise 6:12

new in Towilla, that my parents had built. I remember it being just I'd never lived in a better house, unfortunately, with my family, with my parents ever again. This was like the place they wanted to be. But unfortunately, my dad did not have the education that he wanted to get into the career field that he wanted to get into, which was hopefully going to be not medicine, right? And he was interested in technology, he was interested in computers. Moved down to Arizona, and I just I remember my dad working two jobs all the time, going to school full time, us living in apartments, and we were down in Arizona for about two years. I did first grade, I did second grade in Arizona. Um, I moved every year. I went to a different school every grade from kindergarten all the way to seventh grade. Something about my family, something about my dad and my mom. There was just always a need to be moving. There was we were never settled for whatever the reason. Either my dad just didn't like the area we were in, and each time he would get us there, and then he would realize that was not where he wanted to be, or a job would change, something would happen, right? So the first year we were in Phoenix, the second year we were in Peoria. Um, not a lot of family down there. My Aunt Sherry was down there with her family, so that was, and that matters because in my family, we would do a lot of stuff on the weekends with my cousins and my aunts and my uncles. And so that was kind of a geographic change to having people in our, in our, I would say, in our circle. Um after two years of being in Arizona, my grandpa wise got sick. He'd been having heart problems since way before I was born. And something significantly had happened while he was on a trip down to Arizona to visit with us and with my Aunt Sherry's family. And I remember my dad had to travel with him back to Utah to get him home. And it was a big deal because my dad was going on an airplane. And for us, for me, again, I never rode on an airplane until I joined the Navy. So for me to have my dad going on an airplane at about eight years old, it was it was a significant event. And when he came back from that trip to take my grandpa back home, we were then making plans to go back to Utah. And I remember uh my dad telling me as I got older that as he got ready, as he got ready to graduate from DeVry, uh all the jobs that were being offered in the technology field or in the computer field that my dad wanted to get into were going to be not in Arizona, not in Utah. And my dad did not want to get away from his parents. He was worried about his dad. He was worried about his mom. My dad was the oldest of five kids, right? My mom is one of nine kids. So my mom had a very big family as well. Uh, they were out of Colorado. My dad's family was also originally out of Colorado, but they all transplanted over to Utah after my aunt Susie met my uncle Tom, and they decided to have start their family that was in Utah, in Alpine, Utah. And my grandma and grandpa decided they were going to move to Utah to be closer to the church. All of my family are members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, and they all wanted to be closer to that religious community, right? Let's be honest. That's what it was about. Um, and my dad and my mom wanted to be close to that as well, I believe. It was not worth it to them to move to where the computer technology jobs are going to be located, um, and to be farther away from where my dad felt like his responsibilities were drawing him back to. But the challenge was in Utah, they're just my dad did not seem to be able to find any jobs that would leverage or use his technology training. And so not only did he now have this technology education that he wasn't finding jobs for, but he also was in debt because he didn't pay for the training up front. He took up student loans and now he had to pay those loans back. And this was this matters because I'm gonna watch my dad pay these loans until I'm 16 years old. I still remember the day my dad told me that he made his last payment to his student loans at the age of 16. Mind you, he started the education at the DeVry Technology training location when I was in first grade. So that's a lot of years of him paying a monthly payment to repay these loans for something he never did for an employment opportunity. We got back to Utah, and I remember the first job my dad took was working at the at the mental institution down at Provo, um, working with, you know, people elderly mental, uh, mentally impaired people. Right. And I remember coming back to Utah, my sister at that point, around four or five years old. I'm eight, nine years old. And there my sister and my mom were already fighting areas of friction with other people in the family. Uh my mom and my grandma didn't always get along, which is fine. It's kind of how things go. And then my sister and my mom were having friction. I'm not sure if it's just a mother-daughter thing. I'm not sure. I mean, there was times that me and my mom had friction as well. So that's a whole different reality. Probably we all have to deal with that. Me not raising daughters, uh, that's one challenge I've not seen. But I do know a lot of my friends that are women happen to have complicated relationships with their moms, right? Which is it's fine. Um, but life was good. Went through a couple more years,

Teen Trouble And Leaving Home

Gary Wise 12:20

moved a couple more times. Uh, eventually, I end up leaving home uh around 15 years old. 15 years old, I decide that I'm done going to high school at that point. So, what happened with that was I got in trouble in the local high school because of the people that I was running around with. And they basically said, we no longer want Gary to go to our high school. He can go to a secondary high school where they put the kids that kind of get into trouble. I walked into that school one day, saw people that I knew I wasn't gonna get along with, and basically just told my parents, I'm not going to that school, I'm just gonna get in trouble there, even worse. I don't know what I'm gonna do. My parents said, Well, you can't just drop out, you got to figure something out. So they enrolled me in community college. Uh, that was when I got the opportunity. I did two classes. One was a typing class, and one was a history class. I went to the typing class every day. To this day, I credit that typing class to my ability to type on a keyboard, right? That class and my time as a Navy recruiter. And then the history class, I never went to the class. I would literally just go to the student lounge, go to sleep, and wasted my parents' money. And I just did not value the money that they had spent on me, that investment. I felt I just I was a I was a jerk. I'll own it. As a young teenager, I was just selfish. I was not, I did not prioritize college. And I didn't prioritize college. I remember uh my dad when I was going into seventh grade, uh, we had gone to the seventh grade like indoctrination. I went to Granite Park Junior High School in South Salt Lake, Utah. And at that indoctrination, they were talking about what year I was going to graduate from high school and what I needed to start doing in junior high school to get access to college opportunities. And my dad basically tells me, hey Gare, if you don't get straight A's and get scholarships, I don't know how you're going to college because I've got nothing for you. And I I essentially decided in seventh grade that I wasn't going to college then because I was not going to get straight A's. And that was not the path I was going to take. The problem with that then is then all of a sudden I started to become less worried about school and education and future opportunities and more worried about reputation, socialization, and what I believed was my role in my neighborhood. Right. You know, seventh and eighth grade, I uh went to that one school. Ninth grade, I got shipped down to my grandma's house because I was acting like a jack wagon in element in middle school in high and junior high school. So my parents sent me to live with my grandma uh to try to reverse that course. I came back to Utah or to Salt Lake City after that year with my grandma or eight months, whatever it was with my grandma, got all the way into the problems of my neighborhood again. As soon as I came back, barely made it through that first year of school, and then it was by that summer, the beginning of the second year, that they told me to go to that second school. And that then cascaded into a bunch of other challenges. Now, why that matters is because when I first left high school at 15, 16 years old, my little sister was about 11, right? 11, 12. And I not only left the high school, but I also eventually ended up moving out of my mom and dad's house because my dad was so upset with the choices that I was making as a young man that he basically told me one day, Gary, if you're not gonna live by my rules, you can't live in this house anymore. And I just said, okay. And I packed my stuff and I literally moved down the street like four houses. So four, I don't know what I would do as a dad if my 16-year-old son, who was just ruining his life at a high rate of speed, packed up his stuff and moved four houses away. That would be just hard. Of course, I don't I don't think I would ever tell my son that he had to get out at 16. I I don't still know what I would do. I don't know what I would do. I don't know what I would do. I don't blame my dad. I God bless him for trying. You know, I mean, I remember uh the summer between seventh and eighth grade. I think it was the summer between seventh and eighth grade. No, between eighth and ninth grade. Summer between eighth and ninth grade. I was getting in so much trouble at home. My dad worked on the graveyard shift, right? He worked in the graveyard shift of the VA hospital every night. He was going to work at 7 at night until 7 in the morning. And then he was going to college from 7 in the morning until uh into the around noon. Then he would come back home, get four or five hours of sleep, do it again. And my mom was afraid of me at the age of you know 13, 14 years old. My dad would leave for work, and my mom would take my little sister, and she would lock the lock them up in the room in her bedroom, and basically just because I guess I used to just be a menace. I just used to be bad. I guess I just remember her doing that. And I remember that I would just leave. And then my dad decided that he was going to make me go with him to work after that started happening. So for a whole summer, I was essentially going with my dad every night to the emergency room at the VA hospital and just sitting in that there with him all night long, right? And I I remember uh he taught me how to drive the golf carts at the hospital, and then they were letting me run errands and I wrecked the golf cart, and my dad got in a lot of trouble for that. Of course, that ended me going to the VA hospital. And once again, I just I was a, I was uh, I was a brat. You know, I was an ignorant little young man. And I just, my dad was doing what he was trying to do the best that he could do to figure out ways uh to keep me on the right track. And I say all this because for me, as I look back on my life and I look at my little sister, I only wonder what she was thinking about me as her older brother as she was growing up. Right? Um I ended up moving out of my parents' house around 16, my parents, and I moved four horses, four houses down, my parents sold their home and moved. Right? They literally sold their home and moved because they blamed the neighborhood that I grew up in as being a major contributing factor as to what I was becoming as a young man. You know, and that there may be something to say for that, right? Because my neighborhood is pretty tough. If you if you ask anybody from Salt Lake, you talk to them about South Salt Lake, 33rd South, right? They're gonna tell you that there was it, especially in the 90s, it was a challenge, right? But then there was also plenty of people in my area doing amazing things, right? That were just fine. I was just struggling. You know, I was the boy that went from being, I was a Boy Scout, and in sixth and seventh grade, I was so heavily involved in scouting that I almost I almost got my Eagle Scout before I even got to eighth grade. And then in eighth grade, I just took a detour. I just took a detour, stopped scouting, stopped worrying about. I I just I got all the way into my neighborhood, into my friends' groups, and it just got worse and worse and worse and worse, right? And so my parents, they moved down to Utah County. They moved down to actually live with my grandma again. Uh my grandfather had passed away when I was in seventh grade, and my grandma was alone, and my dad just decided that was a good place to go live while they figured out uh what they were going to do next. And my dad had got the chance to transfer to a VA clinic down in Utah County, which is about 45 minutes south of Salt Lake. And so they left. Then I would I'd say after about seven months, uh, I got the chance to go live with my aunt and my uncle up in Ogden, Utah, or Clinton. And I went to school up there, but got in trouble at that school. Just I didn't even do anything wrong. It was just they found out who I was and they didn't want me in their school. And that put me out. Just as soon as they looked my name up, they said, no, he can't be here. He doesn't belong in our school. So they got rid of me. Uh I ended up going back down to live with my mom and my dad and my grandma for a period of time. Went to a high school down there, got arrested, got taken out of that school, and just oh, it's just horrible, man. I was just putting my parents through it. And again, I'm sure my little sister, because she's growing up. She's seeing her older brother go through all these things. And her Christy and I, we were very close as kids. We were, you know, we loved each other a ton. And we we both knew we were adopted. We both felt connected that way. Uh of course we're siblings, so we're going to uh not always get along. But I will tell you, as kids that moved around a lot, there was a lot of times that we were we were each other's best friends. And while I look at my sons, who are six years apart, I can see the correlation, right, between siblings. And we were not, we didn't have any other brothers or sisters. It was just her and I. But then with me leaving the first time at such a young age, her being only 11 years old, and me just being so wild and so crazy and so out doing wild things, I'll never really understand how that might have affected her opinion of me, right? And and that matters because uh I essentially would live with my parents, you know, sporadically between that first moving out of 15 up until I did eventually join

Joining The Navy As A Reset

Gary Wise 23:20

the United States Navy at 19 years old, right? And so at 19 years old, I ship off to the Navy, and Christy is about 15, 14, 15 years old. Uh I'm on my first ship, the USS Bellow. I'm over in Sasebo, Japan. My sister, and I we're actually in Thailand. I remember we're in Thailand, I called home from Thailand, and my mom tells me that my sister is pregnant, right? And that she's gonna have a baby. So here is my mom and dad having had their oldest son just be a freaking hellraiser. And they were so thankful I joined the military. My parents were so grateful I was able to get a job with the United States Navy. And thank God. Thank God I was able to pass the GED. Thank God they were, they approved all my waivers. Thank God they they had a spot for me. That changed my whole life. And I give all that credit to God. And my aunts, my Aunt Sandy's the one that drove me to the recruiting station, right? And someday I'll tell that story. But I just I thank God that I was able to join the military and not get kicked out my first three years because I was wild. Me and my friends were wild. Um, very, very fortunate. But we were in Thailand and I'd called home. I hadn't even been in the Navy a year yet, and my sister was having a baby. Right. And I remember just being, uh, you know, at that point in my life, I I might have even been proud, right? Like I was a wild young person, and I'm just like, well, we'll figure it out, right? I'm I'm proud of her for keeping her baby. I'm proud of her, I mean, we'll figure it out. I remember uh I didn't get to go home on leave until after the baby was born, right? So I left home with a with a 14, 15-year-old sister, came back, and she was a mom, had a baby. They were all living with my parents, right? I remember on this leave, her and the baby's father were fighting, right? Literally, there was a moment during this leave where my sister and I are chasing her baby's dad in a car. He's in a car with two other people, and I'm like trying to get my hands on this guy, right? Because in my mind, he's done my sister wrong, and she's told me all the reasons that he's not been doing her right. And I have a reputation to uphold, number one, right? That that's a big piece of this, because even where my sister was living at this point in time, the people there knew me from when I lived with my grandma, or just from the the time that I lived with my parents off and on, or then from my sister talking about me. So I was I I had this perceived reputation that I had to uphold, whether I was in the Navy or not, didn't matter, right? I was that guy. And then secondly, uh, you're not gonna treat my sister some type of way, and I'm not gonna do nothing about it. Uh that, but that was just how our relationship was at that moment in time, right? And I remember telling my sister, like, hey, you know, I'm gonna have to get out of the Navy and come home and take care of you and your baby because it's not fair to mom and dad to have to raise your kid, but I'm not just gonna leave you alone with this dude, right? And we're talking about that, and I'm gonna get out of the Navy. And then it goes by about another year, year and a half, and it comes time for me to start getting out of the Navy. And she and this guy, the same guy, they had reconnected, they'd figured out their problems. So I felt a little bit betrayed because I'm like, you had me uh, you know, taking penitentiary chances, taking, I was making a risk on leave to help you do something to this person that I thought this was done. Now y'all are back together again, having a kid, a second kid. Mmm, okay. Now I felt betrayed, and her and I uh did not get along over that next challenge, right? Because I felt like you're living with mom and dad, you guys are having another kid. Mom and dad should not be responsible for taking care of your kids, taking care of you, him. What the hell are we doing? And she was just get out of my life. And we did not get along. I'll put it to you like that. Oh, I went home on leave again, and on that time, I made it a point to just stay away from my sister, her family, and everything she had going on. And she also made sure she was nowhere around when I got into town because she didn't want to have any problems with her person, her husband, her baby's father, or me, right? Which there there would have been because I was still just not adult. I was not mature. And uh I did the vacation, did the lead time with my parents. And I just remembered my parents being, they were exhausted, they were sad, they were worried. They had these two granddaughters they loved, they loved my little sister, they loved me. I was talking about getting out of the Navy, and my parents were nervous, and if I came back home, it was going to be friction all the time. I was nervous about that too. Uh, but what were what were we gonna do? I I wasn't sure. I ended up going back to the Navy to do my last, you know, year, and it was during that last year that I ended up uh deciding to stay in the Navy. I got offered the chance to be a United States Navy recruiter, and I got the chance to go be a recruiter in Clearwater, Florida. I called my parents up and said, hey, what do you think? I got the chance to go to stay in the Navy longer. My parents said, yes, do that. Do not get out, do not come home. I'm only a third-class petty officer at this time, y'all. Like I was, I was not, I mean, I was good at the Navy. I was a good engineer, I was a great watchstander, I was good at fixing things, was not a good sailor. They, why did they pick me to go be a Navy recruiter? Number one, I did, I had earned my ESWASP pen. So I had earned my enlisted surface warfare specialist pen. Two, the Navy was doing uh a new program where they were offering third-class petty officers to go be recruiters. And three, they had come down to my ship and watched me train people on firefighting. I was a DC three, and my charisma, my ability to teach, a lot of the things that made me a successful team leader, that made me a successful sailor, or skills that they recognized would make me a successful Navy recruiter. And they were right. Like they were right. Recruiting was a phenomenal tour, changed my life, and it unlocked a lot of my God-given abilities that I was in denial of before that period, right? Because I was just more focused on being uh kind of a problem, Vice being the best human being I could be. And this is an important part of my story, my journey, because on the way from the USS Bellow, I left the Bellowed the day the USS, I think it was Bonham or Shard or Essex, one of those two came into town to relieve them forward deployed. That's the day I left the ship. So I was on Bellowwood the whole time in Japan. I went home on leave to Utah for 30 days before I went to recruiting school in Pensacola, Florida. And we were in Utah, and there

Theft, Anger, And Calling Police

Gary Wise 31:25

was a girl living with my parents at the time who was a childhood friend of my little sister. My sister was not there. Once again, she is gone. She is not around. Her husband is not around, their two kids are not around because she is worried that there's gonna be a problem with me because I'm in town. We go up to my aunt's house on the 4th of July, and the girl calls my mom and dad, the girl that's living with my parents. And she says, Hey, your daughter, Christy, is here at your house. And she's in the house. And my mom, I remember my mom being on the phone, like, why did you let her in? And at this point in time, the they're not living there, right? Uh the girl tells my mom that my sister and her husband are going through my things. Uh, not sure what's going on there. And I'm just like, well, we need to go home because all I've got is everything at your house. We get back down to my parents' house about two hours later because it's a drive. And mind you, we leave a family gathering to get back down to my mom and dad's house. And my sister and her husband had basically taken all of my jewelry that I wasn't wearing, right? So I had accrued multiple watches while I was overseas, bracelets, necklaces, stuff that I got from Bahrain, stuff that I got from Japan, things that I had thought had value. They took it. They took it. They she literally robbed me, right? She stole my stuff. And I was very upset, right? I was very upset. Matter of fact, I reached out to a few old friends, and I got on the phone with my sister. I don't even remember how I got on the phone. This is like 2000, right? It's just the summer of 2000, July of 2000. And I got on the phone with my sister, and I said, basically, bring my stuff back, or there's going to be long-term problems for people. And if you don't bring it back, I know where people that your family cares about live, and that's it's just gonna be a problem, right? And that was what my intention was. My intention was to exact some sort of retribution for this offense, right? For them robbing me. And I was going to make the papers, right? I was I was going to do something tragic. And my sister basically just said, You're not gonna catch us, you're not gonna do anything, we're leaving. Boom. So I remember that afternoon, I had already put plans into motion. People were coming to get me, and I was gonna go make some bad life choices. And my dad, my this is my dad, my dad, God bless my dad. My dad says, Gare, you know, you do not need to do something stupid here. I'm sorry she robbed you. You're gonna go be a recruiter, you're still in the military. You you got to not do this. And I remember telling my dad, like, what else do I do? Like, what else do I do? Right? They just came and violated us, me, you, everybody, and our whole family. What would a regular person do? Because mind you, I didn't know how to be a regular person, a regular adult. I went from being kind of a problem on in my in my neighborhood to joining the military, going to boot camp, and shipping overseas to Japan. And we were kind of wild in Japan, 97 to 2000. I'm not gonna lie to y'all. We were kind of wild, right? This was before the internet really hit. I got my first email account during this period of time. We were living a very it was it was a fun lifestyle. I'm not gonna lie to y'all, but I had not matured appropriately for like civilization. I was I was very indoctrinated into Japan. I knew how to operate with Cinderella Liberty, I knew how to stay out of trouble there, but now here I am in the States, and it's I've got a lot of independence, and I was not known for being a very law-abiding citizen yet. I just was not there in my life. I had not grown up. And my dad was just like, Gary, you need to not do something stupid here and ruin your whole life. And I said, What does a normal person do? And my dad says, a normal person calls the police. That's what he tells me. He says they call the cops. That's what he said, he says they call the cops. And I think he even said, I'm gonna call the cops on you if you go do something. And I just remember thinking, like, they call the cops. That's what they do. And that's what we did, right? That's what we did. I turned off my my friends. I had some, I I've got some friends, even to this day, that are just amazing people. Uh, and and they would they would a thousand percent cover it down for me. But I turned that off and I was able to, with my dad, contact the authorities, file the complaints, right? Which, you know what's so interesting about this part of the story is that when I get to Clearwater, Florida to buy my first car after coming back from Japan, I have warrants for my arrest in Utah that I have to fly back and resolve. But I don't understand why this doesn't come up at this point in time when I'm filing this complaint against my sister. I don't know, maybe it was because the warrants for my arrest were from, I think they were unpaid debt. I don't know what they were from. I had to just pay money and they were gone. So it wasn't like I was freaking some crazy uh, you know, some crazy, highly wanted person. I just had probably not paid traffic tickets or something like that. I don't even remember anymore. But I just remember we're putting in the paperbook of my parents, and I remember the the law enforcement officer knew who I was from before I had joined the Navy, and even he was like caught off guard that I was calling him. And he knew my little sister too. Like they knew who I was, they knew who my little sister was, and they began their uh investigation, right? A week or two goes by, and I think at that time my little sister was living like in southern Utah. I didn't go looking for her, I just let it go, moved out to Florida and met Erica, changed my life, and everything completely recruiting duty completely changed my life. That's where I fell in love with my wife. That's where I started my family, that's where I invested, that's when I decided to go ahead and focus on the United States Navy all the way. That's when I completely went all into becoming the human being that I am, that I have been blessed to become, right? That but that moment, that time when my sister robbed me, that was a pivotal point because that's when I recognized like I'm no longer just gonna be an outlaw. I have got to be a person that chooses to follow the law of the land. Right? Uh and as time goes by, they they arrest my sister. I think they arrest her husband. They get stuff back that they pawned, right? Because that's what they did. They went and pawned my stuff for money. Um, they get some of that stuff back that they pawned, some of that they never got back, whatever, right? To this day, you know what's funny about to this day, to this day, I almost wear like no jewelry. Like I don't care about jewelry anymore. That was me when I was younger, but I think it was after I got robbed that I started being like, well, what good is having things that people can just take? Right? I would much rather have things that are harder for people to take for value. Um, but but that was I spent more money, I think, on jewelry my first three years in the Navy than I've spent since then. Uh just

Marriage And Parents Raising Grandkids

Gary Wise 39:40

being honest. Um, but uh that was a huge pivotal block between me and my sister. When I got married, so I met Erica March 2001, right? So I get to uh Clearwater, Florida, July, August of 2000, right? And seven, six, seven months later, I meet Erica March 2001. Another year later, March 2002, and Erica and I are getting married. And my mom and my dad flew out for the wedding, and they brought my sister's two children with them because they were raising my sister's children. My sister had lost custody of her children to the point that my parents were raising them full time that they had to the point they had to bring them to Florida to come to my wedding, or they would not have been able to attend my wedding. And I remember being so frustrated by that because I'm just like, I would like for you guys to come to Florida and be able to go do fun things and go do something with me and my wife and us not have to care for, you know, a four-year-old and a two-year-old child. Oh, by the way, I'm living in a two-bedroom apartment, right? Not even though it was a one-bedroom apartment, is where I'm living at. And my parents were gonna stay with me. So I was gonna have me, my new wife, my mom and my dad, and these two little kids. But that was the status of how things were going, unfortunately, for my sister. Um so that they came. They came. We had a lot of fun. We went to Disney. We made it. We made it work, right? Uh, we got through that period of time. I I then uh, after recruiting duty, I got orders to go to San Diego because I wanted to be closer to my parents because I felt like they were getting older, I'd been gone for a lot, I didn't want to go to Virginia, and Erica and I wanted to go somewhere different, so we got orders to go to San Diego. Get to San Diego, I'm on the USS Ogden, which is another godsend. I was born in Ogden, Utah. So when I was looking for orders and the ship, the USS Ogden was available, which was named for the place I was born. I just felt like it was a sign, which it was an amazing tour. I'll have to do a video on the USS Ogden someday. Amazing tour for me. I was on that ship almost four years. I decommissioned the USS Ogden. But the point of this story is uh we moved to San Diego to be closer to my mom and my dad. We drove, Erica and I drove from Florida to Utah. And when we came through Utah, we passed through where our parents lived. And of course, my sister, she was nowhere to be found. At that time, uh, she had she was no longer married to the first guy who she had two kids with. And I think she was and she had a third child, and that third, or she was pregnant with a third child, something along those lines. There is three, she does have three daughters eventually. Uh and it's about that time. I think she's in that new relationship, but she's having a third child. But she has she's nowhere around when I come to town with Erica. And this is the first time Erica ever comes to Utah to visit my side of the family. So, like my cousins and my aunts or whatever it is. Um, we or maybe no, no, that third child's not not there yet because I ended up going to Japan next. So, anyway, go there, no Christy. I'm down in San Diego. Erica gets pregnant with Hayden 2007, and I decide I think it's 2007. Uh we I mean I reached out to my sister and I said, Hey, look, uh this is 2004. I said it's mom and dad's anniversary. I know you and I don't get along. I can put, you know, a lot of stuff in the past. I would like to do an anniversary party for them. And maybe while I'm in town, we can go get family pictures done with you, your daughters, Erica, me, mom and dad, so they will have pictures of their whole family. And she's like, she says, okay. So I coordinate with her to do this event. Erica and I drive up from San Diego to Utah, and we, it's a nine-hour drive, nine, 10-hour drive. We drive up, we do the event, which is the first time I'd seen my little sister in person since I joined the Navy. No, no, since I'd been chasing her baby daddy on leave that one time. So probably 1998, 99, and now we're like 2004 time frame. Right? Oh, that's the first time I saw her in person. That's a Saturday. We have this event. The pictures are supposed to be the next day on Sunday, because after the pictures, Erica and I are heading back down to San Diego because I'm going back to work on Monday. Right. And we go to the picture place the next day. It's like Walmart, Walmart pictures. And my mom and my dad show up with the two little girls. And I'm like, well, where is Christy? And my parents said she's going to Vegas to be a witness for somebody else's wedding. Right? So I just super frustrated, super annoyed. She could not show up and give my parents a 30-minute photo hop so they could have a picture of all their family. And she was on her way down to Vegas. All right, Roger that. I just we did the picture, right? It was up in my parents' living room until the day that they died. And that was the most my sister ever met. My little my my wife was during that visit, during that one event, right? And that experience. Most of you know that we ended up, we came back in 2006 for Erica's baby shower for Hayden that my cousin Gwen put on. My sister was nowhere around for that baby shower. We just I won't, she didn't want to come, I didn't want her to come, whatever. Right? Um flash forward uh several years later, right? And it's 2013. Right? 2013, I believe, is when my sister's gonna pass

The Airport Post And Final Goodbye

Gary Wise 46:55

away. Let me get that date. Yeah, March 16th, 2013. Uh Erica and I, we were uh still at this point we're in Japan, right? We left uh San Diego in 2010. I never saw my sister any of that time. My parents would come down to visit us in San Diego, and they would like it was like pulling teeth for them not to bring those kids with them because they were raising their granddaughters um pound for pound, day for day. Uh Erica and I moved to Yokuska, Japan, and Hayden moved to Yokuska, Japan 2010, and we're there through 2013. I got flown back to San Diego to go watch a damage control training event aboard an aircraft carrier uh in San Diego. And this is a this is an important moment for me because as I'm there in San Diego watching this aircraft carry training event, talking with my parents, but I have no plans on going uh to Utah. I just my intention was getting back to Japan as soon as possible. I'm on the USS George, Washington. We're getting ready to go to sea again, and I'm getting some, they're changing the carrier training readiness standards. And so I'm there getting some intel. I do the week in San Diego, which is great. Get to see a lot of old friends, a lot of reconnects, but now I'm in the airport preparing to board my plane to go back to Japan. Um and I am literally in the line. They are boarding. I am in the line with my ticket and they are boarding. And for some reason, for whatever the reason, I'm not quite sure, but I check my cell phone and on my I check Facebook and this is 2013, Facebook, and my aunt Susie posts on Facebook for everybody to pray for my sister and for my parents because my sister had been found unresponsive in her home and that she was going to the hospital. So I see that message, and I'm like, oh my gosh, what the heck's going on? I step out of line, I uh call Utah, and I get a hold of, I believe, my mom, and she's just a wreck. She's crying, and she's just her daughter is in a bad, bad way. And I remember she has three daughters. My sister has three daughters at this point. And I guess her youngest daughter had found her in the house and and in her trailer park in their home that they were living in. The older two daughters no longer lived with my parents or with my sister. They now lived with their father, who had gotten his life together. He had gotten a whole new family, he had joined the United States Air Force. He was doing very good, actually, for himself. And him and I eventually got to a place where actually, over this period of time, we shook hands and called it good, right? Because I was happy that he was not leaving his daughters with my parents anymore. But that broke my parents' heart. My parents, they love those little girls so much. And so when they lost them to have them go live with their dad, which was the right thing, that really rocked them. Um, but they did have the younger daughter or the younger granddaughter with them. And she's like seven or eight at this time. Um I call my mom, she's crying, and I tell my mom and my dad, I say, look, I'm gonna do what I can, but I'm gonna, I'm gonna, I'm gonna be on my way. And they're they were very, very, it was a blessing that I was stateside and that I was, you know, nine, nine hours away from being home. I called my wife using the Magic Jack app, right, on my cell phone. She was able to wake up my LCPO, Mike Piazza, who I did a podcast with many, many, you know, two seasons ago. She wakes up Mike and basically says, Hey, Mike, Gary's sister is currently in the hospital and it doesn't look good. Can he go on leave? He verbally authorizes the leave, and I get up to Utah. Book a couple flights, get a couple cars, I get there. By the time I get there, um, my sister, unfortunately, has been uh placed on life support. Right? She unfortunately was just putting things in her body. She didn't be putting it in her body for whatever her reasons, and it it just didn't work out. Now, this is the first time I'd seen my sister since 2004. Mind you, we really didn't talk a whole bunch. You know, from I joined the Navy in 1997, I saw her in '98, '99, saw her again uh for my parents' anniversary day and like 04, and any other time we'd ever spoken, it'd pretty much been yelling at each other over the phone and really just me being frustrated for my parents because they were essentially paying for her and for her kids. Right? Um, and so then when I come in the room with my dad, she's on, you know, life support. And they had kept her there, my dad said, long enough for me to get there so I could say my goodbyes. You know, and and in my goodbyes, what do you say, right? What do you say? What do you say? This is a person that first my first 15 years of life, we were very close. And then I started making choices that drew me farther away from the family. And then I joined the service, and then away that I went. And the the human being that I was looking at on this uh on this bed, while I I could recognize her, I didn't know her. Um, but I would tell you that I believe God um played a role in in my timeline because he knew my parents were going, was going to need me to be there to help them put together, you know, uh their affairs, right? Help them clean out her, her things, help them to put together their life after their daughter passed away, which the majority of my parents' life was taking care of their daughter and her granddaughter. The granddaughter uh goes to live with my mom and dad, right? They ended up raising her um from that age until she was 18 years old.

Funeral Help And Hard-Won Lessons

Gary Wise 53:35

Literally, my my mom passes away when the granddaughter's about 16, and my dad passes away a week after the granddaughter's 18 years old. And one of the conversations my dad and I had was he did it, he got her over 18 before he passed away. And but they took on that responsibility as soon as my sister passed away, right? They took that on because they just in their that might as well have been their daughter, right? And God bless them for it. I mean, I was always disappointed because I have two sons who never really got to know their grandparents because my parents never could afford to really do much because they were always raising other people's kids. Uh, but it was a it's a complicated thing. Life is a complicated thing, right? And I I used to ask my dad, you know, how do you have such never-ending patience and grace? But now, as a 48-year-old man, I hope I can one day maybe be that level of supporting, you know, because I I know God is always there for me in that regard, right? And I think that my dad was doing his best to live as Christ-like as he could live. Uh and my mom struggled. She struggled, but she loved those girls. And she just wanted the best for those girls. Even though her and my sister had challenges, uh, my dad was always the strength in that relationship. Um and when he passed away, he told me, he said, Gary, do you care if I leave all this stuff to her? And I said, I don't mind. Like at the end of the day, I mean it hurt. Don't get me wrong, it hurt. All I asked for was pictures, which is what I got. I got the chance to take pictures from my childhood, me and my sister when we were children, that the things that I wanted to remember, right? Um, but when it came to earthly things, I don't need those things. My sons are fine. We're gonna be okay. Um, but unfortunately, I I come from a place where I had a sister who unfortunately passed away due to a drug overdose, right? Let's just call it, it is what it is. She was just making bad life choices. And I know she didn't mean to die. I mean, her daughter was in the other room, right? She just probably thought she was gonna go get high real quick and then continue all through day, and her body just couldn't take it anymore. But this is a part of the layering of me that adds to my ability to connect with people as I go through life, because this is something that I have in my background that helps me to communicate, it helps me to understand people. Thank God for my Chiefs mess family, because when my sister died, my parents had no money for the funeral. None. No, there's no life insurance, no planning, no nothing. And it is 2013. I'm in the USS George, Washington, and I'm telling my wife, like, look, I'm gonna swipe the credit card to pay for this funeral that's gonna be like $4,500 or whatever it was, right? And my wife was supportive, but she said, hey, why don't we try this GoFundMe thing and see if that can possibly help us to raise some money? And I had never even heard of anything like that before. And so we started a GoFundMe, and we raised all the money we needed to raise. And I will tell you, a significant portion of that money came from my from the Chief's mess, from my Navy peers, from my Navy family that just knew I needed my family needed help. And I will tell you, eventually I'll tell the story about when my mom passes away and how the Navy Chief's mess helps me in that moment as well, because they came out and they they did an amazing thing for my family. Um, but it was just once again, my Navy family proving they could support me and my family back in Utah as we came through this very difficult time. Um, you know, my heart goes out to anyone out there in the world that's ever lost a family member from drug abuse, from, you know, just dying before they were supposed to, or that has tough, has tough relationships with her family members. Uh I don't, I tried with my sister. I'm pretty comfortable in saying that. Could I have done more? Sure. But I remember when she made that choice to not be in that family photo and to go to Las Vegas. Uh, that was when I really just kind of said, you know what, I'm gonna do my best to not let my blood pressure get up. But they're we're not friends. And sometimes it's just like that, right? You don't have to be friends with family when you get older, especially if it's unhealthy for you. And it was unhealthy for me, right? Uh, but then try your best to support your family members that are in good relationships with them. Because I was,

Faith, Forgiveness, And Closing

Gary Wise 58:45

I was at times not very nice to my parents, even as an adult. I think it was out of jealousy because I wanted my parents to be more present for my children, and they just never could. They couldn't afford to do it, and they were always strapped down, taking care of uh these little girls that they had, that they felt like been given the blessing and the responsibility of raising. You know, thank you very much if you listen to my story today. Uh, you know, when I look at this story, I I see, I see God, you know, for me, being there for me and my mom and my dad. I see consequences that that happened in life, and sometimes they're gonna come, and we just gotta, there's not always an answer. Uh, I will tell you that, you know, my my my mom and dad were able to raise the youngest granddaughter, get her to over 18 years old before they passed away. And in my mind, that's a they were good and faithful servants, and they did their best to take care of that responsibility. And then they they were able to go ahead, go back home and to be with God. I hope that they're uh with me as I'm telling this story. I hope that, you know, I have no ill will towards my little sister. I do look forward to one day hopefully reconnecting with her in the future in the next life, and maybe we can just, you know, I'm sure we'll be just fine. I don't I don't I we made our peace that day when she was in the hospital bed. And, you know, I just I pray that anyone out there that's going through challenging things can hopefully have the important conversations that you need to have as you figure out life. Thank you all very much for supporting the words from the wise podcast. I am Gary Wise. Thank you so much for sharing your time with me. If you have any questions or if you'd like to have no more information about anything but the story, please hit me up and I will talk to y'all later. Thank you.