I'm extremely excited to announce a brand new sponsor for the Behind the Shield podcast
that is Transcend.
Now for many of you listening, you are probably working the same brutal shifts that I did
for 14 years.
Suffering from sleep deprivation, body composition challenges, mental health challenges, libido,
hair loss, etc.
Now when it comes to the world of hormone replacement and peptide therapy, what I have
seen is a shift from doctors telling us that we were within normal limits, which was definitely
incorrect all the way to the other way now where men's clinics are popping up left, right
and center.
So I myself wanted to find a reputable company that would do an analysis of my physiology
and then offer supplementations without ramming, for example, hormone replacement therapy down
my throat.
Now I came across Transcend because they have an altruistic arm and they were a big reason
why the 7X project I was a part of was able to proceed because of their generous donations.
They also have the Transcend foundations where they are actually putting military and first
responders through some of their therapies at no cost to the individual.
So my own personal journey so far filled in the online form, went to Quest, got blood
drawn and a few days later I'm talking to one of their wellness professionals as they
guide me through my results and the supplementation that they suggest.
In my case specifically, because I transitioned out the fire service five years ago and been
very diligent with my health, my testosterone was actually in a good place.
So I went down the peptide route and some other supplements to try and maximize my physiology
knowing full well the damage that 14 years of shift work has done.
Now I also want to underline because I think this is very important that each of the therapies
they offer, they will talk about the pros and cons.
So for example, a lot of first responders in shift work, our testosterone will be low,
but sometimes nutrition, exercise and sleep can offset that on its own.
So this company is not going to try and push you down a path, especially if it's one that
you can't come back from.
So whether it's libido, brain fog, inflammation, gut health, performance, sleep, this is definitely
one of the most powerful tools in the toolbox.
So to learn more, go to transcendcompany.com or listen to episode 808 of the Behind the
Shield podcast with founder Ernie Colling.
This episode is sponsored by TeamBuildr, yet another company that's doing great things
for the first responder community.
As a strength and conditioning coach myself, who also trains tactical athletes, dissemination
of wellness information is one of the biggest challenges.
Now TeamBuildr is the premier strength and conditioning software for tactical athletes.
And there are several features that really impressed me.
Firstly, there is a full exercise library.
So you, the personal trainer does not have to create that within your own department.
Secondly, you can send out programming, but also individualize, which I love.
So you blanket program for everyone.
Now you can tweak based on someone's injury, someone's need to maybe drop some body composition
rather than having to write a program for every single person on their own.
TeamBuildr also allows you to build custom questionnaires to collate health and wellness
data.
It integrates with wearables.
And I think one of the most important things is obviously it tracks.
To me, it's imperative that we as a profession start tracking our people from day one and
then over the full span of their career.
Therefore catching potential wellness issues and injuries before they happen.
Now if you want to try TeamBuildr, they are offering you, the audience of the Behind
the Shield podcast, a free 14 day trial to experience all of the features.
And if you want to take a deeper dive into TeamBuildr, listen to episode 1032 with
Melissa Mercado or go to teambuilder.com and I'll spell that to you because it's not as
you think.
T-E-A-M-B-U-I-L-D-R.com.
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, law enforcement officer, military aviator and one of the HeloTAC team, Drew
Nicoletti.
Now in this conversation, we discuss a host of topics from his journey into law enforcement,
entering the military as a pilot, flying helicopters, transitioning to law enforcement aviation,
teaching aviators, fast roping, special operations 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 well over 1000 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, Drew Nicoletti.
Enjoy.
Well, Drew, I want to start by saying two things.
Firstly, thank you to our mutual friend, Patrick Burroughs for connecting us and I still need
to get him on the show one day and secondly to welcome you onto the Behind the Shield
podcast today.
Well, thank you very much.
It's a real honor to be here and you know, nailing down Pat's difficult to do, but if
you can, he would be phenomenal.
Yeah, absolutely.
That's the beautiful thing about guests on this show.
I always say when the time is right, you know, the worst time to come on is when it's not
the right time, you know, because then you're just not going to be able to relax and have
a good interview.
You know, some people that means retiring first so they can speak freely about how they
truly feel.
So, all right, well, very first question, where on planet earth are we finding you this
afternoon?
My wife and I, we live in Stuart, Florida.
So it's about maybe half an hour north of West Palm Beach and we live here with our
three daughters.
Beautiful.
Yeah, it's a beautiful town.
It's kind of one of the smaller towns in South Florida still.
So let's start the very beginning of your actual journey then.
So tell me where you were born and tell me a little bit about your family dynamic, what
your parents did, how many siblings?
So I was born in West Palm Beach in 1985.
My dad was an attorney in town and my mom was a physical therapist and I've got one
older brother, he's 14 years older than me.
And I grew up basically, we had a lake behind our house and I grew up just like being outdoors.
My brother kind of instilled that in me at a young age.
We were constantly fishing, just whatever.
If there was a board that could float, we were on it in the backyard.
As growing up, the most iconic memories that I can remember are always just kind of hanging
out with my brother and his friends and they were obviously much older than me.
So I was kind of like the play kid who had to always come around with his big brother
and probably got me into things that I probably shouldn't have when I was a little kid, jumping
off of stuff that I have no business jumping off of.
Otherwise, my brother was a great influence on me when I was a little kid.
Very good kids, we didn't get into anything too bad or anything like that.
We were just kind of a normal, fun childhood.
I played sports, I played baseball, soccer, started getting into swimming a little later
and we obviously did all the water sports, kneeboarding, wakeboarding, we called it skurfing
back in the day with the surfboard, they didn't have wakeboards.
It was a blast.
I really enjoyed my childhood.
My parents, they were older when they had me obviously, my brother is 14 years older,
so they were establishing their careers.
So I kind of grew up to grow up very independently and it kind of worked out later in life because
I found a lot of the things that maybe my peers were gravitating towards.
I had already kind of like looked at something, especially as my brother being older, I looked
at whether that was drugs or alcohol or just getting into trouble.
We had looked at that and said like, no, I'm not going to do that.
That wasn't for me, so I always cleared clear of that anyway, just naturally.
Being able to make those decisions of my own early in life kind of led me to a place where
I feel like I had a really productive, healthy childhood.
Being in the water in Florida, knowing the types of species that live beneath the surface,
did you have any near-gator experience?
I had one near-gator experience.
We had a lake behind our house and then we had a canal in front of our house.
There was only our house on the road and the other side was just grass in the canal.
In the lake, we very rarely had alligators.
The story I always heard when I was a kid is there was a guy that would go around and
scoop them out and trap them and then get them out.
I think I only saw a gator in there like twice, but on the canal side, there were a lot of
gators.
You'd be fishing and you'd look down and you'd just see a tail through the murky water and
you'd realize you're two feet from a gator.
Gators are just kind of a part of life down here.
The cottonmouths, those are the ones that you want to steer clear of.
You can sneak up on those pretty quick and if they're on a nest, they can be pretty aggressive.
Yeah, absolutely.
It's so weird because I came from England, obviously there's nothing really that can
hurt you as far as animals lives in England.
You move to Florida and you're like, oh shit, almost everything here can hurt you.
The spiders, the snakes, the gators.
But then you see some of the born and bled Faridian videos like the guy on the golf course
and the gator tried to take his dog and he was punching it with a cigar in his mouth.
I just saw another one of a guy eating one with a skillet in his backyard.
These are the people that have grown up around these beasts that yeah, they respect them
but they're not terrified of them.
Yeah, it is definitely kind of a fact of life.
There's constantly snakes around and my wife to this day hates lizards but my six-year-old
will grab them and it's fun.
It's a fun part of being here.
I'm sure it'd be the same as if I was anywhere else and whatever they had there growing up
would be normal.
Not all of us are like Mike Kimmel, the python cowboy but it's pretty normal to just be around
that kind of stuff.
Absolutely.
Well, you mentioned first your dad being an attorney.
What area of law did he practice?
He practiced family law.
He did mostly wills and adoptions so he wasn't a ruthless, cutthroat type of attorney but
then he also did government law.
He started basically doing like local government.
He started as a city attorney and then grew into a city manager.
He started as a city manager, went to law school when I was a kid and then turned into
a city attorney.
He started his own law firm and then he would do like magistrate work on the side so he
would be like a city attorney for a small municipality.
I kind of grew up going to these meetings and my baseball schedule would revolve around
when the council meetings were.
He would drop me off at baseball practice, walk over to city hall and then walk back
or I'd get done early and I'd end up sitting in some of his meetings.
It was always funny.
The joke was like he was a different person when he was there.
He's very empathetic but at the same time like what's the rule of the law?
Sorry.
It's okay.
I'm a German shepherd who's crazy.
I got one literally about eight feet from me now so no problem.
I was actually just telling someone about the podcast and they're asking about editing.
I'm like no, this is two real normal human beings having a conversation.
Doorbells will go off and dogs will bark and pee breaks will need to be taken.
That's just how it works.
This isn't the BBC.
You mentioned about your dad working with adoptions.
There's some beautiful, beautiful videos out there on social media about some of these,
either the child giving the parent the letter that they've adopted them or vice versa.
Did he ever relay some powerful moments he was a part of?
Yeah.
I didn't ever get to see that side but later in life I'd ask him and he would always say
that that was always by far the most rewarding part of his job.
He still keeps in touch with a couple of families.
He's 78.
He's been out of law practice for a while.
He still has a couple of clients and does some municipality work on the side but he
still keeps in touch with those people.
I think one of the girls that he helped in process the adoption now, she's probably like
my age.
She might be just coming up to 40.
He's done a lot in his life but I think that that's probably one of the more powerful things
that he's done.
I think that he would find that to be as well.
Yeah.
I've heard a lot of stories where the adoptive family were incredible.
We've heard the horror stories too, of course.
We know about those but some of these children, they were born into a circumstance where the
parents weren't able to get themselves back to where they should be.
Two other humans and other family stepped in and became that parent if it's the sibling
of their partner or whether it's actually a complete family.
This is what we need.
If we were tribal, the entire village would help raise these children.
I think that's what we got to refine, is that community.
I couldn't agree more.
I think the community and I think that most people would agree that people in general
are good.
It's difficult when a few bad apples contain everything and change a whole culture's viewpoint
towards that.
Yeah, absolutely.
You mentioned as well your mom was a PT.
What kind of people was she working with?
Was it a sporting world?
Was it kind of geriatrics?
It was a little bit of both.
She treated everything from ballerinas to older people who had strokes.
That was kind of her specialty.
She really enjoyed that.
She would bring people back from having full blown strokes to where they were basically
immobile to slowly progressing them.
I grew up going to her office.
I went to a middle school and we call it magnet schools here.
They basically try and entice kids to come there from other school districts through
programs.
It was very close to her office, which was downtown.
My mom and my dad had offices right next to each other.
My mom had a physical therapist office and my dad's law firm was right next door in an
old house.
I used to just bounce back and forth.
I spent a lot of time in her office and seeing you would be like 10 walking around a PT's
office and everyone's out sitting on a bouncy ball or working small weights and you're talking
to them.
It was really interesting but seeing that progression too over and over again and seeing
how the body can heal and seeing how without medicine but just the right whether that's
heat or cold or just the right mobility.
It was an interesting way to perceive that young in life where medicine really wasn't
that much to do with all the healing that I was seeing.
It was mostly just kind of, hey, move your body this way and keep stretching and working
it out.
That was pretty interesting.
I try and take a lot of those lessons with me to this day.
It's amazing the environment that you grew up in.
I grew up in the son of a veterinary surgeon.
My dad, his specialty was horses but he had a small animal clinic as well.
I was immersed in veterinary surgery and sadly euthanasia and all kinds of things.
I reflect back now and think about how many of those factored into my career later.
You do get a very powerful perspective when you're a child.
I think even that view that you got from your mother, the body's innate ability to heal
itself, that is a conversation that is suppressed in modern day.
Don't you dare say that diabetes can be reversed with nutrition.
Don't you tell me that your back injury can be healed with movement but it can.
It's so sad that there's so much kind of greed behind poo-pooing the body's natural ability
to heal.
Yeah, but I couldn't agree more, I mean being a pilot, everyone says you trade in your cruiser
or your Humvee for a lower back problem and blue skies because it's constant.
My neck and back are always in this weird balancing act where I have to focus and then
I neglected for a little bit and then I have to refocus.
So yeah, I think the body's probably one of the most powerful things, one of God's best
creations and he's given us the tools to be able to fix those things and I think it just
gets suppressed through culture and it shouldn't be.
Absolutely.
Have you ever heard of the, I think it's the Iron Neck, have I got that right?
Yeah, we have one at the Hangar.
A couple guys have used it but currently I think it's just hanging up in our gym but
yeah, it's pretty aggressive.
All the guys who have used it are like, oh man, that was a hard workout but yeah, I'm
not quite there yet.
My neck's still a little fragile.
Well, I think you can taper it down if I'm not mistaken.
There's certainly levels to it and you can literally just add a bit of tension and just
move left and right but I've got a friend, Dave Prashera Best and he had terrible neck
problems and he said that that was one of the things that's definitely helped him because
of, I mean, you guys have the helmet with the nods so a lot of weight on your head for
a long time.
Yeah, we've, I mean, recently we've actually been doing a lot of research into lighter
helmets and counterweights and trying to work out the fulcrum of putting your goggles up
and then I'm sure like the same with operators on the ground.
Once they're up, it's so much further forward and so much more weight on your neck and it's
just for so much skill in both an operator and a pilot to be kind of eliminated due to
a significant neck issue.
It's like, it seems kind of silly like we should probably be able to work this out.
So yeah, I think the Iron Neck's definitely, I mean, as far as I know, it's one of the
only products specifically designed to actually, you know, kind of work that out and work that
problem so.
Yeah, absolutely.
Yeah, I come from a profession where they still wear a hat that's designed in the 1930s
and they refuse to deviate from it.
So headwear progression is not exactly a popular topic in the fire service.
But anyway, I digress.
So speaking of career aspirations, you have, you know, a PT and a lawyer and your family
at that point, what were you thinking of becoming when you were in the school age?
So my father was also in the reserves, so he wasn't active duty, but he was in the reserves
as a JAG and our house was like a mile and a half from the reserve center.
So we spent a lot of time there anyway.
And I always kind of wanted to go into the military, but the human body, I think probably
because my mom's influence was always very interesting to me.
So I thought I wanted to be a doctor and definitely wanted to kind of pursue that.
My grandfather was a surgeon and I kind of just kind of grew up with that notion, like,
oh, that's what I want to do.
And then a helicopter came and landed at my dad's reserve facility one day in old Huey.
And that basically changed that whole route for me.
I even went into high school and I was like, oh, you know, I'll still kind of dabble with
medicine, but then it also had a junior ROTC program.
And then I just flipped the whole script and decided that's what I wanted to do and really
commit.
So once I did, I mean, like I can remember vividly, like sitting in the cockpit of that
thing and just being like, I just saw this thing land.
I have no idea what it's capable of, but I really want to find out.
And my dad took me on another helicopter ride, I'm sure very innocently when I was a kid
in Orlando for like five minutes.
And well, little did he know it was going to cause him a lot of cash later when he was
paying for flight school.
But it was a pretty influential moment of my life.
And I just remember being up there and like, you feel the vibration of the helicopter and
you look around and there's no wings and you're just like, man, this is wild.
Like I'm just up here and you can see forever and you come down and everything gets real
close all of a sudden, the guy decels and you're on the ground.
You're like, that was just, it was such an incredible, profound experience for me that
I just never, I could never get past it.
And then I went to flight school when I was in high school.
My dad paid for me to go to a local flight school here in Lantana.
And I was flying fixed wing planes, learning how to fly in 172s and that was it.
I was hooked, man.
That was once you feel it.
I think a lot of people kind of make a determination pretty quick, like, hey, this is something
I want to do or this is something I'm going to pass on.
I find it rare to find like one hobbyist pilot who either is like, oh, I just do this for
work or they're always the guy who like says like, I just wish I could dedicate all my
time to this, but I can't because of whatever reason.
But I don't know.
It's definitely got me.
That's for sure.
I'm sure Pat told you about this when we were on 7X, when we went around the world, when
we got to Cairo and I'd never been on a helicopter before.
I'd done all kinds of stuff in the fire service, in the stunt world, but never actually been
on a helicopter specifically.
And so we end up being told that we're going to get to go skydiving over the pyramids,
but it's in this old Russian helicopter.
And it was cool as hell because while we were waiting for our turn, this guy was buzzing
us right by the pyramids and then cutting up.
But yeah, so I have been on a helicopter once, but I was strapped to a Polish dude and we
flung ourselves out.
That's my only helicopter experience at this point.
Yeah, Pat has told me that story.
I've seen the tattoos to prove it.
I never got one of those.
I was watching them.
They're like, oh, this is a really good idea.
I'm like, you guys knock yourself out.
Yeah.
All right.
Well then, moving on, walk me through that kind of early time as a pilot and then educate
me on the kind of parallel journey in law enforcement as well.
So I got my license when I was 17.
I had just turned 17.
It was before I went to college.
So my birthday is in June, so I'm always like the youngest guy in my class.
So I went to college, flew for fun.
I went to a military college in South Carolina and flew basically on the weekends.
My dad was like, hey, you did this.
Now you have to maintain it.
So I was like, all right.
So twist my arm, dad.
Fly around Charleston.
So that was a lot of fun.
And so I would go on the weekends and I take friends up and I actually started, I should
re-energize probably, the Aero Club at the college.
And it's funny, I was going through my yearbook with my daughters the other day and we looked
at the picture of the Aero Club and one of the guys standing next to me is currently
a blue angel and one of the guys on the other side was a thunderbird like four years ago.
And it's like, man, crazy.
Like just, you know, that kind of goes back to my mom's lesson was always you are who
you surround yourself with.
Like you always surround yourself with strong people and you know, you'll continue to be
a strong person.
And that was, it's just funny I always gravitated towards people like that.
So I did that.
I did, obviously I graduated college and then I was looking for a job.
I thought I was going to go into the Marine Corps.
I wanted to be a pilot in the Marines and second semester, senior year, I took like
a chance to maybe take the Army Flight App II test.
I did.
I did well on it and the guy said, hey, if you go find a guard unit, you can guarantee
aviation.
At the time they weren't guaranteeing aviation for anybody.
And so I said, okay.
So I did that.
Got into a guard unit.
Meanwhile, everyone who graduated that year got aviation who wanted it.
It was like gates were wide open.
So anyway, got into a guard unit, thought I was going to fly Apaches.
Didn't end up flying Apaches.
Turns out they just changed over to a general aviation support battalion.
So I was flying Blackhawks and I actually didn't get to go to flight school for like
two years.
I thought I was going to have to become like an MP or something.
And I was kind of at this weird spot where I needed a job on the civilian side waiting
for the guard to either pick me up or kick me out or do something if they couldn't send
me to flight school on time.
And I just fell into being a cop.
Like I was like, hey, I just want to do something that's going to be fun and where I can affect
some good and still kind of serve, but also that will afford me opportunities to do fun
things and not be behind a desk.
And that was 2007?
That was 2007.
So I asked a lot of firefighters this, but I haven't asked many cops.
How competitive was it back then to be a law enforcement officer?
I was sponsored.
So I was sponsored by the agency that hired me and they sent me through the academy and
I was getting paid a full salary while at the academy.
So I think like 2007 was actually a really good time to become a law enforcement officer.
I think that like after that, for whatever reason, it really started to kind of becoming
much more difficult.
But I will say though, like the standards were tough.
Like there was a very rigorous physical program.
Passing the state exam was difficult.
It seemed like they were taking higher caliber people to do that job then and they were paying
also to compensate you for that.
So it was a great combo to kind of get into.
And then once I started doing it, I really enjoyed it.
It was, you know, there's definitely tough parts to it, but if you can kind of put those
aside and focus on the good things that you do, you know, getting cussed out by people
is not fun for no reason.
But you know, finding a small child who's lost from their parents is extremely rewarding,
you know, or capturing a suspect who just committed domestic violence is extremely rewarding.
So you know, those things all kind of combined together.
And then as soon as I started to really like it, the army called and said, hey, you're
going to flight school.
I was like, oh, okay, cool.
So now I'm going to do that.
So I ended up doing that.
I went to Fort Rucker at the time for, it was like 18 months.
And then my guard unit called me like right before graduation, we're like, hey, as soon
as you graduate, you're going to come home for a week and then you're going to go right
back.
You have to do the mic model transition for the newest Blackhawk because that's what we
have and then you're deploying as soon as you get back from that.
And I was like, oh, wow, sweet.
So we, I went back, I went back for like, I think it was like two months, maybe six weeks
and then came home for like a month and then deployed to Iraq on my first tour.
Well going back to the US before we go overseas, you mentioned about having this, you know,
very kind of loving environment as you grew up, you know, playing outside and in the water.
A lot of us, I think, like I said, you're talking to a guy that grew up on a farm in
England.
It was quite jarring when I became a firefighter and saw behind the curtain of society, some
of the areas that most people are oblivious to.
Were there any kind of jarring moments for you while you were wearing law enforcement
at that time for this young man that was arguably raised in a safe environment?
Yeah, I mean, I would say I was raised in a safe environment, but I went to Roosevelt
Middle School, which is like in probably one of the toughest parts of town.
So you know, I was the minority and everyone else was all these different races and there's
a huge kind of clash, even at the middle school level.
You know, it's a tough part of town.
There's a lot of drugs there.
There's a lot of crime and I was the outsider.
So that same time of growing up independently, you know, at home, my home life was quite
good and I could always like bounce ideas off my brother and stuff, but there were definitely
you know fights.
There were definitely you still have to grow up tough.
You couldn't grow up kind of, you know, it wasn't all, you know, nice paintings and daffodils.
It was definitely an environment that forced you to step up and you know, handle yourself,
deal with bullies, deal with you know, kind of just a rough environment.
And then I went to Lake Worth High School, which was like even more diverse and even
more clashing and now you're high school level to where you know, people are driving cars
and there's higher access to drugs and it was you know, it was kind of just a foreign
environment at the time, but you learn how to navigate it and you learn that street smart
side.
So you know, when I was a new cop, it wasn't that jarring and I wasn't in like a spot that
had a ridiculous amount of crime.
I remember the first time that I found a McCormick bottle underneath the seat of a car and it
was completely full of crack and I didn't know like a big one.
But when you see like the you know, garlic and I look at it and I was like, what is this?
And I look at my partner and my partner looks at me and he goes, oh man, that's crack.
And I was like, oh, like that was like pretty shocking.
I was like, man, I'd never seen this much drugs in my life.
This is crazy.
Thank God I didn't put it on my lunch.
Yeah, I was like, oh my gosh.
And you know, but then it was also on the coast.
So you know, you get boats that come across with huge bales of drugs and you're like,
wow, okay.
Like this isn't, it's not just on Miami Vice.
Like this is how this looks.
This is exactly what we're talking about.
So but yeah, I mean, it wasn't anything too dramatic.
I would say that my response to it too after my first tour was much different than my response
to it before I had left.
Like I was much more like kind of in the zone as far as like, hey, this, I'm going to have
to deal with this, you know, as a new cop.
And then when I got back from my tour, my first tour, I think I just had a lot going
on like personally and mentally and I didn't handle it well.
And it probably took a solid like two years after getting back from that to kind of like
center my Chi and be back again.
What did that first tour look like through your eyes?
You know, it was, it's crazy because like you, you hear like, you know, people make
like funny jokes and like, Hey, when you're a new guy, like you go out and you whatever,
find a girl, find a car, you know, you, you try and enjoy yourself before you leave and
then you go off to war.
And I didn't really do that, but I certainly was scared and I can see why people do that.
So I thought for sure, like I wasn't going to survive.
So like my dad was in the army and he deployed to like, he deployed to places, but they weren't
combat.
And so like, he didn't know how to really kind of prep me for that.
And I didn't know how to prep me for that because nobody I knew had ever really been
in combat, not that I could talk to.
So I had lost a couple of classmates already in the war on terror prior to going.
So I just kind of like assume like, Hey, you know, this is my duty.
I'm going to go, I'm probably not going to survive.
And here we go.
And like, you know, the third day we get there, I was in a medevac team.
So it was only like 22 of us.
I started putting like sandbags on top of my chew and we were getting mortar all the
time.
We were at a Cobb Echo in D'Winnea and so like that was like, the story was like, Hey,
you're going to get mortared.
You're going to get rocketed here.
It's going to happen.
A lot of indirect fire.
You're not going to be able to do much about it.
So you know, know where the bunker is and be ready to go.
And so I started like putting sandbags on my chew and I was like, Hey, if like one hits
my chew, maybe it'll detonate on the sandbag and I'll still survive.
I'll be able to roll to the ground, whatever.
And then like day three, I'm in the shower.
I'm on medevac duty and nobody's in the shower chew, which is kind of strange.
Like you're by yourself and I was like, man, this is like crazy.
This is nice.
I'm going to enjoy this.
And I got my Crocs and like I come out and I got my little like towel.
I'm like squeak, squeak, squeak going around and it's a ghost town.
Nobody's anywhere.
And then I go into ops and squeak, squeak, squeak.
Nobody's in ops.
And I'm like, what the heck?
And I look in the bunker and everyone's in there and that was my first like IDF encounter.
Because they had gotten mortar walls in the shower.
I didn't even know it.
And then that was like a sobering experience.
I was like, oh, well, I guess it's really not that big of a deal.
And if it happens and I was in the shower, I would did anyway.
So like, I guess I'm just not going to worry about this.
And I just didn't from then on.
Like if I heard the siren, I would run, but like that was it.
Like I wasn't going to let it drive my day to day for a year.
That wasn't good.
So that was helpful.
That was a helpful experience.
So there's a two sided question I ask.
And obviously you've got a very unique perspective because you're looking through a pilot size.
The stories that we are told back home through our media, I would argue are very polarized.
You've got either the kill them all, let God sort them out rhetoric, or they're all baby
killers.
And in the middle are the real men and women that are out there fighting for our freedom
and the freedom of the people in that country.
The first of the two questions, was there a point where you saw atrocities, horrific
things where you realized, okay, yeah, there are some awful people that do need to be taken
care of?
I mean, absolutely.
We had Intel, there was a rocket team in town and they would constantly target us and they
were getting like really good and they were trained by, supposedly they were trained by
the Iranians and they launched 240, which is like a nine foot rocket and it went over
our base and hit just on the other side of the wall, a little like bodega with a little
coffee shop or whatever and it killed a bunch of people in town.
And so really poor setup for our base, but like all the houses could see down into the
base.
And the tea walls were not taller than the taller houses just on the other side.
So like you'd be running up in the morning and you'd see older gentlemen sipping tea
on the other side of the wall like staring at you, you're like, man, this guy comes up
with an RPG, like I'm dead.
And you kind of get used to that and then you realize like, hey, that guy's not trying
to kill me, he's just trying to live.
And that's kind of the majority I think of, especially Iraq in general, like now, I mean,
a lot of the population isn't trying to kill us or hate us.
But that scenario where the bad guys just kind of killed a bunch of people innocently
who were just trying to enjoy their dinner, like, yeah, obviously when they injure or
kill our guys, you know, I was medevac, I mean, that's all I did was try and take care
of our guys and try and get them to the highest level of care possible off of our little tiny
fob.
But yeah, I mean, I definitely see that.
I can definitely see that side and empathize with it.
Now what about the other side of the coin?
This is what we also don't usually hear, kindness and compassion in a battle zone.
When you reflect whether it was through your own men and women, whether it was the indigenous
population, what are moments of kindness and compassion that you remember?
It's always, you know, the innocence of children is what always kind of like snaps you back.
I think in any jobs, you know, you're flying around and little kids are like running and
waving and it's like, that's what my kids would do if they saw a helicopter flying over
right now, they would be running away and be like, this is amazing.
So I think that's always going to be, it doesn't really matter what culture, what civilization,
you know, when you see those acts of children just being innocent and enjoying life, that's
always going to snap you back to, hey, they're just people, you know, obviously we don't
want to get hurt and we want to catch the bad guys, but you know, there's so much compassion
for those separate cultures.
Like we're all just people at the end of the day.
And that's the best example you could possibly see.
Absolutely.
I've heard a lot of incredible stories by the amputee veterans that made it like Mark
Hornrod, for example, Royal Marine in the UK lost both legs and an arm and was left
for dead, not discarded.
They just figured he was dead.
And then someone noticed him, I think he just opened his eyes, he all took a breath.
It was something like that.
And then they were like, oh shit, this guy's alive.
And they worked him and he ended up surviving.
What was some of the kind of medical miracle or traumatic miracles that you remember of
people that you assumed weren't going to make it that possibly you heard did?
Oh man, I would love to tell you that I remember that stuff and it turns out I don't.
You asking me, I don't remember.
I remember all the bad ones, but I don't remember a lot of the good ones.
And you don't hear it like you don't, you might hear back from like their CEO like,
hey, that guy made it.
And typically, it's like we flew a captain one day who was just having like a heart murmur
and we flew him out.
We had to like basically ask to medivac him like, hey, something's not right.
Doc was like, no, we'll medivac him in a couple of days.
And we're like, I don't know, I think we need to medivac him.
And the MRO approved it and we ended up flying and then he like died and route to Germany.
And it was like just some freak accident.
It was like stuff like that, you're like, man, that's so crazy.
Yeah, I mean, I wish I could tell you and I wish I was able to keep track of or the
government was better at, hey, like trying to keep people connected when it comes to
that kind of stuff.
But I looked back on the first, like literally looked over my shoulder on the first flight
and then I made a promise myself I wasn't going to do that anymore.
So I tried to focus mainly on just my instruments.
But you know, you get back and like your medic would always kind of give you like the skin.
You're like, hey, this is what happened.
You know, they didn't make it or they're going to make it.
They'll be fine.
So I think the not looking back thing is probably what saved my mind frame as much as possible.
Just kind of focusing on my instruments and making sure everything was good to go.
Just doing my job, kind of compartmentalizing.
I had a very grim reaper career as a paramedic, firefighter and a paramedic.
And it was just if someone went to a cardiac arrest, whether that was a medical issue,
whether it was, you know, a traumatic medical cardiac arrest, we only save a very small
amount.
But I was a firefighter for 14 years and had zero saves.
Even after I retired out, I had a cardiac arrest on a plane when I was in London on
the tarmac and worked that passenger and still nothing.
And this is I think the other side of it is we hear the Mark Hornrod stories, which is
amazing.
But for some crews, we don't save any of them.
And that is such a weight.
Now, of course, we make a difference pre-code or, you know, like you said, even the kindness
and compassion you get a kid that was, you know, if they didn't get to a hospital, they
were going to lose a leg.
And I'll be life threatening, but there's all these stories that we have too.
But that inability to save really is a very, very crushing weight for a lot of us because
we are taught if you do X, Y and Z, then the person will survive.
Yeah, I mean, that's that's like you're taught like, hey, that's your job.
Like this is this is the sole reason that you exist.
This is why you have a helicopter with a cross on it is so that you're supposed to get this
guy so that they can live.
And then you get there and you're like, oh, that's not that's not really how this works.
Yeah, you're there to give them a percentage and a chance and hopefully do it.
But that's not it's not guaranteed by any means.
And yeah, I mean, that first one was tough, you know, especially because it was frustrating
because we were in Iraq.
It was like it was 2011.
So we got there like in the beginning, 2011, and then we closed out the country supposedly,
you know, we closed out the country.
And it was just frustrating because like we felt like we were there to cover the guys
going outside of the wire to protect us who were inside of the wire from rockets.
And it was like nobody was really there weren't like a lot of missions going on.
And we're just like, you know, we could just leave.
But that would be cool.
We just leave and get out of here.
And none of us get hurt.
And how about that?
And that's and inevitably that's what we ended up doing.
And it was just delayed to a point where, you know, we didn't really need to.
And then yeah, you know, it was just tough.
And it was it was frustrating, I think.
And that that bled in a lot to, you know, you'd see people get injured.
You try and help them.
You know, they would survive or they wouldn't.
And then you kind of get back and you're like, what was that for?
And then you ask yourself that question.
And that's that good stuff.
That's what I've heard, especially, you know, as the podcast progressed with more and more
of our veterans, you know, you saw the way that the Afghanistan withdrawal happened.
You have now the questioning of supposedly what was in Iraq, why we went there, you know,
and it's it is important to pull that apart.
I mean, it's happened and it was unfolded the way that it happened.
But just like the pandemic, you can't just sweep it under the carpet and say, oh, let's
just not talk about that anymore.
You got to figure out, all right, what what went well and what didn't go well.
You know, how can we make sure that we don't send young Americans into a battle zone again
that maybe isn't going to progress the country in any way, shape or form?
Because every one of these people that's come on the show have absolutely made a difference
to people in these countries.
So they need to be proud of their service.
But the overall mission, you know, did they actually leave it much better than they found
it?
Do you have them feel no?
And like you said, that very term, what was that all for?
And you know, if you if it just cost you a few bucks and you got a couple of bruises,
that's one thing.
But if you have, you know, literally thousands of coffins coming back, draped in American
flags, then we do need to look at that and make sure it doesn't happen again.
And if we do have to go to war, it needs to be fully and fully supported.
But we need to all know why.
And it needs to be a real, real, you know, bona fide reason rather than I mean, I'll
say this from a layman's terms, but 9-11 happens and they're like, let's go to Iraq.
Well, wait a second.
Haven't we got the wrong country?
I'm pretty sure that dude's hiding in Afghanistan, you know, and they're all but there's WMDs.
And, you know, so I think it's just it is important to acknowledge that feeling of almost
betrayal by some of our military members, because they were sold on a kind of vengeance
campaign in a way.
And a lot of as we are seeing now, when you peel back the layers, it wasn't, you know,
there's some questionable decisions of why some of our men and women were sent and how
long they were kept there.
Yeah, I think I mean, so I ended up going back in 1617 to Iraq.
And you know, when we were there, that was that was like right at the beginning of Missoula
and through Missoula.
And I was a headquarters company commander at the time.
So like, I had people, you know, that I was responsible for all over the country.
It was wild, like seven different sites.
So I was doing I was moonlighting as a medevac as a medevac air mission commander, and then
as an air assault pilot, just a regular PI, which was best job ever.
But you know, you go back and like, we had an interpreter at the brigade level, and,
and he hadn't seen his family in like, 14 years or 15 years, and then they lived in
town and he still hadn't seen him.
And then finally, at the end, we were able to get his family on base and his mom had
brought like a full feast.
It was unreal.
And when you watch that interaction, and you hear his stories, he was at Baghdad University,
and you would hear like his stories of the atrocities that were happening before, from
Saddam Hussein's sons and just the way that they were in the whole culture.
And he was like, No, like, I cannot thank you guys enough for coming in and removing
them.
You know, that was it was it was the scariest time of my life.
And you know, you'd be walking around and it's all of a sudden, guy would just shoot
somebody for no reason, just because he felt like it.
And when you tell that story, at least that brought that brought a little bit of like,
okay, at least, you know, hopefully we did a good thing.
It might not have been for the right reasons, or it might have been bad intel or whatever
you want to speculate or, you know, there's a million different things that I have no
control over what got me there.
But at least that that was helpful that that was kind of an eye open experience.
And I didn't necessarily been closure, but it at least made me feel like there was some
good that that came out of it.
You know, some sort of silver lining, I guess.
Absolutely.
Well, you mentioned the first time you came back about struggling with that transition.
So kind of walk me through flying on the law enforcement side.
And then and then what were some of the highs and lows for you emotionally as you progress
through?
Yeah, I came back and I was with I was with a girl prior to and then, you know, tales old
time.
She cheated on me when I was gone.
And just now looking back, it was the best thing that ever happened to me.
But at the time, it was it was pretty jarring.
So you know, that kind of sent me into a little bit of a frustrated state.
And then knowing that people had died on my aircraft and that I wasn't able to do what
I was supposed to do for them and their families, that was jarring.
And then I went right back to being a road cop and, you know, interacting with people
who had no there was just they had no like sort of looking for like concept, like they
had no perception of like what was going on elsewhere in the world.
Like they were speeding through school zones and they were, you know, just doing all these
stupid things to each other that they didn't need to do that were hurtful.
And it was more of like just for selfish reasons.
Now, I know because I just saw people are literally fighting for their lives.
And that was like it was I should not have gone back as soon as I did.
I needed to probably take some time to process all that.
And without that perspective that I had in their place, you know, watching these civilians
just go about their kind of naturally selfish lives was just I mean, irked me to my core.
And so my nephews, my brothers, two kids, they went to school in the town that I was
a police officer in.
And one day he calls me and he goes, hey man, you got to stop yelling at people in the school
zone.
And I was like, no, I was like that I didn't write him a ticket, but they need to know
to slow down.
He's like, dude, you got to chill it out.
And I was like and I kind of like I hung up the phone.
I was super pissed.
And then I was like maybe I shouldn't be so aggressive about this.
Maybe I should think about it a little more and have the perspective that they have like,
hey, I'm late for whatever.
And then there was like a motorcycle took off on me and you know, I turned my lights
off and usually when that happens and you don't have like a forceful felony, you turn
your lights off because they're just going to cause more damage than it is going to be
good if you capture them.
And then of course, you know, he wrecks and I get up and I pull up and he's got like a
severe compound fracture to his leg.
He's wedged underneath a guardrail and I start like treating him and on the radio, I didn't
at the time I thought I was being like cool, calm and collected and on the radio afterwards
when I listened to it, I was like, oh my god, I didn't recognize myself.
Like I was just totally out of body.
I wasn't calm.
I wasn't cool.
I was just like and then my captain came up to me after and he was like, hey, why don't
you just take it easy for the rest of the day?
And I was like, why?
What's wrong?
And then like, you know, you play it back afterwards and I just didn't handle that stressful
situation and that was kind of like the big culminating moment.
And then I was like, all right, I need to take a week of vacation.
I need to like really kind of separate myself from this.
So and that was probably the biggest telling moment.
When you talk about the school zone, when I'm thinking about it, I would have zero,
you know, latitude as well.
And the reason is from our perspective and yours as well, because you're in law enforcement,
I've really struggled with anger when it comes to selfish driving because we have been there
over and over and over again.
And I actually wrote a piece called The Man on the Curb and it was about this horrendous
wreck and there's this dude in the corner sitting on the curb sobbing who you originally
think must be a family member.
And then you realize he's the piece of shit that started this whole thing in the first
place or caused it.
And now he's throwing himself a fucking pity party.
So I get so angry when I see dry, I will fucking, you know, talk to them.
And I've just had a confrontation in the car park a few days ago in the grocery store.
I was like, oh shit, I think I'm getting into a fist fight here.
Because some guy was driving like an asshole, cut in front of a bunch of people, caused
a bunch, almost to wreck.
I mean, he cut in front of like a 50 mile an hour road, then goes into the parking lot
of the store where I happened to be going as well.
And then kind of like fishtails through, you know, where people are loading their cars.
And so I look at him and throw my hands up and he stops and gets out the car and starts
having a go.
And I basically said to him, look, I'm a firefighter.
I've seen what happens when people drive like that.
I don't want you to hurt anyone.
Now this gentleman was a one in 1000 that actually was like, oh no, you're right.
And he shook my hand and I was like, oh fuck, that was lucky.
I was going to get my ass kicked.
Well, they got way better.
Yeah.
But I mean, the thing is, it's like, you know, when you have seen it, how can you just be
complicit?
How can you not say something?
What if those words had stopped him from pulling out in the road again?
And he was obviously angry about something.
And now he gets killed, you know, a bunch of other people gets killed, get killed because
you didn't say anything.
So someone speeding through a speed zone, a school zone, we all have heard numerous
cases of children being run over because that has happened.
So you know, this is a line that I think we tread in law enforcement fire and EMS because
we have seen the horrors that this selfishness causes.
And you know, it's so hard to bite your tongue and not just tell someone, hey, you know,
don't do that.
I get the whole burnout mental health thing, but I think equally and opposite, we're one
of the very few professions that have seen the horrors that happen when people drive
like that.
And it makes a lot of us really fucking angry.
Yeah.
And I think it goes back to like that whole perspective, like we have that perspective,
they don't have that perspective.
You know, I can vividly remember like every scene I've ever been to with a child either
injured or drowned or what I've flown over and watched a fire rescue pull a kid out of
a lake that I knew he was there, you know, that kind of stuff.
And then like same thing, like a drunk driver on the side of the road, he's completely fine.
Meanwhile, there's a family of three and only one survived.
And you're just like, how can you possibly be okay with yourself as a person?
And you know what it took to get there and you see the end result.
And you see other people kind of starting on that line where you know what the end result
could possibly be and you want to interject, you want to stop it prior to and you know,
you go to shake them and you say, hey, stop, don't do that.
And you know, they don't have the perspective of the end result that you do.
And it's probably one of the most frustrating things you can do as a person is know what
the end result could be and you see how it starts and try and relay that to the person
who is going to go down that same path.
And it's just, it can be infuriating.
Those movies and shows where someone's a psychic and they put their hands on the other person
and they transfer what they've seen to them.
I wish first responders could do that.
And it's funny, I just finished writing a book the very end of last year and my burning
goal is to make it into a TV show because to me, that's the same thing.
If you can actually tell in this case, it's a firefighter paramedic is the main character,
but you can show these scenes and you can see the events that led up to that and how
they are preventable.
Maybe just maybe it will save a few lives.
You know, people will watch that and remember that as they're about to drive like an asshole
and go, oh, wait a second.
I don't want to be the man on the curb because you know, that's that to me is the only way
you can really do that is through the TV screen.
But you don't have those cautionary tales on television.
You know, my profession is really represented by a bunch of models that run around and rescue
everyone.
That's the only TV show that the fire service on there.
So I feel like, you know, there's a need for a powerful first responder story or firefighter
story that actually shows society what we see and how it is preventable if you just,
you know, don't act a certain way and reflect on your own mental health journey.
But yeah, I mean, just to kind of smooth the edges on the world that we see just to make
it fit Hollywood is bullshit.
I think that the world needs to see what a first responder actually sees and they would
be shocked and good.
You know, it'd be a kind of unofficial PSA of don't be an asshole.
Yeah, I think it when I was a kid, rescue 911 was like a still show.
That was still a show and that was kind of like that.
Like it was like it was reenactment, but it was kind of raw and still the 90s, right?
Like not phenomenal acting anyway.
But but it was kind of like that.
And like sometimes people died and like you were like, oh, wow, that was that was interesting.
Like hey, don't jump into a frozen lake to try and save somebody because neither of you
are going to make it type deal.
Not that we have a problem in Florida, but you know, that was that kind of stuff like
those cautionary tales of, hey, if you do this, you know, this is possibly where this
ends.
I think that's probably like the biggest issue with communication in general as being a person
is like you can't just transfer to somebody else.
You know, you're trying to convey it in ways that they'll understand or the ways that they'll
want to accept the information.
It's not always possible, which is always frustrating.
Absolutely.
Well, what kind of lead me through how you ended up flying for law enforcement and then
what were the roles that you held in that in the civilian capacity on the non-military
side?
Yeah.
So I went straight into law enforcement aviation.
I got hired by an agency directly to do that.
I had been back for maybe six months and I just wasn't happy on the road anymore.
I wanted to, I really wanted to pursue aviation full time.
I knew these jobs were out here, but they were like kind of unicorn jobs at the time
flying for law enforcement.
And I just got lucky, right place, right time.
And I was able to get in with an agency that was flying kind of older aircraft.
So I was able to build a lot of time and develop myself as a pilot.
I think that people are very, whether we like to believe it or not, we're very malleable
and we can adapt to our situations.
And like Mark, especially as a pilot, you find that your envelope is your envelope until
you've received some sort of training or you've had some sort of experience in that envelope.
Doesn't necessarily shift, but it does kind of bend a little bit.
And you understand like, Hey, I can operate the aircraft at limitations and also find
my limitations that I previously perceived as the stopgap to now it's actually, actually
further than that.
And I was, it was good because I was still in the military.
So I was doing both and each job kind of helped me become better at the other.
Yeah, sorry.
Yeah, I can hear you.
Yeah.
So each like doing each job helped me be better at the other one.
So like when I was flying for the military, I would throw in techniques that I was learning
at the, you know, flying for law enforcement.
And then when I was flying for law enforcement, obviously, there's a lot of military techniques
come in, you know, it's law enforcement side flying for government, local government, you
know, you're trying to do a lot more with a lot less, you know, you don't have unlimited
spending power of the United States government.
So you know, developing programs that would fit that would work with the agencies, you
know, that was, that was kind of what I fell into.
And I really enjoyed it, kind of developing standard operating procedures, tactical TTPs
and working into the fold like all the other guys, like bringing in SWAT, bringing in canine,
you know, working with whoever didn't matter.
I always, I always perceived aviation as a support or support entity.
So you know, what you can do with 15 deputies on the ground or 15 officers on the ground,
you can do with five in a helicopter, you know, you can hold the perimeter, you can
be effective at a search, you can do all that stuff, you can put guys on rooftops, you can
do all kinds of things that previously would take a lot of manpower.
So taking the assets and the resources that an agency has, and just being able to kind
of build on those, that's, that was always something that really appealed to me.
I really enjoyed it.
And when I started flying, you know, I was just trying to affect as much good as I could
with the vocation that I chose to pursue.
And it just just worked out, you know, you really found out, I found out that I not only
loved what I did, but I was I was pretty good at it.
And that was that was helpful.
Will you mentioned earlier about pursuing a bike and turning your lights off with the
technology that we have now?
How effective is it to keep tracks of a fleeing suspect so that the people on the ground are
not endangering other drivers, especially obviously pursuing as you touched on earlier,
someone that maybe had quite a minor charge relative to the potential danger chasing them
would actually create?
I mean, it's all up to the liability that, you know, whoever you're working for is going
to basically be pressured with.
So like, for a while, it was, hey, if the helicopter's overhead and the guy flees, then
the guy's going to say, well, I ran because the helicopter was there.
So I kept running.
So when I waffle, you know, the family walking through the crosswalk, oh, that was because
I went through, you know, this I was being chased by the helicopter.
And then it's like the state attorney's office, you know, they're the ones who would have
to say like, yes or no, or, you know, hey, that's a good practice.
You can continue doing that.
And for a while, it wasn't.
It was the helicopter was, you know, part of the problem.
So you turn around.
And since then, we've developed a lot of surveillance techniques to where usually we can do stuff
and nobody even knows we're there.
You know, with technology with cameras now, we can be at such a high altitude.
We can be, you know, when you work with the FAA, you can get lights out waivers, ADSB
out waivers.
So you're untrackable, you're not visible.
And then you have cameras that are unreal.
And you know, you can see everything.
And couple that with technology, you know, being able to track sources and heat sources.
It's just nowadays it's much better than when I first started.
Yeah.
I mean, just from again, a non-military, excuse me, long non-law enforcement lens, it just
makes more sense.
I mean, back in the day when chasing in a car was the only option you had to make sure
you kept tracks on that person, it made perfect sense.
And again, if someone is, you know, just walked into a kindergarten with a knife and yeah,
that's your pursuit.
I mean, who knows where they're going to go next.
And that that's a justified chase.
But you know, you sadly hear about some of these wrecks that kill police officers or
civilians or both.
And it was because someone tried to cash a false check or something that really, if you
reverse engineer it, was that worth chasing them through the town or a city?
So hearing about the technology getting better and better, therefore making the community
safer while you're still trying to pursue this person, that is incredible because it
just makes perfect sense.
You know, if you can track them electronically and all these people don't need to, you know,
race down, down roads and endanger people, then you know, that's a beautiful thing as
far as technology in the future of policing.
Yeah.
And then when you couple the technology with the coordination between ground units and
like specialty ground units on marks, you can follow and follow and follow and they
get to an advantageous position where they can make contact without there being, you
know, a very minimal likelihood of them trying to run or they're just so caught off guard
that they don't have a choice.
Like they're like, oh, well, never mind.
I'm caught.
You know, they get out wherever and they get out of their car and then bam, there's, you
know, six people there who are ready to arrest them.
They're like, oh man, and that's all coordinated over the radio and through aircraft and unmarked
cars and it really is turning into a very successful procedure and tactic that we use.
So it's good development.
Absolutely.
It's a bit of a tangent.
When I first got into, you know, fire and EMS, I started hearing about these pilots
that were on the helicopter side were Vietnam vets.
And I'm sure, I don't know if that's still the case now because we're talking about 20
years ago, but I heard some pretty crazy stories about some of the maneuvers some of these
non era pilots were doing on, you know, Medevac civilian Medevac flights.
So what are some of the Laura, have you even had experience with some of these incredible
veterans of Vietnam?
I have.
I actually fly on the side with a guy who did two tours and attack you ease and he's
just a corporate pilot now he flies, but I, it doesn't, I don't make a lot of money when
I fly with him or any, it's just fun.
It's just like, it's just a good time.
Like you get in a helicopter with a guy and he's telling you stories and you're like,
this is unreal.
Like though that portion of history that will probably never really be told, you know, you're
learning word of mouth from somebody who lived it.
And not to mention he's also just like one of my favorite human beings.
You know, he's like from New York, he's NYPD guy and he just tells you like it is every
time and tells complete strangers like it is every time, which is sometimes even more
enjoyable to watch.
It's you know, like that kind of stuff though.
One guy was still, he was a Vietnam that when I first got into the guard and you know, you
would watch him like, it wasn't even tactics really.
It was like balancing blades on a helicopter.
Like he could just look at it and be like, oh, this is what you need and then like move
on.
And you're just like, what?
Like how did he do that?
That was crazy.
You know, what would take five guys and a bunch of light guns and you know, they can,
he can just do like just by looking.
He's like, oh, you add a little weight to this one, you're good.
So I think those guys, they were forced to learn so much so quickly in a hostile environment
that it was either like, hey, you either, you're either going to perform or you're not.
And you know, people performed like that was it.
People stepped up and you could learn to do things.
And yeah, there's a great book called Chicken Hawk.
And in the beginning of it, most Army pilots have read it, but in the beginning it talks
about like the training they did prior to, and you know, they were flying like down railroad
lines, you know, in Hueys and that's where they learned how to fly low level.
And then they got in country and then they flew low level even lower than that.
And a lot of that transitions through the lessons.
Like my instructor, when I was in Hawks, you know, when we were doing our low level stuff,
like I put the belly of a Hawk in a fire break in between pine trees and he was like, fly
the line.
And like the rotors are on top of the pines, but my belly is like in the fire break, he's
like, fly the line.
And I was like, this is incredible.
And he's like, this is how you have to fly if somebody's trying to kill you.
And I was like, oh, okay, cool.
That makes sense.
And you know, that's always kind of stuck with me.
Like, terrain masking and using what you have around you to hide your line of sight from
your enemy or from the target you're trying to hit.
So the guys in the helicopter have the highest probability of surprising the bad guy.
That's what you need.
That's the only way to do it.
Otherwise, you're putting everything at risk.
And you know, to do that really well, to do it safely and manage that risk prior to you
actually get to the X, that's important.
So I think those lessons have been passed down enough to where they may not be the same
lesson but we get the gist of it.
Absolutely.
It's really sad about that generation because we know now that that transition home, that
homecoming that especially if you leave the military, that loss of tribe and purpose can
be jarring.
But if you are somewhat received well, whether it's in a World War Two, whether it's, you
know, the war on terror, that's going to dampen it a little bit.
Hopefully you're coming back to a warm welcome and your country is proud of you.
But you hear, I mean, I had so many people from Vietnam, Rich Rice, who was one of the
founding members of Delta.
Vietnam was his first deployment.
Mogadishu was his last.
It's a pretty significant career.
Major James-
Oh yeah, I've met Rich.
Oh, have you?
Yeah.
One of my friends.
He's from Go-Ruck, right?
Yes.
Yep, exactly.
Yeah, yeah.
Yeah, I met him at their headquarters in Jacksonville.
Yeah.
He's such a humble guy.
I mean, what he's done, you know, is just unbelievable.
But then he gets out the military and then works on getting a lot of the special forces
courses that they have to take, getting college credits for them so that these men can get
degrees and transition out and forge another career.
So he was helping even after he did years and years and years of courageous service.
But you hear about their homecoming and it was terrible.
They were spat on.
Major Capers was wounded and kind of brought home and was on the tarmac waiting for the
next vehicle.
And someone came and pissed on him.
This is a hero in Vietnam.
And so that's a generation we need to take care of because they didn't have that ticker
tape parade when they came back.
So it's an incredible band of men and women and the crazy thing is a lot of them were
forced.
They were drafted.
They didn't sign up.
And yet they were still called baby killers when they came back.
So yeah, I mean, that's a very unique war.
And then the other one is the Korean War, which basically is barely acknowledged, which
that has to hurt as well for a lot of Korean veterans.
Yeah.
My wife's grandfather, he actually volunteered for World War II and he was like 15 turning
16.
And then he ended up doing merchant marine for that and then he was in Korea.
And before he passed away, he would tell a couple stories here and there.
We went and saw Fury together, which I don't know if that was a great idea or not, but
he wanted to go and the whole time he's like, oh, I used to shoot those.
And I can't use like what?
It's like so cool to hear those stories from those guys, but obviously it's such a horrible.
I mean, I think it's tough for especially like the G-Water era to even comprehend like
what that kind of warfare was like.
You know, you hear the stories and you're still like, what?
It's just so hard to think about, you know, that much just kind of just so hard fighting
all the time.
It's crazy.
It's crazy to think about.
When people from GWAP reflect and they start pointing out that, hey, they didn't have GPS.
They didn't have these amazing radio communications or satellites or any of this stuff.
They were literally like parachuting into a place with a paper map and that was it.
So when you put that into perspective, that you're dropped into Belgium or wherever it
is and you've just got to make your way through and try not to get shot by the hundreds of
thousands of Nazis that are surrounding you.
I mean, it's just, it's insane when you think about the heroism.
Yeah.
I mean, from a helicopter side, like in Tommy Franks' book, General Tom Franks, he talks
about being a forward air observer.
So he's listening in one ear to the call for fire radio and then he's listening to the
other ear with like the air to air radios and he's like juggling back and forth and
he was like, how?
How'd you fight like that?
Like that's for us, like we have so many different radios.
We just move the stack around and we're like, all right, you listen to this, you listen
to that and you can focus like we have it so much easier.
And these guys were successful in fighting like that.
And it's just, I don't know, it's really interesting to think about and process and put things
in perspective.
Absolutely.
Well, going back to you finding yourself kind of spinning out with the motorcycle after
you catch up with him and you realize that you kind of burned out at that point.
What are some of the tools you start leaning into to get yourself back to where you want
to be?
Order and God are two of my go-tos, not necessarily in that order, but just to answer your question.
So I am related to some Catholic, I was born and raised that way and I've seen a lot of
things in my life that have just kind of solidified my faith.
And I lost it a little bit for maybe a couple of years and it was just around that time,
like you trying to justify like how God could take good men and women in war.
And it took me a while, talking to priests to really kind of understand like, hey, this
is my viewpoint, my viewpoint is like this world's a medium and there is definitely
evil forces at play and those evil forces do have a say, just like every other enemy
does.
And it's our job as Christians to basically be able to rise above those and to fight those
and to lean on God and lean into God.
And the other is the ocean and just water in general.
To me, water is just such a calming, healing force in my life.
I love fishing, diving, I like being immersed in it, I like looking at it, it doesn't really
matter what I'm doing as long as I'm around it.
Running water, the ocean, a lake, I don't care.
I've done everything from whitewater kayaking to surfing to free diving to spearfishing
to you know, sitting on a lake in a canoe with a fishing rod.
So I just love everything about it.
It's always been something that just calms me and centers my chi.
And then about a year after I got back, so my wife and I went to high school together
and we didn't date, we were just friends.
She was like the popular girl in school and I was probably not the popular guy in school,
but I definitely wasn't too interested in like school stuff.
You know, I just kind of did my stuff and went on with my day.
But after I got back, a year after she was in Jacksonville and that's where my unit was
and I called her and was like, hey, you know, what are you doing?
You want to just stay high basically.
We kind of had like a little fling in college a little bit but nothing too crazy.
And then once we started dating and we started hanging out and I started feeling somebody
care for me again and it was like just me as I was.
You know, I wasn't perfect by any means and I was still kind of going through the trail
end of the war stuff and not dealing with you know, maybe somebody not liking me for
you know, my ex you know, basically discarded me for somebody else which is a tough thing
to go through.
Having someone care about you just for you being you was that was like extremely powerful
to experience and you know, she was just so awesome.
I mean, she still is awesome obviously.
You know, it was a really powerful experience to go through and that helped immensely.
I don't really know if she knows that I think about it that way but I do.
You know, it's like you know, to me, God puts things in your life right when you need it
and sometimes he lets you linger for a little bit and kind of fight it out so that you can
appreciate it more and in my opinion, that's what he did.
That's kind of where I feel that whole scenario when you know, I had to go through a lot to
reconnect with her and you know, now we have three beautiful little girls and you know,
my life is just it's amazing to see like how your life can develop and that was all because
of that trajectory.
Yeah, I can relate that same thing happened to me and at the time obviously it doesn't
feel like a you know, a very good thing when you're a single parent and you know, did everything
you could to serve people and then you know, you kind of that happens you're stabbed in
the back as it were and then I met my wife now and it was the same exact thing.
You know, that wouldn't have happened without my previous marriage.
You know, I wouldn't have had my son without my previous marriage so I've got no regrets
at all but this 2.0 version you know, it's phenomenal and I do feel seen and loved and
heard and all the things that I think a lot of us you know, struggle with in the first
marriage.
So yeah, I mean, it's hard to see oh, this is probably going to be good one day when
you're deep in it but it's beautiful to reflect back and look around where you are now and
go okay, you know, making it through that is what created this and this is really what
I call resilience you know, this is that post-traumatic growth.
Yeah, absolutely.
Yeah, I think you know, it's funny I was saying that I was talking to my brother after you
know, after I got back and I was like, I don't understand like what did I like, what could
I have possibly done?
He was like, dude, what are you doing?
It's nothing to do with you.
Like you're solid.
It's like this will be fine and man was he right.
So it's yeah, I mean, after that year, you know, my wife and I, we got married in 14
and then she moved down to Stewart.
I was already living here anyway and so she kind of like just double-dutched right into
the house and you know, we had bought a house when we were engaged and that was it man.
We just took off from there and we had our first daughter in 2016 and I deployed three
months later for another year back to Iraq and that was tough but we had like FaceTime
which is super helpful and it was I think that going to war the first time and then
going back is super helpful when it comes to your perspective and having like four years
in between.
I know a lot of guys didn't get that.
You know, they were doing back to back to back and that's tough to like decompress,
compartmentalize everything and like really understand who you are and like how you're
going to react because my return at the second one was way better.
I mean night and day and my mindset throughout the entire tour was totally different.
I think a lot of that had to do with being a dad as well and like understanding like
okay, you know, it's not as simple as like oh, this is going to happen like life is crazy
and things happen and you know, you just have to be as prepared as possible and roll with
the punches and don't go into it with a bad mentality, go into it with a good mentality
and try and take as much good as you can out of every experience and once I adopted that
kind of mindset, it made everything much easier as far as you know, being away and understanding
the risks that we were taking every day, just being in country and knowing that bad guys
were around but it also wasn't as anywhere near as combat oriented.
You know, there were definitely a lot of fighting going on but it was a lot less for me.
You know, very rarely we'd even see you know, guys on the ground taking pot shots at the
aircraft at night.
It wasn't even that.
And then did you go into the Air Force after that?
Have I got that right?
Yeah, so I got back and my wife and I, I changed law enforcement agencies again and then to
fly for another agency and then I got back and I switched over to the Air Force, Flying
Combat Rescue with them.
So my wife and I were sitting there and I was talking and I was like, listen, if we
go again, one, I'll be like a staff guy, which I don't really want to be in the Army because
I'd make major and then that kind of like puts you into a point where you don't really
fly that often and then two, it's like it's big Army.
Like you're there, you don't really get to pick your teammates.
It's kind of like who you get, it's who you get, it's who you fly with and I was at the
point where I was like kind of bringing up a lot of junior officers and I was like training
them on how to fly in combat because a lot of them hadn't before.
And then I just got to the point where I was like, hey, if I come back again, I want it
to be with an elite group.
Like I want to be with top-notch pilots.
I still want to be flying.
I don't want to revert to be a warrant officer.
I just felt like I had worked so hard and I really wanted to pursue a career where I could
do both, like have my cake and eat it too type deal.
And then the Air Force, our combat rescue tours are like three and a half months instead
of a year, which was also very helpful to make that decision.
And my Air Force squadron is way closer.
It's like an hour and a half instead of four hour drive.
So it's easier to manage.
But it was humbling when I first got there.
Combat rescue is a very elite group and just to get in took over a year.
And then when I got there, I mean, I had been flying for a long time and these guys are
good.
They are very good pilots and their tactics are very methodical, very well thought out.
So it was like starting all over again.
I was studying hard.
I still do study hard, just going up there for a flight on the weekend.
It's a lot to coordinate, manage.
Every mission is very complex, at least in the planning side.
You're constantly planning for like worst case scenario.
Unlucky jets, for whatever reason the guy punches out and you go behind him and he wants
to go pick him up.
How you're going to fight into the country, how you're going to fight out, who's going
to be covering you.
Who's everything from like, hey, I got AT-10s covering me to I've got SEED above, taking
out SAMs, whether that's F-18s, F-22s, where are my refuelers at?
It's just like the whole battle space in your cockpit and you're like riding it on Sharpies
on your window and you're like, oh my gosh, this is a lot.
Just trying to keep track of everything.
So it's a totally different way to fight.
And man, you fall in love with it quick.
It's so complex and you get done and you do it well for the first time and you're like,
man, that's so addicting.
And it's funny, all the rescue guys, I don't know a single rescue guy is like, oh, I'm
getting out of rescue, I'm going to go do something else.
Everyone's like, man, this is awesome.
So yeah, I think I'll probably do that for a little while longer.
But I deployed with them in 2022, the day after Christmas, and then came back in April
of 23.
23, 24.
Yeah, 23.
And then, yeah, that was a fun, I mean, as far as deployments go, I mean, we were super
active, mostly in Jordan, Iraq, Syria area.
So kind of the same region I've always been very comfortable with.
And kind of doing the same mission set, except with that thought process of going behind
enemy lines to go get people who really needed it, like you're their last option, is a lot.
And then working with tier one groups to kind of cover them in case they get into a bad
spot and managing all that, like all the players in town who could potentially need your help,
being prepared as far as equipment and personnel and being able to make those moves, coordinating
fuel in between.
I mean, like that's kind of the whole gig.
And doing that operationally, it was very rewarding.
Just super powerful type of experience.
You're looking at the whole battle space, you're like, all right, if this happens, I'm
going to have to go here.
But at the same time, this could happen.
So I need to be able to flex.
And it's just cool.
It's a different, cool animal.
Were you working with the PJs?
Yeah.
So we fly with PJs on board.
That's kind of like, that's our go-to team.
Able to flex to others, but typically, we're always co-located with PJs.
I've said this on a few times, doesn't mean I ever would have qualified to be one.
But if I did have to test for a special operations, special forces group, that to me would be
the one.
Because if you look at any of them that replicate fire and EMS together, I mean, that's the
team.
So watching some of the documentaries and what they do, the level of medicine, and again,
having to do that under assault from an enemy or just the medicine actually happening in
the back of the helicopter itself, that is a phenomenal, phenomenal team between the
pilots like you and the PJs in the back.
And then the rope rescue and all the other skills that they have to be a master of, it
really does kind of mirror on the civilian side, the fire and EMS.
Yeah.
It's super transferable to what I do now.
Because you really are, you're rolling in tactics.
Because they have operator level tactics coupled with medicine.
And you're just like, yeah, this is a great combo.
And I agree with you wholeheartedly.
To me, it's a really cool thing to see those guys in action and watch them zero in on the
tasks they have at hand and be able to move from like, okay, threats, we're off threat,
now we're on the medicine.
And then they go into medicine, they're like, right, now I need to extract this guy.
And then, okay, how am I going to get him out?
And then watching them go through their phases is really impressive.
And in the meantime, they're like, oh, by the way, I can also jump in with a barrel
between my legs if I need to.
And then you guys can swoop in and get us later.
And you're just like, what?
It's really cool.
And I don't know, you think about how difficult it is to get into some of these places.
I know a lot of people are like, wow, that's so wild.
It's like, I'm just like a normal dude who just happened to ask to say, hey, can I join?
And they're like, well, I guess.
And you make it and you're like, that is awesome.
And having those opportunities afforded to you is definitely a blessing in my life.
You spoke about go-rock.
Did you ever cross paths with Roger Sparks?
He's kind of a legend in the PJ world.
I have not.
I've only done, I did one go-rock tough.
When I got back to my second tour, that was like my, which is weird to say, but that was
like my, my present to myself was do a go-rock tough, which sounds ridiculous to do.
But it was a lot of fun.
But then I was actually flying with that other guy, the guy who worked for, who was in Vietnam
and we were up in Jacksonville and I was like, we had three hours and I was like, oh, go
rockets here.
Let's go to their headquarters.
And that's when we got to see the whole operation and it was a lot of fun.
It was good.
And it was really cool to see those two guys talk about Vietnam together because they were
kind of in the same area.
Like they were obviously, you know, he was a pilot and one of the special forces, but
to listen to them like talk about, oh yeah, no, I know.
Yeah, I know.
I know exactly where that was.
And you're just like, whoa.
You sit back.
You're like, this is amazing.
I wish I had a camera of this like video.
This it was really cool.
Yeah.
So this is the beautiful thing about podcasts is you get to, you know, in some cases it's
me like in on this show asking, for example, rich and not just the military stuff, like,
you know, why were we in Vietnam and him talking about, well, if you look at it trades wise,
this is why, you know, Saigon or some of these other areas were so valuable.
And you're like, ah, you know, so you, again, you see this kind of human perspective and
then you also hear about, you know, what it's like to being hunted by the Vietcong as you're
walking around jungles that you're not supposed to be in.
And, you know, you just can't imagine what again, you know, generationally what that
was like.
But then when, when you get a couple of people on like one time, I forget what had just happened.
Maybe it was the Afghanistan withdrawal.
I sat down with rich Jason and Emily McCarthy and in, and I basically asked him about all
the things because Emily was CIA.
Jason was a green beret, riches, you know, Delta.
And again, that room full of people, their thoughts, you know, and all the different
lenses that they have versus fucking Fox and CNN, where you just get nothing but, you know,
eight assholes arguing with each other.
You can actually listen to real human beings with boots on the ground and just listen,
you know, shut up and listen from these people's perspective.
And it was fascinating.
So I love the fact that now this medium, you can be in, you know, Durban, South Africa
right now and listen to this conversation, for example, and hear what it's like, you
know, to be an American helicopter pilot in the law enforcement and the military world.
So yeah, these, these, uh, these conversations that we was talking about before I hit record,
I mean, they're indelible, you know, they're, they're, uh, um, unlimited resource for someone
to really listen about, you know, what was it like so that you can make your own, you
know, not even opinion.
You can hear from boots on the ground rather than some, you know, dickhead in a blue or
red tie giving you their opinion on something.
Yeah.
Who usually has less perspective than anyone else, but they're, they sound good in a sound
bite.
So yeah, it's, it's, it's frustrating that pepper is definitely frustrating, but you
know, being able to do like a fly on the wall for those types of conversations is, is pretty,
pretty wild.
Absolutely.
Well, one more area before we round off, talk to me about HeloTac.
HeloTac was a company and I was kind of basically, I was giving instruction and giving out products
kind of on the fly and it got to the point where people were asking for kind of a more
structured type of curriculum.
And I had the unique perspective of doing military and police flying and they complement
each other very well.
And the way that it works is a lot of agencies, they have either aircraft or they have tactics
that are one or the other.
They either have guys who are like military guys and you know, they might be trained in
hoist, fast rope, tactical insertion extraction, but they're not really trained in law enforcement
ops or they have guys who are just trained in law enforcement ops and they don't have
a tactical background.
So what I was seeing in the industry was, you know, one or two guys would be really
good at one thing and typically that would either be like a rescue type of scenario or
they'd be really good at like aerial platform operations, you're shooting out of the helicopter,
you know, like Texas DPS is great at that kind of stuff, you know, ARS is great at hoists.
But putting it all together and like understanding how the whole mission will flow is not anything
that anyone tackles.
So it's like, hey, okay, we get the mission.
I'm going to lower somebody from the helicopter, I'm going to pick them up and I'm going to
bring it back to the helicopter.
Cool, got that.
But how do I do that?
How do I get there?
Like, well, the mission drops and then this is kind of where the whole Air Force and Army
thing kind of ties in because that's what we would get.
You would just get a mission and they would say like, hey, I need to do this.
I don't care how you do it, this is what we need to do, this is the end result that we're
looking for.
So then at Helo-Tac, that's kind of what we do is we specialize like, hey, this is how
you get from point A to point B. So SWAT comes to you and they say, hey, we need to get on
this rooftop right now.
How do you do it?
You know, how do you pre-stage your equipment?
What are your SOPs?
What are your minimums?
What is your operating envelope?
What's your, you know, what weight do you need to be at to do an OG hover and approach?
Those are all things that like you need to know.
Instead of like just going out and doing a bunch of reps and calling it good and saying
like, hey, guess what?
You're trained in hoist.
You're trained in fast rope.
Good job.
We try to really give, you know, the clients and really the agencies that we work with
the tools to be successful and to be able to execute those missions precisely and do
it every time.
And not to say that they wouldn't be able to figure that out eventually, but like we're
just a fast track.
And really it's me who already has two full-time jobs.
And then, you know, I, because of the amazing people that I get to work with, you know,
I've tagged two guys to come in as instructors.
One was a tier one PJ who turned pilot.
And then the other was a coast guard pilot who turned Air Force pilot.
And so we have like this very unique perspective of doing things operationally, learning how
to dynamically game plan, like in the helicopter, which it has to include your SWAT guys, your
canine operators or your canine handlers.
It has to include all those people because they're going to the target.
And the direction that you even make your approach, the way that you coordinate with
ground forces as they start making their approach, that's all stuff you have to account for.
But nobody trains you to do that.
They just train you to slide a rope from 20 feet and they go, hey, good job.
You're fast rope called, which is, it's like such a small piece of the puzzle.
Like yeah, you have to do that, but like that's easy.
That's an afternoon of just getting race current, but like coordinating the timing that it takes.
At what minutes do you start going from two connection points to one?
At what minute mark do you start putting your gloves on?
At what minute mark do you start opening doors and prepping gear?
That's all stuff that people don't teach and there really is no way to do it without making
mistakes.
I don't want my fellow aviators to make mistakes if I've already made them.
I want to be able to pass those along prior to, so that they can be effective and that
way we minimize the chances of them having an issue and we maximize their success on
target.
That comes back into making sure that they get home to their families okay.
If they can fast rope safer, if they can execute a hoist safer, if they can capture the bad
guy and manage their risk while doing it, that's what I want.
That's my goal.
My goal isn't, this is like a part-time gig and it's basically just my way of trying to
give back to the community.
It's fun to see guys progress quickly in a course and then it click.
Once it clicks and it's like oh wait, I really have to, so I am planning this but now I need
to plan like the exact approach that I do.
I need to plan where the ropes are.
I've reconfigured the back of so many different helicopters to try and maximize the effectiveness
and just the ability for like additional operators to slide to the door to get to a good position
so that they can fast rope.
I've worked at so many times like I don't want you to have to do that.
I just want to be able to show you that real fast and be like hey, this is the best way
I've got so far and by all means if you find a better one, please tell me because I want
to spread that around.
I want law enforcement pilots and aviation units and SWAT operators to be able to like
just work together and solve these problems because these are all problems that are they're
coming.
They're coming fast and furious and I mean with the threats that there are these days,
we have to be prepared.
It's not if, it's when and everyone should be preparing for the worst case scenario so
that when the minuscule threat hits, you got it.
Like you've already practiced, you've already done mock missions, you've already you know
slid in the rope a hundred times.
You know, you've decaled into a zone already.
You know kind of what you're doing so you're not trying to figure this out on a fly and
that's really the main goal.
When I think about some of the stories I've heard, I think this happened in Mogadishu
if I've got my memory right but you hear a lot of you know injuries and even fatalities
on the fast rope and certain insertions.
When you've obviously I'm assuming studied some of these as you learn about that technique
in the first place, what are some of the common denominators of mistakes made during fast
roping by some of our military?
I think that some of the, one of the biggest mistakes that's made is altitude.
So like I personally believe that a fast rope should be used as a handhold to get to the
ground and that's only because I can't put skids down for whatever reason.
So I will go as low as humanly possible as long as I can affect my egress.
Like I don't go so static over like let's say you're going to a rooftop and like you
get too low over the rooftop and now to get out, I need to pull a bunch of power, climb
and kind of like show myself to whatever threat could possibly be there.
I don't want to do that but I do want to get as low as humanly possible so that we can
fast rope down and the guys have a minimal time on the rope.
You know, the higher you go, it looks cool and everyone's like oh, this is look how cool
we did.
We did a 40-foot fast rope.
We did a 60-foot fast.
That's crazy.
60-foot fast rope is so long.
That's a lot of time on the rope for something to go bad.
You know, and I've seen it.
I've already learned it the hard way.
You know, we had a guy get on one time and he had speed laces on and you know, that snagged
the rope and nobody you know, everyone kind of just figured like hey, that wasn't a thing.
Well, it is a thing.
Thank God he was just a monster and held his whole body weight with his upper body but
you know, ripped his legs right off the rope and that was like a probably good 35-foot
fast rope.
You know, if he would have fallen, he could be dead and you know, it is a lot of risk.
Law enforcement too is much different too.
Everyone thinks like oh, the military does it.
Law enforcement should be able to do it.
We have a lot more liability when it comes to you know, flying law enforcement.
It's a local government.
You have liability for your people.
You have liability for the public, liability for property, all things that aren't necessarily
your one of your key you know, factors when you're doing the military.
So taking those into account and planning accordingly for those, that's a huge part
of it too.
So what about sleep regulations?
Something I talk about on here so much.
This poor dead horse has been flogged for eight years now but is the sleep deprivation and
the impact on our first responders but these are people in vehicles, you know, fire engines
and cruisers and things.
When it comes to aviation, what are the parameters that you have to operate around sleep regulations?
So we're not like a part 135 is like what you would say like a medical operator.
We don't do that.
So we're actually like public use.
So we don't have rules.
So we have to establish our own rules.
So we use the same rules.
So basically everyone has to get eight hours between each shift and then we go on top of
that and we ensure that they have 10 because we don't want them to go.
We want them to have travel time to and from.
But at the end of the day, like, you know, I can't make somebody sleep when they go home
as much as I would love to.
But you know, we treat people like they're adults and we say, hey, if we're going to
trust you to go fly this helicopter, I trust you to get a good night's sleep.
That being said, if somebody isn't well-rested, that can be a pretty significant issue.
So we do have like at my agency, we have bunk rooms.
It's like as close as you can be to being a firefighter as you can to being a cop.
So they're able to rest, but sometimes it doesn't work out.
So it goes off flight time.
They only work 12-hour shifts.
So if they get to five hours of flight time, they call one of the supervisors, either me
or one of the other supervisors, and then we work on getting another shift in.
That does happen.
It can be pretty busy.
So it's really about flight time.
And since all the shifts are 12 hours, technically if something extends, you can be there for
16.
But sleep is a constant issue.
I mean, just getting rest in general.
You know, alternating between night shifts can be really problematic, especially for
people with families.
And it's just a constant issue.
And unfortunately, there's no real good way to maximize it unless you put people on fixed
shifts.
And then that's problematic because it can really hurt the morale of the unit if somebody's
just on a fixed shift and you got little kids and you're missing out on so much stuff.
At what point does that become more problematic?
It's such a delicate balancing act.
How many hours a week do you work as a pilot, like fixed within the law enforcement side?
Like actually flying?
No, just on paper, what is your hourly number of hours worked?
Oh, it fluctuates.
So I'll work either five 12-hour shifts or two 12-hour shifts in a week.
So I guess at the end, I think at the end of the pay period, it's like 160, I should
know this, but I don't.
It's like 163 hours or something like that, I want to say.
So if you got at the end of a pay period.
Okay.
So yeah, so six 12s and then two 12s, that would average out at what?
It's not four, is it three and a half?
I think if I got that right.
So you're around a 40-ish hour work week on paper if you break it down.
Yeah, it's really close to that.
Okay.
The reason I ask is just again, fire is 56, 80 hours when they're forced for another shift.
So it's always good to learn about all these other high stress positions where lives are
also at stake, just so you can kind of paint the picture of how far away from it we are
in the fire service.
Yeah, I think getting that good downtime and being able to reset in between shifts is really
important.
I try and I mean, we occur a lot of overtime outside of just flying.
There's a lot of like, dignitary protection stuff where guys can hop on and make extra
money but that can be problematic.
So yeah, I think enjoying your downtime and being able to actually relax and kind of reset,
recenter and then come back in and focus is very important.
Absolutely.
Well, Palm Beach County just went to 2472.
So I'm really excited for them.
I think it's going to take, I think it's two or three years that they're rolling it out,
but that's going to give their firefighters another 24 hours between those shifts for
exactly what you said, more rest and recovery.
Are they hiring?
The funny thing is your comment is exactly what I talk about all the time because the
antidote of the recruitment crisis is fixing the things that are dissuading our young people
from going.
So yeah, absolutely.
A 42 hour work week where you barely see any mandatory overtime is so much more appealing
than a 56 turned 80 hour work week.
So your joke is actually spot on because this is what some of these agencies are seeing.
When they've gone to it, they're like, oh my God, this is amazing and everyone's testing
with us now.
So it's just a hard sell to get the naysayers to realize.
But when a county as big as Palm goes to it, Palm Beach, I think that's going to be a real
kind of persuader because they can just downplay some of the small cities that have gone through.
Well, there are only four stations, but Palm Beach County and Pasco County up by Tampa,
that's kind of irrefutable now.
If they can make it work, then your agency can make it work.
Yeah, that's pretty impressive.
Wow.
Yeah.
Yeah, I think that's always going to be just a troubling thing for law enforcement specifically.
It's different too, especially a big county like Palm Beach, they've got to be super busy.
They're moving and shaking the whole time.
You need that extra time off.
So yeah.
Absolutely.
All right.
Well, I want to go to some closing questions so I can be mindful of your time and let you
get back to your family and your German Shepherd.
The 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?
Books that I recommend.
So I actually, I'm kind of like a little bit of a prepper, like not a lot, but a little
bit and there's a book series by A-American called Going Home and it's based in Florida.
It's about like an EMP attack on the United States, but it's based in Florida.
So a lot of the places that he goes and travels to and deals with, it's kind of rooted in
my backyard and like I'm very familiar with all these places.
And so it's really fun to like hear and talk about it.
And then, you know, obviously I've been to Sear.
I try and instill in my kids, you know, how to survive, how to make fire, how to treat,
you know, first aid, how to identify things that can hurt them.
So in this book, it's a lot of that.
It's like a lot of, you know, the tricks of the trade, things about old Florida.
It's got some historical stuff.
That's part of my go-to book.
I like that a lot.
And then I really like history.
I'll read a lot.
Like I've read, you know, Tommy Franks' book.
Basically anything that has to do with flying, I'll read.
Autobiographies, those are all kind of enjoyable to me.
I like learning from other people.
I don't like to make the mistakes myself if I can help it.
Yeah, absolutely.
I was having a conversation earlier with someone, you know, this is it.
You know, if we truly look at history and see, I would argue over and over again, the
tyrannical few start dividing the masses and setting them against each other, we would
be able to avoid a lot of these conflicts.
We will be able to learn from predatory actions from in modern society, drug companies, fast
food, et cetera, because these lessons have been there over and over again.
I think that's why you see a lot of organizations downplaying history and canceling certain
groups because, you know, if we actually all got together and really saw the glaring lessons
from, you know, a few millennia, we'd be able to see, you know, it'd be clear the next tyrant
that's trying to raise up or the groups or the companies.
And then we as a masses, we kind of whack a mole on before they before they rose up.
So I think history is imperative.
Yeah.
Yeah, I couldn't agree more.
All right.
What about films and documentaries?
Oh, I watch a lot of Bluey now, got to be honest.
So which actually I do enjoy.
You know, most of my life now is really kind of kids films, kids movies with my three daughters.
But we try and my wife and I try and ease them into movies that we like these kids.
So like Christmas just passed, we watched like Home Alone, Home Alone 2, you know, kind
of iconic movies like when we were kids.
I like anything with Robert Redford in it.
I just always have.
I just thought that he was always just like a really great actor.
And like Spy Game is one of my one of my favorites, Last Castle, obviously, like military and
CIA type movies.
So that captures my interest.
But yeah, anything action, you know, whatever keeps my attention.
Absolutely.
All right.
Well, the next question, 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?
Oh, that's a good one.
Other than Pat, you absolutely have to get on.
He's one of my favorite humans.
Yeah.
A buddy of mine named Chris Cameron.
He's another Florida boy.
He's got an exceptional story.
He's learned a lot of life lessons.
And he's done everything from playing football in college, being a law enforcement officer
to being a pilot, starting different companies as an entrepreneur.
Very, very knowledgeable guy.
Yeah, he would be super interesting.
He just climbed, I forget the peak.
That's the one in Argentina.
It's like the second highest in the world or something.
Is it Monsu Pichu?
Is it that one?
I don't know.
I probably butchered that name anyway.
He did that and then now he's in like, he's in Tahiti like right now diving and he had
like a shark diving company.
He's just a very interesting guy.
But he's turned into a fast friend of mine.
He would be a great guy to have on.
Beautiful.
Well, I'd love to if you can make that happen.
Yeah, absolutely.
I would love to introduce you guys.
Phenomenal.
All right.
Well, then the very last question before we make sure everyone knows where to find you
and HeloTac.
What do you do to decompress?
I have a 35-minute drive back and forth to work and on my drive home, I listen to actually
listen to Christian radio and I just kind of like zone out and kind of listen to the
words.
It's just some great messages as well as like just good tunes now like Christian radio isn't
what it used to be.
It's like actually some pretty good great music actually.
But if I listen to the words and remind myself that what I just experienced at work is just
work and all the super important things in my life are going to be past the threshold
of my front door, that is what I do.
And I get home and I just if I can remember that, if I can focus enough on my way home
and I can put all that stuff behind me, that's what I do.
I love just playing with my kids.
I love showing them the experiences that I had when I was a kid and I love seeing my
wife's face light up when they learn something new or when they do something new and incredible
where at that phase like where our three-year-old will pronounce a word correctly that she didn't
last week or our almost nine-year-old will do something on a balance beam bar or just
jump around on trampoline and do something cool and that's really my that's how I decompress
or I fly or I just take off.
I don't have a mission and I just do some training or something.
That's always been kind of like my cheap place.
If I wasn't on the water with family, that's what I like to do.
Brilliant.
All right.
Well then if people listening want to find you online social media or HeloTac, where
are the best places to go?
If you want like a personal experience, the Helo Man was that's my Instagram and that's
kind of like got more of like my fun stuff.
HeloTac on Instagram and then helotacair.com and that kind of just outlines like some of
the programs that we have which I think people will find are probably a little more unique
than something else that they could get.
But yeah, me and the other guys, we love supporting other people.
We're all about building up our community.
So if people want to reach out, whatever, if they want to collaborate, it doesn't have
to be a thing.
We just promote people that we think are doing good things and that's really to me, that's
the best part.
That's how we keep each other safe.
They say we keep each other alive.
We increase our operational capabilities.
That's the whole point.
That's why we can be here is to build each other up as humans, help be successful and
that's what I want to continue to do.
So yeah, reach out.
Let's do something fun.
Brilliant.
Well, I want to thank you so much.
It's been such an amazing conversation.
Your journey from again, military law enforcement, the special operations community has been
absolutely fascinating.
So I want to thank you so, so much for being so generous with your time and coming on the
Behind the Shield podcast today.
It's a real pleasure.
This is a lot of fun.
Thank you so much.