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Hello, My Name is Aaron: The Wreckage, The Rise and the Reason I Still Believe · Murders to Music: Crime Scene to Music Scene (Streamline Events and Entertainment)

• 0:23
  Speaker 1: Ladies and gentlemen, welcome back to the Murders to Music podcast.
• 0:27
  Speaker 1: My name is Aaron, I'm your host and thank you guys so much for joining me again.
• 0:31
  Speaker 1: Can you believe?
• 0:32
  Speaker 1: In a couple weeks it will be one year that this podcast has been out.
• 0:36
  Speaker 1: There's been an episode every single week, plus some.
• 0:40
  Speaker 1: I think we're on episode 57, 58 right now, something like that.
• 0:45
  Speaker 1: Man, thank you guys so much.
• 0:47
  Speaker 1: And every week more and more listeners are tuning in.
• 0:50
  Speaker 1: So thank you guys so much for sharing, for being a part of this.
• 0:54
  Speaker 1: This is your conversation to get involved with, so I just wanted to say thank you.
• 0:59
  Speaker 1: Before we go any further On tonight's show, I want to talk a little bit about you know.
• 1:04
  Speaker 1: This week I was asked can you please provide me with one of your episodes that best introduces you, encapsulates everything that you've done or been through or why you're here, and this was for a potential speaking engagement at a very large police department in the United States, and they're going to put this in front of their training people to see if this is something that we can maybe incorporate into continuing education and training in the mental health world.
• 1:33
  Speaker 1: Right, because I think it says a lot, you know, and for law enforcement it's been out there or maybe anybody.
• 1:39
  Speaker 1: I think any world can understand this.
• 1:41
  Speaker 1: Sometimes we get these mandatory trainings, and the mandatory trainings requires to watch a video clip or to hear somebody who's read the textbook and can regurgitate the information on chapters five, six and seven, but what that doesn't do is convey the message from the field.
• 2:00
  Speaker 1: It doesn't convey the message of somebody that's actually been there and done that and lived it.
• 2:06
  Speaker 1: And I think that is where my story and my situation may be able to help others.
• 2:12
  Speaker 1: You know, I know that in my episode with Jeff Hall, the Alaska state trooper, I mentioned to him, you know, and Jeff Hall is now an 80 year old man who is advocating.
• 2:23
  Speaker 1: First of all, he's the baddest of the bad If you haven't heard that episode, go check it out but he is advocating for mental health awareness amongst law enforcement.
• 2:32
  Speaker 1: And to hear somebody of his era, in his generation who's promoting mental health awareness, ptsd awareness, recovery therapy, help in these situations is so cool.
• 2:45
  Speaker 1: I will never be a Jeff Hall, but I will be an Aaron and all I want to do is take my story and I want to help others.
• 2:52
  Speaker 1: I again don't believe that my pain is not without purpose, and if we can incorporate this into something and somebody can look at me and say, here's a guy who's been there, done that, he's wore our uniform, he's cried with us, he's bled on the streets like we have and this has happened to him, maybe that message can be conveyed in such a way that we can maybe save somebody else's life.
• 3:17
  Speaker 1: Tomorrow is law enforcement.
• 3:18
  Speaker 1: When this is released, there'll be law enforcement appreciation day, and the stats for officer suicide are higher this year, year to date, than in the last two years.
• 3:30
  Speaker 1: So you know, I think we're headed down a road where we're taking matters into our own hands even more than we have in the past, and we just need that more mental health awareness.
• 3:42
  Speaker 1: So in doing that, in prepping for that request that I had, I started looking through the episodes and I looked back to episode number two, from meth lab to meditation and I listened to that and that episode was pretty informative and good.
• 4:00
  Speaker 1: You know you always nitpick stuff, right, I'm my own worst critic, but at the end of the day, that conveyed a very specific message as to where I was at that time, and one of the awesome things about hearing that is that was just under a year ago and so much has changed in my world.
• 4:18
  Speaker 1: So many things are different and better and blessed because of the constant work that is being put in to better my mental health.
• 4:28
  Speaker 1: Therapy is hard.
• 4:29
  Speaker 1: It really is.
• 4:30
  Speaker 1: It's not fun.
• 4:31
  Speaker 1: You don't go and think, man, this is a great time, but what it does is it helps open the door to both external and internal communication, either dialogue with yourself or dialogue with others.
• 4:42
  Speaker 1: That might help you see things in a different angle or a different direction or through a different filter or lens.
• 4:48
  Speaker 1: It'll help you process thoughts that you're having.
• 4:51
  Speaker 1: You know, I was able to speak to somebody this week who is in emergency services and they were involved in their first critical incident and in that critical incident multiple people died.
• 5:04
  Speaker 1: And in speaking with this person, I was told that I'm like how are you doing?
• 5:09
  Speaker 1: How are you feeling?
• 5:10
  Speaker 1: Well, I don't know how I'm feeling.
• 5:11
  Speaker 1: I don't know what to feel.
• 5:12
  Speaker 1: I'm still processing it.
• 5:13
  Speaker 1: You know I'll check out therapy another day.
• 5:16
  Speaker 1: I'll get down the road and then I'll look back and I'll go ask for help.
• 5:20
  Speaker 1: You know, I don't even know what I would say if I went.
• 5:22
  Speaker 1: What would I even say if I go to therapy?
• 5:24
  Speaker 1: How do I tell them when I don't even know what I'm feeling?
• 5:28
  Speaker 1: I'm here to tell you guys, I've been there.
• 5:30
  Speaker 1: I get those feelings.
• 5:32
  Speaker 1: But the good thing is, once you find a good therapist, you don't have to know what to say.
• 5:38
  Speaker 1: You tell them what you're dealing with and the dialogue starts and before you know it, you are working on things and processing things in such a way.
• 5:47
  Speaker 1: These people are trained in trauma response.
• 5:50
  Speaker 1: It's such an amazing experience, you know.
• 5:54
  Speaker 1: So I encourage this person to go seek help.
• 5:57
  Speaker 1: Talk to somebody now.
• 5:59
  Speaker 1: How many of you out there listening have been involved in a traumatic event, even an argument with your spouse, or a murder on the job or whatever it may be?
• 6:08
  Speaker 1: And you just say you know what.
• 6:10
  Speaker 1: I'm going to deal with this on my own.
• 6:11
  Speaker 1: I'm going to deal with this.
• 6:12
  Speaker 1: I got the tools in the toolbox, I don't need to ask for help.
• 6:15
  Speaker 1: But really, what happens is that gets buried down just under the surface and, before you know it, it starts to fester and it starts to cause a problem.
• 6:22
  Speaker 1: And then things are out of control, starts to fester and it starts to cause a problem, and then things are out of control.
• 6:26
  Speaker 1: Back in my episode where I described last Easter and coming out of the trial you know, my cold case, murder trial I felt like I had all of those feelings under control.
• 6:37
  Speaker 1: I felt like I didn't need help.
• 6:38
  Speaker 1: I had tools in the toolbox.
• 6:40
  Speaker 1: I'd been to hundreds of therapy sessions, I knew what I was doing.
• 6:43
  Speaker 1: I didn't need to ask for help.
• 6:44
  Speaker 1: I got this and the whole time I was continuing to drown and drown, and drown and, before you know it, my world imploded on Easter of 2024.
• 6:55
  Speaker 1: And there's an episode about it.
• 6:58
  Speaker 1: You can go back and listen to it.
• 6:59
  Speaker 1: However, if I would have asked for help on day one after experiencing those events, that could have saved all of that pain and trauma.
• 7:08
  Speaker 1: But all of that to say, let's start with who I am, where I've been and how I got to where I am today.
• 7:16
  Speaker 1: So my name is Aaron.
• 7:19
  Speaker 1: I was born and raised in Alaska, went on my first police ride-along when I was 8 years old and, raised in Alaska, went on my first police ride-along when I was eight years old.
• 7:28
  Speaker 1: I became an explorer with the police department in Alaska at 13 years old.
• 7:29
  Speaker 1: That's the first time I put on what would be a law enforcement uniform.
• 7:33
  Speaker 1: Between the ages of 13 and 17 years old, I logged just under 4,000 hours in a police uniform, riding in a police car.
• 7:43
  Speaker 1: I knew that being a police officer is what I was going to do.
• 7:47
  Speaker 1: It was my dream.
• 7:48
  Speaker 1: It's what I was born to absolutely do, and even at 13 years old, I had a head on my shoulders and people were trusting me to do things.
• 7:56
  Speaker 1: By the time, at 13 years old, I picked up my first dead body, helped in multiple death investigations.
• 8:03
  Speaker 1: At 14, I made my first felony arrest on a felony traffic stop in the middle of the roadway where I went up and handcuffed a suspect who was 40 years old 50 years old at the time.
• 8:13
  Speaker 1: You know and that is as I'm doing that as a kid Hindsight being 2020, do I think that that is the smartest thing to do?
• 8:23
  Speaker 1: You know?
• 8:24
  Speaker 1: No, I don't.
• 8:25
  Speaker 1: I think that you're asking a young child who doesn't have a fully developed brain to roll over, palpate and investigate a dead body or assist in that investigation.
• 8:37
  Speaker 1: You know that is something that has haunted me for years.
• 8:41
  Speaker 1: At the time, I felt really cool.
• 8:43
  Speaker 1: In hindsight, that's the first time my nervous system shut down, but we're going to come back to the nervous system shutting down.
• 8:49
  Speaker 1: So, from that 13 to 17,.
• 8:52
  Speaker 1: I went on to Arizona.
• 8:54
  Speaker 1: I got my degree in criminal justice.
• 8:55
  Speaker 1: I got married.
• 8:56
  Speaker 1: I was going to take the world by a storm and be the best cop out there.
• 9:00
  Speaker 1: I was full of piss and vinegar, full of energy and very black and white.
• 9:05
  Speaker 1: I knew what the world was in front of me.
• 9:08
  Speaker 1: I knew what the statute book said and I was going to enforce every single law that there was to enforce.
• 9:15
  Speaker 1: I returned from Arizona back to Alaska where I became a police officer in that same police department that I spent those thousands of hours working with.
• 9:22
  Speaker 1: I was now working alongside all those people who mentored me growing up.
• 9:29
  Speaker 1: I was working along my prior explorer advisors About a year into the job.
• 9:35
  Speaker 1: Here's where I was.
• 9:37
  Speaker 1: I was kicking ass and taking names.
• 9:39
  Speaker 1: I was in a town of about 7,000 people and I was writing 60 to 70 citations a day.
• 9:45
  Speaker 1: If it was a violation of law, I was enforcing it.
• 9:50
  Speaker 1: I was black and white, I was running hard, I was running fast and nothing could slow me down.
• 9:55
  Speaker 1: Little did I know a couple of things were happening.
• 9:59
  Speaker 1: One I was pissing everybody in town off, which is why my name got scratched into the wall at local Safeway that my dad found and wanted to know why my name was scratched into the wall when it said Turnage is a Dick.
• 10:09
  Speaker 1: But that's one thing.
• 10:12
  Speaker 1: That wasn't the worst thing, though.
• 10:13
  Speaker 1: The worst thing, though, is I was setting myself up for years of frustration and pain being so black and white and so intense.
• 10:22
  Speaker 1: In my formable first few years, I was running hard, running fast, and I was getting accolades for it, and I was wanting to continue to get accolades and continue to get praises and attaboys, because that fed and drove an ego and a pride system that I had, and I just wanted to be the best at what I was doing, and I didn't matter who I ran over in the process, and what that would do is that would set me up for years of similar performance.
• 10:52
  Speaker 1: You know, about a year into my career as a police officer, my partner was killed in the line of duty, and that was John Watson.
• 11:00
  Speaker 1: You see, it was Christmas of 2003 and John, I wanted to take the day off, and John was forced to work my shift.
• 11:11
  Speaker 1: You know John didn't want to work my shift.
• 11:13
  Speaker 1: You see, john had 18 months left before he retired Christmas night.
• 11:17
  Speaker 1: Nobody wants to work, and it was his wife's birthday, but I took a vacation to go to Arizona and John was forced to work my shift.
• 11:26
  Speaker 1: During that shift he encountered a lethal encounter with a suspect and got into a fight and was executed.
• 11:36
  Speaker 1: For the next 21 years I would hold on to that weight that it was my fault that John was working that night, with all the survivor's guilt of what would have happened if I was there.
• 11:48
  Speaker 1: Would have I was in better shape, I was faster, I was quicker, I was up on my tactics.
• 11:53
  Speaker 1: I was a year in.
• 11:54
  Speaker 1: I was kicking ass and taking names.
• 11:55
  Speaker 1: Pride was the.
• 11:57
  Speaker 1: My head was so big and you know what?
• 12:00
  Speaker 1: Have I handled it differently?
• 12:01
  Speaker 1: Would have I let the guy get my gun?
• 12:05
  Speaker 1: You know, would have it been different.
• 12:07
  Speaker 1: And for 21 years I held onto that weight.
• 12:10
  Speaker 1: That is where my downward spiral in law enforcement began, because it was within a very short period of time.
• 12:19
  Speaker 1: I started planning my own funeral and I know some of you listening out there have planned your funeral.
• 12:24
  Speaker 1: Absolutely, it's happened.
• 12:26
  Speaker 1: Own funeral, and I know some of you listening out there have planned your funeral.
• 12:28
  Speaker 1: Absolutely, it's happened.
• 12:31
  Speaker 1: You know, I knew who my pallbearers were going to be.
• 12:32
  Speaker 1: I knew the songs that were going to be played.
• 12:34
  Speaker 1: I knew everything about my funeral and call it power and control or call it whatever you want.
• 12:37
  Speaker 1: And my therapist says and I tend to agree now, that's not normal behavior.
• 12:42
  Speaker 1: The fact that I'm planning my funeral at 22 years old or 23 years old is absolutely ludicrous.
• 12:52
  Speaker 1: Continuing to advance in my career, I went on the drug team, did some undercover drug work.
• 12:58
  Speaker 1: Man pride and ego come with that.
• 13:00
  Speaker 1: From there I went on.
• 13:02
  Speaker 1: I got a canine.
• 13:02
  Speaker 1: Now I'm in a sexy car that says canine all over it.
• 13:05
  Speaker 1: I'm wearing a uniform that says canine.
• 13:07
  Speaker 1: I got a dog at the end of the lead.
• 13:09
  Speaker 1: You know, and there's episodes on this podcast about all of this stuff.
• 13:12
  Speaker 1: If you look through, you'll see my canine stuff.
• 13:14
  Speaker 1: You'll see all of these things.
• 13:17
  Speaker 1: You know 2005, my son was born with a severe medical condition and we dealt with that.
• 13:23
  Speaker 1: He was on touch and go between life and death.
• 13:26
  Speaker 1: We spent a lot of years, you know, even currently, but a lot of years in those first few years where we didn't know if he was going to survive or not.
• 13:33
  Speaker 1: All of that takes a toll, right.
• 13:35
  Speaker 1: All of that is a trauma.
• 13:36
  Speaker 1: It's not just getting into the fight or getting shot at or seeing the dead bodies.
• 13:41
  Speaker 1: Your brain doesn't know the difference between the work trauma and your son dying in a hospital room somewhere.
• 13:48
  Speaker 1: Trauma is a trauma and all that stuff stacks up Now.
• 13:53
  Speaker 1: When I started this career, like many other people out there, there was no talk of therapy.
• 13:59
  Speaker 1: There was no talk of mental health.
• 14:03
  Speaker 1: If you felt bad, if you had feelings or emotions as a result of something you experienced on the job, you were seen as weak.
• 14:12
  Speaker 1: There was a stigma that you were a weak sister, if you will, which is a term that was thrown around.
• 14:19
  Speaker 1: You couldn't handle it.
• 14:21
  Speaker 1: You weren't tough, you weren't a man's man.
• 14:24
  Speaker 1: You were literally expected to wash the blood off and move on to the next call.
• 14:29
  Speaker 1: And as tough as everybody wants to say they are, the things that we see and experience and that I saw and experienced, unbeknownst to me, was seeping in to the cracks and crevices of my soul and saturating my internal sponge and changing me, changing me from what I had been to what the future will have me to be.
• 14:55
  Speaker 1: It wasn't going to be until 2022 that that internal sponge all of a sudden was saturated.
• 15:00
  Speaker 1: That internal sponge all of a sudden was saturated, could take no more.
• 15:05
  Speaker 1: My backpack was full.
• 15:06
  Speaker 1: Whatever analogy you want to use.
• 15:09
  Speaker 1: That happened in 2022.
• 15:11
  Speaker 1: But let's get us there.
• 15:12
  Speaker 1: In 2010, I decided that my son needed medical care in the Portland Oregon area.
• 15:18
  Speaker 1: I was done working moose accidents at 17, below all winter long.
• 15:23
  Speaker 1: I had advanced my career as far as I was going to go unless I promoted in my small agency and I needed to move somewhere else.
• 15:31
  Speaker 1: So I considered moving to the Portland Oregon area.
• 15:35
  Speaker 1: Ultimately was hired with the Gresham Police Department out of Oregon.
• 15:39
  Speaker 1: Now the city of Gresham is the fourth largest in the state of Oregon or was at the time and has the highest crime rate per capita out of anywhere else in the state.
• 15:49
  Speaker 1: They're a dangerous and violent city in the right circumstances.
• 15:54
  Speaker 1: In the subsections of the city, in the gangs, in that world, there's a lot of violence and murder.
• 16:01
  Speaker 1: There's a lot of violence and murder.
• 16:02
  Speaker 1: But that was the kind of breeding ground that I wanted to go to, because I wanted the excitement, I wanted the adrenaline.
• 16:08
  Speaker 1: I remember I was writing those 60 tickets a day and I just wanted to go down there and kick everybody's butt and just be the best that I could be.
• 16:14
  Speaker 1: So I moved my family down to Oregon or I moved them to Washington.
• 16:19
  Speaker 1: I went to work in Oregon and that was in 2010.
• 16:22
  Speaker 1: I worked patrol, I arrested everything in sight, to the point where it upset all of my coworkers, and maybe some of you guys are recognizing the story.
• 16:33
  Speaker 1: You know, whether you're a cop or whether, no matter what your role is in life, if you're chasing that dream, you're chasing that goal, you're chasing that pride, you're chasing that high, you're chasing that next promotion, whatever it is.
• 16:44
  Speaker 1: A lot of times we do it with blinders on and we don't even see the devastation we have around us.
• 16:53
  Speaker 1: Starting in Alaska, I started making terrible choices involving my family, ignoring them, putting them on the back burner, sacrificing their love and time and energy to fulfill my needs, wants and desires.
• 17:05
  Speaker 1: I didn't care what was happening at home.
• 17:09
  Speaker 1: I loved them.
• 17:10
  Speaker 1: They were going to be there for me, but I took them for granted.
• 17:14
  Speaker 1: I did not take their feelings into consideration, but all I wanted was that next attaboy.
• 17:21
  Speaker 1: When I got to, when I got to Oregon, you know I'd been a police officer for nine years.
• 17:27
  Speaker 1: None of that mattered.
• 17:29
  Speaker 1: Everything I had done in Alaska didn't matter.
• 17:32
  Speaker 1: I was the new guy on the totem pole.
• 17:33
  Speaker 1: I was the boot, the rookie.
• 17:36
  Speaker 1: It took time for them to understand what skills that I brought to the table.
• 17:43
  Speaker 1: By that time, it was 2013.
• 17:47
  Speaker 1: During my time on patrol, I got into lots of fights.
• 17:50
  Speaker 1: I got shot at, somebody tried to stab me, people tried to take my gun.
• 17:55
  Speaker 1: I got involved in all these things, each one of these incidents.
• 17:58
  Speaker 1: I didn't talk about them.
• 17:59
  Speaker 1: I didn't go to therapy.
• 18:00
  Speaker 1: I just processed them like I had done for years and stuffed them away somewhere.
• 18:06
  Speaker 1: In 2012, I was diagnosed with clinical depression.
• 18:10
  Speaker 1: In 2012, I was diagnosed with clinical depression.
• 18:12
  Speaker 1: When I was diagnosed with clinical depression, I thought it was the end of my law enforcement career.
• 18:16
  Speaker 1: Now I'm on medication.
• 18:18
  Speaker 1: I can't believe.
• 18:19
  Speaker 1: I'm on meds.
• 18:19
  Speaker 1: I'm a cop.
• 18:20
  Speaker 1: I'm carrying a gun.
• 18:21
  Speaker 1: Nobody else is on meds.
• 18:23
  Speaker 1: Nobody else is screwed up.
• 18:24
  Speaker 1: Nobody else is feeling the way that I am.
• 18:26
  Speaker 1: Why am I doing this?
• 18:32
  Speaker 1: Well, that just led to more depression and more outburst.
• 18:33
  Speaker 1: Before you know it, I'm getting into a fight with every single person that I meet on the street.
• 18:35
  Speaker 1: Anything less than compliance was getting me into a physical altercation.
• 18:41
  Speaker 1: Maybe you've been there with your coworkers, maybe you've argued, maybe you everybody else in the office is an asshole and you're the only decent one.
• 18:50
  Speaker 1: Well, it may not be, and in my case, I was the one with the problem, but I didn't see it.
• 18:56
  Speaker 1: I got into fights with everybody.
• 18:59
  Speaker 1: It led to where I was so isolated and alone that, on June 13th 2012, I was in the woods with a gun in my mouth and I was going to take my life.
• 19:08
  Speaker 1: It was over, I was done.
• 19:11
  Speaker 1: I was a failure as a husband, a failure as a father, a failure as a cop, and I just my world was so imploding.
• 19:18
  Speaker 1: This whole time I was a Christian.
• 19:20
  Speaker 1: This whole time I believed in God, but I felt fallen so far away from all of my core values that I was willing to put a gun in my mouth and take my life, and I guarantee you it would have performed as advertised.
• 19:34
  Speaker 1: It would have ended my world In the last minute.
• 19:38
  Speaker 1: I just I didn't and I came out of it.
• 19:42
  Speaker 1: I never told anybody about that and I went on and continued to work.
• 19:47
  Speaker 1: 2013,.
• 19:48
  Speaker 1: You know what I'm going to do.
• 19:49
  Speaker 1: I am going to join the detective unit because that is somewhere that I can really shine.
• 19:56
  Speaker 1: I have investigative skills you don't know how good I am and I can shine in that environment.
• 20:02
  Speaker 1: So I joined the detective unit.
• 20:04
  Speaker 1: When I joined that, I immediately got assigned to the major crimes team where I investigated the majority or I helped investigate homicide major crimes, kidnappings, that type of stuff.
• 20:15
  Speaker 1: I'm a baby detective so I'm learning these things.
• 20:19
  Speaker 1: I got assigned to some people crimes and then within a year I was assigned to child abuse.
• 20:24
  Speaker 1: I started to take on more of a role in those homicide investigations because they saw a skill set that I had that I developed back in Alaska my interviewing skills.
• 20:33
  Speaker 1: So I and my investigative prowess and my desire to turn over every single rock out there and to sacrifice.
• 20:41
  Speaker 1: Now they're not asking me to sacrifice, but I'm sacrificing my family, I'm sacrificing time.
• 20:46
  Speaker 1: I'm working 30 hours straight, 35 hours straight at work.
• 20:49
  Speaker 1: I'm turning and I'm being successful and they see that.
• 20:52
  Speaker 1: So I start to progress.
• 20:53
  Speaker 1: The more successful that I am, the deeper I get involved in it and the more of an identity it becomes.
• 21:00
  Speaker 1: Between 2013 and 2023, I assisted investigation and well over a hundred homicides probably led a hundred homicides on my own.
• 21:08
  Speaker 1: Homicides probably led a hundred homicides on my own, I don't know 60, 75, a hundred, something like that, whatever it was, you know and thousands of child abuse cases over the years over my career and this just became what I known for.
• 21:23
  Speaker 1: If there was a go-to, I was that guy.
• 21:24
  Speaker 1: If there was something sexy going on, I was the one who was involved in it and probably solving it, because I never touched a case that I didn't solve, including a 44 year old cold case that nobody else could and I'm saying this this way because I want you to understand how much my pride and my ego got in the way and blurred the vision of what reality was.
• 21:45
  Speaker 1: I was such an egotistical prick I would get mad at everybody.
• 21:52
  Speaker 1: I would yell.
• 21:53
  Speaker 1: My idea of winning an argument was being the loudest voice in the room.
• 21:56
  Speaker 1: Maybe you've been there or you know those people.
• 21:59
  Speaker 1: It got so bad that my sergeant got a Nerf gun and he put turnage tranquilizer on it and when I would start to get worked up, he'd shoot me over the cubicle with a Nerf gun To basically tell me to calm down.
• 22:10
  Speaker 1: That is where my world was.
• 22:11
  Speaker 1: But I was successful.
• 22:11
  Speaker 1: To get worked up, he'd shoot me over the cubicle with a Nerf gun to basically tell me to calm down.
• 22:14
  Speaker 1: That is where my world was.
• 22:20
  Speaker 1: But I was successful.
• 22:20
  Speaker 1: I was kicking ass and taking names.
• 22:21
  Speaker 1: I was still writing 70 tickets a day, figuratively speaking, and nobody nobody around me, at least in my eyes could touch me.
• 22:26
  Speaker 1: That's a dangerous place to be, y'all.
• 22:29
  Speaker 1: That's a dangerous, dangerous place to be, you know.
• 22:33
  Speaker 1: And then they make a dateline about me and they put me on dateline and I'm on national television solving a really sexy murder man.
• 22:42
  Speaker 1: Do you know who I am?
• 22:43
  Speaker 1: When I walk into a restaurant I am so tired of signing autographs.
• 22:46
  Speaker 1: I've never been asked for an autograph, but it's not because I didn't think I was worthy of one.
• 22:50
  Speaker 1: I was such a big headed, egotistical person.
• 22:55
  Speaker 1: Everything I touched I felt turned to gold.
• 23:57
  Speaker 1: Then I pick up a murder, and I pick up a murder of a cartel murder.
• 24:00
  Speaker 1: That cartel murder one guy dies.
• 24:04
  Speaker 1: Ultimately, over about a four month, four and a half month period, I chase six or seven cartel members around the Pacific Northwest and ultimately arrest five of them for this murder.
• 24:15
  Speaker 1: But during those four to five months I had four days off.
• 24:17
  Speaker 1: I was working about 150 hours a week, so I was getting about 18 hours off a week.
• 24:23
  Speaker 1: I was absolutely working myself around the clock and working myself to death, quite literally.
• 24:32
  Speaker 1: It didn't matter that I didn't see my family.
• 24:33
  Speaker 1: It didn't matter that I was burning everybody else out, it didn't matter that I was making my crew work just as much as I was, and the fact that there was no supervisor stepping in saying, hey, let's back off, let's take the weekend off, and forcing some controls on me and just letting me go rampant while I was doing it, because that's what I had always known, and I didn't feel anything.
• 24:50
  Speaker 1: I didn't feel bad, I didn't have emotions when I would see these dead bodies.
• 24:55
  Speaker 1: I wouldn't have feelings.
• 24:57
  Speaker 1: Like you know.
• 24:58
  Speaker 1: The victim laying there had no more meaning to me than this pen that I'm holding right now.
• 25:02
  Speaker 1: It was a piece of evidence.
• 25:03
  Speaker 1: The baby autopsies, the adult autopsies.
• 25:07
  Speaker 1: Now it was a piece of evidence.
• 25:08
  Speaker 1: The baby autopsies, the adult autopsies.
• 25:09
  Speaker 1: None of that stuff bothered me.
• 25:10
  Speaker 1: I thought I had no feelings.
• 25:10
  Speaker 1: I would roll up to some of these calls and maybe some anticipation on the way there, but as soon as I got out of my car cold, absolutely cold, and I'd get out and just kick its ass that is how I felt all of that.
• 25:27
  Speaker 1: Now, okay, we're gonna come back to that cold feeling.
• 25:30
  Speaker 1: So then, at the end of this cartel investigation, I end up getting into a fight at some training at work and breaking three ribs.
• 25:39
  Speaker 1: A few days after the broken ribs, I go to the doctor with them because my ribs are black and blue.
• 25:45
  Speaker 1: It it hurts to breathe and I can feel where I'm missing chunks of bone as I feel my ribs.
• 25:51
  Speaker 1: So it's time to go to the doctor.
• 25:52
  Speaker 1: I go to the doctor with that and my blood pressure is 185 over 145.
• 26:01
  Speaker 1: And she says whoa, what is going on?
• 26:04
  Speaker 1: You know what are your medical conditions?
• 26:06
  Speaker 1: I'm like I don't have any.
• 26:07
  Speaker 1: Well, you know, we go through all these tests.
• 26:09
  Speaker 1: She's like well, what do you do?
• 26:10
  Speaker 1: And I said well, I'm a cop, I'm a homicide detective.
• 26:13
  Speaker 1: She's like you know, tell me more.
• 26:15
  Speaker 1: So I tell her about the last case that I did.
• 26:17
  Speaker 1: And she said you know, have you ever experienced trauma?
• 26:21
  Speaker 1: I, I said I've been shot at all this other stuff.
• 26:26
  Speaker 1: Then I started to talk about the flashbacks.
• 26:28
  Speaker 1: Or if I smell the certain smell, it immediately brought me back to a certain crime scene.
• 26:34
  Speaker 1: Or if I smelled, if I nicked my head shaving and smelled the blood, it took me to a bloody crime scene.
• 26:40
  Speaker 1: If I smelled a certain odor of smoke in the air, it took me to another crime scene where father shot and killed both of his kids and then burned everything.
• 26:53
  Speaker 1: And I was getting chased through my dreams at night by monsters that I couldn't see.
• 26:56
  Speaker 1: There were things chasing me down dark tunnels and I'm waking up in night terrors and sweats.
• 27:02
  Speaker 1: I am literally mutilating babies in my dreams and putting them in the garbage disposal.
• 27:10
  Speaker 1: When I would wake up and think about what had occurred, I couldn't help but feel like I was crazy.
• 27:16
  Speaker 1: I couldn't help but feel like and be embarrassed and feel guilty for what I had experienced in some of these horrific, horrific dreams.
• 27:26
  Speaker 1: I thought all of that was normal.
• 27:29
  Speaker 1: I'm getting two or three hours of sleep a night and that is just the way my life has been.
• 27:35
  Speaker 1: So I'm telling her all this and she's like dude, you've got some PTSD stuff going on, you got to take some time off.
• 27:41
  Speaker 1: And I'm like I'm not taking time off.
• 27:42
  Speaker 1: She's like you got to.
• 27:43
  Speaker 1: No, yes, no, yes.
• 27:49
  Speaker 1: Finally, she forced me to take two weeks off just to get my head straight, kind of like the you know COVID curve.
• 27:53
  Speaker 1: It's only going to be a little bit.
• 27:54
  Speaker 1: We're going to flatten this curve out.
• 27:56
  Speaker 1: Well, for me it was going to be two weeks and then I was going to get to go back to work and I'm like I still got homicides to solve.
• 28:01
  Speaker 1: I've still got 15 or 20 reports outstanding on this last one.
• 28:05
  Speaker 1: There's more babies that I need to help defend in this world.
• 28:09
  Speaker 1: Who else, if you send me home, who else is going to play Superman?
• 28:13
  Speaker 1: And I still have an identity that I need to fulfill.
• 28:16
  Speaker 1: I'm supposed to take two weeks off.
• 28:18
  Speaker 1: I go out and I call my supervisors, tell them what I got going on.
• 28:25
  Speaker 1: That Thursday was effectively the last day that I was a police officer.
• 28:26
  Speaker 1: I never went back to the office until 14 months later when I cleaned out my desk.
• 28:30
  Speaker 1: So overnight I went from this egotistical maniac who was on fire to what I felt was a nobody.
• 28:40
  Speaker 1: The entire identity that I had ever had was gone.
• 28:44
  Speaker 1: I had no I.
• 28:46
  Speaker 1: You know.
• 28:47
  Speaker 1: My badge didn't mean anything.
• 28:48
  Speaker 1: The gun didn't mean anything.
• 28:49
  Speaker 1: Um, I'm wound up, I'm wound tight, I'm a complete prick and at the end of the day, I'm feeling sorry for myself because I can't go back and do the things that I did yesterday, because I'm too weak, because my backpack's too full, because my sponge is too saturated.
• 29:07
  Speaker 1: And how come?
• 29:08
  Speaker 1: Everybody else can do it, but I can't, I am a weak, weak person.
• 29:12
  Speaker 1: I, I can't, I'm not going to therapy, I don't need therapy.
• 29:18
  Speaker 1: Then I went to therapy and I went to a couple of different therapy sessions.
• 29:22
  Speaker 1: I went to a therapy session, two therapy sessions out of state, about a week long, both in California.
• 29:27
  Speaker 1: One attacked the science side of PTSD, depression, law enforcement, first responders, and the second one was the same stuff but more from the spiritual side, the biblical side of dealing with the trauma and stuff that we deal with and what the Bible says about it.
• 29:47
  Speaker 1: Both of those things helped.
• 29:49
  Speaker 1: I started into a therapy program that I've now went through hundreds of sessions on and each one progresses on the previous and we start to unpack some of these boxes.
• 30:00
  Speaker 1: You know, and there's stories in there as to how long it took me to realize and accept, cognitively accept, the fact that I'm injured.
• 30:08
  Speaker 1: But in short, it was during a workers' comp interview when they said, hey, list out half a dozen things that you know may have affected you and might be a cause of your PTSD.
• 30:20
  Speaker 1: So I start listing about my partner, john, getting killed and carrying that blame and that was my fault, and I talk about this case and that case and I should have shot a guy here, but I hesitated and I'm a wimp because I hesitated but I should have killed him and didn't.
• 30:34
  Speaker 1: And you know, this happened and that happened and I got halfway through them and I realized that everything I do in my life, the way that I parent, the way that I'm a friend, the way that I am a coworker, the way that I'm a husband, the way that I love, the way that I discipline, everything is a direct result of something I experienced in the line of duty my back being against a wall, that shield of armor, that armor that all cops wear.
• 31:03
  Speaker 1: All of that is something that I started to realize is a defense mechanism of something that I experienced while at work the way that I talk to my daughter, the relationship that's failing with my daughter at the time it's easier to push her away than wrap her up in my arms.
• 31:26
  Speaker 1: But yet I'll go to work and I will defend another child to the death and I will give them the benefit of the doubt.
• 31:34
  Speaker 1: But when I get home and have to discipline my child, I'm stumbling, you know, and it's hard all of those things.
• 31:42
  Speaker 1: So that's when I cognitively accepted the fact that there is a thing called PTSD, but at one of those trainings I realized it's not a disorder, it's a post-traumatic stress.
• 31:52
  Speaker 1: I mean, it's there, but the disorder haunts you for life.
• 31:59
  Speaker 1: This is something that can be worked on and that's what encouraged me through that therapy process.
• 32:02
  Speaker 1: So I go through therapy for the next year in therapy, learning about myself, working through these things through EMDR, through talk therapy.
• 32:13
  Speaker 1: I'm medicated.
• 32:14
  Speaker 1: At this point, man taking medication is a cop.
• 32:16
  Speaker 1: That is something that is like mind-boggling.
• 32:19
  Speaker 1: But you'd be surprised how many people do it because they have to, because this job really affects them.
• 32:24
  Speaker 1: The fact that we couldn't talk about it back before and the fact that we didn't want to discuss it doesn't mean that it wasn't affecting people.
• 32:31
  Speaker 1: It just meant nobody was talking about it.
• 32:33
  Speaker 1: And today people need to talk about what's going on because there's help and there's other people experiencing the same thing.
• 32:39
  Speaker 1: Somebody else's pain can be used for a special purpose to help people get through whatever stumbling block in life they are at right now, instead of putting a gun in their mouth and increasing the suicide rate.
• 32:51
  Speaker 1: That's already the highest in 2025 that it's been over the last two years.
• 32:55
  Speaker 1: It's time we have a change in this.
• 33:01
  Speaker 1: So I recognized the PTSD and go down that therapy road.
• 33:28
  Speaker 1: There was a minor setback I had a trial.
• 33:31
  Speaker 1: That trial was a murder case cold case, murder case.
• 33:34
  Speaker 1: I had some prick of a defense attorney two of them.
• 33:37
  Speaker 1: There was a stumbling block there.
• 33:39
  Speaker 1: It really set me back and triggered me, but I felt like I had all the tools and I didn't want to go to therapy about it.
• 33:46
  Speaker 1: I didn't want to talk about it at therapy because I can handle this, because I got it on my own, because I'm used to kicking ass and taking names and I'm in control of my own damn destiny and nobody else could help me.
• 33:54
  Speaker 1: Until I imploded and realized that the stress became too much and I nearly I got into the worst argument of my 26 year marriage.
• 34:03
  Speaker 1: I was throwing things, yelling, screaming this is on Easter, happy Easter.
• 34:11
  Speaker 1: Then I went back to therapy and before you know it, I started unpacking that box and things start to get better.
• 34:15
  Speaker 1: So even when I feel like I've got this and I'm top of the world, there's still a need to go and talk it out Once I get through that.
• 34:27
  Speaker 1: Over the next year leading me up to current time, a lot of therapy, a lot of discussions, a lot of unpacking boxes, a lot of dealing with everything from relationships to guilt, to imposter syndrome, to identity crisis, losing my identity.
• 34:45
  Speaker 1: I mean everything we talk about and we deal with, and that's so cool.
• 34:49
  Speaker 1: Then this podcast started about a year ago.
• 34:52
  Speaker 1: It'll be a year on May 31st and this gives me a place to come out and share some of my experiences.
• 34:58
  Speaker 1: You know and this podcast is multiple fold I share my experiences, I share experiences of others.
• 35:04
  Speaker 1: I bring guests on the show to tell their story.
• 35:07
  Speaker 1: It's not all law enforcement.
• 35:09
  Speaker 1: I've had everything from cops to strippers to on this show, so and that's giving them an identity and that shouldn't be.
• 35:18
  Speaker 1: These are human beings in different walks of lives.
• 35:20
  Speaker 1: We shouldn't be identified by our title or by what it is that we do as a career.
• 35:26
  Speaker 1: We're humans first and for so long I didn't see it that way.
• 35:34
  Speaker 1: But that's what this podcast is about.
• 35:35
  Speaker 1: We want to take other people's stories and help the listeners.
• 35:37
  Speaker 1: I want you to hear something that I'm saying and maybe connect and be like you know what I feel, that same exact way I feel.
• 35:44
  Speaker 1: I have felt that way.
• 35:45
  Speaker 1: I felt alone, I felt depressed, I felt scared.
• 35:48
  Speaker 1: I, you know all I I I see my relationship dissolving with my partner, my girlfriend, my wife, my child, my dog, whatever it may be, and maybe these are the contributing factors.
• 36:02
  Speaker 1: You know, looking backwards every time I thought everybody else was the problem just slow down, 30,000 foot view, deep breath, self-reflect and realize that I was part of the problem.
• 36:17
  Speaker 1: I was the problem.
• 36:18
  Speaker 1: I had to get over that big ass ego that I had.
• 36:21
  Speaker 1: I had to put pride away and admit that I have a pride problem and work on that and understand that and recognize that.
• 36:29
  Speaker 1: And that opened up the door to so many conversations and relationships.
• 36:33
  Speaker 1: I've been able to help people.
• 36:35
  Speaker 1: You know, I got asked in therapy a couple of weeks ago Aaron, what drives you?
• 36:37
  Speaker 1: What drives you every day as a cop?
• 36:40
  Speaker 1: Why did you go to work and do it and without hesitation.
• 36:43
  Speaker 1: I wanted to help other people.
• 36:44
  Speaker 1: I advocated for people.
• 36:46
  Speaker 1: I connect with people on a real level.
• 36:48
  Speaker 1: I moved the needle in their life in a really big way and I was significant impact in their world.
• 36:54
  Speaker 1: And my therapist says well, why aren't you doing that today?
• 36:58
  Speaker 1: Why aren't you doing that in your new world?
• 37:00
  Speaker 1: Think about it.
• 37:03
  Speaker 1: She and I are even having this conversation because I felt like I was wronged.
• 37:08
  Speaker 1: I felt like I was being put out by others, but she's totally right.
• 37:14
  Speaker 1: Again, this is me.
• 37:16
  Speaker 1: It's my crappy attitude that has kept me from progressing and seeing people and helping people and feeling sorry for myself because I no longer did what I did yesterday and that's just not cool.
• 37:28
  Speaker 1: At the end of the day, here I am.
• 37:32
  Speaker 1: It's a year into this podcast.
• 37:33
  Speaker 1: I've been able to share amazing stories.
• 37:35
  Speaker 1: I know that I've helped people because I've got those emails and those text messages and all that is great, but I really don't look for them.
• 37:42
  Speaker 1: I don't look for that.
• 37:43
  Speaker 1: I just want God to use the pain that he's given me for somebody else's purpose and I want to make sure that I can do a little bit today to help somebody tomorrow.
• 37:53
  Speaker 1: That is my goal in this podcast.
• 37:56
  Speaker 1: That is my goal in this whole journey, in this whole story.
• 37:58
  Speaker 1: I don't know how long this is going to last for, but right now it's alive and well.
• 38:02
  Speaker 1: As long as there's still people listening, I'll still keep putting something out.
• 38:08
  Speaker 1: When I become unrelevant, then I stop.
• 38:11
  Speaker 1: I really have to struggle.
• 38:14
  Speaker 1: I really struggle with speaking of pride.
• 38:16
  Speaker 1: It's so susceptible and so easy to fall right back down that slippery slope and be like oh man, what are my numbers at?
• 38:22
  Speaker 1: How many people have responded to this?
• 38:24
  Speaker 1: Has anybody responded?
• 38:25
  Speaker 1: Well, they haven't.
• 38:25
  Speaker 1: What does that mean?
• 38:26
  Speaker 1: Does it suck?
• 38:26
  Speaker 1: It's so hard not to think that way as just human beings, but I struggle with that and I just want this to be fruitful for somebody else.
• 38:40
  Speaker 1: This whole podcast, this whole today's podcast, is to talk about where I was versus where I am, and I am not out of the woods.
• 38:46
  Speaker 1: I am not healed.
• 38:47
  Speaker 1: I am not 100%.
• 38:48
  Speaker 1: I am still struggling and working on this every single day, and every single day another demon pops up that I got to bop him on his head and put it down and realize that I'm the one in control of my destiny and my journey.
• 39:00
  Speaker 1: You know and I'll continue to talk about those things I really just hope that over my entire career I've been there, I've done that, I've seen it, I've held them when they've died, I've been shot at, I've been involved in critical incidents, I've seen the trenches, the guy who would never break finally broke, going back to that numbness.
• 39:28
  Speaker 1: That numbness started when I was 13 years old and rolled over my first dead body.
• 39:32
  Speaker 1: I was so anxious going to that call, knowing what I was going to find when I got there.
• 39:37
  Speaker 1: I got there, my partner, the cop, says, hey, help me roll him over.
• 39:41
  Speaker 1: He rolled him over and I looked right into that guy's dead eyes and at that point I went cold.
• 39:46
  Speaker 1: That's that same numbness.
• 39:47
  Speaker 1: That's that nervous system shutting down.
• 39:49
  Speaker 1: That's going into fight, flight and freeze response.
• 39:53
  Speaker 1: That's your body not knowing how to process or overwhelm or protecting you in such a way so you don't have those feelings.
• 40:00
  Speaker 1: I did that for 21 years.
• 40:06
  Speaker 1: At the end of that I thought I was always going to wear the shield of armor.
• 40:08
  Speaker 1: I thought I was always going to have the cold, numb feeling, disconnected.
• 40:13
  Speaker 1: Nobody can relate to me.
• 40:15
  Speaker 1: If I talk in a group, I'm the guy that's got the third eye because I'm so intense.
• 40:20
  Speaker 1: I'm the most intense one in the room.
• 40:21
  Speaker 1: I got to struggle with forgiveness.
• 40:24
  Speaker 1: I was always going to be that guy in the room.
• 40:27
  Speaker 1: I got to struggle with forgiveness.
• 40:28
  Speaker 1: I was always going to be that guy.
• 40:29
  Speaker 1: Since I've came out of law enforcement and through the therapy I start to realize you can shed those things Just like you put that suit of armor on.
• 40:35
  Speaker 1: You can take that suit of armor off and my wife now has a husband back that she hasn't seen in 25 years.
• 40:41
  Speaker 1: My kids have a father that they've never met before, and it's not mean it doesn't mean every day is perfect, but it means that we're definitely working towards a better tomorrow.
• 40:49
  Speaker 1: If you're still with me at this point, thank you for sticking around.
• 40:52
  Speaker 1: You know I've spoke about a lot tonight.
• 40:55
  Speaker 1: That has been covered in depth in a lot of my episodes.
• 40:58
  Speaker 1: This is just a synopsis of me, who I am, of me who I am.
• 41:05
  Speaker 1: There's three episodes.
• 41:08
  Speaker 1: I would like you guys to go back and listen to Episode number two, from Meth Lab to Meditation.
• 41:15
  Speaker 1: Episode number 22,.
• 41:18
  Speaker 1: It's called Unveiling Pride, dateline and Sin what's Hiding Behind your Reflection and that episode number 39, which I didn't touch on in this episode today.
• 41:32
  Speaker 1: But episode number 39 is Disclosing my why.
• 41:35
  Speaker 1: It's a very personal reason as to why I did what I did, how I did it when I did it, but that didn't come out until this last year and you need to listen to it because it's going to resonate with you or it's going to resonate with somebody close to you.
• 41:57
  Speaker 1: Just go back and listen to those two.
• 42:01
  Speaker 1: 22 and 39 are the three episodes that I'd ask you to go back and listen to.
• 42:07
  Speaker 1: Whatever pain you're going through is not without a purpose.
• 42:10
  Speaker 1: You're not alone and maybe you aren't having any issues.
• 42:17
  Speaker 1: And this doesn't even apply to you.
• 42:19
  Speaker 1: Look around you.
• 42:20
  Speaker 1: It probably applies to somebody to your left or your right.
• 42:23
  Speaker 1: Ladies and gentlemen, that's me.
• 42:27
  Speaker 1: That's what I'm all about Honesty, transparency, vulnerability.
• 42:33
  Speaker 1: This podcast educational, entertaining.
• 42:36
  Speaker 1: Provide value, ladies and gentlemen.
• 42:39
  Speaker 1: That is the Mergers to Music podcast.