All right, welcome back to another episode of Tales from the Service Industry.
Tonight, we are sitting down with some of our previous co-hosts.
I'd like to say welcome back to Andy and welcome back to Liz.
Hi, team.
Hey, y'all.
So thank you both for joining us again.
Appreciate you being here.
Oh my gosh, of course.
You know, we had such a great time the last time.
I know that there are more stories to be told.
So let's, if you guys don't have any opposition to it, let's get into it.
Okay, so this story I'll start as well.
This loops back to our conversation about training the room attendants.
Room attendants found the encoder and I want to say they found the blanks for like an ID
card that they were using to make false driver's license.
But it was like a large corporation employee ID card, kind of a blank.
Okay.
So the ladies cleaning the room recognized this stuff.
They got me.
So I went up and I checked the room and sure enough, there's all this stuff there.
So I call Andy.
So he comes over and I told him, you know, hey, we've got this issue that's going on.
We've got, you know, smoke detectors that are covered.
They're definitively smoking in the room, which is not a big deal for you, but it's
a big deal for me.
You know, in entering the room and finding this, we found all this other stuff.
So he says, okay, I'll be right there.
I'm like, okay.
So the woman that had been in the room was not in the room when I inspected it, but I
had a feeling she was going to come back at any time.
And all of this was going to go south because this woman was supposed to have checked out
already, et cetera, et cetera.
So I'm working the front desk.
Guest comes walking in.
I'm like, oh, damn it.
Texting Andy.
Are you almost here?
She just walked back in.
I'm almost there.
Okay.
So, you know, it's like, so we had changed the key lock on her room.
So her key wouldn't work.
Invalidated the key.
So she would have to come see us.
So she came down to see us.
That was when I gave her a replacement key.
That was when I texted him.
She comes back down again.
He was not there quite yet.
So I was trying to stall her.
So I'm asking her about, you know, why are the smoke detectors in the room covered?
And she's like, the smoke detectors aren't covered in my room.
And I'm like, well, yes, they are housekeeping advisors.
And I'm trying to stall and trying to stall and trying to stall.
And I'm like, she's about to walk away.
I'm going to lose her.
And then he walks in and I said, well, you know what?
There's a gentleman that's off to my left, to your right, that needs to talk to you.
And she looks over and she goes, because she and I had been talking about, you know, defeating
the smoke alarms and the fire safety.
And you put the hotel at jeopardy.
Not the credit card issue.
No.
So when she looks over at Andy, he's in uniform.
What does she think?
He's a fireman.
Oh, so she walks up to him.
We were in non-traditional uniforms.
We were pulling shirts, cargo pants.
Yeah.
Okay.
So she walks up to him to talk to him like he's a fireman, to talk to her about the fact
that she should be getting a ticket for defeating the smoke alarms in the hotel.
Oh, man, we just need to inspect your fire alarm.
That's all.
So let's go up to the room.
So she doesn't realize that Andy's not a fireman.
He's a cop.
So when he's asking her for her name, she gives him her name.
All of her information.
She willingly gives.
Yeah.
He looks at it and goes, when was the last time you were arrested?
And at that point she realizes, wait, this is not what I thought it was.
She goes, oh.
She got catfished.
Yeah, she did.
So she throws out some excuse and walks out the door.
He walks out after her.
And I'm like, okay, this could get good.
So you follow.
So I follow.
Now there's a short lag time.
So I walk out and I'll let Andy share with you what his portion of this was, but I walk
out to seeing gun drawn two people in a car.
His beat sergeant in a Ford Explorer, like rushing the parking lot, slamming on the brakes,
blocking their car in, but gun drawn through the window.
So I walked out, I see this, I turn around and I walked away.
You're like, that was too exciting for me.
But some of what I had overheard from him, priceless.
This is where I almost got killed in this parking lot.
So we'll fast forward a little bit past that.
This lady, we'll use that term also lightly, was good for all kinds of fraud.
We didn't know it yet.
Bill was just the only one who happened to catch it, but we found out later like four
other hotels were all kind of on her path of bogus crackers.
She'd been doing this for a while in the area.
And so when she figures out I'm not the friendly firefighter and she takes off on my head,
I go, come here.
And it's okay.
I got enough to do all the legal stuff.
I go, come here.
She's like, F off.
That's not an option unfortunately right now for you.
And so she's walking out there.
So unbeknownst to me, about three cars down from the front entrance, her accomplice was
in the front driver's seat of this car backed in, essentially like the getaway car.
She saw me pull up and get out and was like playing it cool.
Maybe I'm not there for them.
So as I'm coming out after her, I'm like, you need to come here.
So I'm coming to, I'm trying not to make a huge scene by grabbing her and throwing her
on the ground.
Like you're trying to like, because it's in the afternoon where families are checking
in.
So I don't want to be like, hi, welcome to this.
We're here for Tommy's seventh birthday.
Get all the crown.
You didn't want to ruin the hotel's reputation.
You know, the liaison position, we really tried hard to create that image of like, it's
really safe.
It's really nice.
And we always did stuff back a house to the back entrances, all the back doors to really
try to minimize as much as we could.
But occasionally crooks didn't want to go with program, right?
And so she gets to the car.
I finally grab her.
I'm like, all right, now I'm in between a couple of cars, we're a little bit more secluded.
As I grab her, she opens up the car door and I can see in the frame of a police baton.
In her car?
In her car, in the passenger side, you know, kind of like next to her seat.
Okay.
That's a felony.
Yeah, it is.
So now I'm like, oh, now I'm for sure whatever like weird sketchy credit card thing is now
we got a weapons position.
Yeah.
What I did not see when she went to go open up the door was her friend in the front driver's
seat, like she was hunkered down in the car.
So as I grab her, she reaches in for the baton and now we're in this like a little bit of
this tugging match of her trying to get into the car.
She ends up, she had like some lacy looking shirt.
So she rips ends up ripping.
So I have a chunk of her shirt essentially in my hand.
She jumps out, she's like, let's go and her friend ping pops up out of the driver's seat
out of nowhere.
I'm like, what?
And she fires up the car.
So at this point I'm pulling my gun.
I'm like, yeah, you need to stop.
Well, what she did is I'm pulling out my gun.
She turns the car hard right and floors it trying to take me out.
Oh, yep.
So as she starts to floor it, I end up essentially pistol whipping her through the window.
I almost start to pull the trigger.
I'm like, I'm going to get run over.
And so she stops and I'm screaming at this truck to stop and I'm putting it on the radio,
which is where, and my sergeant at the time was, oh, this seems interesting.
He'd pop it.
He just liked to see it.
He just liked to watch all these stories in real life.
He didn't do anything.
He just liked to watch them all.
Then he goes, oh boy.
Yeah.
So he comes flying in.
And so what he sees is this car hard over.
At the time I was pinched between her and the parked car.
So she had caught a part of my belt already.
So I was pinched in already as I'm putting the gun into her face, telling her to stop.
And so he showed up and he could see part of that.
I'll never forget this.
He runs up.
About the time you walked down, we're like, nope.
Turn back right back around.
He runs up and cause she's still looking at me.
They're both looking at the gun.
They're distracted.
My sergeant rolls up, grabs her by the, essentially by the throat and pulls her out through the
driver's window.
A whole person?
The whole person.
Duke's a hazard right out the window.
Now I mentioned that I heard one thing and that was just before I saw all this and promptly
turned around.
But I walked out to hearing Andy not say such and such police department, show me your hands,
not freeze police.
It was, I will fucking kill you.
Oh my God.
Noted turned around.
And they were like, Oh.
And I'm still alive.
That was, there's been a few times in my career where I had the very narrow people.
You're just trying to run me over, shoot me, stab me, crush me between cars, you name it.
That was one of those times.
And it's one of those, you don't even really think you don't want to pull the trigger,
right?
Like the last thing you want is to use lethal force.
That just sucks all the way around for everybody involved.
So if I can say something, maybe not very nice as a use of force to make them stop doing
whatever they're doing, we would use the terms that we had to, to try to get people to stop
as it kind of a side note, you know, we see all these police videos and we see all the
recordings and there's like, Ooh, ah, ooh, that's not what I thought police work was.
Right?
When we watch all these like body cam videos and everything, I was like, Oh, it's quiet,
craziest police videos.
What people don't fully understand is when you talk to folks, people want to be talked
to the way that they're used to.
Right?
So I can come up with a, Hi sir, how are you today?
Ah, you know, could you do me a favor and not do any more?
Oh, absolutely officer.
You come up to a hardened criminal and you're like, excuse me, Mr. Criminal, could you please
stop your illegal activity?
What'd you say, pencil neck?
Yeah.
It doesn't exactly get the same effect.
So a lot of officers, especially depending on the area of work, you would adjust how you
talk to folks kind of based upon what they would understand, not that trying to mean
mean or anything else, but same time, if I come up to an assistant, they're like, Oh
my goodness, that officer is really rude.
Right?
So it's like, you got to, you have to kind of adjust and when, you know, apples to apples,
you talk to the audience.
You do, you cater to your audience.
Yeah.
We are in the service industry.
That's right.
Right.
And when you're pinned between two cars thinking that you may or may not be crushed and may
or not be able to walk after this afternoon, certain things come out of your mouth.
What happens?
Yeah.
So that was one of those nearing course in the car.
What did we find?
There's a lot of kinds of fun things, right?
More weapons.
I was going to say, I'm surprised I didn't pull a gun on you.
That's what I was thinking is usually where you see some sort of weapon of police baton
knives, machetes, all kinds of weird stuff.
There's usually more paraphernalia behind that.
More types of things that are going on in that car.
Yeah.
That's just our first line of defense.
Pretty much.
Yeah.
It's a kind of a criminal appetizer for weapon.
Yeah.
I've never heard the department protocol arrest phrase, whatever, from any of the cops in
that city.
Really?
I mean, like stories outside of Andy.
I mean, I remember this one dude that he was causing all sorts of problems.
It was domestic violence.
I mean, we went to the room, we heard him beating on his wife.
I think we told this story even.
Met the cops.
They came up.
We're walking down the hallway and they're chit chatting.
It's like, you know, they're talking about the game that's going on and everything is
all fine and dandy.
We get to the room, they hear what's going on.
Cops looks at me and says, open the door.
So I open the door, the door goes open and it went from being these jovial cops like
shooting the breeze to get on the ground.
And you know, as the door closes, I hear one of the cops saying something about, if you
don't stop moving, I'm going to kneel on your neck or something like that.
I was like, oh, okay, well, this is how this is going.
Zero to a hundred.
It's a flip of a light switch.
It was crazy.
Yeah.
I guess you just get used to that mentality in that environment.
You guys do the same thing.
Yeah, we do.
You guys do the same thing.
Yeah, but it's not a life and death.
You'd be like, this sucks.
Our lives are not in danger.
This is horrible.
After this person, excuse me.
Oh, hi.
Hi, welcome to the so and so.
How can I help you?
Oh, welcome in, right?
It's like, it's kind of the same, but it's different.
It's not life and death, but it's like, I don't know how many conversations we've had
and we're upset about something or this is stupid.
You walk out, big smiley face.
Hi, hello.
Welcome.
How are you?
He's got a point.
Turn around, come back in.
Dr. Jekyll, Mr. Hyde around here.
Hope he dies.
You do have a point, but our lives aren't in danger.
Or so you think.
True.
Let's tell this story though.
This is another one that we have definitively talked about.
But again, this is folklore.
But again, yes.
This is a folklore story.
You know which story I'm talking about.
Again, this is the guy that was there with me when we found the party.
So I'm working one day, I get a call that we've got suspicious behavior going on.
We actually got a couple of those calls.
Yeah, you got a phone call and you got an email.
You forwarded me the email and said, hey, what do you think of this?
The one that really set it all off was this girl that called in that said that she had
found an email on her boyfriend's email account that there was this sex thing going on at
the hotel.
It's like, hmm, interesting.
So I forwarded it off to him and we started paying attention.
We start seeing a bunch of people coming in, specifically young men.
Okay.
Lots and lots of young men.
Were any of them exiting?
Yes, occasionally.
But not as often as entering.
Correct.
There was a definitive difference in the inflow versus the outflow.
Okay.
All right.
I call Andy, he comes over, we go up, we check it out.
Well, let me preface it with this.
We talk about calling 911 for people who are upset.
Someone had called the hotel to also say, hey, there's some illegal prostitution going
on in this room and you should really check it out.
So the email, the phone calls, and so-
You're like, all right, let's check it out.
As we started looking at it, yeah, and this was at a time that human trafficking was becoming
a thing, especially in area hotels and there's more.
So my little spidey senses are like, wait a minute, it's midday, we got a couple of
things, we got emails going, something's wrong.
Middle of the day.
Something's not right.
It was midday.
Yeah, it was like 1130 noon.
Lunch break.
Literally midday.
Yeah.
So he rolls over, we go up to investigate, we get up to the room, we're standing outside
and we hear-
A party going on.
No.
We hear a woman, very loud woman.
Just one.
But just one woman.
Okay.
Screaming.
Yes.
So now-
In pain or in pleasure?
No, no.
In pleasure.
Okay.
Seemingly in pleasure.
Sorry, I had to get that clarified.
First thing I did is I whipped out my phone, I turned on the camera for the video because,
I mean, we're outside, we're in a public hallway.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
You're not doing anything wrong.
No, no, no, no, no, not at all.
But the first thought that went through my head was, oh man, this is one of those stories
that nobody's going to believe, right?
So I want the audio.
So in the video, all you see is his boots.
Okay, okay.
It's only like-
It's so loud that you could pick it up on like an iPhone 5 microphone.
Or down the hallway.
Or four.
Yeah, and this is in a two-bedroom suite and she's in one of the bedrooms with the bedroom
door closed and then there's the guest room, the door that's closed and we're in the hallway.
Wow.
And she's loud.
So I make this little video, it's like seven seconds long, isn't it?
Like nothing, right?
But you can hear her in the audio.
Put the camera off.
Let's just speculate this for a minute here in the hallway.
So he looks at me and says, what do you think?
And I looked at him and I said, mid-50s Asian.
Oh my God, Bill.
So pause that thought, right?
So at this point, he calls for backup.
In my head, I'm like trying to listen through the screaming to see what's going on here.
Yeah.
And you can hear all this ruckus in the room.
You hear like a bunch of voices and ruckus and I'm like-
Like how many people are in that room?
Yeah, so I'm like, so in my head, I'm thinking, okay, how many people in the room?
Is this consensual?
Is it not?
Is it like, what's going on here, right?
We might have a little bit bigger problem than we think.
And I can't handle this on my own safely.
Yeah.
I'm like, if we have five or six people, and again, thinking in the terms of like human
trafficking, prostitution, there's going to be protection, there's johns.
I mean, you're going to have some characters which you don't want to deal with by yourself.
Yeah.
Weapons, you name it.
You name it.
So I'm like, so I think I got in the way.
They asked me about three or four more officers, which I didn't, I very rarely did that, right?
Usually we'd handle everything just kind of everything's pretty low.
Okay.
Maybe one other officer if I needed some help, but-
For sure.
I would never ask unless people were jumping out of a window on the ledge or other weird
things for more than like maybe one or two.
So I went to ask for like three to four more.
All the guys I worked with were like, something's up.
Yeah.
Like, let's go.
So I told them, I go like, okay, hey, we got to wait for at least two or maybe three more
coppers to show up just before we try to make contact to see what's going on here.
So-
Do you pull out your phone again?
No, I should have.
I'm going to put my hand this-
Because we missed some good content during that time.
If now was then, this would be a completely different show.
So we leave from outside the room.
We go around the corner to the elevator landing.
So we're standing there waiting for officers to arrive.
Playing it cool.
Literally, we're just standing there talking.
Just standing there talking.
Elevator pings, doors open.
Can you still hear her like down the hallway?
We were probably like five, six stories down.
We're down towards like the elevator.
Oh, okay.
A hallway.
We were a ways down.
Yeah.
So, you know, elevator doors ping, a couple of cops show up.
And I think one of them said, somebody else is on the way.
So we're standing there waiting.
So it's three or four rather large gentlemen in uniforms with badges, guns, and radios
to call other large gentlemen with badges, guns, and radios.
We're standing there chit chatting and this guy comes around the corner just dripping
sweat.
It's like, he looked like-
You're joking.
No, he looked like he had thrown him in the pool, shook him off, and sent him on his way.
And you're thinking like, did he come out of that room?
We're standing there.
Like he comes bopping around the corner, sees all these cops, and now he's F'd.
He has no choice but to continue on his journey.
Yeah.
Unfortunately, the elevators had already gone back down to pick up more cops.
Oh no, poor guy.
Yeah.
So he walks over and one of the- actually it was your replacement.
Yeah.
Mr. G. Yeah.
So his replacement looks at him and goes, hey man, what's up?
How you doing today?
Just totally chit chatting him.
And the guy looks at him and he's like, not much.
And he's like, goes and finds the bunny.
He started hitting that button like it was no tomorrow, right?
But he was playing it cool.
It was the weirdest thing because in my head, like in my head I'm thinking, okay, we got
like a bunch of shady people in here.
We got like people tied up.
Like it's going to be rescuing like Dems and then the stress.
And this dude's like early 20s.
He's dressed nicely.
I'm telling you, he's on his lunch break.
Yeah.
It looked exactly like he was on his lunch break.
He had that bottle of water in his hand drinking.
He's like awkward.
He was like, oh, hey guys, what's up?
But like not the criminal vibe at all.
No.
At all.
But- But definitively one of those guys that like, okay, you're not playing it cool and
you are dead to rights.
Right.
So if these guys ask you anything, you better be truthful kind of a situation.
Well he doesn't know more cops are- So he doesn't know that more cops are on the way.
Elevator dings, doors open.
Opens up.
Yeah, I'm free.
Turns, looks.
There's two more cops getting out of the elevator.
The pucker factor went high again for that.
Yeah.
But yeah, so he ended up going away.
So all the cops were there.
I'm the M.O.D.
We go down the hall.
I knock on the door.
Now as I knock on the door, these guys are lined up against the wall, backs to the wall.
The way the hallways were set up, the rooms were recessed about 18 inches in.
So anybody opening the door wouldn't be able to see them.
No.
So I go down the hall, I knock on the door, guy comes to the door and I said, hey, you
know, I'm from a hotel with- Noise complaint?
Yeah.
We've had some noise complaints.
I need to speak with the registered guest.
He goes, oh, that's me.
I said, okay, well I need to talk to you.
He goes, well, no, I don't want to talk to you.
And I said, no, no, you need to step out.
I need to talk to you.
And at that point, I'm standing there looking at him, but out of my peripheral, I see this
like wall of blue, right?
Right.
And I said something to the effect of, well, if you don't want to talk to me, you can talk
to them.
So this guy pops around the corner, foot in the door, pushes them out of the way.
All these cops go pushing into the room.
Dude, foot in the door, that's a move.
Door closes.
With all of them inside of it?
With all of them inside.
So you're lifting the hallway?
About five of us went in there.
Okay.
Yeah.
So five of us.
Look, I'm fine with not being- Poor Bill.
Look, I'm fine with not being in there.
I don't have pepper spray.
I don't have a pistol.
You didn't have FOMO in that situation?
Not at all.
Okay.
But as the door closed, I heard one person, and I believe it was your replacement.
Shout out.
Get that thing away from me.
What?
Yep.
Turns out there were a lot of naked people in the room.
Now, at this point- 29 to be exact.
How many?
29.
Yes.
People.
Yes.
29 naked men.
They're all naked?
Yes.
Get that thing away from me.
Now, let me pick up the story.
So as I've about had enough of this shenanigans, I'm like, we're going.
Because in my head, this guy's stalling there.
Yeah, yeah.
So we go in, and as soon as I come in the door, all I see-
Is naked bodies.
Now, remember, so the room, there's a common living room area that's set up, TV, couches,
whatnot.
To the left is another door that goes into another full master bedroom with a bedroom
bathroom with her.
To the right is another door, full master bedroom, bathroom, all that stuff.
So as I come in, I'm like, what in the world?
In my head, I'm like, because we're going in guns blazing because we have no idea what's
going on.
We're like, go on the ground, go on the ground.
We're trying to get everyone down.
So the first room that sees us are like, whoa.
So everyone jumps on the ground.
I now hear the girl screaming even louder.
And so she's to the bedroom to the right.
So I go barreling in there thinking, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, here I am.
I'm going to save the day.
I come in and there's probably, in that room, there's like, I'd say maybe nine naked men.
All I saw, she's in the furthest corner.
The headboard has already been broken and it's off the wall.
The bed's completely turned in the corner.
There is a line of probably about six guys in line that's to the front of the bed around
the corner.
And all I see is like three dudes surrounding her and she's in the center.
And I'm screaming for everyone to get on the ground, getting all getting so everyone's
like, whoa, oh my God.
I end up pulling a couple of these guys off of her.
We grab her.
There's guys jumping out of the closet.
I mean, every weird manifest thing that you can possibly imagine was going on in there.
Every thing that doesn't even end up in certain adult films were going on.
This is like worse than German.
Oh my.
It was one of the gnarliest scenes I have ever seen.
And so we get everyone kind of situated down.
We get them all corralled, right?
We count up 29.
29 men.
Two, nine, yes.
29 men, one woman.
Naked men.
Yes.
So as we start looking around, so now I'm trying to like piece together what in the
world is going on here.
There was a second woman who was the fluffer in the other room who was getting, and she
was in a Santa getup.
This is like July.
In a Santa getup.
She was in a Santa getup and it was the girlfriend of the guy who answered the door.
It was his girlfriend.
Yeah.
Didn't she have bunny ears too?
Yeah.
We'll get back to her in a minute.
So.
I'm so confused now.
That just took a turn.
The whole thing.
Oh yeah.
So I start looking around.
Okay.
So now I'm thinking, what in the world do we have?
There's like chip bowls out and trail mix and snacks and little cooler with drinks.
And appetizers.
Yeah.
And I'm like, what?
It wasn't trafficking.
In the world.
It was just, this is our kink and this is what we like to do.
It was like a party.
It was a social group.
It was a social club.
Yeah.
Gathering together for a barbecue.
Yeah.
Essentially.
So I started talking.
It was their friends giving.
Yes.
To a degree.
Yeah.
In July.
A lot of giving of a lot of friends, if you will.
And I get the girl separated away from everybody.
I got it.
There's like five other officers in the other room.
One that is screaming, but yet fine.
Yep.
So there's five other officers in the room, all trying to figure out, they're dealing
with all these guys, getting names, figuring out what's going on.
So I start talking.
I go, what is going on?
She's like, what do you mean?
I go, well, this isn't normal.
I guess you could say.
So why don't we start with who are you and where are you from?
Bill called it right on the head.
22 year old female Asian woman.
No way you were right.
Piano teacher.
From this city.
From the city we're currently broadcasting from.
No way.
Way.
Who?
Like, did you know where she was teaching?
Are you like familiar?
No, I wasn't that familiar with the thing.
But no, Bill is taking piano lessons now.
Just, you know, I've.
Thoughts crossed my mind.
His recital is coming up.
Yeah.
Solo or maybe not.
Could be a full.
Could be a 29 piece orchestra.
We don't know.
Oh no.
I'm like, what?
She's like, so as her story goes, she goes, look, my parents were first generation.
They immigrated here from overseas and they were very old school, very, very protective.
She goes, my parents recently died when I turned 50 or 51.
They never let me marry.
They never let me date.
She's like, you heard of the 40 year old version.
This was a 50 year old version.
Oh, poor girl.
After her parents had passed and she kind of got to live on her own, she had 50 some
odd years of catching up to do for lack of better terms.
So the guy who answered the door was a social organizer of these like get togethers and
had found him and was essentially making up for lost time.
He was the president of the club.
He was.
So she's like, no, no, no, this is all it's all consensual.
Like this is all like, no, I'm making up for lost time.
Yeah.
Pretty much is what she said.
52 going on 22.
So that day.
Yeah.
And so I'm like, there has got to be something to that legal.
So I'm on the phone or a vice guys like trying to explain this thing.
Like I didn't just see 29 naked men not to arrest anybody.
And the vice guys are like, what?
We're on our way.
Right.
So they're heading over.
So in the meantime, with the door shut, I don't remember if I think you were probably
inside the room at this time or if you stayed.
No, I never went in the room.
Well, we should have brought, we should have dragged you into that.
You never had that pleasure.
No, after, after hearing your replacement shouting to get that thing away from me, I'm
like, I'll be by the, I'll be at the front desk for me.
This is like, you want to talk about the quintessential like tagline on top of get that thing out
of my face, which might be a good title of this podcast.
The next best, the next best title of the podcast is the door knocks.
So my, the same officer who's eventually we go on and replace me in that position.
There's a knock on the door and roll.
Like, wait, is it someone trying to join the party?
So I go, Hey, Mr. G open the door.
And so it's right.
So he opened, so he turns his body.
So his uniforms behind the door and he opens up.
He's like, what's up?
How can I help you?
Yeah.
And the guy's like, uh, Hey, what's up?
He's like, yeah, what's up?
The guy's like, yeah, I'm here for the orgy.
Stop.
And we're like, come on in.
So he walks in and so we grab him, right?
We shut the door.
We get him down.
He's like, Oh, what's going on?
No lie.
Like 10 minutes go by another knock.
We're like, how long is this party?
No, they had stacked reservations.
People had been filtering in.
So I go, Mr. G open the door again.
So another one.
What's up?
He's like, I'm here for the gang bang.
Yeah.
Come on in.
Yeah.
Come on in.
Okay.
Oh my God.
Get in here.
Shut the door.
So what we eventually find out is the theme of this party is the gang bang.
Oh, yes.
Yeah.
Well, that probably happened too.
Somewhere in there.
Oh my God.
Yes, but it was unbelievable.
So I'm talking to the organizer.
I'm like, what is going on?
Because now the vice guys show up, right?
And they're like, what in the world is happening?
So they're taking every angle.
So sure enough, the guy charges, I think it was like 25 bucks or something like that to
show up to the party.
40 if you want to be the first 10 people in the room.
Well, that's where it became not illegal because he goes, look, there's no expectation of naughty,
naughty time.
You have people that show up.
We'll just watch, eat some chips, watch a game and leave.
Like there was a guy in the closet.
Watch a game?
Just watching.
He had the guy in the living room.
They're watching the football game.
Like this.
Oh, okay.
I think I just watching football game, eating like.
Like the actions happening in front of them was not the game.
They literally had ESPN on the TV.
Yeah.
Like their kink was to watch the football game while people were getting it on around
them.
Okay.
And he mentioned the guy that was in the closet.
His kink was voyeurism.
Being in the closet.
Yeah.
So he hid in the closet with the door cracked and he was watching everything that would
go on because that was his kink.
Yeah.
So I go, really?
Because you can't pay for naughty time.
No, no, no, no, no.
There's no expectation.
The chips, the drinks, the room rental.
And I go, really?
He goes, yeah.
He goes, how do you think you guys got called?
I go, what do you mean?
He goes, well, we had to turn somebody away because they showed up thinking that they
got the automatic place in line.
And she was like, not that one.
Which how bad you got to be in a group of 29 guys to be the one guy that she's like,
no.
So he got all upset.
Oh, so he called and complained.
He called the hotel to dime them out that there was a bunch of prostitution.
Because he didn't have guaranteed naughty time.
And then the email that we had gotten was from another guy's girlfriend that had snooped
on his email.
His email.
Yeah.
So the police department got it from two different angles with two very different viewpoints.
Well, he got his reservation confirmation for the barbecue.
So we ran everybody, right?
So we're checking for wants and warrants and sexual.
We're like, there's got to be someone in here.
Nope.
Everyone's clean.
No warrants.
No record.
They're all on their lunch break.
We were asking them, what do you do?
I'm a banker.
I'm a financial advisor.
I work at the office building.
These are all guys on their lunch breaks.
This is my hour lunch break.
Uh-huh.
And some of these guys are like, yeah, once or twice a week.
If one of these was close to their office, they would roll on over at lunch break.
Again, this whole episode, my jaw is just on the floor.
Completely blown away.
The organizer's girlfriend, who was the only other woman in the room, was essentially the
fluffer with bunny ears, a Santa suit, and getting guys all fired up, ready to go.
Well, and she had to make sure the guacamole was full.
She did.
Yeah, I think she was tending the snacks.
Replenishing the ice.
I don't know.
Water engineer.
Yeah.
Just making sure everything was good.
Yeah.
She was the hostess.
Yeah.
But the other one was the...
The mostest.
No, the other one was with the mostest.
Yeah.
So at the end of the day, no one went to jail.
No one was arrested.
Everything was completely...
Oh, and the up and up, everything was legal.
Everyone was good.
The wildest story to have nobody go to jail for.
Yeah.
Yeah, no one got in trouble.
No one had anything.
No, but here's the weird thing though.
The story lives on.
This is...
I don't even know what year this was.
If I had to guess...
Are they a repeat guest?
No, no, no, no.
If I had to guess, I would think this was around 2014.
Yeah, I'd say like 13, 14, somewhere right around there.
So we're like eight years.
Right.
This story still lives with the police department.
Oh yeah.
Oh.
Still lives.
Every once in a while, like I said, I've been gone for a few years now and I'll occasionally
get someone who...
I still know a lot of my friends that work there and stuff.
For sure.
And I was still here like, hey man.
Told the story today.
No, no, no.
It's even better than that.
Yeah.
And so New Copper wanted to know if the gang bang was real or not.
They don't believe it.
Because by the end of it, I think there was about nine cops there at the end of the whole
thing.
By the time we got everything started, the vice guys showed up.
Anyone available had to see it.
Oh, that's what happened.
Everyone was like, hey, are you free?
I get over and check this thing out.
Yeah.
All the other guys in the middle of the call are like, damn it.
I missed it.
Yeah.
So a lot of those guys are sergeants now and lieutenants, right?
They've promoted whatever.
No one talks about them.
That's someone to ask.
Yep.
I was there.
I was like, what happened?
They're like, but wait, was it really 20?
No kid.
Try 29.
That was only the people that were there.
That we saw in the room.
That doesn't count the guys that left before and the guys that were coming in.
She was busy.
Yeah.
And so when I talked to the organizer, I'm like, look, man.
He's like, I'm not doing anything illegal.
I go, no, you're right.
We have thoroughly exhausted that angle.
However.
But you might have had a list of questions.
Yeah.
But at that point, I was like, let's wrap this thing up and get out of here.
I go, look, man.
Get that thing out of my face, right?
You have to realize something.
You're at a family hotel.
Yeah.
So you have people who have spent thousands of dollars to come from all over God's green
earth to come enjoy a hotel in Southern California and theme parks and beaches and all we have
to offer.
And so you show up at noon, you get off the plane, you've got you and your three kids
with you and you're walking in and everyone's pumped and you go up to the room and you walk
in and this is what you get in the room next door.
How do you explain that to a seven year old?
And he goes like, yeah, you got a point.
I go, so take your little merry men and go down the road to like a non-family hotel.
Yeah.
Like go someplace where no one's going to complain about this.
Maybe go somewhere where business professionals stay.
Maybe get more clients.
Yeah.
Like when there's extended stays or something, right?
You know, whatever.
I'm like, come on, man.
Not the family hotel.
Like, you know, we've talked about, you know, my whole AB option.
Always take it.
Yeah.
Part of that stems from working with him.
And I mean, he's in a different position, right?
So you know, where I say you've got an AB option, he says you've got till sundown to
ride out of town.
If you know what I'm saying.
Yeah, for sure.
You know, so guys like this with the free for all parties, it's like, look, you're not
doing anything illegal, but you're not welcome here.
But you got to get out.
You need to, you need to mosey along.
Yeah.
You don't have to go home, but you can't stay here.
Right.
And he and I were privy to that on many occasions with the working professionals, if you will.
The ladies of ill repute.
Yeah.
There were way too many stories of that.
But you know, just like there was one instance that came up that, you know, we reversed search
her email address and she came back as being a back page vendor.
Yeah, she was a vendor.
She was a vendor on back page.
So you know, we look at it and yeah, that's, that's the girl that just checked in.
That's her.
That's 100% her.
So I shoot him the link.
I'm like, Hey, check this out.
This woman just checked into the hotel.
He responds, Hey, the, well, the first one's the Hyatt.
The second one's the third one's a such and such, blah, blah, blah, blah.
He's going down the list.
He's like, I'm on the way.
So we go up to the room and knock on the door and she comes to the door dressed for work.
She was in her uniform.
Yeah.
Okay.
Very lacy and flowing name tag on.
No, no name tag.
Okay.
So he couldn't have fit on the uniform.
Wouldn't have fit.
And that's really not a place to pin it if you're not on the phone.
So you know, he, he's talking to her and letting her know, Hey, we know you're in town doing
business.
Here's your back page, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
You're not welcome here.
You need to go.
You know, she looks at his name tag and says, Hey, you know, such and such, what does that
stand for a hole?
Of course you need to leave.
Don't come back here ever.
And you know, a lot of those conversations really became kind of my repertoire of you've
got an AB option.
Take the A. Option A, you pack your stuff, you go away.
Option B, you're going to pack your stuff and go away with the police.
Which one would you like to pursue?
You know, they say it's a victimless crime and it kind of is, you know, we think the
prostitution of old, right?
All they're just, you know, they're working the streets and you know, they're making a
living and they are trying to put themselves through school and they're a single mom and
right, whatever it is, right?
And this is all they got.
There is a little bit of that.
By and large though, most are forced into it when it to a right.
They've been human trafficked and they're being forced into this or they started out
trying to fend for themselves and provide for their kids.
And it all just barrel rolled.
Yeah.
Then they get swooped under someone who's having to control them, right?
So you know, there's still cold pimps, right?
And so they'll get swooped up by a pimp.
Now they work for them.
And so there's a form of kind of human trafficking.
Most of these girls are really victims at the end of the day.
They're doing something they don't want to be doing.
They're putting places that they don't want to be.
But also-
But that's their life and they-
Yeah.
I was sure kind of one of these stories because it just ended up being kind of comical.
You know, a guy checks in the hotel across the street from Bill's and it's about 8.30
in the morning.
He goes on Backpage or whatever the site he was using, calls up a girl for a little in-service,
out-service type call, right?
Come on into my hotel room.
So she wanders on up and what would happen a lot of times is they would call these girls
in the room while they're pimp or someone, some cohort, something is with them and they
end up getting robbed.
And no service is rendered and they got a big rob.
So this particular case she goes up and the thing was she would text XXX to the guy downstairs.
Like, okay, hey, it's good.
Come on in.
So she'd prop the door.
They'd have some routine essentially to get him up into the room, to rob the guy and split.
So the guy's up on, I think he's on the 14th or 15th story.
So he's up pretty high.
She goes in, quick conversation about pricing, this, that, the other thing.
She's like, all right, cool.
I'm going to go to the bathroom real quick.
Get ready.
And he's like, okay.
Sends a text.
Right?
So she sends the text, right?
So she's prepared in the restroom by about that time knocking the door, boom, boom, boom,
hotel management.
You guys like, huh?
Like, hey, hotel manager, open the door.
And the guy would be kind of dressed like he could kind of look like he kind of passes
maybe like a hotel manager, right?
He wasn't dressed like a sleaze ball or anything.
So what would happen is he would go open the door.
Guy would rush in.
He's a big guy.
Rush in, right?
Throw the guy to the ground, take his money.
Put his foot in the door.
You know?
Mm hmm.
Yeah.
Well, and he's ready.
So, you know, he's not packing a weapon.
Yep.
So this, you know, happy guy rushes in, rips his gold chain, takes his wallet, takes whatever
the guy has around him.
She grabs the other couple of things.
Boom.
They're both out of there.
They're gone.
And so, and usually people are just leaving it at that.
Like, all right, hey, you know, whatever.
Well, this guy's like, nah, screw that.
I ain't doing that.
So he jumps back into his pants real quick and runs out the hallway.
Well, they're waiting at the elevator, right?
Because they're on the 14th story.
So, right.
Could take a while.
Hey, come back here.
They're coming down.
They're like ding, ding, ding, ding.
Like, now they're like trying to get out of there.
Elevator opens up.
They run in the elevator.
Shut, right as he gets there, the door is shut.
Uh huh.
So he's like frantically calling the next, this elevator had four elevators.
So the next one, bing, door open.
So he jumps in.
Now he's in hot pursuit.
So if you can imagine these two elevators going down.
Just chasing each other.
Chasing each other down.
So these two hit the lobby.
They come out.
It's a pretty wide open lobby.
And this lobby opened up and it had like a big fountain in the middle.
It had some really nice things, but there was a Starbucks off to the side.
And so these two come out through the lobby, through the Starbucks, and they go to leave.
Well as they're going through, the guy, bing, pops out behind him.
Stop them.
They robbed me.
So he's yelling, 8.30 in the morning, in the lobby.
Stop them.
They robbed me.
Well these two turn and they start to like hustle now.
So they kind of, in a slow trot, they come out of the Starbucks.
They open the door and they're both looking around behind them to see where this guy is.
What they don't see is the police lieutenant and the police captain both walking up into
the Starbucks in full uniform to grab their morning cup of coffee.
She runs headlong into the captain and he's like, oh, hey, watch out.
And she's like, oh, oh, hey, sorry.
Now they're like in a stumble and the guy comes out, they just robbed me.
Stop them right now.
And they were both like, what?
And the guy's like, oh, hey, no, nothing.
Oh, I got to go.
So now this lieutenant and this captain both are in this like minor little foot pursuit
and grab both of these guys.
Grab them, sit them down.
The guy's like, she stole my money.
She stole it.
No, I don't know what you're talking about.
So they call me.
So I get over there.
Same thing.
Same trick that Bill taught me.
I just Google search for a little email address here.
Sure enough, so we find out that's not me.
This isn't you.
This isn't you right here.
No, that's not me.
I didn't do that.
Yeah.
No, these aren't my pants.
I don't know what you're talking about.
We were talking about nothing good ever comes from these things.
It's just sometimes right place, right time, at least for us, not for them.
Captains and lieutenants and police administration don't really do much.
They lead and all that stuff.
They don't do street work.
They don't drive around police cars.
They don't make arrests.
Well, yeah, if they would have been faster, they could have run away from the captain.
Exactly.
And I go, hey, how does it feel to be a cop again?
You sell some drugs, right?
And I had a really good relationship with these two.
They're like, oh, very funny.
I was like, well, let's feel good to do something really good with your day.
We had a little jovial joke that they actually caught two robbers.
But we'd hear those type of stories.
And like I said, those are the ones that we either catch or the folks that, I said they'll
call the police like, hey, I tried to buy drugs, but they ripped me off.
So occasionally.
I mean, someone buys a prostitute and essentially calls the cops.
I mean, they happen to run into cops.
Yeah.
Oh man.
So who got arrested in the situation?
The prostitute or the guy hiring the prostitute?
The prostitute and the pimp.
For robbery, essentially, because the act of prostitution didn't fully take place.
True.
So at that point, it would have been solicitation at best.
And it's kind of the lesser included crime, right, so all those are solicitation.
All that stuff is misdemeanor crimes, essentially tickets and community service type stuff.
Right.
Robbery is still a felony in this state.
So we went with the, yeah, your victim's not the most pristine victim in the world.
I mean, the guy was in a crook.
He was there for a conference or something like that.
And he was like, oh, well, you know, when you're on the road, right?
But yeah, I mean, we get that a lot.
You would see prostitution rings run, funny enough, it's with the service industry.
They would run rampant alongside conferences.
So they would often follow some of the large, we called the conference circuit, right?
That doesn't surprise me.
They'll follow the conference circuit because you have music, physicians, you name it, right?
Any conference.
And you have business professionals who have money, they're on the road, they're mostly
always all married or have families.
So this is going to be discrete.
Even if they rip them off, they ain't going to say anything about it, right?
They want the whole nine yards.
So it's a good target audience for a lot of these folks that will, even if they complete
services then they'll still rip them off after the fact.
They'll take jewelry, watches, wallets, whatever the case is.
Of course, they're-
Even just cash.
One, yeah.
No one's going to report that because you don't want your name on a police report.
This is what you were doing.
And then you have to show back up to whatever state you happen to be in because let's say
they get caught and try to explain to your family why you have to go on this court case.
Yeah.
Can you imagine?
Yeah.
I mean, in fact, one of my very first calls, I was brand new cop.
I was like 21, I want to say.
I mean, I was fresh out of the academy.
I was like, I'm here to save the world.
Full of piss and vinegar.
And no, I was later in my career.
Early in my career, I was all like, I'm going to make a difference.
And I remember we get sent to this robbery call at one of the biggest hotel in our town,
a huge hotel.
And we get there and it's probably like nine o'clock, 10 o'clock at night.
I get there and I come running up and robbery just occurred in the room, right?
Because we get there, okay, what happened?
There's two normal looking guys, right?
And they rented the penthouse suites.
Oh, hey man, we had this party and we invited a bunch of friends over.
And then these guys rushed in and stole our watches.
There's like Rolexes and all this other stuff.
All this stuff was taken.
I go, well, how many people were here?
Oh, we had like 12 different people here.
Like only these two guys are left, right?
Where'd they all go?
Right?
So again, I have no clue what's going on.
I'm like, what happened?
Where are they?
Well, what they look like?
Oh, they look like this.
I think they had this type of car because one of the guys chased them out.
So we're putting out this broadcast, say a possible red Camaro and all these other things,
right?
Well, within about five minutes, sure enough, a couple of cops find this red Camaro, right?
Felling in car stops, which means you're pointing guns at people, laying people on the road.
Like some of the stuff you see on television, right?
Oh boy.
Like it's all, I mean, it's the real deal, right?
So we're renting these people down.
Anyhow, long story short, I'm like 10 minutes into this investigation.
My field trainer is like, hey kid, come here.
And this guy, my trainer had a time spent 12 years in LAPD.
So he'd worked all kinds of areas.
He'd done all kinds of things, all kinds of different assignments.
He had a lot of tenure under his belt and then he had lateraled out into the agency
that we were working for.
So I come over and he's like, so what do you got?
Oh, I got this robbery.
These guys were staying and it was a guy's weekend.
And so I'm buying this guy's story hook, line and sinker.
Oh no.
Oh, this guy's weekend and these guys just busted in on him.
They must've been followed and all this other stuff.
And he's like, kid, you had a lot to learn.
Just hold on a second.
I'm going to go ask him a couple of questions.
And so we go back over there.
You played right into these guys.
Oh, I played right into them.
I'm this bright eyed, but I mean, my head's still like shaped from the police academy,
right?
They literally were like, ah, this kid, let us tell us a story.
He'll believe us.
So I get this 20 plus year tenure guy, right?
Comes walking over and he's like, so guys, cute with my kid over there.
However, let's try the story again.
Oh.
And they're like, well, what do you mean?
We wouldn't lie to the police.
He's like, you were here with strippers.
A couple of prostitutes rolled in.
You all got jacked.
You were just caught like we see it?
No, officer, that would have never happened.
No, we're all no, absolutely not.
Oh, really?
Hold on a second.
So he starts rummaging around the room and finds all the bachelor party type stuff.
Oh, for sure.
Or all this stuff.
So he's like, look guys, seriously though, we're pointing guns at someone right down
the street that you just reported allegedly robbed you.
So this is your last chance.
If we shoot those people, that's your fault if they don't go with the program.
Yeah, that's not our fault.
So let's talk about the hookers that you all hired.
Okay, yeah, you're right.
Okay, we hired this hooker.
And so the whole story comes out.
And in my head, I was like, you can't talk to people like that.
What do you mean they lied?
My head's just.
People lie?
So anyhow, long story short, we took both those guys to jail for false report of emergency
and making a false police report.
Wow.
Yeah.
Because it drained.
We took a bunch of resources out.
We're pointing innocent people in a made up car that they never saw.
So we figured out the whole thing was-
Even the car was just made up.
And you just pull over a random Camaro?
Yeah, pointing guns at them.
And fit the description.
It was in the area.
That's crazy.
So these poor people now that we have to dust off, say so sorry, you've matched a-
And they have trauma.
Exactly.
So when we talk about, and so I was like, wait, we're arresting him for a false report.
I didn't know you could do that.
I was like, I was brand new.
I was like, what section is that?
And he's like, yeah.
He goes, look, man, he goes, we wrecked at least two people's nights.
Right?
We have eight cops working this thing, thinking it's like a legit takeover robbery when in
fact they just bought a bunch of hookers.
These hookers just robbed them.
Yeah.
And what we eventually found out is they came in and what happened was everyone was all drunk
and they were partying, they were dancing.
So as one was dancing on everyone's lap, she was going around and scooping up all the stuff
that was in the room that was this loose leaf laying around.
And then they left.
And then they started drinking some more and they were like, hey, where's my watch?
Hey, where's my wallet?
Hey, where's my phone?
Gone.
And they were like, oh, here's the wallet that they got.
Yeah.
And so now they're all trying to figure out how they're going to explain all this to their
girlfriends or fiancees or wives.
So the one guy is like, oh, call the cops.
He's like, no, don't call the cops.
And it was too late.
And so then everyone like they all scattered out of there real quick.
And then you have the two ding dongs.
Yeah, the two ding dongs that were left like, oh, we're going to make up this bogus report
so we can-
To a little 21 year old fresh on the streets cop.
That just believed everything they said.
Absolutely.
Hook, lion, sinker.
Yeah.
Oh man.
That's crazy.
I mean, all of these stories, I cannot explain how just blown away I am.
Yeah.
Strange, weird, but true.
Crap actually happens.
They go on and on and on.
And I'm sure this is truly just the tip of the surface of your stories.
I mean, there was stuff that I remember calling him one night because we had a guy that was
in the hot tub that was wearing just his underwear, hitting on a bunch of 12, 13, 14 year old girls.
Oh good.
And he went to trash, right?
Guess that we're out there.
They come in, they tell us we call the police, he shows up.
Night did not go well for that dude.
For sure.
And it's like, I don't understand why people try to lie their way out of things.
You're not a professional liar.
He's a professional lie detector.
So you're kind of setting yourself up to fail in the first place.
Second of all, all your clothes are in a pile and you're in your underwear.
So I'm really believing that you're not a ghost here.
Who am I going to believe here?
Yeah.
Just stupid stuff like that.
I don't know what happened to it.
I am kind of bummed that I lost it.
I'll say I misplaced it at this point, but the city coin.
Oh, I get you.
It was, I think it was after that orgy story or maybe it was after the man in the ledge
or something like that.
But our hotel had been responsible for so many of the calls and so many people going
to jail that I ended up getting a chief's coin.
The city owed you.
Just for the stories, if no less, the cops that we brought in.
I don't know what I did with it.
I'm bummed that I don't know where it is.
We can get you another one.
Yeah.
Replacement.
Yeah.
Good times.
Yeah, we can get you another one.
That hotel had so many stories come out of it.
Just ridiculous stuff.
I mean, and not even all of them were police related.
For sure.
I can't tell you how many times we called 911 for ambulances and fire.
I mean, we had fires in that hotel.
We had a couple of them.
Yeah.
That's scary.
Yeah, I mean, one of my favorites was a woman that was there because her house had burned
down.
Oh, and so she was staying at the hotel.
And she was staying at a hotel.
And then a fire happened.
Yeah.
Come to find out she was taking Ambien and she was sleep cooking.
She burned down her own house and she started the fire in her own hotel.
And then burned down the hotel.
Yeah.
Stop.
Just stupid stuff like that would happen again and again and again.
Well, you know what I always tell folks?
You know, in training hotels now and kind of working through the thought processes,
you open as a hotelier, you open the doors to the world.
If as long as you got money, come on in.
As long as that credit card works, come on down.
Yeah, you don't have to have money.
Your credit card just needs to have available balance on it.
Yeah.
And it's like you bring in the world's problems.
You have no idea where these people are in life.
I mean, I don't know how many times we've gotten suicidal calls, either suicides that
have been completed in a hotel.
They didn't want to complete it in their own house or whatever.
Or attempts because they're out.
They got a night because their wife or their husband kicked them out and they're going
through the door.
I mean, every spice of life shows up in a hotel.
Very true.
And some hotels, okay, it's mostly business and you'll get a little bit of that.
Or it's mostly families you'll get a little bit of that.
But some hotels, it's like you're just, you're getting everything.
You're getting all kinds of, you're getting transient traffic.
You're getting all kinds of stuff.
You never know where people are in their life.
Like when they walk through those front doors to check in.
You don't know anyone's story.
No, and we do say the same thing.
There's no such thing as a normal car stop, right?
Or to pull someone over.
You don't know where in life you're stopping these people.
They just robbed something.
Did they just steal this car and you don't know it?
Did they just kill somebody?
Or are they just having a bad day?
Or are they just jamming to their tunes and life is grand?
They were speeding, right?
They didn't see something.
And in some way, I tell hoteliers, especially at the front desk or operations, it's the
same thing.
When you're checking this person in, you have zero idea where they are in their life.
What's going on?
What led them to get here?
What's going on?
Are they here in business?
Do they just get thrown out?
Are they here on vacation?
Are they...
What is it?
Any little thing could tip you off to a crime.
One little word they say, something they're wearing, their body language, anything can
tip you off.
I count my blessings that I've had to deal with dead bodies.
There's a lot of dead bodies in my history.
Son of a bitch.
Not to get morbid here.
No, I know.
So there was an overdose.
There were a couple of old age.
There was a heart attack.
There was a drowning.
And there was...
A drowning?
Yeah, a guy died in a pool.
He dove into the deep end of the pool.
Hit his head?
No, no, no.
He was going side to side.
He dove into the deep end of the pool and just never surfaced.
Freak accident.
He didn't hit his head.
He wasn't injured in any way.
Just died instantly on hitting the water.
That's bizarre.
Yeah.
Ms. B and I worked at a hotel that there had been multiple suicides.
I found out first week I was there that there is a particular room that has a bullet hole
on the wall because a woman checked in and put a 45 to her head.
So I have known people who have had loved ones that have done suicides in hotels.
Unfortunately, we see a lot of people that they've just hit into the rope.
Yeah.
Not to get morbid on the topic, but I have had a GM take his own life.
My mentor for five years.
So that was a tough point in my life.
But my mentor taught me everything I knew at that point in my life.
So I still am very thankful for that time.
I can only imagine.
You never know what people are going through.
People you work with, people you're checking in the hotel, your employees.
You never know.
Yeah.
I've had people ask in the past, how do you prevent that?
And what's crazy is that you can't.
Oh, no.
It's like the hotel for Ms. B and I, both the rooms were 11th floor rooms.
Yeah.
So you find something similar with any scenario.
It's like, what do you do?
There could have been a three in both of those rooms.
Any small significance will just pop in your head.
Any who's a.
Not to bring the podcast to a heavy note, but.
You never know.
I mean, you look at the folks that checked in the Las Vegas shooter.
Oh, absolutely.
And to look back hindsight 2020, him asking to do certain things or to have certain things
or to do certain.
You know, of course, I'm able to make sense now at the time.
You're like, oh, OK, whatever.
But when you're checking him in, those are just requests from a guess.
Yeah.
Well, I mean, hindsight's 2020.
Every instance that we all experience every day in our lives, we have fractions of a second
to make a decision.
Whether it's us with a two minute check in of a guest that were supposed to screen for
their mental stability, whether they have weapons, what their intentions are, et cetera,
et cetera.
Oh, it could have been prevented at check in.
No, it couldn't.
It's like two minutes.
You got phones ringing.
You've got processes to do, et cetera, et cetera.
Or to the officer that pulls someone over and has three seconds to make a decision of whether
I'm going home tonight or he is.
Yeah.
We all have a very finite amount of time to make a decision.
And you just hope you're on the right side of that decision all the time.
The unfortunate part is that anybody that checks into a hotel to do that, they don't
leave a single wake of pain.
No.
Like for their family.
It's that person that checked them in.
It's that room attendant that found them.
It's the bellman that has to escort emergency services.
It's like, just don't.
Yeah.
Just don't.
I'll tell you.
There's lines for that.
There's lines.
And folks will check into a hotel to think, oh, I don't want to do it in my house.
They're thinking they're doing it for their family.
I'm doing this for my family.
Yeah.
They don't think of all the other people that they are in contact with and they are
touching in that time.
Well and I've been a part of a number of wrongful death lawsuits.
It's stemming out of hotels.
People who died natural causes.
Right?
There's any number of things.
And then some of them, they try to hold the hotel responsible.
Oh, well you should have seen the fact that they were exhibiting this medical sign or
that medical sign or like-
Come on.
And it's like, I remember one of them, I went to a jury trial and I was being asked, what
type of training is the hotel provided as it relates to this and that and these symptoms.
I'm like, look, guys, none.
Right?
None.
We're not doctors.
We're not paramedics.
We're over the top.
Yeah.
They're going to call for help.
They're not going to diagnose.
They're not going to see symptoms.
They're not going to, right?
And so sometimes people think that, you know, hoteliers are superheroes, right?
You're all knowing, all seeing, supposed to be everywhere at all time, answer every
guest you'll request and know everything.
And it's like, folks-
I would say at maximum, you are first aid CPR certified.
On a good day.
Yeah.
You can talk to someone.
You can recognize a stroke.
You can maybe recognize a heart attack.
You can call 911 and get a first aid kit.
You're really, really good at that.
Yeah.
But I'm talking to two veteran hoteliers, right?
Yeah.
What about that 19 year old who's starting brand fresh, first job, front desk, has barely
figured out opera or whatever other system you're using, right?
To even check anyone in and you expect this kid to like-
Oh, for sure.
Piece together what's going on?
I've seen it firsthand with an injury.
I was working one evening.
Guest comes walking back from the park.
She's walking through the lobby and down she goes.
Makes her head on the floor.
Front desk agent says, oh my God, she slipped.
I looked at her and said-
No.
She didn't slip.
She's having a seizure.
She went into full lockup mid stride and that's what took her down.
The girl that I'm working with, she had no clue.
No idea.
So when you call EMS, there's a very big difference of, hey, I have someone that is injured in
my lobby that slipped and fell versus I have someone in my lobby that's-
Actively seizing.
She's on the ground because she's in full seizure.
Very different response.
Yeah.
It's like those are the things that we aren't trained to know.
No.
Those are the things that we learn kind of the hard way.
In that particular instance, that young lady learned the hard way, the difference between
a slip and fall and a full seizure.
Well, I'm fortunate enough.
I don't know if I have touched much about this on the podcast, but I have a lifeguard
background.
So your lifeguard-
You have got to be kidding me.
You've not shared that.
I have not.
So I come from an aquatic athlete background.
And with that, a lot of your summer jobs while you're in college playing these sports, you're
a lifeguard.
You're a swim instructor.
So coming from that background, I have gone through the ranks.
I was a swim instructor.
I was a lifeguard.
And then I became a aquatics director.
And now I still oversee pools.
So yeah, you see it.
You hope to be on the pool deck when an emergency happens.
And you said 19-year-old.
You hope they're 19.
I have 15, 16, 17-year-olds.
All right.
So here's what I want to do.
I want to bookmark that whole line of conversation because we've been talking for quite a while
tonight.
So we can tease it.
Yeah, we're going to keep this.
We're going to bookmark this and we're going to go down that path on the next episode.
But what I would like to do, since we had a very dark moment there.
I'm so sorry.
No, no, no, no.
Don't be.
I know you've got a list of stories that don't involve me, don't involve the hotel, what
have you.
So if you've got one you'd like to share that can take us out on a high note, let's
roll with that.
Oh, there's so many.
Well, we'll keep it in the service industry.
I mean, at one point, I do want to hear the backstory of how your service weapon got the
nickname, the smoke wagon.
That might be another podcast episode.
That's not going to take us out on a high note.
No, no, no.
You'll definitely have to come back.
I'd be happy to.
Let's do this one.
So a hotel that was joining Bill's old hotel in kind of the same parking lot area calls
and says, Hey, our housekeepers found something kind of weird.
Here Bill is trying to figure out what story you're about to share.
There's four other options.
There was a cluster of five hotels on this very large main thoroughfare corner.
So there's four other significant properties to choose from.
So they go, Hey, is it the one with the atrium?
Yes, it is a very lovely open space, beautiful hotel with atriums and a speaking of aquatics
had lovely aquatics that ran through the atrium and the roaring lion, all kinds of other creatures
that were animatronics, if you will, in the lobby.
It's a very interesting hotel, but they call and say, Hey, our housekeepers found some
weird things.
We think we might have a lady of ill repute staying in the hotel, but we're not a hundred
percent sure.
Would you mind coming up and trying to figure out what in the world is going on here?
Huggers.
Excuse me.
I should have that checked out.
Excuse me.
Sounds contagious.
So I just made a weird face.
Like what are you about to talk about?
Sure.
There are times that I wish we had a video recording going.
So I show up to hotel and they go, yeah, hey, sure.
Yeah, not a problem.
So we go up, they go up to the room and they go, yeah, hey, you know, we've locked her
out.
We're pretty sure there's some scandalous things going on in here, but we're not really
sure.
So can you tell us like, what's up?
Yeah.
All right, sure.
Let's go and check it out.
So I walk in and there's a suitcase kind of next to the door and it looks like you've
got to a wedding where they have like the little photo booth and they have like boas
and masks and hats and all kinds of fun things.
Oh, just a plethora of random crap.
Yes.
A little masquerade mask on a stick.
That no one really wants to put on.
No, no.
So she's got this suitcase full of that.
All kinds of random.
Weird.
Weird things, right?
Okay, that's kind of odd.
And they're like, no, no, no, no, here's the thing.
We're not really sure what it is, but we think that it's probably something naughty.
Okay, well what?
What is it?
And they go, it's over there on the table.
And so this particular, it's a sweets hotel and so it's got the little lobby, it's got
a little dining room thing with like a dining room table and then, you know, it's on a dining
room table all by itself, kind of laying off to the side.
Is this sparkly looking contraption.
So I walk over, I'm looking at this thing.
I was like, well, that looks interesting.
So I put my gloves on real quick.
Of course.
So I go to pick it up and as soon as I pick it up and turn it, the thing lights up and
starts to play a tune.
Oh.
And it starts flopping around and moving.
I was going to say.
And then it lights up and it's playing some weird song thing.
And I was like, what in the world?
And they're like, yeah, that thing, is it naughty?
And I'm like, yes, it is.
This goes in places where the sun doesn't shine.
Toys clearly getting down while you're getting down.
I go, so what do you want done?
They're like, well, you know, we don't want that kind of activity here.
We're going to lock her out and have her leave.
We're going to ask her to leave, you know, when she comes back or whatever.
Kind of like we talked about the AB option, right?
You can leave now peacefully.
You're going to leave with the cops.
Okay, fine.
And I go, um, we should probably just leave a note understanding that we were here and
that we know that she's up to.
They go, okay.
So I'm looking at this thing and there's a, it was apparently set on the motion detection
setting.
Okay.
That's such a thing.
I know, right?
We're learning something.
I'm rummaging around.
There is a suction device that I guess you can put on walls and windows and whatever
you, whatever you please.
But there's also the steady on function.
So it just stays on.
So I'm like, okay.
So I hit the study on it, put the little suction cup on it and I stick it right in the middle
of the table and we turn off the lights.
So it looks like a disco light show going in the middle of the room, right?
With the little tune playing on it.
And we shut the door.
The tune playing is what?
Is the best part of the whole thing.
Kind of.
It had to been expensive.
It had to be.
So we walk out and we leave and I go, okay, hey, if she doesn't go to the program or anything
else, call me.
I'll come back over and we'll escort her out of here.
But did you leave a note?
No, that was the note.
That was.
Turn the lights off and turn this thing on.
So it says, acknowledging your presence that you were in the room.
Yes.
So about two hours go by and I get a call from the MOD.
She goes, so she came back.
I was like, yeah.
Was she pissed?
She's like, so she comes back, her room's locked out and they said, hey, we're onto
your game.
You don't know what I'm up to.
I do whatever I want.
And she's copping all this attitude with the front desk.
Of course.
She is copping all kinds of attitude.
And they go, look, ma'am, here's the deal.
You can go back up to your room.
We unlocked.
Here's your key.
Here's go back up there.
Once you get in there, you can decide if you want to stay, you want to leave.
We're just giving you the AB option here.
Okay, fine.
So she goes up there.
They said within about two and a half minutes, she's in full tilt sprint with Boas and all
the other Scutramantas she had flying behind her running out of the hotel.
Because of the note you left her?
So they go back up to the room and the only thing left in the room.
The thing on the table.
There's a thing on the table still going on.
Nice.
Yep.
So you're not backing your suitcase and like using it?
Nope.
She might've been like, I'll leave this for them.
It'll be my parting gift.
Yeah.
Maybe the next person want to use it.
That's disgusting.
Well, on that note, let's go out on that note.
So first and foremost, Liz, thanks always for joining us again.
It's a pleasure.
Thank you so much for having me.
Love having you here and very excited to know that our next conversation is going to be
you going down a lifeguard rabbit hole.
I will get some stories ready.
Like Baywatch.
But not on the beach.
I like guarded pools.
Very different.
Sorry if that's a disappointment for the next episode.
I'm just picture you like running down the beach, like with a red buoy jumping off of
like, you know, speedboats in the ocean.
No, I was more holding a crying screaming three year old with a giant visor and a rash
guard.
So you are the kid.
We were both crying, honestly.
Snort rockets going everywhere from both of us.
But look forward to the stories.
Yes, of course.
Andy.
Pleasure.
Always a pleasure to see you.
It's been way too long since we've gotten together.
Hopefully we can do this again sometime.
I would love to.
This is this was great.
I miss the stories.
And Bill, thank you so much as always for hosting us.
Oh, you're very welcome.
I appreciate you guys coming over.
This will probably be the last episode of the year.
So you're saying we're going out with a bang.
Oh my gosh.
But I'm pumped.
Yeah.
I mean, with the number with the number of stories this evening.
Yes, we are going out with a bang.
All right.
Well, thank you for everybody that's listening.
If you have anybody in the industry that you know that you would like to share our podcast
with that you think that they would enjoy, please send a link to them.
Share it on your social media.
Send an email to spread the word.
We'd love to see our podcast growing and having you be a part of it.
Yeah.
Thank you guys.
Thank you again.
Toodaloo.
That'll work.
Thanks for watching.