535: Keeping Things Humorous Can Keep You Humble. With Kingsley A. Pinderhughes III aka KingPix Media.

This is the Jocko podcast number 535 with Echo Charles and me and Jocko willing. Good evening. I go good evening. I heard this story. And I can't I'm not 100% sure where I heard it for the first time. But but I the link was to the British SAS. And there was some version that it was mandatory for anyone in the SAS to have a good sense of humor. The reason being, because if people take themselves too seriously, then they begin to believe their own hype. And when you start to believe your own hype, you lose your humility. And when you lose your humility, you get complacent only get complacent. People get killed. So that's a long connection to your sense of humor. If you want to maintain your humility, you have to maintain your sense of humor. And you may have heard me say many times over the years that humility is the most important characteristic of a leader. And I agree with that story that humor is a good way to stay humble. And in the SEAL teams, it is a very real thing. Those digs from your platoon mate. They keep you humble, and they're meant to keep you humble. The ribbing from your platoon chief that keeps you humble. The jibe that you get from your shooting buddy. When you blow a shot keeps you humble. And that is what the teams is like every day. It's verbal combat all day every day. And if you have a little chink in your armor, by the way, it's going to be identified, it's going to be exploited, and it's going to be funny. And if you take yourself too seriously, if you take yourself too seriously, you're going to suffer. You have to stay humble. And there's no doubt that humor helps that happen. And joining us tonight is a guy who does a stupendous job of keeping things humorous and thereby keeping us all humble. His name is Kingsley Pinderhuse, the third. And he is from Kingpix Media. He served as a soldier. He served in law enforcement. And he has bounced back and forth between those two a number of times, four reasons that I'm sure we'll get into at some point. But it is an honor to have him here tonight in black and white with dark, ominous overhead lighting, talking in a quiet yet consequential tone, because this is a very serious podcast. And is a serious honor to have King with us here tonight to share some of his experiences, some of his lessons learned, and some of his humor with us. So King Kingsley, how do you say your middle name? Aloysius. Aloysius. Aloysius Kingsley. Kingley Aloysius Pinderhuse, the third. Well, thanks for joining us. It's awesome to have you here. I know Echo and I, we, we, I don't know who sent who real, but however many years ago it was, one of us sent the other one real and said, check this funny guy out. And from then on, we like immediately followed you and we're tracking what you're doing and having a good time with it. Because you make fun of people. I do, which is fun. Guilty as charged. It's always cracked me up. And you do it, you know, very, you know, obviously, your, your, I would say your most prominent target area is all the people like me. Yeah. Yeah. So, which also, I apologize. I don't care. At the same time, it's funny. Yeah, you got to be funny. And that's like, that's the way it is. Like I just said, in the seal platoon, in the seal platoon, it's all day, every day. I've told the story about my wife when I went to college. So I was in the Navy, and I went to college while I was in the Navy. So for the first time in my adult life, I wasn't in the seal teams. Yeah. And so my wife, like, when I needed someone to like pick on and rag on, and it became my wife. And finally, after like two months of going to college, and I came home and she hadn't done something, made dinner or something, I made some snide comment about it. And she just looked at me and said, Hey, I'm not a team guy. And I was like, Oh, because she was right, like all my little verbal sparring was just done with her. And she didn't want to spar with me. Yeah. So that's the way it is. That's the way it is in the teams. That's the way it is with everybody in the Army and the Marine Corps, the Air Force, everyone's doing this. And so you can't take yourself too seriously. And you certainly don't take I don't anyone very seriously. No, not at all. Not at all. So right on, let's get into a little bit. Let's get your background. Where'd you grow up? So I grew up in Southern Maryland. I was born in a town called La Plata. Dude, Maryland is Maryland is Maryland big enough to have a Southern area. It kind of is. You could just say Maryland. It kind of is. But it's it's it's historically as it's it's called Southern Maryland. And the joke is if you live in DC, which I grew up in the DC area, but I was born in Southern Maryland. If you live in DC, Southern Maryland is 30 40 minute drive. But they the joke is that it's a different state altogether. Sometimes they say, Oh, yeah, I had to take a flight to Southern Maryland. I had to take a flight to Waldorf or La Plata. But I was I was born in Southern Maryland. My family is from my mom's side of the family was all Southern Maryland. Yeah, really. So I used to be able to drive from Virginia Beach over the long ass bridge over the nice bridge and go see my family. Did you ever pass that power plant with the two large smokestacks? I probably did. I worked there. Oh, there you go. I worked there down there in Newberg. But I grew up in Waldorf. So I grew up in Waldorf. But I ended up moving when I moved out, I moved up to Prince George's County, which is closer to DC. So you're actually more accepted in DC if you live in PG County. But I, it was it was great. I mean, I grew up in mostly as low income apartment complex, just me and my brother and my mom did the apartment complex have a name. It did. But I'm not going to say it. I'm not going to say it. Actually, they changed the name. Okay. So maybe you can say the old name. No, no, you can still I'm not I'll tell you guys but it was just it was just, you know, large apartment community one way in one way out. And there's a lot of crime. I learned when I got older, there's a lot of crime that took place. And a lot of the stuff that I was witnessing was just that it was crime. And it wasn't until there's one day I was in when I was in elementary school, we were going on a field trip. And so on the bus, we're driving past my neighborhood. And one of the young ladies on the bus, she goes, Oh, man, that neighborhood's dangerous. She says everybody over there has guns. And I'm like, and I'm sitting there, she's like, Yeah, even the kids have guns. And so I'm hearing her talk. And I said, What neighborhood are you talking about? And she points and she literally points right at my apartment building the building that I was living in. And I was like, Oh, my gosh, I gotta tell my mom, I need a gun. I need I gotta tell my mom, this is dangerous. And so sure enough, you know, it's just it's just the nature of the neighborhood. There's guys that I grew up with that I'm still friends with to this day and people that I keep up with. But it was about 5050 on people who ended up in Department of Corrections for drugs murder, all kind of the crazy stuff. So it's kind of a it's kind of an interesting childhood. When I was 11, we moved across town and moved into a townhouse. I never lived in a standalone house until I bought mine. Yeah, yeah. But a movie, yeah, moved across town and ended up I where I lived was I took a bus for middle school, but then I walked for high school. But my mom still lives in that house. No, right on the townhouse in that townhouse. Yeah, she still lives in that house. What was your mom doing growing up? So mom actually started out she she grew up in Florida. She's from Lake County, Florida, small town called Umatilla. I found out that a lot of those towns are you tell us about Umatilla, but you won't tell us about the apartment name. Oh, it's all good. Absolutely. A lot of those town names came from smaller offshoots of Indian tribes. So I think that's kind of where that came from. But when she went to college, she went up to Ellen. Thankfully, she named you Kingsley instead of Umatilla. Yeah. Can you imagine? I'd probably go by something cool like Tilla. Yuma. I don't know. I don't know. But uh, yeah, we're putting Umatilla on the map. I still go back every year. My wife and kids love it down there. It's it's great. But um, she ended up going to she was outside just outside of Chicago for college. That's where she met my dad. And my dad was Air Force. I don't know if I don't know if he was still in when they met. But um, my dad, you know, is in the 80s. He looked like Billy D. Williams, you know, he just had it. Dad had it back in the day. He still kind of does but Capricorn. Yeah. Um, so so they meet and uh, I think within the first year they end up getting pregnant with my brother. So my brother, it was kind of like, All right, you know, my mom and my dad, like we got we got a son on the way. This is great. This is fantastic. We're starting life together. And uh, my brother was born and uh, immediately and I hate telling this story, but I'll tell it for sake of, you know, letting you know my family makeup immediately got pregnant with me immediately. My brother and I were born 10 months apart, which is wild. Think about that 10 months apart. And I'm like, in order for that to happen, someone one party or both have to be extremely motivated and willing to sacrifice. And it's just, it's insane to me. So uh, they got pregnant. They got pregnant with me in January of 85. And at some point they broke up. My dad said, well, they broke up. So somehow my dad, they were never married. My dad ends up in California and my mom's like, well, I'm going to Maryland to live with my sister. My aunt at the time, she's pretty much like pretty much like my mom, second mom. So we go down and when I was born, I came home that her house was a house I came home to. And that house was run by my uncle who a Navy veteran. He was a 05 commander. Oh, dang. Okay. Is it commander? Yeah. It's yeah. He was he was an 05 and he would he would kill me if I said his name on this podcast, like always been involved in like I still to this day, I don't know exactly what he did. It wasn't until I started doing some high speed stuff with the military that he was like, oh, let me show you this. So I started my life growing up in that house. It was my mom, my aunt, my uncle, and I had a cousin who's seven years older than me. My cousin, my brother, we're all brothers at this point. And for the first few years, when I was learning how to walk and talk, I would see my uncle and my cousin always called him daddy. And so I started calling my uncle daddy to this day, I still like that's in his house that my kids call him Uncle Paw Paw, like that is, you know, and he's the one that kind of first he steered me towards graduating high school. Then he steered me to, hey, you got to do something after high school, whether you go into a career field, get a certification, go to school. But he was very instrumental. And I know we were talking about swimming earlier, that dude could swim. So he never said he was a seal, but he never said he wasn't. But he really, he was really big on fitness and fitness integrity, accountability, all of the things. And I tell you, report card day, he was going to hold me accountable. Because I was off doing whatever I wanted. And yeah, so Well, you know, if he was a seal, he absolutely would have told you. That's true. I wasn't going to say that. But it's true. And so what are you into when you're when you're in school and stuff? Like what do you what you're what are you into? So my cousin was at the 80s. So the early 90s, early 90s. So late 80s, early 90s, I started playing soccer. My cousin was a soccer player, and got into soccer, and then more into the 90s, got into basketball and football, and just kind of did the same thing all the neighborhood kids were doing. We were playing football every day in the neighborhood. So then once I was able to get on a team, you know, same thing with basketball, once I could get on a team, that's just that's pretty much all I did. I got by. I mean, I can I can still I could I could probably play basketball better than I could play football, just because injuries over the years. But even like in high school, I wasn't I wasn't a stellar athlete. I kind of just did it to stay out of trouble to have something to do. Did you play? Did you play on the varsity team of football? No, I never made it to varsity. Never made it to varsity. What about for basketball? Basketball never made it to varsity. I played basketball in high school. I played. So I played organized all the way up into high school. And then in high school, I used football as a means to have access to the gym. So my goal was I was always a smaller guy and even like kind of we got to rewind a little bit. When I first started school, I had a very introverted personality. Like it was to the point where, you know, I was diagnosed with ADHD, they wanted to and this is this is the early 90s. So the Ritalin and all this other stuff and my mom said, No, there's nothing wrong with my baby. Typical typical black mom ain't nothing wrong with my baby. And she said that she said it exactly like that. So but I didn't talk and I had some other health issues like with with, I guess, was my bone structure to where I had to wear it wouldn't like forest gum leg braces, but I had to wear these special shoes and or at least mama called it my special shoes. Bro, I bet your friends called her something else. So growing up with that and obviously, you know, we're low income. So it's not like it's not like I'm showing up in Jordan's. But I ended up going from not talking, I'd go a whole day, I wouldn't say a word to anybody. But then when I saw my brother in the hallway, the jokes were on to now, you know, once we got into the apartment and then ended up moving across town, I became the class clown. And back then I was really into art. I was really into drawing. That was like my favorite thing to do. But I didn't really have like a large circle of friends. I was still very introverted. And then so once we moved across town and I started going to a new school, they're like, Oh, he can he can play soccer. So that means he can play basketball. He can run is what they were saying, which not really a runner, but got into basketball. And then once I realized that, Hey, if I volunteer for the football team, I can go to the gym anytime. So I did that pretty much the entire time I was in high school, even though like when it came time for tryouts or when it came time, you know, to actually join the team, I'd be like, Oh, no, I got I got some I want to focus on my academics. Well, I've just got eight months of gym time for free. And now I get to just do whatever. So it it really never turned in anything. Well, kind of lifting. What are you doing? Back then I'm asking this question because Echo is sitting over there thinking like, I don't know what kind of lifting is I it was it was initially it was it was like sports. So they were doing Olympic lifts. But I got more into just basic bench press. I did some accessory work. I didn't know what accessory work was back then. But calves, shoulders, you know, all the things that people aren't aren't highlighting. But I got into that. And then I never got into like the calisthenics, the cardio never got super into that. But I just wanted to I wanted to be able to protect myself if I had to fight. And I wanted to I just wanted to get bigger. And so it kind of it was the first time that I set a goal and I was starting to achieve like when I started to lift more started to achieve those goals. And I saw that and that kind of carried over to where way after that I got into bodybuilding and powerlifting. Dang, all right. And what so what was your plan that you were going to do? You said your uncle was kind of like saying, Hey, dude, you need to you need to get some kind of a track in your life. You need to find something to do. What plan did you come up with? So he put the fear of God in us. And he showed up to my house. It was one summer. He was in the reserve. So whenever he had duty, he would come by after he and my cousin would come by. And he'd bring food or whatever he'd be like, All right, what are we what are we doing today? And like, you're not going to sit and do nothing all day long. What are we doing? So one day he came by, and he had this mechanics manual. It was this thick. And he throws it on the table and he just looks at me. And I was like, you want me to read that? He was like, No, you're going to read it. And I was like, Okay, it sounds like he wants me to read it. So I'm going to read it. But his thing was like, because I showed technical ability in like other projects, and I would help him work on the car or the motorcycle, because I showed some sort of proficiency and being able to put the pieces together. He was like, This is this is something that might interest you. And sure enough, I got interested in it. And so he would come by and he said, All right, read this chapter in this chapter, and he would come by and he would quiz me. And if I didn't have the answers, boy, it was hell to pay. It was hell to pay if I didn't have the answers. But then he ended up getting me an internship at back then they had computer repair shops. And I got an internship at a computer repair shop. And I learned essentially, not how to build but how to repair how to troubleshoot everything regarding computers. And he actually became an adjunct professor at one of the local schools. And so when I graduated, I applied for that school, I went to Southern Maryland for two years. And what did you study? General studies, I just did general because I didn't know exactly where to go from there. And I was looking at some of the specific programs they offered. And nothing really interested me. And that second year, I actually went and volunteered at a summer camp. There's a summer camp that I grew up going to in West Virginia. And I volunteered because I could get credit hours or service credit hours from going to do stuff like that. So I went and volunteered. And the second that we pulled on that campus in West Virginia, I saw the most beautiful woman I've ever seen in my life. And I looked at my brother, I was like, Hey, that's my next girlfriend, like just joking around. And, you know, fast forward, she's my wife now. But I see her and the van that we were in pulls up and they park right next to her. And she's like, you know, unloading her stuff for the week outside of this little Saturn sedan. And we catch eyes for a second. And so I wave this is exactly what I did. I just wave and smile and she looks at me, she goes, and I was like, Well, that ship has sailed. But you know, through the week, because it was a it was a two week camp. But I was she like one of the other counselors or something. Yeah. And I showed up out my goal was to do security and just it's free meals and it's time away from home. I have no responsibility. I'm just security. They're like, Oh, no, you're a counselor. So now you're in charge of 15 high school aged kids at 20 years old, you're in charge of these 15 kids for their safety protection. And it was a it was a religious it was a church camp. And so you're you're their guide. And I was like, Oh, my gosh, I've never been in charge of anything at this point. And for the camp, they put you on a team. So like I have my 15 guys, and then there's another another dorm or barracks room that's 15 other guys. And then so you might have like 50 people or maybe not maybe I'd say 30 to 40 people on each team. And so apparently, you know, I kind of locked in and got my team up to speed to where we won the entire camp for the week. So you do events, you do tasks, you do team building. And as you go through, you get points for it. And I just I was like, you know what, now's my time to shine. And I just, you know, I was doing like these motivational speeches. And it was it was kind of comedy, but kind of not because all of they just flocked to me. And my team won. And so it was it was really cool as my first time in a leadership experience, my first time actually like driving the train. And I just I failed upward, and we won. And then that following week, I had to go back to work. I was working out a car wash. And so going from the high of my first leadership experience, my first true victory and meeting this woman that I wanted to I knew I was in love with. And going back to working at the car wash was kind of like it's kind of like a bummer. So her and I we had exchanged numbers and we had talked throughout the week and then her team won the second week. So I was like, Hey, that's great. I was like, we should celebrate, we should grab dinner. And she was like, Absolutely. Now keep in mind, I'm coming off of my first leadership experience, my first leadership victory, my first time as a camp counselor. And now this is my first like real date. I don't know what to do. What do I do? Does she pay? Do I pay? Like I'm talking to my brother, I'm like, and he's kind of in the same boat as me. Because again, we grew up as Irish twins. And he's like, dude, you got to take her to Cheesecake Factory. Going big time. I was like, you know, expensive that is, he was like, dude, he's like, Hey, just, you know, get you some overtime at the car wash. You know, he's like, if you need any help, I'll give you some gas money. And at the time I was driving to 1992 Chevrolet Lumina with I say I say extensive but it was it was medium body damage from a crash. It was I bought it from my uncle, that my oh five uncle, he had gotten into it. There was a DUI driver that crashed into him. And so I paid 800 bucks to get the vehicle fixed. And he said, you got you pay to get it fixed. It's yours now. So our first date, our first real date, I go to pick my wife up and I'm in this trashy car. And she hops in and we go to DC and we go to Cheesecake Factory. And I'm looking at the menu and I'm like, I know what I'm going to get because I've been here before I know what I'm going to get. She starts ordering crazy stuff. And I'm like, and I'm, and I'm like looking and I'm looking at the waitress and I'm like, maybe I'm going to downsize my meal in order to facilitate hers. And I was like, no, no, I was like, it's cool. Getting breadsticks. I'm not hungry. But so it was it was a learning experience because in my mind, I was like, gosh, I was like, how do I ask her to pay for half? And then right when I had that thought, I was like, I'm not gonna she's not paying for this. So I was like, oh, excuse me, I need to go to the restroom. I leave the table, I go to an ATM. I had to check my account to make sure I had enough money to cover it and cover the tip. And I did. And so I came back and she was like, oh, you were gone a while. I was like, I was like, oh, I ran into a guy I knew, you know, just throughout some some BS and I came back and that was our first date and the following week I got to meet her dad. So dang, yeah. So we went quick. Yeah, it was it was pretty quick. And meanwhile, you're a car wash attendant. Yeah. So the car wash that I worked at I was I was it was it was a self car wash. So like the one where you pull up and you wash your own car or you go through the we had a laser wash 2000 cutting edge technology. Oh, yeah. Cutting edge. It was a touchless car wash. It's still it's still around the day. If you if you get the chance if you're ever in Southern Maryland, head over to the La Plata car wash. But so I call the king. I call it extreme plumbing, because I went from not having any knowledge of air compressors, water pumps, any kind of filters or anything to now if one of the bays goes down, I have to get it back up within an hour because that's money. And so I got on to you know, replacing these high pressure pumps, these hoses, I emptied the trash, I cut the grass, I just I was the only attendant on duty when I was there. And it was it was work and I learned a lot from it. But it was it was one of those jobs where it was like this is the first job. This is my first real job. And here I am, I'm given free time, I'm given free time, free reign. And so in the winter time, it's busier because the salt on the roads. So I said, you know, I'm going to go buy a gallon of purple power. I'm going to pour it into a bucket, spray some water in there, I'm gonna scrub tires and see if I can get tips. I was out there in 20 degree weather scrubbing tires for eight hours. And I made like 200 bucks that day. And I'm like, I'm going to do this every day. So I would get my actual car wash duties done. And I made sure it's cool with the owner, I go out there and scrub tires. And, you know, I've got tropical genetics. So the cold wasn't really a friend of mine. But I scrubbing tires and making money. And that's essentially how I was able to date my wife and go on dates. And we got to a point where once we got the cheese factory, yeah, yeah, it just and I saw that my job helped me to become helped me to gain value as a man because now I can put gas in my car. I can wash her car. I can put gas in her car. And I can take her to dinner. So it really all these responsibilities, they kind of layered up all at once. And I didn't even know it was happening. I had no clue it was happening. Of course, I'm my mom's youngest son. She didn't want she didn't want her son because my wife is she's a year and 10 months older than me. She didn't want her son getting snatched up by a cougar. So there was obviously this beef between my mom and my wife. And that that's what ultimately led to me moving out. I got you know, got my own place. I ended up leaving the car wash and working at a lumber company. I built roof and floor trusses. And that's where that's why I learned a majority of the Spanish that I know now, which is all cuss words. But I worked there, I was at the lumber company, and it was hard work. I remember my first eight hour day, you know, I'm out there, we're, you know, rolling the trusses on the table, and I've got to stand them up and get them onto the roller, send them to the end. And then I got to a point where I got promoted where I was driving a forklift. I had I was doing these commercial trusses where you're supposed to stand them up so that you construct them flat. Then they roll them, they flatten all the plates, and then you have to stand them up. And I was probably 140 pounds at the time. This truss was 300 pounds. And I go to stand it up. And this thing start like the weight, the full weight of this trusses on me. And I'm like fighting for my life. And I was like, I have no choice, but to succeed. If I don't succeed, I'm going to get hurt. And I just I don't something in me, I just I was able to push it all the way up. And then once I did it, I was like, I can do anything. I can do anything. This trust didn't stop me. I can do anything. And then shortly I was let go from the lumber company. But you know, things happen. Things happen. So what was the next move after the lumber company? So the next move. My mom, she said, she said, you need to go to the unemployment office. And I was like, for what? She was like, you're unemployed, you were let go. There's an administrative thing you weren't let go for performance. They were doing they were there, you know, they're cutting down, they're cutting back, they were trying to enhance their profit and they were spending it cost them more to have me because I started to get into the engineering side of it as well started to get into inspecting trusses and everything else. But I was never taught how to do that. So that kind of fell by the wayside. And once they saw that some of these trusses weren't being expect inspected, they were like, right, we need to let go three people in production and two people in inspection. I was production and inspection. I was out of there. So I went to the unemployment office. And I'll never forget the guy there was Air Force veteran. He goes, you're a young man, you're strong. Have you considered the military? And I'm like, absolutely not. I will never join the military. I was like, I got a girlfriend, dude, like, I can't leave her. I have a girlfriend. I can't join the military. He's like, people with girlfriends join all the time. And I was like, no, not me. So I ended up finding a construction company out of Texas that had job sites throughout the nation. They happen to have one in Southern Maryland, right on the Virginia line, which was the power plant. And I got hired there as a laborer. And I learned even more Spanish. But I also learned that a lot of the guys who are speaking Spanish aren't here legally. Now keep in mind, this is 20 years ago. And if there is a guy from, I don't know, Sacatecas, Mexico, I said it, I said it with the accent. Don't judge me. If he's from Sacatecas, Mexico, and his name is, I don't know, Luke Goldberg, he's probably not Luke Goldberg. So I was on I was on the river, it's in the wintertime, it's cold. And we go to lunch, we had I think about 30 minutes for chow. And you don't even get to go inside, you just sit under an awning. And they had like seven microwaves. So you go warm up your lunch and you eat your lunch. Well, customs and border patrol, because this is this is actually no, this is right after ice was formed. Customs and border patrol show up. And we're now down strength like 40%. So now that's even more work that I have to do. And it was it was the roughest job that I've ever had. I saw guys that building is 200. I think it's 220 feet tall. I saw guys fall from elevation 90 down to elevation 20. And I've seen it there was the first time I ever saw a compound fracture. It's the first time I ever saw like any kind of like, like TBI related injuries. And it started to become a thing to where they we had a stand down. And so during this stand down, I was like, I'm gonna take this time and start looking at other jobs because this ain't it this hourly stuff. It's great money. But I'm working from seven to seven. On Tuesdays and Thursdays, I would go straight to my wife's house shower, and then we'd go on a date or spend time together. So it took a lot like it took a lot of time. We were working six days a week. So I ended up finding a job with a company that was doing contracting, they we built that we did inventory and we built out displays for the flooring department of Lowe's. Check. Yeah. So I get on with this company. I had interview, my supervisor, Tim, super, super cool guy. This is my first real interview. And I just I just we just talked. And he was like, Well, I really like you. I want to hire you. But this is the salary we're offering. He shows me the piece of paper. It is it is a salary. It's not hourly is an annual salary. And I'm like, a year? I'll yes, I'll do that. This was less than 30 grand, less than 30 grand a year. And I immediately jumped at the chance. And so immediately, I was put in charge of eight different store locations to where I got paid mileage. So that was cool. Because, you know, going from Southern Maryland and DC area up to like, you know, Gaithersburg, or, you know, the areas that are a little further out, I got a little, little more bang for my buck for doing that. And I did that. I did that for a little while. And then after I proposed to my wife, I took on a part time job to pay for our honeymoon. And so I got this part time job was doing security at Target. And it was it was what they call a red store. It means that there's a lot of theft. There's a lot of nonsense. And that was the first time that had been involved in criminal apprehension. And it was terrifying. It was terrifying. You get, you know, you get, you know, five guys that come in off the street that are there to steal. I think they were stealing, I think it was razor, the, the interchangeable razor heads at the time. Okay. And like luxury fragrances. I mean, if they have luxury fragrances at Target. But this was the first time that I'd been involved in apprehensions. And then after the apprehension, you call the sheriff's office, they show up. And I remember standing there and they sent this deputy, this female deputy, she was the same size as me. And I'm like, what is she going to do if this guy fights back? And so that was, that was, it was kind of short lived, because once we got married, we ended up moving to Virginia, well, she lived in Virginia, but we moved, I moved to Virginia. And once we got married, I found another job as a construction engineering job. And I was doing soil testing, testing for like moisture and density. And then also I moved into concrete. And my only claim to fame on this job was that one of my job sites, I did commercial and residential. I worked on the Marine Corps Museum. That was the biggest construction project I've ever been a part of. So I did the soil testing and the they have a trail that goes up on the trail side, I guess the non highway side. And they came through to shoot a documentary for you know, what they're putting in and everything else. And we had already dug the footings for the wall and they started to put in stone. And we had to do a stand down. Well, anytime you do a stand down in the concrete business, you're not making any money. So I wasn't making any money. And I was like, there's got to be something better. And I slowly I don't want to say I lost motivation for the job. But if I'm taking commercial jobs, and some of these contracts on the high side are getting cut down, and they're saying, Hey, we haven't got this approved. So you're on this contract, but it's not been approved yet. I'm an employee that's not getting paid. And so I ended up going to a job fair went to a job fair in Fredericksburg, Virginia. And there was there were police agencies there. And so I'm like, I was like, well, I'm going to go to every booth because I need a job. And I went to every booth. And sure enough, these these two police officers from Prince William County, they sweet talked me. And I was like, I'm gonna be a cop. And I went home and I told my wife and she was like, you sure? I was like, yeah. And she didn't say good, I thought she was gonna say good. She was like, I don't know. So I ended up going through the application process. And did all the all the things the fitness test, the the background check and I walk in and the last thing is like this interrogation, you walk into this interrogation room. Big glass glass pain. This is right before you do your right after you do your polygraph. And the detective who facilitated he actually he passed away a few years ago. I still kind of kept up with him. He passed away a few years ago. He's great, dude, big jacked former Marine Corps guy. And he walks in. And he's got a blank sheet of paper and a pencil. And he sets it on the desk and I never forget because he set it down and then he slid it. And I was like, what is what is going on? He's like, listen, we know where you grew up. We know we know people who are where you're from. You gave us answers. We want more information for what you've done that you're hiding from us. And at this point, this is my first polygraph interrogation or it's an interview. This is my first time experiencing this. I'm like, geez, this is just like the movies. And so So this is you had already taken the polygraph? I had already taken the polygraph gave whatever truthful answers that you Yeah, I had a reaction. They said, I well, they said I had a I know more about polygraphs now than what I did back then. He's like, you had a reaction on this question, we want more information. So he slides the piece of paper across, he gives me his spiel, he says, I'm gonna walk out that door. He said, when I walk out there, you write it down, you don't have to tell me just write it down. No issue. When I come back in here, I'll take a look at it. We'll go from there. I said, Okay, I'm not hiding anything. He goes, you don't have to talk. And like was completely this whole thing was a Psyop. And so he slides the paper, I sat in that room for 26 minutes. I couldn't think of anything to write. I was like, I told them everything. Did I tell him this? Yeah, I told him that. Did I steal from my brother and not you know, and so I didn't write anything. So I hear the hear the latch on the door, he comes in, he looks at the paper, he goes, he takes the paper and the pencil, he just walks out. And then so they send another detective in there like you're lying like literally he comes in insisting he's like, you're lying about something. And I said, you know what, I no longer want to be considered for this position. He goes he goes from like so he's looking at me across the table. He's like, you're lying. And I told him I said, I don't want to be considered for this position. He goes, Well, hold on. I said, No, I was like, No, I don't want to be considered for this position. Now, he thought that they were breaking me. But and they were like I was I was I was I was broken at that point. But when I told him I didn't want to be considered for the position, I saw him break. This is the first time I've ever said something to another grown man who's in a position of power. And it I guess it kind of appears as me standing up for myself. And I literally watched him break in real time. And so I was like, I can't go back now. I've already made my statement. So they escort me out the office. And he stops me at the parking lot. He's like, Listen, he's like, you're a great candidate for this job. You're a phenomenal candidate for this job. We think that you should reapply. He's like, we have to note your, you know, you want to be removed from the consideration. He was like, But we think that you should reapply. Here's my card, keep in contact. And I was like, Sure thing. I got my car like balled it up and threw in the backseat. I'm not I'm not gonna, you know. And so at the time we were still going on Sundays and getting the Washington Post and coming through jobs. And my wife was like, Well, why don't you try this agency? This is a little closer to home. It's, you know, it's not as fast paced. There's not a whole lot that's really going on. And I was like, it's, it's the same, same thing. It's just closer to this is instead of being close to DC, it's closer to the city of Richmond. So she was like, Well, I'm gonna fill out an application and send it and see what they say. So back then, there was no I don't know, I don't think they had a typing application. You had to write it in my handwriting. I'm an artist. Okay, I'm an artist and a piano player. Kind of I still give myself that title. But I had terrible handwriting. And so she fills out the application and sends it in. In the meantime, I go to work security at the hospital. I was like, I'm unemployed. I'm newly married. I have to do something I cannot sit still. So I walk into the hospital, I drove drove over there, I walk in, asked where the security office was, I go downstairs, say, Listen, I need a job. I will work any shift any hours that you have, and I can start today. And the guy sitting across from me leans back in the seat. And he's looking at me. And he yells, he goes, Hey, Mitch, and I hear a voice from out back go, Yeah, he's like, We got a good one. And Mitch peeks his head in and it's this old retired Marine Corps black guy. And he's like, Can he work tonight? And he looks at me goes, and I said, Yes, I walked out of that interview with a uniform, a little, you know, top flight security, the world badge and no training. And so I ended up coming back, I worked midnight shift while I was in the application process for the agency that I worked for. And I learned a lot. I mean, that job prepared me for quite a bit. And going through the application process, I was very nervous because I really wanted to get that law enforcement job. I wanted to work for that agency. And I had never there's still certain things I'd never experienced never experienced belligerent drunk people, never seen death, never, never really experienced people in their last moments or people at their worst. And through my time there, I worked in ER to get an extra $1.50 an hour. And I saw an insane amount I'm talking from domestic violence, to gang shootings to to where you know, the local police department would lock the ER down if there was a shooting that had just occurred and people arrived in personal vehicles. So it's stressful. It's very stressful, very fast paced work in the ER very stressful. But I got through it. And I was so stressed from the job and from my application that I ended up getting shingles. And I'm like, I was like, What is this going on? Like, it was, you know, it follows your nerve, your nerve endings around your rib cage. And I was like, What is it? I was like, I feel terrible. It hurts. But I can't take off work because I need money. And so I would work dispatch and working dispatch, I learned how to communicate with the police, give them the information, give them a description. Like even to this day, like I had an Uber driver yesterday at the airport, and I'm like, and I send him a message, you know, given my shirt color like blackmail, you know, green shirt, blue jeans, brown backpack. And that's where I learned that and it's something that's carried through. But they were like, Hey, we had a code gray upstairs, you need to come get them so you can put them in the freezer. I said, Excuse me? They're like, Yeah, we're in charge of maintaining the custody of persons once they pass away and getting them into the freezer. I'm not, I'm not touching a debt. Like, are you kidding me right now? They're like, No, you have to put them in the bag. Put them on a gurney, put them in the freezer. And I'm like, All right. Okay, if this is what I have to do, this is what I'm going to do. Well, this was an obese person. I don't know how much this person weighed. But they had these. And I'm sure you guys have seen body bags, the ones the old school ones with like the little zipper. And so I go upstairs, we have to roll them into the bag. And these are like, it wasn't like the plastic bags, it was like a Tyvek bag. And we get down to the freezer. And I open up the freezer and the side of the freezer door kind of puts a little gash in the bag, and I didn't even see it. And so I go to push, I was on the side, my buddy was on the end and we go to push and the bag rips and the arm falls out of the bag and just I don't know if you've ever been touched by a dead person. Listen, I've been a lot of crazy situations. I was mortified because I thought, one, this person's not dead and they're trying to get out of the bag. To this person is dead. And this is the start of the apocalypse. This is the end for all of us. And then three, somebody's playing a terrible joke on like there's got to be is and so I have my little freak out and haven't had a little panic moment. I did. I was gonna say it's like such a good opportunity to mess with a new guy, right? It is. Hey, we got a body up there. And you but check this out. The senior guys had never seen this happen before. So I looked down to the end of the gurney. They're freaked out too. And they didn't even get touched by the dead person. So we get another bag, we double bag. I've never closed a freezer so fast in my life. Close that freezer. And but I had never seen death firsthand. I had never, you know, a dead body that's still warm. It's at that at that time, that was like, you know, I don't know what I was thinking. It was insane to me. Whereas now, once I actually did get hired by the Sheriff's Office, and I was responding to death scenes or, you know, gory scenes, I still don't do well with blood. In the moment, I'm fine. In the moment in a pinch, I'm fine with blood. But my adrenaline dumps. Oh my gosh, man, they're they're so bad now. But going back to the hospital. So I did my time there. I ended up meeting an old guy, old guy named Charles. He's in an application process with another agency further north retired army guy, very smart guy. And he and I just clicked and we're we get along, he gets hired. And he's like, Hey, tonight's my last night, you know, if you want to grab a child together, you know, we'll just talk. So I kind of picked his brain and he gets hired by this agency. And he goes and works up north. I didn't see him again for years. So I get hired to work just outside of Richmond. And I did that job. I was at that agency at that time for five years, maybe a little maybe a little more. But I hold are you when you went through like so you went through the police academy? I was 22. And how was the police academy? It was stressful because I had never done any kind of paramilitary. We had some guys that came out of the Marine Corps to join and my first day of the academy, I was dealing with I was dealing with some athlete's foot issues and I wore white socks. So here I am in my academy uniform, my dark blue shirt, my khaki pants, white socks and dress shoes. And they issued like the chlorofrains and I'm sitting on the front row. And I remember I'm like trying to cross my ankles to hide my socks because those are only cotton socks that I had everything else was like some sort of blend like dress, dress socks. And the major, yeah, he was a major at the time he was retired Army Sergeant major. And he comes over to the table and he looks at me. He looks at my socks. And he always kept a tooth pick in his mouth and he goes, So this what we doing? Okay. And he walks away and I'm like, Oh my gosh. But throughout the police academy, it was it was very challenging. And rightfully so police academy in 2007 2008 timeframe was very different than what it is now. And at that point, I had never shot, you know, semi automatic pistol, I'd only shot my granddaddy's revolvers. My granddaddy used to he was he used to trap. That's kind of it's kind of his side business was he trap and he'd either get raccoon possum or whatever he could trap and then he you know, there's a market for it to sell the meat. And so he'd take us out to the traps and we'd have to shoot the raccoons. And so I had always shot this little tiny 22 that he kept in the in the glove compartment of his El Camino. So you know, my first time shooting, I was shooting a SIG 220. And I got this 45 in my hands, and I'm not even looking at the target. I'm looking at the gun because I'm watching this little tiny explosion take place in my hands. And I shot horrible. And so fitness wise, no issue. I learned that was where I learned that I could do pull ups. I learned that I was really good at pull up pull ups. But they ended up putting me in remedial shooting. I was the only one in the class that got remedial. Dang. And out. Yeah, I didn't but I didn't care. I didn't care because I'm not I'm not trying to impress anybody around me. I didn't really have that sense of competition or just hoping to get through it. I just want to get through it. Because I got bills to pay. And so I went to the entire Academy with the mindset that I'm not going to make it. I kept that mindset the entire time. And my buddy Wayne, he's since retired, he's an older guy, former Marine Corps guy. He's like, look, if you're willing to give me give up your lunch break, I'll go out there, we'll get a few boxes of ammo, we're just going to shoot. He said no rush, no timer, no time standard, we'll just we'll just walk through it. And it was it was probably about a five day span because Academy was Monday through Friday. And every day, instead of eating lunch, I'd go out there and I'd shoot with Wayne. And he taught me how to shoot. And I got passing score on that. And I was like, Okay, the next option after the next obstacle after the passing score on that was the final exam. And then what they do is they do the your you do your final exam for the state for Department of Criminal Justice. And then you do like this court, this mock court thing, to where you have every lesson plan from the entire Academy, you get every single thing, every single document that you've done, every piece of paper they give you. And they just give you this stuff as a hey, put it in your binder. Well, my binder was so organized, if they said, we're looking for this, I had a table of contents, I had little sticky notes, they said, we're going to give you a topic, we're going to give you a PowerPoint or something we want you to pull up. You need to be able to refer to your your own documents and be able to find it. This is record keeping, big part of law enforcement. And so they had a stopwatch, and then they had another binder where they had the questions. And so they go through and say, All right, pull up, I don't know, use of force day two. Well, I've got use of force marked, I can turn the page I'm at day two. I didn't realize I think you had like a minute and 30 seconds to be able to pull it up. And I could just go straight to it within the first 20 seconds. And what that translates to is if you're testifying in court, and you've documented something, your the the trust that either the jury or the judge has in what you're finding is your accurate documentation. And so that's that's another thing that I carried with me. And so I made it through a pass my exam made it through got my assignment. And I just drank from the fire hose. I just I drank from the fire hose. There was a lot of guys that had done law enforcement narcotics detectives in the 70s and 80s. So like the crack epidemic. And these guys had wild stories. And they just they taught me so much. There's one guy in particular, Dave Carroll, I know he won't mind me saying his name. I actually I don't know if he's I don't know if he's still with us or not. But this guy had insane stories from downtown Richmond in the 70s and 80s. And I remember thinking like, I don't know if I could ever do the things that he did. And then it looks at me and I'd say something like, hey, go, sure, you can if you have to. And I was like, wait, so this guy is a senior guy, and he's got faith in me that I can actually do these things. And it just it really kind of like I said, each job, each person, each, you know, friend or relationship that I had it built me up for the for the next was it when you first got out of the academy, and you go you said your first assignment, like what was your first assignment? Do you like to the big cop just out there? No, no, I was in a civil process. So serving like subpoena, different business different civil processes. I was a civil process server. But if patrol needed a backup or if they need if they were going to what does a civil process server do? I don't know what that is. So we get so you get like the subpoena or you get Ritz so like for civil cases, just to bring it to someone's house and say like you have to serve you have to serve them. But if you were doing like summons for unlawful detainer in Virginia is an eviction, you have to facilitate an eviction. So you go you make your notification, you post documentation, you set a date, they've got three business days. So you set the eviction and then you have to show up and make sure that no nonsense happens during the eviction. I didn't know it at the time. Evictions are very dangerous. I would imagine so. The first big thing that I had we had there was a member of Texas Chicana Brotherhood. This is the first like big, big time like actual like no BS gang member that we had and they were like, Hey, we have a warrant for this guy, we're going to go to this address, we need you to be there. You know, this is the time we're doing it. And I was like terrified. I was like, man, I've been doing civil process. I haven't done any of these like larger apprehensions, especially working with other agencies like the Marshals. But they're like, we want you there, you know, to be able to be on perimeter or block traffic in. So I was like, Okay, so now I'm terrified. And they're like, All right, let's go. And we move we went to the house. I've never said this publicly. But someone crashed my police car to that young man's mailbox. I'm not going to say who I may or may not know who but someone was someone was driving my police car that I was assigned and they crashed it in his mailbox because they were so nervous about what was about to go down. I was gonna leave that alone, not gonna actually, well, statute of limitation, never mind, we'll leave that alone. But I ended up inside the house and I'm face to face with this guy. And this after he's already been apprehended, he's in handcuffs. And he looks at me, he goes, New guy. I didn't even lot like I used to try to lie to be like, I'm not new. But he looks at me goes new guy. I said, Yes, sir. He goes, you're the only one that's called me sir. And I was like, it's probably because I'm new. And he just laughs. And he was like, Look, he was like, you've chosen a respectable job. He said, Don't ever be afraid of guys like me. He was like, because there's a certain level of respect that you give. And there's a certain level of respect that you get in return. And I'm like, still kind of scared. But I'm like, Wow, this guy's like, he's like mentoring me right now in handcuffs. Yeah. Yeah. And so it was it was just really cool. And then I had to cut another few interactions to where I was doing a prisoner transport. And I was trying to hurry and get it done. And I walk in, we call the guy out of the cell, he sits down, I'm just taking him maybe about a mile or two up the up the street to the jail. And I open the cell door, he comes out and he sits in the chair because normally will if it's older guy will shackle their feet first. But he sits in the chair. And he goes, you're not taking me anywhere. I was like, excuse me. He's like, you're not taking me anywhere. I was like, dude, what are you talking about? Like you're going to fight me right now? He's like, no, no, he's like, I'm not I'm not messing with you. It's older guy. He's like, I'm not messing with you. He's like, but you're not taking me anywhere. And I said, why? He said, he looks at me, he goes, you still have your gun on. And I look down, you're supposed to stow your gun before moving inmates. He goes, you still have your gun on. And if you still have your gun on, I can only imagine what other things you, you know, don't do the right way. And he's like, I'm not going anywhere with you. So you might as well call the supervisor now. And I'm like, I'm getting called out. Now keep in mind, there's a cell full of inmates. And now they're all joining him like, hey, he don't know he don't know he doing it here. Hey, y'all come get him. He's stupid. And it just it really it was one of those points where I could have just puff my chest up be like, I'm gonna put my gun away and you're coming with me. I was like, I was like, dang, he got me. He got me. You got got I got got. So I don't know if you notice a theme of me constantly getting called out for things that I'm, I'm, I'm rushing through things. I'm overlooking things. I'm doing things the wrong way, constantly getting called out in a safe way, but constantly getting by perpetrators. Yeah. Yeah. My criminals. That's, it's fired up when the criminals have the experience to call out exactly. Exactly. Hey, you're doing that wrong. Hey, thanks, sir. You're going to jail. But so, you know, constantly getting called out and I would overlook things. I would overlook the little things and, you know, I had a conversation to where if you overlook the little things, those little things can grow into big things and it can be detrimental. Well, yeah, like a guy grabs your gun. Yeah. Have we're supposed to have still absolutely. Absolutely. And so it was it was kind of a rough go initially and I was kind of, you know, I did have points where I felt sorry for myself, but, you know, growing up, I was my dad, I was talking about my dad used to when we go visit California, my dad was like, every night you will do 10 pull ups and 100 reps of jump rope. He had an old boxer's jump rope, you do 100 reps. He said, you will not go to bed until it's done. And I was really good at pull ups. My brother was good at jump rope. He said, you've got 10 reps of pull ups. He's got 10 reps. He said, you can do his 10 reps and he can do your jump rope or you can switch the reps. He said, but either way, this number of reps needs to get done before we go back into the house because we're in the garage. And so, so kind of kind of learning that there's no shortcut to doing pull ups. There's no shortcut to doing jump rope. You have to do the reps before you can go and get exactly what you want or before you can move on from this task. And so kind of having that mindset, it just it's all built on. It just perpetually built to where I was still at the at the agency I was at, but I ended up joining the Army National Guard. And the reason I ended up joining was because I sat in an eval sat on a performance eval. And my marks were never stellar. But my O five Navy uncle taught me that you don't put on a cold uniform. You got to get that uniform off the iron. You got to iron it before you put it on. For the years I was there, I never left the house without ironing my uniform first I iron my uniform. Every time I put it on, it was warm from the iron. And so I would yeah, he was he taught me a lot. And I went out to OCS the drill instructor, like Marine Corps drill instructor, awesome guys, his name was his name. Ironically was gun resurgence seals. Really? Yeah. And I remember the first time he's showing us how to iron. And probably was like a military operation. That's what it became. This guy's square But even with that mindset and ironing and I had I'm talking I had creases everywhere. I had creed there were creases. I mean, like, my pants crease came all the way up to the belt line. No other officer was doing that because you're sitting in a car you're you know, you're wearing this duty belt. And I would still get, you know, average for my uniform eval. But then you had people who were obese who had uniforms, they had crumbs on their uniforms. They had wrinkly pants. They had all these things. And they're and they're getting higher than me. And I started to see how the personality and the friendship aspect played into that. And it bothered me. I remember sitting I was sitting in a performance eval and my lieutenant was sitting across the desk and my sergeant was sitting right next to me. And my sergeant's not hit. Well, that Sergeant was my FTO the one who essentially taught me how to be a cop. He's a he's a major now. He's one of the command staff. Great dude. He he's sitting there and he's kind of like vouching for me. Because my LT is this older black woman. She's looking at my marks. And she's like, this is not good. This is not good. And he's like, Well, this is because of this. And he's kind of like arguing my case. It's like I'm standing there and he's my lawyer. And he's trying to, you know, beseech the judge is good grace. And so she was like, Well, we noticed we noticed that you know, you're kind of you're not as enthusiastic as you once were, you know, you're not dragging your feet, your work's getting done. You're still you're still semi motivated, but you've you've lost motivation. And at that time, I had put in for all these extra trainings I put in to become an instructor to I was volunteering at the Academy. There was a ton of stuff I was doing I was working around the clock picking up extra shifts, taking people's on call rotations, like there was a lot that I was doing. And I remember sitting in the chair and thinking like, I'm not gonna let my sergeant speak for me. I was like, I'm gonna say something. I was like, Well, and right when I said, Well, I could I couldn't see it, but I could feel his head snap and look at me like, please don't say anything stupid. I said, Well, honestly, I feel like I'm spinning my tires. I'm wasting my time here. I'm doing all this extra stuff spending all this time away from my wife and all this time away from home. And everything that I put in every, you know, request I put in gets denied. And there are people who show up who are doing the bare minimum, we got guys that'll get they'll get mad, they'll get pissed off at something, and then immediately call out sick the next day, like maliciously. And it's something that's a constant thing. These people are getting these positions that I'm putting in for. And here I am, essentially, losing sleep to come to work. And I get nothing for it. I'm and I use that that exact phrase, I'm spinning my tires. And I heard Sarge go, Well, LT, what he means is I said, No, Sarge, I was like, What I mean is exactly what I said. And LT looks at me, she brings her glasses down, she goes, Hmm. Well, I guess we're done here. And sends me back to work. So now, I don't know. I don't know. So did you just have like so much pent up frustration? It was this? Yeah. And this was at like the five you've been there for five years? I think at this point, I was at, yeah, I was it was it was right around five years. And I was frustrated. I was frustrated because I would put in for to be, you know, an instructor and someone else will get picked. And it just it made no sense because if my uniform, let's start there, if my uniform obviously is something that I take pride in, if my paperwork and everything that I'm doing is something I take pride in, why is there someone who I'm out performing that's getting exactly what I'm looking for? And I really I did I was upset about that. And over time, I don't want to say I became complacent. But it got to the point where I felt like I started to be targeted. I had one day walking out of the office where there was a captain that comes downstairs and he was like, Hey, come here real quick. Let me talk to you. And I go talk to me says, How are things? I said, things are fine. He goes, Okay, cool. He said, Let me see your handcuffs. Take my handcuffs, I hand them to him. He looks at him, holds him up to the light. He's like, Hmm, did you oil these? I said, No, he's like, Okay, he said, Let's go outside. We go outside. He says clear your weapon, hand me your gun. I had just done firearms like two days before. So I mean, I hadn't cleaned it to the extent that it should have been clean. He's hand me your gun. So I clear it I lock and show clear and hand it to him. He looks at he goes, you clean this? I said, I just did a quick clean after the range. He goes, hands it back to me. I go about my day the next day the LT calls me into the office is like, Hey, you got door duty, you're gonna you're gonna work the door because the captain came down here and your gun was dirty. Your cuffs weren't oiled. You got door duty. And I sat on that door. I think I think six weeks I sat on the door and just greeting people as they came in doing the running the metal detector and getting people into where they needed to be. And that whole time I was like, I dropped the ball. Like normally people will get door duty and be like, Oh man, that LT's got it out for me. But that whole time I was like, I legitimately dropped the ball. My my gun needs to be cleaned. My equipment needs to be serviced. And so people thought that I was disgruntled. I wasn't disgruntled. But I was like, I dropped the ball. And this is years I've been doing this for years now. So I need to know I know better. And so on the way home, I pass an army recruiting sign, it's just a little billboard on the side of the road. There was an army one and Air Force one side by side. And I said, Oh, that was Air Force. I'll call the Air Force called him waited a week, no call back. I was like, Well, maybe this is a sign I'll call there. I call the army now. So I call the army. Hello? Immediately. Oh yeah. And so that was in July. That was June or July of 2010. Or was it? Yeah, no, it's 2011. And I go and I take the as Vab and I took the as Vab in high school. But because I was a class clown, you know, you've got your whole grade in this auditorium. I'm obviously sitting with friends. We started cracking jokes. The the it was a Marine Corps NCO that was there facilitating it. He's like, That whole row get out. And I'm looking. And we're all like doing like this. He was like, Yep, that whole row get out. And I was like, Oh, no, I want to take the as Vab because I'm you know, I just want to see where I land. He's like, Nope, out. Keep in mind, this is during like a lunch period. So I have no class scheduled. I've now been kicked out. Now I have to roam the halls. And if I'm caught roaming the halls or skipping class, straight to detention. So I was like, Well, where can I go? So I go to the gym, I go to the gym. And I'm like, Hey, we were just kicked out of the the as Vab. Can I just at least, you know, hang out in here and clear my mind. So I did that. And so I never took the as Vab. So I hear him as an adult. And I'm like, man, I got to take the as Vab. I haven't done math in years. And so I got one of those study guides and I'm studying and at the time, I didn't really have much confidence in my intelligence. And even now, like I still I have a little bit more now. But even now, like I'm never the smartest guy in the room. But I'm going over the study guide, I go to take the as Vab. And there were three total, it was me and two other guys, those two guys were trying for the Marine Corps, I was trying for the army. And so I sit there and I go through this test. And I'm like, Okay, you know, when's it going to get difficult? When it when are the difficult questions coming along? And I finish it. And I was like, I didn't have any different, they wouldn't it wasn't super difficult, like there were some that were challenging when super difficult. So I turn it in go wait in the waiting area. So then the other two guys finish and they come out. And so we're standing there while they're the proctors grading the test. And so he calls us back in calls the other I was at the end of the line calls the other two guys back in and I'm at the back of the line. And he's sitting at a it was a typewriter. Or yeah, I think it was a typewriter. And he goes he says last name you give me your last name. And he looks at you and he's like, Hey, he looks at the first guy is like, Hey, better luck next time. He's like, you he's like, if you want to be a Marine, you can just got to be a little bit smarter, you got to do a little bit better on the test. The guy had gotten like a 24. And so he hangs his head and he goes out the door. The next guy he was like, Hey, listen, better luck next time. And I'm like, Oh, my gosh. Oh, my gosh, like everybody's failing. I failed. I was like, I'm too confident with this test. Everybody's failed. He goes, better luck next time, you know, gives him whatever paperwork the guy goes out the door, the guy got like the same score. So I walk up and he goes, he looks at it. And then he looks at me. And I'm like, he's about he's about to give me the spiel about to hear it better luck next time. And he pulls his glasses down. It's a kind of reoccurring theme. People pulling their glasses down. He goes, son, you can choose any job you want in the army. Nice. I said, what does that mean? He said, it means you scored high enough on this test that you can choose any job you want in the army. He's like, you need to find exactly what you want to do and make sure it's in your contract. And I was like, Okay, got it had no clue what that meant. But got it. So I called the recruiter. I was like, Hey, great news. He was like, Hey, listen, you're already in law enforcement. We've got you slided for an MP. I was like, Okay, okay, let me let me think about that. Give me a few days to think about it. He's like, no problem. Call me back whenever. So I go home and I'm with you. You like 27? I was 26. 26. And so I go home and I'm looking through like the brochure and I went to a recruiter on 18, you know, actually, I was 17. So you they're just looking at you like licking their lips. I got this rule. But first I'm in 26. They thought that I just I just needed a job like, you know, I'm just gonna be a pushover. And I knew what I was doing by going to the guard because I was gonna keep my law enforcement certification. I was gonna keep my job. And while going through training, I was gonna double dip. That was the thing was that I still get paid from the sheriff's office, but also get my army salary going through my entirety of training. So I called my brother in law and I have an older sister, but we didn't grow up together. And we actually we haven't spoken in years. During COVID, she we kind of I don't want to say we butt heads, but we just had a falling out and haven't really spoken to them in a long time. But I called my brother in law. He had gone through OCS. He was in the infantry. He was down in Georgia. And I called him. And I said, dude, I don't I don't know what direction to go. And his exact words were, join the infantry, just go be a killer. And I was like, he wouldn't steer me wrong. He would not steer me wrong at all. And this is like 20 what what years? Oh, geez, 2007, 2000. Oh, so you like the war is on. This was 2000. No, no, no, no. I had the idea in 2008, but it wasn't until 2011 that I actually was going through the process. Okay, so wasn't quite as obvious at that time. Yeah, Afghanistan was over or at least well, no, not over, but it was winding down. No, sorry, Iraq was over in 2011. That's right. Afghanistan was over. And so he's like, yeah, just go be a killer. And so what I ended up doing was I was like, okay, I'm joining the infantry. I've already got it set out. I'm joining the infantry. He told me he told me he said he said infantry airborne Ranger school, he said, just get that in your contract. It'll be fine. So I go home and I'm looking through the state like the state National Guard. There was a pamphlet. And I was like, there's no bonus for infantry. There's no bonus at all. I was like, I'm doing this because I need some sort of supplement to my financial situation. If I if I go Intel, I can I can get this bonus. It's a pretty good bonus. It was kind of scary because you do have to be smart, you know, and I didn't still didn't think I was that smart of a guy. But I was like, I'm gonna go I'm gonna go Intel I'm gonna do I'm gonna go into the Intel field. And I'm gonna find something specific in there and I'm gonna do that. And the schools were the schools for that were pretty long, but you could still get your contract squared away before you ship out. And so I called the recruiter was like, Hey, I want to go, you know, there's Intel unit that's in Northern Virginia. I want to go Intel. And he goes, Oh, we don't have that available. Like without it. He didn't even sound like he looked through and he just said, we don't have that available. I said, Oh, that sucks. He goes, So you're ready to be an MP? I said, No, thank you for your time. I was like, you know, I appreciate it. I was like, but I'm not I'm not gonna do this if I can't, you know, go Intel. And just hung up the phone. And within like two days, he called me back. He's like, Hey, you still interested? I found your spot. A slot just opened up. Yeah. And that's that's exactly what he did. And so I go down to Fort Lee to go through meps. And I didn't know what a security clearance. I didn't really know what it entailed at the time. And so I go through my security interview. And I'm looking at the resume that they're going over to ask me my security questions. And my recruiter had filled in missing information rather than ask me, or say, Hey, do you have this person's information? He just filled it in. And he hands it to me says, Hey, whatever they ask you, just agree with what's on the paper. And I'm sitting there and I'm on the phone with the feds because they're doing the background investigation. And I was like, I'm not a liar. Like I'm not a liar at all. And he's like, All right, you know, from this time to this time, you worked at the lumber company and your supervisor was this, is this correct? And I went, No. And one of the recruiters was sitting and watching me while on the phone. And he sits up in the seat. And he's like, and the guy's like, Wait a second. So some of this information isn't correct. And I said, a lot of it's incorrect. And he goes, Who filled this out? So I got them as much information as I could find. But this final product that's in front of me, they filled out. And he's like, again, and you can hear him like kind of he's, he's been through this before. And so he's like, All right, get as much of the correct information as you can. You've already got a ship date, they're going to ship you to basic will conduct your interview while you're in basic. And so I ship out to basic and it was it was easy. They tell you what to wear, where to go. It was really easy. And I was 26 going through this. So it was the hardest part was being away from my wife. And at that time, we had our first kid. And one day we were on the range, we're doing we're doing a marksmanship. And they call my name out. And like, anytime you hear your name called in basic, like, I'm going to go over there. And I'm going to have to make me stronger, because I'm going to have to do a bunch of push ups. And so they call my name. So I grab a battle buddy and I go over there. And they're like, No, no, no battle buddy needed. And I'm like, Okay, so by myself, like, which is kind of against protocol, but because it was a security interview, they couldn't have anybody present. So we're standing there. And he's like, Hey, we got your updated information, we just want to go over this, make sure it's right. So go over my security information. He's like, Well, you know, by the time you graduate basic congratulations, you're going to have a clearance. And I was like, Oh, that's awesome. And he goes, he's like, So your first packet, he's like, What was the deal with that? I said, I got the recruiter as much information as I could. He either had the gaps and just decided to fill him on his own or just made it up. And, and I told him I was like, you know, I didn't feel comfortable lying about that. And he was like, Well, that wasn't a test, but that shows a tremendous amount of character. So now after all these years of being built up as just, you know, do the right thing, make sure your equipment's in order. Now I have someone from the outside looking in who's telling me that I have a good, good character. And these are things that I mean, I didn't necessarily grow up hearing, but seeing this like, Wait a second, now I'm actually, I'm actually doing something. And then so ship out from basic and go to AIT. I was, there's a few months, and then come home and have to go right back to the sheriff's office. So now I'm back at the sheriff's office, and I didn't realize it, but now there's a riff because I've got, you know, once a month, I have to do a Friday, Saturday, Sunday. So that means I'm missing a Friday. I'm unavailable for on call for Saturday, Sunday. So that's kind of taken my name out of the pot. So all the work and the volunteering that I was doing before I couldn't do. And so they were like, Well, we see that your orders say that you have to be, you know, at drill on the 14th, we can't afford that I'll put us down personnel. And I said, Well, you know, I'm covered by law. But respectfully, these are federal orders. If I don't show up, that starts the AWOL process. I learned how long the AWOL process is. And I was like, I don't want to start it because once you get that, you know, that marker by your name, it's hard to bounce back from. And so they really gave me a hard time about it. And I'm going through, you know, I've got my clearance, I'm doing my drill weekends, I'm working, you know, at the sheriff's office, and they just they really kind of ramped it up. And they put the pressure on me to where I was back on door assignments, you know, there was all these things that it didn't feel like it was malicious. But looking back at it, I realized I was like, this is they don't like the fact that I now have two employers. And all the old Army guys, they loved it because they're talking about their time in the Army. And now that I'm in the Army, I'm a full fledged soldier. And now these guys are like, Okay, we're all on the same page. And these guys are like opening up to me about, you know, things that they've done some of the guys that have been through Vietnam and some of the older guys, it was just really cool to be a part of that network. Well, there was a guy, and I'll tell you his name once we're done shooting, but he was a seal. I think he was there's some sort of reserve. Yeah, there's a unit. Yeah. And so being that I'm in Virginia, we're right up from North Hook and damn neck and all of that. And I would always run into him in the gym. And he looks at me as like, Hey, heard you join the Army. And I'm like, Yeah, he was like, good. And I'm like, well, not ripping from what you said, but he said he didn't say it like, intense how you said it was more like good, you know, but he's like, good, he's like, you know, I think the military is great. He said, don't think that the sheriff's office is the only career that you qualify for a lot of people get into a sheriff's office or a local agency from a town they grew up in and they never leave. He said, if you can travel the world, if you can do whatever you can to get the perfect job, do it. And he had caught caught a lot of heat because he was actually slated for a deployment shortly after that. And then once he deployed, I ended up taking contract with an agency in Northern Virginia. And I was, I was baptized by fire baptized by fire. I went and doing these overseas missions. And it was just sort of you leave the sheriff completely. Yeah, when you got that contract. Yeah, I went in and after my second kid was born, I submitted my paperwork, submitted my two week notice. And that same sergeant who was trying to defend me, I came in from paternity leave and I handed him my notice. And he's standing there and he reads it and he looks at me goes, No, no. And I was like, dude, I was like, what do you mean? No, like we're past that point now. He's like, We can't afford to lose you. I was like, well, y'all don't treat me like that. And he was like, no, no, he's like, he's like, you don't listen. He's like, the people who have it out for you are about to retire. And we have I think people like had it out for you. I don't know. I don't know if it's because like a lot of times my humor would get me would rub people the wrong way. But I've never I've never cracked the joke to disparage some why I have but not like not not like to their face. So like if I crack jokes, if there's an intense situation, we had a guy who once we switched over from analog to digital radios, he didn't test his radio. And so because he didn't test his radio, he had some issues. And so that came up while we're in roll call, to the point where he's sitting next to me, he and the LT are screaming at each other. He reaches down to take his badge off, he takes his badge off and throws it at her feet. So after the badge comes off, the next thing he goes to take off is his gun belt. Now, I'm sitting next to this person who is a disgruntled employee who has just essentially quit his job and thrown his badge at a commanding officer. And now he's going to reach down for his gun belt. So I'm sitting there and I'm watching and I go and we had leather holsters and I unsnap and I'm like, I don't want to have to do this. But hey, if there's work to be done, it's got to get done by somebody. And so I unsnap and I was probably but I had halfway, you know, and he luckily kind of changed his trajectory, he took off his belt key was took off his belt and threw his gun belt on the ground. But you broke leather. I did. I did. And keep in mind, I saw what was happening and I was terrified. And so luckily it played out. So then I look over like while he's walking out the door and I look over to one of the older guys and he's sitting and he's got his gun just like, like on his lap, just sitting here like ready to rock and roll. And I was okay, so that tells me I had the right idea. But you know, I started cracking jokes after that. I was like, oh man, if I was the LT, I wouldn't let that badge hit the ground. I caught it. And so, you know, they didn't like stuff like that. So I think I was camping with my family and my son and I were at a at a National Park Campground. And my son and I, we had these awesome props to nerf nerf the nerf company. Yeah. The nerf guns are cool. But the nerf they were the nerf laser guns, really, they were really, really good. Like they were very accurate. You can shoot someone at like, probably 75 yards, maybe even 100 yards. And the weapon itself was also the receiver. So when you got shot, it was that gun that got shot. And then after and every time it shot, it would shake. When you got shot, it would shake. It was very realistic training. And so I was doing that all the time with my kid, I would play I bought so many of those guns, all his friends, we come over, it was awesome. So we brought them to this camping trip. And we're running around in it's like a desert camping area. And so we're out there, you know, like nine in the morning, and we're, you know, doing cover and move and maneuvering through trying to kill each other. Yeah. And all of a sudden, like a female like Park Ranger, is like, she's like, she comes out from like behind someone's camper. And she's got her hand on her weapon and her weapon is like, one quarter draw. Oh my gosh. And she's like, you know, put the weapons down. And I am just like, these are laser pistols, you know, as I'm like slowly moving, but I was like, dang, dude, yeah, imagine getting smoked by a Park Ranger out there with a Nerf gun. Hey, not everybody likes to, you know, they don't like the jokes in the playing around. It's getting wild over there. It's getting a little about to get a little Western on that thing. Yeah, that's a scary scenario. You know, some guys like all heated. I mean, that stuff happens. Yeah, you know, people get frustrated at work. Yep. And that's when the workplace violence goes down, especially when guys already has it. He's already got a gun. Yeah. So it and at the time I had kind of dove into I was a volunteer as a volunteer instructor for officer survival, which even now like I ended up instructing that course for 10 years. That was that was like my fit in the course of survival. Got it. And you dive into these police videos where you see things like this. And it happens so fast. And it's like you really have to it's survival officer survivor. Does that include hand to hand? Does that include combatives at all? It's 100% survival combatives hand to hand your your decision making process, everything, you know, you show up to a house and you have a frequent flyer and he you got to go in there and he's he's one of these guys who may be a combat vet and you see chicken wire on the windows. He's he's in there for the long haul and you're not shooting gas into that house, you know, so it's like these little things he's pre flight or pre flight and or pre fight indicators. You go to arrest, you know, a little Jose from next door and he's got on a cowboy hat, you know, in the Mexican community. If he takes his hat off and sets it down, he's got his hands on his hips, probably gonna fight it's on. And so you know, so teaching these things, but then also getting these recruits into fights and getting them to go hands on because I'm telling you, it's very weird to go hands on with someone you don't know. And you know that you're going hands on to hold them accountable for something they've done. And they know it too. And if they don't want to go to jail, the fight's on and I've been in my fair share of fights. And I've got injuries, but you know, being able to teach that mindset, you might go to a house and have a conversation to where y'all get along and then you might have to shoot this person. And I've seen it hundreds of times, if not thousands of times throughout my career. And so teaching that I kind of expose myself to a lot of these videos that kind of it put me on high alert. Yeah, and I wasn't those videos are great. Yeah, because you start to realize patterns and recognize things. So yeah, I've been I've been always down for watching whether it's even even bar fight videos, like any type of videos of violence, you get to learn a lot about it just by watching it makes you a lot more aware. Yeah. And then, you know, obviously, when you train for it, that's one of the biggest things I say about training you get to for self defense for like females is, you know, human beings are not especially like in America, we're not used to, like that level of contact. Yeah. So when someone grabs a hold of you, if you're not used to that, yeah, you don't even get over that mental hurdle exactly like what is going on right now. Whereas if you're a jiu-jitsu person, like someone grabs you, that's just another day in the office, we're gonna okay, this is what's happening. So to get people not only to watch the things but then to experience them and have them like fight each other and fight other people is, it's just good to go. Yeah, obviously. Well, I know that I learned quite a bit. And, you know, there was a, we had a guy who was a he was a frequent flier. And we ended up having this murder trial that was going on. And I was I was slated for security for this trial. And they had had a mistrial before and they wanted to make sure they did everything the right way. Well, they bring over this guy, but they bring him along with a guy who's mentally unstable and inmate who's mentally unstable. So they're in the cell together. The mentally unstable guy has an arraignment, which means he finds out if he's getting a bond or not. The murder guy is waiting for his trial. It's a jury trial. So I had to thought I was like, if we've had a mistrial before, we should probably put them in separate cells. Just so that way, there's no, there's no issue. They're like, no, they're both males, they can both stay in the male cell. And I was like, well, the female cells empty, so we could probably put him in there. And they didn't. So sure enough, we take the arraignment guy in the court. He finds out that he's not going home. The judge denied his bond request. So now he's pissed because he knows he's not going home. And they put him back in the cell. And I remember watching him, he was doing, he's doing like this. If you're in jail, and I've learned a lot about jail over the years, some from the other side of the fence, most of it from the other side of the fence, but he starts doing this. And the second that it registered what he was doing, he just, just wailed on this guy just started like, he hit him, he punched him, he hit him with a right. And the guy fell to the ground, he grabbed a shirt, and he's just like, wailing on him. So by the time we're able to get in the cell, this guy's been punched three or four times. He's bleeding from the mouth and the nose, he's cussing us all out. The crazy guy is like, you know, if I'm not going home, then nobody's going home or I don't know what his mindset was, we get him out, put him in separate cells, ends up in a mist trial again. And I remember playing that back in my head. He walks in when he's let back into the cell, they take the handcuffs off, he immediately stares at the guy, he's, you know, people we telegraph, he stares at the guy that he's going back in there with. And then once he stares at him, the guy's just kind of sitting on the end of the bench. That's when he goes and he goes to his left side. And that's when he starts kind of loosening up. And then he circles around and does his attack. And so I had a had a foot pursuit once, it was on Thanksgiving Day a few years ago, where a guy did that he is like five people in a car. I think we had one of the guys that already seen the hand to hand transaction, guy gets out of the car, long hair, he already given us a false name. He does like this, and then starts listen, if you're ever in a conversation and someone they're looking for an escape, it could be because it's a bad conversation, it could be because they don't want to go to jail. So then he puts his hair in a ponytail. I was like, bro, you don't have to put your hair in a ponytail. None of us like you that much. I was like, you're not that cute with it. You know, cracking jokes, keeping it light. Well, then he bends down to his shoes. The second that he takes a knee. I said, you about to run, huh? And he ties his shoe, and he stands up and he's looking at me like, what are you talking about? I was like, you're about to take off running, you're gonna try to run from us, huh? I kid you not, this is exactly what he does. He goes, man, I'm not about to and he takes off. And he takes that first step. And because I had seen the last direction that he look, I kind of was like, okay, 50% chance he's gonna run to his right. So he takes that first step and I just wrap him up. And we we fall to the ground. And the psychological aspect, I know he's got buddies that are there with them that they're all they've all been detained at the time. So I start yelling, Taser, Taser, Taser. And I know that they hear Taser, none of them want to get tased. I obviously I didn't even have time to grab my Taser, I'm yelling Taser. And he stops and lays face down on the ground. I never even drew my Taser. And so by this time, there were some park rangers that were across at the Dunkin Donuts of all places. They come flying over and they get out and you know, we've got assistance and we end up finding a bunch of drugs in the car. And the guy ended up getting a obstruction. I think I don't know if they hit him with a looting because he really only took one step. He didn't allude me at all. I don't know if they hit him with a looting or not. But he was like, man, y'all are fast. I was like, brother, I was two steps ahead. And then my coworker goes, man, that was fast. I was like, dude, I knew he was gonna run. And he was like, how do you know? And so then once I started to be able to articulate and talk about what I saw, I could share that. And you know, I still had foot pursuits. I still had people that, you know, try to get away from me or fight me. But you know, I'm kind of putting that in the toolbox. But that was after my time contracting doing counterintelligence, counterterrorism. I call it, I call what I was doing, I call it target acquisition and elimination. It was, it was really cool. It was a lot of time away from home. It was overseas missions. I met, I met a guy, a Marine Corps guy, Marsach guy, the first time I ever dealt with anybody from Marsach, dude was like six, five, just a large, beautiful man, like flowing hair. I mean, dude, dude, look, they called him Captain America. And so I was like, that's the perfect name for him. The problem is, is that he was a major. So he hated being called captain. And so I was always one poking the barrel, hey, hey, cap. And so, you know, I ruffled some feathers while on that mission. And then I got to a point where, you know, like I said, my wife and I, we had, we had already bought the house, we bought the house in 2008. And we had two kids, and we were just slowly drifting apart. And I said, well, my law enforcement service is still good. I can, I can come back from, you know, doing what I'm doing and go right back into law enforcement. And she says, would that make you happy? And I remember saying like, I'm, I'm not working to be happy. I'm working, you know, to be able to sustain my family. And if me going overseas or me, you know, working on overseas missions means that I'm going to lose my family, I'm not going to do that. And so went right back to law enforcement in 2015. And within a year, I had my first law enforcement shooting. It was October 16 or excuse me, October 2, 2016. And same thing. You know, I remember I left roll call. I had at this point, I got a little complacent. I was on the SWAT team by then. So I felt like, you know, I'm the man, I got this. I remember coming in a roll call. And one of my buddies was our sniper. And I go and I was like, you know, I had never switched seats in roll call, not once. Every time I go into a roll call in a new squad, I pick a seat that no one's sitting in. And that is my seat. It's the first time that I ever switched seats. And I switched seats. It was my first sergeants last night, because he was going up, he got promoted to detective. And we had a brand new sergeant. And so I go in there, I was like, I'm not sitting where I normally sit. I'm sitting in this the SWAT section back here, like just chip on my shoulder, you know, thinking like I got this. And so Sarge says our first sergeant says, All right, this is my last night here. Don't y'all stir nothing up? I was like, Sarge, you got nothing to worry about last words. I said that I was like, you got nothing to worry about. So I leave roll call. Roll call ended. It was from eight to 830. And I leave roll call, go get a coffee. Same thing I always do. Go get a coffee, check in with some of the local, you know, businesses and pry around. Just before nine o'clock, my buddy makes a stop on a car and I they run the driver, drivers got like 12 felony warrants. So he's like, All right, I'm gonna detain a driver, give me, you know, give me some backup. So I go over there. I was the first one there. And the driver completely cool. No issues. Like, Yeah, no, I got warrants, blah, blah, blah. Like well, these are drug related. You have anything in the car? He's like, No, there's nothing in the car is completely clean. So get him in handcuffs. My buddy, Matt, he says, Hey, go check, there's a passenger in the front seat of that van. Go check, go check the passenger. He's like, we just got to detain him. If the driver wants to release the van, we can release it to him, but we have to search it. We're going through the, you know, it's narcotics protocol. So I go and I'm talking to the driver and I'm like, All right, which, you know, you got an ID is like, Nope, no ID. That's clue number one. No ID. I was like, Wait, this is the driver of the passenger? This is the passenger. Okay. At this time, I think Matt was interviewing the driver. And because they're at his passenger still in the vehicle, passenger was still in the vehicle. So I'm up there. I had my old mag light. Remember those old mag lights? I used to tuck it under my arm because I didn't like to have anything in my hands. So he's given me name, date of birth. And then he gives me he didn't give me a social he gave me name date of birth. They ended up running him. He's got some history, but I had an earpiece that he couldn't hear my radio traffic. So come to find out he lives or he grew up just a few miles from where I live. And so I'm talking about the county. I'm like, Oh, yeah, you know, the county's really grown. blah, blah, blah, you got any kids just small talk to keep him talking. And he's like, Yeah, I got you know, I got a kid, I got this and we're just we're just talking. So I was like, Look, the driver's been arrested. I can't verify that you have a license. I was like, if if you I was like, what I what I need you to do is get out of the car. I was like, You don't have any warrants get out of the car. I'm gonna pat you down, make sure you're good to go and then you're good to bounce. I was like, Can we can we do that? He was like, Oh, yeah, no problem. Well, he had some marijuana shake on his shirt, I could identify just just out of the blue. And that was never a high priority thing for me. Because if it's just shake, I'm not going to charge you with possession. That's, that's ridiculous. So he starts wiping his shirt off because he think he knows I know, but I'm like, dude, I'm not worried about I'm not worried about weed. Like that that doesn't matter. I was like, if you're good, I'm just gonna pat you down, you'll get out of here. He's like, All right. So he gets out of the car, keeping my room on the passenger side. And I'm watching his body language, I'm looking at his belt line when he gets out. He's got a gray shirt or gray shirt and red basketball shorts. And he gets out. And but he gets out away from me. He's like backing toward like backing out of the car. I was like, that was weird. But to do was like 63, 240 pounds. He was a big guy. So maybe that's just what he does if he's got any injuries. So he walks back to the police car back in the day, we were teaching cops to put hands on the hood. That was a really big thing that that they taught me Academy hands on the hood, put them at a position of disadvantage. Well, if someone is 63, and then you got me who's five, 10 and a half, you know, he's still at an advantage because that literally puts me at elbow height. So I would brace the elbow. And I would start I was starting on the I was called a driver side. Anytime I search anybody, I'm starting on the on the left side, I'm going to go down the left side and go my goal is to get from the driver side of the passenger side going around the back the belt line. So driver side no issue, nothing, and get around to passenger side. And I remember I was going across his belt line, you can feel the drawstring inside of basketball shorts. And my hands stopped, I felt immediately what I knew was a gun. In my mind, it was a revolve, I could see it like once I touched it, I could see it. And so split second, I froze. Matt's watching my body language. Matt yells gun. Right when Matt yells gun, it triggers in my mind. Oh, yeah, this is a gun. You should probably do something. So right when he said gun, I keep in mind I had my hand braced on his elbow. He draws his elbow in and he punches me right in my temple. And I didn't know it at the time, but it echoed across the park. I like he hit me hard. And I had taken a few hits at this time. So I kind of built up, you know, a little bit. But I think that's probably the hardest I've been hit in well, at that time. But in recent years, that was really hard. So I remember stumbling back in my eyes started to water. And all I saw was him take off running. And his hands were in front of him. I get on the radio. I literally I've only ever listened to the the transcribe listened to the recording, maybe once or twice. I actually saw it pop up on TikTok of all things like, you know, people will pull up police videos and dash cam videos. And I saw it pop up on TikTok one time and it threw me off. But I said one running with the gun. And so I know the canine had just pulled up on scene. And I have this weird relationship with police canines where they don't like me and I don't really like them. So I know that if I'm moving if I'm chasing him, the dog is going to focus on me. So I run around the back of the car as I'm drawing my gun, and the dog goes in front of me and the dog runs. And so now we're all chasing the canine handler, the dog and I were chasing. And he's running directly towards these townhomes. Now the week before I'd gotten a call at these townhomes where some kids had gotten in trouble for, I don't know, making noise or something. So I know there's a ton of kids in these houses. And this guy's running straight for him. And so the guy ends up he's probably 1520 yards ahead of me. He ends up turning around and just boom, boom, boom, boom. And all I remember was after the first shot, it was so loud because this was like a courtyard area, there's townhomes on this side and this side and then on the front of us, there's a small break, all of that sound just and it was fired right at me. So then I start hearing like the it's like a buzzing sound. Keep in mind at this point, I've never I nobody ever explained getting shot at with like a buzz and like a snap sound. So I'm hearing it. And I slow I want I started to slow down but then I dove like so I'm like in this prone position, diving. I don't know how somehow the suspect ended up with a hole in his leg. It's a whole long thing. You know, it's really weird how that happened. But he ends up running into the woods. And I'm I'm still laying on the ground. And I'm like, I check my mags. I'm good. I'm good on my mags. I'm good on ammo. I call out, call out my buddy, Matt, you good? I hear him say he's good. So I backpedal to the car. And when I get back to the car, I see blood all over the ground. And I was like, I'm not looking down. Because if I am shot, and I feel it or I see it, I'm going to feel it. I was like, I'd rather just feel it. So I'm doing these sweeps. So I check my, you know, my legs, check my femoral first, check my body and and while I'm doing this, I can't hear anything that's going on around me. My vision is like through a soda straw. It's like completely locked into where the last point that I saw him, and I can't hear anything. And so I'm doing this. And I grabbed my rifle had this old, this colt m4 commando, which was my SWAT rifle. So I got that. So now I'm at the back of my car. And they're calling me on the radio. I got guys showing up on me. And I was like, I'm not seeing yelling my name. And I can't, I'm not responding. And so my buddy, he says he came with the car. He's like, dude, it looked like you were beating your meat when I pulled up. He said, because you just kept doing this. And I was so focused on making sure I wasn't shot. And I'm sitting there, I got my rifle kind of tucked and I'm behind the trunk of my car. And I'm just checking. And I didn't hear a word until he touched my shoulder. And when he touched my shoulder, it was like vision opened up. It's like I was hearing for the first time, I could hear sirens, I could hear stuff going on around me. I could smell the air like I like this this life changing event has just occurred. And now it's like, I went from being in it to now I'm watching it. And so come to find out I wasn't shot, but the guy actually shot the canine shot the canine and the canine ran off and then they recalled it and it came back in and ran through that area where my car was. And so I remember coming back to my car, they said, All right, are you okay? I said, Yeah, I'm fine. They're like, All right, we're gonna bring in another canine, we're gonna do a canine track, we need you to track. Well, they didn't know I didn't say what I had done. I didn't mention any of the actions I had taken. I didn't mention getting punched in the face or anything like that. I just said I was okay. So now I'm on this canine track. And while we're in the woods following this blood trail, I started to get dizzy. And I was like, dude, I can't do this. He was like, What are you scared? I was like, No, the guy punched me before he tried to shoot me. The canine goes, That was you? I said, Yeah, he gets on the radio. They come down, they grabbed me by the arm and scored me to the ambulance. And they're like, you have to get checked out because you just got punched in the head. And we can't afford having you out here passing out or anything. So I get in there, they take my gun belt. And I'm sitting back there and I'll never forget. I'm just staring at the wall trying to trying to put together the pieces of what had just happened. And one of the EMTs cracks a joke, I don't know what the joke was. But he made it as though this was a lighthearted situation. And I didn't say a word, I just stared at him. And my supervisor was in the ambulance with me, says get him out of here now. And I didn't know what was going on. Of course, I'm in my own world, but they think that I'm like going full rage mode. And I'm about to just tear up the back of this ambulance. Who's the comedian now? Exactly. So this is what my leadership has been experiencing. But so yeah, it just it was it was this whole thing to where I had to remain on scene. I was seen by medical, the sheriff came out and came over to me and and gave me some encouragement. And I was like, where do I go from here? You know, what like do I do I have to like this is the beginning of my shift, do I go back to work to have to go sit at the office? Are we doing my interview tonight? And so my supervisor came over and he kind of like shakes my hand, give me like a little hug. And he's like, Hey, you did the right thing. He was like, we're gonna we're gonna get you and some of the other guys in here, everyone that was involved with this call, we're gonna send you guys home tonight. He said, when you go home, don't get on social media. Don't get on Facebook, just go home. Get a night's rest. He said, call me in the morning, we're gonna have you come back at some point to do your interview. I said, Okay. So I still didn't fully have my adrenaline dump because this is my first like, did they catch the guy? Yeah, they ended up they ended up catching him. But it was like a week later, he ended up yeah, he ended up he was able to get to a phone to call his baby mama. I'll I'll get into more of that because that also it kind of there was some stuff that went along with that as well. But so I go home. And I remember I walk in the door and my wife I was on midnight shift for like eight years. I walk in the door and she sits up at a bed, she goes, Oh, you scared me, you're home. I was like, Yeah, I was like, you know, there's a lot of stuff that went down at the office, I didn't have the heart to tell her, because I was still processing as there's a lot of stuff that went down at the office. I was like, they sent me home. I'm gonna probably go in for a day shift tomorrow. She goes, Okay, can you check on the kids? And I was like, All right, I'll check on the kids. I check on the kids and I go sit at the end of the bed. Well, you got to check on the kids. That's the way it goes. Geez. I call my dad. That said, did you get him? Oh, man. I call my dad and told him what happened. My dad has a thing where he he doesn't call me by my name. He calls me boy. He's like, boy. He said, did you get him? I said, No, he's he's still out there. He's like, No, did you get him? I was like, Yeah, he got got. He goes, did he get you? I said, No, sir. He said, Now you got to do is keep on living. And I was like, man, like I had done these missions, I had, you know, worked on these overseas missions and all this stuff had gone on and all the stuff that I've been through. But at the end of those, I didn't come to my house and check on my kids. I didn't come to my house and and see my wife. I didn't see my family after those things. That was, you know, jobs finished. Good job guys. Add a boy pat on the back. You go home. You get to go home. You go home. Whereas for this was this just happened within the last few hours. Now I'm at home. And it just dude, it all hit me like at once. I think I went three or four days with no sleep. Like it just the idea that that was 15 miles from my house and that could have been my last day like it really it affected me and I didn't know that it affected me. And so the guy like I said, he ended up getting away. And I didn't know the they brought in the marshals task force was on was on the case. And they found him. And when they found him, he was he was in a hotel room. He still had the gun. He had done this makeshift tourniquet kudos to the guy made sure to turn a kit around his leg. And they went in they got him and my buddy took a picture of the warrant and I was I was listed as a victim of attempted capital murder. Well, strong emphasis on attempted. Yeah, take that right? Yeah. Seeing my name in and seeing, you know, he ended up getting I think he got he got a few other warrants because at the time, that case was what changed the case law for police canines because it then back then it was just destruction of property. But seeing my name as a victim, like, you know, and the code spelled out, you know, it was it was insane. And I went through the whole cycle of emotions all over again, once I saw that. And then I went in to do my interview. And you do your admin interview, then you have to do a criminal interview. So admin interview, it's for record keeping purposes, you know, you don't have to give the interview, but I didn't know this at the time. And so I do the interview, detectives walk out, they walk back in, well, then they read you garrity. Essentially, when they read you garrity, it's them reading you your rights. And I got I was furious. I was like, you read someone their rights before you interrogate. And they were like, you know, having these rights in mind, you wish to speak to us and everything else. I was like, I'll talk. I was like, I got nothing to hide. So I did that. And then the case kind of dragged on for a little bit. I got some time off. I went to SWAT school. It was a two week school. And it was a great time. It was I mean, I learned so much. There was a an old retired Navy SEAL that that taught the class. He was out of Dalgren, Dalgren Naval Base. And just a phenomenal course, great group of guys. And I really, you know, got that camaraderie. And I was able even though I wasn't able to work with my squad, because I was still on admin leave, I got that camaraderie by being in a school. And so went through went through all of that. And then by the time I came back to work, I had no clue that impacted me until it was probably two or three weeks later, I came back to work and I was not proactive. I wasn't motivated. I wasn't doing anything. And I had a conversation with one of the supervisors and I was like, oh, well, there that's my one traffic stop for the night. And he called me out. He was like, what? He was like, you've never been a bare minimum kind of guy, what is going on? And so I was like, Oh, nothing, just, you know, just life just, you know, busy, just stuff going on. So later in the night, when things kind of die down, because the shift kind of happens in waves, when things kind of die down, he calls me, he says, hey, come over to the parking lot over next to the Pizza Hut, I want to talk to you real quick. So I go over there. And he goes, Hey, just out of the blue, he said, did they give you any mental health resources after your incident? I was like, no, he was like, did you talk to any mental health professionals or anybody? You know, regarding the incident? I was like, no, dude, I went home, I was on administrative leave, I went to SWAT school, and then I came back and now I'm here. He's like, All right. And so he reaches in his console, he writes a number on a card, he's like, Listen, he's like, I think that your incident has impacted you in ways that you don't understand. I was like, what are you talking about? I'm good. I'm not hurt. He's like, No, no, no. He said, I think it's impacted you in ways that you don't understand. He said, here, give this person a call was the emotional assistance program or whatever we had for the office. He said, give this person a call. And, you know, just have a conversation. I was like, All right, all right, Roger Sarge, I'll do it. So I put in the console didn't think anything about it. And then it was probably, I don't know, maybe another week or so that I was, I was at home. It was it was nighttime. I was a day off. So I'm up at night while my family sleeping and I'm sitting there at the dining room table. And I'm just racking my brain like, What, what did he mean by that? What did he mean by it might have impacted you in ways that you didn't understand or don't understand? What, what could he possibly mean? So I grabbed that card, I went to the car and got the car and I'm sitting there looking at it. And I was like, man, I'm not calling these people. I'm tougher than that. And then I was like, Well, you can still be tough and make the phone call. You can you can still, you know, you can do both. And so I grabbed it and I called. And he asked me about, you know, what I dealt with. And I told him about the incident. And then he goes, So how's the weather where you live? Because this was obviously you phone in and it could be anybody anyway, any therapist anywhere. How's the weather where you live? We started talking about the weather. And we started talking about my house. And because we moved into that house. Yeah, no, we had we were moving into a new house coming up. He's asking about the weather. So I was talking about the house, talking about everything that was going on in life. And he goes, Well, it sounds like, you know, you got a you got a lot going on. He was like, Do you ever get overwhelmed by all of it? I was like, Oh, yeah, all the time. And he's like, Well, maybe you should think about taking, you know, a day where you and your family don't do anything, but spend time together. And like all these things, it's, it's, it's a benefit. You know, the Bible says a man who finds a wife finds a good thing. It's she's a good thing. How dare I not spend time with her and just relax or just have coffee on the porch. So I started I started kind of doing that. And slowly, but surely she was like, Yeah, I think it affected you. But you know, you seem fine, but you might still dwell on it. And I was like, Well, I do kind of I was like, sometimes I have dreams about it. And you know, no big deal. She was like, I think, I think you have PTSD. And keep in mind at this time, this was like the counselor on the phone. This is my wife. My wife was my wife was a psych major. She's got a master. She knew what was what. Yeah. And so this is after all of the fights, the pursuits, the, you know, the, the, the times that I had to kind of overcome my own fear. You know, I was a breacher on the SWAT team for years. And there were days I was terrified, but there's a job that had to be done. So all this stuff had kind of bottled itself up. And I never used to talk about it. That day that the day she said that, I kind of looked up some of the, you know, some of the side effects and everything else from then on, at the end of my shift, like if whether I was on midnight shift, day shift, evening shift, I would call my wife and we debrief the entire shift. I did that every shift. I still do that now. But I would call her and be like, Oh, man, you're never gonna believe what happened today. Just by me talking about it, instead of like, Oh, I'm hiding it from her to protect her. It was detrimental to me. And I had no clues. I'm sitting here on a time bomb. And so just by me sharing that with her, now my wife and I have longer conversations, which means we spend more time together, which means the support that I give her, she now gives me in return. And things just really, really grew from there. And it really, as much as as much as I hated to say it at the time, it enhanced my relationship. And so then I went from there, did a bunch of really cool SWAT callouts, I'll get into some more cop stories later on, but I ended up tearing my ACL. It was a partial tear. I was doing a SWAT event. And I think I got injured there. And then I came home, showered, put on my uniform, I went right back to work, and ended up getting into a fight in the ER parking lot. And the same ER where I worked security back in the day, get into a fight in the parking lot. And of course, you're like, I get the guy, but he, you know, he I was hurting. And so I left there, went back to the back to my zone, my patrol zone. And I went on another call with another another deputy, one of the guys that I had trained. And I'm limping up the driveway. He was like, dude, he's like, you can't, you can't go up there and knock on this door, you're limping. I was like, bro, it's fine. Knocked on the door, handled the call, no issue. He was like, I'm calling the supervisor, you have to go, you have to go to the hospital. And so he calls supervisor, supervisor calls me, he's like, Hey, you got to go to the hospital. So I go to the hospital. And this is another a separate hospital. And the doctor there, some of the ER staff knew me because I had brought so many people in from different calls and everything else. And she checks my knee and she's like, you tore your ACL. I was like, there's no way if I tore my ACL, I wouldn't be able to walk. She was like, what's your pain level? I was like, Hi, she was like, can you walk fast? No. And she just looks at me like kind of how like your mom looks at you if you do the wrong thing. She's like, and so so I tore my ACL and ended up dealing with that. I said, well, if I have to get the surgery, if whatever I have to do, I'll do what it takes to come back to work. And so I opted to not get the surgery because the doctor was like, look, you can do physical therapy, but it's going to take a while. So I was like, I'm at that time, I wasn't as anti doctor, anti big pharma, anti big medicine as I am now. But I was like, I'm gonna, I'm gonna, it's dude, it's conspiracy theater in my house. We're all on the same page. It's wild. But so I go through and they kept me on light duty, which immediately cut my hours, which cut my pay. And I was trying my hardest to come back to work. And one of the higher ups ended up calling me into the office. And he was like, I think you're lying about your injury. Now, I told you, I'm not a liar, I don't like being called a liar. And so we exchanged words. I left his office and immediately applied to transfer to the next agency over where I had taught a bunch of other people in the regional Academy. I had a solid network there. I had gone to Academy with guys from that agency. And I applied there. And by February, the following year, I was hired on at that agency. And then within within five years of my first shooting, I had my second one, which it was it was a little different. But this this agency was completely different than where I had ever worked before. Higher call volume. There's a lot more going on. You're seeing and doing a lot more. And at some point, my brother, he ended up moving up to Massachusetts, and I was like, Hey, you should come down to do a ride along. I was like, I've been doing this for years, you've never done a ride along, you should come do one. It's not that bad. So he comes down and he does a ride along. Sure enough, it was the busiest night outside of my shootings. It was the busiest night that I've ever had. There was I ended up with a DUI stop, which they take forever. I ended up with homicide robbery, where I was first on scene. I end up with I had another domestic violence that turned into a robbery slash foot pursuit. And by the time we did all these things, my brother looks me and goes, I want to go home. And I was like, relax, big dog, we got Chick-fil-A for breakfast, you're going home. But this agency, it's it's kind of I learned a little bit more. I realized that I was left eye dominant, I shot 90% or better shooting like this. And so I really I really stepped up my game with shooting. I came off of the SWAT team and focused more on just, you know, my patrol duties, and then I ended up getting promoted. And then I got well, I got into a shooting, January 17, I got promoted a few months later, then I got demoted by the end of the year. So it was an interesting year for me. How'd the shooting go down? So I ended up having a trainee or someone he's a he had transferred from another agency, they have to do their FTO. So I have to I have to train him to sign off that he knows our agency policies. This guy had been in law enforcement for 20 years, but just had a terrible attitude. They're like, you need to get this number of calls and this number of traffic stops in order for us to say you're good. He's like, man, I was I was head of a traffic unit. I don't have to bad attitude, terrible tactics as well. So we get a call on January 17 2021. It's on a Sunday. And it was at right around 11, you know, during church time, if you go to the early service at 11, you're getting you're getting out of church, if you go to the late service, you're in church service. So we get a call and it comes from behind a Chick-fil-A like there's a like a it's like a like a storage, but there's like a business center back there. And we get a call from back there. And they're like, you know, subject to saying that they heard gunshots. And one of the indicators with gunshots is that multiple people will call in. So then call started rolling in. Well, then a call came in where someone was on the phone whispering like someone's shooting outside when when you get a call when dispatch gets called that someone's whispering. It each call steps it up. But that whispering call steps it up even further. Because that says someone is trying to stay safe while there's an emergency taking place. So I look at my trainee and we were one zone over. I said, we're going to that. I said, turn on your lights and siren. Things are about to get stupid. And that's exactly what I said, dude, my dash cam videos, I'm not bragging my dash cam videos are hilarious. I said, turn on your lights and siren things are about to get stupid. I said, do you know where the Chick-fil-A is? He said, yeah, I said, go to the shopping or the the business center behind the Chick-fil-A. That's where we're going. And so while we're going there, lights and siren, one of my buddies was the first one on scene. It was his zone. And he gets on the radio and he says shots fired as he's saying shots fired. I'm hearing shots while we're pulling up on scene. And my biggest fear was that one of my guys, one of my buddies, you know, is down and I'm going to have to, you know, render aid and try to, you know, be able to affect the threat. So Brian is is standing near the hood of a car. And he's by himself. So I remember I looked at the trainee, I grabbed my rifle because I rifle is stowed up top and I'm in the passenger seat. I grab my rifle. I said, I don't know where they are. Keep your head on a swivel. That was the last words I ever said to him because he quit right at like that day left left stuff in my car and everything. But I grabbed my rifle and I ran up to Brian. And while I'm there, this guy shot in the guy shot, I think it was upper chest or maybe middle. He's crawling over and he's like, he's like talking, he's like, like, get me. And so I'm like, Hey, one, one male shot, gave the description, the clothing description. Oh, this is a civilian that was shot. Yeah. So so the guy that shot him, he shot him and then was going back to his car. He had a full auto rifle that was in his car. So I think he shot two people and was going to get his rifle. And so when I get up to Brian, I said, Brian, I said, like, I told him, I was like, because he's fairly new. Great cop. He was a phenomenal cop. I said, So don't look at me. I was like, I'm not going to look at you. Let's keep our eyes on the threat. I said, But you need to help that guy that's down. You need to help that guy that's been shot. He goes, Okay, I said, do you have a chest seal? And I asked him if he had his blowout kit. If you have your med kit, he said, I have my med kit. I was like, you need to help that guy now. I said, pull him to the side of the building, start rendering aid. I said, the Calvary's coming. We're good. And so I'm looking at there's a guy on the ground. Brian have his long gun out too? No. So that's why yours is like, I got this. Yeah. So there was another guy that had been shot that was just kind of like sitting on the ground. Well, that was the shooter. That was a shooter, but he had gotten shot. So he just kind of fell down. He's sitting on the ground. And so I'm sitting there and I've got my rifle. And I was like, I'm not saying a word. I'm not going to say a word. There's other deputies here. They can give commands. I am taking lethal action. I was like, he's not going to get a shot off. I was like, I'm not getting shot at again. First of all, my wife would be pissed because I told her it wouldn't happen again, which is stupid. That's a stupid thing to say. But this one I had, I had the absolute mindset like, this guy is not going to shoot another person. This guy is not going to grab that gun. If he makes a move, then I'm making mine. And I remember standing there and then I hear like this heavy breathing. Well, keep in mind there's commotion behind because there's another guy that's like, we didn't want the police. We wanted the ambulance. And he's like going off. And I'm like, yeah, I'm like Brian, shut him up now. And so then I hear this heavy breathing. And I see a pistol right by my head. And my first sergeant, I'm not going to say his name. He's like, I'm here. What do you need? I don't know how far away he parked, but this dude was moving. And I was like, okay, if we shoot this guy, I don't want this pistol to deafen me because I already got some hearing loss. I don't want so I said, I said, I said, go help Brian. I said, there's a shield in my trunk. Go to my car. He's like, I'm on it thinking that that's going to occupy him long enough for us to take action. The dude, I mean, I don't know what his adrenaline level was. But he's like, all right, I'm on it. I'm back. That's how quick it was. And he was a bigger guy. And I mean, we always we joke with him now about how fast he ran. But he comes back. I said, all right, how what's the distance to the shooter? I was probably 15 yards from him. And I've got I've got cover behind a vehicle. And I mean, it's just the whole thing the way it played out was that we ended up getting more deputies on scene and I didn't know it. But I heard other I heard my buddy Jimmy giving commands. So I'm so if you're the bad guy I'm facing you, they had an L shape. So they ended up coming there were two other guys that were covering down as my buddy Jimmy and then my buddy Bo was on the other side. And they're rendering aid all hell's breaking loose because the building that they came out of there was a party going on. It was like a cookout or something. There's people that are watching this play out. And so it's commotion is pandemonium. And so I called myself and I just in my mind, I'm like, okay, there's at least one person shot. One, you know, civilian shot possibly two bad guys been shot. I know he's got a handgun. I know he's got a rifle in the car. He can't make it to the car. So I'm just sitting there. And I'm just like, I'm not saying a word, they're giving commands, sir, don't reach for the gun, don't reach for the gun. And I think, you know, you've heard of like sympathetic fire where when somebody does something, I don't know, seem like that you do it. So I he looks the dude turns and looks right at me. And he has the scowl on his face. And he's just like staring at me like staring through my soul. And I'm like, and in my mind, I'm like, I'm just looking at him like, don't do it. Don't do it. I was like, I never I never want to be in this situation. And I'm like, just don't just don't do it. Then he looks back like down where the gun is because he had a see he was wearing a holster, but there was also a gun on the ground. And he looks at the gun. And I'm like, in my mind, something told me it was like he's, he's gonna reach. And I kind of regret like, from that standpoint, I was still thinking two and three steps ahead. And I was like, I could have a justified shooting and still be sued. If I don't shoot within the parameters of my training. What do we train for? Center mass. I'm not initially I had my I had my dot on this dude's forehead. I was like, he is not there's no way he's killing or shooting anybody else. And in that, like split second, I said, Nope, that's a lawsuit, shoot him in the stomach. And sure enough, he goes to reach for the gun. And I shot him. And I saw my rounds hit him. I had so we were running, I was running P mags at the time. My duty mags, I would only stack up to about 25 rounds. I wouldn't I wouldn't fill them all the way up. And I had a marked. But when I rotated my selector from safe to semi, I heard the click outside of all the commotion. I heard the click. I didn't hear my own gunshots. And then I see my rounds hit him, I see his clothing move. And then like this stream of like dark brown, like dark, like it was it probably probably hit his stomach. It flows out. I remember thinking like, and I'm standing there still looking down my site. And I'm like, that's disgusting. And the guy like doesn't go for the gun. He goes to the tough dude goes to start crawling away. I give him the ones over. I was like, now's our time to run up on him. And so we go running up there. And grabbed his hands through the cuffs on. I had a little fixed fixed blade that I kept on me. I cut his pants off, we start patching them up. And I was so thankful that my buddy Jimmy was a former medic because I'm like, you know, the basic Oh, put a seal on this, put a seal on this, pack this with gauze wrap. We're doing all the basics. But this was so much more elaborate than that. Because I didn't realize how many times a dude had been shot. And so Jimmy goes, All right, we need to roll him over. And I'm like, All right, cool, no problem. So I go to roll him over. You ever seen jaws when they realize how big jaws is? When I rolled him over and this is on my my body cam. I literally said out loud, we're going to need a bigger boat. Nobody on scene caught the reference. Nobody knew what the heck I was talking about. But what I was saying was like, I can't fix these exit wounds. These are too massive. And at this time, like again, had blood all over me. And you could start to smell. Jimmy shot him in the butthole. He called a Texas heart shot. I when the guy started to crawl or when the guy returned over to reach, he shot him in the butthole. It was really weird. But so by this time, I see the cavalry showing up, the the medics are coming up, there's other deputies coming up. And the captain comes over to me goes, Who shot? I said, I did. He said, I need your guns. This is an active scene. He takes my guns. He says, he says, go over there. He gives me an escort says, go stand by that car, you have to wait. And so I go wait and everything cools down. They're like, All right, we're gonna start the admin portion, which is completely different. My my first shooting, I was complacent. My guard was down. This shooting, I kind of had an idea of what it was before I ever headed in that direction. So now my demeanor is just a little different. So Brian asked me, he's like, dude, what, what do I do? I said, Well, there's gonna be stuff on social media. I said, car, your wife, say a bunch of stuff went down at work. Just know squads good. Just say like that. I said, don't give her detail, because she's gonna worry all day long. Tell her the squad's good. I did the same thing. I called her and I was like, Hey, babe, I was like, What are you all up to? And I always try to I always throw out that question to kind of, you know, get her to let her guard down a little bit. What are you all up to? Oh, I'm doing such and such. I was like, Okay, I was like, Yeah, we got a bunch of crazy stuff going on at work. I was like, we're all good, but I'm probably gonna have to work late. She was like, again, I was like, Yeah, I was like, but it's no big deal. She's like, All right, what do you want me to make for dinner? And I was like, Oh, geez. I don't know. And I'm like sitting here. And my response on the back end of just shooting a person is way different than what it was the first time. And I I I attribute a lot of that to some of the just the mental toughness and resiliency that I built over time through talking to someone and getting it off my chest, but because I wasn't complacent. And so, you know, we talk and so I ended up going back to the office. And they put us all in the same room. And I said, I called the LT, I was like, LT, I was like, we're not supposed to be in the same room. I was like, This, this is not supposed to happen like this. Like we we can because we're in there talking like, and I'm these are boys. So I'm like, Hey, y'all good? Like, you know, and it was just really cool because we had this time to like interact before they wait, you guys have to be separate. So then they separated us. And my buddy Kevin who went through the Academy with was my escort. So we go into a separate office. The LT comes in was like, What do y'all want? I was like, pizza. I want pepperoni, bacon and jalapenos. And I'd also like a Dr. Pepper, please. And so I was like, I'm on it. And he goes running down the hall. And so he brings it. They end up delivering food and they bring us food. I'm sitting there. We're kind of reminiscent. And I'm just talking to Kevin about because he was an MP in the Army. So we're talking about Army stuff. And we're talking about, you know, some of the overseas missions. And it was just really cool. And I was like, Kev, I was like, Do you think they'll mind if I take my gun belt off? I was like, it's kind of uncomfortable sitting in these seats. So I was like, I know I'm going to be here for a while. He's like, you can take it off. He's like, just set it on my cubicle, which is back. It's out of it's out of sight. So that way it's not just sitting out here. And remember, I told you about my humor. I've got dark humor. And it's situationally dependent. And I would never kind of crack this joke around an audience that I didn't know. But I take my belt off and I go to Kev's cubicle. So I'm out of line of sight. I was like, Hey, Kev, what if I just ended it all right now? And man, Kev came run Kev was a wrestler. Kev and wrestling and jujitsu. Kev came running around and immediately came over and like, it was like about the grave. I was like, I was like, I'm not. He's like, dude. He was like, don't joke like that. I was like, my bad dog. Like I'm they used to call me Dennis the menace. I was like, it's because I'm a menace. I was like, I apologize. So we go sit down and I go to do my interview and I go into the interview room and the detective comes in and immediately when the door closes, I have this adrenaline dump. And everything that I had done, I was like, if I had gone left instead of right, if I had gone over here, if I had gone because initially I didn't know the guy had a gun on him. So I was like, if I run into try to grab him and I had this adrenaline dump and I remember standing there and of course I'm a little older at this time. And I don't drink energy drinks. But if I do, I get the shakes and it's like a it's like a Tom Hanks and a same private Ryan, I get I get the and so I get that and the detectives like, are you okay? I was like, yeah, this is how my body regulates itself. It's kind of a pain, but it's it's got to run its course. I'm good. So go through my interview. And at the end of the interview, the detective goes, oh, we put together some resources for you and your wife. This is unheard of. The last one was like, hey, good job, son, go on home. This one, they put together a whole binder, like a law enforcement and law enforcement spouse specific binder of resources. And I went home, told my wife what happened. She was like, oh, you know, again, like she was kind of kind of disappointed. But she was like, well, how do you feel about it? And I told her, I did so much better this time. I said, because of the things that I got from last time. So we go through the binder and we do like, it's got like activities and conversation things, you know, like conversation prompts that you can do. And we did that. Come to find out that the guy lived and in Virginia, they have three years to sue you and the clocks started from day one. So now I'm on administrative leave. I get a call from the sheriff and I've known that I've known the sheriff from well before I started working there and he used to go to we used to go to the same gym. And he's talking. He's like, look, man, he's like, don't second guess yourself. You guys did the absolute right thing. He's like, there's not he's like, there's no one else that I would have rather had handle that call than the group of guys that handle that call. He said, you guys were professional. He said, you guys didn't waste any time. He said, and further, you didn't give that guy any leeway to hurt anybody else. Because the guy that he shot ended up dying come to find out it was it was headed towards an active shooter. I don't think it counts as an active shooter. He shot two people, one of them died. Sounds pretty active to me. Yeah. But he was really reassuring. And part of the, you know, still there was some out of touch leadership because I had another person in leadership that called me. I was like, oh, I've never shot anybody, but I've had my finger on the trigger several times and I'm like, dude, I don't I don't want to talk to you right now. It's like if someone comes to you and says, oh, I finished basic training so we can I can relate to you with seal stuff. You can't you can't there's there's no there's no correlation there. And there's there and so I really kind of upset me because I'm like, why are we talking? And so he talked the majority of the conversation. I said, yes, sir, I'm good. We ended the conversation. Which that same person in leadership actually came to teach a breacher course to the patrol units. Here I am SWAT team breacher. I was in an engineer battalion before that, you know, and here I am with with this experience with breaching. And he's like, you know, he's holding up a he's holding up a halogen and he's like, uh, so what you want to do is you look for the hinges and then and I'm and I'm just sitting there and I'm like, and he's like, of course, I can teach this class because I'm I'm in leadership. I'm a lieutenant. I can teach this class and I'm like, so it was it was that same guy and and I'm just like, you know what, I get it on on paper paperwork. You're you're the guy. I was like, but as far as like person to person, you know, and I had the sheriff called me and he's like, hey, I can't relate. But you know, I've known you for a while and I just need to know you're good. And so it really showed me like my my leadership and just the diversity and how the different approaches and different leadership styles. But I made it through that and then then got promoted and then I can't really talk about the demotion. But if you ever do send out a group chat or a group message, make sure that people who have common last names make sure it's the right person. That's what I'll leave it at that got demoted, moved the evening shift and must have been a real good zinger. Yeah. And then after I got demoted, check this out. I get the highest award in the county, which was the Medal of Valor. I get the Medal of Valor. So I'm at my Medal of Valor ceremony and they had to redo my plaque because initially it said Sergeant, but then they had to switch it. So but yeah, that's that that was my that was a that was a big moment for me because even though we did have to take action, I saw it as a victory. Not just because of what happened, but because of how it was handled afterwards. And it just you know, kind of kind of rode that out for a little while and I don't know, it's just it's been a weird weird journey that I've taken and some good, some bad, some ugly, mostly, mostly ugly, but most a lot of good, a lot of good in there. So then at what point did you start doing social media type stuff? So I started so when I tore my ACL, I had bought a camera when my first kid was born. I bought it from the PX was like 200 bucks. It was a DSLR camera. It was my first like non just like point and shoot camera. And so while I was while I was on light duty or while I was on no duty at all, I'd stay up at night and watch videos on how to learn. I just typed in how do I use my camera? And then that led me to you know, these YouTubers who not only do photography, but they do video. So I started started shooting with this camera and I told my wife, I was like, I think I want to do photography like as an outlet. And she was like, well, that's a lot better than going and spending all your time at the gym. And I was like, I'm still gonna still gonna lift weights. But so I dove into this and I started shooting and I was like, I told her I said, I'm gonna start a photography Instagram. And through that photography Instagram, I linked up with some other veterans, some veteran street photography groups like around when when well COVID was still kind of a thing. Got into doing street photography. And this was a little bit before the shooting that I started getting a street photography. And I loved it because I could just meet with a group of guys, other guys that were veterans and veterans of law enforcement. What is street photography? So street photography, you go out into a city urban area or whatever setting you want to and you create your shot, you find a subject. So it's not necessarily you setting something on a table and saying, I'm gonna take a photo of this. It's you going out and you know, you shoot strangers, you shoot events. And my thing was I like to chase shadows in line. I just did that in New York City. My street photography. I did a new city. You're very talented. Props or what? Certified. No props. But I was putting just like what in the caption. Yeah, I was just like putting like thoughts in my head about what those pictures might make someone think about. Yeah. And people are re-nog. Yeah. I had I had literal people text me like, Hey, is everything okay? They're texting me about that. Bro, that was funny. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Little cryptic stuff. Yeah, like because you know, I forget what some of them were, but you know, uh, is this where it's supposed, you know, is if this is the end, one of them was like, yeah, yeah. If this isn't the end, what is because it was like a picture of like a construction scaffolding and it kind of like went down a path and it was at night and it looked kind of like, oh, this must be the end. That's street photography. Yeah. So I was doing straight up street photography. I didn't know it at the time. Well, you tech in a I mean, and I put them in quotes like I put my the caption I put in quotes as if to say like this would be not this is me talking. This is like a character or whatever. Right? Okay. Okay. I didn't gather that part of it, but you know, but even even your uh your gym photographs. Yeah, like that's I mean, it's not out on the street so you can't call it street for now, but it's the exact same thing. Those are gym photography. Yeah. Well, it's like, yeah, just like I said, it's like finding compositions and have the have the photo tell the story. Yeah. Yeah, you be into that because you find, you know, like you're the kind where you'll find it, you'll see like, oh, I like how that perspective. You're gonna do an assessment with me when we're done. I'll show you my uh yeah. Instagram uh street photography from New York City. I'll give you a grade. I'll rate it. No people in them. Yeah. Except for no, there was one. It's tough to get people though because it's very awkward if I don't know you to but some of the best street photographers, that's what they do. They they capture people in these photos tell stories and so I I dove into chasing shadows. So like we'd go in the evening, we go like right at the tail end of like golden hour and you could see the the buildings casting different shadows to where you could have a walkway where two people are side by side. One person's in the light, one person's in a shadow. That's a cool shot. So chasing that but it also teaches you to learn your camera on the fly because you have to constantly adjust your aperture. You have to constantly like if I I didn't I wasn't using prime lenses at the time. A prime lens only shoots at one focal length. So if you got 50 millimeters, that's all you got. If you've got 85, that's all you got. I was shooting with a 24 to 70 which I eventually switched to an 85 because 85 is just awesome because you don't have to get close to strangers. Um but we learn or I learned like if if you take a picture, there's no expectation of privacy in public. So you're not outside of the law but if someone asks you to delete it, show them you deleting the photo and so that taught me more along the lines of searching for that composition but being a stand up person and saying you know I'm I'm not using this for nefarious reasons. I am using this because I need to learn how to use this camera. So I did that for a long time and uh I ended up buying a camera from a buddy of mine because cameras cameras never go out of style. They just circulate right. You got camera guys that sell their cameras to other camera guys and those camera guys and it just it just it circulates. So I ended up picking up a older camera um and this camera actually shot video and so I've got this camera and I was like you know what? I can I can shoot weddings. I can shoot because COVID weddings, they're smaller. There's a lot of people that I know that are getting married. They're having these little 20 person weddings. I could shoot a wedding. If I can shoot street photography, I can shoot a wedding in the backyard and immediately got a wedding. I think they paid me like 1500 bucks and it was a great time. I actually I still know the family um um but it was a great time and I was like this is this is I'm on to something and then so I shot a little quick video uh at the reception. I was like this video looks great. I'm a videographer now and so now I added that. It sounds like Echo's career path. Yeah. Exactly. Yeah. I added that to my my website. Um I bought a domain at the time. I added that to the website. I came up with Instagram or I'd started my Instagram. If you scroll all the way back to the beginning of my Instagram, it's food and product photography. Um I'll never delete those photos because that's like part of my journey and uh so through doing that um I started I made you know Kingpix Media. It's short for Kingdom Pictures and Media. Um when we went to uh homeschool our kids, we changed, we we named our school Kingdom Preparatory Academy and it's kind of after Seekee first, the Kingdom of God. That's kind of where everything that we do. It's kind of faith based and so uh that's where Kingpix Media was born because initially it was like everything is Kingdom Pictures and Media and I was like that's too much to say. There's too many syllables. So, I came up with Kingpix Media and um I linked up with uh I was at one of our favorite restaurants, one of our favorite local Italian restaurants. I see a guy with his camera tethered to a MacBook and they're bringing him plates and he's taking pictures of the food and I was like wait this guy is the he's the restaurant like photographer. He is he photographs their online menu, their Instagram, he does all of their marketing. So, I go over and I introduce myself and we start talking. He was like he's like you want to you want to come by and just hang out for a shoot? I was like yes. So, I started working with him and so um I was just going and learning as much as I could and then one day he was like hey do you think you could shoot some video for me? I'm trying to you know upscale my business. I need something you know video for the video portfolio. I was like yeah. So, I bring all you know all of my stuff. I shoot this video for him and I was like oh yeah. I'm definitely a videographer now and started trying to market. Be like hey I shoot weddings but I can also shoot video. Zero clients. I had zero client. I wasn't shooting weddings or videos. I had nothing and it was like I had this it was this genius business idea or so I thought and it's going nowhere and my wife was like well you already bought the website like you you already you know are you going to do this business or not? I was like yes. I was like I have to because I opened a business account. I got you know the business through the state and everything. I did all the all the tax paperwork and everything. So, I have this business. I just have to do something with it and I was like you know I have no clients. I have you know really no no interest. Nobody's really website traffic was near zero and you can advertise for free on Instagram and so at the time I had just gotten over on the TikTok and I wasn't really big. I wasn't sold on TikTok but I was like you know what if I'm going to start making videos I'm just going to post them on TikTok. Nobody's going to see them. It's not going to go anywhere and if it does go somewhere then I got business. So, you know it was a win-win and so I posted a video. I actually ended up I slung a rifle and I went out into the yard and I made fun of every single instructor that I've ever worked with and every single instructor that I've ever had. There was something in and even now like there's a lot of material to choose from. And listen so our good friend our mutual friend Zach Bell veteran with a sign. He has been my biggest fan throughout the entirety of it and he told me when we first met he said you've got evergreen content and I'm like what does that mean? He said there's always going to be something for you to pull from. He said the way your jokes are they're not you're not talking about you know I told my wife I was like they're not all dick jokes. They're not all you know just rude humor. It's not all like ball sack like oh you're in your portrait and uh and such and such and it's 150 degrees and she's like you know your your content's different. So, Zach had kind of you know coached me along and he was I was like well what should I do? He's like just keep doing what you're doing and so I posted this video of me making fun of this range instructor thing and it's not going anywhere. I I have a very solid bedtime like my bedtime 10 o'clock if I'm up it's because I'm working on something um 10 o'clock usually I'm in bed. So, I posted and I went to bed and I woke up the next day and my buddy um one of my street photography buddies hit me up and he was like dude you just went viral. He was like you need to start doing this more. You just went viral and I looked at 4000 views overnight. I had gained like 500 followers which is not really viral but for me going from zero to that it was like I'm on to something. I'm really on to something. So, what I did for the next two and a half months was I shot a video every single day. Every single day I shot a video and I was here with us. Oh, Jesus. Uh 20. It was 21. No, it was 20. It's 2020. How long what do you think you we found this guy? How long ago was that? I don't know when I don't know if that was that first video or what. Well, it was on Instagram for sure. It was on Instagram. So, Instagram was way later for me. Okay. Yeah. Um it's 2020 but um the first actual videos that I have, there's two videos that I did during COVID that I edited on my phone. Like I didn't have a laptop. I didn't have like it was it was rough and I edited them on my phone and I found out that um I could just use different editing apps and I edit these videos. I only shared them on Facebook because Facebook is family and friends and people I went to high school with. That's it. Um but I shared them on Facebook and the response was like, oh wow, you did this. This is great. And so, I got the kids incorporated in it and we did like this whole COVID series and it's very much it's a pretty it's it's primitive video um but it it the content is funny. And so, when I started doing it and posting on TikTok, I was just posting every day and it was just growing and growing and growing and I started to see this was at a time when military content creators posted sitting in their cars in uniform and were like, you know, I saw this in the news but I'm a sergeant in the army so let me tell you my take on it and it's like and so, I saw that people placed value in people that were like, look at me and I was like, what if I just go in there and make fun of all those people that are taking themselves too seriously and that's what I did and I rubbed a lot of I listen, I ruffled a lot of feathers, a lot of feathers and people were like, oh, well, I have six hundred thousand followers so you'll never be on my level. There's no way you could be funnier than me because I have more followers and I just that was just fuel for the fire and I just started posting. I call it posting and roasting but I started posting and roasting and making fun of these people. Next thing you know, I get invited to shot show and we actually started some friends of mine, we started a small business called it was called Wins Chow because that was my initial tagline. Yeah. What is Wins Chow gone? Uh, technically, yes. How come? So, Wins Chow. I thought that was freaking class dude. Especially from the military dude. No one gives a shit about anything. They'll be like, hold on Wins Chow. Exactly. And that's something that applies across all branches but also we have another demographic that we apply to the Department of Corrections. These inmates prioritize Chow just like we do in the military. So, but yeah, so we started this. We started this. We opened up an out. Did you retire Wins Chow? No, we have an LLC or we had an LLC and we started doing merch through a third party and that third party ended up it was it started out and it was great. Um, I wasn't really making money off of it because of what we were spending but the business kept itself afloat. We ended up butting heads from that third party and he tried to he said, hey, I've got you on the hook for 80 grand. I was like, no, you don't. We don't have that much inventory. Like there's there's no way and he was like, well, I'm gonna take you out of court. So, there were three of us. So, uh, one of one of us dropped out and was like, hey, I'm you know, I'm looking at going into doing real estate. I can't have this. Like I'm out. So, I was like, all right, cool. No problem. But with the three of us, we never made any decisions unless all three of us were on board with it. And so, when the third party came on, we always saw was the production quality and the value and everything else and we was like, oh yeah, let's it's a no brainer. Let's do it. Come to find out. It wasn't a good choice. And he said that you guys have, you know, 60,000 in inventory and you have another however many thousand. I think at the total was like 150 grand. He was like, you have this much in contracts. And I said, and we're on a zoom call and I'm recording on my phone and told him, I'm recording. I said, who approved contracts? What member of Winschau LLC approved contracts? Where do we sign up with contracts with these big clothing manufacturers? He goes, well, you guys, you guys had a verbal contract. I said, who agreed in the verbal contract? Well, you guys just you nodded your heads. I said, listen, we're not on the hook. You're on the hook. And he was like, all right, that's it. I'm taking you to court. I said, okay, show me what inventory you have in stock. He's like, all right, well, I'll have to call you back. Okay. He gets off the phone. He's like, you know, I talked to my partner and I was like, hey, bro, if we go to jail, we go to jail. Like it wasn't that serious. I was like, but if he's going to sue us, it is what it is. We're already but we have everything that we need to prove ourselves because again, I'm documenting everything and he never calls me back with the inventory. Yeah, that's a bummer, man. And so all of the stuff that we had in stock, he ended up they ended up creating so they owned our domain. They bought the domain for how I invented combat solutions group industries, which I don't know if you noticed CSGI instructor lead instructor. That's right. But so they bought the they bought the domain for those and so I'm screwed out of domain. What I still had was my king picks media domain at Kingpicksmedia.com and I had the real wins child.com because I went out and bought that as well. And so we started whatever we could. That's what we used to kind of keep things afloat. And they ended up creating an Instagram page and it said, I don't know what it was called. It was something real wins chow or who is the real wins chow and they created this this wins chow page and they were just slandering us in the comments on all over Instagram and they were using our logo. And so I said, Oh, wait a second, my partner owns that logo. He created it. And so I did a video and I said, you know what's interesting? I was like, it's interesting when people think you're stupid. I said, they created this Instagram page that's slandering our Instagram page on everybody else's and they follow like a thousand people but there's only three people that they follow and it's all the three people that work for that third party that was trying to charge us with this money and to this day, I have not publicly mentioned that company. Like I said, they did us dirty. They tried to rake us over the coals. I've never publicly because that company's still around. But once I called them out, they deleted their Instagram and then I haven't heard from them since. And of course, we did not happen to pay that money. We still own you know, we still own wins chow. We still own all of the logos that we came up with. We still own everything, all the the intellectual property behind it. So we're actually we're we're slated for revamp this year because I kind of let's get it going. Yeah. Well, I took it and so what I did was I brought it back under Kingpix Media. So my entire merch line, it's on my website, but we go through the same as like Zach and Fat Electrician. We go through the same. It's the same company. So I have punch out and go to work shirts that people just they some people like we don't know about these and I'm like, I promote them all the time. I have the CSGI instructor shirts. I came out with red hoodies for range instructors. I've done all of these different and I'm starting to now do my own logos to wear endless opportunities for for merch, but it's just it's been so crazy because it's like I went from zero to 100 from not knowing how to do it and having someone else doing it, getting screwed over to now facilitating it myself. And so whenever I whenever I go somewhere, I'll wear a CSGI shirt and right now right now there's a handful of them that are all throughout the world. Like there's so I'll get a picture and it'll be someone in Dubai. Like that happened last year. Someone was in Dubai with a CSGI shirt. There's a guy that's in Paris today with a CSGI shirt. So it's like the the this fake company that I've created is is growing and it's a thing and it's exactly like what Zach said. It's evergreen content. It'll it'll never get old because there's always going to be someone telling some story to make themselves look way cooler than what they are and there's always going to be these instructors that know it all but have done not much. So it's it's been awesome. It's been phenomenal. And when did you switch over to using Instagram? Um I had started using Instagram and well I used it back during my bodybuilding career. Uh I started bodybuilding in 2009 and I really got into it and I ended up doing I did my first show was the Sean Ray classic in Baltimore. I did that and I got second for men's novice with no coach, no trainer, barely even a tan to go on stage with outside of the natural tan at the Lord's bestowed upon me. Um but I I did that show and did really well and then I started using Instagram for fitness and I actually built an Instagram in the past up to I think it was like at twelve hundred followers. So I had the idea of how to do and I think I always had the recipe and then I don't know if you remember the app Vine. Yeah, yeah, yeah, I do because I have kids. Yeah. And you know, my kids at the time when Vine was was popular. Yeah. It was popular with kids and my kids were like watching the Vine so I got to see it. So Vine was the first platform that I had a huge following on. I had over a million loops on Vine. What were you doing on Vine? It was it was just like stupid videos and then somehow this is this is crazy. Um I'm a I'm a uh perpetual learner. I love to learn new phrases and new languages. I loved I just love to learn. I enjoy it and so uh I started to notice that there's a heavy Indian population in Canada. This is when I first really started to notice like things in other countries and everything else. Well, they all speak Punjabi and I was like, how cool would it be if I do a video introducing myself in their language in Punjabi? So I learned how to do it. I did it. I didn't know this at the time but their community when they see people that want to embrace their culture. Oh, they love it. So next thing you know, I'm part of what's called Punjabi Vine and I'm doing collabs with people that are in New York, Toronto, like and it's it's insane. It was insane and so I learned how to tie a turban which I there's there's no videos of me wearing a turban but I was I was almost there. Um but I became this this Punjabi personality while being an Intel guy, you know, and it just it was it was cool. So that's where it started. So I think that I've always had the recipe for it but I'm only just now starting to see, okay, how can I do this at a pace that fits my life because like I told you, I don't ever want to get to a point where I consume more content than I create. If I do that, the scales aren't balanced and uh so now I still I just started creating and shooting and I never overlapped uh military. Well, I never overlapped law enforcement and content creation. I was to a point even if I was editing videos on my phone, I would not edit if I was on the clock. I never wanted there to be any opportunity for someone to say, oh, well, you're doing this so you're not focused on your job and I had that one time and I completely shut it down. I was like, no, I don't do that. That's not that's not something I do. I'm here for a job. That's my side business. That's by itself. Um but uh I've never actually I think the big allure behind me was that I never opened up about any of my past because who am I to say, oh, well, you should follow me because of what I've done. No, you should follow me because it's funny and it benefits you. Laughter is the best medicine and I got a PhD. Kind of. Has anyone ever gotten like has anyone ever gotten mad at you? Oh yeah. Yeah. Oh, absolutely. People. So, have they ever like messaged you and said, bro, you should this is really? They say it's stolen valor. They say it. They say, oh, that's stolen valor because I won't tell them. Oh, I got it. And so it's like, have you ever made anyone mad enough that they've messaged you and said like, hey, this is you know, I don't want you to take you shouldn't say you're trying to make fun of me in my good video or something like that. Um because I think the first time I saw your your videos, the first one, I think I just immediately I think it was about me. Yeah. And I immediately reposted it because it was classic. I did one that Eddie Gallagher shared the first one that I did that kind of blew blew my stuff up. Uh huh. But when I met Eddie, he said that he thought that I was being serious. And so he said it wasn't until further down the road. So Eddie's super cool guy like it was it was really cool. Like I got you. Um but uh people have gotten mad and have been like, well, who does this guy think he is? He's never done anything. And it's like, you're right. I've never done anything. But guess what? I'm funny. And also you're wrong because I have done things but uh not leading with what I've done. So I didn't realize how prevalent that was. People just lead off with that rather than a good idea could come from anywhere. And now I'm starting to see more satire content and I love it. I love it because that's what I set out to do and that's what I'm doing. Hopefully I get to a point where I can start to actually turn a bigger profit and make it something that's more sustainable as a business in and of itself. But it's just it's fun for me and it's my creative outlet. So what are you up to now? What's you got a podcast now too, right? Yeah. So uh I actually I actually uh just picked up co-host for podcast with my good buddy Kyle. Uh I don't know if you got if you know uh Kyle Morgan or familiar with his story. Uh former Delta Force guy. Um he and I have known each other in passing uh over the years and um he had a host or a co-host but his co-host they parted ways. Amicably they were they're you know good to go. They were like hey you know we're not gonna you know it's not gonna be this long drawn out thing. And something told me hey I should send him a message to be like hey you know you're not that you're only a few hours away from me if you need somebody to fill in I don't mind like I'm I'm flexible. I'm willing to do whatever you need. He's like well I'd like to have you as a guest and just see how it flows. So I go down and I was a guest and I met his whole production team and met his wife and met the kids and we we uh we had dinner and then I I ended up staying the night we shot we shot on the first day. We went to the range and and shot some more the second day. And uh he and I have just gotten super close over the the time that I've been there and um it just it's it's a huge benefit because he runs the podcast and he's also got the training company. He also does speaking engagements uh depending on um you know the time of the year but he teaches mainly law enforcement but he's got civilian courses where they're open to everybody and he's running just an insane production down there and I told him I was like look dude I'm just glad to be a part of this. Um he and I have similar you know faith. We have similar beliefs and kind of have a similar story and it's just really cool to sit down and talk with him and look at the comments and see how people are relating to us. Um but that's called the black and blue podcast. Um and that's been phenomenal to be a part of because that lets me that lets me be a character without having to worry about production. Even though we sit and we have those Echo Charles conversations about what aperture these cameras are shooting at. We have those conversations but it's a production that I've kind of fallen into and so far like we had a conversation. It was it was me and Kyle and then his wife and then my wife. My wife's never been involved in any of my business adventures and for her to be involved in this she she loves it and um so outside of that I I did start streaming. I started streaming a while back but never really like I wasn't I wasn't all in on it whereas now I stream every day. I stream every single day. Can you do that on the Twitch? On the Twitch. I stream on Twitch and kick. Um and I've actually started uh Twitch uh Instagram channel. So, I have Kingpix Media is my main Instagram and then Kingpix Media TV is the streaming channel and I've been streaming and I dude I talk about politics, social events, I talk about you know whatever's in the news. Um I don't necessarily take sides. I will call if something stupid I'll call it stupid but I get on the internet and for anywhere from one to three hours a night I talk and I take these episodes and I get clips from them and I'm trying to grow the channel now. So, right now, I think the most we hit was 200 subscribers um but I'm trying I'm trying to shatter that goal and slowly but surely like it's it's working like uh I'm kind of being more recognizable um Twitch it's hard to grow organically so you have to use Instagram, YouTube and everything else but I've been streaming every single day and we just did our first like major giveaway. I've been talking with the good folks at Safari Land and we have I have an announcement for a giveaway for the Incog Holster. At some point I'm going to be giving away like I like I don't know like X300 uh the Surefire uh pistol lights. I'm doing shirt giveaways hoodie giveaways so that really kind of keeps people in but uh Twitch is the best way to talk to me because I have people that I've never met that have seen my Instagram and they might send a flurry of messages. I don't really check messages on Instagram but if you're in my chat that's a good way for us to have a conversation so um that's been the main line of effort. There's something typed messages to you in the chat. They can type them up so I do have this thing where you can send like a speaking message but I don't think I don't I gotta talk to my assistant I don't know and he's gonna kill me for saying his name but my buddy Snowox is he was the one who's supposed to be here with me today. He he has showed he's given me the game he's shown me the ins and outs and he's never asked for a thing. He's never asked for a thing. He came and he helped me shoot uh Las Vegas range day that I went to and he was my camera guy and um he just he just gives so much time and effort and and support of my channel and he's been my assistant for the last it's almost been two years now and it's just amazing because he knows Twitch and Discord. I have no clue. Discord is weird because it's like that's where you go and people can post memes and you have different channels. It's tough to keep up with but he is on it so if someone says something uh we had a guy that said something that was disrespectful to me and my family. I said no I said that guy said that because he's angry. Let him stick around. He was like alright but next strike. He said he's just give me the sign. I said people you have two opportunities. The first time if you're angry if you speak out of anger and you post something that's detrimental to or disparaging to me I get it but the second time you do that you're out and he is on it like he's always like chomping at the bit to ban people and he's like he's like my assistant slash nerd security because the people just say some crazy things on the internet and so it's it's been awesome. It really has. Internet be getting wild sometimes. It do. And you're back active duty with the National Guard. Is that right? So that's where you're at right now. Yeah. So, I was I was at a point in my on the law enforcement side where there was a lot that I was seeing with leadership that from my perspective I could be wrong. I always say this. From my perspective, certain members of leadership were out of touch and they they were there was a lot that was going on that I didn't agree with on the leadership side. There were things operationally that I didn't agree with and just from looking at things from a tactical side like hey, this just happened. We should do this. Well, no, I'm in charge here and like they made it a point to say I'm in charge. So, it's like okay. I respect the rank. Um but when you have to say you're in charge, it's not a good sign. Exactly. Um but uh I ended up having this opportunity uh on the counter drug task force and being with my experience in law enforcement and also doing surveillance and pattern of life and all the recon stuff that I've that I've done over the years, I can translate that to either teach or to be a part of a team. So, I got assigned um got assigned uh almost two years ago and then I had uh another assignment. There was a an agency that was building uh their sniper program. They were also they were switching over to pistol mounted optics and the people who were building the curriculum for this agency had no clue like well what what is a what is the difference between you know uh getting a slide milled or buying you know the the Glocks that you know the the ones that already have it and I said oh my gosh okay. So, I helped build that curriculum. I got moved from that assignment to another assignment but I've been doing pretty much counter drug task force in narcotics for the last two years. Nice. Yeah. Freaking a lot of rides and helicopters which I don't I don't like. Pull right on man. Speaking of rides, it's been a wild ride for you so far, huh? Yeah, it has it has been wild. Is that um is that get us up to speed? Anything else we need to hit on? Geez, no, that I think that's uh that's that's everything. Uh I I have been working very closely with I don't know if you've heard of like the unsubscribe podcast. Yeah. Those guys. I've oh no, I haven't been on that. I've been on the adjacent podcast. Yeah. With the fat electrician and Zach. What's their what's their podcast? Underwhelming. I've been on the underwhelming. He was so underwhelming that I didn't run up with the name. Sorry boys. No, yeah, they're great. They're they're freaking classic and uh and I had both those guys on my podcast. Yeah. Zach's been on also as well. Solo but yeah. Yeah, I know those guys. Yeah. So, I've been working with and Brandon Herrera who's gonna win the seat that he's running for in Texas. Yeah. After the other guy was a dirt bag. Yeah. Which was pretty epic. Uh so that I've been working with those guys. So, um Donut Operator or Cody uh he uh he came up to DC or they all were in DC for Army 250 and uh I do work with echelon energy drink not echelon front uh but echelon energy. I work very closely with them because anytime I go to Nashville, I can stay at Eric's house. I'll go to the warehouse. I'll give them I'll give them content ideas. They literally um I'm kind of in a uh creative director position there. Um so Eric had missed his flight or something happened with the flights where the echelon was on a suitcase that was delivered to DCA but Eric was still in Nashville. So, Tyler and I Tyler Vargas Andrews we live within 20 minutes of each other. He's over at the house over at the range all the time. We're on the way home and I'm like dude I'm tired. Let's just go home. So, we're heading home. Eric calls and says hey there's a suitcase at the airport. I need you to pick it up and take it back to DC because the unsub guys need it and I'm like and in my mind all I can hear is Dion Warwick singing that's what friends are for. That's I'm literally. That's a rough soundtrack. It is it is it is and I looked at I said I said Tyler I was like I'm I'm gonna I gotta have to buy you a meal man. I was like we gotta we gotta turn around and do this. So, Tyler's like it's all good and he's he takes his handicap placard and puts it on the on the windshield and he's like let's go. So, we go to the airport. He's like no one's gonna ask me to move. He's like he's like you go inside get the suitcase come on out we'll take it to DC. So, we end up taking it to DC. Of course, there in this hotel where parking was like atrocious. So, keep in mind handicap placard's still up there. So, the guy sees Tyler get out you know missing an arm and a leg and I said I said I talked to the security say hey y'all can't park. I said listen. I was like this man is a war hero. We're going upstairs to see our friends for the first time in a long time which is not a lie. It's true. I was like you can find five minutes to let us leave this car here. He goes, oh, I recognize him. I was like that's exactly who this is. You can he's like oh man y'all good. I was like, all right, cool. So, we go upstairs and of course we were up we ended up being up there for like an hour or so but it's all the unsub guys and it was almost like it was all almost like someone someone bringing you hot chow at the end of a training evolution. They're like oh thank you you know thank you and so we all get to talk and we're all in our separate conversations and Cody they're like dude we have no idea what you do for a living. We have no idea like we we've we've hung out before you've come down to range day. He was like can you please tell me and that's where I told him. I was like Cody I've been a cop for the last 18 years. I spent a lot of time you know also in the National Guard. I said I spent little time you know contracting conducting missions overseas. I was like but mostly most most of my career law enforcement and SWAT and all the cool stuff all the the pursuits and the shootings like that's that's why I don't talk about it because I'm and he goes you're the black version of me and I was like pretty much I was like I'm the old black version of you because he his background is law enforcement and so he was like well I got some projects I'm working on you can you can help me out with if you're interested so we had already exchanged numbers but he was he was like call me anytime and so we were about to leave and he goes he goes wait wait and he's got his phone and he says hey are you free next week? I was like well you know I gotta I gotta put in leave and and he looks at me he goes are you free next week? I was like yep I'm free. He says he says all right I'm he said send Zach your information we're gonna book you a flight. He said we just moved he said me and my wife we just moved into a new house. He said come down spend the week with us. He says I want to come back to streaming keep in mind I'm still new to streaming fairly new to streaming at this point. He says I want to get back into streaming and Cody's got millions of followers like he he he does it right he does it full time and so his first stream back I was sitting right there in the office with him and I spent we spent a few days and I didn't know it but he's got a video background as well. We watched uh we watched a bunch we watched like uh Sicario and we were critiquing the shots and like what do the shots communicate outside of the dialogue and so we're sitting the more we talk the more we realize we have in common. I didn't know it but I had met his mom at a previous range day. His mom was still asking about me so he FaceTimes his mom and he's like here mom talk to your black son and I'm just sitting on the couch and and I'm just talking to mama and we're just it just it's such a it's such a good fit and he and I just get along and these are the kind of people that they're not they're not gonna give you a fish they're gonna teach you to fish and the kind of friends that I need are people who are gonna teach me because you can give me something I could sell out to any shill company or shill brand or whatever and make ten thousand dollars today but ultimately if I play the long game and do this over time I can get to a point where I have a full fledged career as a streamer slash content creator just from the people that are showing me giving me the keys giving me the game the people like Zach the people like Nick the people like Cody dude spent money on me inviting me out to the house and then Zach came down we went over to Brandon's house and that's where like it just it's this network of guys that are successful because they're good dudes and um captain touch with him and then you know he was like you should consider this with streaming and I was like well I I'm streaming from a MacBook and he was like that sucks and uh within the within the first two weeks of me getting back from his house he was like hey I sent some merch to your house it should be there today I come home there's a full PC that was shipped to my house it was like it's like this five thousand dollar computer he literally sent it to my house computer monitor mouse the whole nine yards I have no clue what I'm looking at Snowax could tell you what I'm working with because I let him remote into my computer to set it up but that's the kind of people I work with and then during the shutdown this last shutdown I'm not gonna lie like I have some passive income which is good for you know small bills and everything else but Cody was like hey I need your Venmo I was like what he was like yeah it's a government shutdown I need your Venmo and he literally gave me money to to make sure that I didn't miss a step these are the kind of people that I love being surrounded by because although they're celebrities they're famous they still make time to support the people they love and it just it's it's crazy because I went from thinking like man I just got screwed over by third party and now here I am you know working with someone who's supporting my essentially has helped me build my channel and he's asked for nothing in return he's asked for he's he's not been like hey uh I help you out you know it's like hey you want to come back down next month and we'll you know go to the batting cages or something it's like these are these are friends which is crazy because you hear so much about you know don't meet your heroes and hear so much about these people and these grifters that are they have these big followings but they're not good people whereas these are actually good people who just so happen to be really good at what they do and I'm kind of my goal is to follow in their footsteps and in your footsteps you've obviously built something over time and it's not it doesn't happen overnight but you've built something over time and everything you've done you know from start to now it's built upon the next thing and it's that's a common theme is build the next thing from the thing you're on now and just keep going. Right on well sounds like you're on the path man. I am. Um Echo Charles. Yeah. You got any questions? We got rewind back to that first video that you that you did what was that about do you remember the first one? The first one I was making fun of Lucas Bakken and I've actually met Lucas and I've talked to Lucas and super nice guy he was running T-Rex Arms at the time I was just making fun of him. He's got no law enforcement no military background but he's always talking about law enforcement and military scenarios and offering his commentary which is there's nothing wrong with that but he catches a lot of heat for doing it and he works with a lot of you know military guys and he works with a lot of former special operations and he he's built a company a multi-million dollar company from doing that and I was like hey low hanging fruit I'll just make fun of him so I just made fun of him like not maliciously but I just you know just made fun of him and that's where it started and then of course Tim Kennedy I made fun of Tim which when I met him it was kind of awkward but again he was he was nice he didn't have you know a problem with it I think the biggest hurdle was when I met you the first thing I did was apologize because I didn't get any feedback I didn't get any feedback from so when I met him I was like hey just so you know these are jokes and these jokes are good so there's the one the one the first one I came across of yours was I was one of those guys too who thought you were being serious yeah just for that one video though because I looked into then you're doing your job right yeah yeah I sold it it was the one where you were like hey I don't something a lot I'm paraphrasing honestly where you're saying um you know I I don't I don't have to tell you how much of a badass I am you know my my resume speaks for itself yeah although you're telling everybody exactly it's like so funny oh I've experienced that so many times now consider now you're watching this video and you think he's serious you're like oh my I can't believe this guy's actually saying this two people on a video and he's posting the video like bro this is just me you know so I looked into it I was like oh this is good this is really funny I used to I used to put a disclaimer I used to say I used to put like an asterisk and say this is satire and my wife was like why are you doing that I was like because I'm getting a ton of hate comments she goes the hate comments are what they call engagement that promotes and she's she's just got a mind for it she's like that promotes you in the algorithm and get your videos out there stop doing that so I stopped doing that and I started growing and I'm still I'm still on my way I think I just hit 95k on Instagram but I'm on my way to 100k and even past that so it's like the people that thought I was real and they might not see the content for a few months and come back to it and see something else and like oh this guy was joking it's a whole new audience right and the even of course the algorithm that's kind of the game within the game in in a lot of ways but if they don't think that you're or if they think that you're real and so you wind up with this big group of people who think that it's for real then another big group of people who are more the insiders you know but are kind of part of the they're down for the whole stick you know they're down for like the comedy stuff like that so now you have these kind of warring factions right and they don't even know that they're at war by the way yeah because they're like oh that guy's such a douche and you're on their minds you know what I'm saying so now when your stuff comes up they're kind of addicted to it because really that's the the feeling that I got that's why I even looked into it I was like bro this guy's such a douche I want to see more douchey stuff and I looked and it was like it wound up being more funny but it's because it's douchey and it's funny you know what I'm saying yeah so it like it helps in that way as well the crazy thing is I have five years of doing this five years of cringe worthy content and it's still like I get I get videos all the time and my phone is full of notes for video ideas and it just it's fun do you um did you ever or did you ever think about doing like improv acting or anything like that uh so I did theater for a short time in high school um but because my grades weren't up to par I ended up doing a monologue um I did a monologue from like streetcar named desire um and I I worked really hard on it I did this monologue and I've actually talked to one of my buddies is an LA actor um I've talked to him he's like you just gotta get an agent you'd be really good at this and I'm like that's not really where my heart's at and even with with improv like I like doing the stuff that I can do on my terms because if it's two o'clock in the morning and I have a video I have a low light video where I can go set up lights in my yard and shoot a low light you know video I can do that if if I don't feel like shooting this week and that's another thing I've gotten away from is the pressure a lot of people they're like oh I'm pressured because if I have to do this every day to remain uh relevant well you don't I take days off I I still you know I still am very instrumental in homeschooling my kids and and taking them back and forth to uh to youth at the church and everything else um so the the acting side of things I would I would be interested to work I I have friends that are uh in production uh buddy of mine just graduated film school he's working on smaller productions I would be more than willing to do that but to have that be my full time I I don't think that I would do that you know more than maybe three to four projects a year. Do you enjoy that that part of the process being in front of the camera? I do. Is it because okay so we I did a show with a guy called Hinato Laranja which I kind of mentioned it earlier where he does his persona is a lot different than his real persona he does he doesn't overlap as much as you but he's um he does have an acting background and stuff like that um so but you could tell he's really into that part of it you know I I think I think I could um I haven't really done I haven't really done anything outside of some collabs but I'd be more like when I talk to Cody uh we always talk about shooting a movie and one of the reasons that I got that camera was because eventually if I ever decide that I am gonna shoot uh I did write a short film I just wrote a synopsis and then I'd start out on a script but I'm the only character in that I play uh it's it's I play two different characters but it's it's the same character and uh so I wrote that uh probably two years ago now and I just I don't I don't have the time and I haven't finished the project I don't want to start another part of that project while that while it's still in in progress but I think that you know depending on depending on timing and everything else I would if I could make a living doing that I think that it would be difficult to make that decision but I could probably do like you know smaller projects throughout the year you mentioned the collab thing and one a big part of what makes collab so fun and interesting is when you take let's say your character right you know a loisius yeah freaking pinder how is Kingsley a loisius pinder Hughes the third gonna interact with XYZ oh I got I like that's the that's really what it is so that's that's why I mentioned the improv acting because and I'm not saying hey you're gonna go all in on improv but if you just have a little bit of that skill sprinkled in it really gives rise to this interaction that can be like super one of the things that I look at with collabs is obviously who is this character that I've built and what would they say if they were in the room with jocco what would they say if they're in the room with you know with any of these other guys they would immediately try to one up them you know what I mean they would immediately try to to to create to establish some sort of like this this whole thing of oh you got to dominate the room no you don't you can literally just be yourself and just be comfortable in that but that's that's kind of where it would come from and then like I did one with Kyle where uh he came over and this guy's got you know I mean he's got he's he's decorated you know from from his uh his time um his incident in Africa and I'm like hey just so you know I'm a combat cook so you can go sit down and he just goes Roger that and that video people seeing me interact with someone you know that's done what he's done and seeing this combat cook which is made up you like I don't know if you guys know that or not that's not a combat cook it's not a thing um but uh they they see him interact with me and they're like this is great and because now they see Kyle who has has been seen as more of a serious intense kind of content creator come out of his shell because I'm the comedian who's like you know comparing myself to him and so it really it opens him up or him up to my audience but then it shows his audience that he's got that comedic timing and everything else and he's a funny guy but you turn the camera on and he's like kind of I don't want to say robotic but I know he's going to watch this he's a little robotic he's a little he's a little robotic the truth comes out or Kyle over there I'm coaching him never mind your distinguished service cross you're a little robotic in front of your camera yeah yeah loosen up a bit man check right on anything else echo Charles good to hang with you right on right on King Kingsley any closing thoughts um I I do I do like to to leave with this I do like to leave this as a closing thought initially like when people would ask me that I'd be like nope nothing good to go um but I I like to promote my faith my belief I've been a Christian I grew up a Christian grew up in church kind of straight away from it and I've I've had you know good bad and ugly in my life and at a time where I was at my lowest which was when I was recovering from a torn ACL a friend of mine reached out to me he's like hey you should bring the family to church I was like I'm not going to church I was like I gotta get on these crutches and hobble over there and I did it I went to church and that friend became my mentor he's older guy a little closer to retirement and I tore my ACL in September of 2018 I was baptized in October that same year and um Kyle has this thing where he always talks about you know how his road to faith is similar to mine but he advises people to remain curious and one of the things that I like to promote is remain curious you know when you have that still small voice that you hear in your head and you know it's not a suggestion or it's not something you'd come up with on your own remain curious and I often challenge mostly young men because I've once been a young man but remain curious you know integrity and accountability are huge but also if you have that still small voice if you hear something calling you really hone in on that and you know I don't there are a lot of people who will force it and say you you have to do this well I don't think anybody has to do it I would like for people to do it I would like for you to do it I would like for you to call me and say hey you know I was thinking about this and you know I would like to be able to have that but you have to want that and every for everyone listening they also have to want that and uh I like I said I grew up and I strayed from it and I was kind of when I was leaning to my own understanding life was not going well I thought it was it wasn't and even now I'm not you know I'm not floating on a cloud but even during the shutdown during things that I've been blessed with the people that I've been blessed to meet you guys like it's all it's all a part of you know this thing that I'm doing called life and I always encourage people remain curious yeah well that's a great great attitude to have out there for everybody and um yeah thanks for joining us thanks for coming out I know it's a little bit of a trip uh probably a very long trip actually from the east coast so thanks for coming out thanks for sharing your lessons learned definitely your experience your outlook on the world you know keeping us humble through humor yeah which is an important thing and thanks for your service you know absolutely both as a as a contractor as a law enforcement officer and you know as a soldier yeah thank you much appreciate it brother appreciate you more right on and with that Kingsley a laucious pinderhuse the third has left the building he has gone to take a little walk back to his uh hotel the hinterlands being outside sir being aware of his surroundings yeah healthy if you want to have a sharp mind for the wit you know then you're gonna have the physical strength stamina awareness so that is why that's why we're working out that's why we're training that's why we're lifting that's why we're sprinting running surfing we're getting after it and because of that you know what we need you'll give you one guess what we need fuel yes we do need fuel and we want to get the good fuel the good the good fuel check out jocofuel.com or go to a store in your area a grocery store in your area and check out jocofuel we have protein we have ready drink protein protein powder we have hydration we have energy we've got everything that you need we have a pro line now i've been taking muscle drive which is very excellent uh i don't this is not something that it is like intended for but when you when you have some muscle drive i think it's because it has all the amino acids you kind of feel full right so it's kind of nice to take that after you work out when you don't want a big like sometimes you get done working out you don't want a big giant meal please i don't sure i understand so it's it's be turning into my kind of like a kind of like a 930 breakfast little muscle drive so check it out jocofuel.com or wherever you buy stuff food stuff you'll be able to find some also training jujitsu which we really didn't get into the topic of jujitsu very much today which which is weird because we talked to jason subjects because whenever you're talking about combatives you're talking about you know what i mean like i i usually bring or you talk about subduing suspects or like that's the time when i start talking about jujitsu and i didn't but you should be training jujitsu whether you're in law enforcement or not whether you're in the military or not no matter what you do you should be training jujitsu check out originusa.com because you're gonna need a jujitsu gi you're gonna need a jujitsu rash guard you need some good stuff to train in but you're not always training jujitsu that's why we also make jeans we make hoodies we make t-shirts we make boots we make everything that you need and it's all 100% made in america that's what we're doing at originusa.com check it out also check out jocco store forget about that uh discipline equals freedom you know we're representing while we're uh on this path with our good fuel we can represent anyway we got some shirts on there some hoodies on there some hats on there some shorts on there a lot of stuff on there if you want to represent also short locker subscription subscription scenario subscription scenario every month probably every month new design it's good when people seem to like it anyway it's all on joccostore.com so yeah click on the top where it says shirt locker see what it's all about pretty cool it's all on joccostore.com can you get the black on black discipline equals freedom shirt like you're wearing right now yes you can check we like that also a bunch of books put your legs on by rob jones need to lead by dav Burke i've written a bunch of books a bunch of leadership books uh and a bunch of kids books so check those out if you want we have an a leadership consultancy where we will help you solve the problems inside your organization through leadership if you need help go to ashlomfront.com and check it out we also teach the skills of leadership online so if you want to engage in that check out extremownership.com and we also have a little ai tool to help you ask jocco.ai you can ask leadership questions and i will give you answers well the artificial intelligence version of me will answer your questions um if you want to help service members active and retired you want to help their families want to help gold star families check out marquise mom mom and we just got an amazing charity organization if you want to donate or you want to get involved go to americas mighty warriors dot org also check out heroes and horses dot org and jimmy mays organization beyond the brotherhood dot org if you want to connect with us first with four to to connect with kings lee check out kingpicksmedia.com and then on twitter x instagram twitch and ticktocks he's at king picks pix media and for us check out jocco.com and then on social media i'm at jocco willing echoes at echo Charles just be careful for the algorithm and thanks once again to kings lee for coming on and sharing his experiences his lessons learned and thanks for your service as a contractor as a law enforcement officer and as a soldier and thanks to all the military personnel out there around the world right now there are some definitely there's strange and crazy times happening so thank you for putting your lives on the line to protect us and our way of life we are grateful for your service and your sacrifice also thanks to our police law enforcement firefighters paramedics emt dispatchers correctional officers border patrol secret services as well as all other first responders thank you for what you do here on the home front to keep us safe we are also grateful for your service and your sacrifice as well and everyone else out there remember what the sas at least i think it's the sas remember what their protocol is don't take yourself too seriously have a good time keep it humble and in order to do that keep it humorous and that's all i've got for tonight until next time this is echo and jocco out