The Team House - War Was the Easy Part | Eduardo Garduno

Episode Date: August 29, 2026

Eduardo Garduno recounts his path from a turbulent childhood in Southern California to the 75th Ranger Regiment, with deployments to Afghanistan, Syria, and Iraq and combat against ISIS. He also opens up about his difficult transition out of the military, becoming a police officer, struggles with PTSD and alcohol, and the long road toward recovery and writing his memoir.Follow Eduardo here:https://www.instagram.com/eduardo__garduno/Today's Sponsors:GhostBed ⬇️https://www.ghostbed.com/houseFOR 10% off! Cash App ⬇️Download Cash App Today: https://click.cash.app/ui6m/in49dyw5 #CashAppPod  As a Cash App partner, I may earn a commission when you sign up for a Cash App account. Cash App is a financial services platform, not a bank. Banking services provided by Cash App’s bank partner(s). Bitcoin services provided by Block, Inc. For additional information, see the Bitcoin disclosuresFor ad free video and audio and access to live streams...JOIN OUR PATREON! https://www.patreon.com/c/TheTeamHouseTo help support the show and for all bonus content including:-live shows and asking guest questions -ad free audio and video-early access to shows-Access to ALL bonus segments with our guestsSubscribe to our Patreon! ⬇️https://www.patreon.com/TheTeamHouse___________________________________________________GRAB JACK'S NEW BOOK "THE MOST DANGEROUS MAN" ⬇️⬇️⬇️⬇️⬇️https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/803651/the-most-dangerous-man-by-jack-murphy/paperback/Subscribe to the new EYES ON podcast here:⬇️https://www.youtube.com/@EyesOnGeopoliticsPod/featuredJack Murphy's book "We Defy: The Lost Chapters of Special Forces History" ⬇️https://www.amazon.com/We-Defy-Chapters-Special-History-ebook/dp/B0DCGC1N1N/Or make a one time donation at: ⬇️https://ko-fi.com/theteamhouseSocial Media: ⬇️The Team House Instagram:https://instagram.com/the.team.house?utm_medium=copy_linkThe Team House Twitter:https://twitter.com/TheTeamHousePodJack’s Instagram:https://instagram.com/jackmcmurph?utm_medium=copy_linkJack’s Twitter: https://twitter.com/jackmurphyrgr?s=21Team House Discord: ⬇️https://discord.gg/wHFHYM6"Karl Casey @ White Bat Audio"00:00 – Start01:13 – Growing Up Poor in Southern California09:10 – Early Hatred of Police & Growing Up Around Crime16:44 – Fighting, Anger & Becoming a Troublemaker28:02 – Getting Arrested for Shoplifting37:17 – High School, Rebellion & His Brother’s Drug Business51:18 – His Brother Gets Busted & Police Raid the Family Home1:00:20 – Deciding to Join the Military1:06:20 – Accidentally Signing an Option 40 Contract1:10:54 – Basic Training, a Dear John Letter & Finding Motivation1:15:33 – Surviving RASP1:19:34 – Arriving at 2nd Ranger Battalion1:27:22 – First Deployment to Afghanistan1:34:33 – Going to Ranger School1:41:48 – Recycles, Peer Evaluations & Eight Months at Ranger School1:53:28 – Finally Earning the Ranger Tab1:57:29 – Deploying to Syria as a Ranger Team Leader2:01:22 – Dropping Mortars on ISIS2:03:14 – When the War Suddenly Became Real2:07:10 – Javelins, Close Calls & Nearly Getting Shot2:10:29 – Taking Incoming Mortar Fire in Syria2:19:09 – Returning Home & Considering Delta Force2:21:05 – Deployment to Iraq With Delta Force2:25:36 – Ranger Shenanigans & Getting in Trouble Overseas2:34:14 – Leaving the Army & Struggling With Alcohol2:38:15 – Becoming a Police Officer2:48:05 – PTSD, Police Culture & Trying to Change the System2:54:37 – Refusing to Give Cops Special Treatment3:01:18 – His First Police Chase Ends in a Rollover3:09:09 – Leaving the Police Department3:11:09 – Recovery, PTSD & Hitting Rock Bottom3:15:18 – Checking Himself Into a VA Psychiatric Ward3:20:19 – Intensive Therapy & Searching for Something That Worked3:21:46 – TMS Treatment & Beginning to Heal3:23:35 – Writing His Memoir as a Way to Understand His Life3:24:15 – Marijuana-Induced Psychosis & Another Psychiatric Hospitalization3:31:41 – Finding a Treatment That Finally Helped3:32:28 – The Demons Within & Looking Forward3:33:28 – Closing ThoughtsBecome a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/the-team-house--5960890/support.

Hey guys, welcome to the team house. My name's Jack Murphy. And I'm here with today's guest, Eduardo Gardunio. He is a ranger that served in second Ranger Battalion, was a mortar guy, 11 Charlie, did deployments to Afghanistan, Syria, Iraq. I just read your unpublished memoir, Eduardo. And it's a pretty compelling story. You had a pretty wild upbringing. I mean, we can say a pretty tough transition, I think. out of the military, into the police force, into the private sector. So we'll talk about all this stuff during the interview. But, Eduardo, thank you for joining us and being willing to share your story. Yeah, I'm happy to be here. Just tell my point of view. And it helps people along the way, helps them get the resources they need. And that's all I'm really shudging for, you know.

Yeah. No, that's great. Well, let's start at the beginning. Tell us a little bit about your family and what your upbringing was like. Yeah, it was on paper. It's a lot worse than what it sounds, but as a kid, you know, it's what I was used to. My dad was an immigrant from Mexico at five years old. He was working fields and he had the mentality through his whole career of landscaping and just that Mexican mentality of I'm going to be the provider.

I'm going to do everything in my power to work six days a week. And just that mentality really left a lot. of open doors for me just to do whatever I wanted as a kid. You know, both parents are always at work. My wife did your typical housekeeping and my dad did landscaping and between the two of them, you know, they were too busy working to actually take care of me. So I was just left alone to my own vices. And unfortunately, I was surrounded with all the wrong people. So I just leaned into that. You had a big family too, right? A lot of brothers and sisters. Yeah, it was, there's such a huge age gap that only my older brother is the one, like my older brother and my little, my little, my

first sister are really the only ones that I really consider brothers. The rest are more like an uncle figure. Like they're so young. Oh, I got you. They're like 10 years old right now is like, yeah, I'm their brother, but I don't really know them like that. The only person I really know is my brother who I grew up with. And he wasn't exactly your typical role model. Yeah, I mean, in your book, what really came through, I thought was interesting was like how hard a worker your dad was. and like he was like really just like grindstone all day um and trying to do the the best he possibly could for the family um but at the same time it sounded like he had his own misgivings too uh at certain points yeah i think alcohol was his biggest coping mechanism uh he drank until the age of 41 and that was

most of my childhood unfortunately and then it was just a lot of him drinking me realizing we're poor and we don't have food and you know he has $20 what's he going to spend it on alcohol or buying us more food or buying us shoes buying his clothes well it was alcohol and i saw that and i just didn't agree with it it made me angry a lot of the time so it was just i took the good and the bad you know yes i learned a lot of good lessons on how to how to work you know at the age of like 10 he was i was already doing landscaping all the way up until 18 where i was like i don't want to do landscaping for the rest of my life i'm gonna go do something else uh and um you know you were a bit of a troublemaker in school right you get sent to the principal's office quite a bit

yeah i feel like it's a common theme for our a special operation guys yeah yeah i just it was the lack of attention i was getting at home you know looking at looking at looking back at it now It's obvious that I wasn't getting the attention at home, so I looked for it at school. And unfortunately, the way I got the attention was I'd have to be louder than everyone else. I'd have to be more disruptive. And it worked. I got the attention I was looking for. It just wasn't in the best manners.

And could you describe a little bit, like as you started to hit your teenage years, you know, where you guys were living, you're out in California, as I recall. And your older brother got mixed up in some really bad stuff as you guys, you know, grew up. Yeah, I'll start in the beginning. Sure. Elementary, like, really young age, like the first thing I remember is like five years old, you know. I had a, I had, we lived in Section A housing, and for whatever reason, kid brain, you know, doesn't think clearly. And the first real memory I have in my father is there's a ball stuck on a roof or an airplane. I don't remember what it was.

I just remember not a roof on a tree. And I remember wanting to get it. So I went inside and my dad had all this landscaping equipment because he did landscaping on the side. And there was some rope. So I grabbed the rope and being a five-year-old kid, I don't know how to tie Ranger School of Knots yet. I haven't been there yet. But I somehow I get it over a branch. So I get it and even it out. And in my kid logic brain, I was like, I'm going to tie it around my neck and pull myself up, you know, to go get this airplane. It's like some Bugs Bunny logic. Yeah. Yeah. So I get around my neck.

It's not tight or anything. It's just like your typical one loop knot. And I'm going to Poland. And then I see my dad running out screaming at me. And for the first time, I saw emotion in his eyes, you know. I saw him, like, actually scared and, like, sad. And he ran. He grabbed the rope.

He's just not, I was expecting him to scream at me. You know, I was doing something wrong in my mind. And he just looks at me. He just hugs me. He just hugs me. And he starts cheering up. But he's not saying anything. And after a little while, like a minute or two pass and he still hugged me.

And he finally clears his throw. He's like, what are you doing? It's like, I wanted the ball or the airplane. I don't remember what it was. But I wanted to grab it. He's like, why didn't you just ask me? And like he just goes back inside, grabs a ladder and gets it down and plays with me for a little bit. But that's like one of the core memories.

Like that's like the first thing I remember for my childhood was my dad being an actual father figure, which in today's world, it's really hard to come by. Sure, absolutely. But from there, it's just a lot of the same, you know. My dad's drinking. I'm bringing him beers. And I come to realize the more beers I bring him, the more generous he is with money. And it was your typical, you know, they drink a case.

They go to the liquor store and they get more beer. And I have a vivid memory of I was the reason behind them getting a, my uncle losing his vehicle. on getting a driving without a license ticket. And this was young. I was probably like, if I had a guess, like six, seven years old, really young. And they're going to a liquor store. I know if I go, they're going to buy me chips or something because they're drunk and they're a little more friendly after they had a couple beers.

So we're driving. And my dad would always put the seatball on me. It was just a booster seat. He put the seatbelt on me. And I brought a toy with me. It was just a little plastic toy. I don't remember what it was. And I dropped it.

So I leaned down. picked it up and when I'm up we're pulling over I was like this isn't the beer store and I look back and the red and blue lights are flashing and my dad's just confirmed me oh it's okay you know it's probably just there's nothing serious probably just a tell light whatever he'll talk to us and well we'll get going and as the officer officer approaches the window he's telling my dad the reason for the or my uncle was the one driving my dad was passionate he's telling him the reason for the stop was because I didn't have a seatbelt on and I was like but I did have a seat bow on.

I just reached down to grab the toy. Like it was just, I pulled it off and leaned down. Right. And the officer was like, yeah, well, I still have probable cause, blah, blah, blah. And they went the whole back and forth. He's like, I know you guys been drinking. I could smell it. I'm going to catch you guys a break.

Because my uncle didn't have a license because he was an immigrant. He's like, I'm going to cut you guys a break. I'm going to tow the car and then just write you a ticket. And then you guys could just walk. And me as a kid, you know, I don't know better. I thought this was all my fault. And I carried that guilt for way too long. I'm talking like recently, like the last two years,

I finally was able to let some of that go. But he lets us go. And we still walk to the beer store. We still go and get alcohol. And at that point, I don't want anything. You know, I'm just, I'm just so guilty that I lost my uncle's car and got him a ticket. And obviously, they told me, you know, it was your fault because, you know, they stopped. They stopped us because of you.

So I carried that guilt. And then just from there, that hatred towards police officers really grew. And in my mind, it was just like he didn't take the time to actually listen. And it was just like, okay, yeah, he cut us a break. But in the long run, I truly believe it was doing more bad than good, you know, creating that divide of just like lower income people were, they were always like in that neighborhood. It was obvious why, you know. I did it too as a police officer later in life, you know, lower income people where you're going to have more crime. It's just factually correct.

But early, that early on is when I started to lean towards of like helping people and what was the best way I could do it. And I leaned into like Gandhi, you know, be the change you want to see in the world. And I just despise cops from that one incident. I have a couple more incidents down the road, but that's where it started. And from there, a little bit of. lot of the same, you know, growing up as a kid, not having enough money, clothes, shoes, whatever. And it was just normal. I didn't care. I got my hand-meadowns from my older brother who was big into, you know, your oversized AAA shirt, sticky pants. And that was my handmaidowns. I didn't

have a choice. I didn't get to pick what clothes I got. It was up to me. You know, I'd want clothes that fit personally. That's just my style. But I got a lot of this dickies, you know, your generic fans, you know, whenever you, what you think of a gangster. That's what I was. was wearing that that's like i still have this lick back hair and like a california gangster i think of like in those days the flannel shirt with the top button oh i couldn't afford the flannel shirt shirt so i just had the triple a but but that's how i would dress and it wasn't by choice you know it's by by hand-me-downs and from there we that was one section a housing and then we upgraded to another section a housing uh we were on a wait list for a little bit and this is like uh uh

Still elementary school, like fourth, fifth grade, no, 9-11 era was when we moved over to these new apartments. And it was nice. Like I didn't know what like a house was yet. I didn't know people can have pools. So like going from like terrible Section A housing to nicer Section A housing because this was newly built. And my parents were on the wait list and they got in somehow. And we moved to this new Section A housing. And it's nicer. They have like a computer science lab where it's like this room where you go and like do activities.

They have apple trees. They have like open field of grass. You could play soccer in. And like all the neighborhood kids would just go outside and meet up there because there was nothing else to do. But when we move there, it was it was it was better. The biggest issue was the people all surrounded with, you know, it was a lot of people that were left alone, home alone, with. no real role models because everyone's working. So you just hang out with the neighborhood kids that are up to no good, you know, breaking windows, throwing water balloons, just getting into your typical trouble. It was at this apartment. I had a very memorable experience.

I was still a kid, so like I wasn't corrupted by my surroundings yet. I want to say it was like in third grade. That's just a random guess. I was young. And it was Halloween. And believe it or not, we were the kids that took your bullet, but we were respectful. We left the bull. We took all the candy and they just dumped it into the pillowcase and they kept walking.

But as we're doing this, we're going looking for all the nice neighborhoods, the big houses, you know, that don't bother to stand at the door and hand out candy. So we're just grabbing bowls. And we're making our lap. And we make it down to like 13th Street. It's gang territory owned by some West. you know, local gang stuff. I didn't know any of this. I knew I wanted candy.

I knew my pillow case was almost full. It's almost time to go home. But as we're walking there, it's me, my brother, a cousin, and then just one of our friends at, a neighborhood friends that, for whatever reason, his parents, oblivious to the world, didn't understand that a Diablo mask represented the opposing gang. And as we're walking here,

we start hitting your typical gang whistle, you know and we're looking around then there's these two uh in my mind they were dressed up as gangsters it was two females dressed up as gangsters and and they grabbed like my cousin's uh pillowcase full of candy and they're like give me this we're taking it and my cousin's like no he's just a little kid you know fighting back he was younger than me at the time and he's just fighting back pulling on the pillowcase he's like let go you fucking weenie and little did he know he was he was like a growing kid he didn't really understand insults at the time so he said the worst possible thing oh oh we need to a west sider is like saying the end word to a black person oh really so yeah so it's that

serious it's like the worst thing you'd possibly say and when he said that they let go and we're like sweet let's go let's run so we start running and then uh they do their gang whistle and it's just it's like a mob starts forming like people are like coming out of the woodworks out of nowhere like there's people sitting on porches and they start chasing us and like well i didn't know I was a kid. I didn't want to get hurt, so I just kept running. And I remember running. And at some point, I remember seeing my friend from school. His name was Mark. And he's on a bike passing us. And we just look at each other very confused because he was chasing me, but I was running with my friends. And he didn't know why we were running. And I didn't know why they were chasing. But I was so fast that I just kept on running. I didn't look back. And then I ran all the way home. And I looked back every now and then. And they were all still behind me. So I just kept on running. And somehow, for whatever reason, they didn't catch any of us. Like, there was people with bats and stuff and, like, just screaming every slur you could possibly think of. And we're going to get you.

We're going to hurt you. And I was like, you ain't catching me. I would drop this candy and keep running if you guys get close. But somehow we managed to keep our candy. And we made it all the way home. And later in life, I found out why they were chasing us. You know, my brother explained it to me. But at the time, I didn't know.

Like, I was just a kid. You know, I was innocent at the time. I wasn't into causing chaos yet. But that was very memorable for me. That's when like the shift started changing of, oh, wait, the world's actually dangerous. People actually hurt you out here. And in those elementary school years is where I learned, like there was this boxer guy, the same guy on the bike, his name was Mark.

And everyone left him alone for whatever reason. And we were friends. So I asked him, I was like, why don't people mess with you? And he just explained. he's like, yeah, man, I will help beat the shit out of them. I was like, oh, sweet. I was like, how? He's like, he's like, I've been boxing forever.

I was like, well, you mind if I say I've been boxing with you too? He's like, no, go ahead. I was like, all right, sweet, I've been boxing. How long have we been boxing for? He's like, bro, I've been boxing since I was like two years old. I was like, me too. In reality, I haven't been boxing at all whatsoever. I just, it was building a persona.

And from there, like, people just stopped. messing with me, knowing that I had him as a friend, like, because it was essentially protection, you know, no one wanted to mess with the guy who's best friends with a boxer. That was elementary, you know, no one really picked on me then. And it wasn't until middle school where I started to develop, I had to hurt people first before I got hurt. It's terrible logic. I understand that now, but as a kid, you know, that I truly believe that. And that's really where I started getting in trouble a lot more where I have a lot of like fights and stuff just just childhood fights and I was very analytical about it I was not picking a fight unless I knew I can win and I studied people's

foot movement their stance and what I did is I just punch you as hard as I can my first punch and then just bum rush you until you gave up or until you were separated because most fights in the school only lasts like 30 seconds to the minute until they get separated so I knew if I hit you first you're throwing off your game and I could just punch you. you as many times as I want and then someone's going to separate us eventually. So I just kept that mentality. You know, I got into two fights and for whatever reason, we never got caught. It was one was in a bathroom and this was my first fight. It was in a bathroom where the floor was way too wet. There was way too many people in this bathroom and we're just,

we're just dancing at this point. No one's getting hurt. We're throwing punches and we're just like catching each other with hugs and at the end of it, we just hug it out. We're like, all right bro it's over you know we got our emotions out we're cool again we're friends again and i was like man that didn't really have the effect i wanted you know it didn't build the persona of leave me alone so i decided to pick another fight and this one's kind of rough because it was a close friend of mine and i i picked the fight on purpose i knew what i was doing i knew if i bullied him enough sooner or later he'd want to fight me and i knew i could beat his ass because i was bigger than him and I just, he wasn't a fighter.

So after like, you know, picking on him, like just messing, pushing him in the hallway, you know, you're very generic textbook bullying, slapping the books out of his hand for, just because I could. He finally had it now. He's like, you know what? I'm a fight you after school. I was like, sure, pick a day. And being a bad kid, I had detention that day.

And luckily I had a friend, his name was Carlos. And I was like, hey, bro, can you sign me in since you're at detention? He's like, oh, yeah, I got you. I was like, sweet, I have my alibi. And we just did this for each other because we both were bad kids. And he didn't want to go home because he went home to an abusive house. And he's like, I'd rather just cause trouble at school and stay at school. So I don't have to deal with it as much.

So he signs me into detention. So I have my alibi in my mind. Little did I know, they have cameras everywhere. As a kid, you're not thinking about these things. So we pick our spot. And it's way too many people. There's security. they know it's going to it's going down but we get there early enough to where it's like a two-minute

fight and the first thing i do is like i was like you don't want to fight me i'm going to hurt you i'm just going to start talking shit to get in their head and like the whole time before we even start fighting i'm just going you know you're going to lose this and i'm sorry man you're just going to cry afterwards and like he's doubting himself at this point he's not as confident as me i just knew if i was if i was the first to hit i won in my mind you know it's like i got to get my first punch in so uh there's all this back and forth answer and finally someone's like just fight i was like sweet i was like you ready he's like yeah so i run superman punch up as hard as i could and he's he's up he stumbles uh he's up in a corner in like a

cutoff section under some stairs in in my middle school and i just started bumrushing him and he's like going fetal position trying to cover his face and i'm punching him in his face as hard as i can And I heard someone say, like, chill or stop. And I couldn't. Like, I just let the rage control me. I just kept going. And at this point, I'm punching him his face as hard as I can. And it wasn't until someone said security that I finally stopped.

And I took off running. You're not catching me. You're not catching me fighting. So I ran. And I just kept running. I ran all the way home. It was like three miles. I get home.

I turn on the TV. I pretend like nuts. happened wait for my parents to get home and the next day uh i get called into the office and they call my mom they call my parents my mom's the only one that drives my dad still to this day doesn't drive because he was an alcoholic then in his mind he told us if i'm going to be an alcoholic i'm never going to drive because you know i want to stay here you know i don't want to have a DUI i don't want to crash and kill someone but my mom shows up to the principal's office and she's full attorney mode at this point. I told her my side of the story. I told her my lie. She believed it. I was like,

I was in detention. I don't know what they're talking about. Like if you look at the time, I was at detention the whole time. And then I just walked home with my friend. And my friend was like, yeah, yeah, we were at detention together, you know. They didn't believe a word we said. They saw the video. They saw me running. And their parents, they go back and forth. And they agree on like suspension. I was like, there's like two day suspension. I was like, sweet. I don't have to go to school. I didn't want to go to school anyways. I hate going to school, you know. I don't I don't learn anything. I'm not paying attention. So that was my first, like, suspension. And the next one was a lot more personal to me. And to this day, I still believe

I'm 100% in the right. My friend, his name was Saul and good friends growing up, childhood friends. We elementary, middle school. I knew him very well. We were very close friends. And one day, I hear from my parents that one of my friends got ran over on 13th Street and it was a hit and run and he he was drugged. It's really bad and to a kid, I didn't believe it. I was like, I'm going to see him at school tomorrow and then this is all going to get cleared up. And it wasn't until a week later that he showed up and he's in a wheelchair. Immobilized from the neck down, absolutely paralyzed. And, you know, it's the talk of the school.

everyone's talking about it and I vividly remember going to science class and I'm behind this one kid talking to his friend about the incident and he said and I quote he fucking deserved it oh really I was like I was like hey bud what you say and he repeated it so I punched him as hard as I could I didn't think about it this was just reaction I punched him as hard as I could in his face like and this was like walking into a classroom where the science teacher was right there. And I, he, he, he fell to the ground, started crying. I stepped over him and just went to my seat and sat down. And I was just so mad that I was like, the only way I can calm down is I go sit down or else. I'm going to go back and hurt him some more. But like, I had already did what I wanted because he was on the ground crying.

I was like, he learned his lesson. And this one, this one, I was on paper. Yeah, I was wrong. But morally in my mind, I thought I did everything, you know, I didn't sell my integrity for, like, I didn't sit there and do nothing, because in my mind, if I would have sat there and just listened and let him disrespect my friend like that, who is now immobilized in a wheelchair from the neck down and you're insulting him. But I got, I went back to the principal's office. They know me at this point. I'm the troublemaker, always speaking out of class at a turn, you know, flirting with the girls.

Very generic, high school bully. And at this time, you know, it's it's a white family, a higher income, higher class. And they want to press charges. And they want to throw the book at me. And my mom, again, you know, she comes in here, attorney is like, yeah, but what he said was wrong. And my son just reacted to what he said, you know, if he never said that, my son would have never, would have never punched him in his face. He deserved it. And I'm being super nosy.

I'm in the hallway and I can hear all this conversation. I remember it because I was there. I'm listening to my mom. Just go back and forth with the principal. And like she's screaming at him. She does not care. You know, I'm her little baby boy. And in her mind, I'm innocent, even though I wasn't the greatest role model.

But she's going back and forth. And finally, they agree on like a weak suspension and anger management classes. So I didn't have a say in it. I did it. I went home for a week and I was like, sick. I get to just be home and eat the limited food there is and watch TV. Like, I wasn't like a super port to where there was no food. It was just like tortillas, rice and beans, you know, very generic, low-income stuff. So there was food. It just wasn't what I wanted. So what I would do is I'd go to

like the Vaughns. It's just like your supermarket store, like giant or whatever. I don't know. You're East Coast. I don't know what's up there, but it's just a market store. Like a C. EPS or, yeah, shop right, something like that. Yeah. So I just go in there and steal. And at one point, the manager saw me. And I was stealing, like, I was stealing kid brain stuff, you know. I was like, I'm hungry.

I'm going to go steal some candy. I'm going to steal the biggest chocolate bar because that's going to fill me up the most with nuts in it. You know, the big Hershey's with the nuts. And it was like, yeah, that's going to give me the most amount of fulfillment. So, well, one day she catches me. She's like, why do you always come in here and steal just chocolate bars? And I was like, because I'm hungry. And she's like, oh, she's like, why don't you steal actual food?

And I was like, why would I do that? I was like, I'm hungry. I'm going to eat the chocolate. That's what I want to eat. And she's like, I know you come in here and steal. I know that every time you walk in. I don't care enough. I don't get paid enough to stop you.

But if you want food, just take the actual food. It's more beneficial. And she's like, I'm going to look the other way. but you do you essentially is what she told me it and unfortunately i was like okay i could just take whatever i want now so i went back and just like started taking random magazines like that i didn't need and like just all this like gum that i wasn't supposed to have in school and it was just like routine at that point i'd go in there in the morning grab a gum and sometimes i pay for it just just even at the scales a little bit if i had uh money from like helping my dad out but a lot of times

I'll just take it because it was free and there was no consequences to my actions. And I vividly remember buying gum one time and the principal to the school is behind me. He's like, you're not supposed to have that. I was like, I was like, and you're not supposed to talk to me outside of school. Fuck off. And he just looked at me confused. He's like, he's like, why you're so disrespectful? I was like, you disrespecting me first.

Don't talk to me. But just the ego part of it. Just from that, like, middle school age is where I really developed that. Like, I have to be bigger and better and stronger and I have to prove myself. Hey, guys, this episode is sponsored by Cash App. I use it. I love it. I really do enjoy it.

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the promo code house at checkout. That's ghostbed.com slash house promo code house. Some exclusions apply. See site for details. Wasn't there one incident where your buddy stole something too and he was like pretty dumb about it and he got both of you caught? Yeah. Yeah, this was, I want to say it was like right before I went to high school, so eighth grade. And we're at the shopping mall. And I know shopping malls are way more secure than like your generic, you know, no camera stores. At this point, I was very seasoned in the heart of stealing.

You know, I've done it enough times to where, you know, you just. walk past it, grab it, slip in your pocket. You don't make eye contact with them. They don't make eye contact with you. They're not going to notice. So I went in there with, I had money. I had $20. I went in there for headphones.

I wanted to be able to listen to like this, to music on like this old, super old computer that was a hand-me-down to us. But it was just that childhood age of playing video games and stuff. And I was like, I just want to listen to music. And I asked my dad, I was like, hey, can I have $20? I want to buy some headphones. He's like, yeah, sure. here you go and cool uh i'm gonna go to the mall tomorrow let him know where i am and all that

and three of my friends uh we decided to go together i was like hey i'm gonna go to the mall after school you guys want to come like oh yeah sure i was like i just want to i just want to buy some headphones and that's it you know i'm not really looking for shopping around and when we get there we're all hungry we're kids we don't think about we don't we're not planning for being hungry and stuff and my friend's like oh he ordered some food and he's like oh man i'm sure can i borrow 10 bucks. I was like, sure, here, here's the, here's the 20. And, and then I didn't have enough money for the headphones I had, you know, I had $10 left because he spent 10 of my dollars and I was like, fuck it, I'm a steal it. Who's going to stop me? And in my mind, I came up with

my whole plan, you know, I'm a slip in my pocket. This place usually has the, the higher end security where they'll wait for you outside to, you know, justify, you break the plane of stealing. and you have to cross the barrier of the door. So I knew that. I knew that if there was people outside, they were waiting for us and I was going to run. But we get in there and that was my plan before I even go into the store, was if there's someone outside waiting for us,

I'm going to take off running. And they can only chase me to the end of the mall property. You know, they can't chase me past that because I was very analytical. I looked into their rules and regulations. So I knew what the boundaries were. And I told my friend that and he's like, oh, okay, sweet. This is going to be my first time stealing. I was like, okay.

I was like, I'm very good at this. Just don't be obvious. I was like, we'll split up and you go steal whatever you want and I'll go steal whatever I want. And I walked around, found some headphones. It was $19.99 and $99. It's important for down the road. And my friend, he found like a game that he wanted to steal. And he's super obvious.

immediately red flag. I knew that they were onto us because he was like ducking in alleys. He was looking around. He was making eye contact with the cashier. And I see the security, you know, doing his little routine of walking passes without trying to look obvious. And I was like, they're onto us, bro. We're going to have to run when we get out. And for whatever reason, when we get to the door, I'm ready to run, you know, I'm already like leaning towards, I'm getting in my running running phase. And at this time, I was fast. I was fast kid. I was running like five minute miles. And as soon as I see the two securities, there's two massive white pillars on the entrance to seers. That's where we were stealing from in the mall. And the two dudes come around the side and

I looked to my friend, I was, let's run. And he's like, he grabs me by the wrist. And he's like, how about we stay? And by that point, the two dudes are already grabbing us. And I was like, I like the run plan better myself. Yeah, they're not going to chase us that far. And if they chase us, we're faster. We're going to get away. Like, it was two fat security guards, you know. They're going to get tired before we do.

We were young kids that had infinite amount of energy. But they grabbed us and I was like, and they're walking us back to their little security office. I was like, why didn't you run, man? He's like, honestly, I got scared. He's like, I panicked. I froze. I was like, whatever. Now we're stuck here.

They call the cops. The cops show up. They call our parents. his mom is looking at me like I'm the criminal I was like she was like glaring at me I was like he's the reason we got caught it wasn't up to me if it was up to me we'd be home but then my mom shows up after his parents show up and his parents take him and uh he gets whatever charges and we go our separate ways after this I don't I don't talk to him after that but when my mom shows up police are there and I'm catching a charge because what I stole had a value of $20 and like

or like whatever taxes was. And for it to be an actual crime, you had to break the plane of $20. So if they would have charged me for the $19.99 value, they couldn't, I wouldn't have had to go to the things I had to. I had to do community service. I had to do juvenile court. But it was all because it was with taxes, it was over $20. And I just found that so hypocritical. But I get my talking.

to, I get home, I get spanked, you know, very generic childhood trauma stuff. And then I had to go do this jury duty. I had no idea what a court system is at this age. I walk in, I'm wearing your oversized white T-D shirt, dicky pants, looking the way your typical gangster looks. And it was a jury of white people. Every one of them was white. I was like, I'm guilty. I don't know. Whatever the max punishment is, I'm going to get it. And they go through the whole. trial they let me speak my piece and I was like yeah yeah I stole it I was there you know I didn't I wasn't like trying to avoid the question I was like well I was like and but I stole it because I I used the money that I had to buy for it no buy my friend food and didn't care there was

there was no reason I got max max time max community service max amount of jury duty and it was like just juvenile jury duty I don't remember how many times it was I want to say between five and ten but every time i'd go in there i'd just argue with them and it was because it was people like me people that looked exactly like me were the ones being tried and the jury would be like oh yeah he's guilty i was like yeah but why are we giving him the max amount why are we recommending the max amount of time you know he's already having to spend time his parents have to bring him here why are we saying that he's guilty before we get all the facts and i don't really understand like the whole court system at this time you know it was

It was just very generic kid, Braden. I relate to this person. We should let him go. Like, there was no more logic. Like, yeah, there was the charges and all that. And it was, like, very, like, petty stuff, you know, stole candy bar. They pushed someone and they got charged for assault, stuff like that. And I was like, it's not that serious.

I punch people in their faces and I didn't catch a charge. And like, yeah, well, that's wrong, blah, blah, blah. And I did my jury duty. And, like, the first two times I was super argumentative. I was like, I'm not agreeing with this. It's going to be a hung jury. But I stayed there so long that eventually I had to like submit, you know, I had to give in to whatever the group wanted.

And then after those two times, like, all right, I'll just shut the fuck up and listen. I'm not, I'm just going to go with the flow. I'm, it's going to drag this out. I get to go home sooner if I don't argue with them. So I did that. And then I had a community service where I lived where the computer room, rec room, whatever you want to call it. And there was a volunteer lady.

That was super chill. She would open the place up when she didn't have to. She stayed there longer for us, you know, really cared about, like, she wasn't paid to do it. She just volunteered. And unfortunately, she was too nice. I took advantage of the situation. I asked her, you know, I was like, hey, I got community service. I explained the whole story.

She's like, oh, no, that's totally reasonable. Give me your paper. I'll sign off on all your hours. I had like, I want to say it was like 50 hours of community service, and she just signed them off. She's like, make sure you put separate dates. on it though. That way they know you came on separate days and don't turn it in until like a week later. Damn, she's a professional.

Has it together. Oh, yeah. She gave you the whole structure, the whole layout. She's like, just wait until this day and then you'll turn it in. That way they can see that you did this amount of hours every day. I was like, okay. And she's like, don't worry about it. You know, you don't have to clean up in here. You just come in here and have fun.

Like, we'd go in there and play like RuneScape. I don't know if you're familiar with the game. No, I don't think I've played it, but I've heard of it. World Warcraft was similar you know generic video game going there and play with my friends for like it was supposed to be open for half an hour and every time she'd leave it open

upwards of an hour minimum an hour and she's just like I just care about you guys you know you guys need those outlets to be creative kids would go in there make crafts some kids would just go in there just to talk to her because you know I was a parent that listen and most of us in those situations don't have that But I get that community service done with and that was the last of my trouble making in middle school.

But then we move on to high school and I'm still this egotistical. I'll let you ask questions if you have. I mean, yeah, it sounds like when you got into high school, like the legal problems really began, especially with your older brother. Yeah, yeah, it wasn't towards, so I went to two high schools. was, we lived in Section A. And early on, I was still a troublemaker, you know, just seeking that attention, arguing with teachers, failing school on purpose. Because I just didn't want to, you know, I didn't care to prove myself with grades, you know.

I just wanted to do bare minimum. I don't want to do homework at home. I did all my homework in the next class. It was just, I didn't want to spend energy and time on things I didn't care about. like i knew for a fact i was never going to go to college just because sitting in a classroom was so boring to me but the biggest place where i'd get where i'd like uh have too much freedom is like math class because i'm really good at math and i could finish the work really quick because that's what they'd ask of me and then i could just go and start flirting with girls start messing with my

friends etc and that would get me in trouble a lot i'll get to what you're asking but there's There's a couple stories in here that I remember vividly. So I learned this fancy trick where the era of YouTube taught me, if you tie fishing line, people can't see that. And I hone these skills in in middle school. I tie just 50 pound test fishing line. I was a fisherman growing up, so there was fishing line laying around. So I did one strand.

I thought it would snap. I thought if someone ran into it, you know, they'd catch it and the line would snap. And I tested it with people walking on the street next to the Section A housing. And so some people clipped it, you know, they did your generic bump into it. And it was like, oh, it took under it, whatever. And it wasn't until I felt bad on this one. It was this biker. Mind you, he's in the wrong.

He's driving on the sidewalk. It wasn't my fault. 100% he's driving on the sidewalk and he's he's cooking you know he's going as fast as he can and he didn't see the zipline obviously and it catches him closed lines him by the neck falls backwards and i'm hiding on the roof of our two-story um section a housing i i just climb on the side of like a porch and get up top so i that was my vantage point that's where i did most of my misbehaving just because no one can find me up there. And there was so many ways to get off that like if someone came from one way, you could get off the other side. But I'm sitting up there

and I see this guy get closed line. And I was like, oh shit, that actually worked. And I go to school and I was like, hey, guys, I got some fishing line where do you guys want to put it up to trip people? And being kids, you know, we didn't think this through. We're like, well, we always hang out in front. So we won't be suspicious. We're always, we're in the same spot. So let's put it so where we can see it from our hangout spot. I was like, okay, I was like, well, the stairs would probably be a good choice. You know, there's the railing there, which is tied to the railing. We'll clip someone's legs and they'll fall and it'll be funny.

Unfortunately, it was the principal that was our next victim. He's walking with his coffee. He has his binder. He has his computer. He's all happy saying good morning to everyone. And he's looking around talking to the kids. He does not do the zip line or the fishing line. And he clips it, faceplants onto a step, like face first.

Coffee goes everywhere. His papers go everywhere. And we just walk away. We don't want any part of it. We left. They did their investigation. They couldn't figure out who it was. The cameras weren't clear enough for them to see us in that spot.

But I got away with it. So I was like, I'm going to keep doing this. This is fun and entertaining to me. You know, I had built up resentment towards the principal because I get random backpack checks. I get it. I knew what I looked like. Yeah, I'd random backpack check myself, if I'm being completely honest. But it was just one of their policies, you know, oh, we're free to check everyone's backpack, but we only check Hispanic backpacks because I had a lot of white friends. And I was like, how many times has your backpack been checked, brother?

He's like, none. I was like, you're carrying weed most of the time. How's your backpack never checked? He's like, he's like, because I'm white. It's called white privilege. I was like, I was like, I'm white too then. I was like, how do I get this privilege? We just went back and forth and we were close friends.

So like, that's how we bantered, you know. I was like, man, this is some bullshit, you know. I'm always being targeted just because of my skin color. So it just gave me more reason to, to like, to hit back in a way, you know. And my way, at this time, I started to learn that I hurt you way more with my words. in actions and it wasn't it was really bad on one of my math teachers and this one actually feel bad about this was like 10th grade and my math teacher you know she she cared way too much about me and i didn't care you know i'd go in there and just cost mayhem i'd she'd give me a hand

out you know it takes half an hour to do this i'd do it in like five i'd turn it in just be super cocky, I'm done. I was like, what do you want me to do now? And she's like, just go sit in your desk and be quiet, go draw or something. I was like, I'm bored. What else can I do? And she's like, just go to your desk, please. I got paperwork to grade and stuff.

And I'd go back to my desk and immediately start flirting with girls and distracting people. And she's like, can you go outside? I was like, I can if you want me to. She's like, go outside. I was like, all right. And she'd go out there and talk to me. I was like, all right, I'll chill. I'll chill for the rest of the day.

And this was a common occurrence, you know. I do my paperwork. I start throwing stuff at people, start getting my pencil stuck on the ceiling. Just anything to keep my mind busy. And she just put up with it too much. And eventually, she's like, I can't keep doing this with you. I'm going to send you to the principal's office. And you're just going to keep getting in trouble.

I don't care. I live in the principal's office. is I call him by his first name. And she sends me to Prince of Wall's office the first time. And I'm sitting there a little nervous. And like the attendance ladies, there's two of them at the front desk. And they're talking to me. Like, what are you doing here?

I don't know. I was talking back like I always do. And they're like, why do you think you do that? I was like, I don't know. I don't care either. I was like, it's entertaining to me. I get bored. And they're like, oh, you just don't get enough attention at home.

And I took offense to it. I was like, well, this is why you're fat and ugly. like just immediately counter insult just because if you're going to hurt me i'm going to hurt you right back and she just they both looked at me sideways they're like the mouth on this kid like what's wrong with him and the principal caused me and he's like oh yeah it's it's you again you know you got to stop speaking out in class you get detention and then from there we're going to have to suspend you blah blah blah and then eventually you're probably going to get expelled if you keep up this attitude i was like oh you're just you're just you're just being racist

just, you know, in my mind, if I made it a race thing, they'd leave me alone. It didn't work, but I tried. I was like, you're just doing this because I'm Mexican, you know, and he's like, no, I'm doing this because you're doing this and this is the outcome, you know, you knowingly disrupt the class and this is the punishment. I was like, nah, this is just because I'm Mexican and you hate Mexicans. He's like, go back to your, go back to your next period. They just helped me there for that period. And I kept doing it. I didn't stop. You know, it was too entertaining for me. And I just, it gave me the attention I was seeking. It wasn't until one day, I was just, I was having a bad day. I don't even know why. And the teacher wants to be her level head itself and wants to talk to me.

And I was like, can you send me to the office today? I really don't want to argue with you. And she's like, like, what's the matter? Let's go outside and talk about it. I was like, and at this point, she's super pregnant. She's like eight months pregnant. And she just keeps trying to talk me down. I was like, please, just send me to the office. I am going to say something really stupid and you're going to regret it. Not me. You are going to regret it.

And she's like, I promise you, there's nothing you can say that can hurt me, blah, blah, blah. And I look her in her eyes and I tell her, send me to the principal's office before your fucking baby dies. And like, that was just like the meanest thing I could think of at the time. And she breaks down and starts crying. And I was like, fuck, I'm in trouble already. I'm just going to start walking to the principal's office. I walk myself in there, like, knowing that, that was the outcome. So I'm sitting there, I get to the office.

They're like, what are you doing here? I was like, I'm going to be in trouble soon. Just wait. And the two attendants lady know me at this point. And it takes a while for like security to locate me, even though I was just sitting there waiting for them. Principal talks to the teacher and he explains to me, you know, he's like, you really hurt her. You know, she was crying for a really long time. And I just didn't care.

I was like, I gave you the warning. I told you exactly what I was going to do. And you just ignored me. So you deserved it. And it wasn't until later, I didn't even get in trouble for this. That was the crazy part. I didn't get suspended. I didn't get expelled.

I got like one day of detention. And detention was entertaining for me because I'd get to hang out with my friends that were all there with me. But there was really a major consequence to that. It was a verbal talking to. And at this point, I'd been talked to too many times for me to care, you know. I got in trouble and I was already on the defensive, so I just tuned it out. But that time, they would call home a lot of the times, and I would just run home and answer the phone and just pretend like I was my mom or dad.

And that's how I got away with a lot of the things I got away with was they'd be talking to me and I'd just talk in Spanish and they wouldn't know the difference. You know, I could make my voice deeper in Spanish. They don't know that my dad, who is always working. And they'd send letters and I just forged the letters. because who's going to know no i was i was my dad's signature and my brother was my mom's signature because he could get it more accurate so like anytime they'd send disciplinary stuff they're like oh you have to get this signed by your parents like okay i was so egotistical one time they gave me

a letter i turned it in the same day like i haven't even gone home yet to get it signed i signed it and turned it back in they're like how'd you get to sign i was like oh my mom stopped by to sign that i called her and like oh okay thank you it was like i lied straight to your face. But it's just like in my mind it just made it so easy to lie to people and just to lie people to get what I wanted, you know, just to be left alone. And it was at this time that my brothers started getting started getting into like selling drugs, gangs, stuff like that. And for me, it was a positive, you know, we finally had money, you know. I was able to, at this time my parents were looking from moving on from Section A since they had that extra income of drug money.

And they're looking at houses. We're going torn houses. And in my mind, it didn't seem real. I was like, there's no way we can afford this house. We've been poor our whole lives. You know, we live in Section A. I knew numbers. So I asked them about the finances.

So I understood that it wasn't feasible. And at the time, rent was cheap in California. It was like $1,200 bucks, $1,300. and like more expensive houses, bigger houses were like $2,000, which is crazy to think about. Yeah. And I'm talking like Escondido, California, like San Diego County for generic speaking. But we look at a couple houses and there were around 150K and that was like very generic, you know, fix her upper, has a couple problems.

And then we look at this really nice house. It's like 210K. It was way more than they could afford. But they had the drug money and they wanted the nicest things. This house had a pool. It had your picket fence. They had garden space. It had everything we never had as any of us ever had, you know, my parents, us as kids.

And they jump, you know, they get the new homeowner feeling. They jump at it. They put, they put a bid in. They overbid on. it they get the house and for a while everything's working out since they have that that income from my brother you know he he's financially paying for pretty much everything at this point you know new truck it's making it rain yeah oh yeah and it's it's it's works until it doesn't so so we move into this house you know i had to switch schools because it's a new district and i switch schools and for

whatever reason, you know, I'm no longer causing chaos as much, you know, I'm more leveled out. I got all that out of the way. When we switched, I was more into like, you know, chasing girls and just trying to get laid essentially. But when we move there, it's, it's way nicer. You got your, your super friendly neighbors that wave at you. And I was like, why is people so nice around you? I just didn't understand that, like, people were friendlier if you moved to a nicer place. But my brother kept selling, and like all good things come to the end, eventually, he gets caught. First time he gets caught, it's a lot. It's pounds of crystal meth, pounds of marijuana, and he's a smart dude.

And he put money aside for attorneys and all that. He goes to jail. he does, I want to say it was like two months. It wasn't a very long time. He gets out like immediately. And California is a three strike rule where you could get in trouble three times. And on the third time, you're pretty much doing life. So he's like, oh, well, I got another chance, you know. I'm going to keep selling. And then if I get caught again, you know, that's my second strike. And then after that, I'll stop. And they're onto him. You know, they're tapping his phones. And, you know, your phone's getting too hot. Obviously, someone's listening to it.

there's random cars sitting outside our house unmarked police cars of all cars. It says police on the back of it, you know, the police interceptors. Like, can you at least be a little more discreet? We know you're here. I'd go up to them and not going to just being super nosy and they wouldn't roll down their windows. They just drive off. But I was just doing to piss them off at that point. And eventually they get enough evidence to to, they don't even have enough evidence to get a search warrant.

They do what is known as a knock and announce, you know, they're going to get consent from the homeowner. Yeah, yeah. Which is super legal in my mind if I take a look around here? So this is where it gets super shady. Just from a police standpoint, you know, I did just for context of four years in Ranger Regiment and four years as a police officer. But looking back now, they had a home. full SWAT team unmarked. There was no police in uniform. Everyone was like just in civilian coast with clothes with their vest on and badges. And I was with my brother, my cousin. We were in my room.

It was a converted garage and it had a sliding door that backed up to the pool. And I see just random people showing up to a back door, which wasn't an uncommon occurrence because my brother sold drugs from there. So random people showing up was normal. But these people had guns and that wasn't normal. But I thought we were getting like robbed or something. But then I see the badges and they're knocking on the door, you know, let us in, police. So my brother opens a door. They, they do police callouts. You know, they grab all of us. They take us to our front lawn. And at the same time, when I'm walking past, I left to my left. And they're the other officers are probably walking in talking to my parents. And I just overhear them say, you know, well, you have to sign this or else you

could get deported. And that's all I heard until we get thrown on our front porch or our front grass and they're keeping us face down in the dirt. And mind you, I'm just a kid. I am not that I was still in high school. Sorry, my headset's been right. It's all right. But they put us face dirt, face first in the grass and we're there for a really long. time half an hour to an hour of them just like keeping us there i get up and just cis crisscrossed applesauce and one guy comes back outside he's like oh no you got you got to you got to get back on the ground i was like why he's like oh it's just it's a control thing i was like okay so i get back on the ground and i'm sitting there the whole time i'm just mad i was like there's no reason they should they should be in

our house right now and then uh they bring our dad out and i'm just asking them questions in spanish you know, it's like, why'd you let them in? They're like, oh, they threatened to deport us, you know. They said if I didn't give them consent to search the house, they were going to arrest me and take me back to Mexico. I was like, well, knowing what I know now, that's illegal. You can't do that. But at the time, we didn't know better, you know, we were, we just knew what we were told.

And they tear up our house, absolutely destroy it, you know, putting holes in walls, on doing like sealing tiles and digging random holes. And the one that hurts me personally the most is they dug up one of my dad's, one of my dad's trees that was from Mexico. He brought over the seed. It was his childhood tree, you know, this is a fruit he grew up on. And they dug it out and he tried to replant it and ended up dying, you know. How do you put a value on something like that?

You don't. There was way too much emotional value to that. But they tore up the house, which, whatever, you know, we can, we can fix holes in walls. We can put the stuff. We can put the clothes back into all the drawers and stuff. They search everything. And my brother was smart. He didn't keep drugs inside the house.

He was smarter than that. He kept it outside. But they didn't find, they didn't find the actual stash. They found like an eight ball of crystal meth. And they're like, oh, he was all probation at the time. They're like, oh, you're lucky, you know, we're just going to cut you a verbal warning. we're not going to charge you with it. And looking back now, it was because they didn't have enough legal standing for what they did, you know.

But I didn't know that at the time. And I was just so angry as a kid, you know. I started looking into laws and stuff. I started reading case law at this young age just from that incident. You know, I was like, there's no way this should happen to people, you know. We moved here. I am an American. I was born in America.

I should not be treated like this. it is inhumane in my mind. So I started looking into it and I called the police, the local police department. I was like, hey, on this day, I just want to know who raided our house. And they're like, what are you talking about? No one, there was no police calls in that area. Try the sheriff's office. Okay.

So I call over to the sheriff's office. And they're like, yeah, we don't have any incidents at your address, period. And they're like, try state police. okay so I tried to stay police and the same thing you know they're like oh yeah no we haven't responded to any calls there we haven't done any any work there's like well then who the fuck rated us and no one apparently like uh uh I I had never figured it out you know I went back again even after being a cop trying to get uh just because it's I remember the date or I asked my parents for the date or whatever and it just it didn't exist you know they didn't give them

any paperwork didn't give them copies of anything They just took the drugs and left, and they left them with a verbal warning, you know, cutting him a break. But from there on, it's just like, cops are mean for no reason, you know. At this point, I've been Terry stopped and I have been, you know, frisk for no reason. I've outran a couple cops just because I wasn't doing anything illegal. I just thought it was entertaining when they told me, hey, stop and I ran. Like, what are you going to do? Chase me and if you catch me.

You're going to search me and I'm going to have nothing on me. I don't care. I was looking into laws at this point. So I was just so mad where I wanted to catch them in a lie, you know. I wanted to hurt them the same way they hurt me. But I chill out. I get through school. And it wasn't until my high school year that I actually started trying.

And I was bad. I was failing so many classes. I was way too much into girls. Like, you know, I was too busy flirting with girls. to pay attention or I just wouldn't do the homework. I wouldn't do the assignments or if I did them, I was purposely missing stuff. I remember taking a math test and I was like,

I'm gonna get 0% on it. I told the teacher that. And she's like, no, you're not. She's like, that's impossible. You can guess on every one of them and you'll still get like 25%. I was like, watch. She gives me the test. And I go out of my way to purposely choose every wrong answer.

And on a white piece of paper, I'm putting the correct answers just because, I don't know, I thought it was funny. And I hand it in and I leave. The next day, she holds me after class. She's like, why'd you get 0%? I was like, I told you I would. I was like, I'm a man in my word. I do what I'm going to say. And she's like, you can get them all right, can't you? And I reach in my backpack, I give her the piece of paper. I was like, yeah, here they are. And she's like, why? Why did you do that? I was like, I don't know. I thought it was funny. She's like, I'm going to give you 100% on it, but don't do that again.

And like, after that, like, you know, I felt the respect. It was mutual, you know. At that point, it was like, she did something for me. She didn't have to. So I didn't feel the need to lash out as much. It was there where, like, I learned that, you know, there's actually some people that actually have your best interest at heart, you know. Not everyone's out to get me. As I, I listened to these stories.

I can see that you were the perfect candidate for either the Marine Corps or the Ranger Regiment. It was going to be one of the two. Yeah. And it was at this time where all the ROTC nerds are talking. And they're like, oh, I'm going to go do these cool things overseas. I'm going to go join the infantry, what I know now. But in my mind, I was very illiterate. You know, I didn't pay attention in school.

I heard infirmary. And I thought infirmary was infantry. I didn't know the difference. I didn't care to. I didn't ask these guys about what they were signing up for. I had friends that were in ROTC, and they just talked about the military. Like, oh, it's this lifesaver. So once I got graduation day, I grind.

I make up like 10 classes on my last year. I had zero period and I had to stay after school. I did all nine classes at home just so I could barely graduate. I graduated with like a solid two point something. Like it was not good. But then I started doing landscaping for like a month with my dad. And I hate it. I don't want to do it.

I don't want to be in the sun. This is hard work. I don't like this hard labor stuff. So in my mind, the only I can think of it was, well, everyone talks about the military as this super cool thing. So that's when I started training. I was running like marathons every other day. I was running like 13 miles just just casually. because like in my mind was like if i'm going to be in the military i have to be the best and i would just

run until i was exhausted and then i'd had to get back like and and someone one of my like gym teachers told me this if you never if you never walk it never gets hard so even if you're like you're just slowly jogging i was like well then i'm just never going to walk i'm just going to pretend like i'm just moving my arms a lot i'm moving at the pace of a walk but in my mind you know i'm jogging And I just kept that mentality anytime I ran. And I would always shoot for like a faster score, you know. I'd do a landmark and I'd be like, all right, let's see how long it takes me. I left the house at this time.

Let's see how fast I could be back. And that's how I would challenge myself. And I was like, well, this is getting easy. I need to go further. It started with like one or two miles, you know. I'd run out a mile, come back a mile. And I'd look it up on Google Maps just to see the distance. So I knew like, because I knew you had to run to.

miles for the BTs us so like I'm gonna be very fast at the two miles but I'm still gonna run more that way if I have to you know I'll be ready for it just trying to be over prepared because I I asked some former military uncle he's like oh yeah just just be a good runner if you can run you'll be okay so it wasn't until like two or three months after high school where it's like I have this path of I can go start a business with my father and I can run it I know I can I am smart enough to do that. But that's not what I want to do. I want to get out of this small town. This is not where I want to be. And it was a lot to do with the way my parents raised me. You know, ever since a kid, they're telling me, you know, you hit 18, you got to get out of the house, you know, we can't

feed you, et cetera. I was like, okay, I'll leave. I'll find my way out. And that's the only path I saw. So I go to the Marine Station. And unfortunately, on this day, I had a very hot day after, like, I was in a hurry and I go into Marine Station and these guys are very egotistical. Like, are you even good enough to be a Marine? I was like, yeah, what do you need me to do? Do X amount of push. It's like, okay, I could do that. I've been practicing for this.

I could do 100 pushups and whatever a lot of time it was, two minutes or whatever. And I did them and like, oh, well, I bet you can't do pull-ups. I do like 20 pull-ups. And I'm staring them down the whole time. I was like, this is light work. And they're like, oh, yeah, you're like, oh, yeah. got what it takes to be a Marine just get on this computer and take this ASVBB or take this test. And I didn't know. I didn't know that that test was going to determine what jobs I had available.

I had a date. I had to be somewhere. So I chose C for every one of them and like, okay, you felt that miserably. It was just like a mock test where they got the answers right away. And they're like, you need to come back. You need to study and come back when you're better prepared. We recommend going to the library checking out an ASVB book. I was like, whatever. I'm going to go on my date. So I'd go meet up with my girlfriend at the time and whatever, didn't think I anything of it. The next day I go back, I was like, well, I'll redo the ass map. And I go in there and I was like, what job am I going to get? And they're like, well, it's not up to you. You know, we go based off the needs of the Marine or the needs of the Navy. And I was like, what's that

mean? They're like, well, you can recommend to be X, Y, and Z. But at the end of the day, it's the Marine that's going to determine where you end up. I was like, I don't want that. I want to do what I sign up for. So I walk out and I walk right next door to the Army recruiting. And on this day, I didn't have anywhere to be. So I took my time. I talked to the recruiter and they're talking way too much.

I stopped listening after so many words. And I do the ASVAB and he comes back with a binder like literally this big. I scored like a 111 on the GT. And he's like, you have. so many jobs available for you like what are you trying to do i was like i don't know man i just want to have a future for after the military and the military sets you up for that he's like oh well if you want the 88 mic or this nuclear something i don't even remember what the title was i just remember hearing nuclear i was like i was like what do you do he's like well the truck driver you just

drive trucks but it's kind of dangerous you know you could get shot at and stuff i was like i I don't want that. I want to get shot of that. And he's like, well, you scored hiding? I was like, what about infirmary? And at the time, I had more of an accent. And he automatically assumed I said infantry. I thought I was going to be a medic.

And he's talking about it. He's like, oh, yeah, infantry. We have this thing called an option 40. And I was like, what's that? He's like, oh, you get to do airborne. And he keeps talking out here airborne. I was like, ooh, jumping out of plane sounds awesome. That's all I needed to hear.

I didn't hear anything else he said. He explained what a Ranger was. I was like, and at the end of it, once I was done daydreaming, I asked him, I was like, were you a Ranger? He's like, oh, no, me? I could never. I was like, I could do it. I'll take that one.

So I get an option 40, Ranger assessment selection. But it changed from RIP from your generation. But I get that. And I didn't know what I was signing up for. It wasn't until like, until like you do like your PT test and you get to talk. to other people that are in the recruitment process. And they're asking me, I was like, what did you sign up for? I was like, infirmary. They're like, you're a medic?

I was like, I think so. I was like, I got an option 40. What's that mean? And they explained it, they explained it a little better. And I still didn't really understand. I just knew that I wanted to jump out of airplanes because it sounded cool. But I just didn't really care. You know, I was like, they're like, oh, you signed up for infantry, bro. I was like, what's that? What's the difference between that and the medic? They're like, you get to deploy, you get to go to all these cool places. I was like sick. I was like, that sounds even better than what I signed up for.

So this whole time, you know, I'm maxing PT tests just because I'm holding myself to the highest standard. You know, they're like, oh, you only need to get whatever 80%. And I was like, well, why would I do that when I could get 100%? Not knowing some people are just not capable of reaching that standard and just egotistical. So every time I go there, you know, I'm the first one to run back after the two miles. I'm staring the recruiter in this space being like, ah, yeah, this is light work. I could do this all day and they do their little hazing sessions. I was like, this is cute.

Is this what the military is like? This is going to be easy. The whole time they're like, you're not going to make it. You're not going to make it past basic. I was like, watch me. And on the day, I'm supposed to ship out, haven't told anyone. No one knows about this. No one knows I signed up for the military.

No one knows I've been going to the PT test. haven't told anyone because, you know, it was around this time that I got my heart broken by my at the time girlfriend. I was like, you know what? I hate this place. I never wanted to come back here ever again. So like, it just all lined up to where on the day I shipped out to MAPS. I asked my mom and dad. I was like, can you guys give me a ride to the recruiting station? And they're like, why? They're like, you want to join the military? I was like, I'll tell you when we get there. So we get there and they pull up to the very front on the no parking zone. I was like, I had some bags with me.

I was like, oh, I'm a good, I'm going to do something. I'll tell you when I get there. I had my bags packed and everything. I was ready to go. And once I got out the car, I look at my mom and my dad. And I was like, I'm leaving for the military today. And they just start breaking down crying. They're like, why are you leaving us?

We need you here. We need the support. Because like I was doing like landscaping, you know, I was helping with my brothers and sisters and stuff. I was like, you guys told me I had to get out 18. I'm just doing exactly what you guys told me. Yeah. I leave today.

I leave today and I'm not coming back until I get leave. And I did. I got on the MEPs and I had a I had another girlfriend. This one broke my heart. It was a military girlfriend. She was also enlisting at the same time. And it was just that young, young dumb love where like, like for two months we were talking and we'd go on dates and stuff and we're like, oh, we'll send each other's letters, you know,

we'll keep in touch, we'll make this work, et cetera. So we get to basic training, and I don't know, if you have any questions, I'll let you shoot. No, I mean, you write in your memoir that is unpublished thus far. I mean, you write about some very, like, common typical experiences that I think, like, we all had when we joined the military. You talk about the bus ride from the airport to Fort Benning, and it's deathly quiet. Everyone pretended they're not afraid of what's about the air. happen and 30th AG the holding area holding facility before you go to basic um I mean what why don't you finish the story about your army girlfriend and then we'll jump

forward to Rasp yeah so so this one hurt me so I don't know how you if you know how letters work they did take a really long time to get to the person and if you break up with someone you're still sending a couple more letters before they've broken up with you. So we sent like two or three letters back and forth that were like positive. And in basic training, she found someone else. And I get the dear John letter. And at this point, I had to send like a letter like once a week. So there was like six or seven. There was a couple letters that were like still like, I love you. You know, we're going to work it now. We're going to figure this out. And once I get that letter, you know, I go full rage mode, all caps. So it's like, I hate you. You're a terrible person.

you're the reason. Like, it just fueled the rage I already had inside of me. It was just more motivation for me. And it was just like, well, I had to prove her wrong too now. Like, it just gave me more fuel. But basic is where I learned what option 40 was, you know, at the time. Someone had finally explained it to me. I finally took the time to actually listen.

And it was like, oh, you get to go do airborne. And most people felt that. I was like, that couldn't be me. I've never felt anything in my life, just very egotistical. And they explained to me, you do airborne, you go to a ranger assessment selection, and then you get to the ranger regiment.

I was like, when do I become a ranger? They're like, well, once you pass the assessment selection, I was like, cool. I was like, how long is that? They're telling me the time, like, sweet. So what, it's just a time thing. I just stay here and wait. Cool.

And I do. I pass, I think I was like an undergrad in basic training. I get a piece of paper for it. It's not that impressive. But I get that and like the PT award had like a 320 something. I maxed just about every PT test except one where they hazed us right before the PT test. And I still got like, I still I still passed. But it was like in my mind I failed because I didn't max it. Even though we were like. like destroyed the day before and like right before we took the test. And I was just so egotistical. You know how like you get the pace guy, the instructor who's pacing you on the run? I'd run next to him. And I didn't know you could pass him. I didn't know you could pass the paceman until like a couple months in. Because I would just run right behind him because I didn't want to get in trouble by passing him.

And one day once I like finally get comfortable in the environment, I'm talking to him while he's dying. He's like trying his hardest to run as fast as he can. And I was like, do you mind if I go ahead? Go ahead. And he just looks at me. He's like, you can run faster. I was like, yeah, I've been running at your pace this whole time.

And he's like, yeah, go ahead. So I just take off on like a sprint. And that's when like I actually started like trying harder than like because I was told just be a gray man. Like, you know, just just blend into the back. And I was like, why would I do that? If I want to be the best, I got to be better than the guy in front of me. And it was always a competition between me and my good friend that, also ended up being a mortar.

A short little guy did track and field this whole life. And he was just fast. He was like four foot nothing and quick for no reason. I was like, you should not be able to run this quick. Your legs are not as long as mine. But it was always between him and I on who was running faster. But I just kept that mentality of, you know, this sucks, but there's someone hurting more. You know, just looking back and seeing everyone else struggle fueled me as messed up as that sounds.

But just seeing someone suffer more than me, it was like, like, oh, they're going to quit before me. I'm not quitting today. I'll wait for them to quit. And sometimes they'd quit and a lot of times they wouldn't. And it's like, well, if they're not quitting, I'm not quitting either. I'll quit until that person quits. And if that person quit, I'll quit until that person quits, you know, someone in my mind who was weaker than me. But that got me through airborne school. Airborne school was honestly not that hard. The thing I hated most was being in a harness and having to be so bad that like, you're just holding it for for so long and then you get in trouble for when you land immediately just peeing it's like

i had to pee for like eight hours what do you want for me but that's like the most memorable thing and just like the constant running and cadence is like this is this is not hard you know i've been i've been preparing for this run run scenario this whole time that what what i saw is fear got people the most you know people were quitting before they even started and it's like why it's not even hard yet You must have seen that at Rathb also, right? That, you know, even before you start the course, there are people just like standing in formation and they VW, but there's just fear of the unknown, really.

Yeah. Yeah. And I mean, you were there. You held your bags over your head and someone came out there and screamed at you and they said they'd be right back and they lied to you. They were not right back. You're standing there. for hours just waiting for them to come back and just like i would cheat i don't care like they'd say like

keep it off your head i'm putting it on my head i don't care you're not you're not checking in on me i am going to do whatever i can to make this as easy as possible i just remember they would they would put us in the front leaning rest on that basketball court when it was like blazing hot in the summer so your hands are getting all burned and you're like doing this pushing out oh and then the instructor will come and they'll see you squirming and like okay you get in the iron chair and did the day like when I go to like a crossfit gym or something and they they have you do the iron chair it's like a fucking exercise I'm like this is bullshit torture this is what this was a corrective measure in the military what the hell is this yeah what got me through it was like just focusing on something

else that hurt like when you're like in that front leaning rest like for us it was on the rocks and like the rocks start hurting so I just like shifted my hands like back and forth just to like hurt somewhere else and I was like all right this doesn't hurt as much anymore let me focus on something else that's hurting but for that mentality is really what I would focus on when I was struggling you know it's like what else is hurting what's hurting less and it just helped me get my mind off the one thing that was burning and it was in airborne school that I learned that I could just fake it I could just fake being tired so I'd be there just shaking and then they'd come relieve me they made me do another exercise I was like well I'm just going to do that until I get bored of it and

and I'm a fake that too. So I just did that. And so like once I like I would never be fully exhausted because, you know, then they push you past that. So like I was like, I'm always going to have something in reserves. They're never going to know the whole story. But, but that helped me a lot. And for whatever reason, I was never caught.

And I guess I was just that convincing on my shaking like, ah, I can't do it anymore. But I was never caught on it. So I just kept doing it. But like RASP wasn't that hard for me because of that because I was cheating. I was not going 100% every time because I didn't see the purpose behind it because if I went on I went 100% like the first week and I was like, why am I doing this to myself? They're not, they're not watching me. You know, there's other people on the front meeting rest position that are just laying on the ground.

I was like, I'm going to join them. They seem way more comfortable than what we're doing. But yeah, that got to rasp very. I personally didn't think it was hard. And it was just because I was cutting corners everywhere. I saw corners. you know that obviously there's some things where you just have to do them you know obstacle courses pt test at the time i was running like a 30 minute five miles so i was i was very quick on my feet

and you know you get to the end of it and you get to put in your picks on where you want to go i put first bat second bat third bat in that order i wanted to go to the beach i did not want to go to washington state where it rained all the time that's all i ever heard was like oh it rains all the time. They're, you know, suicide rate is super high. I was like, I don't want that. That sounds like a terrible time. And then third bat, you know, it's really close to the flagpole. They're very by the book, you know, and it's like, I don't want that either. And, you know, first bat's usually the, they're the chill ones. Everyone's talking good about it. I was like, I want to be first bat. But unfortunately, every mortar went to second bat. Every, all the guys I

knew we all ended up going to second bat. And it was pretty cool because it was. was a group of like eight of us it was a big group of mortars that went together and i don't know if you got questions shoot them yeah i mean i'm just going to regiment so yeah tell us about what it was like showing up at regiment and and especially like being a new guy in mortar section i think is a particularly horrifying as i recall yeah it was it was not pretty uh i thought i made it at this point you know i thought people were going to chill the fuck out for for once and no i can't get there. I get there. And, you know, I have, I have this big black duffel bag that has all my personal belongings. You know, I picked up a lot of things along the way because I didn't have

money before and now I did. So I had this massive like suitcase style bag and I had two other duffel bags. And we get dropped off at the front headquarters, the main building reception essentially. And we're just standing there and parade rest waiting for whoever. I don't know who. And I've remember just standing there. It was like, all these guys look so angry. Who piss these guys off? Everyone I looked at would just mean mug me. And naturally, I'm a happy person. So I tried to smile at them. And they're like, they'd just be like, what the fuck you looking at? I was like, oh shit, I'm not allowed to smile here. So I just stopped smiling. It's like, all right, they don't want me to smile. And it was at that time, someone said tab check. And I had no idea what a tab check was. So I was like,

so I started looking around. And I was like, I don't see a tab anywhere. And the guy's like, start doing push-ups. I was like, okay. So I started doing push-ups, you know, normal level push-ups. He's like, have you been to range for school? I was like, I don't think so, no. He's like, elevate your fucking feet. I was like, okay. So I put him on my bag. And he's like, have you been a mountain? That's not high enough. I was like, what do you want me to do? There's nothing else around. So like there's like a decorative like mortar tube out front. So I put my feet on that. And he started screaming at me again. He's like, that's not high enough. Put him higher. So I was like, well, there's nothing else to put him.

my feet on. So I'm just going to put them against the wall and work my way up. And at this point, I'm pretty much doing like straight vertical pushups. And I kept going until everyone else stopped. He's like, how many did you do? I was like, I don't know. I wasn't counting. He's like, just supposed to do 25 and one for the airborne range in the sky? I was like, okay. I was like, do you want me to start over? And he's like, no, just recover. Don't look at me. I was like, okay, does I go back to parade rest? And I was like, that guy was mean. I don't like that guy. It turns out it was one of the mortar team leaders, but I didn't know that at the time. And one of the mortar guys, you get your typical hazing ritual, you know, get screened at, grab your bags, get to the barracks, unpack your shit, and then meet back up at regiment and get your hazing ritual out of the way.

For whatever reason, they decided against it. I don't know why. They're just like, oh, we're busy today. We're not going to do it today. we'll do it tomorrow. I was like, okay, what do you want me to do? They're like, oh, just check in tomorrow. And I was like, sweet, we get a day off. But the next day wasn't, wasn't so nice. They were mean to me, believe it or not. I can also see, I can see you being a bit of a leadership challenge also, bringing some of your criminal mastermind skills to Ranger Battalion.

Yeah, I was always, I always like the challenge of like egoing people, you know, it's, I am going to outperform you. I don't care how big or how strong you think you are. I'm going to try to outrun you. I am going to outpace you. And I vividly remember going on a gas mask run. And I am trying my fucking hardest. Like, I cannot breathe with this gas mask on.

And one of my team leaders that I know is slower than me. I know for a fact I am faster than him just based off PT test. I am faster him by a lot. You know, I was running like 11 minute, two miles. And he's not struggling. And I'm so confused for the longest time. Like, we would run around the airfield, which was five miles. And he did it like it was nothing.

And I was dying. I was right behind them. But I was hurting. You know, I was gasping for air. And I was struggling. And I just couldn't understand how he did it. Well, come to find out years later, when he got out the military, he hollowed out his canister.

So he could breathe normally. And meanwhile, I'm breathing through a filter. And I was like, no wonder you were just so much faster than me. I'm over here fighting for my life and you're just casually jogging. But I handed that down to the next guy so he can use it on the next generation. But yeah, I was always just egoing everyone. It was like, you can try to hurt me, but there's nothing. Like I know it's going to end at some point and you're going to get bored before I do.

And they learned, my leadership learned real quick that it didn't work that, it didn't work for me, you know, like they put me with more, of father figures instead of people that were going to train you, corrective action, you because I was very smart, you know, you told me how to do something. I'd memorize it. I'd go back to my barracks room and study it. That way I don't make the same mistake twice. And I very rarely got in trouble because of that, you know.

I studied max distances, ranges, all that because, you know, you get quizzed on it. Airborne Ranger in the sky was something that kind of I didn't understand, you know, they made me pick one. And then they're like, remember these facts about it. And obviously, I'm autistic. So I remembered exactly what they told me. They're like, remember the name, remember what beer he likes and remember his family. I was like, okay, that's easy. I can remember that.

I really remembered it just by you telling me it. And that was it. And I was questioned them a couple of times. And then after that, it just fell off, you know. And I was blessed in the sense where I never lost anyone close, super close to me. Yeah, I lost a couple of people I knew. but I never got to experience, luckily, that part of it, you know, where you lost your best friend or whatever. And I just didn't understand why that tradition fell off.

Like from my generation, you know, even I, when I became a team leader, we didn't really enforce it. You know, you had to have an airborne ranger in this guy. You did an extra push up for him, but that was pretty much it. It might have been because the war was kind of bleeding off. And, you know, thankfully, I mean, it's a good thing. we weren't losing as many people. Yeah. I honestly don't know, but I think that's one thing where, like,

you forget the history part of it. It just repeats itself. Yeah, I mean, I agree. When I first got to battalion, my airborne ranger in the sky was Roy Brown, who was a ranger that died in Panama in 89. Yeah, I had a, I forget the rank, but he was a mortar in First Battalion, Lance. But like I didn't know much about him.

You know, what of my squad leaders was the first battalion guy that knew him personally. And I tried to pry just because, you know, you can only find so much information online. And I'd go out drinking with my squad leader. And I'd go out to his house, work on cars, do man stuff, you know, get drunk and work on cars. But he'd never talk about it. You know, I asked him, you know, it was like, can you tell me more? Like, I'm actually curious, you know, I want to know, like what kind of person he was, etc. He's like, no, man, it hurts so much to talk about.

She's like, I just avoid it, to be honest. I was like, all right, I won't ask you again. And it was like, well, why aren't we talking about it? You know, if it hurts you that much, obviously you need help. But that was the mentality. And it's crazy to me because I didn't start drinking until after Ranger's School. If you want, I'll cover Ranger School. I mean, didn't you go, you got deployed to Afghanistan first, didn't you?

Correct. Tell us about what year did you get deployed to Afghanistan? Afghanistan? I want to see, it was very early on, 2014, I believe. Sorry, I wrote him on my flag so I wouldn't forget. This is the flag. Afghanistan in 2015. 2015, cool.

Okay, so where in Afghanistan did you get deployed and what was sort of the mission at that time? Yeah, it was a gentleman's deployment, you know. I don't know if you know where Scorpion is, but it, it, It was a training mission more than anything. Like we were just training the partner forces. We spun up for QRF a couple times, but we didn't actually get to do anything. This is when you guys were working with the KCA?

Correct. Yeah. Yeah. Sorry. Just for timeline-wise, you know, you fly into Erbil and from there you get your briefing, you know? No, you flew into Kabul or Bagram. Oh, Kabul. Yeah, yeah.

Sorry, they all blend in together at some point. I know. I know they do. But we flew there and then, you know, you're there for a couple of days. And that was the first time we got mortared, you know. And I got to see R2D2 on steroids in action. I forget what the actual name is the C-RAM. I think it's what it's called. Oh, yeah, yeah.

But we're there and all these sirens started going off. And they briefed us already. You know, you got to go to one of the shelters if you hear these sirens. And me being the noisy kid I was, you know, I was like, I don't want to go to a shelter. I want to see the round explode. So I stayed outside the bunker waiting for this round to explode. And all I hear is the C RAM, R2D2 is what, because he looks like R2D2. I just see the tracer of rounds, you know, the br-through the air.

And it shoots a round out of the sky. And I was like, that was cool. What was that? And I asked my PL, and he explains it to me. He's like, yeah, there's like a bunch of rounds in between those tracers. So it's just chewing a wall lead at the mortar rounds. I was like, that's cool. We can't die here then if we have that thing protecting us.

Like, I truly believe, like, there was no way in the world where there was no world where we actually lost because we trained so hard. But we get our briefing to go to wherever. And this is where I started seeing somewhat like the shadier side of stuff. We're a convoy. We're attached to just a platoon of infantrymen, you know. And I was, as a mortar, you know, you're always with the weapons squad. And we're in the Humvee and we're test firing the 50 cows before we leave the base. And I remember seeing the antenna getting shot off.

I was there. I saw the sparks hit the antenna and they shot it. It was just dangling and I guess no one else saw it or no one else wanted to admit it. I don't know. I truly don't. But we do our convoy and we take contact. We take contact. I truly don't know. Someone said we got shot at. I don't believe it. But one of our windows, not the vehicle I was in, was one of the other vehicles took around to a window. And that antenna was part of the evidence they used to get their CIPs. And I was talking to my team leader and he's like,

we can put in for it. But personally, I'm not going to, you know. I don't agree with that. I want to earn it. You know, if I get a CIB, I want it to be something that I did, you know, something that, something that was respectable. So we didn't put in for CIB's at deployment. And the PL, you know, all the nerds got their CIB's based off, you know, being mortared in a safe base and getting, taking contact. But like, we didn't shoot back. We didn't we didn't know how to do much. there was a very boring deployment like honestly i thought i was going to be kicking indoors you know i was going to be dropping rounds on people's heads that's what i signed up for that's what i was that's what i've been training to do and you know they talked it up to where you know your QRF you might get spun up at some point and you might have to do you might have to drop rounds i was a 60 team at that time i was a i was just an ammo bearer you know do you want to real quick just explain

for people watching this if they're not familiar, that you guys have the 60, the 81, and the 120, kind of like what those systems are? Yeah. So the 60 meter mortar system, you could just Google it, look at a picture. There's two versions of it. There's a handheld version, and it has a way more limited range. I want to say it's like $1,300. Don't quote me on the numbers, but it's not that far.

And that's just handheld it. That's because if you shoot any higher charge, you're going to break your hand. So then there's a conventional version, which is just more weight they had to carry. It has a bipod and a base plate that are bigger and support the recoil of the round with a heavier charge. A charge is just like a gunpowder makes the round go further. But that's what I was. I was on the 60 team for that deployment. And then there's what's called an 81mm motor system. The millimeter is just the size of the round. So 60 millimeter, 81 and 120s are the three the U.S. uses.

And I've been a part of all of them. But for this deployment, I was just an ammo bearer for a 60 team. And we just trained. We trained the partner forces. We got to watch some tanks shoot other tanks, like just in training scenarios. We got spun up for QRF. We got on the plane. We flew around.

And we never touched ground. So it was more of just a... Peace, peaceful mission, you know, we went on runs, we climb mountains. It was honestly, like, for military, that was some of the best times I had was, I was left to my own vices, you know, no one was micromanaging me, no one was screaming at me. I got to talk to, like, ODA teams, other operators that were working out in the gym. And what they did, it sounded cool, too.

I was like, that sounds like more fun. And like, ODA teams, I don't know. what they call themselves now, but they were going by Gablestone at the time. They'd be walking through. And I was like, those guys are so cool. They don't have to wear anything. What do they do? Oh, they're contractors.

I was like, what's that? And they explained like, you know, contractors versus Delta. And it was like, which one's which? They're like, we don't know. I was like, what do you mean you don't know? Don't they work for us? They're like, yes and no. They kind of just do their own thing.

I was like, well, that looks like fun. I want to do that instead. But that deployment, you know, I got to do a lot of like, of like just working out and just just practicing you know you get unlimited ammo and you get to just be there you know you get to enjoy the time you're there especially on like a deployment where it's just maintaining peace rather than being the front line we we were QRF you know we they never really needed us because we never got spun up and when you got home you're a little bit saltier now and they sent you off to ranger school yeah

Yeah, and I was the only mortar that deployed that year. There was only one slot for deployment, and they picked me probably because I was one of the tryhards, you know. I was always trying to prove everyone else that, like, I was trying to prove it more to myself than I'm better than everyone else, but in turn, prove to everyone else that I'm better than them. But, yeah, they, my team later told me I was going to go to Ranger School when I got back. He's like, he's going to make it happen. I was like, okay. I was like, I don't want to go, but like, can you, like, just. talking give me some advice he's like yeah quit tomorrow i was like what do you mean quit tomorrow he's

like well whenever you feel like quitting just just tell yourself you'll quit tomorrow and then when you wake up tomorrow tell yourself the same thing i was like i was like that doesn't make sense it's like no no you'll understand when you get there i was like whatever so i get i get i run into a lot of problems because of my mouth and at the time i didn't know i had a lot of things that wasn't Like I didn't know I had like a lot of issues. I haven't dealt with like a sleep apnea, PTSD, anxiety, depression. There wasn't a label for it yet. I was just very young.

And I go to Pre-Ranger. And while I'm there, you know, I'm still being myself, ego through the fucking roof and challenging people. It's like, I vividly remember getting into arguments with the first bat mortars. Me being a little bit more salty, you know, I deployed and they were undeployed as like, you guys don't know what you're talking about. I'm better than you. You know, second bad's the best bad. Just your generic egotistical arguments.

And I took it a step further. You know, I called them out. And I was like, we're at Cold Range. And for those of you that don't know, it's just a suck fest. They make you walk forever. You do push-ups. You set up a triangle where you just, you're essentially camping on steroids. And they're hurting your feelings the whole time.

but when I'm out there, I had enough, you know, I'm mad that I'm here. I'm mad that these guys are poking me all the time. And finally, I go to this kid and I was like, if you want to fight me, bro, I'll meet you at the patrol base afterwards. Like, like, full ego. Like, I'm ready to throw hands with this. And he didn't show up. He didn't want to fight. I honestly don't remember that part too clearly.

Show up at the PB tonight is a pretty good line, though. Yeah, I don't remember, but what I do remember is that my squad after Pierce hated me because of it, just because I was always trying to ego everyone, talking shit to everyone. And one thing that did me in was I had sleep. I couldn't sleep. Like, I slept so heavily that I couldn't be woken up for one of my night shifts. And finally I woke up and they're like, bro, you had fire guard. I was like, why didn't you wake me up? Like, we tried.

You wouldn't wake up. I was like, well, I'll just go do it now then. And I stayed up with the next group and they're like, well, you didn't do it with your actual group. So, you know, you're a piece of shit because of it. I was like, whatever, man, I don't care. Your words can't hurt me. You're a bitch. Fuck you.

But then I get, I get peered out. We go to peers and I'm bottom of the totem pole. And I'm making my argument at this point, you know, I'm very cop-brained because I've been studying like just laws and stuff, rules and regulations. I had them all memorized. And it was a losing argument for me. There was no world where I won that just because they had that evidence of, you know, you're trying to fight people. You're arguing with instructors.

You're missing time hacks by sleeping in. It was like, I couldn't wake up. It wasn't like, they're like, oh, you woke up and then you just rolled over. I was like, I don't know what to tell you, man. I don't remember that. And I vividly remember talking to. the douchebag in charge. And we're having a one-on-one.

He's just going off on me. He's like, oh, you're a piece of shit. You're not made for regiment. You're never going to be a ranger. You're going to go straight back. You're going to be a nobody. I was like, okay. I was like, what are my options?

He's like, it's not up to you. It's up to your command sergeant major. You're lucky he's in town. I'm going to talk to him tonight. I was like, okay, I'll go back to the barracks and hang out. So, like, that class left, you know, it was just me in the empty barracks all by myself. Fucking miserable. so lonely in there just contemplating life is like how did I feel this you know I studied patrol

bases I studied tactics I studied for ranger school I memorized the whole fucking book and like down to the snares I studied it so hard just because I wanted to be that prepared but he talks to my command sergeant major and he comes in in my lonely barracks where I'm just by myself sitting on my bunk and like the rest of the bunks are completely empty it is so quiet in there and you know, I stand up, go to Parade Reyes, and I was just like, how's going to go and Command Sergeant Major? And just like, sit down, just talk to me. And I tell them exactly what I have. And he's like, that's why they want to send you back? I was like, yeah, what did they tell you?

I was like, what's your side of the story? He's like, it's a lot more different than what you said, but I think you should have another chance. You're just going to stay here and recycle. And this was pre-ranger. This wasn't even Ranger school yet. I had lost I lost 20 pounds already from that pre-ranger class. And so I had to do it again. I had to do pre-ranger again. And I want to name drop this asshole so bad, but the guy in charge, I won't name drop him because I should let it go.

I don't want to. I'm not ready to let it go yet just because I'm still mad about it. But he put me in charge, you know, I was the platoon leader. I was the guy that was getting in trouble. I was the dude that had to stand there while the rest of the class Scott Hayes just to build that resentment. But I just got my head down. I sucked it off. I was like, there's no winning these arguments.

I just have to do exactly what they ask of me. And the second time is always easier just because you know exactly what's going to happen. So I do. I keep my head down. I help people where I can. You know, it's like, oh, I already did this. You know, this is what we're going to do. These are the objectives we're hitting tonight.

I know exactly what we're doing. We should approach this way and this way. And this was when like leadership change and I was in leadership roles. It was like, I know, well, I know the best way to hit this because I've done it. And I ended graduating that time, go to, unfortunately, go to Ranger School. And at this point, you know, I've lost like 25 pounds. It is insane. You send me to go to Ranger School and then you starve me before I get starved.

It makes zero sense in my mind. But I'll let you ask the question. Yeah, I'm not here to throw any shade because I had an extended department. appointment at ranger school myself um i was at vons platoon out there at camp derby long enough i thought they were going to rename it murphy's platoon uh but uh you had a you had an extended stay in ranger's school as well didn't you sure did yeah it didn't stop for me there so uh you get to derby and i'm still i'm still like egotistical you know i'm still trying to do like the most you know i'm asking like like what do you guys need for me like my problem was

I wasn't asking the correct way. I was more of like, you're wrong and here's why. And you talk to a fresh PL who's fresh out of iBolic, and they've never been talked to the way I'm talking to them ever. You know, childhood, military career. No one is as raw as a ranger from regiment. And it's just like, you're wrong. You got to do it this way or else we're going to fucking walk through a swamp.

We don't have to walk through. And they're like, no, you just do the terrain model. If that's what you guys want me to do, that's what I'll do. I'll go build a terrain model. I'll go play with sand, sure. And that's where they put me a lot of times was the terrain model, just because they don't want to listen to me in the planning phase, unless I was in the leadership role.

But, like, it was for good intentions, you know. It was like, I don't want to suck more. I don't want to go through a river when there's a bridge. And they're like, yeah, no, but they're going to be expecting that. I was like, I don't care. We'll fight them back, whatever. And they're like, no, we got to go through the hardest part. That way they don't expect it.

And even the casual would be like, you don't have to do that. You don't have to make this harder. They'll be like, you don't have to make this harder. Believe it or not, we have to go through the river too. Yeah. He's like, you guys are going to do. So, but like I ended up getting peered out again. And this time I'm sitting in front of the first sergeant.

And I've done this before. I'm experienced. I'm weathered down. I know exactly what I need to say to not get in trouble. And I'm just putting up my counter argument. I was like, first sergeant, respectfully. these people are a bunch of bitches. I hurt their emotions, and that's the reason I got peered out.

He just stared at me for a second. And he looks at, like, the four officers that are in there. And he's like, what does your guys decide? And they all go through, and they're like, yeah, well, he screams at us. He's always trying to, like, take control of everything. And, like, he doesn't respect the rank structure. There is no rank structure. Yeah, that's exactly what he said.

He's like, stop. He's like, everyone is equal here. You guys are all fucking nobodies. And he looks at him. He's like, get the fuck out of here. Go, go back. You're going, you're going to, you're going to the next phase. I was like, sick.

And I don't know if you, when you peer out, there's two groups, you know, there's, there's the, there's three groups, the people recycling, the people that quit and the people going to the next phase. And everyone was expecting me to go to the recycling group. So I started walking towards them. And then like I did a half right phase and then walked to the boys. and they're all just happy to see me. They're like, oh, yes, we thought you got pured out. I thought that was the end for you.

And that's the only phase I made it straight through. I get to mountains. Yeah, it wasn't even my fault. Mountains was just, it was raining way too much. It was, it was freezing in the morning where, like, your sleeping bag is crusted over. And then it rained on, like, my greater patrols. So I ended up just failing patrols. So, and it was in, like, it was in mountains where I had an ingrothed toenail massive.

It was like, it was hurt. Like, my socks were bleeding through and stuff. And I went for, like, I want to say it was like two weeks before I actually asked for help. And like, just because it hurts so bad, like, I couldn't endure the pain anymore. And I finally asked the medic. I was like, can you take a look at my toenail? It hurts. And he's like, sure.

And he, like, takes my sock off. It's all bloody and stuff. And it's like, you have an ingrown. You know that, right? I was like, yeah, I know. I just don't want to get recycled. It's like, they're not going to recycle you. They're going to cut it out and send you right back.

I was like, yeah, but it's going to, I need, I have to go back to base and I'm probably going to get recycled. I don't want to get recycled. I'd rather just suck it up for this phase. And he's like, no, you can't. I have to send you back. So like, they send me back and they cut it out. It's literally the size of a quarter ingrown into my foot.

And they're like, they're like, you were just walking with this? I was like, yeah, it fucking hurt. And they're like, you know you didn't have to? I was like, no. I thought if I came over here, I'd get kicked out. They sent me right back. They're like, I get back to the group and it wasn't the big deal I made it out to be. They bandaged me up.

They gave me like things to keep it from getting affected. So I just had to apply that. But like, I was just sucking for the love of the sport at that point. You know, there was no reason behind it. But yeah, I ended up failing mountains. and that was the first time, you know, I actually got to refit. And I didn't know that you could just eat as much as you want. So in these refit phases, I was grabbing everything.

You know, I was stacking my plate as high as I could. And they're like, doesn't it hurt your stomach? I was like, yeah, but I'm going to need it for the next phase. And like, you know, when you recycle, you have a million times more energy than anyone else because you've been getting fed, you know, you didn't go through Darby. You didn't have that. you didn't have that reset. So the second time I go through mountains,

I'm just way more aware of everything going on. And I got lucky where we did a lot of patrols that we've done before. I did this ambush. I know exactly how the layout is. So we're going to do exactly how I say, or else we're going to fail this miserably. And luckily, this studio group listened a little more. And they were a lot more respectful because it wasn't,

it wasn't a LT heavy, you know. It was a lot of enlisted guys. So they were more willing to listen. And this is where I met a good friend that I lost contact with. He was a command sergeant major. He was 50 years old in J-Soc. I was like, what are you doing this for? I was like, no one wants, yeah, he was super old.

And he struggled a lot. And we were Ranger buddies. We were always next to each other, just by design, I guess. And I saw him struggling. And I was like, I was like, well, hurts. He's like, bro, everything. I'm old, you know. this isn't for me. I was like, how can I help you? He's like, he's like, honestly, if you take

like the ropes and like the machine gun when I have it, I really appreciate it. I was like, of course, man. Like I'll do anything to make this easier for you. And that's what I did. You know, I took the machine gun from him. I took his ropes. I took the special equipment every time he had it. And he like, he like loved me for it, you know, just that mutual respect part of it. And he's like, when we get out of here, if you ever need a favor, you know, I work for like the legal side of the military. You ever need a favor? You got one. I was like, I'm not going to use it. That's a friend you need, Eduardo. Yeah. Yeah, definitely with the way I was going. But I met him there and we get through mountains and then we get split up. We go to different platoon. So I didn't

see them again after that. And I graduated that phase just because I did the same objective that I felt. So like I had already gone over it in my head so many times. There's like, what could I have done better. And obviously, you know, don't go through the water, you know, set up, don't set up an ambush from the low ground, obviously. Don't shoot uphill, go around, take the high ground, just very generic. I was way too tired to come up with an actual plan. But second time, you know, I think I got peered out again just because I was the new guy. But they didn't care. It was more of a, you got peered out because you're the you're the you're the importer you know you didn't grow up with these group of people and i get to swamps and believe it or not i recycled swamps

i recycled swamps because uh during one of my patrols someone lost their nods in the water and it was because it wasn't tied down wasn't even my fault it wasn't up to me You're responsible for everything the patrol does or fails to do. Yep, I sure was. So that's the reason I recycled that phase. That phase was honestly cool. Like I like the talent show they did where like you got to go look at snakes and stuff. Oh, yeah, they pretend to throw the snake at you.

Yeah. Yeah. But like at that point, I was just, I lived there, you know. I'd been there for at this point, close to eight months. Like from Pre-Ranger to that point, I'd been there for eight months. I was starving, you know, I was super skinny. I was, I think I had lost like 50 pounds by that phase. And, oh, no, I didn't even, it was part of the reason that I recycled was the nods and

then I got peered out. So I went to another board. I don't even know if it was the nods that got me, that, I don't even think that was my patrol, but I know that I got in trouble for that for whatever reason. It was like, okay, I think he was in my mind. squad when he lost his nods but it wasn't my greater patrol that's what it was but i ended up getting peered out that phase too and it was a lot of the same it was it was the way i talked to people like you're going to listen because i am right and you are wrong and this is why i got fired out again

yeah you think i'd learned but i didn't and and at this point the first sergeant that's sitting there he knows my background he knows i've been there for way too long he sees me he's like brother you're starving. You are not going to be able to make it through this next phase. You're not going to be able to recycle again. This is it. You either pass swamps or you're done. I was like, well, I was like, I can only do the best I can. So I'll stay. He's like, he's like, you should go home. You know, a lot of people make it to this point. And unfortunately, it's not for everyone. You should just hang up the hat, you know, you struggled enough. You proved, you proved to yourself that you could do it. I was like, no, I didn't. I need, I need the, I need the badge. And he's like, well,

I know at the end of the day, you're going to stay, but I truly believe you should go home, you know. I was like, I'm not doing it, but he's like, he's like, but if you felt his face again, you're done. I can't, I can't recycle you again. I was like, all right, good enough for me. And I'm walking out. I'm bawling, man. Like, I didn't want to recycle again, especially for peers. Like, like, like helping, like, like, trying to help the best I could. And unfortunately, it was just the way I talked to people that that got me in trouble. But I did recycle. I did it again. And this time I'm being way more strategic. I was like, well, I'm going to make two to three friends. You know, I'm a peer the

highest at this point. We're going to do the peer triangle. And peer triangle, which just means where, like, in Ranger School, you make like two or three friends. You guys peer each other number one. it's like a graded thing from first to last. And if you're first on like two or three of your friends, you can never be at the bottom. And that's just the scheme that people do while they're there. And I thought I did it. You know, I did the phase again.

It was easy because I'd done it before. I made sure everyone's thing was tied down, double-knotted. I checked every single one of them. I wasn't even the platoon leader. I was just checking them because I was traumatized. But no one lost knots, surprisingly. I made it through and then I got peered out again. So at this point, I'm defeated, you know, I'm done.

Like I have nothing left. And there wasn't even like a, there wasn't even a peer board. It was just me and the first sergeant. And I was like, I was like, you don't have to explain it to me. I was like, I know, I know I'm done. If I'm in this office, I shouldn't be in here. And if I'm in here, there's something wrong. he just looks at me and starts laughing.

He's like, nah, I knew you were going to peer out. He's like, you're good, man. Go get your tab. Get the fuck out of here. Bro, I start bawling.

Yeah, dude. If they didn't give you your tab, they would have had to deal with you coming back to the school at some point. I mean, it's like, Jesus, get them out of here.

Yeah. So this is where, like, graduation happens. And at this point, one of my biggest motivators was to prove that guy wrong that told me I wouldn't amount to anything in the pre-ranger yeah yeah and and he comes up to me and he's like oh I knew you could do it I I always had it in you I believed in you and I just looked at him I was like can I get in the van and go home I don't want to talk to you like just just trying to be

as respectful as I can because I know if I say something dumb it's going to get back to my leadership but at some point I slipped up and I don't remember what I said I just remember I insulted him because like I was just hurt so bad by like him doubting me. It was something along the lines of like, why the fuck you lying? You know, you didn't believe in me. You told me I wouldn't amount to shit. Yeah, here I am. I proved you wrong and now you're my friend.

Fuck you. It was something along those lines. It wasn't that word for word. It was that disrespectful, but it wasn't that. But I get my tab, you know, I get to fly back finally, starved, got a new chip on my shoulder. now ego's even higher through the roof. No one could even look in my direction without getting tapped checked.

Like, I am hurting everyone because I can now. You got questions? Pain instills memory. Hello, everyone. If you're hearing this, you are not a member of the Patreon. You can get your hands on ad-free episodes that come out early

and you can ask us questions. Maybe we'll answer them. You can also watch the Teamhouse podcast completely ad-free and early. And you can also watch it live as we interview our guests. And it's the best way to support the channel. So if you can, if you're open to it, you can go to patreon.com slash the team house. That link is in the description.

We appreciate the supporters and we hope you would consider being one. So it's patreon.com slash the team house. Thanks, guys. Back from Ranger's School, freshly minted tab. You're going to be a mortar team leader now and they deploy you to Syria. Yeah, we do a training cycle. I do a training cycle as a team leader. Very generic. I mean, you've heard it hundreds of times, so I won't go over it. But I was a bully. I came up with this fun new 500 Fridays.

Every Friday, I will tab check you until you do 500 push-ups. And it got to a point where I wasn't even tap-checking them anymore. I was like, you guys keep each other accountable. Let me know when you guys done 500 push-ups. And if you guys do them early, you could go home. Like, if it's allotted, I'll send you home. I don't care. But I was a bully, you know, and it was because, like, that's what I grew up with.

You know, that's what I knew, you know. Like, I took these guys on runs just because I was fast. I knew that that was my domain. I could outrun you. You might be able to outlift me, but I can outrun you all day long. I am not going to give up before you. And one of my first privates, I actually broke him. I ran him so hard that his liver gave out.

I don't know how. It was in my fault. I was perfectly fine. I was drinking water. I guess he wasn't. But he ended up getting like hospitalized and they gave me a new private. Like I didn't know why his liver gave out. But actually, he ended up recovering. I ended up deploying with him to Iraq, but that was down the road. But we get deployed to Syria and this is new and exciting, you know. We haven't been at war for a really long time. No one knows what it's going to be like. And even for me, like, I was excited to go go back and actually get to do what I signed up for.

And this appointment, it's fun, but like super traumatizing at the same time, you know. I get to finally do the things I signed up for. We deployed with every weapon system, 60s, 801s, and 120s. We didn't use the 81s at all. We mostly used the 120s. And the 60s, the team guys would take those and use them on like a super secret squirrel missions where they just leave us, leave us at the base and go to, disappear for a little bit. But that deployment was nice. We get to undisclosed location, one of the bases.

And it is super nice there. Like, I was not expecting to have running water. I was not expecting to have a team room. There's, there's alcohol and there's everything you could ever ask for. There's a private chef. And it's like, what is this? This is not deployment. And we're there for a couple days just getting fitted, you know, getting the local uniforms, all that stuff, like just just getting situated with like the layout of the battlefield and what our role is there. And, you know, we test fire all their weapons. We outfit our vehicles, up armored range rovers that are way too heavy, so they blew tires all the time. But first, first convoy, we drive for a really long time and we're rocking a convoy of like way too many vehicles and i was like this is scary like uh

we're in uh up armored uh the range rovers i think they are i don't know what's it but uh may have been yeah they may have been yeah but we're in those and the first time we go out we we blow a tire and we we have run flats and we do a tactical tire change i was like well we're just sitting ducks out here aren't we You know, any one of these tractor trailers could be a V-bit, and we all just die. And it was like, well, I guess if that happened, you know, it's out of my control. But we drive somewhere for like two hours, and that's the first time we actually get to drop rounds on people. What we did is, you know, we'd sit back and we'd give the village a two-day notice of, we're going to bomb the shit out of this place.

Get out. If you're not ISIS, we're going to bomb it. And they had refugee camps set up. So, like, they had somewhere to go where there was food and water and shelter. And after the two days, that's when we start dropping mortar rounds. And we were dropping over 100 a day. You know, we had a truck outfitted for just carrying our mortar rounds. And the person that drove it absolutely is.

And those 120s are like that, right? Yeah, they're massive. They're, I don't remember weights because it's so long ago. I got out in 2018. But they are heavy. But, uh, we, were dropping close to 100 rounds a day and it didn't feel real you know it was no different to me than just training because i wasn't watching where the rounds were going and we had isr but it just it just felt

like a video game for so long and we kept doing it you know we'd go out for i want to say it was five days out two days back something along those lines and it wasn't until like halfway through the deployment where it finally got real to me at some point after doing it for so long going through the villages seeing the destruction and stuff because we we bombed the village send the partner force in and then we'd go in behind them once once they deemed it was safe and obviously you know there's still uh random iEDs and all that stuff still you know people hiding in tunnel shooting at us but we were very blessed in the sense where we never saw like direct contact other than like vids and it was at such a distance that it didn't seem like that was that was that was intentional that like you guys were

providing a lot of indirect fire because they don't want American soldiers like in indirect combat. Yeah. Yeah. Like the notable thing for me was, uh, was we were dropping rounds in this and then after we went into the village, there's the backspray of an RPG and like you just see like the, the silhouette of a body. So what in my mind, you know, what I pictured is a mortar round landed. This guy got scared, pulled, uh, aimed RPG down. and pulled the trigger and then that's why he blew himself up right there and it was like oh shit i'm i actually have some part in this and it was in the same village that some some some five-year-old kid just screaming

at the top of his lungs at me and at the time my my little brother was the same age and i just see my little brother in this kid you know brown little kid angry at the world and i was always with the interpreter just because i was the only brown dude and i guess he gravitated towards me but we were bullshit a lot and the kid's screaming at me and I try to ask the dude what's he's saying but you know the it's so loud but like driving and all that he didn't really hear me so I wait until we get back to the base and I finally talked to him I was like you remember that little shit at the corner what was he screaming at me and he's like ah just your generic propaganda I says bullshit you know he's going to kill your family uh I was like what do you mean he's didn't kill my family what I do

to him. He's like, bro, you killed his dad last night when you were dropping mortar rounds. I was like, me? I was like, what do you mean? He's like, yeah, no, that's what he was saying at least. I was like, oh, this is real. Yeah. And at that time, we had ISR where I got to watch as my rounds that I dropped were lighting up a compound. And there was three or four people running out. And as they were running out, the mortar rounds were striking right where they were and they just vanished, you know, there was nothing left. There was, and it was like, oh, this is real, you know, this is, this is not a game. And from there, I kind of lost, I kind of lost the purpose, you know, I kind of lost the reasoning as to why, why are we doing it? I started being more analytical about it, you know,

given the same situation from their point of view, I'd probably be doing the same thing, you know. But at the end of the day, I still had a job to do. So I kept doing my job. And that slowly, that's where I saw the shift, you know, that deployment is where it's like, I started to realize a lot of what we were doing. Yes, we're helping, but we're also hurting a lot of people. Yeah, it's sad in the sense that, I mean, it's one thing if someone is ideologically aligned with ISIS, at least I'm not going to lose any sleep over that. But there were people, as you know, ISIS would come into the village that saw the old man's head off and be like,

hey, if you don't join up with us, this is what's going to happen to you. And so you have a lot of like 15-year-old kids press ganged into joining ISIS. And that's sad. Like that does bother me. Yeah. And I was just very nosy in the sense where I just gravitated to the Kurds. And I would take the interpreter with me. And I'd be like, can you translate?

I just want to ask some questions. And I just ask very probing questions of like, why did you join this side? And like, why have you been fighting so long? And the Kurds did this thing where they'd fight to a line and then they wouldn't want to fight past that. You know, that was their boundary. That's, that's their land. They don't want to, they don't want to push into enemy territory. And I was like, why?

Well, why do they always stop here? It's like, we go a little bit further. That's, that's their stronghold, you know. But they would explain it and they're like, bro, we've been at war our whole lives. We don't know anything else, you know. We were born into this. We've been fighting since forever. We don't know another, another.

option. It's like, that's sad. You know, you were born into war. Your sons were going to be born into war, and this is just a never-ending cycle. But I had a couple, like a couple close calls as well. We were there, you know. We had a VIVA that got really close. And I was facing the opposite way that from where it was coming, Poland's security. And me being the nosy self, I was like, I told my buddy who was maddening a machine. gun and I was like, I'm a go luck. And I peeked my head over the berm. And at this point, you know, everyone's lighting it up. You got a 50 cow on it. You got a bunch of people shooting at it with small arms. And someone grabs a javelin. And this is the first time I seen a javelin do what it's

supposed to do. And I'm just being nosy. I'm just peeking over. Just trying to be just not trying to be involved, but trying to see what's happening. And I see this javelin absolutely wrecked this car. Just absolutely turn it to scrap pedal. And We drive past it, so I actually got to see the aftermath of it, and there was nothing left. It was just like, there's a tire. There was no engine. I was like, that car was moving. There has to be an engine somewhere.

It was gone. And it was just so crazy that, like, the level of explosion that created just from one javelin, it was at that same base where, like, because we'd set up, like, essentially patrol bases as we went, you know, set up a triangle, and we defend that while we're shooting boarder rounds. And it was at the same place that me and my buddy were just sitting there bullshitting because that's what you do when there's nothing going on. And we hear a round whiz right past me. It's like I, the rounds here. My buddy's like right here. Like barely like the round is two feet away.

My buddy's another two feet away. And we're both. We don't know what just happened. I like my reaction time was faster where I knew that we got shot at. So I got down and got to the ground and my buddy was frozen. He just stood there. I threw my kid on and I told the team leader, I was like, I think we just got shot at. And at this point, my buddy's catching up.

You know, he's like, yeah, we got shot at by someone. And then the team later verifies he's talking to the partner forces. And come to find out, one of the partner forces was shooting at a vehicle. And as the vehicle drove in between where we were, he just kept shooting. So he was shooting at us. Oh, shit. It was the partner forces shooting at us. I was just lucky, you know.

I just, you know, two steps to the right. That's my face. I wasn't wearing a helmet. I wasn't wearing any protective gear. But that incident is what, like, just, I just accept the death, you know. I was just like, if it's going to happen, it's going to happen. I have no control over it, you know. We got mortared a couple times where it was super close.

That's how I got my combat infantry badge on paper. This was down the road on, I want to say like three quarters of the way through the deployment. We're sitting at a fob, you know, and at this point, it's routine. There's nothing new. We're finding targets on ISR. We're leveling them out with mortars. And it's just casual. It's not even a stressful job anymore.

It's like, here's your target. I'm sure you've seen the videos that I post. Like, it's not like I'm having a good time while I'm there. But while we're at this. place. We get the first incoming round and at this point I've never I've never heard. I've never been on the opposite end of mortars or artillery so I didn't know what it sounded like and to me it just sounded like an air asset flying overhead way too low like the whistling sound and it impacts it's super far away. It's like 500 meters away and it's like okay that was close where's that coming from

so we just started lobbying rounds in where we thought it was like we were we were laid on a position already. So we just started dropping rounds and we're not being accurate. We're just dropping rounds wherever they go because, you know, it's like we don't we don't know for sure if that's it. So we're just going to, we're going to send some probing rounds and hopefully we scare them enough to make them stop. But they shoot another round. And this one's, this one's scary. It's close. The whistling sound was way shorter and it impacted probably like 50 meters away. And for whatever reason, we were all just super lucky that wherever, someone was standing, there was no shrapnel. It was, it just hit the burn perfectly. And,

uh, you saw the sparks. You saw the dust kicked up, kick up in the air. And that's when we decided this place. So we're, we're panicking. You know, our base plate is dug in. You're not, you just don't pick it up. It's 100 and like 30 pounds. And it's buried in Syrian dirt, which is like concrete. So we had a grab recall that lifted up, but it's like a two-man job. And everyone's panicking, you know, we, we have stuff everywhere, you know, we have our sleeping systems laid out. Like, we're over here camping, we're not at war, we're over here having a good time. So we start displacing and we're just grabbing everything as fast as possible. And at one point, I look around and I'm down a man.

Like, it's me, just for reference, it's me and two other Rangers and our platoon sergeant. And me and the other two Rangers are, we're struggling. you know we're trying to force this base plate out we're digging it out i look up and i'm trying to find our platoon sergeants like why isn't he helping us and uh come to find out he he was he was stunned like he he froze he stayed in the passenger's seat and couldn't move and i went up to him you know i hit him on the helm i was like can you fucking help us please and he just couldn't hear me like he was just he got his eyes forward and like he just couldn't move and luckily they didn't we displayed fast enough before another round landed and we left that area but that's when I started to like

lose respect for the platoon sergeant who was an import he wasn't like a born and raised regiment gun and that disdain grew uh we we took um artillery a couple other places like in villages it just hit buildings around us it wasn't that serious um well i was nosy and like uh when they were trying to like sniper for targets. I was on Bino's just being like, uh, like I had no business watching it, but I was trying just to see just because, you know, there's nothing else to do when you're deployed. But stuff like that. And then another memorable incident for that, that platoon sergeant was we're doing shifts on, um, the infrared. I forget what it's called. It's just a camera that's

an infrared, you know, I'm pulling security on 180 degrees of an area. And we just cycled off of it because we were trained on it and we do either one or two hour shifts. And I fell asleep one night. So I accidentally did the shift of another person. And like, so it was me, it was a team guy and then it was the platoon sergeant. So I accidentally did the team guy's shift. And, oh, no, I did the platoon sergeant shift. And it was the team guy's, team guy was next.

but in my mind it was like well i'll just go wake up the platoon sorry because he's next on the list and i go to his 10 i was like hey bro i accidentally uh i accidentally uh stayed up too long like i didn't want to admit that i fell asleep so i just i just lied to him i was like i stayed up too long uh it's your turn pull shift and he's like you did my shift uh can you just go wake up the next guy i was like no i want to go to bed man i'm tired and he's like oh no he should be over here uh he should be inside this building on like three doors down whatever so i was like sure whatever i'll go wake him up instead so i go over there and there's no one in there so i go back to the platoon charge i was like i can't find him you want to go look for him and ask him or can you just pull the shift i want to go back to bed he's like

oh no actually he's in this room and so i go looking for him and i don't i can't find him i don't know who he's talking about i don't know where he's sleeping like there's a bunch of random dudes sleeping everywhere so it's like hard to tell how hard to pinpoint the dude you're looking for And so I just go do another shift. Like I do six hours straight and at this point I'm exhausted. I haven't slept. And the sun's coming up. But that was the last shift of the night.

And I just lost more respect because, you know, instead of just getting up and doing his shift and, you know, giving the other guy a break or even doing what he wanted, getting up and going and waking up the dude. Because we knew where the next dude slept because you had to point out, you talk to the person that you were waking up. And they're like, all right, I'll be right here. So you knew where he was. I didn't know. I was exhausted. I was too tired to comprehend. And there was just too many people sleeping next to each other where I'd look at under

nods. And I was like, I don't know if that's him. But I ended up just doing like six hours. And I was just exhausted. We did a couple of fire missions. And I just ended up passing out on the chair. And they're like, what's wrong? I was like, I'm tired.

I haven't slept. And they're like, oh, yeah, that's normal. that along with the overpressure, you know, you're just going to lose gaps in your memory. I was like, okay, like, I didn't think anything like I was just so mad about the principle behind it, you know, the integrity part of it. So I told the team, the guy in charge of the team, the Delta guy, and I explained to him what happened. He's like, that's not right.

I'm going to talk to him. So he talks to him, and he gets the same story. And he talks to me again. He's like, so. We got that dilemma, you know, we could send them back. The only problem, it's going to look really bad for us because we're sending back an import platoon sergeant based on a team leader's word.

And it's just not going to look good for anyone. He's like, I recommend, like, just ignoring him. We'll give you guys the fire missions, and he could just be like safety checks. We'll just rework it that way. And then from there on now, it was just me. my two friends doing most of the work and he was just supervising, give him a title, so he'd feel important. But after that, you know, it was a lot easier. We started doing a lot more reckless things because we were in control and we shouldn't have been. We allegedly,

allegedly reach past the max distance on the 120s just because we were barely outside of range. max range is like 7200 meters on the 120s well the tube goes a little further down let's see if we can force it down so i told my uh my buddy and he's like okay yeah we could try that so so we drop it in there normally and it's moving so slow you can hear it going down the tube it hits the bottom you hear the dink and like it has like a three second delay before it goes off like i thought we just misfired but it goes off and we wait for the splash and the team guys like that was really close can you send it a little further i was like we can try i was like hey bro this time throw it down the tube and then move your hands real quick so we crank it down another two turns and he throws it down the tube and

he's like yeah that that looked good that hit the target meanwhile me and my buddy i was like that was the dumbest thing we could have ever done why did we do that i was like i don't know it sounded like a good idea in my head. But for whatever reason, it worked out, we just got lucky in that situation. Because, like, we were running a gun. We were running a 120, and the other two guys were running their own 120 gun. So we were really separated. So, like, if we had a misfire, they'd have to stop what they're doing.

They'd have to come. And we'd have to, it'd be a whole thing. Yeah, yeah. That would suck. Yeah, but we got lucky. And then you redeployed back to the United States, and the last one was to Iraq, right? Yeah, so I redeployed to or I got back to the States and this is when I met my wife and That's when the shift started you know this whole time. I thought I wanted to go SF. I wanted to go Delta and at the time I was a corporal. I believe and that's

Or I was a fresh sergeant or one of the two and I reached out because But that deployment they're like oh you should try out you know for for the team. I was like okay sure. I got nothing to lose sounds like a good time, you know, you guys are nice to me. You guys go by first names. I'm not getting disrespected. I'm not getting screamed at. You guys just tell me what to do. And if I do it right, it's a, it's a good job. And if I do it wrong, it's like, this is what you could have done better instead of like, you know, you're always wrong. So it's like that. I like that environment, a whole lot better. So like, yeah, just, just, just, just try out, you know. You can name drop us if you want, but it's like, in my mind is like, nah, I want to do it myself, you know. I don't, I don't, I don't, I don't need

a handout from anyone. So I talked to the recruiter and he's like, well, you need to meet this criteria. You need to have one NCO ER. And I was like, I was like, yeah, but I've deployed with them, you know, it's like, they'll vouch for me. He's like, yeah, that's not how this works. You know, you have to meet the textbook standard of having one year as a sergeant. I was like, well, it's either, it's either this or I'm getting out, you know, I'm not reenlisting for a maybe or for a tryout, you know, and they're like, well, you know, there's nothing we can do. There's nothing you could talk about. So I forgot about it, you know, I didn't really care.

You know, I still had time. I still had another deployment. I was still scheduled for a training cycle and deployment. So at this time, you know, a lot more wars ramping up. We got the Sierra deployments and the Iraq deployments, actually a new deployment for us at the time. where only two, one other Ranger, um, weapon squad and mortar team leader had,

had deployed there. And it was attached to Delta. While we were there, it was just, uh, training the partner forces again. And I thought it was going to be a lot like Afghanistan. When we get there, we do our show of force, you know, let's show them that we actually know what we're doing. Because I'm just a kid, bro. I'm 22 years old.

You know, I don't know much of anything. I know how to ego people. That's about it. But luckily, we had a weapon squad leader who was a little more season, you know, a couple more deployments. He was E6, about to be E7. And he's like, yeah, this is what we're going to do. I was a fresh sergeant, just for reference.

He's like, yeah, we're going to get there. And we're going to show them how efficient we are with our weapon squads and our mortars. That way they respect us. I was like, okay, sounds good, man. How are we getting there? Are we driving or we flying in? He's like, we're walking. I was like, why?

It's like, to show that we can do it. I was like, okay, sounds, I guess, I don't know. I was like, how far are we walking? It's like, it's like 12K. I was like, with a combat load? He's like, yeah, I was like, oh, this doesn't sound as fun anymore, you know, because we were rocking the conventional mortar, you know, bipot, extra weight. And me, I always egoed to the point where I needed more rounds than the combat load.

So like normally they're like take 12 rounds. I was like, we're taking like 20. Fuck it. We're going to show these guys how strong we are. And we do it. We get there. We lay on a target. We light it up.

It's very efficient. And at this point, you know, the Kurdish team leader, he's impressed. You know, he's never seen that level of efficiency, that level of speed. And just the level of weight that we were carrying, he was actually astonished. He's like, how heavy is that? And I had my private do the math on the rounds and stuff, the weight of the bipod and all that. And I gave it to him. He's like, you guys walked with that the whole time?

I was like, you watched us. You were there. And he just starts laughing. He's like, no, no, I respect it. He's like, I think we'll get a launch is fine. And, you know, we do training missions. And I didn't know that this was going to be like we actually got to do other things other than just training. Like in my mind, I thought I was going back to Afghanistan and it was just going to be a chill, chill with the voice thing.

but we did get to go out into the city you know just pick up some high value targets and this was in like solomonia and kirk cook yeah yeah i honestly don't remember what what cities we were going into i just remember that i wasn't having as much fun as i wanted to because i was just pulling security every now and then they'd let me into a building and it's like i want to do the building part i don't want to sit you know covering x y and d sectors of fire you know but it is what it is, you know, bottom of the total pole, you got all these top two guys and Rangers are just the lowest because we have the privates. So we were mostly just pulling security for them.

And it wasn't too crazy. I had this one incident where this vehicle is just driving at us way too fast. So we're laying prone and we have the weapon squad laid in on it and my buddies on it or my privates on it with his laser. And I just stand up and shine my wife. light at him and he gets way too close we let him way too close we sure probably lit him up but in my mind i just pictured like an uber driver that was lost and saw like a strobing light and got confused so i i didn't shoot and he finally realized that there was a bunch of dudes with guns pointed at

him and he backed up slowly and left but that that was like the only close call that we really had other than like you know generic like uh vehicles like uh one thing that I was really sad about was, oh, it wasn't even this deployment. The previous deployment, I was the mini gun gunner. And I did so much training for that. And I never got to use it. I got to test fire one time. And I'm still salty about that.

I wanted to light up a car or something. But on this deployment, I was a 50-Cal gunner. And it was just a lot of the same, you know, scanning, analyzing. It becomes routine at some point. It's no longer like a stressful situation. becomes what it is. But we did get in trouble while we were there. And it's because, you know, we're a bunch of alcoholics with egos. And me, I don't, I don't care like what your rank is. I don't care what you've done. If you talk to me respectfully, I'm going to return that same energy.

And one night we're playing poker and one of the one of the team guys is just way too drunk and talking shit. And we're just going back and forth trying to see who's done more. And we're just like dropping kill count and et cetera. And he's like, oh, bullshit, you didn't do any of that. And this is where, like, I get one positive influence is one of the team guys was like, bro, you should just go to bed. You're not going to win this argument.

I was like, you know what? You're right. I was like, thank you for having me. I'll see you guys tomorrow. So I leave. And the way this place was set up was, it was. Americans, French, a bunch of different nations were all compound together. And I believe it was the French or Canadians.

They ended up throwing a party just to like hang out and talk. And we got in trouble here. And it was mostly because of our privates got a little too drunk. And me, I'd get drunk, but I'd still want to have some level of control, you know. I'd still want to be able to react to something if something happened. you know i'm not i'm not blacking out in this situation so i'm sitting there drinking way too much like everyone else and i'm watching my private just because you know he's my responsibility and he's too drunk he's bumping into people knocking drinks out of people's hands not like on purpose just like bumping into

them so i'd let it i let it go on for a little bit and then finally i decide you know that's enough you know, you bumped into, you drop some guy's drink, yeah. You know, he was upset about it. So I'm just going to tell you to go home. So I go up to him. I was like, hey, buddy, you should go the fuck home right now. And he's like, he argued to me. He's like, why?

I was like, because I fucking said so. And he continues to argue with me. And he's like, well, I'm off duty, you know, I'm not working right now. I was like, I was like, bitch, you're always working. you're in the military i'm gonna make your life hell if you don't go home and at this point i'm screaming at them i'm full rage mode because like i'm the i'm the sergeant you're a fucking private without a tab so like obviously there's some level of respect there and one of the team guys over here's us arguing is like yeah this is this is getting too escalated everyone should just go home and like

everyone does you know all everyone goes back to their respective compounds and I knew we were in trouble. I knew that that wasn't going to go over well. So I started drinking water. I started chugging like canteens of water knowing what's coming in the morning. And I wake up early in the morning. I go to the gym. Why?

I don't know because that was my routine. And in the gym, I was like, fuck, I need to go check in. See what they want us to do. And I go check in with the weapon squad leader. And I tell them what happened. I tell them the truth because I have nothing to hide. And he's like, you know, you know what we're going to have to do, right? I was like, I know what you want to do.

I was like, you're going to hazes until someone throws up. I don't want to do it. He's like, he's like, you know we're going to do it. I was like, yeah, I know we're going to do it. I don't want to. So when, whatever, six or we waited until everyone else was awake so they can see us suffer, all the other team guys and all the other compounds. But sunlight comes up and we're out.

out there formation with our canteens like a bunch of privates and we're like we're going to walk this airfield until someone throws up so we walk it we do a lap and at this one we're a fucking spectacle everyone's out there with bino's just watching us and the airfield or the compound to walk all around it was like six miles or something crazy so we do our first lap and i'm tired i don't want to keep doing this anymore it's me and the weapon squad guy we're walking in the front and all the privates are behind us. I was like, how long are we going, Brian? I'm fucking exhausted. I'm going to throw up soon. He's like, no, someone else is going to throw up before you. Just hold it. We're just going. And finally, like, two and a half laps in, someone finally throws up. I was like, can we go home, please?

My legs hurt. Like, just a one-on-one conversation. And he's like, yeah, we're done after that. I'm tired, too, man. He's like, but don't show it. Act tough when we get back to the privates. So we get back to a private. were like, all right, do you guys learn your fucking lesson? All right, let's go back. Go get ready for the day. And, like, we had to run back and, like, get all our equipment and get ready for the training cycle. But it was just like, it was a learning lesson, you know? It's like, you can only show so much.

Like, even, like, to me, he was super, I, like, had so much respect for him just because he had actual deployments where he was, not in the weapons squad. he was on the line team and he actually got to kick indoors. It was just a respecting for me that, like, whatever he said, you know, I respected him enough to where I was going to do it, no matter if I agreed or didn't agree with it. But we do it. And then, like, the team guys were like, you guys were fucking nuts. You guys are fucking insane.

Like, we had some choice words for you, but we let it go after watching you guys struggle. I was like, sweet. We accomplished exactly what we wanted to, you know. And it blew over after that. They're like, all right. They punish themselves. We don't have to punish them. I can imagine on these sorts of like train, advise, assist type deployments that, like,

Ranger Privates, you kind of got to keep them busy, like give them something to do, you know, or bad things happen. Yeah. Yes and no. I think with a little direction and like a little bit of freedom, you know, like this is where I started letting go control a little bit. where I wanted him to max a PT test. And to me, it was just so easy to max a PT test. You know, you can't max a PT test? What's wrong?

You can't do 80 pushups? Do pushups until you could do 80 pushups. It's not a complex structure. You can't run fast? Well, run more. And he was right on the line. He was like a 95% there. And there was just like, just do the other 5%.

You know, you've got to work towards it. It's not just going to happen by itself. But, you know, this is where I, I gave him freedom is like you're going to do whatever you want. And if you can pass a PT test at the end of the month, I'm going to keep leaving you alone. And that's where I learned like another form of leadership, you know. I don't have to be the one that hazes him into excellence. Like I don't have to be like leading by example in a sense every time.

You know, I could just let go with some of the control and expect him to do it. And he did, you know, he was maxing PT test by then the deployment. But, you know, there's a. They're so, it's so simple. Like you, you just tell them what you want to accomplish. And a lot of times they'll do it real quick, you know, you don't, you don't have to micromanage them. And I did that for way too long, you know. It's like, I don't want your negative outcome to be a reflection of me, you know.

Therefore, I have to be involved in it. And it was just bad logic, you know. Yeah. No, there's definitely something to that. It depends on the soldier, right? How much supervision they need. Yeah, 100%. He was just more of an adult, you know, where you can tell him to do something and he'd do it.

And I just had too many bad experiences. My first private was not the brightest. He had a good heart, but he just, he had it in the wrong places, you know. You can tell him to remember this or he had no street smart. It's what it came down to, you know. He was very book smart. But as soon as, you know, something stressful happened, he like shut down and, like mess up whatever or he'd overshoot.

He'd put in the wrong numbers. Just very basic, like put in a stressful situation. He couldn't handle it. So that's where I got a lot of my like, oh, I have to be, I have to be double checking everything. I have to be micromanaging. And it was just because that was my first experience with a private. So talk to us a little bit about coming home and transitioning out of the military. It wasn't great.

Alcohol was was keeping me alive for way too long. It started after the Afghanistan deployment, actually. You know, we get back and I'm feeling these new emotions I've never felt before. You know, anxiety, depression. And I didn't know what it was. I just knew I didn't like it. So I go to one of my team leaders. And I start talking to him.

and I didn't drink at this point. And he's like, well, you know, I've dealt with a lot of things. And it was someone I respected, you know, someone had a couple deployments. And he was wasted at this point. He'd been drinking for way too long. And he's like, he hands me a beer. He's like, your problems will go away at the bottom of this beer. I was like, sweet.

So I chug it. I was like, well, this is the cure. Well, he wouldn't lie to me. So I chug it real quick. And I still feel like shit. It didn't solve anything. And I tell him, I was like, hey, man, I don't think that fixed it. He's like, oh, I just drink another one.

And if that doesn't fix it, just keep going until it does. So we just get wasted. And that's where, like, the alcoholism really started, you know. It started with you drink way too much when you were around certain people, but you surround yourself with the right people and you have moderation. And the thing that saved me was probably my wife, you know, when I was around her, you know, I wasn't drinking to get blacked out drunk. I was drinking for a good time.

And I met her after the Sierra deployment. And it was rough being separated on the Iraq deployment. Like I'd call her every night. And we keep in touch. We were married right before that deployment. And that's what carried me over. You know, it's knowing I had something to go back to, you know, for the longest time, I just wanted to die.

That was one of the biggest. reasons I joined the military. It was easier to die honorably. In my mind, that was the easiest way to go. I die overseas and my family gets a paycheck and I get my problem solved. It was that mentality that really did me in, you know, after the military, alcoholism and that mentality where I was drinking and then I was like, well, what do I do now? How else can I go honorably? Well, I'm going to be a cop and then I'm going to join the SWAT team. And that's, that's going to solve my problems, not knowing that I had to deal with the underlying issue that I figured out later in life. But after the military, my son is born the same month I get

out. So to be completely honest with you, I lied a lot. So I got out the military. I smoked weed. I thought that would solve my problems. You know, I thought that would cure the anxiety. That would help me sleep. And to be in a police department, you can't smoke. weed within two years. So I was going to lie in the polygraph. I had to. There was no way I could pass a polygraph if I was completely honest. So I applied to every agency within like 50 miles where my wife's hometown was, Baltimore, York area. And I just kept applying for a year. And it was just a slow process of, you know, you got to go try out. You got to go do this. And this whole time, I'm trying to raise my son the best I can, you know.

I'm a stay-at-home dad. My wife is going through postpartum. So she decided to go back to work. And I was like, yeah, I'm not working. So I'll watch my son, you know. I'll enjoy that part of it. And I truly did. You know, I bonded with him.

I'd have him on my chest while I'm playing video games when he's just napping. It was a good time, you know. It gave me purpose again. And then after. I got out March 2018 and I was hired as a cop on December of that same year. And then my wife decided to stop working so she could take care of the kid. And we swap roles. And same thing, man.

My mouth got me in trouble a lot. I didn't stop being myself. And that transition from being told, you know, your God's gift to earth, you cannot die. You are unstoppable to, bro, you're just a cop. you're human you should be nice to people you can't talk to people this way uh that transition was really hard for me in the police academy you know i was ego in everyone every instructor i ran into it was like brother you're fucking fat you cannot talk to me this way like i will outrun you like and i wasn't saying they like that direct but that that's what i was thinking in my head you know

It's like, I will outperform you in any task that you decide. So I'd just be speaking out, making jokes, talking shit, the norm, the typical military banter. And I was lucky that there was like a Marine guy there and another guy who was just very bro mentality. You know, like he was all about it. It was like, yeah, fuck these people. They're all dumb. You know, they don't know better. We're better than them.

We're going to run. And if, let me give you the first experience. of getting hired by a police department. So I apply. You do your test. It's like the equivalent of an ASVAB, past that. Then you get scheduled for an interview. Pass the interview, do a polygraph.

And I was blessed in the sense where allegedly there was polygraphs overseas, so I practiced. So I knew how to beat them. And it just goes to show how bullshit they are if I could smoke weed. And then so I smoked weed on in March and then December is when I was hired. So that was not two years. But I just told myself that it was it was one time, you know, it doesn't count. And I just told myself enough times, myself that enough times to where I believed it. And I passed a polygraph.

However, for whatever reason, I guess I was just honest with myself. there was ways to work around the polygraph. But I passed that and then you go into this limbo phase for a little bit where you're hired on, but the police academy doesn't start. So you just go in and do admin BS. And this is where I started to grow the disdain for cops even more, you know. The reason I wanted to be a cop was I wanted to see a change, you know. I wanted people to have way more positive interactions than they had negatives.

So that was my mentality going into it. You know, I've had so many bad experience. I don't think I've ever had a good experience with a cop at that point. So it was like, if I could give you a warning, that's what I was going to do. But I get there and that mentality doesn't seem to be the norm. You know, there's a recruitment officer there. And I'm just egoing her because I know I can outperform. their PT test and she's like, no, there's no way, you know, you're going to, you should just be,

you should just try to pass it. I was like, I'm going to max it. What's the max? I don't need to know what the minimum standard is. I don't care about the minimum. I'm going to do the best. And like, I guess that ego didn't vibe with her. And she's like, oh, you're just here fully yourself, blah, blah, blah. I was like, I'm just going to let my action speak louder than my words. And she's like, okay, let's go for a run. I was like, okay, you're coming with me. And she's like, oh no, I have a bad hip. I'll follow you in the patrol car. I was like, if you're scared, just say that. And at this point, you know, she's like, all right, let's do a mock PT test. I was like, okay. I was like, what do you want me to do? She's like, oh, we'll just do pushups.

See if you could do it. It's something super low. It's like 50 pushups to max it. So I'm staring her down as I'm doing this pushups. And I get to 50. And I should start counting. I go all the way up to like 80, 90. And I was like, you want me to keep going? And she's like, no, do the sit-ups now. And I'm just staring her down the whole time. And I understand how bad it sounds now. But at the time, you know, it's like, you challenged me. So I'm going to prove my point now. But from that point, you know, that disdain grew.

So when I got to the academy, it's so sad to me, you know. She was, she recruited me. She was the one that was looking out for me in a sense. And I was cool with one of the instructors who was also a military vet. you know we we exchanged stories we talked you know he was all about the the ego part of it of oh let's everyone's tired let's do some more push-ups this is easy you know because they make you do cadence and i was the one doing cadence and it's just because i knew them and he's like i love your mentality you come in here and you're just happy it's like yeah i got nothing to lose this is this is entertainment for me

and he's like yeah but like uh you you're you're gonna get in trouble i was like what are you you talking about he's like yeah you're your captain she stopped by and she asked uh if there's things that you're doing that are not in line with police values i was like i was like what do you mean he's like she's fishing bro in simple terms she she wants to write you up and she just wants to start the paper trail i was like you're not allowed to tell me that are you he's like i didn't tell you anything i was like okay sweet i was like so what's coming he's like oh well she came in here looking for a rule infraction and a rule infraction is the same as the California three strikes you get three rule infractions in you're out and the verbiage behind it was although the totality or although

there's no one thing you did that violates that constitutes a rule infraction the totality of the circumstances everything combined is the reason you're just sort of overall an asshole it's kind of the gist Yeah, yep, yep. And I agreed with it. I wasn't going to deny it. But the fact that they stretched it, you know, and they had this thing where you could take it to trial and then, you know, you could argue with them and all that. And I like to be a thorn in people's side.

So I was like, I'm going to take it to trial. I'm going to argue with you in court. And I was talking to this track. I was like, what are the odds I win this? He's like zero percent, bro. There's no, there's no world where. you win this argument i was like but like it's bullshit he's like i agree but you're not gonna win it i was like i was like what do you recommend i do he's like bro just keep your head down stop

stop talking i was like fine i'll stop egoing and then so that's what i did you know i just cut my head down and then time to ask me a question i'll be like i'd still have the ego i'd be like can i answer this am i allowed to talk now and they're like yeah answer the question and i'll answer whatever question it was you know it wasn't hard for me Once I graduated, I was supposed to be awarded every award, the Defensive Tactis Award, the Shooting Award, the PT Award, and the Academic Award. And I was talking to the instructor the day before they gave the award down, and he's like, you're not going to like this?

I was like, what bullshit do you have for me now? He's like, you know how I told you you're getting every award? They changed the criteria, so you only get two of them. I was like sick. And I actually have them right here. I don't know. It's in a box somewhere, but I got the PT award and the top, top gun award. But it wasn't even the fact that I only got those two awards. It was the fact that they were going to give me all four of them, but then they decided to like change the criteria

because, you know, they didn't want one person getting all four awards. And it's just like, what are we doing here? You know, you guys are changing stuff. And they did it with an obstacle course too, you know, they, they pushed the start line further back for me and my buddy that they knew we were going to be, we were going to beat the score. So they made the start line further back. And then they didn't tell us that we absolutely crushed it still because like, it was like the obstacle course, you know, very generic. It was super easy obstacle course, like a kindergarten obstacle, of course, compared to what we've been through. And I egoed them. They're like, oh, you have to stay with your partner. I was like, I'm going to race you, brother. And he's like,

like you're going to lose. I was like, there's no way I'm going to lose. I'm going to win this. And me and my buddy, we raised and I combat dope through windows. Like, I was, I was pulling all the stops. And we absolutely crushed it. We beat it by like 30 seconds. And they wouldn't tell us what our score was until like my buddy went back one day for like

training. And he's like, you know, we're the highest ranked on that obstacle course? I was like, they told us we lost. Like, yeah, I saw the award. It's on a wall. guys we did the best. I was like, why didn't they tell us? He's like, you know why didn't tell us. They hate us. I was like, yeah, you're right. But I ended up graduated. Like, I didn't even care about the awards, honestly. Like, for me, it's just another, like, I already know, like, I could do it.

It was just, like, it's unnecessary. Like, I don't, I'm not, I wasn't there for the award, you know. What did, uh, what did you think about the police department when you got there and, and, and, like, how did that job kind of, like, combined with. some of the transition or PTSD issues that you were dealing with on the on the back end. I think it gave it like us a easier off ramp if that makes sense, you know, like you go from trauma, the highest level of trauma and then here's different level of trauma, but everyone, like you felt comfortable in the sense where everyone was was experiencing the same levels of trauma. No one was dealing it. Everyone's coping with alcohol. Very few people are actually

talking about their emotions. And you could do that for a while. You could do it works until it doesn't. But getting there, you know, you quickly realize that the reason that police department specifically is the way it is is because that's just how they're trained, you know. They don't want you to be proactive. It's actually the opposite. You get in trouble, you get talking to, and I just didn't care, you know. My goal was to do the 44 agencies traffic tickets by myself. And I accomplished that close to every time, every month. That was my goal every time.

It was like, I'm going to go stop as many people as I can, and I'm just going to give them warnings. And I'd get pulled into the office. They're like, what are you doing? I was like, giving warnings? Why? They're like, you should write citations. I was like, what for? They're like, well, it looks bad that you're just giving warnings,

you know, your ratio is off. I was like, well, in my mind, if I'm going to be speeding everywhere I go and I stop someone for speeding, why would I write them a ticket? It doesn't make sense. They're like, yeah, but like, we need to write more tickets. That way it evens out and stuff. I was like, sure. Send it to me in the email and then I'll do it because they don't want the paper trial part of it.

They wanted the talking to you and then you just do it. Yeah, yeah, because there are no quotas. Illegal since the 80s. Yeah, yeah. Believe it or not, I looked into it. But every argument I went into, I'd get the factual evidence first. You know, I wasn't going into an argument that I knew I couldn't win. And if I was, I was just going in there to piss people off for fun.

But they slowly started to force me out by, like, writing me up for bullshit. So the first time, other than, like, I didn't even mention in, like, the rule infraction of the academy, my own captain wrote in a section where she was like, I, I too have all. also spoken with Officer Gardunio and he has shown signs of disrespect, etc. or insubordination was the terminology. But that's part of it. And then the next time I got ridden up, we were, I was on night shift when I got there just because they hated me, obviously.

And so I was forced onto night shift and I was not sleeping. I was getting like three or four hours and I was waking up to my son. You know, he's a baby. so he's crying so like I was not getting the sleep I needed so I was just surviving all caffeine but like the less sleep I got the more attitude I had just because I didn't have the tolerance for it and one night we get new recruits and they're on night shift and for whatever reason I know that this one officer has a DUI a previous DUI back in the day and I just look at him and smile and I was like hey brother you get to be on the other side of a DUI tonight and I just laugh and walk away

nothing about it. This is a very generic, typical conversation I have with people. Like, I didn't even think it was that harsh. I've said way meaner things to other people. And I walk away, I go do my job unlike most of the agency. I go out and start patrolling, stopping cars, trying to arrest people. And probably like a week later, I get pulled into an office and it's the captain, the patrol captain. He's like, you know what you said last time? I was like, what are you talking about? it's like well do you remember like making remarks towards another officer he's like what are you asking me do i talk to other officers i knew exactly why i was there but i was just i was just playing playing with him

and he's like well at this point he's like stumbling over his words he's like well what i'm trying to ask is uh have you have you been disrespectful to other officers i was like define disrespectful and we went back and forth i was like can you just tell me the quote that you want me to say he's like well you said uh to another officer he gets to be on the other side of a DUI. I was like, I don't remember. I don't, I don't remember if I said that or not. I was like, am I getting in trouble for this?

If so, I want my attorney present because police have an FOP. And that's when he like, close his book. He's like, no, no, no, you're not getting in trouble. I just need to talk to you about this. You know, worst case scenario, it's just a written reprimand. And then it disappears. And I was like, well, that doesn't sound that bad. I don't care.

You give me the written reprimand. I don't want to get an attorney. involved. So I get the written reprimand. And I actually felt bad because, you know, I thought I heard this grown man's feelings with a joke. So I go back to him. I was like, hey, man, I'm sorry. I didn't mean to offend you. He's like, what are you talking about? I was like, the joke. I got, I just got pulled into the office. He's like, I got pulled into the office. I told him, I didn't care. I thought it was funny. I was like, and who wrote, who snitched on me? And I went to my lieutenant. man, I just wanted to know why I got in trouble.

And I was like, hey, LT, you mind just looking into this? I got written up for a joke I made. I want to know why. He's like, oh, fine, sure. You're always about drama. Can you just do your job? Just joking. I was like, I do the most traffic stats out of anyone here.

I don't want to hear it. And he goes, he goes, ask around. And come to find out, it was another officer got offended on his behalf. But it gets worse. they decided to write me up when they were at a bar drinking talking about the incident. And that's, that's, that, that was the time that they decided, you know, he should get in trouble for this. And it was like, yeah, maybe I shouldn't have said that. But at the same time, it's not that deep.

Yeah, that was the first up. Yeah. That was the first sign that I was like, okay, I am slowly not going to be liked here. I made a lot of mistakes just because I didn't know better. And I knew better. A lot of the times I just didn't want to get in trouble or didn't want to deal with the consequences. And I say mistakes. It was a lot of like integrity mistakes on my behalf where I wasn't arresting police officers when I should have. And one really, it bothers me to this day that I should have taken this guy to jail. So where I worked in Westminster City, there's a bar downtown where there's a one way. And if you're drunk, you're going the wrong way on the one way every time. I don't care if I. I don't care if I. I'm. I don't care. It's a bar. It's a one way. You should go the one way. But I'm sitting there across the street. Just hanging out. I don't even want to do anything. I'm tired. I just want to observe the crowds and just have the presence there. Because like a lot of times if you're there, people don't act out. They don't get into fight, stuff like that. But I see this car pulling out the wrong way out of the one way. I'm fine. I'll go stop him. So I run to my car. I light him up. And he pulls over right away. And he has the audacity to just hold his badge up to the window. So I knocked on his window, and I was like, do you want to roll the window down, buddy?

And he's like, can't just see I'm a cop? I'm one of you. You could just let me go. I was like, you're going to roll the window down or I'm going to break it and drag you out. And he's like, oh, you're one of them cops. I was like, can I see your license registration and proof of insurance? And I'm just smiling at the whole time. He's mad.

He has his gun very, very obviously displayed in like the center console. And he gets a paperwork. And he hands it to me. He's so pissy about it. I was like, you keep talking. You're going to talk yourself into jail. And he's like, oh, you wouldn't do that. Then we'd have like a turf war essentially. I was like, what are you even saying? Like, you know you shouldn't be driving. I'm going to run you. And then I'll go from there. So I go run him, a Baltimore city cop. And I want to take him to jail so bad just because of his attitude. So I call out that I'm on field sobriety. And anytime you call out, you're on field sobriety another officer comes for backup just for safety reasons and and it's the supervisor

and i'm talking to him i was like i want to take him to jail and he's like nah you shouldn't it's gonna look bad you know how about you just uh how about you just let him park his car and then tell him to get a ride home i was like but i want to take him to jail i don't like his attitude he's like he's like just do it man i don't i don't want it the paperwork you know because if you arrest the cop they got to reach out to the agency they got to submit the gun they got to transfer it's a whole it's a logistical nightmare it ties him up for a really long time so i was like fine i'll go let him park in the library that's a one way too you can only go one way in this library as well so i was like i'm gonna go i'm gonna let you park in this in this parking lot

I'ma go sit on the other end of the one way. And if I see you drive out, I'm going to take you to jail. And so I do. I drove his car to the parking lot because I didn't want him driving. I was like, get a ride home or else you're going to end up in jail. And he's still pissy with me. He's like, oh, I'm going to talk. I was drinking with my captain.

He's not going to stand for this. I was like, talk to whoever the fuck you want. I don't care. And I just, I leave at that point. I go, I drive up. it's like a U-turn library so like it's a one-way this way so he parked in on this on the one side and I was just waited on the other side so I waited there and two minutes later I see the same car pulling out I was like there's no way there's no way this guy has the fucking ego to pull out again so I light it up again I don't care who it is I told you not to drive that car I should I should have towed it but I light him up again and it's the same fucking dude driving I was like you're going to to jail. Hop out. You're doing field sobriety. And I started doing field sobriety and he's, he's wasted. I could have told you from the moment I spoke to him just from the smell of the car that he was drunk.

And I started doing field sobriety until my, my supervisor shows up and he's like, what are you doing? I was like, I'm taking into jail. I don't care. I'm fucking over it. And he's like, slow down. Come talk to me. So I handcuff him. I put him in the back of my car and I go talk to my supervisor is like think about what you're about to do you pulled them over there's a record of you pulling them over and then you let him go and then you pulled them over again five minutes later and then you arrested them how are you going to explain that to the court i was like i don't know i'll tell the truth i guess it's like that's going to look really bad on your integrity part i was like i was like what would you have me do it's like just just just let me handle it i was like fine

Can you tow his car at least? Can I tow his car? Can I do something to hurt him? Can I take his keys and chuck him in the woods? He's like, just let me handle it. I was like, fine, whatever. And I just forget about it. I let it go because that was my first, like, encounter that I actually wanted to arrest a cop.

And I did it. And I talked to him later. I was like, whatever happened to him? I was like, oh, his wife came, picked up his car. And they're super thankful. They called. And it's like, yeah, but like, I sold my integrity. you know i didn't want to do any of that i was like in the future if i want to arrest a cop should i just

arrest him from the beginning he's like that's up to you man i'm just going to tell you the consequences i was like what do you mean consequences it's a cop you should go to jail if he's d u i's he's like yeah that's that's what should happen but in reality what's going to happen is every officer in this county is going to hate you because you're arresting our friends essentially and that was just the cop mentality at the time i don't know if it's shifted i doubt it no no you got to think positively it's definitely the better. It definitely doesn't happen anymore. I'm sure.

This was 20. Yeah. Yeah. And there was a lot of mistakes that I made like that were it was just so blatantly obvious. You know, you're doing 100 miles in a posted 60 and you're drunk and you're coming from a police gathering and you expect me just to let you go. No, give me your keys. I'm going to chuck them in the lake.

Because someone told me I could do that. So that's what I started doing. I was just chucked people's keys into random places. And so I got in trouble for it. Someone complained about it. And I got pulled into the office. They're like, have you been chucking people's keys into the tree lines? I was like, yeah.

They're like, why? I don't know. Someone said I could. I got the green light. You know, they said I couldn't take them to jail. So, you know, you punish them by making them walk home. And they're like, stop doing that. You can get in trouble.

I was like, why? I was like, it's either that or I take them to jail. I'd rather take them to jail. But I don't want to be like, like known as the cop who's arresting other cops. And shortly after that, I got in trouble again. And it was, this one still, it's so annoying to me. So I am downtown.

It's like one or two in the morning. And I'm bullshading with one of my friends, as most cops do, you go meet up and you just talk about all the incidents you have. And that's just how they decompress. And we're just talking. And I was like, I see a car. And I was like, that dude's 100% drunk. I seen them like two blocks away. He's crossing center line and like his headlights are off.

I was like, you want it? He's like, no, this is your sector. You pull him over. I was like, I don't want to do a DUI tonight. I was like, fine, I'll do it. So I follow him. I follow him for like half a mile just to get more evidence. It's just like for me, it's like if I got you crossing the center line seven times and, you know, you forgot to stop at a stop sign.

It's just more reason. It's just more probable cause. So he finally gets to this warehouse parking lot. I light him up and it's suspicious to me. He still has his foot on the break and it's very rare that you pull over someone and they keep their foot on the break unless they plan on leaving. So this whole time, I'm just thinking to myself, what does this guy thinking? You know, like, why is he still think, like he hasn't let off the break? He's probably still in drive.

I'm just going to stay here for a little bit. He tries to stick off and he didn't do anything until I was like, you know what? I called out my stop, you know, very generic police talk. Vehicle description. It didn't have a vehicle tag, so I didn't call out a tag, gave make and model and location. And after that, I kicked my door open. I don't even sit up.

I don't even get out of my patrol car because I know there's something weird about this. I kicked the door open, and that's when he takes off. So I put it, I was still in drive. I step on the gas and follow him. and my door closes by itself with the momentum. But I start following him, and this is my first pursuit. I don't know what a pursuit is. I've read the textbook.

I know I have certain things I have to call out. And I started calling stuff out. You know, I'm heading this direction. This is the vehicle description. This is the vehicle speed. We're heading to this intersection. And this agency hasn't had a pursuit in a really long time. So it was new and exciting for everyone.

So you have all these officers calling in route. Meanwhile, I can't talk on the radio because everyone else is like coming up with like blocking positions, you know, I'm going to go set up over here to set up spikes or whatever. And the whole time, I'm just trying to get like relay the information that I need to. Like I had to call out weather conditions. I had to call out weather conditions. We are directly under the sun now. Yeah, that's what I got written up for. failure to call out weather conditions, vehicle tag, and then traffic data. There was no traffic.

It was two in the morning. Me and him were the only cars on the road. But that's what I got written up for. But I'm chasing this guy. We get to this intersection. It's a busier one. And he wants to turn left, I guess, but he decided too late and he just spun out. But he just did it like a half circle and that he regained control and then started heading down this road where I know this road is, it's, it's It's a sharp turn. I know you cannot go that fast. So I started letting him get some distance on me because I know he's not going to be able to make that turn at that speed. And he doesn't.

He hits the median barrier. He rolls the car, flips it twice. And he's just stuck there. The car's rolled over. And I just drive up to him and wait for him to crawl out. And it's one of the locals. I know him. It's one of the local crackheads.

One of the bad boys. And I was like, what are you doing? He's like, you caught me i'm drunk i have some i have some dope on me this car is not mine he's like you're gonna throw the book at me i was like probably i kind of have to why did you run he's like i don't know i got scared i was like it's not my car i was like is this stolen he's like kind of i was like what do you mean kind of it's either stolen or isn't and he's just talking to me and uh since he rolled the car i to take him to the hospital. And I'm just bullshining with him. I don't, it's not that serious for me.

Like, like, you know, I had my moment of fun, but now, now I could go back to just talking to the dude because it was, he was a kid, you know, he was like 18, 19, just had a rough childhood. I've talked to him before. I've asked him about why he's on the street. I've responded to overdoses involving that person. So I'm talking to him and he's like, yeah, man, I just don't have very many options. So I was a crack baby very early on. Like, my mom. hated me. I got abused. I was like, well, that makes sense. I see why you are in the situation you are. He's like, and we get to the hospital and he's like, are you going to charge me with a dope that I'm hiding? I was like, it's like, what do you mean? He's like, I know I'm going to jail and I have dope somewhere hidden on me.

Are you going to charge me with it? I was like, how much is it? He's like, oh, it's just a pipe. It's nothing crazy. I was like, I don't know. I'll hit you with a misdemeanor charge if you give it to me. He's like, all right, that's better than the felony if he was to take it to jail. I was like, all right, whatever. So he gives it to me, hands it over. And, you know, it's very casual conversation. I'm not, like, mad at him. I'm not, it's not a big deal. So I take him to jail.

I book them, and I do all my paperwork. And I submit it. And then I go home because it took me all day to do all that paperwork between a vehicle rolling over a pursuit. And I just wanted it to be like a finished product when I submitted it. And I submit it. And then the next day, it's, I have so. much red tape on it. I was like, what do you mean? I've written police reports for a while now. I've never had one that was this scrutinized. And they're like, yeah, well, it's because the

pursuit policy is going to change after that pursuit. We're no longer allowed to change for DUIs. I was like, because of the pursuit I had. Like, yeah, it's too much liability for the police department. I was like, okay, whatever. I was like, I made my corrections, whatever they recommend. ended on the police report just to make it sound more professional, cover their asses. And I didn't think anything of it. A month later, I get pulled into an office. And the crazy part is I was getting like high fives, good jobs the whole time, you know, up until this point. I get pulled into an office and they're like, you remember that pursuit you had? I was like the one that was within policy. Yeah, why? And they're like, yeah, well, the policies

change and we're not going to write you up because of the policy change but we kind of are. I was like, what are you saying? They're like, well, we scrub the tapes. We listened to the dispatch recordings and you failed to call out vehicle tag, weather conditions, and traffic. I was like, yeah, because there was no air time. I was like, have you gone back and looked at how much free air time there was because I did. There was two seconds where someone could have spoke and it takes longer than two seconds to key up. So why am I getting written up for this? They're like, well, you know, it's just the fact that you didn't call out like you were supposed to, you violated the policy. And that's when I got mad. That's when it was personal to me, you know, it was no longer about right or wrong. It was,

it was like a personal attack towards me. And so I just was like, I need to talk to an attorney. I need have attorney president. I'm not I'm not doing this with you today. And he's like, okay, no, we'll get you attorney. We'll talk about it then. And that's when I started, like, getting my foot out the door. I started looking at other agencies. And I just started documented. I started documenting every policy they violated. Every person there had a policy they violated. And I wrote about it. When I left, I had like a couple pages that I turned in. And it's crazy. So for Westminster City, When you leave, if they know you're leaving, they're going to open an internal investigation on you so you cannot leave. So you cannot leave until the internal investigation is complete.

And I know they're going to listen to this. So I want them to know that the workaround is you go get hired by another agency. And the day you quit Westminster City is the day you get hired by the new agency. And that is the only way you could leave that agency if you're on bad terms with them. And that's exactly what I did. When I left, I left them a couple pages. of things that they did wrong. You're not allowed to have your police thought

or your personal dog in a police vehicle. The chief was doing that. I wrote about it. I put timestamps on it. They have the paperwork. There was just so many things like that that I documented it because I was sick of being targeted on policies that were selectively in force.

It doesn't make sense. Why would they do that? Yeah. And it's just like the good old boys club, you know. You're out here. trying to make a change and for me it was I just wanted to have I just wanted people to have more positive interactions if you pull up my traffic stats you're going to see I wrote so many warnings but then I I switched over to a smaller agency Manchester Police Department and and that

that leadership was so much better you have any questions on yeah yeah no I just want to um we've been going for like three hours three 15 I just want to like kind of move to um you know you decided in the end you know the police department wasn't really for you moved into the private sector um can talk to us a little bit about you know recovery and um the book that you're working on yeah yeah i'll wrap it up um yeah police uh i realized that you know it was a it was a bad loop you know i was i was doing i was just avoiding all the emotions and stuff and i was just trying to escape you know it was that police or a military mentality of you got to keep moving so when i got when i was at manchester for two years i

decided to go to california to go be a cop out there and it was just a form of escape and i i flew out there i did their course where you get certified to be a cop in their state um it wasn't hard it was fairly easy for me i don't know it's very by textbook so you just remember the stuff and it was easy so i did that and then And then I moved out there and started applying to every agency I could find. And it was my first one, San Marcos Police Department or Chula Vista, one of those two that I applied to. And I got all the way up until the polygraph. And in the polygraph room, I experienced a panic attack for the first time.

And I didn't have a label for it. I just knew that my heart hurt. It felt like my chest was tightening. And I just didn't know what it was at the time. And the polygraphers like, well, you're showing signs of deception. And I was being completely honest. Honestly, I'm stressed out. I don't want to be here.

This is a small room. I can't sit still a lot of the times. At the time, I was already diagnosed with PTSD. And he put in my paperwork that I was being deceptive. And, you know, my integrity is up for discussion. And it essentially blacklisted me from ever being a police officer ever again. So every agency that I applied to had to contact that agency, and they pretty much just said, you know, he's going to be dishonest, even though I was a cop, you know, a couple months ago. But then I decided to be a truck driver, did that for like two years and a lot of the same, you know, just avoiding emotions, not facing them.

And mind you, I've been doing whatever the VA recommended since 2018. So it wasn't until like a year ago where I reached my breaking point, you know, I was drinking way too much. much. I was brewing my own alcohol. I got to the point where I was drinking like five gallons a day. And I was just numbing. I was numbing hard. And I knew it. I knew I was avoiding something. I just didn't know how to deal with it. You know, I was, I was asking the VA, what can I do to make me feel better? And like, oh, you got to try all these different medications. And we, I went up and down all the medication routes from 2018 to last year. We got to a point where there was just like, we've tried mostly all the medications, you know?

Maybe it's time to try something else. It's like, well, I've been trying therapy, but I go every two months. What benefit does that have? Like, yeah, that's just the way the VA schedules it. I was like, well, can I go more? Like, well, you can. You just got to go to the community. I was like, well, how come no one ever told me this?

It's like, well, you didn't ask. I'm like, I am barely in a state of mind to survive. How am I going to ask for more help? Yeah. But, right after Christmas I reached my breaking point I was I was just drinking to to forget I wasn't drinking to have a good time I was just numbing as hard as possible and I just reached the point where I was like I'd rather just fucking die man like I'm so sick of living like this like I have I have a wife and two kids I know I have a reason to live but I don't I don't feel that I don't feel it and I ended up just asking my wife is like what should I do like I don't know I don't know where to go from here and she's like you go check yourself into a sideboard I was like what what good is that going to do for me like they can't

help me and I was like you know what I'll try it just a detox off of alcohol or be done with it and I check myself in at a Lebanon VA medical center it is the worst experience for me I am so miserable there I get there. I'm immediately scanning doors. I'm looking at my exits. I already know how to get out. I had to take one key card scan it, and then I am out the door. I can run from here.

And I get there, and they give me a room, and it is so terrifying to me. At this point, I was way bigger than what I am now. I was like 50, 60 pounds heavier. I was using a CPAP to sleep. and I asked them, I was like, can I, can I have, can I have a CPAP? I needed to sleep and they're like, well, did you bring it with you? I was like, no, I'm barely surviving. I want to kill myself.

Why would I bring a CPAP? And they're like, well, we can assign you one. You just won't be able to have a roommate. I was like, okay, I guess I won't have a roommate. Okay, we'll get back to you. And I guess they forgot or whatever. So I was just in a room by myself without my CPAP. And for those of you that have never been to a sideboard, they check in on you every 15 minutes, whether you're awake or asleep.

And believe it or not, for someone who can't sleep and suffers from PTSD, you're checking in on me every 15 minutes. I'm going to wake up every 15 minutes. So like, I was there for, I want to say it was like five days total. But the first two days were okay, because I was still running off like the previous sleep I had. But the longer I was there, I was just getting so angry because I couldn't sleep. And I mask really well. Like I can pretend like stuff doesn't bother me for a really long time until, you know, I start losing sleep. And then I can't hold it as long, you know.

I feel like that's just like a normal human trait. But the longer I'm there, I just start wanting to outburst on people, outrage. And I'm telling them, I was like, can I go home? like I didn't even feel withdraws from the alcohol I just want to go home I want to be back in where I feel safe like you guys are putting me in a box in here like I already know how I can leave I just had to hurt you and then I'll be out of here and obviously that that is not what you tell someone in the psych ward because they ask me they're like how would you get out of here well I would beat the shed of you take your key card and then walk out if I wanted to leave like just like just knowing that I could and they're like well yeah you you you don't have to hurt us. We would just give you the key card. We don't want to be hurt. But, but, but, but, like, talking to them. And since I went on, um, the day after, uh, Christmas, there was no doctors there. So there was no one there to discharge me. And, and I knew going into it that I could leave whenever I want if I went in there voluntarily. So I told them that I was like, I checked myself in.

In Pennsylvania, it's called a 201 versus a 301. A 201 is voluntarily and 301 is court mandated, police mandated, whatever. So I 201 myself. I skipped a couple pieces, but real fast. I drove myself to the York VA flying 112. My truck doesn't go any faster. I talked to the guy there. I was like, I don't know what's wrong with me, but I just don't want to be here anymore.

What do you recommend? And then he's like, oh, you should go check yourself into a hospital. And that's how I ended up in Lebanon. I ended up at a local hospital. I sat there for a night and I was miserable there because I was stuck next to someone screaming the whole night so I didn't sleep there. And then they transferred me to the Lebanon VA. And while I was there, say, you know, not sleeping, trying to leave because, you know, at this

point, I'd been there three days. And it lined up to New Year's. And they're like, well, no doctor's going to come in. They're on call, but they're not going to come in to come check you out. I was like, what are you talking? about i was like i voluntarily came here i can leave whenever i want you guys it's only a 72 hour hold i am way past that and they just kept me there until finally a doctor came in on i think it was right after uh new years and i was like can i go home please i am tired of being here like well you have to start a

medical regiment i was like i've been taking whatever meds you guys prescribed can i just leave i'm tired of being here. And finally, they're like, yeah, well, here's some resources. There's this program. It's here in Lebanon. You go, it's therapy, you know, it's intensive therapy. You go to a place and you live there and you go to classes. I was like, I'll try it, sure. So I started taking their medication, whatever they prescribed, you know, blindly, not really knowing that I was numbing the emotions instead of actually feeling them. And I go to to the, I take like a couple days to gather my stuff, let my wife know, you know, I'm going to go do this 30 day thing where it's 30 days I live there and it's therapy essentially, intensive therapy.

I was like, at this point, I'll try anything. So I get there and it's a bad experience in the sense where it's a group, it's a bunch of veterans, it's a group thing and I'm opening up about some of my trauma and I'm getting graphic because I don't care. I don't care. I don't. I've lived it in my mind long enough to where it doesn't bother me. And they're like, oh, wait, wait, wait, wait, no graphic details. It's like, what do you mean? No graphic details. It's like, I am trying to express my thoughts and how I feel.

And they're like, well, you're going to trigger other people. And I was like, isn't that what I'm here for? Isn't how am I supposed to get through the problems if I don't talk about? Yeah, you're supposed to do that on your one-on-one therapies, etc. I was like, well, what do you want me to do? They're like, well, just talk about it without getting into graphic details. I was like I don't think I can like I was like well just just wait until you're one-on-one sessions and that mentality was like well then I guess I'll just shut the fuck up and not say

anything right right yeah so like I was there for 10 days and I was just like I'm sick of this place I'm not learning anything I am away from my wife and kids I'm doing more harm than good I I'm leaving you guys are a wasted by time you know you guys aren't helping me the way I believe that should be helped so I get out of there and While being there, they talk about a therapy called RTMS. It's essentially where they hook up a wire, electrical current next to your brain, and it stimulates the fear factor part of your brain. And they explained to me, I was like, I'll try it.

I got nothing to lose at this point. And at this point, I stopped drinking. I'm still flowing, you know. I'm still trying to find something to numb. And they tell me, you can't change your medication. while you're doing this treatment. I was like, okay. I was like, what else can I change?

They're like, you have to keep the same caffeine intake, same, keep the same routine no matter what. And at this time, I picked up medical marijuana. And I was using that to suppress a little bit just to keep me from being completely unstable. But I did that treatment. It's impossible. There is no way that someone who is not as strong willed as people like us. would make every appointment and maintain the level of rigidness that you need for you to drink coffee at the same time, you to keep the same routine.

Like, I was going to these appointments and I was breaking down on my way there. Like, I was going through tears. Like, it was not easy because it was like a three hour drive every day, Monday to Friday for 35 days. And I didn't believe in it. I didn't think it'd change anything. It wasn't until like day 33 that I finally saw a change. I started feeling emotions a little a little bit brighter like I could like actually remember like incidents like before it was just like I couldn't I couldn't picture it I couldn't like see the whole picture and it was just a little bit more clear on like day 33 I started to feel a little bit more but I still had like mental blocks where I'd remember bits and pieces and that's when I started writing like the main reason I started writing was I wanted my kids to know the life I had and it's fucked up to say it was it was essentially a suicide note at one point you know i wanted them to

understand why why i took my own life which i never did obviously but that's what it was and through writing it i got to realize why i am the way i am you know it wasn't by luck or chance that i am this messed up but i did the tms and then i just leaned way too hard into medical marijuana where I was smoking way too much that it was a medical medical marijuana induced psychosis. I ended up in another psych ward. And it was just because I was hearing voices. Like I was, I was picturing things. Yeah, like I was, it got to a point where I was listening to the song,

and the song was repeating the lyrics. No one man should have all this power. And in my mind, I already knew where I would do it, you know, in the middle of the woods, away from everyone so I wouldn't bother anyone. And subconsciously, I was walking there. And I guess something clicked on my way there where it was like, stop. What are you doing? And I still had, I had these headphones on and I was playing that song. No one managed to have all this power. And then when I get to the spot where I wanted to end my life, I something stops me. And I was like, fuck it, just go to your room, go to bed, do it tomorrow. That mentality. I ran to my bedroom. I took

off the headphones, I disconnected everything. Like, I was that paranoid where I thought, like, people can hear me through the CPAP. And I told my wife about it. I was like, there's something wrong. I need to go check myself in. And I did. I ended up in another psych ward. And it was the same thing, you know, I'm caged up again. I am not sleeping CPAP all over again. And here I am not nice about it. I am lashing out on anyone who is looking in my direction just because I am so sick of being treated like like I have a problem and no one's listening this time I came prepared I took out the drawstrings out of my sweatpants I brought my CPAP I was I I dressed for the occasion dressed for the job he wanted to have but I get there and they don't give me my CPAP because if you

have a CPAP you have to have a room to yourself and they didn't have the the staffing they didn't have the room or the staffing for that and I was like I brought me my CPAP can I just have it to sleep but like I sleep better with it and they're like no we don't have the rooms where if you have a CPAP you got to be in a room by yourself I was like you know what whatever it is fucking midnight I just want to go to sleep so they take me to a room and I have a roommate in there and obviously I have trust issues you know I can't really sleep with someone sleeping next to me that has mental health problems but I'm awake every 15 minutes all over again and in the morning I go up to the nurse and And I was like, can I please just get my CPAP in a room to myself?

Like, I struggle from PTSD, anxiety, and depression. Like, this is making my situation worse. Like, yeah, no, you got to wait until the doctor gets here, blah, blah, blah. I was like, can I please just go outside and touch some grass? Like, I am tired of being cooped up in here. And like, yeah, that's scheduled for this time. I was like, well, you gave me a pamphlet with the rules and regulations. And on the pamphlets, if it's in line with my religion, I am allowed to touch grass.

so fuck it i'm religious now i need to go touch grass and they did not like that they're like well now you're just trying to play the system i was like i'm going to sue you guys if you guys don't let me touch grass and uh so like fine i'll talk to the doctor and they did a lot of back and forth with them they're like oh you got to go to your classes i was like fine i'll go to my classes i was like can i go touch grass now they're like no i was like i'm going to touch grass whether you guys want me to or not like i'm going to get violent if you guys keep talking to me this way and they're like well now you're high risk we're going to switch it to a high risk unit i was like can i can i go fucking touch grass please and they're they finally let me they let me out there for

i shit you not 30 seconds and i get out there i sit on the grass and i'm finally feeling grounded again you know i'm feeling less violent and they come back out they're like all right time's up you got to get to your class i was like i'm going to hurt you if you keep talking to me like this I could leave. I could jump this fence right now because it was outside. And I was like, I could jump this fence and just leave. I'm here voluntarily. I could have left whenever the fuck I wanted. And they're like, well, you're getting people worked up around here. We're going to switch you to the high risk unit.

And I get over here and it's the same thing. It's just a bunch of people like me who are just like mad at the world. And people are staring at me. You should not be staring at me. I am way too mad and sleep deprived for your bullshit. And I get there. And there's one guy who's trying to establish. and it's eyeing me up and down. So I look at him. I was like, what the fuck are you looking at me for?

You want to kiss me or what? And he's so confused by the statement that he's just like, what did you say? I was like, you heard me? And he's like, I wasn't, I wasn't read for that. I thought you were going to try to fight me. I was like, I thought you were going to try to fight me. And we just talked it out and like, we got over it. But I was stuck there. Like, I was trying to leave for another day. And the same thing, I asked for a pamphlet. And then I just started crossing off all their rules and regulations and how they violated them. And the whole time I'm telling them, I was like, can I go home? Like I am I am over the psychosis stuff. Like it was just in the moment medical marijuana induced. And they're like, no, you got to talk to a doctor. I was like, please, you're wrong. I know you're

wrong. I am 201. I am here by, I'm voluntarily here. Please just let me go. And they're like, well, you need a safety plan. You need someone to come pick you up. I was like, my wife will pick me up. Here's her number. Just call her. And they're like, well, we can't do that. without your consent. I was like, I am giving it to you. They're like, well, you need to fill out the paperwork. And finally, they let me call her. And I called my wife. I was like, have they reached out to you? And she was like, no, no one's talked to me. You're the first person that's spoken to me. I was like, I asked them to call you like three different times. They're like, yeah, I tried calling, but I needed a code. I was like, yeah, I asked them for the code. They haven't gave it to me.

And my wife is frustrated at this point. She's like, how do I get you out of there? I was like, I don't know. I've been trying to get out of here since I got here. Yeah. Jeez. Yeah. So it's just making the situation worse. They're like forcing me to classes. They're still not letting me touch grass. You know, I mean, I hate to say it, Eduardo, but I bet they were getting paid. The hospital was getting paid more money to have that bed you were in occupied. And that's why they kept you there.

I don't disagree with you. I don't know the logistics behind it, but I just know it's wrong. Like I know. Yeah, I agree. Yeah. Even just for my mental sanity, like, I was so close to, like, actually hurting someone just because I couldn't control myself anymore just from the sleep deprivness. And I had a lot of self-control where, like, if for whatever reason you look at what my notes are, I was way more controlled than what I am saying just because I was masking so hard. Like, I was holding it back because I knew that I would stay there longer if I hurt someone, you know?

They wouldn't let me leave. And then at the end of it, they finally let me leave. I talked to the patient advocacy guy. And I was like, where the fuck have you been? I've been trying to talk to you for like three days now. And he's like, oh, I was on vacation. It was my days off, et cetera. I was like, well, I kind of needed you.

And I don't need you anymore, but here's a book filled of all the mistakes this place is making. And they finally let me go. And my wife was like, yeah, I don't think I'll ever do that to you again. I'm sorry. I thought that was our best route. I was like, no, I needed it. but that wasn't our best route. And then after that, I did, just to wrap it up, I did an outpatient for six weeks where it was all,

for the most part, it was virtual. And you just learn like coping mechanisms. You get to listen to other people's stories and then you just relate. And then through that, I realize, you know, not everyone is like, not everyone is out to get you a thing. You know, there's other people hurting. Even though they weren't in the military, they understand, like, the pain we've been through and they related a lot of the times and for me it was a lot of the childhood trauma that that really weighed on me it wasn't it wasn't too much of the military stuff it was a

lot of like i could talk about the military stuff all day long but the the childhood trauma is a lot of the stuff i couldn't remember and doing that therapy helped me remember a lot of it but and the book is tentatively called the the demons within right yeah it's it's definitely one of those things where it's all in your brain, you know, the good and bad, like, uh, however you want to picture it, you know, whatever religion you subscribe to. I, uh, I, I read what you have so far that you, you know, you sent me prior to this interview and, um, I, I'm looking forward and hoping that you get it out there when you're ready. Yeah, it's just one of those things where I don't want to put out an unfinished product,

you know, I want it to have the, yeah, take your time. Yeah. Yeah. I, But now things are looking up, you know. I get to be a stay-at-home dad. You know, I get to spend time with my wife. I have a kid on the way. Like, it's not all bad. I know it sounds like I've been through hell, probably because I have been. Yeah.

But I made it on the other side of it, and things are looking better. Oh, that's terrific. I'm glad to hear it. Is there anything you want to shout out before we go? Do you want to tell people about, like, your Instagram page or anything else out there that you'd like to direct people to? If you guys want to, you guys can have my Instagram. It's just my name. Eduardo 2 underscores, my last name, Gardunio.

But I'm sure they'll find it if they want to find it. Yeah, we'll put a link down the description of the podcast. But, Eduardo, thank you for sharing your story, man. As you said, I mean, you've kind of been through hell. I know it's a lot to talk about. But I am glad, and I'm glad that other people are going to get to hear your story. Yeah, no, I appreciate your time. I mean, I believe in what you're doing.

and I truly believe the only way you heal is by talking about it. Yeah, for sure, man. And there's a lot of other people out there who will hear this. And, you know, it reminds them that they're not alone. I agree. So for everyone else, thank you for joining us on the show tonight. And we'll see you next week. See you, brother.

Take care.