This episode is sponsored by NuCalm.
And as many of you know, I only bring sponsors onto this show
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Welcome to the Behind the Shield podcast. As always, my name is James Gearing,
and this week it is my absolute honor to welcome on the show
firefighter, flight medic and podcaster Sam Brawley.
Now, Sam has her own podcast, 9-1-1 Nonsense, but has never been interviewed until now.
So I was honored to be the first person to ask her questions.
So we discuss a host of topics from her journey into the volunteer fire service,
her road through EMS, some career calls,
paramedicine in the ER, becoming a flight medic and so much more.
Now, before we get to this incredible conversation, as I say every week, please just take a moment.
Go to whichever app you listen to this on, subscribe to the show, leave feedback and leave a rating.
Every single five-star rating truly does elevate this podcast, therefore making it easier for others to find.
And this is a free library of almost 900 episodes now.
So all I ask in return is that you help share these incredible men and women stories
so I can get them to every single person on planet Earth who needs to hear them.
So with that being said, I introduce to you Sam Brawley. Enjoy.
Sam, I want to start by saying welcome to the Behind the Shield podcast and I want to give a shout out to Didi Finder for connecting us as well.
Yeah, thank you so much for having me. It's an honor to be here and getting to look and see it all.
You know how successful you've been in your podcast. You're really something to look up to.
And yeah, Didi Finder did introduce us. He's a good dude and he's got a lot of great stories.
I loved having him on mine and I loved listening to him on yours.
Yeah, I listened and that's how I prepared for mine was listening on yours. So that's how we came across each other.
All right. Well, the very first question, where on planet Earth are we finding you this evening?
I am located in New Mexico, which a lot of people tend to think that we are part of Mexico, but we actually aren't. We are part of the United States.
I've never heard anyone say that before. As I say, New England is still part of the UK.
Yes, exactly. Exactly.
So, well, I would love to start at the very beginning. We were talking before we hit record. I don't know much about you, which I think is awesome sometimes.
I just kind of unravel you as we go along, metaphorically that is. So let's start at the very beginning.
Tell me where you were born and tell me a little bit about your family dynamic, what your parents did, how many siblings.
Awesome. So I was born in a little town called Las Cruces, New Mexico. It's actually really close to the New Mexico, Mexico border.
I have three siblings. I have two sisters and a brother, and I am the middle child there. We adopted my younger sister. So I am very much the middle child.
My father was a police officer and my mother worked in customer service for various jobs until they decided to open a business together called the Buffalo Hunter.
It was working really well. And then my parents got divorced and everything kind of fell apart. Okay. I don't know how detailed you want me to get. It was a rough. It's kind of a rough growing up.
Yeah, we can go on that in a minute because I think that is part of the first Responder mental health journey is before we ever put the uniform on.
When you look with this lens that you have, the age that you are back at your father's career, what were the pros and the cons of the impact of the job on him as a parent?
Well, as far as pros go, I would say he was very protective. That's probably one of the only pros I would throw out there.
We didn't see him a lot because he worked a lot of swings. He did a lot of nights, so we didn't get to see him.
That unfortunately afforded him the opportunity to go and sleep around with other people, which unfortunately happens a lot in that type of profession.
And I mean, as far as cons go, that's really about it. We didn't really get to see him a whole lot. He wasn't really a very sharing kind of guy.
He had his own ways of going about it, but it wasn't a very lovey-dovey family.
Well, there's a lot of us that have different dynamics that send us into service ourselves.
I think what's interesting though, and it just kind of hit me when you were talking, is a lot of us are sons and daughters.
I'm not, but a lot of us are sons and daughters of Responders.
So when someone's been in the career, they get a very mature outlook to reflect on their upbringing.
And can really say, this was good, and this was not so good.
I think this is part of the storytelling because sometimes I feel like all I talk about is some of the doom and gloom negative side.
But all we're doing is just shining light on that as well. We all know that being a First Responder is awesome.
We all love our jobs. We all are proud of helping other people.
But I think acknowledging the impact of the job on the human being and their family allows us to then have a discussion of how can we improve it.
So the police officers of the next generation have the rest and recovery, have the way to offload stress.
So that way the marital home is a lot more secure.
Right. We're wanting to break that stigma.
Absolutely. So what about when you were young? What about athletics?
What were you playing and doing as far as sports or activities?
I played a lot of basketball at a young age, and I did a lot of running.
I loved, loved, loved to run.
Basketball was my second favorite sport, and that was really about all I did.
I didn't get back into it until about high school.
I started playing basketball again, and then after high school, I met a couple people and started playing rugby.
Great sport. No pads.
Yes, it is. No pads.
Yeah, I loved, I loved rugby. Had a lot of injuries from it, but it was so much fun.
So I asked a lot of people this, you know, when you get into a profession, and I know you worked as a medic in different roles, SWAT and fire and all kinds of places.
So there's times where you're more of an individual, there's times where you're definitely more part of a team.
What did the sports that you play, or excuse me, how did they factor into the roles that you played later in life?
That's a really good question.
I, that one's tough.
I don't mind being an individual player, and I feel confident enough in my skills and abilities that I can probably get through most problem solving.
But I just enjoy being on the team, because when you have that teamwork, you have the ability to lean on somebody else, and you have that stability for other people to help you and then to help them in turn as well.
And I just think that teamwork in our services is greatly underappreciated and much needed.
And I don't think that we, we all have our own like A team, B team, you know, C team when we have our shifts and stuff, or we have our partners when we're working on the ambulance.
And I think just having that partnership is really, really good.
And I know the fire departments don't see as much switching or exchanging of shifts between people where ambulances might have more partner swaps and maybe not as much stability between their providers.
I remember from, because I rode rescue quite a lot later in my career.
And when you're on an engine, as long as there's a couple of people on the crew of four, you know, you're going to probably have a good day.
But when you're on the rescue, you have your rock star partner, you know, you're going to have a kick ass day.
But if you have the person that you don't get on with, that is a long 24 hours.
Yes, it makes for a very long shift when you're with somebody either you don't know and you're not jiving with right away versus having somebody you know that you are comfortable with and you work with a lot.
It can just, I've said it multiple times, like that can make or break your whole shift.
Absolutely. Well, what about career aspirations when you were still in the school age? What were you dreaming of becoming?
I had always known, I think from the sixth grade that I had wanted to get into the fire department.
My mom was driving me to a friend's house one day and we drove past a volunteer fire department. I was like, hey, I want to do that.
And then when I turned 18, without any support or pushing, I was able to go into a volunteer fire department. I actually signed up and tested and got into it.
And then once I got into the fire department, I started looking at what the fire department actually does. So EMS versus firefighting, right?
There's kind of a huge difference there.
And I actually found that I was really enjoying both, but I really, really enjoyed the EMS side of it.
And I kind of knew as soon as I got my basic that I wanted to get my paramedic, but everybody said, you know, wait, take your time, get that experience, get to know the job, make sure it's something you want to stick with.
So I did actually had my EMT basic for three years. I got my EMT intermediate for three years, and then I got my paramedic.
Progressing forward, because I don't think we should get stuck on an ambulance. It's hard work. It's a lot of really hard work.
I had looked into going either PA or NP, and I am currently looking to applying for a nursing program here coming up pretty soon.
Excellent. So, well, firstly, with reflection, so I wanted to be a medic from day one, but my journey East Coast, West Coast back to East Coast, I kept changing departments every few years.
So right when I was in line to do, for example, Anaheim's in-house program, I had to give up my spot because I knew I was going to be moving back East again.
So it took me a while to actually finally go through. I ended up putting myself through with zero support from the department I worked at.
At the time, they wouldn't even do tuition reimbursement. Nothing. So that was a big fuck you. But anyway, got it.
And hardest year of my life trying to be a single dad working in one department and doing ride-alongs with a completely different department.
But amazing. But when I look back, there was a lot of value into being an EMT. Now, conversely, one of my classmates in paramedic school went EMT fire school paramedic back to back to back.
And he would think he was still living with his parents. So he just knocked it all out. He himself is a very intelligent guy and he was definitely able to deal with that kind of intense journey.
When you look at most of the people you work with or you hear them talking about, what is the kind of the ethos you think that's the middle ground?
Should people go straight into medic or do you think there's value in being an EMT for a while?
Well, when I became an EMT and I was told that you had like you should get some experience, that was kind of the expectation.
Like they wouldn't let you in the college if you didn't have a few years of service. And that's just local to here. I mean, I can't speak for everywhere else, but like.
The ambulance company to work for here, it was very like they wanted you to have a certain amount of years before you had that basically zero to hero kind of mentality.
I do. I think people should get the experience. I think that too many people rushed through the program and think that they know what they're doing.
And that makes it hard and that can make you kind of a dangerous provider if you're going out. And that's not to say that even after, you know, three, five or 10 years of experience, you're not that same way.
But I think that getting that experience under your belt helps you to be a better provider. Ultimately, one of the people that I had on my on my podcast just recently was Tara.
And she, I don't know if you listen to hers at all, but she's does a lot of psych history stuff, mental health, and she's and I don't want I can't remember exactly how old she is.
She's she's in her forties fifties and she decided to go back and get her EMT basic license. She is great at her job. She does mental health.
For college students on one of the wherever she works. And she was like, well, I just, you know, I feel like as a nurse, if an emergency were to happen, I didn't feel good about it.
And so we've been talking back and forth and I sent her this video on Instagram yesterday of this guy jumping off a roof and like basically she's like, I'm not going to do that.
You know, and it's meant to be funny. And the first thing that she said to me was, well, before I arrived there, I'd be making sure we had the cops there because that guy looks like he was trying to run out of the window from, you know, the girl's husband that's probably showing up at the front door.
And I was like, oh my God, scene safety. Yes. Like, good job is the EMT like being in a paramedic. We always have to be careful.
And now like, it's not even something that I think about, I think probably because I'm in flight now, but the, it was just hilarious. I was like, oh, that didn't even click to me. What made you think of that? You know,
Well, that's what I was going to say when I made this conversation. Well, I had made this point with people on the show recently, people who go out and teach firefighting all over the country.
But if, if we get too focused on the more advanced skills, we stop practicing the most basic ones. And I think what the EMT role does is it keeps you in that basic foundation. Now, you know, I just worked a code on a plane with a few weeks ago and, you know, just as a passenger.
And so had zero equipment or anything. So it was back to not even really EMT, but talking, you know, CPR, American heart basically, but that's all you have. And then you realize, well, yeah, all the drugs and you know, the, the monitor and all those things, they're extra bits.
But if you get so zoned in on that, you know, treating the monitor, not the patient will treat, you know, obviously you're supposed to treat the patient on the monitor. Then, you know, we, we find ourselves deviating from the very principles, the nucleus of our training. So this is why I put the, I put the
Even though it's chomping at the bit to be a medic for a long time, it gave me, you know, it kept me grounded as far as those basic skills on every one of the calls, even when I was a paramedic.
Yeah. No, I think that's great. And I think that that type of experience probably made it a safer career for you all together, which maybe is what gave you part of your longevity as well.
Now, what about the volunteer side of the firefight? And I just literally had a conversation with Chris Moore, who's a firefighter in Virginia Beach area. And he was a volley and then he was a career. And, you know, not only obviously are they different as far as, you know, you guys are working and then you get banged out or, you know, you come and do certain shifts and you're not getting paid. But there's also that proximity to the volunteer side of the firefight.
So what was your experience as a volunteer firefighter?
So in the town that I grew up in, we couldn't work for the ambulance company until you were the age of 21. And I got into the volunteer fire department at the age of 21. And I was a firefighter. And I was a volunteer firefighter.
So after I turned 21 and I got my EMT basic license, well, I got it when I was 18. But after I turned 21, we moved up to Albuquerque fairly shortly after that. So I didn't have a huge gap between the time that I started working at the ambulance company. But I think that that is great. If you have people who are working in the ambulance company, you can get a lot of work done.
And I think that getting that experience ultimately is great for them. And it's great for the people who are working in the ambulance company. And I think that that's a great thing. And I think that that's a great thing.
And I think that getting that experience ultimately is great for them. And it's great for the people that they work with. And it's great for the people that they're serving.
Did you have an issue though, where you were responding to people you knew or you were living in a place where you started seeing a lot of the places where trauma happened? Because that's the proximity. I've always lived in a different town. I've worked my whole career, maybe somewhat close, but not in the town.
And that's not something I'd even started considering until I was in the throes of working for that ambulance company and starting to run on calls with my friends and with my friends' grandparents and parents where I was like,
Oh, okay, I just graduated with you and now you're trying to harm yourself and I'm taking you for a psych transport. It was hard. And then moving to Albuquerque when I finally did within that year definitely opened it up to not having to respond to those people that I knew anymore. So it made it a little bit easier.
So what was your next step then? You were a volunteer. Where did you find yourself in your first paid gig?
So that was for the ambulance company, working as an EMT basic doing 24, 48 hour shifts. And as a, you know,
a not very mature person being in a position of taking care of other people, it was really weird. Really, like not that I thought that at the time, but thinking about thinking back at it now is pretty interesting.
I just talked with the pre-hospitalist, Lindsay, and she said that she actually started volunteering while she was in high school at 16. And like that is such a young age and so debatable on whether or not that should be allowed, right?
Like, I feel like some of the things that we see now are so hard. And now you're throwing this child at 16 years of age into this kind of service and allowing them to see these dead bodies, these terrible situations, these terrible living situations that people are living in, that people are making their babies live in.
That's hard. That's a hard one.
It is. Yeah. They say, well, we don't stop maturing our brain till, is it 23 or something like that. So when you look at, you know, I mean, police usually a little bit older than us, but yeah, fire, EMS, and the military.
I mean, we're sending children out on ambulances, we're sending children to war. And then, you know, wondering why they struggle when they get back because their brain literally is still developing at that age.
Yes. And that there, and I was one of those people that made that their entire identity for the first couple of years. You know, I fit in with the fire department. I got along really well with those guys. I got in really well with the ambulance company that I was working for. And that was my identity for several years. And that ended up ultimately burning me out really bad.
So when you're going through this period at the moment, what were some of the career calls?
The very, I saw my very first cryke working for the ambulance service and my partner, criked this patient who had fallen about two stories because he was doing construction work and he didn't have a safety harness on. So he was working with his whole family and he fell face first into the cement.
Required a crike, still had pulses. So we transported him to the closest hospital because the closest trauma hospital was 45 minutes away. So we knew that we could get a bird out.
He ultimately ended up passing and it's morbidly funny, but his family, about four hours after they had called him in the ER room had stepped out and asked the facility to send him to El Paso because they wanted a second opinion. They didn't believe that he was dead.
Yeah, that was one of the first ones that I'd had, but we had had in that area. There's nothing for kids to do in Las Cruces. So a lot of them would just go out and drink and drive, you know, or a lot of them.
Like I think all of the high schools now have babysitting jobs within the high school because these kids who are in high school have to bring their kids because they don't have anybody to take care of them at home.
They're just getting pregnant all the time, but it was a lot of, it was a good mix of medical and trauma out there. It's a good mix of medical and trauma.
So you said burnout was that as an EMT or was that later in your career?
I think it was through patches, right? Especially if you're working with somebody that you don't want to work with or somebody that you're not getting along with and you don't get a shift change for a long time because that's just who you're with.
Especially when you're new into a company and you're getting stuck with the old guy that nobody wants to work with, but you have to put in your time.
You know, that was kind of burning me out a little bit, but definitely got as I got into my paramedic years and I realized, hey, I can make not great money, but I can make a decent amount of money doing overtime.
And I was picking up all the overtime that I could physically pick up. That was probably the big burnout.
Yeah. I mean, I talk about sleep deprivation a lot on this show because that's, you know, one of the elephants in the room. There's a herd of elephants in the room, you know, and that's the thing.
I was talking to somebody the other day, I'm forgetting who it was now, but their overtime was just insane. I think it was the private ambulance side and they were being forced for shift after shift after shift after shift.
And it's just so dangerous because I think they were paramedic too. And, you know, you've got these people that are just so exhausted and they're behind the wheel, they're driving code and performing crikes and needles, you know, I mean, all the things.
And it's just, it's insanity, absolutely insanity. And then we wonder why no one wants to be a paramedic anymore because we just literally burning our people out.
And I wasn't even forced. I wasn't forced to pick up the overtime. I just realized there was good money in picking up overtime. So I did.
Multiple years I got awards for transporting most patients, for integrating most patients, for starting the most IVs, you know, just because of the sheer amount of volume in calls that I was taking.
So you talked about, you know, what you observe as an EMT, now you're progressing as a paramedic. What were some of the career calls or memorable calls for that period?
I have a lot. I talk a lot about, you know, some of the more traumatic calls that we've ever seen. I talk a lot about the calls that have affected me personally. And that's been a big topic discussion.
But I think here in Albuquerque, you know, we get a lot of, a lot of drug overdoses and some of the funniest things that I've ever seen. And I don't know if you guys experienced this out. I'm assuming that you do, right? Because there's a lot of drug overdoses.
But with heroin going around, when we respond to somebody who's overdosed on heroin, you walk in and they're laying on the floor and they're completely drenched.
Like soaked from head to toe. And you're like, well, what happened here to the family, your friend, whoever's there. And they're like, well, we threw a bucket of water on them because that's what my friend told me to do.
So you're like, well, no, not somebody who's passed out. You probably shouldn't throw water on them. And then you give them Narcan and they wake up and they're like, why are my pants cold?
And they end up fishing out like a bag of peas or a bag of green chili, like frozen peas or frozen green chilies. I've seen those popsicles, the kids popsicles that people eat pulled out of people's pants. It's hilarious. I love those. They're so bad and so funny at the same time.
I remember literally testing for medic school through Anaheim through their program. And that was one of the scenarios that they'd give. You find a patient unconscious, pinpoint pupils, etc, etc, depressed respirations and ice under their armpits and in their groin.
And I guess that's what they were seeing a lot even back in the day. And I don't know if it worked in any way, shape or form, but that was the least at least people thought that was the antidote somewhat for a heroin overdose was shoving ice in special places.
I wonder, I haven't been in the field in like in the nine one one field in about seven years and I wonder if that's something that they're doing for fentanyl overdoses.
I don't know if they are because I mean it sounds like that stuff is just, you know, just killing people. I mean most of my career it was it was basically heroin and an opiates legal opiates was it was you know what I see a lot. So you know Narcan always worked.
But from what I'm hearing now there's there's cases where they go and you know they'll give three or four Narcans and still not kill it not getting them back and then you now you've got Trank as well which is a whole other you know scenario where firstly they stay unconscious because Narcan doesn't work.
And then secondly the wounds getting from Trank now is just it's like rotting these poor people from from the outside in which is just is heartbreaking.
Yeah it is heartbreaking. Is that something that you guys are seeing a lot out there.
I haven't been out there quote unquote now for five years. So the fentanyl the last place I worked at they they protected a local theme park so we didn't have as much of the you know the homelessness and addiction that I had in my entire career prior to that.
But I just had a photographer on and Philadelphia and New York and L.A. some of the places where especially around the homeless population that I mean they're literally she said like zombies you know these these Trank addicts because they're literally got all these rotting wounds you know they're obviously completely altered because of the chemical itself and it's just heartbreaking absolutely heartbreaking.
That is heartbreaking. Have you seen people skin popping or have you ever heard of skin popping.
I haven't actually.
So it's when they take whatever drug of choice that they have if they don't have any more veins they'll just start injecting it directly into the skin because they won't get as good of a high but there will still be a little bit of a high.
And I've seen people covered with these boils basically it leaves boils wherever they're injecting literally from ankle to neck like it is crazy and they have to go in like you know if they sober up or if this is something that's causing a continuous issue with infections and stuff and they have to have them removed.
We picked up a gentleman who again was covered from like feet to head who said that he was having some removed because he had sobered up and they at one point in time had to remove like 50 just from one of his butt cheeks.
Oh my God. That's probably a combination.
Yes.
Yes. So probably what we're seeing with the trunk wounds is skin popping but the compound itself now is rotting. I think Crocodilla was another one that was coming out. I think it was a Russia or somewhere.
But again these poor people were literally rotting while they were alive.
Yeah. Where you could see their bones like through the skin.
That was some crazy stuff. Crazy stuff.
What happened to the good old boy drugs you know cocaine.
Well this was so crazy as marijuana so stigmatized and you know you were comparing it to all this stuff. It's class one. Like come on. Seriously.
Really. Yeah. And now it's it's really good to see that it is there's a couple of police departments in the U.S. that have stopped testing for it.
Yeah. I mean obviously it's a common sense thing. You don't want to be altered while you're driving of course but if you used it to down regulate the night before.
And you have somewhat of a trace trace amount left and you know absolutely because I mean the number of people that are on prescribed you know antidepressants and pain pills that's all legal but they can't take CBD because it's got point four percent THC. It's absolute insanity.
It is insane. I agree. And I'm glad to see that it is becoming more of an open topic and more open conversation amongst first responders.
You know the barrier that we're having right now is getting it federally accepted.
Yeah. Hundred percent. Now when I think of Albuquerque I think of Nick McKinley who's been on the show a couple of times now he's the founder of deliver fund. So they are bringing basically tracking and education to first responders especially law enforcement on the human trafficking element.
And again educating a lot of us that you know human trafficking most of it is within our own borders and it's our own children being paid upon. Did you did that training or that kind of awareness come across you during your career.
It has it has in the flight job. That's something that we talk a lot about is children and adult trafficking as well. It's one of the modules that we have to go over every year.
Now what about the application. Have you actually found cases where that training has helped and you were able to to make a difference in a child's life.
I haven't personally. No. And it's unfortunate because here in New Mexico we just have huge cases of child abuse elder abuse just all over abuse in the whole state.
Now why do you think that is in your state specifically.
We're a very poor state. The community in general is just very poor. We don't have a lot of health intelligence here so we have a lot of poor health and then financially poor people.
When you go into the average house then what are what are some of the challenges if you compared it to let's say a more affluent area of America where there is good education there is good health care.
How would that contrast to what you're seeing where you work.
In my career I've walked into a lot of disturbing houses. You know you'll walk in and you'll see a 100 inches green TV on the wall with these really nice cars outside and you walk in and the house is crumbling.
There's holes everywhere there's dirt covering the floor there's bugs and there's kids and they're living in that like the everything is getting poured into these electronic devices and these things to make it look like the houses are really nice but you walk in and it's terrible.
It's really really sad and you know these are these are people that are on like food stamps you know so you walk into the kitchen of these diabetics and there's Cheetos and all kinds of soda cans and you know little Debbie cakes all over the counter because they're not trying to take care of themselves.
Yeah it's heartbreaking. I think that's a universal thing. I think most people listening can can see that. I mean I could from Anaheim from Hialeah from the Orlando area you know you get these homes and the parents have taken care of themselves but these poor kids are doomed.
You're like how is this kid going to grow up and have you know good self-esteem be driven to chase a career that's going to make a difference in the world when they're surrounded by this selflessness and they you know more often than not in an area with gangs and other negative role models.
Yeah I mean the gang culture here was so bad that there's an area of town that we have called the war zone and they a couple years ago actually went in and put
like barriers so that when you're driving up to an intersection you can't go through that intersection you have to either go or you can only go in one way you can only turn right.
So they were trying to mitigate the drive by shootings by putting up these barriers so that when people were shooting at somebody's house they couldn't just continue driving through these intersections they were being forced to either stop by the gates or to take really tight turns.
Crazy that does not sound like a proactive solution.
No no it doesn't no it doesn't unfortunately yeah the homelessness has gotten really bad here.
Now what about you said you're close to the border what's the impact of immigration as a whole and I'm an immigrant myself you know the again the highs and the lows that you're seeing standing in Albuquerque.
Well I haven't been again in the streets in a while so I haven't seen a lot of it but towards the end of my career in the 9-1-1 system you know we were seeing a lot of cultural diversity.
So we were you could definitely tell in certain parts of the town when you were responding there you knew that you were going to be responding to a different culture that you might not necessarily be educated on.
You know people who don't speak the same language or have the same cultural ideas that we have.
Growing up in Las Cruces you know I know a little bit of Spanish enough to get me by enough to get an ambulance call in but not enough and we do see a lot of Spanish speakers Hispanics.
In the culture here growing up because we are so close to the border we're seeing more and more towards you know going up into Colorado and Texas and Arizona.
But I'm seeing a lot more cultural diversity of different cultures coming up and through that through the border.
We say different cultures you talking about South American and Central American cultures or from somewhere.
No everywhere everywhere we're seeing cultures from everywhere.
Interesting.
Yeah it's really cool it's sad but it's cool.
Yeah I mean that's the thing that this country was built on immigration so you know this is what's so sad this is a very black and white conversation.
You know either let them all in or build a wall let none of them in you know in the middle.
Yes exactly.
There are some great great humans that would be an absolute asset to this country so you know how do we find that middle ground of letting people in.
Because I've you know I came from a affluent country so I had the money and I had the ability to get the sponsorship and took a long time and jump through probably way more hoops and a lot of people that you know find themselves here.
However I can't you know I understand that I didn't come from a war-torn country I didn't flee cartels so you know that middle ground again of continuing immigration but obviously stemming the flow and making sure that we don't let the bad people in is you know where the middle conversation needs to happen.
Right and you know I think it's funny that everybody I don't know how political you want to get it's not really political but a lot of people jumped on Trump for saying that he wanted to build a wall.
Having worked in the ambulance service where I worked.
20 years ago I we worked right next to the border they were already building a wall down there that was something that was in.
Process already and we actually transported a lot of those workers because they would get injured either driving to or from the work site.
And falling asleep so we had a lot of trauma going out of there.
So he stole that idea and he never was even honest about it.
Yeah I guess so.
Not not that surprised I guess.
But you see this is why I absolutely love these conversations because I get to speak to someone who is a paramedic right at the border or I've had you know people that were border patrol and these are the same with war you know the people that were overseas.
That fought for our country they talk about you know some of the atrocities they talk about the kindness and compassion they saw with the indigenous people or with their you know fellow soldiers.
And we don't hear any of that and like you said with the immigration thing we're going to build a wall but there's nuances even to that.
And you know the thing that I would love to see is the discussion of why are people fleeing that country and what are you know what role did America play in the devolution of Mexico and you look at drug prohibition for example I mean we have a big role so.
To just say you know you to to negatively impact a country I mean Colombia Mexico you know wherever it was and then just stick a wall up.
It's kind of like going to Afghanistan and then just fucking leaving in one day you know we got to look at our responsibility and how can we proactively impact the Mexico so that maybe some of these people don't want to leave anymore maybe you make that help them make that country better so a lot of them.
Are happy staying where they are because I'm you know an immigrant's life is not going to be a fun sort of fun choice I'm just going to upstakes and walk you know swim through the Rio Grande and hope I don't get caught and then go clean hotel rooms for the first three years of mine.
American experience you know no one's dreaming of that so what can we do to to affect the other side of the border as well.
Right I mean then we had we would have tons and tons of women that would who were pregnant just walking along the border.
While they were in labor because they knew that border patrol would be there to help them once they started like actively pushing this child out and then calling for us so that their children were born on this side of that wall you know on this side of the border and their kids were born in the US and they were born in the US.
Making them United States citizens.
Wow yeah see we need to hear we need to hear this stuff as you know as humans and like you said it really irks me when people like I don't want to get political I'm not saying you know I was irked at what you said but this is how we groomed oh I don't want to get political I don't want to talk about you know COVID or whatever no that's not politics that's humanity.
Yeah we don't want people to die and we're not diving into that too much the middle ground is is this helping our people or is this hurting our people that's not politics that's altruism.
Right I just didn't want to give too much credit to Trump.
Trust me I give almost none to him just simply because 340 million people and we're given these these shit bags every four years and I'm still waiting for a good leader to actually make it so it's not him specifically he just should never neither should Clinton neither should you know Biden none of these people that we've been forced upon have any business being in a role that leads this entire nation when there are so many great great men and women that are in this country.
And that could do an incredible job but won't get the opportunity because they're not millionaires and they have ethics.
Yeah I agree I don't know how you feel about this but with voting like do you know how much voting we saw when like American Idol and all of those others like pop culture TV shows would let you vote from the TV.
Insane amounts insane amounts so if we could figure out some way to let people vote through the TVs with like true identification however that would be possible the amount of voting that we could have would be immense.
Yeah I mean you look at the way that we do it now you know there's a we're still putting our trust in the fact that that little machine that we go and stick a piece of paper in is is doing the thing so I agree with you you know whatever other system and going back to COVID I mean we literally relied on a piece of paper with a nurse's signature to be our international passport that we had or hadn't been vaccinated.
You know so if we believe that that was a legitimate system then why can't we give like I agree 100% you know a verified bonafide online voting system where each vote counts as one and everyone gets to actually choose and then get rid of all the freaking lobbying and moneying and moneying and lobbying and money that is involved in politics and give them I think in the UK they get something I think it's literally like 50 or a thousand pounds it's like a million pounds.
Yeah I agree 100% that would be fantastic if we could limit the amount of money that you could get lobbying.
Yeah just tell us what you stand for. Tell us don't tell me about what the other person did I mean you know now everyone's all surprised that you know this this big reveal of Epstein's Island that all these politicians are there like you they're they're not good people a lot of them so you're surprised like you know it's like when you know when people are inside trading and all that stuff this is because you keep putting the same kind of person in that position I know lots of honest people that wouldn't go on Epstein's Island
wouldn't inside trade they'd just be too busy trying to help the country that's who we need to get back to.
I agree 100% we need more honest people.
Absolutely well let me get off my damn soapbox and back to the interview.
It's all good dude.
It's needed sometimes.
Absolutely it is 100% so you're on the ambulance walk me through the next role that you play as a medic.
So going from the EMT to a paramedic position was kind of a big deal.
When I moved up north because I like I said I had had my EMT basic license for almost three years and then I took my intermediate class before I moved up to Albuquerque.
When I moved up to Albuquerque I got into a small private ambulance company.
Who when you asked them you know if they had any protocols or guidelines or anything they all just kind of laughed at you like that kind of a service you know.
And then as an intermediate I was running my own calls I was expected to be making the clinical decisions for my ambulance because it was me and an EMT basic and that was a huge.
Well A it should have been kind of a big red flag right because here's an intermediate who has no experience as an intermediate only three years as a basic and now you're throwing me on my own truck that's kind of scary.
But it was a big boost I think in my confidence and my skill in medicine.
And I think that that those three years spent as an intermediate really pushed me to feel comfortable and be confident as a paramedic.
So then you become a paramedic but you end up getting off the ambulance.
What was the next role that you had when you left the ambulance side?
I was a paramedic on an ambulance for seven years.
I left the ambulance and I went into an ER setting and I went into an ER that allowed paramedics to actually work at a pretty decent scope.
I was able to take patients and I could see between four and six patients for a night like in a time in my room area or you would be utilized as a tech on the floor.
You would be utilized as the bed medic.
So you're the one who's kind of shifting everybody and telling everybody where they're going to be going.
You're triaging and trying to get patients up stairs or you would be in.
We had such a huge dynamic role.
You could be a trauma medic so you'd be a tech in the trauma room all night or you'd be watching all of the cardiac monitors.
So I did that for three years.
I would say that significantly increased my knowledge in pathophys.
So many cool things I got to do because we have a lot of the baby doctors in the ER.
And then you had a lot of teaching doctors. So if it was just you and a teaching doctor and they were getting to do something cool a lot of time they would let you do that.
So I got to do a lot of cool hands on things and promoted into a flight position where I've been flying for the last five years.
When you say baby doctors, are you talking about real babies that became doctors really early like Doogie Howser?
Yes.
No, we took a lot of the student doctors because it was a teaching hospital.
So talk to me about what you got to do there because when I went to medic school we had two hospitals in Ocala.
One at the time was the shiny hospital, the big nice hospital everyone went to.
And then the other one was the Wild West that actually now is a level one trauma center as well.
So most of my medic school friends went to the shiny one because it was nicer.
But I don't even know how I got to the other one, but I'd heard that that's where you really get to get your hands dirty.
And I was de-braiding burn patients. I was intubating. I was doing all kinds of stuff.
And then I went to the other one just a couple of times for whatever specialty rotation.
And I was processing bloods and they're like, where the hell did you get to do all this?
I'm like, well, this is what we do in the other hospital. Oh, we don't do that.
So again, no two ERs are the same.
So you come off the ambulance, talk to me about some, again, I guess, career calls that you had now in this new role within the ER.
Oh, yeah. We got to do, I mean, getting to watch them crack somebody's chest open to perform a cardiac massage, a gun to do cardiac massage.
We've done a lot of wound de-breedment.
I think one of the coolest things I got to see was we had a guy who fell off his bike into a large cactus.
And so he had the needles everywhere, like covered everywhere. And do you know what they use to get those out?
No.
They use Elmer's glue. So they take on Elmer's glue and then they peel it off and it takes the cactus spikes with it.
So that was a lot of fun getting to do that.
We got to use, man, we helped cast so many broken bones.
I've gotten to bloodlet people where you literally have an 18 gauge or a 16 gauge connected to a blood bag if they're hematocrites too high.
So you just drain blood off of them for a little bit. We've gotten to, let's see, done a lot of crazy things.
We had a patient that came in, I think, because he was coming in from the prison system and I think he just wanted to get out of the prison for a couple of days.
And he did self-cathying.
Well, instead of putting the tubes up to relieve the bladder and then pull him out, he was just shoving him up as far as he could, up his urethra.
So when he came in, he was complaining of UTI symptoms and the urodoc came down and he brought this like really cool.
It was like a screen attached to a little cart and he had this like little roto-router looking thing.
So you put the roto-router in and it's got a little camera, but on the end it deploys a little like claw.
So you can pull the tubes and pull them out of the urethra.
So I was getting to control the little claw like a claw game, the claw machine game.
I had a lot of fun doing that.
There's just so many things. Do you see? Literally the craziest things in the ER.
We had a, we have a state fair. I don't know if you guys have that up here, but so in Albuquerque, we have the biggest state fair here.
And we had, they decided to do a competition, like a ghost pepper competition where if you ate these ghost peppers and you kept them down for five minutes, you got like 50 or a hundred bucks.
Like something totally not worth it.
We had so many people come in crying about their stomachs hurting from eating these ghost peppers.
And you're like, there's nothing I can do for you.
I can give you a little bit of pepsi, maybe help coat the lining of the stomach, but there's really not.
You just got to get it out and guess it's, it's going to hurt coming out too.
You can put the claw up there and go get the pepper and bring it out again.
No, not at that point. Now when it's already like digested.
Yeah. I'm an absolute puss when it comes to spicy food too. So that's why I would never even do, do one of those like, Oh, you want to do a challenge? Like I do the mild chicken coma challenge. That's about the most I can handle.
Oh, that makes me sad. You've never tried green chili before.
Oh, if it's spicy, then no. Like I, there's a certain point, my threshold is low where it ceases to be tasty. And by that point, it's just like you're on Joe Rogan's show, whatever it was called at the time.
Fear factor. You've transitioned into fear factor. And I just like to stay in that. I'm going to enjoy my food realm.
Well, if you ever come out here, mild green chili is great. The flavor is great. The consistency is great. It's good. Okay. But it's mild.
They do have mild. You have to ask if it's mild first. Okay. I will take that into account.
All right. You mentioned about getting into the flight medicine side. So talk to me about that transition.
A huge, huge transition. I initially got in mostly just to see if I could challenge myself. You know, flying has been something that's always scared me.
And I knew that the critical care medicine was where I wanted to be and what I wanted to perform. So when I got in, I got in to a small company.
That had been around just a couple of years, but it was starting to really grow. And yeah, I went on my first couple of flights and had a really good time.
And I actually yesterday I just passed my 1000th mission for the company. Congratulations. Yes. Thank you. It's been it's a little scary.
The level of medicine that we can do to treat these people is actually really amazing. Like it's been a really cool thing to see and kind of transition into this critical care role.
So I took, you know, in the first couple of years, you're just kind of learning what a critical care provider does. And then I was able to take and pass my flight paramedic critical care certification, which was really cool.
And I'm still learning. Like this is a job that you can't just sit and hang out and be idle on. You have to be learning constantly. And I love that about this job.
Now I want to get into some career calls in that role. But before we do, you've got ER where we, the paramedics of the world are preparing the patient for, you know, coming through the ER doors.
But you've also got the same kind of preparation role when it comes to the flight crew as well passing off the patient there.
So having worn the EMT and the paramedic uniform yourself, what would you tell the first responders or the EMS personnel of the world as far as some takeaways that set you guys up for success, whether it's the ER or on the flight side?
My biggest thing is, and I think you've harped this quite a lot, is take care of yourself.
That is one of the most important things you can do. And I think a lot of us take, take for advantage, you know, because you get stuck in that loop where you don't pack your food.
You don't have anything with you. So you're just grabbing what you can grab at the gas station or whatever.
And you end up weighing a lot more than you should. And it's really hard to take it off once you got it on there.
So I tell, I do try to tell people, you know, take care of yourself physically and take care of yourself mentally, because if you are not mentally fit, you're probably not fit to be taken care of other people.
Absolutely. Now, what about operationally?
You know, for example, you know, if I know from back in the day, if I were going to take someone for a CT scan for a stroke, for example, that ideally they wanted, you know, bilateral large bore IVs, you know, obviously trauma, you got burns.
So are there any kind of reoccurring, I wouldn't say mistakes, but areas where there's a lack of knowledge from us, setting you guys up for success?
I mean, there any, any things that have happened more than once that maybe we can learn from to set you guys up to continue care more efficiently?
Definitely. You know, my biggest thing is going to be trust your gut. If you think something's wrong, treat it like something's wrong.
You know, if you think that that patient needs a different facility than the facility that you're taking, like if they need neuro, if they need cardiac, you know, know your locations, know where you can transport to, know what's available to you in your location.
And if you can't facilitate that, then get somebody who can, such as calling in a flight service or whoever else you need to get in contact with.
You know, bilateral 18 gauges is a big one for CT scans. Pregnant females are also going to need usually bilateral 18 gauges if they're going into labor.
And that's just in case something goes wrong.
That's a really good question. Don't be afraid to treat with fentanyl.
There is a huge stigma on it. I can't tell you how many patients I've had tell me like, don't give me that fentanyl drug. I don't want to get addicted.
Make sure you have a good knowledge base of the medications that you're giving and don't be afraid to treat that pain.
Yeah. I know with fentanyl, this is before the big crisis. I think we could only give a hundred of those medics in my last place. So it was a pretty conservative dose anyway. And this is the thing. Fentanyl is a beautiful drug when used properly. But this is, you know, that doesn't mean that you got it from the dark web from China. That's a different kind of fentanyl.
Yes. Yeah. Now it's a huge, huge stigma on fentanyl right now and a huge stigma on ketamine too. And ketamine is an amazing medication.
Yeah. Well, even for the psychological side, there we go. It's like here in Florida, where a lot of people are having a lot of success with ketamine led counseling, led therapy. So they will have an infusion and not be left alone.
Those are the bad ketamine places, but with someone there leading you through as you start kind of the walls start coming down, you do talk therapy and I've heard amazing things.
But sadly, I forget who it was now, but someone who's high profile, they revealed that their death was ketamine. And I'm like, hmm, there's probably a lot more to it than just ketamine.
That was the guy from Friends. Yeah.
Oh, that's right. Yeah. Who had battled addiction and all kinds of things. So I don't think it was, it's like saying someone died of COVID, you know, someone who had, you know, COPD and smoke for 40 years. Oh, COVID killed them. There's more to that story. Let's talk about it.
Yeah. Yeah, that they won't. They won't, unfortunately.
Yeah. Well, speaking of critical care. So now you're in the flight medic role again. What are some of the career calls in those thousand runs that you've had?
I will tell you that a large portion of the flights that we do here in the state of New Mexico. And I think this really is unique to our location is we do a lot of psych transports.
We just don't have the services available to ground transport these patients.
And I know for a little while they weren't using rotor to transport the psych patients, but they have just recently started using or facilitating that those rotors are transporting psych patients.
But, you know, we do a lot of medical and a lot of trauma out of the smaller communities and we have a lot of native populations out here. So we respond a lot to the reservations and we transport a lot of people from the reservations.
Now I've had people with varying perspectives on that element of the indigenous people of the US.
And it seems that, you know, you've got one group saying, oh, they're so lucky. They get all this money. They've got casinos.
But then a lot of the first responders have come on that happened to have worked in reservations, see a lot of desperation, addiction, domestic violence, et cetera.
Now that can also end up becoming all that people think about. And obviously there's a lot of very healthy, thriving areas and all over the US.
However, if we are failing those populations, that needs to be discussed as well.
So talk to me about looking at that specific group of men, women and children through your eyes.
I will say that COVID was a big hit to our reservations because a lot of that community and that culture, they all live together as families.
So they have large families that are living together in small areas or in small buildings even together.
So COVID took out huge numbers of our reservation populations.
It really is sad to go out there and see. And it's not all of them. Like you were saying, you know, there's it's not like an honestly it's not anything like we're not seeing here.
Here we just have nicer cars, nicer things. We have access to other things out on the reservations. We're not seeing as much access to that.
It's there's a lot of, again, you know, poor health intelligence.
So you're seeing people with diabetes who are missing both of their legs and some of their fingers and don't have any eyesight and are, you know, deaf.
They can't do anything because of the progression of the diabetes or they're all on not all of them,
but there's a lot of them that are on dialysis, you know, because their kidneys aren't functioning anymore.
And there's only a very small amount of dialysis clinics located on the reservation.
So, for example, we had to transport a grandpa the other day who needed dialysis.
But the staff couldn't even tell us, like, why he needed to go to a different hospital when his labs were abnormal.
And when you are on consistent dialysis, when you're a chronic renal failure patient, your labs are going to be all over the place anyways.
The facility couldn't contact the family. So they were like, well, we have a doctor here and we have a nurse here.
Sign off, get that patient sent out, you know, six hours from where you're at right now.
Just take him. Well, he might have history of dementia, but he's telling me he doesn't want to go.
You don't have dialysis at your facility. You're wanting to admit him. He doesn't want to go.
What do we do from here? You know, and ultimately we were able to facilitate getting ahold of the family who agreed that he should be transported.
And we did ultimately end up transporting him. But it's just that the.
There's such a huge issue between the staff and the community they're serving.
And a lot of the time, the staff at the facilities and at the communities are part of the community.
You know, so it's sad to see that level of, well, just take them, you know, just get them out of here.
And again, I think most people listening, we all know that, especially your con homes and some of the urgent care clinics.
I mean, I've been I mean, people that you said about in a high hematocrit, there was a gentleman and he had it.
Correct me. It's been a while. Is it poly or semya when you have too many blood red blood cells?
So he had that and he just he just went in to get some some blood drawn.
He was told to just get basically pseudo give blood every so often. And they called God.
It was like a stroke or something. And the guy's like, I'm absolutely fine.
You know, and I forget why they thought.
And, you know, we ended up arguing with this doctor in this the central care, I think it was.
Well, no, it was a facility on on the theme park property.
It was their facility and we had problems with them all the time.
And what it was, is they just, you know, see why a check the box, get them out of here, like you said.
And a lot of people, not a lot. Let me correct myself.
There are people in quote unquote health care facilities that do not put the patient's well-being first.
And, you know, like you said, ultimately, that gentleman needed to be six hours away.
But if there was an alternative, you got to think, well, is this person able to get back from six hours away?
You know, what are we talking about as far as the well-being of the whole family unit and the individual?
And I think sometimes it becomes so much about, you know, dollars and cents that they literally get disconnected from the human beings that they're supposed to be taken care of.
Well, and we see it. We see it everywhere, too.
But we see it out there a lot because they're so limited on how many people they can admit right into their facility.
So once they're full, they just have to start shipping these people out.
And we see a lot of dumping where people can't take care of their elderly parents or their elderly siblings or their elderly, whoever grandparents.
So they'll just go and drop them off at the ER and then they disappear for three, four or five days.
And the facilities don't know what to do.
So they come up with a diagnosis and they send them, you know, four or five, six, seven hours away into somewhere else where maybe they'll get better treatment
or maybe they won't.
Well, it's so sad as well when you look at, you know, indigenous tribes that were thriving prior to, you know, a lot of our ancestors coming here and from all different parts of the country, of the world and, you know, getting it to where we are now.
But someone recently made a really good point.
You know, we talk about identity, you know, within the fire service, you know, we transition out and a lot of us struggle because I'm a firefighter.
That's who I am.
But imagine your entire identity.
You know, you were this tribe, this Native American, you know, whatever it was.
And now your entire world is being disassembled.
You know, the schools in Canada and those things, the impact on the mental health a few generations ago of those men and women and how that's now devolved some of their communities to where we are now with ill health and addiction.
Because, you know, imagine you were told that your identity wasn't allowed to exist anymore.
We're going to snuff out your identity.
I mean, it's horrendous.
And change your name because it doesn't fit and, you know, change it.
Yeah, it is horrendous.
Absolutely.
What can we do?
Yeah, we can find real leaders that will actually start proactively fixing things in our country.
That's what we can do.
Yeah.
And be part of the change yourself.
And all of us, you know, figure out exactly if we're in even a reservation, can we be the voice of change and start pushing it back the way it's supposed to be?
Right.
I agree.
100%.
As we mentioned at the beginning of the show, you know, I was introduced to you through, yeah, to you through DD Finder being a guest on your podcast.
So what made you start a podcast and then kind of walk me through some of the interesting guests that you've had on yours?
So it had been an idea for a while.
My wife kind of pushed me into doing it because I really, you know, leaving the 911 system, I really miss hanging out and chatting with a lot of the coworkers that I had.
And not even just the coworkers, but a lot of the community, right?
So when we respond out, depending on what you're responding to, you can have the ambulance, the police cars, the fire engine, the fire rescue.
So you can have like up to 10 people hanging out on a scene trying to get something figured out, you know, and then if you end up getting canceled, now you're all just standing around bullshitting.
And I miss that camaraderie. I miss that that kind of hanging out.
So that's kind of what started the idea, just story sharing basically.
And then it turned into, you know, I'm sure you have it all the time.
What's the worst call you've ever seen?
You know, and then people ask you that and you're like, why do I want to relive this trauma with you?
Why do you think that you're special enough for me to share that trauma with you?
I don't even think you could handle the amount of trauma that I've seen, you know?
So that turned into a, well, what if I could get other health care providers to share their trauma with other health care providers and even the rest of the world if people are willing to listen?
That's what really prompted it. I talked to a buddy who has another podcast, The Art of Emergency Nursing, and he was like, just start it.
He was like, who cares what you have? Just start it. You'll love it. You'll absolutely love it.
So I started it and I do absolutely love it. It's a lot of work, but it is so much fun.
And when I first started, it was really funny because it was hard to get people on the show. I had asked several people, several people, and they were like, yeah, yeah, let's do it.
Let's do it. And last minute everybody was canceling. And I was like, I just need to get somebody first episode. Let's get this going.
And finally got on one of my good buddies, John. He was my first episode and we just had an absolute blast and it just progressed from there.
It's me and my brother-in-law who has no EMS history at all.
He's enjoying listening to all the stories. He edits all the episodes. He loves it.
And it became a challenge then to not get like the same people from the same company on the show all the time.
So then I started looking into the fire department and asking some of the fire guys that I knew.
And now that I had an episode, I could be like, hey, look, it's really easy, really chill.
Listen to this episode and then tell me what you think. And if you want to come on, come and interview.
And then it got to a point where it was like, okay, now people are reaching out to me because they want to be interviewed.
This is really cool. And I'm trying to make it so that I'm not having the same type of profession.
So I want to keep it to a health care profession, but I'm willing to accept anybody from any position at this point.
So it's been a lot of fun.
Have you found it cathartic? Because I've done almost 900 episodes now and I kind of had a realization a while ago.
I'm talking about mental health, but I personally don't go to counseling.
But I honestly feel like these conversations three times a week, it is my counseling.
And a lot of times I'm listening more than talking. But even so, I'm able to kind of story share, you know,
as people start talking and they have something pertinent, like, oh, you know, like, for example, the CPR on the plane.
I've told that story or kind of discussed it with probably three or four guests.
Well, there we go. There's there's some some some offloading right there, some sharing.
So what about from that element?
Oh, it's definitely been cathartic. I don't personally get any type of treatment either.
I do have ADHD. I probably should get on for that.
But as far as my other mental health, no, I feel like this is a huge, huge cathartic part of my week,
getting to chat with people and share those stories. And I've had I don't know if you've had this problem,
but I've had kind of a little bit of a hard problem.
And you could probably tell in the beginning when you were asking me questions about my family, but exposing myself.
So it's kind of funny that I ask people to come on to my show and expose themselves.
And I still kind of hold back a little bit because I I'm afraid or it's scary to let myself go for the world.
Yeah. Yeah. Well, it is something that takes time to kind of ease into as well, especially.
And there's people that be on the show that do it so well.
But being honest about your upbringing whilst not sounding like you were just talking shit about your parents,
you know, before your family or whoever, your step parents, whatever was involved in your family dynamic.
Because, you know, as a lot of people say, they did the best with what they had.
And, you know, and it's true, you know, we're talking about people that were growing up, you know, in my case,
they were growing up 80 years ago, 80, 70 years ago was their childhood, you know, so very, very different time.
So I think that's the thing is finding that middle line and going, OK, here's here's what happened.
It actually happened. But, you know, either, you know, there's some people with horrible parents and they do blame them, rightly so.
But most people are like, you know, but they didn't know that was the situation.
They were working all hours, got sent, you know, they were constantly on shift because, again, you know,
whether it's infidelity, for example, that isn't solely because of the police back then.
But if you have no ability to actually say how you feel and you're constantly working night shifts.
And now, you know, in in twenty twenty three, we go, oh, OK, there was a void and it needed to be filled with something.
And that was your particular avenue. You know, but so, yeah, I think it's the whole, quote unquote, safe space now where it's OK to look back and go,
not everything was perfect. And here's some things that I struggle with.
And I think if you can counter that with. But, you know, my parents did what they could at the time.
That then allows you to open up a little bit more and not feel like you just being catty.
That's true. And that is something I've come into realization, I think, in the last probably a couple of years, because I harbored a lot of a lot of hate and a lot of anger towards both of my parents.
Ultimately, what what happened was I was a senior in high school and my mom took off because my dad was cheating.
And then my dad took off to go off with his little lady.
And I was forced to take care of my two younger siblings who were also in high school.
So they weren't super young, but also at an age where they understood and could be angry about it, too.
So I had to force myself to get up every morning to go to school, to take my siblings to school.
And then got into the fire academy my senior year.
So I was going to the academy on the weekends and going kind of going to school throughout the rest of the year, my senior year.
And. Yeah, it's hard to say whether I have forgiven my parents or not at this point.
And I haven't spoken to my dad in like 20 years.
He was like I was daddy's little girl.
You know, that was a big, big part of my journey growing up.
So that's really hard. Absolutely.
When you hear about those kind of family dynamics, there's also a sense of when children are supposed to still be children, they're forced to be adults for a young.
Was that an element for you and your siblings?
Yeah, I think I've always been mature, even at a very young age.
I was more mature probably than I should have been.
But I would say that that definitely made all three of us grow up a lot faster than we needed to.
Yeah. Well, the other thing when it comes to understanding and forgiveness, especially two things.
Firstly, I love the phrase instead of saying what's wrong with you, saying what happened to you.
And the reason why I love that so much is if you reverse engineer to when your parents were two, all they probably cared about was chasing bubbles and playing with whatever toys they had at the time.
You know what I mean? We're all a blank canvas.
And then life happens to us. And even within the first responder profession, you have that salty guy or the person who's always in a shitty mood or whatever it is.
If they were like that day one, then that's just a terrible recruiting choice.
But more often than not, 95% of those people you ask, what were they like in the academy? Oh, they were fucking awesome.
So then it's like, well, what did the job do to them?
Because if you were great the first year, two years, three years, clearly that's the other factor.
That's what's really changed people.
So you also then kind of are able to be a little bit more forgiving. So like, okay, you had no intention of being unfaithful, of gambling away your family's money, of becoming an addict, whatever it was.
You went into this profession with all the best intentions and probably some trauma that you had when you were young.
And then fast forward 10, 20 years, now you're upping and leaving your children to go be with a woman.
It makes no sense. But is that a devolution for what was initially an altruistic thing, which was I'm going to go put a uniform on and serve my community?
Yeah, no, definitely. That is a great way of asking that question and probably something I will use moving forward.
Yeah, absolutely. I mean, this is a thing. I think all of us, we're constantly going to have this mental health journey.
And I think that that forgiveness is something that comes with age and wisdom. And once we've done our self work, then we're able to kind of look at it with a slightly more compassionate lens.
But I mean, it's easier said than done. I have an ex-wife, so I can test that.
Yeah. So I talked with a young lady named Gabby, and she was a couple of episodes ago, but she is trying to specialize in.
She called it ACEs, and I'm trying to remember what it stands for.
Acute childhood, no, adverse childhood experience.
Adverse childhood, yes.
Scale.
Wow. Talk about a great conversation. Holy smokes. And the fact that those experiences can have physical changes on you in your adult life.
Like that is pretty insane to think about.
And most of us in uniform have that. I just literally had a conversation a couple of hours ago with the firefighter.
And he did a thing called Save a Warrior, and I had the founder of that on the show. And Jake was making the comparison that the average ACEs score of a prisoner, six, and the average ACEs score of a first responder or soldier or member of the military is six.
And it was such an interesting perspective because I mean, I see it now. I mean, I've had so many conversations with so many people, and it's rare when someone had an awesome childhood.
And it's not like anyone's complaining. It's just that these are factors that will impact you in a certain way.
But if you think about the poorer neighborhoods especially, and we were just talking about this, how often have you heard, I either had to go to the military, join a gang, or I'd be dead.
And so you think about uniform and prison that we all come from. So a lot of us come from that same group where we could have hit a fork and gone either way.
So no wonder a lot of us in uniform that were fortunate enough to make the right decision still have that same kind of backstory that a lot of people that made the wrong decision.
Yeah, no, and it could have, in my circumstance, it could have gone one way or the other, right? If I had gotten into a bad group of people, you know, that last year of high school or even the year after high school, my life could have definitely gone down a different route.
Absolutely. Well, I want to throw some closing questions at you before I let you go. That's okay.
Yeah.
First one I love to ask, is there a book or are there books that you love to recommend? It can be related to our discussion today or completely unrelated.
I'm a loser and I like to read Harry Potter often, but I always suggest Harry Potter.
That does not make you a loser. He is an amazing magician.
He is, I agree.
You know, being inclusive, I think magician would be the correct.
Exactly. I don't want to assume his with the gender.
Exactly.
I actually just so
Dede Finders, Ready Left, Ready Right was a great book. And I don't know if you've had the chance to read it or not.
But it's engaging, especially if you don't work in the rotor position. I really liked that one.
I also just finished Kevin Hazard's American Sirens.
And that talks a lot about the history of EMS. And it was really good, actually. Surprising. It was really good.
So Dede's book, amazing. I read American Sirens as well. Kevin came on the show and I'm actually now setting up, getting the actual original men from Freedom House to come on the show together.
So I'm hoping that will happen in the next few weeks. But I posted about that.
That is so cool.
There was something online and I forget, you know, but it was someone who basically told that story, put it together, a little Instagram video.
And I had all these like, you know, trolls going, that never happened.
And it was like, yeah, it did. I don't know if you're offended because it wasn't a blue eyed white guy that started the paramedic program.
But I hate to tell you, the origin story here in the US precedes LA, Miami, the ones that we know of.
And it's such an incredible story. And it's a sad story because once it did take off, they were kind of disassembled then too.
So I can't wait to hear it from the real men that were involved.
Yeah, that's exciting. So one of the guys, and I can't remember his last name.
He said it at the end of the book. One of the guys had actually come to the University of New Mexico to help with the EMS Academy here.
So I started doing a little bit of digging. And don't get me wrong, because I didn't go super deep into it, but I did do a little bit of digging.
And I wasn't even able to find his name in the EMS Academy's history, which was interesting to me.
So that'll be a really good topic, I think, for you and a really good conversation between the guys.
That'll be really neat. I'm looking forward to that. Me too. Me too.
I'll have Kevin Hazard on the 26th. Oh, excellent. That'll be a great conversation too.
Is there anything that you wish that you would have asked him or talked a little bit more about that I should bring up?
Not, I mean, as you can tell, my conversations are long. The one earlier was almost three hours, two and a half hours.
So it kind of varies on the tempo of the conversation. But I think ours was quite long.
So I don't, I think really, you know, what I wanted to do was talk to the real man.
So obviously that's kind of part two. But I mean, there's so much because he was at Columbine as well, if my memory serves me right, early in his career too.
Really? Yeah. So he's just double check, make sure I'm not getting too guest confused.
But I'm almost certain Kevin was at Columbine, if not maybe one of the other shootings.
But I think it was early, early, early, early in his career.
But yeah, but I mean, I'm sure there's so much to talk about.
Obviously the book was a part of the conversation, but his own career is pretty awesome.
And even now, you know, like, you know, whatever he's doing next, because I forget, I forget at the top of his next book, but I think he's writing another one at the moment.
So, so yeah, you'll have a great chat with him. Awesome. Yeah, I just started his other one.
The, not, A Thousand Naked Strangers. Yes. Yeah, that was a great book.
Yeah, I just started it. So we'll see how it goes.
All right. Well, the same kind of question. What about movies and or documentaries that you love?
Oh, I'm a huge true crime documentary junkie. I love watching that stuff.
I couldn't give you any name in particular because I've watched so many of them, but I really, really just love true crime documentaries.
What about cats? It's got a funny title. Did you watch?
Don't, yeah, don't fuck with cats. That was it. That was insane. Absolutely. That was insane.
That guy is nuts. We're actually watching the documentary now about the, the little girl that was adopted from Ukraine.
Oh, that she's discovered she was actually like 20 something.
That's what they said. Yeah. So if you haven't watched that one yet, oh my God, it is nuts.
It is. I feel so bad for her. Natalia Grace. Yeah.
The disturbing case of Natalia Grace, I was the that's the one we're watching right now.
OK, you want to be careful because there's there's so many amazing documentaries out there now,
but there's some absolutely shit ones too. And I made the mistake of watching a couple and I'm getting good now.
Like in the first 10 minutes, I'm like, right, just stop now, James. It's gonna it's not gonna get any better.
I forget one of the ones I saw, but it was fucking terrible.
I did go like it. I did go is one of the ones we typically don't watch because the quality of them is really bad.
Yeah. But then you have to be careful too, right? Because we had and I can't remember the name of this one,
but it was about the guy that was wrongfully imprisoned for raping that lady.
And it was a Netflix documentary. So he actually got out of prison and then was out for just a couple of months and is now back in prison.
They're saying for killing another lady. Oh, God, really?
Is that ringing a bell for you? Kind of. So they made they made another documentary showing the behind the scenes on how like.
He may not have raped that lady and they made it seem like the police and everybody involved were like.
Like making it a conspiracy to say that he murdered the other lady.
So the second documentary shows all of the evidence they didn't show in the Netflix series that could have very definitely proven him as guilty.
So are you talking about the one where the lady was found dead in the scrapyard? Yes.
Yeah, I did watch that. I forget. I forget his name now. Yeah. Yeah.
So I was actually talking with I think it was Justin Brooks, who is a lawyer who specializes in wrongful convictions.
And I actually asked him about that. Was it Stephen? Someone was the dude.
Yes, Stephen Avery. That was it. Yeah. And he said he definitely thinks that it was his nephew that's in prison as well. He's like, I'm sure his nephew is innocent.
But he didn't say Stephen was. So maybe it's a gray area there. Yes. Yeah, I agree. Man, that one was good. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
Another one I watched. I can't remember what they called the actual documentary, but I had Greg Kelly on.
He was the high school football player in what state was it? Texas, I think.
And he was wrongfully accused of basically touching children.
So what happened? His family were sick. So his parents moved to be closer to a medical facility.
His mom was sick. So he ended up being offered a room in one of his friend's house and his teammates house.
And they had a daycare in the house. And there was an house was called his outcry was the name of the documentary.
And this kid named Greg. Oh, Greg, touch me. So the worst, I mean, just an absolute disaster when it came to the legal system from the police to everything else.
And Greg was in prison for a while. And you imagine being a sex offender in a prison wrongfully convicted.
And then this incredible lawyer stepped in, took his case and then broke it down and was able to prove.
And I didn't even interview the other kid. It was the other kid whose house it was. He was the one that was abusing the kids.
In the meantime, while Craig was serving time, this kid ended up raping a woman, too.
So these wrongful convictions, I mean, that I just put a post up today about that of a guy who after 25 years was proven innocent.
Twenty five years in prison. But, you know, it's so important that we, you know, as a as a country and certainly in the legal profession and law enforcement, do everything we can to make sure this doesn't happen.
Because how many people died in prison? How many people was shanked because they were wrongfully accused of whatever it is. So very important stories.
Yeah, yeah, that's nuts. And I was I have a friend. He's actually third writing with us right now for our company. And he used to be a corrections officer.
And he was saying that people that are in for rape, you know, and child molestation or we always we always think that they get what they deserve in prison, you know, but you never really know.
And he was like, oh, no, they absolutely do. They get the shit beat out of them.
So could you imagine being falsely charged and then getting the shit beat out of you just because you're there?
Yeah. Or if you're innocent, because I know this happens, Greg, I forget how he phrased it, but he did what he had to do whilst in prison.
So you're trying to defend yourself whilst not accumulating charges that will keep you in prison.
I mean, talk about, you know, a fine line like making sure that whenever you're fighting off people, that you do it in a way where no one sees. That's I just can't even imagine. What a nightmare.
No, no, yeah, that's got to be terrible. There's a guy and I don't know.
So we had a paramedic here a couple of years ago that he got fired from the local company for they were responding code three to a call and he was a chest pain.
And they pulled over because he wanted to smoke a cigarette. So he subsequently got fired for that.
Well, he was also in a bike gang. Okay. This is a paramedic that I worked with. He was in a biking and were using meth.
He randomly one day was driving like really early in the morning.
I don't remember if he was going to work or what. I think he was going to work.
But he said the car next to him was he could hear the guy telling him, I'm going to go to your house and I'm going to rape your girlfriend.
And I'm going to kill your girlfriend. Like he's driving on a freeway at sixty five seventy miles per hour and he's swearing he can hear this guy talk to him.
He forced this guy off the side of the road and shot him in the head and then took off.
Yeah. So they ended up finding him. Right. Or he went in and he confessed to it.
So now he's in prison and I think I'm going to try and get him on the show.
I think it's like large process, but I'm kind of I don't want to like.
I don't want to offend the family by having him on a show, but he was a paramedic. He was an EMT for several years.
He was a paramedic for several years and I kind of want to ask him like, do you feel like.
Basically, like what you said, what happened to you? You know, and I want to do that tastefully.
I don't want to do it without. Offending people. Have you ever interviewed anybody like that?
No, but I have to say there's a few people that are incarcerated that, you know, I would love to one day for different reasons, different people.
Even actually, we had a school shooting here in Ocala.
But unlike the horrendous ones that we see on our TVs all the time, I think this was a cry for help.
The kid went in there, I think he just had I think it was just a shotgun.
He shot down into a classroom door once and then immediately gave up.
And I mean, to say immediately, there was an incredibly courageous teacher that talked him down.
I think he'd already put the weapon down, but she then talked him down and an excellent SRO that ran towards the gunfire and ended up taking him in custody.
But I really feel like that was, you know, a true cry for help.
And he's obviously going to be in prison for a long time for what he did.
But, you know, that would be I'd be interested to see what was different about that versus others.
But, yeah, I mean, I think the more we can humanize people and then, like you said, at that point, your medic partner was a cold, calculated killer.
You know, but obviously there's an element of psychosis in that, too. So, you know, what can we learn?
That person's in prison, that poor man is dead. There's nothing we can do to make that situation better.
But can we learn from it or do we just shove it under the rug, you know, and just call them another statistic?
So, yeah, I think, you know, that that sounds like a very powerful episode.
And I had a paramedic on the show, Bonnie, Bonnie DeVara, and her EMT partner beat her and I think she I think he stabbed her as well, but he beat her to almost to death.
I mean, she's still to this day got huge deficits from from the attack. And I think I think he ended up taking his own life.
I really can't remember. It's a long time ago now.
But, you know, again, someone who was in our uniform that literally tried to kill their partner.
So, you know, it's not just, oh, they must have been born a psychopath. No, they were a little baby.
So what happened to you? How did you get to that point that the person that you work with every day became a target?
And it was it was I think it was off shift. So it was a calculated murder.
It wasn't even like, you know, just lost his shit and then a love a call.
Yeah. I mean, if we don't unpack some of these, how do we ever learn?
How do we ever figure out all this common denominator here? Maybe we should stop doing this thing.
Right. Yeah. If we don't expose this, how do we make it better?
100 percent. All right.
Do you use any like do you read any mental health books to work maybe more on your communication skills or
like, I don't know, like basically stress management for people when you're talking to them?
Is there any any resources that you would suggest?
Honestly, for me, it's the conversations because I have people from all walks of life.
So a lot of people from, you know, psychology, from the performance world, from, you know, just just high performance in general.
So I speak so much or listen so much during the week that it's you know, it's only once in a while that I find books that I really, you know, are so good that I have time to read them or have to read them.
So, I mean, for me, it's more it's not so much the the mental health one specifically, but, you know, man's search for meaning tribe.
Some of these ones that are still people's kind of pseudo biographies, but there's all this this kind of wisdom infused into them.
Those are the ones that I feel like I can pull from a lot more than, you know, a mental health kind of how to book, for example.
Sure. Now that makes sense.
So.
Well, then, speaking of awesome people and not so awesome people like the guy in prison, is there a person that you recommend to come on this podcast as a guest to speak to the first responders, military and associated professions of the world?
Yes, I think his name is Rob Arietta, and he does the skulls for hope foundation.
I think he'd be wonderful for your podcast.
Yeah, I think. Did you did you mention him when I put that post up a few days ago?
Yeah, I push for him. I want him to get bigger.
I think that also I believe her last name is Severn's.
Let me just pull it up really quick.
She was Catherine Severn Avery.
So she has the restoration ranch in Colorado, where she lets first responders come and stay at her property for free.
And like, it's a big thing now. So she's a really good contact. She's very well spoken.
She'll do well for your podcast.
Brilliant. Well, thank you for that. All right. Well, the very last question before we find out where people can find your podcast and reach out to you.
What do you do to decompress these days?
Honestly, talking on here helps significantly.
But when I get home, I have conversations with my wife. I basically just talk. I talk a lot. I talk with my partner at work. I talk with whoever will listen.
That's kind of my biggest like de-stressor is just having conversation and remembering that people are real and people are great.
And we do have really bad people that are here on this planet that are doing really terrible things.
But we have a lot of really great people as well.
So I think working in the field, it's easy to see how shitty the world can be sometimes. And it's good to step out and remember and decompress.
I'm also an avid video game player. So I don't want to make myself look too bad, but I do love playing video games.
What are your favorite games?
Right now, I think that Dying Light is probably my number one favorite game, which is about killing zombies.
But I love the Batman series as well.
Very cool. All right. Well, then for people listening, if they want to find your podcast and or find you online, where are the best places to do that?
Sure. The podcast is called 911 Nonsense, and we are on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and iHeart Radio.
You can find me on Instagram through Sam's Pursuit.
And we also have a Facebook page with the same title, 911 Nonsense.
Beautiful. Well, Sam, I want to say thank you so much.
It's been a really interesting conversation again, like so many people on here.
A very unique perspective, your journey from volunteer firefighting all the way through to the flight medic position now.
So I want to thank you so much for being so generous with your time and coming on the Behind the Shield podcast.
Yeah, no problem, James. I appreciate you having me on. It's been an absolute blast. I've had a great time talking with you today.