The Journey with Mark Astor

Ep. 13 How 8 Hours of Heroism During Vegas Shooting Changed Everything with Todd Blyleven

• Mark Astor

Share episode

Use Left/Right to seek, Home/End to jump to start or end. Hold shift to jump forward or backward.

0:00 | 44:32

What would you do if gunfire erupted around you and your family was running for safety? Todd Blyleven faced that exact moment at the Route 91 Harvest Festival in Las Vegas, and his split-second decision changed everything. Instead of running with his wife and family to safety, Todd kissed his wife goodbye and ran back into the chaos - not once, but dozens of times over eight grueling hours. His actions that night saved over 30 lives and helped hundreds more escape one of America's deadliest mass shootings.


Todd's story goes far beyond that horrific night in 2017. As a former MLB scout who signed 25 players to major league contracts and grew up in a Hall of Fame baseball family, Todd understood pressure and performance. But nothing prepared him for the moment he saw muzzle flashes from Mandalay Bay and made the choice to become a human shield for strangers. From carrying wounded victims to safety, to disarming a man with a knife in hotel corridors, to building makeshift triage centers on the street - Todd's journey through trauma, survivor's guilt, and ultimate healing offers profound insights into resilience, faith, and what it truly means to bounce forward rather than just bounce back.




Contact Mark Astor:

Website: https://mentalhealthaddictionlawfirm.com/

Phone number: 561-517-9405

Email: mark@astorsimovitchlaw.com

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/markastor

TikTok: Mark G. Astor (@astorsimovitchlaw) | TikTok

SPEAKER_00

We ran back and forth getting as many people out as we could and making sure that the triage centers were set up. I was going back in and a SWAT member grabbed my shirt and he said, Where are you going? And I said, I'm going in. Where are you going?

SPEAKER_01

It's the journey with drug and alcohol attorney Mark G. Aster. Welcome to the journey with Mark Astor. I'm your host, Mark Astor. I've spent a lot of years sitting across the table from people during some of the most challenging moments of their lives. As an attorney, as an advocate, and as someone who understands that the road isn't always straight. What I've learned is that success, recovery, and growth rarely look the way we expect them to. There are detours, hard conversations, and moments that change everything. On this podcast, I talk with people who are willing to be honest about their journey, what worked, what didn't, and what they wish they knew sooner. My guest today is Todd Lylevin. Todd, good to see you, and thank you for being here.

SPEAKER_00

Thank you, Mark. It's an honor to be on your show. I appreciate it.

SPEAKER_01

So let me tell you a little bit about Todd. Todd has spent his entire life at the intersection of elite performance, leadership, and human resilience. Born into a Hall of Fame baseball family, Todd grew up in a major league clubhouse, surrounded by world-class athletes, legendary coaches, and the highest expectations in the sports world. From an early age, he learned what it meant to compete, lead, to fail, to rise again, and to perform when the moment mattered most. Todd went on to become a professional athlete himself, then served as a respected MLB scout, signing more than 25 players to major league contracts. His unique ability to evaluate talent, build trust, and lead under pressure led him into an executive leadership role within global sports organizations and corporate sports companies. However, I think that pales into comparison as to what happened on October the 1st of 2017 when Todd became a heroic survivor of the Route 91 Harvest Festival mass shooting in Las Vegas, which is one of the deadliest mass casualty events in American history. Over the course of eight hours, he carried dozens of people to safety, protected the wounded, comforted the dying, and placed his life on the life again and again. His actions saved lives and changed lives. And if you haven't listened to Todd's TED Talk, you should take the 13 minutes that it takes to listen to it because I think it'll probably change your life. I know I listened to it and I was like, wow. So all I could say is wow. So Todd, I'm really happy that you're here, both furtively and literally, because you after that shooting, you may not have been. So I'm glad you're here and thank you for coming on.

SPEAKER_00

Thank you for the warm intro. That was very kind to you. And I'm happy I'm here too. So I appreciate it.

SPEAKER_01

I know baseball has been a big part of your career. Let's talk about that. You grew up in a baseball family. Tell us about that.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah, totally different life, Mark. My dad became a Hall of Fame baseball player, but that didn't come with just showing up at the ballpark and putting your uniform on. I got a chance to see him grind every single day. Got a chance to be around some of those great athletes, learn what it was like to lose, how it affected these great athletes, how they dealt with that failure. And then also, too, the celebration times with the game by game, the pitch by pitch. I just fell in love with baseball itself, fell in love with being around the ballpark. And what was so cool is my dad actually wanted me to be there with him. He was a present father in an industry where you're traveling all the time, the majority of the year, and all the way through as long as I can remember, since my childhood through about my high school years, I got a chance to travel around with him and go to all the ballparks, MLB schooling program, just all kinds of cool stuff and be around those guys. So it was just an incredible childhood being raised around so many of those great athletes.

SPEAKER_01

At some point, you must have said, This is what I want to do with my life. I want to play baseball.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah, for sure. Up until high school, when I started playing football, I was a quarterback. And of course, then I was like, oh no, I want to play football because you get to hit people and the aggressiveness of it. But in the end, I fell in love with baseball and ended up going to college and then playing professionally. But yeah, it I learned the fun side of the game at the highest level. I learned that game can be fun, even though you're working out all the time. And in many ways, too, skewed my perception of what success meant to me when the game ended. I didn't know how to like, how am I supposed to live in a normal life in a normal lane without Gatorade being poured on you after you like do something great? Whether it was like, I don't know, doing normal job stuff, and there's no pats in the butt, there's no a manager coming in talking to you every night, telling you how to fix things. That whole process. It was definitely an adjustment when baseball ended. But yeah, my journey in the game as a player and growing up was amazing.

SPEAKER_01

So, how long did you play professionally for?

SPEAKER_00

So I played for six and a half years, and then I tried the real world jobs for about a year. I became a manager at a boot barn Westernware facility. I was working construction, I did carpets, I delivered water, I just dove in. Like, what am I supposed to be doing? And then I was on the phone one day with my dad, and a friend of mine turned around and said, Every time that you're talking to your dad, you're like so happy about baseball. Why don't you try to go back into this? So I ended up going to a major league baseball scouting school. The Angels sent me there, and I ended up getting a job with the Angels right out of that extensive like how to become a Major League Baseball Scout program. And I ended up scouting for eight years with the Angels and the Rockies, which was another amazing job. I loved it.

SPEAKER_01

So you spent like 15 years pretty much just surrounded by the game.

SPEAKER_00

And then prior to that, all the years growing up. But what that game provides is yes, it's super professional, it's a blast. You learn a ton, especially in the baseball operational side. But when you've got a wife and two small kids and you're there at the Little League game, and your son hits a single and you miss the whole thing because you're on the phone talking about a player to your boss, and you see him high-five another coach, and you see your wife walking down the left field line with your young daughter, and you're there standing by yourself. I knew I was gonna miss everything else that these kids were gonna do in their life because I was gonna be gone. And the more I advanced in my scouting career, the more days on the road I was gonna be gone. So I made the choice to leave scouting at that time. And I went in, tried an indoor training facility thing, coach. That's all you think about, too. That's the problem. Athletes only think they're either can be a coach or they're gonna play or they're gonna do something else that they're gonna hate for the rest of their life. And all the skill sets you learn from being an athlete, all the people that you meet, you shake hands, like it's incredible in what you can do in the business world, or even just going back to school and applying yourself without all the pressures of working out every day and everything else. I went and I really challenged myself and I got a corporate job, and the rest is history. And I've been in the corporate sports world for just about 15 years now.

SPEAKER_01

Talk about your role in the corporate sports world.

SPEAKER_00

So I'm the chief marketing officer today for USA softball, which we're back in the Olympics in LA 28, which is pretty awesome. And the Olympic Games and softball are being played in Oklahoma City at our basically in our backyard. So I help with their marketing efforts or partnership. That's where my niche is global partnerships. It's what I've done in the corporate space for so long. Because of all those connections and warm handshakes, and every time you look someone in the eye and you're kind to them, it matters. And all those people raise up to be executives. Next thing you're doing a deal with Major League Baseball or the NBA or Little League or whoever. So that's what I do now. And then I have a sports technology company because I dove hard into technology after the Route 91 shooting as a therapeutic piece just to keep my mind on something else and really learn like coding and applications and build-outs and website design and development. So I took all that sports knowledge and put it into that stuff, which was part of my therapy, and it's a nice side gig for me as well.

SPEAKER_01

All right, let's talk about Las Vegas. Okay. Because you were right there when the shooting happened. Tell me about that day, how it started out, how you ended up being there.

SPEAKER_00

We had gone to that venue prior the last couple years. We were in Southern California, so it was a nice three or four hour drive. We would go to Vegas to unwind, and that's what you do, right? You go to Vegas to hang out, party for three days, or whatever. So that concert came about every year. It's a three-day country music festival. I don't know how many artists, let's say 30 or 40 artists, are playing on two different stages. You get your main stage. Well, every night you've got your main three or four artists that are starting to play right around 3 p.m. until about 11:30, 12. And you have your main artist every night, similar to Coachella or Stage Coach. So, anyways, we had just moved to Dallas, and my wife and I were not doing well in terms of our relationship and had been going backwards for a few years prior to that. And so we moved to Texas to start over, have this refresh. I had lived in Texas a couple times already, and we thought, you know what, let's go to this festival. We met all of our younger people that we had known, really since they were younger kids. They were friends of my wife's niece and nephews, all middle school, high school friends. This whole little group, it was about 18 of us in total. Uh, we were the cool aunt and uncle that went and partied with everybody, took them to their 21st birthday in Vegas. So they were about 23, 24 years old at the time, I guess, and 17. And it was cool. We we went to rekindle uh a love between my wife and I. We went to go hang out and relax. We hadn't had that in quite some time, and it was awesome, Mark. We landed, we hit Vegas running, man. Like that country fest first day was amazing. The dancing, the love, that was the other thing. Like Vegas PD, the venue, everything they did was so spot on. I mean, like security, right? You go in, you're getting wanded, they're checking you, and especially cowboys. We got all our boots, they're frisking you, and so they did a good job to make you feel safe. And there was tons of PD, police officers and EMTs walking around. Of course, there's a lot of drinking involved, so there's always people that are getting hauled off or whatever, or taken to the EMT booth for IVs, but like a lot of that it was controlled chaos, and uh we felt very safe throughout that. So we went to the first couple days, and then that third night, we went to conclude our festival fest, and we were leaving that Monday morning to come back to Dallas. And the last artists were about 20 to 30 feet from the stage, right off to the right of the stage, between the stage and the VIP booth, which then, if you're looking beyond that, you have Las Vegas Boulevard. As you're looking, if I'm looking at the stage, which is the stage I would consider to be south down on the Vegas Strip, and then you have Mandalay Bay across the street to my right, so I can see everything there. And then behind me, you had Tropicana, which is no longer there, and then to my left, you had the airport, but you had a parking lot and a street in between that called Giles Street. Okay. And every night at the end of the night, when that last performer comes on, the girls they all go to the front and they're up in the rails, and the guys go with them, and we're standing about 10 feet back and hanging out and watching our girls have fun and looking at the cowboys sing or whomever's on stage. But this night we stayed back. It was the first time we had all decided to stay back. We were dancing, people are videoing us, the all the kids were just circling us with their video cameras, and you can hear everybody chanting and having fun. And in the background, in that video, you can hear the first sound of sniper gunfire where he was trying to hit the gasoline tanks at the airport or the oil tanks or whatever they were to try to create chaos so people would run out the exit points towards him where he was set up with machine guns. And so we didn't know what those popping sounds were at the time, but you hear it, it's a little different, uh, maybe crackling from the speakers. You're thinking maybe it was a firework. I don't know. It's just some weird noise that I'd never really heard before. And then the first barrage of automatic gunfire started. And at that time, I had just stopped dancing with my niece. And once that gunfire hit, I thought it was a drive-by shooting on the other side of Vegas Boulevard. And there's a seven-foot retainer wall, the VIP tent. So I thought, okay, we're okay. If it is on the ground level, we're fine because of those cinder blocks. We should be okay. But police officers didn't move at that time. So that first automatic barrage of machine gun fire, it was crackling. You could hear the noise. They didn't move. So Jason Aldean's still singing as well. So the concert's still going on, but you're like everybody started getting a little bit closer to each other. And when that first mirage stopped, that's when you started to hear some of the screams that were, I would say, of joy and happiness turn into terror. And then the second round started. And once that second round started, we had people uh next to us go down, and we saw the people in front of us start to go down.

SPEAKER_01

Um how long between the first barrage and then you said it was a stop, and then the second one?

SPEAKER_00

I would say five seconds, maybe less. It didn't seem like it was that long in between the first two. It was enough to process, it was enough for us to consolidate and get closer to each other. And then it started, and it wasn't enough time to put together your thoughts in terms of, oh, we should probably go over and check out and see what's going on, or I'll go ask the officers. It was pretty quick in between the first and second round.

SPEAKER_01

At some point, did you become aware of where the shooting was coming from?

SPEAKER_00

Yeah, so once the second round started, I told everybody to get down because I'm a little bit taller, so I was able to see some of that chaos getting hit in front of us. Because mind you, we're still 20, 30 feet or so. We're right there next to the stage. And uh, so I told everybody to get down. As soon as my left knee hit the ground, I had my wife in front of me. Everybody's down. I knew there was gunfire coming, and I looked up to my right and I saw the muzzle flash at an elevated position from Mandalay Bay, and I knew that's a sniper or someone firing down at us. There's no coverage. So I told everybody to get up and run. And I wanted everybody to run towards the Gile Street, get away from the shooter, and because also there was the food vendor row was over there. The Budweiser booth was a big metal tin structure. So I wanted to get to that coverage where we could be out of the sight of that gunman. I lifted my wife up probably too hard. I lift her off her feet and we started running. And I got everybody as much as I'm trying to keep everybody in front of me, running as big as I possibly can. I remember running with my elbows out, just trying to really think about if a bullet were to come. And that's the scariest thing is when you're running away from a bullet, knowing that you could be hitting the ground, and that's the end of everything for you. But I just wanted to shield everybody I could, and we finally got out to Giles Street. And once we got out to Giles Street, we were okay at that moment. But I looked down the street towards Tropicana, saw four more cars, so I wanted to be able to get down that street to them, uh, four more police cars. And as soon as we started to run, a man came carrying a woman out, and it was within seconds. I ran over. He was close to us, I helped lay her down. She took her last breath, and then I knew at that moment instantly that there's no way I was going north. I sent my brother-in-law and the rest of the family to keep running north. I kissed my wife, I told her I loved her, and then watched them run, and I ran back in the other direction into the venue again.

SPEAKER_01

You said that when you first went in, there was there were law enforcement there, they were screening people. Had there been any response yet from law enforcement? You realized what was happening. Did it seem like that law enforcement knew what was happening at that point?

SPEAKER_00

I know that law enforcement obviously knew there was a shooter, but because of the acoustics inside the venue, even when we were running, you thought there was a shooter on the other side of the stage as well. And you could hear two barrages of gunfire. I'm not a conspiracy theorist, and I didn't really want to look into all of that. I knew what the carnage brought. Unfortunately, I was there and I saw it. But there was also 22,000 people and over 500 that were injured. So within minutes, you had people that were hit, that were bloody, running in different directions, out, different exit points, running across the street, back into Mandalay Bay, running to New York, running into Tropicana. Police started getting scattered everywhere, and they didn't know what was going on or how many shooters there were. So I knew that I saw one shooter when I ran back in that first time, and I picked up that older woman. She was hobbling out. I picked her up and I brought her to that squad car, that police car right on the side of Giles Street where we first ran out of that exit point. And at that time, there were three women down and like a security officer or an officer that was on his radio in the car. And it looked like he was injured in his foot. So I knew I needed to just keep going back and forth. That's what I was gonna do. I was gonna bring people there. And I'm a big faith believer, and I think God puts you in places that you're meant to be, and I think he places people in your lives in moments to inspire you. And as soon as I turned around to go back in, there was about 20 people coming out. I think I was probably one of the first crazy ones to go back in and against the grain, but there was about 20 people coming out, and a blonde-haired little nurse lady grabs me and says, What can I do to help? I'm a trauma nurse. And I said, Ma'am, you can put your hands on those girls right there, help them stay alive. I'm going back in. That girl right there, we still are connected through Facebook, but she was a veteran, been in trauma nursing forever. She ended up putting together three trauma triage centers on Giles Street, probably saved hundreds of lives that night. Incredible heroism that you're being confronted with as you're doing something heroic, not thinking about, I wasn't thinking about being a hero in that moment. I'm just concerned. I wanted to just get people out. My dad's side of me came out, the father figure side. I just wanted to get these young people out of that venue, and I knew a lot of people were going to be hurt. And every time I was battered, I was bruised, I was hurt, the questioned, what the heck am I doing? There'd be some inspiration fly across my eyes that I thought, okay, let's go, keep your boots moving. In that moment of complete darkness, again, the hero, the heroes that come out of that darkness to help others was remarkable to see. The aftermath of everything, your mind plays all these tricks on you in terms of positioning what you did and when you did it and all these things. But the stories that came to me through Facebook, the confirmation that I got through carrying over 30 people out that night, the remembrance of what it was like to hold three women in my arms that passed away that night. Absolutely horrible. I did my TED talk on that, on the 13-second memory that still affects me every single day. There's nothing in my life that could ever be that horrible, tragic, and dark than what I experienced in those 13 seconds. And what happened after that, that moment of light that hit me, and I realized okay, this is bigger than me. Let's just keep going. That's my motivator every day. So to be that consoling peace when someone's taking their last breath in such a horrible time when chaos is around you and everything's screaming, and you got people all over the ground. And people trying to save lives and to try to hold someone in your arms as peacefully as you can while they're slipping away is just it's horrible. And I had to do that three times. And then found out later that two of the girls that I had carried out ended up passing away at a hospital later on. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01

You said that you got your wife and all the family was out, and you said, just go that way and I'm going back in. You kissed your wife goodbye. It's not like you had a whole lot of time to contemplate this thing. You just said, I'm going back in. Where do you think that came from?

SPEAKER_00

Both my grandfathers were veterans. My one grandfather on my mom's side. My mom had two dads, a stepdad, and her biological dad was a career marine and fought in wars. My other grandfather was career Navy. I grew up as a kid wearing fatigues, digging ditches in the backyard, getting lost in the middle of the woods in Cleveland and Westlake, Ohio, where we live when my dad was playing with the Indians or in Pittsburgh. I grew up wanting to either be a Marine, a police officer, or a baseball player. And so it didn't surprise like my dad and those that knew me that the actions that I took to go back in. But it's also different. You don't know what you're going to do in those situations. And you can always try to say, I'm going to be that guy, or I had friends saying, Oh, I would have been right there with you. But I think honestly, the situation was perfectly set up for me to do what I needed to do in that moment because my brother-in-law was there. I felt comfortable and confident that in that moment, not 20 seconds prior to that, when he looked scared. Everybody looks scared. His eyes were huge. Everybody's trying to figure out what the heck is going on. But in that moment, there was this peaceness and calmness about him and this strength that rose up. If I didn't see that, I would have kept pushing everybody to go and I would have ran with him. And at some point I would have run back to go back to the craziness. But in that one moment, I think just everything lined itself up for me to be able to say yes.

SPEAKER_01

How many times did you go back in? Because I know that you told us a bunch of people with lost, but you saved a lot of people too. How many people did you carry out?

SPEAKER_00

Yeah, I carried about 30 people out over my arms or my shoulders, over my shoulder. I ripped my left shoulder out, my right hip, my knee, my right arm. I carried as many as I possibly could. At one point, I'm a third base coach waving about a hundred people out from a position where now this was towards the end of the shooting. The shooting was coming towards the back corner of the venue, and I'm waving people out of this position to get on the other side of this booth, out the gate, and bullets are flying right past my face and hitting the metal tin where we had first run to the Budweiser booth. But I probably got out, I don't know, over a hundred plus people in terms of getting them out. But I was boots on the ground for eight hours. Like it didn't stop. And the shooting was only 12 minutes, but we thought we were completely under attack. And we thought the shooting and the war that was happening, the invasion coming into Vegas was ongoing all the way up until that SWAT officer, eight hours later, put his hands on my shoulder with two SWAT officers standing next to me and said, Sir, you can stand down. We thought we were completely under attack. We ended up running over to Tropicana, and that was another interesting story. So I'm thinking I'm doing this all by myself. And I knew that people were going in and out. I'm helping others carry people out like on makeshift stretchers from the rails that we were breaking down to put bodies on top of, so then we can bring them out to pickup trucks or cars that were delivering everybody to the hospitals. It was a controlled, chaotic scene with all the people that ran back in, hundreds of people that were helping others. But at the end of the night, I laid a girl down and I get back up, and this EMT guy, young fit guy, shirt off. He's got his EMT belt across his chest. He goes, Where are we going next? And I'm like, Who are you? And he goes, Brother, we've been with you. You're carrying these people out and we're fixing them up. And I'm like, and it was him, San Francisco, like big burly firefighter guy, a big beard, gray hair, and then a marine. And so the four of us were like this team for, I don't even know, maybe an hour plus. We ran it back and forth, getting as many people out as we could and making sure that the triage centers were set up. And still, the only time I ever saw SWAT come in was I had laid a girl down and I was going back in, and a SWAT member grabbed my shirt and he said, Where are you going? And I said, I'm going in. Where are you going? And he said, We have orders to secure this gate. And I'm like, I said some explicit words and I said, Screw your orders, basically. Follow me. We need help. And so I ran back in, and when I came out, those guys were gone. Obviously, they're they were all over the place trying to eliminate threats and protect all of the people. But we ended up running over to Tropicana and the back service entrance, and that's where the ambulances were staging. So they were pulling up like Uber lines, and there was about 150, 200 people there that were injured, and we started loading people into the ambulances until you think it's over in terms of like now we're just putting people in, and a police officer pulls up, and I'm on the phone with my wife for the first time in the night. And I'm like, Are you okay? And all of a sudden he says, We need to get everybody inside the back service entrance here. We feel there's a shooter on top of the roof. There may be a shooter inside. We'll be safer in these corridors. And I'm like, Okay. And my wife's, what? There's another shooter? And I'm like, I gotta go. I'm safe. I'll find you. I still don't know where she was at. So now me and a bunch of other men and women that were protecting everybody in this. We have no weapons, we have just our hands. And now we're getting everybody into these corridors in the back service entrance. I'm breaking doors down. We're hitting doors because we're looking for a shooter to try to secure these areas. It was crazy. And I'm going in thinking, if I go down, I told these guys, you better take the guy out. You're now in this mode, right? I'm breaching doors. And what we're finding is pods of people that ran from the venue, found closure, they locked themselves into these refrigerated rooms and laundry rooms, and there's 20 people in there. And so they're screaming, and now we're getting those people out and putting them in the corridors until finally someone says, There's a man with a knife at the end of the hallway swinging this, wielding this knife around. And I'm like, all right. And you just instantly react. So now I'm running down this hallway. And to be honest, it reminded me of when I was a kid in the ballpark at all these stadiums under the stands. You have your clubhouses, and then you have long tunnels that lead to like where they store all the food and go underneath all the way to the bullpins and all these things. It reminded me of that. I'm running down this hallway, wishing I had a baseball so I could throw it at this SOB. And I got him just enough. I was coming up on him. I'm like, good guy, bad guy, good guy, bad guy. And he takes his arm up and he's got his knife. And I was able to grab it and throw him up against the wall. And the firefighter guy behind me comes up against me. And now this guy's not going anywhere. And so I was able to disarm him. And then you see SWAT come in, which was the second time I had seen SWAT.

SPEAKER_01

What was the deal with the guy with the knife? Was he just it sounds like he might have been afraid? So he took his knife out to protect himself, but meanwhile, you perceived him as a threat.

SPEAKER_00

And that's the thing. So they weren't just taking the people that were at the concert and trying to corral everyone there. It was all of Vegas. So you had everybody from that were on the streets living there, local neighborhoods. Everybody was getting corralled. So this guy ended up just being a scared dude that was probably out of his mind a little bit. And uh and so I was able to disarm him. And then we got put they put everybody in these big ballrooms. And at that time, now you're profiling, you're protecting. I kept circling with all these guys. We're looking because we kept saying if there's a shooter in here, we're all sitting ducks, so we all need to be vigilant. And it wasn't until those two SWAT officers came up to me, and I'm covered in blood on my left side, just from all the people I carried out. I'm in pain. I'm my my feet, I'm probably dragging my boots. I'm just I'm I'm hurt. And uh and the officer came up and said, Sir, you can stand down. And I just collapsed at his feet, and both those officers, I could see the gun sticking down, like they were both hovering over me, and I just cried. I just melted into the ground. And uh, what's it so inspiring, and I still hold on to this today, is the amount of people that came up and lifted me up off the ground. They didn't want to see me down, and so they lifted me up, and they now all the thank yous and the hugs and everybody were coming up, and yeah, it was absolutely terrifying, emotionally horrible. It was a malt off cocktail of emotions because you'd have your moments of pure happiness. There was a moment I ran in, shooting's still going on, it was pretty early, and I'd gone back in super fast, and there was a man stuck on the turf. He was just standing there frozen, and I'm like, You got to get down. And he goes, I can't move my legs. And so I didn't know if he got shot or if he was paralyzed or what. So I go up and I just picked him up. And he goes, I'm a medic, I just can't move my legs. And I'm like, let's go. So I carried him out, put him on the Giles, and I said, So now you're safe. You need to do what you were trained to do and get down and help people. About an hour, two hours later goes goes by, and I carried a girl out, set her down, and I look over to my right, and that guy is on his hands and knees helping one person, and he goes to another, and you're like, Yes. All right, let's go. I can't even explain it. It was kind of like this scene out of Gone with the Wind in terms of what you saw up and down Giles Street with as many people that were hit and as many people that were helping. And then you look over to your right and you see a woman crying. It was extremely tragic, and I was truly honored and blessed to have sacrificed whatever part of me that night to go help others and get them out.

SPEAKER_01

You shared one story with me before. I think you said you found some people huddled in a room, and one of them was law enforcement, and he said he felt guilty that he hadn't done more, and you said you patted them on the back and said you're doing what you're supposed to do. Share that with us.

SPEAKER_00

I was getting calls from my law enforcement buddies throughout that night. It seemed like they were the only ones to be able to get in to my phone. I was able to talk to my dad just briefly, talk to my wife, obviously, briefly. But I did get a call from one of our friends that were there, a young kid, and he had his girlfriend there, and they had just had a little baby, and they were getting ready to get married, and he's, I'm coming to you, I'm coming to you. And I said, No, no, you need to stay. And he felt really guilty that he didn't come back. But what you're the story you're talking about is I had met an individual later on that told me that he has really struggled with this whole survivor's guilt. He's a law enforcement officer. He was there with his wife. When the shooting started, and they realized what was going on, they ran. And they ran so far that they ran into another hotel, which was right down the block. They took the elevator up to the eighth floor. He said, I didn't know what we were doing. That's not where they were staying. They just ran, they kept running, and they were banging on all the doors, and someone let them in. And him and his wife ended up on the other side of the two beds up against the wall in the window, and he was like acting like he had a gun in his hands, and his wife was trying to calm him down because he thought he was getting ready to take out imaginary soldiers that were going to burst through this hotel room and find them. That was the mentality that a lot of people had was you thought you were under attack, and no matter where you went, you weren't safe. And that's why so many people scattered everywhere to try to hide. And in fact, the door I told you, one of them that I hit, and we found those 20 people, one of them ended up being part of our group. And she lives here in North Texas with us. That's where she's from. And she had she was grazed by a bullet on her kneecap. So I was able to get her out of there, get her onto an ambulance to get her out. That was like, I'm like, you got the ticket. Let's get you out of here and get you to a hospital far away from this place. Because again, you still think we're all under attack. And that's when I was told there was a man with a knife at the end of the hallway. People scattered everywhere. And I've heard those stories countless times from I was a veteran. I'm in the Navy or I'm in the Marines, and I ran. That just goes to show you you just don't know what you're gonna do in those situations. And it doesn't make you right. And like I told that man, I said, You did exactly what you're supposed to do. You took care of your wife. That's what God wanted you to do. You took care of her, she's the mother of your children, that's your future, and you took care of her, and that's exactly what you needed to do in that moment. It's hard to hear all those stories just about the survivor's guilt piece. And I tell people, like, I'm glad you didn't see what I saw. I'm glad you didn't hear what I heard, and got a chance to like see everything the death, the crying, just the horror of everything. But then in that, there was that inspiration, the light, the heroes, everybody that came out of that hiding after the gunfire stopped, and everything calmed to come back and help each other. And it didn't matter what color you were, didn't matter what politic viewpoint you had, nobody was talking about any of that stuff. Everybody was just talking about trying to keep people alive and trying to work together. And you're talking thousands of people that were doing that. So it was that part to me is inspiration. I'll hold on to for the rest of my life.

SPEAKER_01

What's life been like for you all since then? And what you've been focusing on, how you've been dealing with your own trauma?

SPEAKER_00

Yeah. I was again raised in a clubhouse, so I was raised to rub dirt on it and don't ever say you're hurt. And so it took me a while to ask for help. I finally found out what type of therapy I needed to go to with EMDR therapy. And I found out after going through a couple different therapists, I found the right one for me. And I had some a really good PAL network that was saying, hey, keep going. Don't just stop after one therapist. Go find the right one. I found the right therapist. She's absolutely amazing. I still see her every once in a while. But I went through about a year and a half of VMDR therapy with talkative therapy. It really helped me process every step I took. I was able to remember, thank God, through Facebook and all the stories, we were able to piece a lot of that in a timeline for myself. And then I had a great PAL network, a group of five or six individuals that reached out, told me their stories of tragedy and trauma, and I was related to them, something that was relatable to what I experienced. Um, mostly veterans and law enforcement uh and firefighters, to be honest, uh, just because of the horrific nature of everything. My faith just grew and grew in strength, and I realized that's my center point of strength for me. It's where I can wrap my belt around it, and I know I'm gonna get tossed around, but I'm not going anywhere as long as I stay foundationally grounded there. And through that journey, Mark, I got into writing poetry. I got into really trying to find peace in my life. I built my sports technology company. I started to dive into analytics. I started to do a lot to occupy my brain in ways to offset those really hard, dark moments that were hitting me every day. We led into songwriting. I'm getting ready to launch an album here on May 8th. Super excited about. I can't believe it. I've written over 33 songs that are written and produced, and the lyrics are great, and they're all a representation of strength and resilience and love. And uh they're all super heartfelt, and they come from my journey of recovery. So I'm excited to share those. It's taken me a long time to get to that point, but it hasn't been easy.

SPEAKER_01

One of the things I always learned, I mean, I told you my stepson was a college hockey player, and I always taught him when I said, hard work beats talent, especially when talent don't work hard. And I know from my experience, anything I've ever had in life, whatever it was, I've always had to outwork somebody. I don't know if I'm the most talented guy, but my philosophy is I don't care how talented you are, I'll just outwork you. It's as simple as that. Yeah, I've always found the things that are worth having are the things you have to struggle the most for, because that's what makes them worthwhile having. If it was easy, it wouldn't be worth having anyway.

SPEAKER_00

That's right.

SPEAKER_01

So before I let you go, talk about your sports technology company.

unknown

Sure.

SPEAKER_01

Tell them about that.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah, I have a daughter that was a dancer and a son that played baseball. And when he got into that kind of recruiting age, I realized there wasn't a lot of like athlete profile stuff out there at the time to help him promote himself to college recruiters and things. So I ended up building this kind of unique platform and I helped out a bunch of people, just them being able to create their profiles and stuff. Now there's way too many companies to compete. But what I ended up doing was then I went into this education platform for coaches and being able to educate them on hey, I was a major league baseball scout. Here's how I analyzed a baseball player when I used to go watch them hit or pitch or throw a ball. Here's the techniques, and so I started putting these little courses together. Then that turned into my own personal website. I just launched a walking with your trauma course where I walk you through the process of identifying your trauma. It's video, so it's a lot like this here. There's text, it stems off of the book I wrote called Walking with Your Trauma. And yeah, just it all of that just kept moving forward. So I'm a big nerd when it comes to delivering those education type courses, being able to help somebody that's been knocked down, or maybe in a transition in their life, and they want to learn something more, and maybe this is a way to be able to start a new career, or just help them in their advance in their current career. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01

Is there a book or a movie coming out about all of this?

SPEAKER_00

There's a movie script that has been written. So that's all I can say about that. It's in the early stages of being pitched. It's pretty amazing. It's a very heartfelt film that I'm really excited about. It's a true story, obviously. I'm writing my memoir book. I've been writing that for a few years now. I took about a year off just because I needed to focus on some other areas of my life. And so I'll probably be launching that here soon. I'm 270 pages in. And then, yeah, it's just been a journey. I get out and I speak to a lot of military groups, first responder groups, businesses and executives on leadership. And resilience is one thing, right? Everybody thinks about resilience being, I'm gonna bounce back to where I used to be. No, you've now learned through your trauma, through your hardships, how to fight even harder. You've learned how to become better. You know how to tackle more obstacles in your life. You're not just gonna bounce back to where you were, you're gonna bounce forward now. You've walked through that fire. Now you're gonna float a little bit and now step into the light. And so that's been my big thing is what else can I keep doing to amplify that, which amplifies me to just be the best person I can be every day. So all of that is reflected into what I'm doing. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01

So, folks that are watching this, how do they find out more about you? What's the website to go to?

SPEAKER_00

It's my first and last name, toddblylevin.com. That's my website. It's got a ton of stuff on there. I've got an apparel line with over 90 products of inspirational, motivational stuff. You can find my books. I've written a baseball book called Scout Like a Pro. Um, so I have two books out. I've got a third one coming out in sports on modern data and analytics and baseball. So I'm excited about that. If you follow me on my social media platforms with LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter X, TikTok, I'll be announcing the news with my songs. I've got the album is called Beast in Peace. It's an incredible album, three country songs, two Christian songs, and it's all about resilience and strength. I've shared these with a few people already, and they're like, this is amazing. This needs to be up on the radio. I don't know. I'm just I'm super humbled that people really are grabbing on to that because it is a lot of of my reflection on the journey of standing back up and keeping my boots moving forward. And I'm gonna do some videos on why I wrote the song, maybe pick out a lyric and Talk about what that lyric means to me and my trauma journey. And the hope is that someone can listen and just reflect and maybe it puts a smile on their face or gets them back up and keeps them moving.

SPEAKER_01

I love it. I'm so grateful that you came on. And folks, for those watching, if you want to learn more about what we do, our website is mental health addiction law firm.com. That's mental health addiction law firm.com. And thank you for tuning in, and we'll see you in the next episode.