Episode 55 | Scott Larson | He Survived a Plane Explosion, War, and Addiction… Then Changed His Life

What happens when you survive war… but almost lose your life to alcohol?

In Episode 55 of the Rain Brings Growth Podcast, Scott Larson shares a powerful story of survival, addiction, and redemption. From joining the military at 17 to experiencing a near-death moment when a C130 engine exploded mid-flight, Scott has lived through moments most people will never face.

But his hardest battle wasn’t overseas…

It was with alcohol.

This episode dives deep into the reality of addiction, especially in military and law enforcement culture, and what it truly takes to break free. Scott is now over 15 years sober and shares the mindset, discipline, and hard truths that helped him change his life.

What You’ll Learn in This Episode
* The near-death experience that changed everything
* How alcohol slowly takes control without you realizing it
* Why so many men struggle with addiction in silence
* The truth about discipline vs motivation
* How to break destructive habits and rebuild your life

Transcript

SPEAKER_03 0:00

The C-130 I was on almost exploded. Uh we took off from Manis and we got up about about 10,000 feet, and I was just about dozed off. I'd been on them before. They didn't scare me. They make all kinds of funny noises. They leak. Oil drips on you while you're sitting in them. I mean, they're just that way. Just about asleep when I heard a bang. I thought, well, that's weird. And so I looked, I kind of woke up and took my sunglasses off and I looked down through the back of the plane, and the crew are running frantically back and forth looking out windows. And I thought, well, shit, if they're scared, now I'm scared. And the plane instantly banked and went straight down. And it was like that. And then just before we hit the runway, it flared and hit the runway, came to a stop.

SPEAKER_02 0:44

And we're like, get off the plane, get off the plane, we're on fire, we're on fire.

SPEAKER_03 0:48

And one of the engines had exploded.

SPEAKER_01 1:13

Alright, Scott. Thanks for coming on, man. It's been a crazy morning, but we got it. We got it. I'll set it up.

SPEAKER_03 1:19

Well, that's good to be here, man. I I kind of honored that you asked.

SPEAKER_01 1:23

Yeah. I remember hearing some cool stories back when we were working transport together about your military days, and um I've had a few guests on recently that have we've been talking about like the giving up alcohol life, and I remember your big story on that too. So and I think you just hit um I don't remember which chip you just showed on your thing, but it was like a big 15-year sobriety. Yeah. So I thought that was I think it's like kind of jarred me. I was like, I should get this guy on because he's got some good wisdom that I think people could hear, you know, and and under and uh really need because I know for me alcohol was one of the things that got me the closest to get a divorce with my wife, and I did not want that. So that was like one of the big reasons I ended up quitting drinking.

SPEAKER_03 2:03

But and I think in law enforcement too, like a lot of people just turned to alcohol as like a coping, and then Yeah, I didn't I didn't really um I was never in law enforcement until after I quit. Um I had always wanted to get into law enforcement and I had tried, and I think that um that was God's way of telling me that I wasn't ready to be in the street cop. Yeah, to because I I don't think I could have been a street cop because I think I would have gotten in, I would have still been using. Yeah, I wouldn't have been a very good cop at that point. Yeah, I wouldn't have lasted very long, that's for sure.

SPEAKER_01 2:41

Yeah. Yeah, dude, that started out. Where are you from? You got a big old Iowa shirt on.

SPEAKER_03 2:45

Yeah, I uh born and raised in southwest Iowa, born in Council Blouse, which is right across the river from Omaha, Nebraska. So I hate the cornhuskers. Um in about 2000, well, about 2008, for the first time I I came out here for a um my command in the Army Reserve stood up out here. And so I came out here for a meet and greet, had no idea, never been to Idaho before. Uh in fact, when I landed on the airplane, uh we flew over Boise and I made fun of the blue stadium. I had no idea. And um I spent a weekend out here and I fell in love with the place and I said, I want to get, that's where I want to be. And that was about 2008, and then about 2011, um, it was right actually right after I got out of rehab uh to quit drinking. Um my boss that was out here in the on the Army side uh said, if you were serious about moving out here, I can get you a full-time job working with me in the Army Reserve. Um, but it's up to you. And I was like, sold. And so the uh my wife at the time and the kids, we uh we packed up and moved out here and been out here ever since and have no desire to ever move back. I love it out here.

SPEAKER_01 4:04

Yeah. So what was life like growing up in Iowa?

SPEAKER_03 4:07

Uh I grew up in a farm community. Uh I think there was 800 people in the town. Uh small town. Uh my graduating class in high school was 24 people. Uh, and the top 14 people in the class were National Honor Society students. So I'm proud to say I was silver honor roll, but I graduated toward the bottom of the class. Um but it was a small community, typical 1980 lifestyle, jamming out to ACDC and Motley Crew and cruising the the local strip every night.

SPEAKER_01 4:43

Um What was there to do in Iowa? I mean, I think of it as like, is it what it sounds like? It's just all farmland, nothing.

SPEAKER_03 4:50

Uh it's it's not as much farmland as you would think. I mean, they we don't uh in Iowa there's no uh you can't hunt with a high-powered rifle because it's too condensed, the population. Uh so it's shotgun and black powder and and uh archery only. Uh so you can drive 20 minutes and get to a town. 20 minutes get to a town, 20 minutes get to a town. Where I mean, out here you could drive two hours and not see civilization.

SPEAKER_01 5:18

Oh, okay.

SPEAKER_03 5:18

Uh so it is pretty condensed. I mean, I guess it's hard for me to uh to guess what it would be like from somebody looking outside in. And the best way to explain it would be the first time I took my wife there. Uh, she could not get over the perfection in the rows of corn. That was the biggest shock to her was how perfect and how rolling the hills looked. Yeah. And how perfect the rows of corn were. Um, I think pretty much everybody I grew up with at some point worked for farmers, walking beans, or to tassel and corn, or in a local grocery store. Those were the three big jobs for teenagers.

SPEAKER_01 5:57

Is that right? When did you start working?

SPEAKER_03 5:59

Uh I was about 14 and I started working for a far farmer walking beans, and I did that throughout the summers. What is that? I'm sorry. So the beans, you walk down an entire field of beans could be 500 acres, and you walk the rows, and you have a thing called a bean hook that's basically like a long pole with a knife on the end of it, and you see a weed in the beans, like a random, like a we called it um free corn or whatever, where like a corn stalk would grow out of place, you cut that or sunflower, any kind of weed. You basically weed in the garden, is what you do. And you just walk up and down the road doing that until the field's all done. Um, I never did the detasseling corn. I had friends that did, but it was cutting the tassels off the top of the corn stalks, is from what I gather. Um hot work, crappy work.

SPEAKER_01 6:53

Yeah. Was that kind of a requirement growing up that you were gonna get a job at as soon as you could?

SPEAKER_03 6:58

Yeah. Um, my my parents had kind of put it to me. If I wanted a car, the only way to get a car was to go to work. And so I would work through the summer. I mowed yards, I did everything I could do. And then when I was I think I was 16 years old, I applied for a grocery store that was about 20 miles away. When I worked there until gosh, I think I I started there in 89, 88 or 89, and I worked there until 2000. Oh, really? Yeah, I did that. I did uh everything there. I was uh I was a baker, worked a little bit in the meat department, I was a shift manager for the store. I I did everything there was to do in that store.

SPEAKER_01 7:39

So you didn't go military right out of high school then? Uh I did.

SPEAKER_03 7:42

I joined the guard when I was 17. I was a junior in high school.

SPEAKER_01 7:47

Oh, okay. What made you was it did you come from a military family?

SPEAKER_03 7:50

Uh I had two uncles that served in Vietnam. Uh, but at that time, you didn't talk about Vietnam around them. Yeah. Because they both had really bad PTSD. Yeah. And so it was kind of an un it was kind of an elephant in the room. Uh I had no idea what the National Guard or even what the army was. And I was in my guidance counselor's office being told that I was probably going to pump gas for a living. Uh, because I just he kept asking me what I want to do with my life, and I didn't know. And the recruiter was there to see somebody else, and the the counselor had to go to the restroom or something, I forget what it was. And the recruiter started talking to me, and three days later I was I was inducted into the National Guard.

SPEAKER_01 8:36

There you go.

SPEAKER_03 8:37

It was that quick.

SPEAKER_01 8:38

Yeah. Like the whole like go talk to your parents thing and all that in high school.

SPEAKER_03 8:43

Yeah, he came. He when I went home and told my parents, uh, my dad was like, Ain't no way, I don't even know why he's coming over here. We ain't doing that. You want to do that crap? You can do it when you're 18. You know, you can sign it on your own. And I was like, just listen to what he has to say. And the recruiter was there for a whole 20 minutes, and my dad was ready to sign papers.

SPEAKER_01 9:02

Oh, right on. Nice.

SPEAKER_03 9:04

Yeah. And so then I went to basic training between my junior and senior year.

SPEAKER_01 9:08

Oh, and like between the uh summertime? Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 9:11

Yeah, which was quite a show culture shock.

SPEAKER_01 9:14

Yeah. What was that like?

SPEAKER_03 9:16

That was horrible. Where was that at? Fort Benning, Georgia. Um, it was dang, middle of summer. Yeah, humid, hot. I remember getting off the plane of Fort Ben in Columbus, Georgia, and I think it was Atlanta, was where the airport's at. And we got off the airport, and I mean that the humidity instantly hit us, and it was nine o'clock at night. And there's a whole bunch of people waiting, and a bus rolls in, picks you up, and then it takes you onto the base, and right away the drill sergeants were there. Get off my truck, get off, just screaming at you. So I went from the weekend before where I was driving a loop drinking beer with my buddies, to this guy scares the hell out of me.

SPEAKER_01 9:58

Yeah. Did you have any idea of what to expect going in?

SPEAKER_03 10:01

Um, I had watched the movie Full Metal Jack. Yeah, and I had asked a friend of mine who had been through it. I asked if that's what it was really like. And he says, Oh, they toned it down. And so I was petrified. Oh, the movie toned it down. Yeah, so I was petrified. But looking back, I don't think it was near as bad. And I I understand now why they did what they did. I think they should do it now. To today, I think that's the way they should teach people, but they don't anymore.

SPEAKER_01 10:29

I heard that they were reversing the standards to like in the 90s now, that like Hegseth, I think that's the director of war, right? He had just announced that they were gonna put the standards back to where it was in the early 90s.

SPEAKER_03 10:38

Yeah, I think they're trying to go back to focusing more on um we're gonna train to fight instead of focusing so much on, and I used to make fun of it, focusing so much on you drink too much, you're suicidal, and you're probably trying to have sex with your friend, you know, with your partner or your your your another soldier. So everything, those were the big three things that you spent every day talking about instead of training on, okay, this is how I pull the trigger and make that decision.

SPEAKER_01 11:09

Yeah, the actual best person gets the job, not just because they need a diversity hiring.

SPEAKER_03 11:14

Well, and and they they focused so much on um and this is funny because I'm a recovering alcoholic to say this, but they focused way too much on substance abuse. Um and they talk about a lot of how people need to get to know their their subordinates better. And I think when they took the NCO clubs and the enlisted clubs off of bases, I think that terminated a lot of the ways that people got to know their subordinates a lot better. Um, because you know, you sit down with somebody, hey, let me buy you a beer, and you start talking to them. You learn a lot about somebody by buying them a beer, yeah. Or just sitting there talking to them in a different environment out of work. Well, that's gone now. So the only way to get to know somebody is to sit at work and talk to them, and nobody's gonna sit and tell their boss how they real feel really feel. Yeah, it's just not gonna work that way.

SPEAKER_01 12:05

So you're saying they're getting they were getting rid of bars on base? Is that what you're doing?

SPEAKER_03 12:08

Yeah, they've they've got really stringent on having any kind of a we call them e-club, which is an enlisted club. Yeah um those are pretty much a thing of the past. Um I think the last place that I went that there was an actual non-commissioned officers club was uh Fort Leonard Wood, Missouri. And that was in 2003. Uh and that was actually you could go after you were done for the day and sit in there and have a drink or have a burger. Yeah. But I haven't that was the last time I saw anything like that on a military base. And then it became to where if you have more than one one drink in a month, you're an alcoholic. I mean, they went, they totally went off the deep end. I mean, I was obviously, yeah, but there's a lot of people that aren't.

SPEAKER_01 12:54

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 12:55

You know, and I can kind of see why they went that way because the military has a tendency to um go with that. If it can save one person, then we have to do it. Yeah. And that's kind of the way they look at it. Like, here's your here's your bubble wrap. Make sure you're wrapped in it before you go out the door because we don't want nothing to happen to you. Yeah. That type of mentality.

SPEAKER_01 13:18

Yeah. Yeah, that's interesting because I think a lot of uh a lot of people do bond and and socialize over alcohol. Yeah. And I mean, yeah, like you said, not everybody has a an alcoholic problem. They can handle a couple beers and they can't.

SPEAKER_03 13:31

And there's nothing wrong with that. Um, there's nothing wrong. And the way I've looked at it over the years is that if if you want to go have a beer, that's great. I'll sit with you and have a Dr. Pepper. Um, I abused it, therefore I lost my privilege to be able to sit down and have have a beer. Uh do I miss it? Yes. Do I know it can happen if I take a drink? Absolutely. And so that's what drives me from doing it ever again.

SPEAKER_01 13:59

Yeah. Yeah, I'm saying, like, I don't think that I would probably be a one and done. Like uh once I get it, um, and I was a thing too when I was a drinker. I wasn't like a I wasn't a casual drinker. Like I wouldn't drink just to drink if I but if I started, I wouldn't stop. Yeah. I can make a six pack last for a month in my in my um fridge, but as soon as I cracked that first one, they were all gone.

SPEAKER_03 14:21

Yeah, and that was that was with me is the minute that I took the first drink, I was getting drunk. And and a six pack was nothing. That was starters for me, you know. I would I would it was usually around 18 before I considered stopping. Yeah. You know, and and that's a problem. And it was that way every night.

SPEAKER_01 14:40

And you were you had said that you had started drinking in high school, like before you you said before you'd gone to basic, you and your buddies were drinking and stuff. When did you start drinking?

SPEAKER_03 14:47

Oh, probably I was probably starting to dabble in it when I was around 16 or 17. And and the weird thing was is our town almost condoned it, the town that I grew up in. We had a um a street called Broadway, and it was a divided street, one way on each side. And that was where we would cruise. And they had trash cans placed all up and down where you could just drive up with your car and throw your empty in there. And it was almost like it was condoned. Yeah. And it wasn't a big deal. Cops catch you, they just make you pour it out. Um and so I probably it was probably around 16. We'd me and a buddy'd get a six-pack, drink two apiece, and think we were hammered, you know. Yeah. But that's that's probably where it started, and it was just everybody did it. It wasn't a big deal.

SPEAKER_01 15:41

And then once you get to the military, they uh they kind of just let it happen too.

SPEAKER_03 15:47

Yeah. Um when I was in when I was in basic training, I was 17 years old. And for those of us that when they made us take our um our army physical fitness test for the record, those of us that got a pass on the first time the drill sergeants took us to the to the club and we were allowed to drink. They actually brought in strippers. Uh it was just something today, somebody go to jail for today. That was in the late 80s, you said it was in 1989. Yeah. So it it's just the army kind of that and smoking. Those two things when I joined were the two things that were the norm. Everybody did it. Um and then even up through the time I before I turned 21, anytime I was TDY, it didn't matter. We beer was readily available, alcohol was readily available. Um it wasn't until probably the mid to late 90s that things started to shift away from that. Yeah. That the smoking got to where they were starting to really cut crack down on um smoking in buildings and things like that, and kind of try to pull away from that. Uh when I went to basic training, you weren't allowed to smoke. Um, but I found ways to chew. But uh the military's kind of pulled away from that. The last few years I was in before I retired, there was absolutely very little alcohol provided. Anytime we were TDY, and by this time I was one of the senior people. And so I was the one standing in front of the groups saying, Hey, no alcohol, guys can go out on a town, but nobody drinks. You know, it's just I'm not gonna deal with people getting in trouble.

SPEAKER_01 17:37

Yeah. What was your hardest part about uh going through basic and just that culture shock? And were you already like a pretty fit dude?

SPEAKER_03 17:46

So it wasn't really the fitness side of it, but yeah, I was a student athlete, so I I wrestled, um, I did track, uh, I played baseball. Uh one year I played golf. So going and and being doing physical fitness every day wasn't wasn't a game changer to me. Um and I was kind of at the mindset, well, what are they gonna do to make me do push-ups? Okay, so I'm gonna make myself better. Yeah. You know, I'm I'm doing something that's good for me. Right. Um, the hardest thing, the culture shock to me was is I had come out of wrestling where I cut weight, cut weight, cut weight, cut weight. That's the way they they preached back then. And so when I got to basic, I think I weighed 125 pounds. I was six foot tall, weighed 125 pounds. And the drill sergeants called me, uh I suppose you'll have to bleep it out, but they called me a bulimic fuck. And so every time I ate, I would hear one of the drill sergeants say, Where's my bulimic fuck at? And I'd have to come run it up and say, Right here, drill sergeant, and say, Go back through again, and I'd have to eat again. And so I weighed 167 pounds when I came home.

SPEAKER_01 18:57

Probably a bunch of muscle though.

SPEAKER_03 18:58

Yeah, I mean, I was yeah, I was stocky. It was gone in six months, but yeah, but I was built. And so that was that was probably the toughest thing. Um, my mom always said that I was the the bird that would fly the nest at any time. And so I wasn't afraid to step out and go away from home. So being away from my mom didn't bother me much. I did have a girlfriend, a high school sweetheart at the time, and that was that was probably tough.

SPEAKER_01 19:26

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 19:27

What's basic like 12 weeks? It was eight weeks back then. Eight weeks. Yeah, and that was just your simple basic training. That didn't include any kind of tech training or anything like that.

SPEAKER_01 19:36

Is that normal to go into to the army at 17? Is that the regular age or is that what it was back then?

SPEAKER_03 19:42

For the guard you can do that. Okay. And I think it's still normal today because my son did it.

SPEAKER_01 19:46

Oh, okay. Uh about eight years ago. He did the same thing. I was thinking for some reason you had to be 18.

SPEAKER_03 19:52

Yeah, I think to go, I think to go into the actual army, you do like active.

SPEAKER_01 19:56

Yeah, to go active duty, you go and be 18. Yeah, because they have that one high school program. What is it, the uh what's it called? Like the R R O T C? Yeah, R O T C. Yeah, yeah. Because I remember that. That was a thing. Yeah, the junior, I think it's called junior R O T C. Yeah. When I went through the CERT Academy, there was there was they had to be like middle school kids. They weren't even high schoolers yet. But they were right above us in the in the dorms, and you just heard every morning at five o'clock they're getting yelled at and everything. We seen them lining up out front, and then that was wild. But I was like, that's good for those kids. That's a lot better than being tablet kids in the middle of the summer. Like, yeah, no kidding. At least they're out doing something. Yeah. What'd you go into the military for? Like what was your what was your assignment you were gonna do?

SPEAKER_03 20:40

Uh when I initially joined, uh I had signed up to be uh uh 11 Hotel, which was a designator for I was infantry but anti-armor. And so we drove around on Humve in Humvees with a tow missile system on the top of it, and we'd have one guy that was a gunner, and he would shoot at tanks. So we were in Humvees to fight tanks. But the nice thing was is we could shoot from almost two miles away.

SPEAKER_01 21:12

Oh, wow.

SPEAKER_03 21:13

Yeah, and uh the the acronym TOE, it's spelled just like it sounds T-O-W, stood for tubular launched, optically sided, wire guided. So it was the missile had two wires that came back to the system. And when you look through the site, whatever you kept the crosshairs on, that missile would go towards and it would hit exactly where your crosshairs were at. That's pretty sweet. And the wires had two and a half, three miles worth of wire inside the missile system that went to the actual gun and fired it.

SPEAKER_01 21:44

That's interesting. Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 21:46

That's pretty sweet. And then probably mid nineties, the army decided to do away with those designators. And so they made us eleven B, which is infantry, straight leg infantry. But they gave us uh I think it was called an H designator, which meant that we were qualified to be anti-armor gunners.

SPEAKER_01 22:07

So as a as a reserve, you were in the reserves in right? That was in the guard. In the guard. So as as being in the guard, that was one weekend a month, and then you had did you ever get deployed while you were in the guard?

SPEAKER_03 22:18

Yeah, I did uh I did a year in Afghanistan with the guard. Um and then I did I did a couple of different TDYs. I did a a TDY in um Hohenfels, Germany. Um that one I was the uh it was for an exercise where we played the uh enemy for the 82nd Airborne.

SPEAKER_01 22:39

What's a TDY, sorry?

SPEAKER_03 22:41

Temporary duty.

SPEAKER_01 22:42

Okay, yeah.

SPEAKER_03 22:43

Um and we played the enemy for uh the 82nd Airborne before the 82nd Airborne dropped into Kosovo. And so we were there to um we basically acted like gorillas hid in the woods, attacked them here and there, and and that's what we did for a month, and that was great. And that was before that was when I was still drinking, and I drank a lot of beer in Germany. Oh yeah.

SPEAKER_01 23:07

Is it hit differently than here in the States?

SPEAKER_03 23:09

Yeah, yeah, but it's also fun because every village has their own brew.

SPEAKER_01 23:13

Oh, yeah. So I mean you could You can drink it warm there though, right? In Germany, it's not cold.

SPEAKER_03 23:17

Yeah, they make fun of you if you ask for a cold beer.

SPEAKER_01 23:19

You're like, Can I get some ice for my beer or what?

SPEAKER_03 23:21

Yeah, I remember one time I was in this bar and I asked for a Miller Light, and the guy made fun of me. He said, You Americans don't know how to what good beer is. And so then I came up the next time and I said, All right, what do you recommend? And he poured me something and he goes, You want a glass? And I said, No, I'll drink it out of the bottle. And he goes, Here's a glass. And it was you could hold it up to the sun and couldn't see the sun through it. It was so dark, but it was good. Yeah. But that was that was that was fun. That was in the mid-90s. Um, and then when 9-11 hit, everything got real, real fast. We started doing a lot more um train-ups, so we would temporarily go to places uh and train in different environments. Um we we did a a stretch in uh I think it was it was just out, it used to be called Fort Chaffee, but I think it's Camp Chaffee now, and it's in Arkansas. Places full of armadillos and snakes and tarantulas. That's all I remember, and it was horrible, horrible. And my buddies had a rubber snake, and every time I would do something, the snake would fall on me and just scare the bejesus out of me every five minutes, and it was horrible.

SPEAKER_01 24:31

And then um So what were they prepping for in those areas? They like is that just like simulation combat units or combat areas?

SPEAKER_03 24:38

Yeah, and then um towards the end of 2002 and 2003, our unit came up as a possible tip of the spear to go into Iraq um before the initial invasion. And so I was working your guard unit? Yeah. So I was working uh full time at that time towards uh outfitting the unit. And I'd actually, my civilian job, I'd left that temporarily and was on active duty at the time uh to help outfit the unit. Uh and then toward the end of two thousand, well, toward the uh yeah, toward the end of 2003, the they figured that they were gonna send a different unit, so they backed us out of that position. And so we stood down and went right. So then I went back to work at my civilian job, and I was there for about three months when the order came down to pack your stuff, you're going to Afghanistan. That order came down, and six months later I was in Kandahar. It was that quick.

SPEAKER_01 25:42

Was it hard for you going from a military, like even when you went active duty for a little bit, to go back to a civilian job? Like just going from like kind of a chaotic kind of go, go, go to kind of just at a civilian job. I feel like that'd be an interesting shift.

SPEAKER_03 25:57

It wasn't too bad. I don't I don't think so. I enjoyed I had a crappy civilian job at the time. And so I dreaded going back just because I couldn't stand it. Um I was at the grocery store one? No, I was actually an insurance adjuster at that time.

SPEAKER_01 26:11

Oh, okay.

SPEAKER_03 26:12

And so everything was a fight. Everybody to talk to wanted to fight with you and argue and everything. And and so I dreaded going back. But after after I had been on that preparing for that other mission, I had learned some different organizational skills that helped me in my civilian job. So when I came back to that for that short amount of time before I went to Afghanistan, I was actually excelled at the job. And I don't know what I learned different, but I learned something different that helped me organize and helped me negotiate better. And so I was able to swim through that. But it was only like a short few months before I had to pack my stuff and head out.

SPEAKER_01 26:51

And that time that you had to head out, was that your first time going active on uh deployment? For a combat tour, yeah. Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 26:59

Yeah. That was the first time. Um during the first Gulf War, um, we were actually called in, had our alert notice, um, and this was in 9091, I think. We'd actually had our alert notice, we're getting ready to go. Um scared of scared of bejesus out of me because I was 19, 20 years old. And at the time, Saddam Hussein was saying it was going to be the mother of all wars and you know, the end of times, and everything else. So it was a little nerve-wracking. Um, we had our alert notice, we were ready to go, and the war was over as quick as it started, and so we didn't have to go.

SPEAKER_01 27:39

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 27:40

And then um, so that was as close as I came to on that one. And then when 9-11 happened, I got called in to act as a um security force around our uh National Guard building. Uh, it was the headquarters for the 1st Battalion, 168th Infantry. Uh, and so we had everything from Baretta pistols to tow missiles and mortars in that building. And so we secured it. And I did that for about a month. And then in 2004, that's when we actually my first combat tour that I actually went on.

SPEAKER_01 28:22

What was that like?

SPEAKER_03 28:23

That was uh I was an awakening. Um we we left, we actually went from Iowa to Fort Hood, Texas, and we were there from March until May uh doing train up.

SPEAKER_01 28:36

And then what do you do during that? You just kind of get you ready for the area and stuff like that?

SPEAKER_03 28:42

Yeah, yeah. They they have a certain list of tasks that the army has to put you through that so that they can say, Yes, he's been trained to do that, he knows how to do that. Uh you get all your weapons qualifications, you learn a lot of first aid stuff. Um, any kind of, like I said, any kind of weapon you're gonna be dealing with, you get qualified to handle that weapon. Driver's training, how to drive a Hump V or any other kind of truck you'll come across. Uh, they have a whole lot of scenario training where you go through and you meet with village elders and discuss things with them. Uh we call them key leader engagements.

SPEAKER_01 29:17

Do they teach you any kind of the language?

SPEAKER_03 29:19

Uh a little bit. They teach you some of the customs. There's a lot of customs briefs, um, things like that.

SPEAKER_01 29:26

Oh, like things that they might consider disrespectful, you don't want to do that you wouldn't even think of.

SPEAKER_03 29:30

Yeah, they'll put you that we call it fob training. They put you in a little fob, and then you're in this thing and you receive missions and things, and and outside of your um secure area, there's a village that's full of people that are acting as Afghanis, and they do things and you have to react to what they do, and they'll react to how you react. And so it's to train you how to deal with with that kind of thing. Um, I don't think it helped. I don't think any of that helped. Um because it just isn't as realistic as real the real thing, or I mean you know that they're you're you're looking at a dude with a buzz haircut that's wearing a wearing a turban. I mean, you know that it's oh this guy's an E7 in the army, just acting like a like an Afghan, and it's just hard to take serious because it just doesn't look real. Yeah. Um then in May we got a we we ended up flying from Fort Hood and we landed in Kyrgyzstan, Manis, Kyrgyzstan, which was a former Soviet republic.

SPEAKER_01 30:36

Um the C-130s, is that what you guys are flying over there in?

SPEAKER_03 30:40

That's where you get picked up in a C-130. You they charter a commercial jet, like a 747, and stuff it full of soldiers, rifles and all, and then it flies straight to I think we stopped. We stopped in a few places. We didn't get off the plane, but we stopped in a few places, and then we land in Kurdistan, and that's the extent of the stewardesses and nice airplanes. Yeah, from there it's C-130 into country. Um the C-130 I was on almost exploded. Really? Yeah, it uh we took off from Manis and we got up about about 10,000 feet, and I was just about dozed off. I'd been on them before, they didn't scare me, they make all kinds of funny noises, they leak, oil drips on you while you're sitting in them. I mean, they're just that way. And I was just about asleep when I heard a bang, and I thought, well, that's weird. And so I looked, I kind of woke up and took my sunglasses off, and I looked down through the back of the plane, and the crew are running frantically back and forth looking out windows, and I thought, well, shit, if they're scared, now I'm scared. And the plane instantly banked and went straight down, and it was like that. And then just before we hit the runway, it flared and hit the runway, came to a stop.

SPEAKER_02 31:58

And they're like, get off the plane, get off the plane, we're on fire, we're on fire.

SPEAKER_03 32:02

And one of the engines had exploded. Oh, geez. And so everybody, all I think there was 120 of us on the plane, everybody had to pee. And so then we were stuck there. Oh, there was like five of us that got stuck there for another week, which it was great. That's where I met my first CIA agent was in Manis. Um on an accident, I walked into a room I wasn't supposed to be in. The guy's like, Oh, you can't come in here. I'm like, no, did out the door. I went. But uh then getting into Kandahar as we landed, we uh the plane landed at the Kandahar airfield. And the first thing we noticed was as we were coming off the front of the plane, out the side door of the front of the plane. There was a tractor, and they were loading coffins on the back of the plane as we were getting off. And that was my first sight that I saw in country, and it was like, okay, I'm really here. I am really here.

SPEAKER_01 33:02

Yeah, that's gotta be a just uh an eye-opener. I mean, you know it's a possibility, but like to for that to be the first thing that you see and to know that people that paid the ultimate price sacrifice.

SPEAKER_03 33:15

I was I was later able to find that that wasn't something that happened every day. Um that particular load of caskets and remains they were loading was a group of special forces soldiers that um their convoy had gotten attacked by several IEDs and uh RPGs and it killed, I think, God, I think there was like seven or eight of them were special forces soldiers that were killed in that one attack.

SPEAKER_01 33:43

Wow.

unknown 33:44

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 33:45

Did you work did you work what was your role at this time in the military?

SPEAKER_03 33:49

Um, so at this time, I had currently reclassed to a uh 74 Delta, which was a chemical weapons specialist. Needed something due, so I'd made that change just to try something new. And there was obviously no need for that over there. So my secondary MOS was still infantry. Uh so I I worked for uh the company commander who we were spread all over um southern Afghanistan, our company was. And so the particular platoon I was with, I was basically their operations sergeant. So I I would cover down if there was somebody that went on leave, I would fill that role as the squad leader or whatever. Uh, but most of the time I supervise the ops center where I tracked everybody's positions on maps, um, sended daily uh reports up the chain of command of uh activity in the area, Taliban activity. Um and then I submitted activity that I caught coming down the food chain, disseminated that out to the to the people that needed it within our base. Uh and then our particular mission at that point was uh force protection for the civil affairs people, the hearts and minds, the people that were going to go out and build schools, dig wells, things like that. And so we would cord on off areas for them to meet with the village, village elders and protect them while they were doing their thing. USAID was another big player we dealt with. The State Department, Department of Agriculture, all of those. We protected them.

SPEAKER_01 35:25

Gotcha. Was this the time I remember you were telling me that you were working with like interpreters and stuff? Was this that one?

SPEAKER_03 35:32

Yeah, yeah. We had we had interpreters that went with us. There was a few um village sit-downs that I went on where we it was a big dinner, and we would all be sitting around the floor, and the feast would be in the middle, and you'd have each person would have an interpreter with them. So you could at least get what the conversation was, you could add to the conversation. Um the one in particular that I remember was I was sitting with my interpreter and the village elders' three sons for some reason picked me out of the group, and I was the one they wanted to talk to. And they wanted to have a debate as why we call our football football and their soccer. That was out of everything going on on the planet, that's what they wanted to argue about. You know, you're not allowed to touch it with your hands. It should be called football, not soccer. You touch your football with your hands. Yeah. That's funny. So that was that was the one that sticks out in my mind for that.

SPEAKER_01 36:30

You said you mentioned agriculture, and the first thing that popped up in my mind was like, I remember hearing something about they have a lot of the opiate plants over there. Is that right? Is that or is that Iraq? No, it's it's Afghanistan. Yeah. Did you guys ever have any issues with like uh soldiers getting into that kind of stuff?

SPEAKER_03 36:48

No, um not on my base, but one of the other bases my company was operated out of, we had an issue with morphine.

unknown 36:55

Oh.

SPEAKER_03 36:56

And that wasn't just because they bought it on the black market, that was because they had access to it. Um, but it was very little. Um most of the reason why we had agriculture there was to try to teach these people how to grow corn instead of opioids and say, I don't know about anybody else, but I'm from Iowa and I know corn does not grow in the desert. Okay. Yeah. I know that. But that's what they were trying to teach them. And how you take somebody and tell them, hey, you can grow this crop and make two dollars and fifty cents a bushel versus the millions that they're making off of poppies.

SPEAKER_01 37:28

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 37:28

Uh to me, it was a stupid.

SPEAKER_01 37:30

Was it illegal for the for the Afghanistan to be selling poppies? Was it like an illegal growth thing? Or I know obviously for America, right?

SPEAKER_03 37:38

But yeah, I don't remember if their government, I think after Karzai became the Afghani president, it was it was illegal, he made it illegal. But I think it was one of those, hey, it's illegal. Okay, wink, wink, nod, nod, don't get caught. Yeah. Um, but we never messed with the drug trade. Um we did know one drug lord, and we didn't mess with his stuff because he kept a road clear for us. So we we didn't we mess with his poppies and he kept the IEDs off the road that we drove on.

SPEAKER_01 38:07

Kind of like an Afghani cartel.

SPEAKER_03 38:08

Yeah, it's exactly what it was. It was you let us know when you're coming this way. We clear road for you, you know. Yeah. And and so yeah, he would make sure that there wasn't, if we were in his area, there was no IEDs to hurt us.

SPEAKER_01 38:21

Would you guys train the Afghani civilians too, as like to train up their military, or was that something later on that started?

SPEAKER_03 38:27

Yeah, we uh we did have uh we called it a a PTAT team, which was police police training and assessment team. And so they would train local nationals um the art of law enforcement. Um we actually bought bought and supplied them uh police cars. They were little to Toyota pickups. Yeah. But I'm sure they all have machine guns mounted on them now. But yeah, but we supplied those to them. And then uh at one point during the first presidential election for Afghanistan, we had uh Afghan National Army on our base, uh, which was quite a culture shock um to have a bunch of people that you're don't really know if they're on your side or not, carrying AK-47s following you around, a little different. Uh, but for the most part, they were pretty respectful. Uh, the only thing that we could not get them to do was use a toilet. They just wouldn't, they'd they would rather dig a hole right in front of you than go. Uh so that was a little odd. We m we built them a porta potty, they just had to light it on fire every night and they wouldn't do it. They'd they'd dig a hole and pour it all in the dirt before they'd burn it. Jeez. But that was a culture shock. Um I did have one of them one time. I was helping them do something, and I had a cross that I wore that my mom gave me before I left. And we always tried to keep our religious symbols hidden because we're in their country, we don't want to offend the the Muslim faith. Um, we're trying to be friends with them. Um and I was helping them do something, and he reached out and one of them did, and he kind of picked up my necklace and looked at it. And all he would say was, Hey Zeus, and then he would make the like hanging on a cross motion. And I was like, Oh, sorry, you know, I tucked it in. And no, no, no, no, no, you you're good. Yeah, and so he was being respectful of my faith, you know. And I think he was respectful of the fact that I was not being disrespect. I was trying not to disrespect his faith. So that was that was some of the culture shock too with dealing with them. Was um for the most part, they were good, good people, yeah, just in a bad situation.

SPEAKER_01 40:42

How was that working with them? Like, because they have multiple times a day where they got to pray, right? So if you guys are training them, you gotta take a break, or how did that work?

SPEAKER_03 40:49

Yeah, we um I don't remember their call to prayer being that big of a distractor. It was kind of one of the things that was built into the daily activities. Oh, okay. Um, I had one guy that wasn't he he worked on our base. There was only 80 of us on our base, 80 Americans. And I don't know what his name was. I just called him Dilbert. And I I I carried at any given time between 50 and$100,000 in cash on me. And so if I needed something, that was my money that I used to get something off the local economy, or if we needed anything, you know, maintenance items, I could use that. I just had to I had to document every dime I spent. And so Dilbert, he would, I would need something, and Dilbert would come up, I'd have an interpreter, and I'd tell Dilbert what I needed. And when I pulled the money out, if I gave him too much, he would go, no, no, no, and he would give me back. And he always brought me change with a receipt. I don't know what the receipt said. He could have said Americans are dumb, I wouldn't have known any better. Yeah. But he always documented everything. But um I would catch members of our unit that would harass him when he was doing his call to prayer. And he used to piss me off something fierce. I'm like, leave that guy alone, man. He's probably the most honest person out here. Yeah. Let him pray. Yeah. Let him pray. That's his faith. Yeah. Anybody say shit before you ducked your head before your meal.

SPEAKER_01 42:14

Right.

SPEAKER_03 42:14

Let him pray.

SPEAKER_01 42:15

Yeah.

unknown 42:16

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 42:17

I remember you tell me you had like a whole room that was just stacked full of bricks or like pallets of cash, right? Well, so so is that just like for you guys to like work with the governments around there to pay, or how does that what was that money for?

SPEAKER_03 42:32

So it was called um, it was called uh the position that I had, it was a secondary duty. It was called the field ordering officer. And so I would had to take some training and everything, and then I would go in and I'd draw this cash, and I think the most I ever drew was 75 grand. And so I used that money for like say we needed something done on our base that obviously the army couldn't provide or they didn't have the supply to provide it. Like um, we wanted rock brought in because it was just a dust bowl anytime a vehicle drove around in our base. So we wanted rock brought in so to knock down the dust. That's what I used to pay the locals to come in and do that. If we had a problem with um uh something anything to do with our compound building structures or anything like that, I would use that money to pay the local economy to come in and take care of it. Um we were required to have access to local internet to because we had a uh intelligence team that was part of our outfit so that they could monitor local internet, local websites, just looking for intelligence things. Uh and so I paid for the local internet, and it was a thousand dollars a month for internet off the local economy. Um so yeah, I use that money for anything. Everywhere I went, I had an armed guard. Yeah. I had people following me. Um one funny thing that did happen was I got called to the front gate and they said that um a local farmer had his pickup and claimed that one of our Humvees hit it and he wanted money to pay for the damage. And so I go up there and I think there was like three bolts total holding this rusted frame of a Toyota on the, you know, body of a Toyota on the frame. It was ready to fall apart. And I could see where it looked like something probably was fresh. And I asked the interpreter, I said, how much money or how much does he want? And he said, he wants$25,000. I said, well, you tell him I'll give him$500 and go away. And the interpreter goes, talks to him, comes back, says, no, he's he's pretty self, he's set$25,000. I said, well, tell him he'll take$500 or I'll just shoot him and take his truck. Comes back, he'll take the$500. It was$500 and off he went. I would never have done that, but it was just at the time it seemed like something funny to say and it worked.

SPEAKER_01 45:17

Yeah. Did you guys ever have any close calls with your your base getting like attacked or anything? We did.

SPEAKER_03 45:23

Um we had uh during when we first got there before the election, we'd we'd have people drive by because we were in downtown Lashkargah, and I want to say this is like a city of 300,000 Afghanis. Um we would have people drive by lob grenades over the fence at us at night, usually uh one night in particular. I was just getting ready to um to bed down. I was actually in my shorts and flip-flops and a t-shirt. I was arranging my sleeping bag on the cot, and I heard a bunch of explosions in the direction of our front gate. And so I took off running, flip-flops, t-shirt, shorts, because I had a friend that worked up there, and I didn't even think about it. I just thought somebody's hurt. I gotta get up there. So I took off running, and and I think I grabbed, I did have my rifle, and as I'm running, something comes over the and lands right in front of me and explodes and knocks me on my ass. And I remember going, I had a little bit of blood on my knee and whatnot. And I remember I got up and I thought, I better go get my body armor and my helmet on before I go running into this. So I get up and I'm running back towards the barracks to get my helmet and everything. And we had the group full of um, called them ASF, Afghan security forces, and they were they were locals that were supposedly vetted by the FBI and the CIA to work on the base and help with security issues. They all come out of their hut with their AKs, and I remember about passing out going, Oh my god, they breached the wire and they're inside the compound.

SPEAKER_00 47:05

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 47:06

And I realized who they were, so I continued to run. I got back to the barracks and I'm putting my shit on, and my first sergeant comes rocking by and he goes, Yeah, I saw what you did, you dummy. Put your shit on and get back out there. Uh but that that happened quite a bit. Um they uh most of the time it was just skirmish stuff. They'd take a pot shot at us every every once in a while.

SPEAKER_01 47:30

Um Yeah, the idea of like drones and stuff wasn't even a thing back then. No, we did for the enemies to have no.

SPEAKER_03 47:37

Um, they didn't have anything like that. They didn't have any kind of capabilities. In fact, they're the way they would set explosives for us was very primitive. It worked, but it was very primitive, simple things. Um, they uh they did a lot of because there's mines everywhere at the time. There was if you were driving down the road and you saw rocks lining a path, you stayed on that path because the rocks would be painted white on one side and red on the other. And if you were in between the whites, you were good. Anything on the other side, there was mines. Because the Russians, the Soviets laid landmines everywhere in that country. So when was that? Uh in the 80s. Oh, okay. Yeah. And so you had to be careful, and then that's what the Afghanis would do is they would, or the the uh Taliban would do, is they would go and they would find these minefields, dig these mines up and make some sort of IED out of it and set it on the side of the road waiting for you to drive by. Um, so they had access to weapons everywhere. They just had it. We we would go in and we would find things. Um I've had somewhere I've got pictures of some of the cachets that we found. Um, and it's just a room about this size, and it's floor to ceiling full of mines, grenades, rockets, you name it. Jeez. Stuff that stuff that they had pilfered since the Soviet Union left. I could go out on the black market and buy Soviet AK-47s, and they'd sell them to you. Stuff they'd had since the 80s.

SPEAKER_01 49:11

So the all the AKs that like the Afghani army had, that was mainly from stuff that they had found, or was that no, those were bought and provided for.

SPEAKER_03 49:18

So if they were Afghan National Army, they had brand new out-of-the-box AK-47s. Some of the stuff you'd see on the black market. They even had enfield rifles from when the British were there in the early 1900s.

SPEAKER_01 49:32

If they were working with you guys, why didn't they have like Colts like you guys would you guys wouldn't supply them them, or you wanted to know the differences or how the AK thing about?

SPEAKER_03 49:41

I don't know why. I don't know why we didn't give them. Maybe it was because I don't know. Maybe it was to keep our own stuff ours. I really don't know. I don't know.

SPEAKER_01 49:52

Like the 308 versus the 556. Like yeah, that's a that's a damaging round.

SPEAKER_03 49:57

It is, but those those AK-47s are not accurate at all. An AK-47 is built for spraying and praying. And they um I don't know why we didn't field them with that. I maybe it's cost. I'm pretty sure that's a lot cheaper to field an army with AK-47s than it is with M16s.

SPEAKER_01 50:17

Yeah. How long was that tour that you were on on that one? That was a year. Uh a year to the day. Wow. Yeah. Is that average?

SPEAKER_03 50:25

Yeah, at the time that was average. Um now I don't know. I can't speak for Iraq, but I'd heard rumors that a lot of them guys got extended for like six months, so their one-year tours ended up going to like 18 months.

SPEAKER_01 50:37

Do you get bonuses for extending? Or is that just like mandatory at that time?

SPEAKER_03 50:41

I I think they did. I think they got a little bit extra. Um, but uh I I would we didn't really have to deal with that. I was I was gone for a total of 18 months, but I was only in theater for a year straight. But um, but yeah, I don't think they gave us because I think it would have been offered, there's a lot of us that would have taken that extension.

SPEAKER_01 51:04

When you're on uh on activity and on tour, what was the drinking like then? Um so I could get I I didn't drink a whole lot while I was there.

SPEAKER_03 51:13

There was ways to get alcohol.

SPEAKER_01 51:17

Um, you guys just didn't have like supply to the commissary or anything?

SPEAKER_03 51:21

No, no, no, because uh supposedly it's against uh Muslim oh doctrine to drink. And then since they're the host country, we try to respect that. Now that being said, there was a place in Kandahar that I believe that that's where all the media went and partied, and we could pull in there and we could buy alcohol there. Um for the first part of the time we were there, we could get anything there, and then it was like somebody else took over and I said, You know, you guys know you're not supposed to be drinking, so no, we're not gonna give it to you. So then it went to where I had I'd made friends with some of the interpreters that worked with us, and so I'd give them a$20 bill and say, Go find me a bottle of something. And there was days I would get like one day I got a bottle of maker's mark that was Pakistani and Pakistani writing on it. Another day I got a water bottle that just said ethanol, you know. So it was it was kind of luck of the drawing. What you get sometimes you get a bottle of gin. Um sometimes but it was always some foreign-made thing. And no matter how how good or how bad it was, it was always the same cost, 20 bucks.

SPEAKER_01 52:31

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 52:32

And so every now and then I would I would get a bottle of something, and then I would just sip something at night to help me calm down and go to sleep. Um, but I didn't drink a whole lot while I was there. I my philosophy was was that I'm not gonna die because I was drunk.

SPEAKER_01 52:49

Yeah. Especially where you don't even know, like in the middle of the night where something could happen and you're not even expecting it. You're in your skivvies and you could be drunk and that happens now.

SPEAKER_03 52:57

You're Yeah, and I didn't I didn't have the problem with alcohol at that time that I did eventually. At that time, I could still not drink and not worry about it. I could still have a beer and just stop at that point. I wasn't that it wasn't alcohol wasn't a tool for me at that time.

SPEAKER_01 53:19

Gotcha. So what how was uh what was base life like? Do you have any days off or are you always on duty every day, or do you have like a day where you can do your laundry, or like is that just kind of like an hourly thing? I'm not even sure how that would work.

SPEAKER_03 53:32

It was it got to be where it was pretty normal. Um again, there was only 80 of us on there on that base. Um I had that worked for me in the in the operations center center. I had four or five people, and so I got it to where I developed a schedule to where everybody got one day to kind of sit in a room and decompress for the day, read a book, play a game on their computer, whatever they wanted to do, play Xbox. Bunch of the guys had Xboxes linked together and they played um Halo and Halo tournaments. We have we had to have a poker tournament every Friday night. Uh Friday was their Sabbath day, so there was no missions ever on a Friday. Um for the most part, we were able to get downtime. That wasn't an issue. What you had access to was an issue. Like, yeah, I mean, you you could either be bored at work or be bored in your room, take your pick.

SPEAKER_01 54:28

Yeah. You know, and would the higher-ups and the the newer guys mix, or would you have your own areas that higher up and then the um I don't even know the the ranks, but like would the higher ranks and lower ranks mix, or would they just kind of have their own little areas?

SPEAKER_03 54:42

We tried to keep keep everybody as far as would they bunked with rank specific. Like um, like my first sergeant and my lieutenant, they they were the two highest ranking officers or ranking people in the besides the FOB commander, which was a lieutenant colonel in the Marine Corps. Uh, he had his own room, obviously. And then the first sergeant and the loot, the LT, they had their their room together. Like me, I was an E6, I had an E4, he was the logistics guy, so they kind of mobbed us together. And then the rest of the unit was usually rank specific. So you had your E6s together, your E7s would bunk together, your E5s would bunk together, rank specific how they bunked.

SPEAKER_01 55:29

Yeah. Did you guys have men and women both in your unit?

SPEAKER_03 55:31

I had one unit or one woman in the unit. Um, and she was attached to us from the 25th Infantry Division. She ran our satellite dish. That was our communication satellite.

SPEAKER_01 55:42

Gotcha. Does she then have her own she'll have her own bunk? Yeah. Yeah. She'd have her own room, I mean. Right. Yeah. Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 55:50

She she had her own room. Um I'm pretty sure it wasn't solo very often.

SPEAKER_00 55:56

Um, personally, but what do they call those in the military? Where they just Queen for a year. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 56:04

Yeah, I'm sure you're the only one in the whole unit. The only woman, yeah.

SPEAKER_03 56:08

Well, she worked for me, so I tried to maintain a professional, a professional outlook with her. She was great. I'm still friends with her on Facebook to this day. She she was a she was a hell of a nice lady. I think she ended up uh her and her husband retired both of them as I want to say she was a master sergeant. He was a sergeant major, command sergeant major, but she lives in Alaska now.

SPEAKER_01 56:32

Is it a pretty common thing for people to get like divorces and stuff while they're while they're in active duty and people like get those Dear John letters and stuff?

SPEAKER_03 56:42

Yeah, um now I can't speak for how it is now, but at that time, you like say I went and say my wife wants to divorce me, they can't take any legal action against you because you're deployed. Uh I think it falls under the Sailor Service Relief Act. It's a it's a federal law that um somebody can't take legal action against you while you're deployed because you can't come and defend yourself. Right. And so that's forbidden. But we did have a few people that that got those kind of letters. Um, and so it was it was kind of a sketchy area because you would have guys that would find out their wives were messing around on them, so they would change their bank info and quit sending money home while they've got kids. Yeah, you can't do that. You still have to send money home to take care of your family. Um me before I left, it's not that I didn't trust my ex-wife, I just I wanted to make sure that money was saved and spent right. And so I made my dad my power of attorney and then he supervised all my funds and everything. Yeah. Uh smart. Yeah, there was there was a lot of people though that I think that that dealt with that. I didn't witness it very often.

SPEAKER_01 58:02

Yeah. So what did you do when you came back then from your tour?

SPEAKER_03 58:05

So I got back. I ended up uh uh going back to my civilian job, which was I was an insurance adjuster. Um I had a lot of problems sleeping. I there's certain things that that I'll take to the grave with me that I don't talk about that for a long time I couldn't close my eyes without seeing. And and so I started to get to where if I drink six beers, it puts me to sleep and I sleep all night. You know, and and I refused to get help. I refused to go to the VA. I refused to talk to anybody about what I'd went through. And so I slowly started to to spiral and crawl into that bottle. And it went from where I'd come home, have a few beers with dinner every night, to I'd pull off and I commuted an hour each way to work, or I'd pull into the gas station right next to the office and buy a 12 pack of beer and have half of them gone before I got home. And it slowly went into that. Um my relationship started to fall apart with my um with my wife at the time. Uh the kids, they didn't want to do anything with me because I was in a stupor most of the time. Um, and what's what's funny about this whole thing is that during this, I don't think my parents realized what I was going through and how much of a problem I was developing. My coworkers didn't think there was any problem. They didn't know I was drinking like that because I came to work every day. No matter how hungover I was, I rolled out of bed, made a cup of coffee, and went to work.

SPEAKER_00 59:44

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 59:45

Um and so I started at that point to really kind of spiral. And the worst part, that I think the part that started me on it was I had 90 days to report to work after I got home. And I know why the government makes it to where you're eligible for this, the employer can't fire you for doing this. And I think it's because in the government's eyes or the military's eyes, is it you need that 90 days to readapt, get to know your family, get to know your kids, um, get reaccustomed to civilian life. What that 90 days did for me while my wife was at work and the kids were at school or daycare, what that 90 days did for me was make me sit around and think about every stinking minute that I was gone. Every minute. Worst case scenario, what could have happened, what didn't happen, what did happen. And I should have just went back to work. Came home, stayed home for a couple of weeks and then went back to work, but I didn't. And I think those demons are what started spiraling me. But uh, but I came back and I was as far as the army goes, I had realized at the age of oh god, how old was I? I think it was 34, 33 or 34 years old. I started to realize that being in the infantry, my body wasn't as good as it was when I was 20. I couldn't quite keep up with some of them younger guys, and I knew I couldn't function in that environment anymore. Uh my best friend had left and went to the Army Reserve and was in an instructor battalion. And he finally one day I'm like, hey dude, I'm gonna come see your unit. I want to check it out. And so at that time, about 2006, I ended up transferring from the Army National Guard into the Army Reserve. And that was a big culture shock because I went from being an infantry soldier where everything is right in front of your face, everything is black and white. Everybody knows what their job is, everybody knows they're placing a pecking order, everybody knows that at any minute they could they could die to a unit where everybody just doesn't, it's just like going away for the weekend for a second job, you know, and it was a total culture shock to get into a I call them Rimph units, rear echelon units, and that was a culture shock. And then I ended up staying in reserve until I retired from that point, but that was the big thing, and about that same time that I transferred, I was really starting to hit full pace in my drinking. Um my job was kind of starting to to have some bad effects. I I hated my job, but at the same time, I blamed a lot at the time on why my bosses were the way they were towards me. I always blamed it as I just didn't know what I was dealing with. And looking back, no, I probably could have been a better employee. I wasn't drinking or coming to work drunk, but my attitude sucked. And I had this attitude of you need to thank me for my service. You should be thanking me and licking my boots that I was over there fighting for you. And that's the attitude I had. And I think it was just part of being so amped on what I was doing while I was there that it was kind of made you feel spoiled too. Um but anyway, I ended up job was starting to kind of go downhill, so I switched. Um I was supposed to become a supervisor, is what it was. And they decided to go a different route. And I thought, oh, this is just because you don't like me. You don't like me, you know what? F you. You don't like me. Then I look back now, I'm pretty sure I know why they didn't pick me. Yeah. Work ethics sucked. I came to work, but I was an ass to work with because I was sober. And the only way to make me happy was to give me a beer.

SPEAKER_01 1:04:06

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 1:04:08

Um, but then I switched into risk management and I did that for probably about two years before I quit and moved out here.

SPEAKER_01 1:04:17

Yeah, and then you went full-time active reserve.

SPEAKER_03 1:04:20

So I go through all of that. Um about 2011, it's about it's March. And I'm sitting in a 2,000 square foot home by myself because my wife at the time, she's moved on with the kids. She's already dating. So I'm sitting on the floor because I didn't have any furniture. And watching TV, and of course I've got my my beer. And I'm like, God, I can't understand why nobody wants to be around me. I just don't understand what I've done wrong to the world to deserve feeling like this. And the dog farted and walked away. And I thought, well, damn dog, don't even want to sit with me. Yeah. Um, and at that point, I had a suicidal thought. Um this is it. Let's just do it right now. And I don't know what clicked in my mind, but at that moment, um I called my ex-wife and said, Hey, I need somebody to take me to the hospital. I just had a thought of killing myself, and I think I need to, I think I need to quit drinking. And so she came and got me and took me to the VA. And the VA made me go, I went to the substance abuse unit, talked to him, like, well, we can't take you right out of the street. You you've got to go to the emergency room. So I went to the emergency room and and they uh they kind of gave me work up and everything. And then I went back up, talked to the substance abuse unit, and this was on a Friday. And they're like, Well, we won't have a Monk until Monday. Do you have people that a support group to help you through till Monday? They're like, oh yeah, yeah, I do. And in my mind, I'm going, as soon as I get out of here, I'm getting freaking ripped. I'm going home. I know I got beer all and booze all over the house. I'm going to go home and get drunk.

SPEAKER_01 1:06:18

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 1:06:19

And so that's the first thing on my mind is once she takes me back to my place and drops me off, I'm going to tie one last one on before beforehand. I get back to the house and she comes in the house with me, and my parents are there, and my dad had cleaned out every bit of alcohol out of my house. Oh, threw it away, dumped it down the drains, got rid of all the bottles, everything. He completely ransacked a house. And so yeah, that was March 28th, 2011. Wow. Yeah. Yeah. And thankful every day that that he did that. Because had he not, I'd probably, I don't know if I'd ever went to rehab. Yeah. Um, and I do thank my ex-wife for coming and get me that day. I mean, we've we found out later down the road that my alcoholism wasn't all of our problems. And so that's why we ended up splitting. But but at the time, that was the root cause of every problem we had. Um, but uh I don't know if she wouldn't have come and got me who I would have called.

SPEAKER_01 1:07:19

Yeah. At that time. How was that weekend for you not drinking and waiting until Monday?

SPEAKER_03 1:07:23

Um, it was rough. We went up to my to my sister's house and stayed there. And I I just I made sure that I was never alone. Um after my my parents had cleaned everything out of my house, I thought, okay, this is real. So this must be this must be God's way of telling me, hey, no, you're not getting drunk. You're done. You've made the decision. Um, so I really tried my best to not do it. Um, I did not have, and I'm lucky, I did not have the DTs that you see people, you know, the people that are shaking or picking at themselves. I didn't have any of that. Um to me, I think I was blessed because to me it was easy and it's not easy to everybody. Um when I got inside of rehab, I actually at one point went, uh, I don't need to be here. These people are way worse. I don't have a problem. Yeah, that's a problem. You know, people screaming in the middle of the night. I mean, it was everything out of the movies you see. Yeah. And but I thought, no, I'll give it 48 hours and see what happens. At the time I smoked too. And they kept on you about smoking. And I was like, you know what? Maybe if I'm giving one up, I should give the other up. What the hell? I'll give up smoking too. And so I went from the first day of going, I'm not here, so I'm just gonna game the system for 28 days. So if my family gives me a pat on the back, no harm, no foul. Um, to where by the time I left, I was a class leader and I was conducting the the different sessions, I was conducting AA meetings, leading them. Um I was the class leader, so I helped the new guys coming in, getting them squared away. Um, and I continued, even after I was discharged, I continued for so I was discharged at the end of April and I moved here in July. So between April and July, I went three days a week nonstop.

SPEAKER_01 1:09:32

What was that mindset of shifts while you were in the you're like gonna take it seriously?

SPEAKER_03 1:09:36

Um I think it was because I was around people that saw the same crap I did, same problems. They had the same, I had one kid that bunked next to me, and I want to say he was a few years younger than me. But uh one Sunday we went to church, and the sermon was, and I don't know how familiar you are with the Bible, but the sermon was about Lazarus when um Jesus went and raised Lazarus from the dead. Yeah, and the sermon spoke to me with I was dead, but now I'm alive. I was revived and given a second chance based off of that sermon. It hit me that hard. And that's when I was like, all right, it's clicking now. It's really clicking. I'm getting a second chance. I'm getting a second chance with my kids, I'm getting a second chance with my family. Um and so I started to go headfirst into everything. I bought into it. Um plus I saw stuff where they talk about what it does to your body. Um, they were constantly doing blood work on me to check my liver for damage, which thank God, nothing was wrong. And to this day, nothing's wrong with my liver. Yeah, uh, which very well could have been. Um and then one particular day, right about that same time as the the church thing, they brought my kids and my my wife in, and I had to sit and listen to what they hated about me. Wow. And I couldn't defend anything, I had to sit there and listen. I wasn't allowed to talk. I'd just sit there and listen to that.

SPEAKER_01 1:11:12

How old were your kids at the time?

SPEAKER_03 1:11:14

Uh my daughter was four, and my son was no eight. No, no, no, no. Taylor was nine. Ray was eight, Taylor was nine.

SPEAKER_01 1:11:23

That's a that's a hard age to have to hear stuff like that from your kids. Yeah. Because they can understand everything. It's not like they're so young that they don't know what's going on.

SPEAKER_03 1:11:31

Yeah, I take that back. Taylor was Taylor was eleven, Ray was 10. So yeah, they were old enough to know they were getting into their tween age. Yeah. Um, so that was that was a real real eye-opener because you couldn't go, but but but you just couldn't, you couldn't stand up for yourself. You had to sit there and listen to what you had done to them while you'd been drinking. And I think that was a very powerful, um that was a powerful way for me to think about who I had hurt and how bad I had hurt them. And to this day, I don't think that there's a hundred percent healing uh from my kids regarding that. I still think that they were still growing to get better from that.

SPEAKER_01 1:12:24

Yeah, but it's interesting because now like they can you can also set that example for them, they could see both sides. And I don't know how they are, you know, now, but like I'm sure that they can have that kind of an example to look back on and if they want to make those decisions on alcohol with their life.

SPEAKER_03 1:12:40

So yeah, I mean, they um they've both experimented in their own ways. Um, and I've told them you have to make your own choices, you just know what your dad went through. Yep, and there is a history on in my family of of it. Uh, so you know your history, just be mindful of that when you go out there and you live in that world. And of course, my my son currently works for I DOC. Um, my daughter, she works for Amazon, and she's she's finding her way slowly and steadily. But I think I think they're both mature enough now that they know know what to watch out for. Um and I'm slowly starting to learn how to how to communicate with them and and be a better dad with them, be uh be more of a of a coach than a dictator. Right. With them, so to speak. Like a mentor. Yeah, more of a mentor. Um yeah, and Shelly's helped me immensely with that. She's she's she's bridged that gap a lot with me, taught me how to communicate more, be more of a listener than a talker.

SPEAKER_01 1:13:55

I'm sure it's gotta be hard with all your roles that you had through leadership in the military and in the prison, and and even now you're still in a law enforcement role where you were, you know, enforcing stuff, to then realizing that your kids aren't like you you're you're more of a mentor to them than you are uh like you said, a dictator or or the enforcer. There's times you need to enforce, but there's times there there needs to be more coaching than it is like do as I say kind of thing.

SPEAKER_03 1:14:22

Yeah, and there was one day that my uh my daughter and I don't always see eye to eye politically. Uh and in the current world of events, I mean, oh my god, people are relationships are going into the trash over what's going on in the world. Um and instead of at one point we got a little mad at each other, but then we talked through the day. And even my daughter said that she was happy that we were able to have a conflict, talk our way through it, and still love each other at the end of the conflict versus the way it used to be, where it was F you, no, F you, and then communication shuts off.

SPEAKER_01 1:15:01

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 1:15:02

You know, so we're we're able to communicate and talk to each other and talk our conflict out now.

SPEAKER_01 1:15:09

Yeah. What was the hardest part like when you get out of uh rehab, like for triggers and stuff?

SPEAKER_03 1:15:15

Um it was it was probably well, one of the hardest parts to remember was when I first moved out here, which was three or four months later. I think Beer Fest was going on downtown Boise. And we decided to go downtown to just walk around and do stuff, and I didn't know Beer Fest was going on. I turned a corner and I could smell beer. Yeah. And that was a little bit of a trigger. Um, I guess the biggest trigger would be stress that I had, but I don't remember up until I was I was single, but between the time I met Shelly and the time that my ex-wife and I divorced or split up, that was the toughest time. But that I that was the biggest test I had had. But I don't remember, I think I just changed my mindset to where to me it was like I just knew it was just a trigger. I didn't, I didn't really feel like I had triggers. Yeah. I just stayed away from it. I stayed away from any environment. I changed friends, I moved 1200 miles away from my environment that I was used to. Um, I completely restarted my life. Um, and so that's that's a big thing that I tell people is that if you're gonna quit and you're gonna be serious about any sort of substance abuse, rehabilitation, recovery, you have got to change your life. You've got to change your background, you've got to change your friends, you've got to you can't you can't sit around and do methamphetamine and then go get sober and then come and hang out with the person that sold you the methamphetamine. Right. You just can't because you're gonna go right back into doing it. Uh unless that person quits doing methamphetamine, you'll use that as an example. But um you you you have to make those changes. You can't you can't go back to the same life and expect just to be able to to get by. Um, and I think that helped me moving out here, and I had a good support system with the people I was working with here. Everybody knew my past. Um and I just kind of enveloped myself into making sure I didn't fall in that again. And so I don't remember triggers really, really getting to me um when the ex-wife and I started to split up and before I met Shelly, there was a few nights because I worked at the Speedway part-time uh for extra cash, and I can remember that was tough because I got posted a lot by the by where they'd sell beer and stuff. Uh, I just kind of put it out of my mind and get focused on watching what was going on with like the race and stuff because I love racing. Um, but coming home, the demons would start pecking at me, and I would kept telling myself, if I can just get inside my door, if I can get in my apartment, I'll be fine.

SPEAKER_00 1:18:30

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 1:18:30

But if I stop pulling to a gas station for anything, I'm buying beer.

SPEAKER_01 1:18:35

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 1:18:36

And it was it was it was that close. Uh in fact, I dated a gal right before I met Shelly that would come to my apartment. She would bring beer with her, and she would leave and leave her beer. And finally I was like, you gotta go. Yeah, you know, you're you're feeding you're feeding the demons I'm trying to keep at bay here. Right. Um and then I met Shelly and I found that she's not a drinker, she'll have a few occasionally. Um, but very seldom does Shelly ever push herself to that that inebriated state. Well, not even inebriated, where she's got a buzz. Right. She doesn't do that. She respects my feelings towards it and and whatnot. And so I was able to put all that behind me. And again, I think I'm blessed because I've had a lot easier time than most people have. Um one of the things I do in my job is um, I don't know if you're familiar with drug court.

SPEAKER_01 1:19:41

I've heard of it. I don't really know exactly what everything is, though.

SPEAKER_03 1:19:43

So drug court is somebody gets a felony for whether if it's could be marijuana, could be methamphetamine, could be heroin, could be alcohol. They've gotten their fifth DUI. Right. And they can petition to become a member of drug court. And so it's an extensive programming thing that they can do in in lieu of going to prison. They're still on felony probation. They're just overseen, they got to come in, they have phases that they move through in it. They have to do a community service project. It's it's very, very programming oriented. One screw up and your time gets implemented, and you're going to IDoc. You know, so it's very strict. Um and so I get to work with that every now and then. Like Monday or no, Tuesday, I'm the bailiff in drug court, and I get to watch two kids graduate drug court, that they're making it out of drug court, and they're getting their unsupervised probation papers, and they're they don't have to do any more. They're done. Um, and so I tell all these people, and I've gotten to talk in front of drug court too, and and it's amazing. But I tell them, you've got to change who you hang out with. You cannot hang out with the same people that fed your addiction. You can't. You just can't do it. And you've got to change what you do, you gotta change how you look at life. You gotta you got to get in your mind that being honest means you have to be honest with yourself even when nobody's not looking nobody's looking. You have to be honest with yourself when nobody's looking.

SPEAKER_01 1:21:20

Yeah. Yeah, because if you keep lying to yourself or losing trust with yourself, and you're that's the only person you got, then you're not gonna believe any of your anything that you say to yourself. Yeah, you know, like a lot of people they'll uh they'll like set goals and then they'll keep giving up on themselves and then eventually you just stop believing in yourself. Exactly, exactly.

SPEAKER_03 1:21:40

And you know, it could be the same with anything, it could be the same with your physical fitness, the same with your diet. Um it it it all depends. It all is about how stubborn are you gonna be with yourself and holding yourself accountable. Um like I always was an ass about making sure I had enough money in my account to have money for beer for two weeks. And so I took that thought. I thought if I was such an ass about making sure I had that drink, I'm gonna be an ass to myself about not having that drink and hold myself accountable for those thoughts. And if I do have a thought like that, then I'm gonna go find somebody to talk to about it and say, demons are choking me out today. I need to sit down and talk. Yeah, you know, um, it's and that's hard. That that's hard for people to admit that they've got that weakness.

SPEAKER_01 1:22:28

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 1:22:28

And I'm still learning to deal with it. Shelly still has to remind me every now and then that if I'm having feelings like that, I need to tell her and talk about it. But I feel like I'm getting a little bit better at it. But um, but yeah, it's it's it's a lot about holding yourself accountable when nobody's looking.

SPEAKER_01 1:22:48

I think one of the things that really got me to switch to stop drinking alcohol back in 23 was was uh just a lot of the inmates like from working in the prison, and we were working transport, so they would, you know, talk to you once you get out of the prison, and a lot of times we would just ask them like how'd you end up here? and a lot of times people are like, Oh, is this a drunk, stupid night? And you know, I've made a bad decision when I was drunk. Yeah. And I was like, How many times have I heard this and then to think that I'm any better than them that it couldn't happen to me? Exactly. You know, like I remember one specific guy, I would I stripped him out, and you could tell it was like his first time ever being stripped out, really nervous. And even he said, like, sorry, this is my first time, I've never even got a speeding ticket before. And I was like, Oh dang, what are you in here for? He's like, uh, I murdered my roommate. And he told me the story how he was um just drinking one night, and then next thing you knew, he woke up and he was handcuffed to the the uh bed in the hospital, cops standing around him, and he'd ask him like what's going on, and they ended up proceeding to tell him that you blacked out and you would your roommate's dead, and we're trying to figure out what's going on. And it came out that he had murdered him, but he's like, I'd never even have a speeding ticket before, and there's just one night of being drinking alcohol, and I think, man, that's like one of the top stories that sticks with me. But I mean, back before they took away like reading PSIs, like I would be bored and I would just read people's PSIs, even though they told you not to, but whatever.

SPEAKER_03 1:24:13

I did the same thing, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 1:24:14

But I mean, how many times would you read it and it was because they were they weren't sober, and it was something they did while they were drunk or high, or yeah, you know, and or they did something to feed that habit. And a lot of times, like when people are sober inside of prison, you're like, Man, this guy's such a good guy. Like and you you hate to be that guy and you're like, Oh, I gotta go look and see what he did, but but a lot of times it would be that it was something that happened when they were drunk.

SPEAKER_03 1:24:37

Yeah, yeah, I I did that too. I'd I'd get a good rapport with an inmate and be like, this guy's all right, man. He likes the same music, likes the same sports I do. Uh he likes to hunt, he likes to fish. I mean, I'd take the prison out of this. I'd probably be friends with this guy. I wonder what he did. And you'd look it up and you're like, ooh, gee, no, I'm good.

SPEAKER_01 1:24:53

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. There's and there's some of those too that it's like, oh, never. Okay. But then at times you're like, man. Like when when inmates would tell us, like, the only just difference between you and me is you didn't get caught. It's not that far from the truth. That's a lot of truth.

SPEAKER_03 1:25:09

There is. And and I am I'm a hundred percent sure that if I have a guardian angel, mine looks like the dude on the mayhem commercials. He's had the shit beat out of him, he's got a black eye, stitches up here. He's got to because the amount of times that I should have been in prison or should have been in jail, I just it just baffles me how I managed to get to where I'm at now, to where I was at then.

SPEAKER_01 1:25:34

Yeah. Well, was it that made you want to go work in a prison?

SPEAKER_03 1:25:37

Uh, I needed a job. Yeah. Uh in 2013, the uh the economy went south and um and the government decided that if the government was gonna shut down or they could not come up with a budget that the money that they needed for whatever during a shutdown at that time, they called it a sequester or something, and that they were gonna take money out of the military budget to cover that. And around 2013, government shut down, so they pulled the money out of the government budget, and my job went out the door. So I went from, you know, I was pretty much active duty and I was getting all the active duty benefits to nothing. And so I started applying for jobs, I was going to job fairs. Um, I had no intention of going into law enforcement at that time. I figured that ship had sailed. And then I went to church one time with the guy that I was hanging out with, and I started talking, it was Bible study. He had talked me into going. And I've never been one that goes, I'm not a huge fan of organized religion because I guess my my thing is is I know what I believe, and I can read it and infer by myself how I feel that that's meant to impress upon me. But what I don't like is somebody that he doesn't know any more than I do, and he's up there trying to tell me how I should live and how much money I should give him so he can go to Europe and tell people about God, you know, and that's what I'm against. And so anyway, I went to Bible study and I was talking to a guy that worked at IDoc at the time, and he was telling me all about it. I mean, he sold it, he was in love with his job. Yeah. And I was like, oh, okay, well, you know what? I'm kind of hungry, so I need a job. And so I applied for CCA at the time. It was before, yeah, before uh IDoc took it over. CCA told me I didn't meet their moral standards according to their entrance test, which is funny. That's funny, yeah. Uh, and I applied for IDoc. And I got hired by IDoc. And I don't know if they do this now, but at the time they used to make you go through a physical. And so I had made it all the way through everything, had my conditional offer, and I had to go out to the Arm to take a physical.

SPEAKER_01 1:28:02

Yep.

SPEAKER_03 1:28:03

And I they uh my blood pressure was running high, and I was scared to death they were gonna boot me for that. And they ended up getting me to take a test enough to where it came down. And I'm on my way home.

SPEAKER_04 1:28:13

An HR calls me on my phone and says, uh, so uh yeah, so when you when you applied here, the test that you take online when you apply, I said, Yeah, what about it? Yeah, you failed that.

SPEAKER_03 1:28:24

I said, How the hell did I fail a test? They basically asked me my name, my social security number, and my employment history. How did I fail that? Well, you didn't answer any of them. I said, The hell I didn't. I answered so you need me to come in and retake it. No, you're gonna have to reapply and start over. Like, oh. So I ended up reapplying, and it was like took me another eight months to get through the process. And again, I'm not working. And I end up uh that time, and it was April of 2014. I started at IDoc and made it through everything and then went to post. Started, I had my week of new employee orientation, and I started post the second week. And been in that field ever since.

SPEAKER_01 1:29:10

Yeah, in the law enforcement field. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, you did what, seven, eight years?

SPEAKER_03 1:29:15

Yeah, I started in 2014 and I left in 22, so eight years.

SPEAKER_01 1:29:21

Did you you always worked at what the yard in the farm?

SPEAKER_03 1:29:25

Yeah, I did um, I started at the yard. Uh, I worked pretty much every post there. And then in 2017, I was I was kind of at an impasse. Um, starting to get a little jaded. I had, it was funny because twice it had happened. I had tested for corporal and tested for sergeant. And every time I tested for sergeant, my current sergeant would say, Why are you wasting your time? They don't promote people from officer to sergeant. You're just wasting your time. I said, I'm just doing it for the interview experience. Well, I would always get an interview for sergeant, but not meet the minimum requirements to be a corporal. And I would get so mad. And around 2017, I was kind of thinking, maybe I need to start looking at something else. This is really starting. And I was it was about the same time I was separating from my ex-wife, and so life wasn't I wasn't in the best of places. And um one of the lieutenants who was he was in charge of uh the speedway security crew that worked at Meridian Speedway, he contracted that. Um he was my former lieutenant. I think he's a warden now. I want to say he's a warden at ISCI now. Uh Nick Baird. But he's like, hey man, apply to apply for a transfer. Come over and work with me at the farm, get a fresh start. I was like, Yeah, I'll apply, but you guys ain't very seldom did the farm ever take people from other facilities. And so I put in for it and he gave me the transfer. He got it pushed through. And uh so I transferred over over there, and the first day he said, I know you've had a bad rap going at the yard. I know you're burned out. I know that you don't agree with a lot of the policies of the way things are done right now with supervisory stuff. And he said, What I'd like you to do is look at this as a fresh start. Today's your first day of working for IDoc, start over. I was like, okay, deal. And I did that. Um, and that was January 1st of 2018. And in April, he put sergeant stripes on me, promoted me, skipped the corporal process and put me straight to which is pretty much like a lieutenant over there, right? Yeah, yeah. So I became a shift commander at that point. Went from being the property officer to shift commander. Talk about a wake-up call. Yeah. But uh that gave me kind of a fresh start. And if it wouldn't have been for him, God knows where I would have gone from there. I don't know if I would have stayed with IDOC or or or what I'd have done, but I was kind of at an impasse at that point.

SPEAKER_01 1:32:06

Yeah. Did you work with Travis Taylor?

SPEAKER_03 1:32:09

I did. Uh he was at the he was the um, I think he was an operations sergeant when I got to the farm. I worked at him with worked with him at the yard too for a real short while.

SPEAKER_01 1:32:19

I had him on a few episodes back, and he was telling me a little bit about the his farm experience and how it was a whole different experience.

SPEAKER_03 1:32:27

It was, it was. Yeah. Going from going from a secure facility to that was a huge wake-up call.

SPEAKER_01 1:32:34

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 1:32:34

I mean, it was and even even Lieutenant Baird at the time told me that you're gonna have to forget what you know. He goes, tell us what you know, because an outside eye looking in might spot things we don't see. But this is more geared over here towards guys that have done their hard time and they're getting ready to get out. And he was right. Majority of them guys were over there to work, make money, put some change in their pockets. So when they got out, they had a start. Yeah. Uh, and so I agreed with most of what they were doing there. Um, it was hard for me to go from my God, if I found tobacco at the yard, I'd it was almost like finding heroin. Yeah. Same offense, you know. Right. To the farm, you catch somebody smoking a cigarette, you're like, put it out. Then you go and you look in their C notes. Oh, they don't have a C note, I'll put one in.

SPEAKER_01 1:33:31

You know, kind of like back when you were in Iowa and they caught you with alcohol driving. Yeah, like poured out.

SPEAKER_03 1:33:37

Um, and then yeah, it's so when I became a shift commander there, it was I was thankful that that's where I did it at, and that's where I cut my teeth on that kind of work was because it was a little bit easier. I had fewer staff to do it. Like there was times when and graveyards, if I was running three or first shift on graveyards, there was times that we were short-staffed enough that I'd have one or two people maybe on the north end of the compound, and me and the ASC on the other end of the compound. And we would be doing the cheer checks on the units on that end. There was no staff permanently in the unit. Yeah, it was that bad sometimes. But for the most part, those guys were so tired from working 16 hours that day that you didn't have any problem from the inmates until they moved the women to change the half of it to women. Right. It was a piece of cake over there.

unknown 1:34:34

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 1:34:34

I'm not knocking on the women, I'm just saying it got a little more, a lot more hard work because they were that was considered a close or uh secure facility over there. The North Dorm. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 1:34:46

Yeah. Yeah, that's a that's a whole nother thing, I think, working with women because you're dealing with a different kind of emotions than you're working with men. Exactly.

SPEAKER_03 1:34:55

Exactly. Uh when I was done being a shift commander commander, I I kind of petitioned myself into becoming the um the housing sergeant. And so I supervise if if you wanted, if if your bunk was assigned to you, I assigned it to you. You know, I did all of that. Uh I controlled who got brought over, who got kicked out, all of that. And uh I go down to that north end, and some of them gals would say, I want a bottom bunk. Well, do you have a medical need for a bottom bunk? Because that's who gets those is people with medical need. No, I don't have a medical need for it. Well, then you can't have one. Why? Because somebody else that's got a medical need needs that bottom bunk. Yeah. That's stupid. Why is that the rule? I'm not gonna argue with you, all right? That's just the way it is. Yeah, and and I used to get I used to tell them it's it's as simple as this. You don't want to have people tell you where to live, don't do drugs and go to prison. Yeah, it doesn't get any more simple than that. Yeah, you know. Um, yeah, that was a whole different that took time to get used to because you're dealing with um I think, and I'm not not saying guys are stronger because guys have their share of mental health needs, but I think on the women's side you you also get the abused female, the the girl that got with the guy that beat her and hooked her on drugs and everything, and so you're dealing with that past as well. Um there's a lot you have to be prepared to deal with a lot more, and and it's tough. It's tough. Some of them, some of them women, you're like, Oh my god, how did you get wrapped into this? Yeah, and you know, and I had a particular warden tell me one time, you don't know what it's like to be an abused woman. Well, well, no, I understand that, but there's also requirements in society that you follow the rules, you know. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 1:36:54

Yeah, you gotta take ownership. Like you can't, you can't you can't uh change what happened to you in the past, but it's still up to you to make sure that you control your future.

SPEAKER_03 1:37:02

But uh I think that you have just as many problems with the guys as you do the women. It's just the women are are very good at at verbalizing their their needs and their, you know. Um and so it really works on your communication to have to deal deal with that. Um plus they can manipulate you really quick. Uh you really gotta watch yourself. Um it uh I got to the point at the farm where again I had to walk each unit every day. I would I would walk that particular unit when they were all at lunch. So there was less apt to have to deal with with um.

SPEAKER_01 1:37:45

Very strategical.

SPEAKER_03 1:37:46

Yeah, semi-a concerned form and walk away.

SPEAKER_01 1:37:48

Yeah. Did you ever have to deal with anything with compromising like staff getting compromised with those kind of units?

SPEAKER_03 1:37:56

In the female side, no. No, no, I never saw it. Uh there was some after I left, but I didn't see that, so I I don't know how much.

SPEAKER_01 1:38:07

I feel like it'd be a lot easier to get compromised with how emotional they are, especially if like the especially if it's a guy like and he's having issues at home and no one's showing him attention, and and now you got a woman that's out there and it's you're that's like the first thing to teach you in in post, like, don't sleep with the inmates.

SPEAKER_03 1:38:26

Yeah. Well, and there was there was uh a couple of people, one in particular that was a corporal when I started at the farm, and he ended up, I think, he ended up going to Orfino as an inmate because he was taking them, transporting them to medical appointments, and then fooling around with them.

SPEAKER_01 1:38:42

And was that the guy that played on the Boise State football team?

SPEAKER_03 1:38:45

No, this is a different one.

SPEAKER_01 1:38:46

Oh I know who you're talking about.

SPEAKER_03 1:38:47

Yeah, this was a different one. And I'm like, dude, you're in a position of power. You cannot do that, you have to put your emotions and your self-esteem aside. And it you I just it just always baffled me. If you're that hard up, go to a bar at two o'clock, you're gonna find something. Yeah, you know. Uh, but there have been some news stories I've seen come out in the last few months about certain staff and fooling around with the amazing some accusations have been made, and and I knew one of them. Yeah, I don't know how true it is, and I the individual, I can't remember who it was, but I remember thinking, oh, I never saw anything like that. But the bad thing is that if one person does that, then all of us are painted as rapist and and compromised people, as knuckle draggers that don't care. You know, one person does it, we're all grouped into that loop. Yeah, we're the only profession in law enforcement in general, where if one person does something bad, everybody pays for it. Yeah, everybody's just as guilty.

SPEAKER_01 1:39:56

I always found it interesting on the other end, too, of like the inmates that would be doing live, and then the women that would come in to see them, and they're like, never have a chance of getting out, and they're like stone cold foxes, and they're like with them, like never have a chance. Yeah, it's like you have the whole world, and you're gonna get this guy that's been he doesn't have a chance of getting out. Like, yeah, it's crazy. I would see I would work visitation and you see these people coming in, and you're like, What in the world?

SPEAKER_03 1:40:19

Well, it's even funnier to see the ones that you'd see the women like that come in and they'd have like three visits a week, those guys would, and it'd be a different chick every time.

SPEAKER_04 1:40:26

I love maybe make sure you put money on my books when you get out of here. You know, like it's the same thing every week.

SPEAKER_01 1:40:32

I have enough problems just trying to manage my wife. I can't try to manage four or five different of them. It's like, who when you if you ever get out of here, you need to be a manager because you can manage these relationships.

SPEAKER_03 1:40:43

Yeah, what would be funny was, and I saw it once at the yard where there was a guy that that did that all the time, every week. He'd have his three visits and it was always a different chick. Well, one week the guy, the one of the guys up front would usually he would I don't call it lying, but if there was one of the women there, he would tell the other two that he doesn't have any visits this week, he was in trouble or something, and basically cover for him. Yeah. Well, one week somebody knew was up there. Nope. They oh, he's already got a visit. Well, who's who's here to see him? And pretty soon there'd be some chick stand up in the back. That's me. Who are you? And then they would start arguing, like, take it outside, ladies. But it was funny because it ruined the little the little game he had going with him.

SPEAKER_01 1:41:33

Yeah. You worked in visiting at the yard?

SPEAKER_03 1:41:36

I I my FTO when I started was uh visiting corporal.

SPEAKER_01 1:41:41

I was at R E my last my last six months of working in there in on the yard, and it was interesting how many times I got called down on a Saturday to go and escort people because they were bringing stuff in, and I would I would be up with investigations and they were like, uh-huh. It was interesting, like a lot more than I ever had any idea before I was an RE.

SPEAKER_03 1:42:01

Did um did you ever work with Sergeant Case? Uh-uh. Dan Case, yeah, that was my FTO, but he was the visiting corporal at the time, and and he was a great, great FTO. I got plenty of strip outside working with him and visiting, but um I got plenty of those on transport.

SPEAKER_01 1:42:17

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 1:42:17

That was the awesome thing about being the sergeant on transport. If I ever went with any of you guys, I just pull rank and say, strip him out.

SPEAKER_01 1:42:23

Yeah. How was that? Were you going from the sergeant at the farm to then doing the transport? Um, I was ready.

SPEAKER_03 1:42:33

Uh I was starting to get to where I was at a point where, all right, I've got being a shift commander down. I can handle any ICS instant command system thing they throw at me. I've got the housing department fixed and it's up and running good. What's something new that I can do? And the only other opportunity besides transport was to start getting my lieutenant stuff in line, start getting ready to test for lieutenant. But I wasn't quite sure at that point if that's what I wanted to do because I had a pretty good gig. I was going, I went from you know, working RFM as a shift commander to I ran third shift for about eight months, and then I became a housing sergeant, and I was working basically, wrote my own schedule. I just had to work Tuesday through Saturday, but I could work any hours I wanted. Saturday I was a shift commander for day shift, but the rest of the week I could come to work at 5 a.m. and I could leave at one. I set my own schedule. Um and then the transport thing came up and I was like, hmm, this is interesting. So I threw my hat in a ring, and instantly Terrell Davis, who was the Ty Davis, he was the he was my deputy warden. He instantly came to me and he says, Oh, you know, I know where you want to be, and putting bars on your collar is not the way to go through transport. You're not gonna get bars going that route. And then Noelle Barlow Hust was the warden. She gave me the same lecture. She didn't want to see me throw away my career to be in transport. I was like, no, I really, I really kind of want to do something that is brand new that I can put my label on and say, I did that, I set that up, I started that. And so I went to the interview and I found out later down the road that Charlie had no idea who I was, never met the guy, he'd never heard of me. Um Martinez was the captain that was in there, and the other captain, I want to say was Ross. I think it was Captain Ross, who was the other captain. And so I went to the interview, and I walked out of the interview going, no, that was interesting. Guess I ain't going anywhere for a while. I just didn't feel good about it. Um and then when Charlie called me and offered the position to me, I said, Wow, that's a shock. I just I wrote that one off. And so I asked him for feedback, and he said, Well, I already had my pick made, I was just doing interviews because policy says I have to. And he said, After you walked out of the room, him and the captains were he looked at the captain and said, Well, what'd you guys think? And they said, Well, if you don't take him, we're gonna poach him. And so Charlie offered me the job. And uh, so going into the transport, it was something brand new. I had no idea how to write policy, how to write post orders. I had no idea how to do anything like that. I had no idea where to look, nothing. Um and Scott Brown and I had worked together as well, him a sergeant, me as an officer before. And I knew Scott, but I didn't know him that well. And so I was real, real protected around him. I didn't I didn't know who I was dealing with. Uh, and then I as I worked with him, I steadily got to realize that Scott's super smart when it comes to policy. He knows how to write post orders, he can look at things and go, yeah, they're not gonna go for that. We need to do it this way because of this, this, and this, and this. I was good at looking at, okay, this is the policy we've got. This is what we need to put it in place as far as manpower and staffing. I was good at that part, and so we ended up complimenting each other really well. Um, I could I could organize things and like I had spreadsheets to keep track of my spreadsheets, basically. And so I was good on that side of things, um, where he was good on the policy side of things, and so we complimented each other really well. And it took probably about four or five months, and we were able to take that. And I felt like the way it was when we started for the first the time I was there, I felt like we had a well-oiled machine set up. We didn't have, we didn't have staffing issues, we didn't have, I mean, I was pretty good about getting the medical people to not over overtask us with urgent stuff, exactly. Emergent. Oh, we can't cover that. Well, it's emergent. Oh, it wasn't, it's a frickin' fingernail. It wasn't emergent an hour ago. What changed? Why is it urgent now? Yeah, but I was able to communicate enough and build that rapport that I could get them to work with us, and I was able to get with the other captains and get them to work with us when hey, hey, I can't cover that. You're gonna have to cover that unless you talk to your medical people and tell them to stop. And so it got to where I think it was a well-oiled machine. Um, I'm pretty sure when I decided to leave, it was a shock to a lot of people. I don't think a lot of people thought I would ever leave. Leave I leave leave transport, let alone leave IDoc. Yeah. Um, but I was starting at the point I decided to leave, I was starting to get burned out there. And is so you, I mean, I I was on call 24 hours a day with that place. Um when I went on my honeymoon in Cancun, people were calling my phone on my honeymoon. IDoc paid for my phone, so I was expected to answer it when it rang. So even when I left for the day, I was still working from home. Yeah, never had a day off from the place. It was always available by phone.

SPEAKER_01 1:48:30

Um yeah, because then when we would have to call off, it wasn't like we're calling the shift command, we're calling you guys.

SPEAKER_03 1:48:35

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 1:48:35

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 1:48:36

Yeah. And the first thing I'd do in the morning is I'd get up and I'd get ready to get in the shower. I'd be sitting on the toilet and I'd load my phone up and go, Matt, I need you to come to work today, damn it. Yeah. You know, and he broke his collarbone. Yeah. I mean, not I'm just using that as an example, you were never an issue, but there was some that was an issue. And and so that meant I had to tell somebody else they've got to pull somebody off of their floor who's already short staffed, yeah, and put that person in a transport spot to cover me. And I I took that personal and so it ate at me. And even my wife will tell you there's days I came home and I was effing this and effing that, and I just I was crabby all the time.

SPEAKER_00 1:49:16

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 1:49:16

Um and so toward the end, when I saw the position I'm in now as a marshal come open, I was like, that's a hell of a pay cut. And it was, it was a huge pay cut. But I think I need to look at my mental health and my physical health. I don't want to go back to being a shift commander. I don't want to go back to working in a housing unit. I don't want to go back to, oh, sorry guys, I don't have weekends off now. I can't go up in the mountains and go on, you know. All my friends, my family, everybody had the same days off. Uh, and I just couldn't see going back to that. Yeah. And I knew it was only a matter of time before they made changes to the higher ed. Echelon that would make people get let go, change of leadership, everything else. Oh, he spent enough time in transport. It's time for him to go back to a facility and learn how to be a CO.

SPEAKER_00 1:50:11

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 1:50:11

No matter how good a job I was doing, right? That's where I was destined. And so at that point, I was like, Yeah, I've got to, I've got to move on. Yeah. This came along. It was almost like it fell into my lap. And I was like, yeah, I'm out of here.

SPEAKER_01 1:50:26

I'm out. How was it juggling everything when COVID hit? And IDoc. It's horrible. Because I remember that was the same week that I called you. You were the first person I called when I broke my collarbone. I called you up and I was like, I'm like, I didn't know I broke it. I thought I just dislocated my shoulder and I was like, hey, I think I'm just dislocated my shoulder and won't be at work on Monday. And then I called you the I think it was later on that night because then I went and got an x-ray and they're like, all right, it's it's broke. Yeah. That was funny that I called you before I even called my wife.

SPEAKER_03 1:50:54

I was like, ever remember Colin Brown. Guess what? Yeah. Um, the COVID stuff was a pain in the ass because it drove me crazy how I could haul a busload of inmates that had COVID. No problem. Yeah. No problem. I could do that and nobody would question it. But the minute I worked with you and you tested positive for COVID, boom, I had to be quarantined because I was exposed. It's like, what's the I does COVID come off of the inmate and go, oh crap, that badge says peace officer.

SPEAKER_01 1:51:29

Oh, can't can't hit him. Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 1:51:31

And that it was just stupid.

SPEAKER_01 1:51:33

That was a wild year.

SPEAKER_03 1:51:34

Yeah, it was it was so stupid how they ran that. And you know, and I I had COVID twice through that whole and one time put me in the hospital. I don't know if you remember that, but I was in the hospital on that. But it always drove me nuts. One time I got put on quarantine and I never was around anybody that they said I was around. And then I found out later it was meant for Kevin Larson, not me. Yeah. But yeah, I that was wearing masks. I'm sitting in my office by myself wearing a stinking mask. How stupid is that?

SPEAKER_01 1:52:06

We always had to keep the blinds shut because they don't want to wear the mask inside of that little tiny office. Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 1:52:10

We'd always tell you guys, no, if you guys want to have to deal with this shit, we can keep the door closed and stay out of here.

SPEAKER_01 1:52:18

Right. Yeah. Yeah, it was wild. I remember that year. I was always uh, I mean, I'd missed nine weeks because of my shoulder, and then I came back for like a month, and then I missed another week because my son was born. And then uh COVID, COVID was like, I don't think it was actually in the prison yet. And then me and my partner were the first case that we had transported someone earlier that day that had COVID. And so when we came back in our little Ford fusion, they wouldn't even let us come into the compound. We went to like Tower Four, dropped our guy off, and there was somebody in a in a golf cart, picked him up, took him, and we went and parked the car. We'd filled stripped our Glock and everything, put it all out there. They wouldn't let us go into the facility. They took a bug bomb for a bus and put it in our little car, sent us home for the weekend, and then uh they told us like we can't come back for 10 days. And I told my wife, I was like, I told her that I got exposed. And uh was funny because then it was like middle of summer, and I was like, I'm just gonna go quarantine up in the mountains, I'm gonna go check my gel camera. She's like, You don't have to do it's fine. I was like, No, I'll take one for the team. Yeah, I was and the golf courses were still open. I was like, Oh, I'll just go quarantine on the golf course. And she's like, You don't have to, it's fine. I was like, No, I'm gonna do this. Keep you guys safe. I don't like you guys subjecting to it.

SPEAKER_03 1:53:29

Yeah, yeah, I I just it was everything was so it was almost like they had nine million people running the show, and none of them knew the right answer. It was it was so annoying, and sometimes they would come up with the stupidest thing like, hey, if you go get the COVID shot, you don't have to test every couple of weeks.

SPEAKER_01 1:53:50

And we'll give you four hours of paid vacation. Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_03 1:53:53

So everybody went and did that. Oh, yeah. Um, so everybody needs to get a COVID test every other week. Uh which I guess I didn't mind because I would always volunteer to do that at the front gate because it gave me like every 160 hours I would pay periods, I would get, I don't know, it's like like 20 hours of overtime just off of standing there and going, here.

SPEAKER_00 1:54:14

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 1:54:14

All right. Scratch your brain with this.

SPEAKER_01 1:54:16

Here. You know, it sucks when the medical people do that because they would really scratch your brain.

SPEAKER_03 1:54:21

What the hell was that lady's name that used to do it for us in medical? She used to do the scheduling too, and she used to make me so mad some days because everything was urgent. Cannot remember what her name was. She was that old lady that worked in the yard.

SPEAKER_01 1:54:33

Oh, the Asian lady? Was it the Asian one?

SPEAKER_03 1:54:36

The main one, or yeah, she was the main one, and I can remember what her name was to save my life. But I I loved her to death, but she made me so mad. Everything would turn urgent. Well, well, this guy, his his uh he needs his hair removed, so when he goes in for his sex change surgery, I don't give a crap about his sex change. I don't have people to drive him, okay?

SPEAKER_01 1:54:56

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 1:54:57

But um God, but she would. I had to go down a couple of times. I think it was before we were taking me and Brown, I'd take that dude down to Salt Lake City and had to go down there and she had to give us our COVID test. And I swear to God, she hit the back of my scalp when she went in.

unknown 1:55:13

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 1:55:14

Yeah, it was wild some of the stuff that we did end up doing, going out of state. And uh, you guys were out down there for two weeks with an inmate. I was brutal. That was brutal. He um the biggest baby of them all. Oh my god, he was that was that was something that I've tried telling a lot of people is uh the inmates are bad, but it's their parents that call in. Yeah. Because his mommy was the one that was always having issues. Yeah, I can't remember what it was.

SPEAKER_03 1:55:37

It was he had done something. Oh, I remember what it was. Because Brown pulled me in the hallway and told me I shouldn't probably talk to people like that. But it was probably about the seventh day we were down there with this guy, and I had had it up to here. I was I was tired of tired of dealing with his every little need. And I mean, most of my days amounted to sitting on my iPod doing solitaire or on my iPad. And this particular day, Brown and I showed up at 6 a.m. to relieve the night crew. And so they were in the bathroom, we were getting a pass down, and they were swapping the weapon out and everything. And this kid rolls over and goes, Can you guys be quiet?

SPEAKER_04 1:56:21

I'm trying to sleep. I said, Dude, you slept for 17 hours yesterday. What the hell is five minutes gonna do now?

SPEAKER_03 1:56:30

Yeah, and he continued and he continued and he continued. And finally I walked over and I took the remote control for the TV and I said, We ain't watching that shit today. We're watching what I want to watch. And Scott's like, hey man, do you need to go get some breakfast or something? Yeah, maybe.

SPEAKER_01 1:56:48

Yeah, you need a Snickers? Yeah, I was just I I had had it.

SPEAKER_03 1:56:52

I just I'd had it.

SPEAKER_01 1:56:54

Yeah. Yeah. Did you ever get to see some cool surgeries? You ever get a I never had to do any of those.

SPEAKER_03 1:57:00

I well, I wasn't on transport. It was right, I was a brand new officer, and I got to watch a guy get his ankle steel screws and plates put in it.

SPEAKER_01 1:57:08

That was a cool opportunity being on transport, seeing some cool surgeries. I remember I did uh I seen an open heart surgery and just seeing the blood pumping into heart, like and then straining and how small the heart gets, and then just knowing that there was a machine just keeping this dude alive. It was it was wild. We weren't in that exactly in the room, but it was a big viewing room outside, and there was only one entrance and exit.

SPEAKER_03 1:57:29

So yeah, I've I've seen enough blood and guts in my life that any of the transports, by the time I when I was supervising on transport, I I pulled rank.

SPEAKER_01 1:57:40

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 1:57:40

I wouldn't I refuse, I not refused, but I would prefer not to go in. I just I just didn't didn't feel the need to look. And in fact, the one surgery that I was in was that ankle surgery, and the only reason I was in there is because uh there was a senior guy that'd been at IDOC for 20 years that was the other transport officer, and he goes, I ain't going, get in there, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 1:58:03

So it was a good switch for you going to Marshall, though.

SPEAKER_03 1:58:06

It's cool because you get to see how the criminal justice system works on the front side, um, and how slow the wheel of justice really turned. And my biggest takeaway from from working on the front side of the criminal justice system is you see a lot on TV people talk about how oh, this judge let this guy go, or this judge let this guy out of jail. 99 times out of a hundred, it's not the judge. 99 times out of a hundred, it's the attorneys that motioned for that, and the judge is going off of what the attorneys decided was fair between the prosecutor and the defense attorney.

SPEAKER_01 1:58:48

So like they reach an agreement.

SPEAKER_03 1:58:50

Yeah. Um a lot of times you'll see people say, Well, this guy's case is getting dismissed, and somebody else says, Well, who's the judge?

SPEAKER_04 1:59:00

We need to drag him out.

SPEAKER_03 1:59:02

The judge isn't dismissing the case. The prosecutor's dismissing the case. Go after the prosecutor if you're gonna be mad at somebody. Um, so there's certain things that you know, you sit and you watch social media, yeah. Everybody's convicted in the court of public opinion on the social media. And so there's been a lot of times where I've I've been in a no on some of these trials and some of these things, and I'm like, that's not how it works, people. You don't see one side of it, yeah. Yeah, you don't know how it works. Um, I'm not a lawyer by any means, but I've seen a lot of how it works. And it's like, don't blame the judge. The judge isn't letting that person out. That's some two attorneys coming to an agreement. Uh and I understand the judge doesn't have to agree on it, but if you don't like the prosecutor agreeing to those kind of deals, maybe you should vote in a better prosecutor, you know what I mean? Yeah, they're an elected official too.

SPEAKER_01 2:00:00

Okay.

SPEAKER_03 2:00:01

Um for the most part, our job as marshals for Elmore County is to protect the judges and order in the court.

SPEAKER_01 2:00:10

Okay.

SPEAKER_03 2:00:11

So that's specifically our biggest task is to take care of the judges. Um and you get to be privy to a lot of stuff that most people aren't. And so you really have to exercise self-control to keep stuff that's not out in the public, not in the public.

SPEAKER_00 2:00:31

Right. Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_03 2:00:32

I've had people say, hey, I got jury duty next month. What trials you got coming up? Well, I could look, but why would I tell you? Because now I'm tainting the jury pool.

SPEAKER_01 2:00:42

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 2:00:42

And and if I tell you about a case, then there's a mistrial because a jury they found out a juror knew something extra, and then last thing I want to hear is, well, who told you that information? Well, he did. Yeah. And so I've had a few people come up and say, Hey, I got jury duty next month. You got any good ones coming up? I could look, but yeah, I'm not gonna because I can't tell you anything about it.

SPEAKER_01 2:01:06

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 2:01:07

Um and it to it's to keep it fair. Yeah. If if I was accused of a crime I didn't do, and I'm not saying that everybody's innocent, I'm not a true believer, but if I was convicted or if I was arrested for a crime that I knew I didn't do, yeah. Last thing I'd want is somebody out there tainting the process.

SPEAKER_01 2:01:23

True.

SPEAKER_03 2:01:24

You know, so I try to uphold the process to make it it's still a process we have. Is it the best? I don't know. Yeah. But it's a process we have, it's the constitution, so right.

SPEAKER_01 2:01:38

That's cool, man. That sounds it's good that you've been able to cover a whole array of different things in your life. Yeah, it's all been kind of around the same kind of serving other others kind of thing, too. So service. Yeah. Yeah. Um and you were able to retire from the military too, right?

SPEAKER_03 2:01:54

Yep. I retired in 2022.

SPEAKER_01 2:01:57

It was like right before you left IDOC, right?

SPEAKER_03 2:01:59

No, it's 21, 2021. So yeah, it was it was about about a year before I left IDOC. Yeah. I retired uh with 32 years of combined uh National Guard, reserve, and active duty.

SPEAKER_01 2:02:13

You're just gonna keep doing the federal thing for for a while or well not federal, but I mean Marshall.

SPEAKER_03 2:02:18

This is county. Yeah, I've got five years till I hit rule of eighty.

SPEAKER_00 2:02:22

Okay.

SPEAKER_03 2:02:22

Um and we've already talked, the wife and I, that um she's rule of ninety. And we've agreed that when I pull the trigger on mine, we're both gonna retire. So we've we've been really working really hard to put ourselves in a position to have pretty much everything but our house paid off when uh when we pull the trigger. Um people have asked me, are you gonna stay past the rule of 80? And I'm like, nope. Percy's gonna go congratulate, and before they spit the word congratulations out, I'm out the door. Yeah. I I'm I'm done, I'm going fishing. I'm gonna go play some golf. I'm gonna go up the mountains, go camping. Um I'm done. Live some life. Yeah, I'm gonna enjoy my life. I mean, I with this job that it's blessed me with the ability where I can I don't have to fight for time off. I don't have to schedule it a year out. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 2:03:21

I don't have bid for vacation.

SPEAKER_03 2:03:23

Yeah, I don't have to worry about seniority. The only thing seniority does for us at at uh on the marshals or it used to was who has or how much time off you get a year. That's it. And what your call sign is, which it doesn't even matter anymore. We don't even assign call signs by seniority. Yeah. So I'm still six. Out of six, I'm Marshall six. Yeah. So seniority doesn't have anything to do with it. I don't have to bid shifts anymore. I don't have to, I don't have to worry about five minutes before I get off. Hey, uh, so I'm gonna need you to stay until for another four hours. Don't have to worry about any of that.

SPEAKER_01 2:04:00

You don't have to worry about decompressing early at the end of the day.

SPEAKER_03 2:04:02

You're kind of no, no, and then that was the thing, is that I dock, I'd leave work, I'd get home, and I'd have to take a nap.

SPEAKER_01 2:04:07

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 2:04:07

I'd have to go in a war in a room, shut the door, and be quiet for an hour. Where now I don't. And it's just a totally different now. I fight boredom more than I do anything. Yeah. Uh if there's no court going on, it's a little dry. But but yeah, it's uh I'm pretty happy with where where I'm gonna close my career out. Um it's it's it feels good to be able to um, like one of the judges. Um I went and played golf with him. And he's a blast to play golf with. We don't talk about work. Yeah, we don't talk about work. We we go out and we play golf. And one uh one time last year, uh I rode my motorcycle up here and I met him at the Idaho Racketball Club, and then we took we did the Lowman loop on our motorcycles and had a blast the whole day long. It was it was like Scott and Brian. There was no, I I still won't call him that. I still call him Your Honor. Yeah, you know, hey, my name's Brian. You know, cool, Your Honor. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. But um, but I mean it's kind of nice to you meet people that you know that in the public eye, there's so much power there with that individual and to meet and see the personal side of somebody like that. But you you don't you don't talk a lot about it with people, but at the end of the day, they put their pants on the same way as we do. And we're just a lot more educated and whatever they want, they get.

SPEAKER_01 2:05:39

Yeah. So what's your best advice for someone that's in like the law enforcement or or in the military or any of that, like that needs to decompress and not manage their and manage their stress in a healthier way than just alcohol?

SPEAKER_03 2:05:50

Um, I would find I would find better outlets, like um like the physical fitness part, you know, that that definitely helps. Um sometimes if I need an escape, I'll go play a video game for a little while. Uh, but that too, that can be addictive. That can that can get to a point where it takes up all your time. And if you've got a family, now you're taking time away from your family. Yeah. Um I I I play games a little bit, but I try not to play it when it's when um when we're not when we're both available. Like if she I get up in the morning, I get in the shower, take my shower, and I'll sit down and play a video game while she's getting ready for work. Yeah, things like that. Or I might play before she gets out of bed in the morning if I wake up before she does. But very seldom will I take time away from our time together to do that. Um, some other things would be um hiking. Get out and enjoy nature. Yeah, um, I've never been big on hiking after being in the army and being told to come on a rock in March. Yeah, uh, I was never big on it. Last year we went for a hike up in the foothills, and we were walking along, and Shelly, I said to her, I said, wouldn't it be cool if we found a shed? I mean, this is in November.

SPEAKER_01 2:07:07

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 2:07:08

I said, but they're probably already all picked up by now. And she says, Well, we're not in a place where you're probably gonna find any. There's no trees, it's all scrub brush and everything. And I was like, Oh, well, look at that. And I looked down and there was a shed. That's the only shed I ever found. Yeah. Um, so we're trying to get more into doing a little bit more of that because I realized that yeah, it sucked in the army, but to go out and do it just to enjoy being out in the quiet, yeah, you can't beat it. Can't beat it. Yeah, it is to me the biggest that going fishing. I don't care a lot of times. I don't give a shit if I catch a fish. I've seen guys doing like kayaking and stuff too, right? Yeah. Yeah, we do a lot of kayaking. Uh, never been big on kayaking, but um, she loves to do it, and I'm good once I get out there. I hate packing all the crap in the truck and getting if you can get me past that part, I'd love every minute of it. Last year, two years ago, I threw my kayak through the back of my truck loading it. I was so mad.

SPEAKER_01 2:08:06

Was it you that said that you lost a shotgun? Well no, no, no.

SPEAKER_03 2:08:10

That was my best friend. He took his grandkid duck hunting. They were kayaking down uh the Bruno River and hit some current and rolled the kayak. And we went back out there that year, that spring, with magnets trying to magnet fish the shotguns out of the room. We never did find them.

SPEAKER_01 2:08:25

Probably just full of sediment over the top of it or something.

SPEAKER_03 2:08:28

Yeah, I'm sure it got buried. Yeah, we never did find them. But no, I've I've never kayaked and hunted before, but I'd be willing to try it. But I did learn, I told him, I said, Did you learn to put a dummy cord on that damn thing before you put it in your kayak?

SPEAKER_01 2:08:44

Yeah, that's rough. Especially if it's a nice shotgun, like a vanilla or something. Yeah, that's rough. Yeah, but I think you I think you kind of touched on it too of people need to have friends outside of whatever job they're in, or to not talk about their job if they are from the same, you know.

SPEAKER_03 2:09:01

Yeah, um, don't always be in that stuck in that law enforcement or military or like yeah, you you probably saw it at IDoc where you'd CEOs work together and then they leave work and then they go and hang out together, and then that's all they would talk about is work. And so work never escapes your mind.

SPEAKER_01 2:09:18

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 2:09:18

Um, where the group I work with now, or I live that I'm that I hang out with now, we're all affiliated with law enforcement somehow. Uh however, that does not dominate our conversation.

SPEAKER_01 2:09:33

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 2:09:34

We might talk a little bit, 10 minutes tops, at night we're all playing cards together about law enforcement or about work. And after that, it's a general conversation. So we keep our work lives completely separate from what we what we deal with. So that's that's the big thing is you gotta learn a way to get, especially in law enforcement, to get it out of your mind.

SPEAKER_01 2:10:00

Yeah. Yeah, and that can be tricky sometimes because you can see some some pretty messed up stuff or or go through stuff, and then that's how you bond with people is like in those, you know, cell extraction or something.

SPEAKER_03 2:10:12

Yeah, you know, it's like you know, I have a a new staff member on Marshall's office that um this is her first gig in law enforcement. She worked at a grocery store for like 12 years. And this is her first she wanted to get into law enforcement, and she thought this would be a great job, and she still does, but she thought that it would fit her schedule and everything. And and the other day, my boss and I, he used to be a sergeant with the jail, and so we've both got facility experience, and we were telling her stories, and she was like, Oh my god, and I'm like, Oh, you don't know the half of it. Yeah, you do not know the half of what goes on in those facilities.

SPEAKER_01 2:10:53

It's wild.

unknown 2:10:54

But yeah.

SPEAKER_01 2:10:55

Well man, well, I appreciate you coming on and sharing a lot of your wisdom and experiences. I think it's cool when everybody gets the chance to to share, you know, things they've gone through and others can relate and you know, get some ideas of how they can make some changes in their life.

SPEAKER_03 2:11:08

So yeah, yeah, definitely. I mean, that's uh I like I like talking about the uh the substance abuse because I think it's kind of a hidden secret people don't like to talk about because it's a weakness.

SPEAKER_01 2:11:20

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 2:11:21

And I think it's a weakness that can be overcome. It's just you have to be willing to make the changes in your life to make it to make it work.

SPEAKER_01 2:11:29

Absolutely. Yeah, but thanks, Scott. Appreciate it. Oh, thank you.

SPEAKER_00 2:11:33

Thank you for having me on.