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Cop with PTSD helps others- Kevin Donaldson · Nightmare Success In and Out

• 0:01
  What happens when your worst fear becomes your reality?
• 0:04
  Hi. I'm Brent, Cassidy.
• 0:05
  Welcome to the nightmare success in and out podcast, where we
• 0:08
  explore a, how to overcome your fears.
• 0:11
  And Nightmares is set yourself free.
• 0:13
  We're going to be exploring this topic with guys that was in
• 0:15
  Leavenworth with and others who survived their own nightmare.
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  These stories can be inspiring. Sometimes sad, there's some
• 0:24
  humor but hopefully you can come away with a nugget of something
• 0:27
  that will help you knock down some of the prisons.
• 0:29
  You Built up in your own mind. Welcome back.
• 0:38
  Nine more success in and out listeners.
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  I am a man. Do I have a treat for you guys?
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  So we talked on this podcast about what happens when your
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  worst fear becomes your reality, how do you adapt, how do you
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  survive? Well, today for the first time,
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  I've got a retired police officer on your Kevin Donaldson
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  and he's got a super big podcast.
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  That is doing great things, but he nearly lost his life in the
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  line of duty. When a bullet grazed his head
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  and it set off a lot of things in his And he went down a dark
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  path. He had post-traumatic stress and
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  there's a lot of things that happen with him and how he
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  walked through that and how he got through that he started
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  realizing. Once he got past that Darkness,
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  he started figuring out that he could help people with his
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  experience and how he got through it.
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  And those dark moments that he had, he could walk besides
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  people and help them. And I can't wait to unwrap all
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  this today, but that suffering podcast.
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  Check it out. It's, I've kind of, I told, I
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  told Kevin today, I've been deep inside his head because I've
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  been in his podcast. I've been as his, what he was a
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  guest on a podcast, but what I like about what he says about
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  his son, the suffering podcast is suffering is the way to
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  sustainable success. So it's, it's, it's fascinating
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  how he's done it. What he's done and how he's come
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  to the side. And the other thing that he's
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  done is, he's got a nonprofit called dented development
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  project. That is also a piece that will
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  get into. But man, I Kevin Donaldson.
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  Welcome. So, so happy to have you here
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  today. What are you really did?
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  Your research on me? You you humbled me.
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  Well show's over. There's nothing left to say
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  pretty much covered it all. So Oh Kevin.
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  I got to tell you I went I was just telling you I was I was
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  down riding the bike this morning you know.
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  And the basement I'm listening to this and and listen to used
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  to I just couldn't get enough of how you did what you did.
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  But I want you to take the listeners back a little bit
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  because you didn't comment being a police officer that as a
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  little kid, I'm going to grow up and be a policeman not at all.
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  That wasn't your. That wasn't your game.
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  So how did you Grow up. What was your world as a kid
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  growing up? My world was filled with lots
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  and lots of bad guys. So I grew up in the Atlantic
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  City area and, you know, that was the time of Nicky Scarfo
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  Junior running, the streets, and Georgia Avenue, everything was
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  corrupt. They had a piece of every single
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  construction project, one of my very, very good friends that I
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  went to high school with his father was crazy, Phil leonetti.
• 3:47
  Wow. And yeah.
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  Yeah, and it just so happened that you know, freshman year,
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  his father turned evidence against Nicky Scarfo, I never
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  saw my best friend again. So you learn real quick, a, how
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  fragile that life is, and that life.
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  It's not a life that it's a life that I dabbled in.
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  Let's put it this way. I wasn't always, I wasn't always
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  an upstanding member of society, but you know, a lot of those,
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  those habits I came from because the worst guy, That I was
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  around, was the guy that I was living with?
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  My father was a nightmare. You know, he was, he was
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  oppressive. He was the meaning in a lot of
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  different ways. And there were some really bad
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  abuse that went on in that household.
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  So you try to find your place in that household.
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  What do you have? Siblings wise.
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  It was just me and my brother, okay, you know, he was, he was
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  the fur, I'm a younger brother so that, you know, toughen you
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  up a little bit sure, but You try to make a name for yourself
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  as a younger brother. Yeah.
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  So If it was, if it wasn't nailed down, I try to steal it,
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  you know, I stolen, I used to walk into a convenience stores,
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  and I can say the name of the one convenience store was.
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  It was grovel and, and I would walk out with handfuls of stuff.
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  You know, my, for my friend, I was never afraid to do that and
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  I don't know why I mean, who knows what would have happened,
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  if I would have got caught, but I was never afraid.
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  And my friends always knew that, Hey, listen to We'll have money
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  and we were not economically Sound by any means.
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  So a couple candy bars given out to my friends and I give them
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  out, it wasn't even that I wanted them, I didn't need them.
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  So I'd give them out to my friends and all the sudden do
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  you build up some sort of status as that because people are
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  starting to like you, you know, you're always looking for that
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  acceptance because I wasn't getting as a little kid.
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  Yeah. And you know I was I was a
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  terror to a lot of different people.
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  I wasn't I wasn't a very nice kid.
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  Wasn't a very nice kid, there was a and it's a great story to
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  to give you a little window into how I grew up.
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  So when I was in 6th and 7th grade there was a there was a
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  kid and I'm friends with him now so I can say his name is name is
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  Jay Aponte, he was the so I grew up in a town called Absecon New
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  Jersey and was a very white Suburban town and Jay was Puerto
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  Rican. He was the only I think you know
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  we had a couple black guys and One Puerto Rican.
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  That was j.j. was a nicest kid in the world but for because I
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  had all this stuff going on at home, I took out my aggression
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  on him and budget, bullied the hell out of them and then he
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  leaves school, right? It was the first time I'm very
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  lucky because my Humanity never left me even though I was not a
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  nice kid, but I still had that little bit of humanity left in
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  me, didn't lose your heart. He leaves School in and I looked
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  for this guy because I was, I felt bad.
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  I mean, we got some of the stuff we used to do to him.
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  It was it was a nightmare. Nightmare, I'll form and look
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  for him and you can never find them, you know.
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  So I spent 30 years looking for him and then the Advent is one
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  of the good things that social media.
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  I was able to find him reach out to them and have them on my
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  show. And, you know, I say 2J this to
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  this day, I said you were the biggest son of a bitch I ever
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  met in my life because when I, when I'm, when I went
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  face-to-face with him or when I talked to him on the phone, the
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  first time he said, I said, look, I just want to apologize
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  for how I was as a kid. You know, I feel bad about it
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  for a very long time. I can't imagine what I did for
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  you growing up and he goes, he's listening, we were just kids, I
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  forgive you, but keep some of this rain.
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  Can't you just like, okay, can't you just ring me out a little
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  bit? Make me feel a little bit
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  better. Yeah.
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  And turns out he's a cop no, to be a cop in New York and and,
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  you know, I had them on my show, which was one of the more
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  difficult shows as like, episode was very early on was like 12 or
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  13. And we sat Face across from each
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  other and went out to eat afterwards and now we became
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  friends and the crappy part about that is when you're
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  damaged in your foundation is so broken.
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  When you're a kid, you can't no matter what you do in life, no
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  matter what good things you do in life, you're never going to
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  build a solid structure above it.
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  My foundation with was nothing, you know it's like building a
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  castle on sand. So Jay comes in and we hug and
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  we Embrace and we become very good friends but I lost out for
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  30 years on somebody who was a wonderful human being and turns
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  out to be a really really good friend.
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  Yeah, that's that's the the regret that I have to live with
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  but at least I was able to make up and cats capture back in
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  though. A lot of people don't get that
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  ever know. I was very fortunate with that.
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  Yes, so So, Kevin were you did you have a normal?
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  Like, I mean, I understand that the home was kind of tough.
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  I mean it sounds like that was a, that was a place that did you
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  have an escape? I mean, was was school?
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  The Escape was like, where did you go to feel?
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  Like you were belonged, I had a group of friends that,
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  unfortunately, most of that group of friends, turned out to
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  go to jail. Yeah, and as I moved into High
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  School, it just got worse and more Progressive.
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  I was, you know, I ran football pools.
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  Out of my betting pools, out of my high school and me and my
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  friends. If somebody didn't pay, you
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  know, you rough them up a little bit.
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  You think you're this big gangster when really you're just
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  a scared, snot-nosed kid. And we bonded over that stuff.
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  So that was my Escape, you know? With school.
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  Thankfully, I was pretty good at school.
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  Like I was a, this is not an ego trip but I was able to read
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  something once and remember and retain it.
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  So I never did homework. I was the kid, spit and spit
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  balls that the teacher in the back because I just found them
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  challenging it. There was nothing there for me,
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  no matter of fact, in Garden. They try to keep me back because
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  they said I was a when she called me a social butterfly.
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  Well, I wasn't a social butterfly.
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  I was bored as hell. And I couldn't, I didn't want to
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  listen to this stuff anymore, but I, but ultimately, there's
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  those group of friends that I was around.
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  I knew I had to get out of there or else I was going to go down
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  that same path, I knew it and thankfully I did play sports
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  growing up. You know, I played football
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  basketball baseball, but I was, I was better at football and
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  when it was time to To graduate and go to college.
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  I took one that was far enough away, where I couldn't come home
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  all the time but if there was an emergency, I could come home
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  like two and a half hours away, and that's how I ended up at
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  North Jersey. Yeah, it don't you think too
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  that, you know, I played Sports to.
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  I there's something about sports that is kind of the great
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  equalizer, you know, you know, you can show up, you know, I
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  played basketball and football and and like, you can show up
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  Black white hispanic. And if you show up at that court
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  and you got game, you can play and you can be part of it.
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  And I think that's an interesting dichotomy of the
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  bigger part of our world is that Sports.
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  I think allows you to become part of an accepting of Those
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  people who become a team and it doesn't matter who they are.
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  Can you win with them? Can they, can he be a team with
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  them? And there's something I think
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  about sports because I think about when I went to prison
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  really strangely iin down deep playing sports, kind of helped
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  me get through that and it's, I would have never thought that
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  but Sports, I feel like is something that creates a playing
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  field that you all come together.
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  Together, it doesn't matter who what your last name is what you
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  how much money somebody has. Can you win with me?
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  Can you be a good team player with me?
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  And it's a little bit different so it's one of the few Level
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  Playing Fields on life, right? Life is not fair.
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  We all know this, I've heard I've know your story very well,
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  life is not fair, but on this on the football field, everybody
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  starts at the same place. You know, you all start a
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  beginning and you have an opportunity if you're willing to
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  work, and yes, obviously, there are some kids who are little bit
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  more talented, little bit more athletically inclined, but hard
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  work beats Talent every single day.
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  Yeah, and especially, when talent doesn't work hard.
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  I love so, yeah, it's hard working hard, work beats Talent
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  when talent doesn't work hard and, you know, I had some really
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  great coaches who really really believed in us but on my
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  football field and in different sports, I played there's no
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  black white Looking Democrats. It's the it was the best thing
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  in the world and that's why today not to not to get too far
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  into that but the pop the political the political putting
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  the station Port. Yeah, that's what I was like.
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  That was getting tongue-tied. It's kind of hard to say.
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  Putting politics in sports, is the worst thing you could ever
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  do awful. It's the one place that it
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  should never be right. You know it how many how many
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  kids growing up if you didn't get along with your father or
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  your brother? Mother.
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  You could sit on a couch and watch the game.
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  Watch baseball football World Series Super Bowl, hockey,
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  whatever you're into, just have some common ground.
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  Everybody comes together right there?
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  Yeah, yeah and it's that, that right there.
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  You know, me, my father, doing ghetto, we didn't get along on
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  anything except for the Philadelphia Phillies and the
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  Philadelphia Eagles. And that's the only thing we
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  agreed on. So there was at least that one
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  thing. And, you know, here what I think
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  is a big deal though. I mean and and No, we've crept
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  into and we're getting off on this deal here, but that we've
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  crept into that. Where that special place?
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  That sacred land, wherever that is the playing field, shouldn't
• 14:13
  be messed with because that's a place where kids really learn.
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  You know, that's where kids really get a feel for being part
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  of a team. And like you said, some kids are
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  better. So I'm kids, you know, have
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  talent, but if they don't work hard, the work hard, the work
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  hard kid will be. Them up and they'll make it and
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  and that's good for everybody. No, because that's life.
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  But you know, I don't know where that's all going to go because
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  we're teetering on the edge on the cliff on that and I
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  certainly hope that we don't jump off that because that's a
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  place that if we lose that for kids to have that for them to
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  play on that field. Like, you know, I think back
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  when I grew up as a kid, You know, that that neighborhood
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  filled where everybody gets picked to be on a team and you
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  play, you know, supposed to be touch football, but it's tackle
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  and you play baseball, whatever, whatever that is, that happens,
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  that Dynamic at the happens without adults around and you
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  play on that field. If we lose that, I think we lose
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  a piece of whatever makes us who we are.
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  As, you know, if you really want to take it a country because
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  those pieces of that, and Fireman in the neighborhood if
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  we lose that and and that becomes something different
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  later. I don't know what that is.
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  If you ever coached a youth sport and you see a kid who who
• 15:40
  is not that talented, who may not even have the drive to play
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  football, make that one little small piece of progress, and you
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  look in their eyes, you will see the benefits of sports?
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  Absolutely, but here's a, here's another one for you, Brad.
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  So when I went to college, I played college football.
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  All what you play was position. I was while I when there's an
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  offensive tackle, they had an offensive tackle.
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  Who was a sophomore? I knew if I stayed there I would
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  never play. So I lost a bunch of weight and
• 16:06
  became all offensive guard. Okay.
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  All right. So I just wanted to play.
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  That's all I wanted to do was play and when you're on that all
• 16:12
  sensible guy, you're like 6 foot for something.
• 16:15
  Yeah, okay yeah. So when you're on that offer and
• 16:19
  supplied, I'm talking to these people and I you know, I do this
• 16:23
  in limited swatches with My seventh grader when I'm saying
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  things to him that are so nasty and so vile, I'm just trying to
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  get his goat. Like, you know, I was, I was not
• 16:36
  the cleanest player in the world, but I was doing
• 16:39
  psychological. Can, you know?
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  I used to go in. Well, my, my go to movies, I get
• 16:45
  underneath there pads and I pinch your nipples.
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  And I get them nice and aggravated and I walk past the
• 16:51
  ref. I was like yeah, keep an eye on
• 16:52
  number 70 there he's like 30? Sure, enough he'd come back and
• 16:56
  get me but it was a psychological game.
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  I need to get, you know, I need to get every Edge, I can over
• 17:01
  that person. So I would say these awful
• 17:03
  things on the line to people and we'd go in and we do battle.
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  And after the game more times than not, we shake hands and
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  then we go have a party because we left it out on the field and
• 17:14
  that's the best metaphor for life.
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  I can tell you you're going to, there's going to be times
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  throughout this life. Life where you're going to get
• 17:19
  aggravated. You're going to get fired up.
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  If you can release it and and live in the moment, God, what a
• 17:28
  the world would be a completely different place.
• 17:30
  Yeah, yeah. Yeah.
• 17:32
  No. It's like, I mean, what you
• 17:33
  reminded me of is, you know, when, when Ronald Reagan and Tip
• 17:38
  O'Neill, they would fight all day.
• 17:40
  And then they go is two Irishmen and have a drink at the end of
• 17:42
  the day, until some stories, if we could get back to that and
• 17:46
  our country. Wow.
• 17:47
  What a, what a different places. Be so Kevin when you, when you
• 17:52
  got past all that how in the world did you end up?
• 17:56
  Being a police officer. Well, where did that?
• 17:59
  How did that pack do for you? Some people believe in
• 18:05
  Serendipity, some people believe in coincidence, some people
• 18:08
  believe in chance, I believe that you're always placed in a
• 18:10
  position where you're absolutely supposed to be every moment of
• 18:14
  the day. You know, you went to prison,
• 18:16
  you might say you got a bad break, you didn't get bad luck.
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  You were supposed to be there because there was a reason why
• 18:20
  you would have never gone to prison.
• 18:21
  You would never been doing nighttime, sick night and exact
• 18:23
  measure success actually. So When I went to college, I
• 18:29
  first I went to college, believe it or not, because I did a
• 18:31
  complete 180. I was I felt something for
• 18:37
  theological studies. I loved I loved reading the
• 18:40
  Bible, right? Oddly enough.
• 18:44
  So I first went in, for theological studies, I kind of
• 18:46
  lost my faith after I had a class with a guy named dr.
• 18:49
  John Becker. Who was it was an ex Jesuit
• 18:53
  priest who married a nun? So he was no longer a priest.
• 18:56
  And we read the Bible as literature in and you realize
• 18:59
  how violent the book is and so I lost my fate.
• 19:03
  So I said, okay, I'll become a school teacher, you know, I'll
• 19:05
  be able to shape young minds with the love of literature and
• 19:09
  what it means. So I always wanted to become a
• 19:10
  teacher when I went to my whole college, career went through,
• 19:13
  postgraduate going to be a teacher.
• 19:16
  I knew I was never going to play professional football.
• 19:19
  So that was where I went. I taught high school for a year
• 19:22
  and I absolutely hated it. I hated it.
• 19:26
  I didn't hate the kids. I hated I hated the other
• 19:29
  teachers with a passion and also I'd like to well as Lounge.
• 19:34
  No, no. And I don't do well in confined
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  spaces, right, right. Okay.
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  So that's why thankfully, I left that life of crime sounds like I
• 19:41
  would have done very well in prison.
• 19:42
  Yeah. So that confinement of the
• 19:46
  classroom just sort of grabbed me.
• 19:48
  And after year, I said, you know what, this isn't for me.
• 19:51
  I went through all that schooling.
• 19:52
  I'm like, what a waste but it wasn't a waste right now.
• 19:56
  I bounced around from a couple different jobs.
• 19:58
  I sold cars I was, I was traveling Coast to Coast with a,
• 20:02
  with a new web company selling software to private country
• 20:08
  clubs. And that, you know, that's, that
• 20:11
  was cool. I did that for about a year and
• 20:13
  a half but I was living out of a suitcase for 4 weeks out of the
• 20:15
  month. And, you know, I was single.
• 20:17
  I didn't have any kids, so it was cool for about six months
• 20:20
  and then that got really old I'm in the gym one day and there was
• 20:26
  a guy I knew who I work out, what I just work out with me, he
• 20:29
  worked out real hard. He's an older guy turns out.
• 20:32
  He was the retired. Deputy Chief of the prosecutor's
• 20:36
  office in one of the counties in New Jersey and he goes.
• 20:39
  Did you ever think of becoming a cop my brother?
• 20:42
  On the other hand took police tested for police?
• 20:44
  Testy. That's all he wanted to do.
• 20:46
  I just wasn't, I've always told myself as a criminal I was like
• 20:49
  criminals don't become cops criminals, don't think okay.
• 20:53
  Laughs that should yeah t-shirt but it turns out criminals make
• 20:58
  the best cognac because they understand.
• 21:01
  Yeah, we've done it all. We've done it all in, we've
• 21:03
  gotten away with our share stuff.
• 21:05
  So we have a we have a little bit of our Humanity when it
• 21:08
  comes to minor things. So you know, my brother who
• 21:13
  always took tests one time, he the state police to test a New
• 21:16
  Jersey's, like take the test. So I do it on a whim and this is
• 21:21
  I don't have 99 or something like that.
• 21:23
  And at the time, the state police was in upheaval, over not
• 21:27
  having the right group in their classes.
• 21:31
  So I took the, I filled out the application, put it in, and I
• 21:34
  got a letter back saying, you don't meet their qualifications.
• 21:36
  I still don't meet the qualifications.
• 21:37
  What are you talk set? I've never been arrested.
• 21:40
  Yeah, I don't have a traffic ticket, right?
• 21:41
  I have postgraduate degrees. I have all this stuff.
• 21:45
  So what I mean, I don't read between the lines a little bit
• 21:49
  and it was I think it was a. I personally think it was a
• 21:51
  little discriminate but you know, What?
• 21:53
  I didn't care, they didn't really want it, but in the gym
• 21:56
  this time he goes, well, I got a friend in their hiring and I
• 22:01
  really didn't like the job that I was in.
• 22:02
  So I said, you know, it was a pretty good package sold to me.
• 22:05
  It's like, you know, you're going to pinch in, you won't get
• 22:08
  rich, but you'll make a good living, you get benefits, you
• 22:11
  get all this stuff. So, I took the test and I did
• 22:14
  very, very well in the test, so I got hired.
• 22:19
  All right. Cool.
• 22:20
  You know. And but when I got and I took
• 22:22
  the job because it was a Job. Yeah, I didn't take it because
• 22:25
  it was a call all of thing. I just took the job because that
• 22:29
  would say it was available and you pass out.
• 22:32
  No. Yeah.
• 22:33
  So you edited you took the job because it was available.
• 22:36
  You passed it and it could be a job that could you know, for for
• 22:44
  what you just said, Kevin you make decent money.
• 22:48
  There's a pension in it and I know from I'm listening to you.
• 22:54
  There is also your background of service.
• 22:57
  So I think in your deep Soul, you know, going all the way down
• 23:01
  to whatever that underbody has a Kevin Donaldson.
• 23:05
  You you wanted to be of service. And whether that was teaching or
• 23:10
  whether that was being a police officer, you were trying to
• 23:12
  figure out what that was. I would love helping people.
• 23:16
  You know people who couldn't help themselves help themselves.
• 23:19
  Yeah, you know I coach little league when I was like 16 or so.
• 23:23
  17 years old. And it was, it was an amazing
• 23:25
  experience, the parents, the parents, on the other hand, it's
• 23:28
  a different deal. Yeah, that's a dip like,
• 23:30
  teaching the kids and just seeing that little bit of growth
• 23:34
  and and given them a give not not picking them up and place
• 23:37
  them. Please just give him a little
• 23:38
  nudge in certain areas and that's what I found in police
• 23:42
  work, you know. But unfortunately when I was in
• 23:44
  the police academy 9/11 happened, so everything changed
• 23:48
  had to, you know, you took, right?
• 23:50
  I mean it was, that would mean it had to be weird because Has
• 23:54
  the whole world changed when 9/11 happened.
• 23:56
  I can't imagine being in the position.
• 23:59
  You were being going into the police World, being a police
• 24:04
  officer and everything changes. I mean, overnight, everybody
• 24:10
  thinks differently. I mean, how in the world can we
• 24:12
  have two buildings? Not be knocked down.
• 24:15
  We were not where the United States of America and then The
• 24:19
  police force are the people that protect everybody.
• 24:22
  I can't imagine what was running through your mind.
• 24:25
  One of the first questions when I was going in for my initial
• 24:28
  interviews because I guess I don't know if it was, I always
• 24:32
  felt like I was a coward and that one of the questions I
• 24:35
  asked, the police chief. I said, have you ever lost
• 24:37
  somebody in the line of duty and he says, no, I said, okay, yeah,
• 24:41
  that's that's good answer. Yeah.
• 24:43
  Right. So we're sitting in the police
• 24:45
  academy and I could tell you everything about it was I
• 24:48
  remember very clearly I'm sitting next to a girl named
• 24:50
  Kristin Cattlemen and she comes in very she's important, just a
• 24:54
  moment. Our captain of the police
• 24:56
  academy comes in his name was Jack McBrayer R&D and he comes
• 24:58
  in, he says a plane just hit the World Trade Center up until that
• 25:01
  point planes. Hit the World Trade Center in
• 25:03
  the Empire State Building all the time.
• 25:05
  No, a little Cessna planes. Cory Lidle from the New York
• 25:08
  Yankees, he ran into and right? So we didn't think we didn't
• 25:12
  think anything of it. Of it.
• 25:13
  It was, it was no big deal but Kristen Catwoman, she isn't
• 25:17
  crap, my father works in the World Trade Center, but again,
• 25:19
  there was no Terror and then all of a sudden, little bit later,
• 25:23
  he comes in on another plane, hit the World Trade Center.
• 25:25
  That's right, that are. And they know, we're like all
• 25:28
  crap. What is this?
• 25:29
  What is going on? Now, our departments recalled us
• 25:32
  and we were two thirds of the way to get through the academy,
• 25:36
  my lieutenant. Now we had a couple high-value
• 25:39
  Targets in the town that I worked in.
• 25:42
  So, Markets. They would they would consider
• 25:44
  but because we just didn't know if we were being invaded like
• 25:47
  nobody. Nobody is Pentagon and then
• 25:49
  spitsbergen. Yeah.
• 25:52
  So we get recalled and we're told to go stand post at certain
• 25:57
  places and were handed our gun. Now, we had in qualifying with
• 25:59
  her gun yet, they just handed your gun and say, hey, don't
• 26:02
  shoot, somebody told that's, that's what I was.
• 26:04
  That's what I was told and I'm holding this piece of metal in
• 26:08
  my hand, I'm like God. Okay, you know I guess this this
• 26:12
  craps for real, you know so I go out and stand post and you know
• 26:17
  everything gets sort of figured out, we finish the police
• 26:20
  academy in a nice. Hit the road and boy, I got a,
• 26:24
  why do I got a rude awakening? When I hit the road, you know to
• 26:27
  what police work really was, it's not just the job.
• 26:30
  It's it's a it's a true calling. It feels good to be there for
• 26:35
  somebody when they call for help.
• 26:37
  Yeah, well, you do understand that that's that's why superhero
• 26:40
  movies are so valuable in our society because hey, you don't,
• 26:46
  when you don't know what to do and you're looking for a place
• 26:48
  to go, hey I'd love to be able to call Superman in The day.
• 26:52
  Yep. And so that was, that was a good
• 26:54
  feeling, you know, and I think my first day on the job, I was a
• 26:59
  dead body which I had never outside of a funeral home.
• 27:02
  I never seen a dead body and yeah, we're an excellent.
• 27:06
  I mean I can't imagine because I'm not good and I'm, you know,
• 27:11
  I'm from the funeral business and I never was good with dead
• 27:15
  bodies and which is really weird because we owned a lot of
• 27:19
  funeral homes and cemeteries. But when you Get pushed into
• 27:23
  because I know you handled like Road accidents and you know guys
• 27:28
  blowing their heads off when you came upon that like what was
• 27:33
  going through your mind? I mean what what does it feel
• 27:36
  like? Because I don't think people
• 27:37
  really know what that's like when you come upon something
• 27:40
  that you don't normally see. And that's a lot different than
• 27:42
  seeing it on TV or some horror fiction movie that you're
• 27:47
  watching. It's different You go to work.
• 27:51
  That's what it's all about. You go to work lock-in you, you
• 27:55
  focus, you remove yourself that, whatever.
• 27:58
  You're looking at used to be a human but it's no longer a human
• 28:01
  being and you go to work and then the science begins and
• 28:04
  that's why something like accident investigation, it
• 28:08
  appealed to my nature because it was a challenge that mean
• 28:10
  there's some of the math equations and they're like this
• 28:13
  long. And I I enjoyed it but walking
• 28:17
  up on that dead body you deal with it in a lot of unhealthy
• 28:22
  ways you get the Gallows humor. I'm I know morticians though, I
• 28:26
  know are not morticians. I know all medical examiner's do
• 28:31
  it but I'm sure they have it too.
• 28:33
  Yeah you know you see you look at the body as a science
• 28:38
  experiment you remove yourself that that used to have a soul.
• 28:43
  And then you start to see things that people aren't supposed to
• 28:46
  see. You know, you're not supposed to
• 28:48
  look at the insides of bodies, but it's like detective work,
• 28:52
  okay? You look at a person, get out on
• 28:54
  the slab and they look, there's nothing there's no marks on
• 28:58
  them. There's no nothing.
• 28:59
  And then they start cutting them open and be like, okay, that's
• 29:02
  why they died. There had an aortic tear in
• 29:05
  their product, their their chest, cavities, filled with
• 29:07
  blood, and they're cutting open the ribcage, I put, and maybe
• 29:12
  this town's a little Sick. But I enjoyed that I enjoyed
• 29:15
  getting in there and getting my hands.
• 29:17
  Dirty, what was that stuff? But you deal with it was sick
• 29:20
  with very, very bad humor. Sometimes I there was a it was
• 29:23
  an accident. If anybody listen to us talk
• 29:29
  they would think we're insane. There was a husband and wife
• 29:33
  slammed into a tree. The husband had a medic massive
• 29:35
  medical event slammed right into a trade license plate first and
• 29:40
  I'm the first one on scene and I take a bar I try to break the
• 29:43
  window to see if the woman is still alive.
• 29:45
  And it was those old cars with the automatic seatbelt.
• 29:48
  Oh God. Yeah.
• 29:49
  And the reason they set behind him.
• 29:51
  Yeah. Nobody put the lap belt on which
• 29:54
  was the most important part, use them anymore.
• 29:56
  Yeah. So why break?
• 29:58
  And it's called a Halligan bar. It's a big crowbar.
• 30:02
  I break the window with the Halligan bar and it goes
• 30:05
  straight through the window and hits the woman on the shoulder.
• 30:09
  She was long since that she was in a spot like about this bunch.
• 30:12
  So one of the know where officers who's a little
• 30:14
  squeamish comes by, and he's gosh, I wonder what the last
• 30:17
  thing went through her head was and I said, was the dashboard
• 30:20
  problems up. Yeah.
• 30:22
  You know. So but that's that's a coping
• 30:24
  mechanism now. And I think that I think that's
• 30:26
  a good point, though, because their humor and dark times is
• 30:32
  real, you know, humor for, and this is why I think it's
• 30:36
  interesting talking to you about being a police officer because
• 30:40
  humor in prison, Is real, you know, you know they think you
• 30:44
  know is it is it always bad. Is it always you know dark and
• 30:48
  no color and all that. No, there's humor.
• 30:50
  And we, you know, you laugh and you get through and you feel
• 30:53
  better, you know, when you laugh, it's a coping mechanism,
• 30:58
  you have that, whatever that is, that's human, it gets you to the
• 31:03
  next step and sometimes, sometimes that's humor and it's
• 31:08
  weird because at the, you know, lowest point you can say
• 31:11
  something funny. And it releases something and
• 31:14
  you get to the next step, the endorphins inside of you, it's
• 31:18
  like a drug, you know, drug addicts, they shoot for it.
• 31:21
  Or they snorting, the Endorphin release during humor during
• 31:26
  stressful times really. Just even stuff out.
• 31:29
  Right? You know, that's the thing, with
• 31:32
  any type of first responder job or veteran or something.
• 31:38
  I will guarantee you talk to everybody and they Will tell
• 31:42
  you, they laugh more than they've ever laughed in their
• 31:45
  entire life. They'll come out of there with
• 31:47
  some stories. That's right.
• 31:49
  First Responders in general and veterans in general are great
• 31:52
  storytellers. Sure those are the times that
• 31:55
  you remember you. Yeah you do remember the horror
• 31:58
  but you remember I laugh more as a cop than I've ever laughed in
• 32:02
  my left since and you know that's what that's the thing you
• 32:06
  miss mostly. Well, you said something that
• 32:10
  caught my attention because I watch Everybody Loves Raymond
• 32:13
  all the time and and his brother talked about that.
• 32:18
  It's boredom with a few. Is it a few minutes or a few
• 32:21
  seconds of in interrupted by brief moments of horror or
• 32:27
  exactly and interrupted in interrupted by brief moments of
• 32:32
  horror? But, I mean, that to me really
• 32:36
  spoke to me because you when you're on the beat, you know,
• 32:42
  No, you're looking and you're seeing in your, you're trying to
• 32:45
  react to what's happening around you.
• 32:47
  But at any given point, you know, if I remember right, The
• 32:54
  night that and I could be wrong but you were pulled up to
• 32:58
  another police car and you were like, you know I hope something
• 33:01
  comes on tonight, you know, the crack of the radio or something.
• 33:04
  Was that the night that the your Your thing happened July 10th
• 33:11
  2013. Okay so your pulled up and I'm
• 33:14
  just leading into this story because I thought that was what
• 33:18
  it was. You were pulled up there's
• 33:20
  nothing going on and you're like I'll go do anything.
• 33:23
  I just don't want to be out. Here is So Silent.
• 33:26
  It's so calm. I'm looking for something and
• 33:29
  then you get the crack of the radio and it's it's in the
• 33:34
  middle of the night. What is it midnight or 10:00?
• 33:36
  I can't remember what time you're about, ten.
• 33:38
  It's about 10:45. Okay.
• 33:41
  And there's there's there's markers.
• 33:43
  And and how else to take it from there?
• 33:45
  Kevin? Because I mean that that to me,
• 33:46
  I was like, gripped from that point forward, the worst thing
• 33:50
  for anybody is, is silence, is down time.
• 33:54
  Then you're stuck just trying to fill your time and this is
• 33:57
  nothing new. And the reason I know this is
• 33:59
  not the new, I was speaking to a deed a Survivor and he after
• 34:04
  D-Day got through he had downtime.
• 34:07
  And what is He do he goes and steals a car in France.
• 34:10
  Wow. And he gets, he gets busted by
• 34:12
  his two star. General.
• 34:13
  Why would why did that happen? Because they had nothing to do
• 34:17
  right? It wasn't all bullets weren't
• 34:19
  flying at him at all times. So you know any cop will tell
• 34:22
  you. There are certain times a night
• 34:25
  that you just you dread they call them the witching hours,
• 34:28
  you know, between 3:00 and 4:00 everybody's in bed.
• 34:30
  The only people that are out the good thing is it's easy to spot
• 34:34
  the criminals because the only people are out are usually up to
• 34:36
  no good, right? That night was one of those
• 34:39
  nights. It was a Wednesday going into a
• 34:41
  Thursday and there was nothing happening but we we're a small
• 34:46
  suburban town where I worked in. You know, we used to go pull on
• 34:49
  doors, make sure they're all the businesses are locked up.
• 34:51
  And pretty much put the BET down the bed at night.
• 34:55
  I pull up next to my partner, and we're drinking coffee, and,
• 34:58
  and I'm like, just anything. Just give me anything.
• 35:02
  I shoot a deer. Go chase a turkey off the road,
• 35:04
  whatever it is. Which, by the way, turkeys made
• 35:09
  for life. The reason I know that is
• 35:10
  because I saw one get hit, that was still alive.
• 35:12
  I tried to go put it down and I ended up running away from
• 35:15
  another turkey, which was pretty funny, but so I go to do my
• 35:22
  checks to pull on doors and everything changes with one
• 35:27
  crack of the radio and that's what happened this night.
• 35:30
  It's start responding to this address unknown open Line 91 11,
• 35:36
  I hear yelling in the background and that's all the information,
• 35:39
  the officer on the desk had. So you don't know what you're
• 35:43
  going into which I think and I think you know Kevin I think
• 35:46
  that's just fascinating. You have no idea what you're
• 35:49
  going into. I think for people listening to
• 35:53
  this that is such a weird phenomenon because most people
• 35:57
  that are at work, a normal job. They kind of know what they're
• 36:01
  going into unless they've got a meeting and they don't, you
• 36:04
  know, somebody's coming into town and they don't know how How
• 36:06
  the meetings you go, that is totally different than getting a
• 36:09
  crack on the radio and you're going at 10:45 at night and it
• 36:13
  could be somebody's shooting at you which is actually what
• 36:16
  happens. That is a totally different
• 36:19
  scenario that I don't know if people can actually grasp onto
• 36:23
  unless you walk through the scenario of your story.
• 36:26
  Because it's not normal. What you do in that scenario is
• 36:31
  not normal because people don't live that way.
• 36:35
  You've been speaking to my wife to my town called me, not
• 36:37
  normal, but you have to understand the mentality of
• 36:42
  anybody who takes that job or a fireman or EMS, it's the same
• 36:46
  thing and guess what? It's the since probably, the
• 36:49
  reason why I'm friends with so many criminals, because it's the
• 36:52
  same thing in the criminal life, you know, it's that something
• 36:56
  the adrenaline, something new every day, you don't know what
• 36:59
  you're going to walk into and it becomes almost addictive and You
• 37:05
  know you live for those calls, you live for that.
• 37:09
  Okay? Hey listen, we got to pursue
• 37:11
  coming through town and go get them and try to be saved.
• 37:16
  Yeah, yeah. It's great.
• 37:17
  That's that's the the stuff that you look forward to this night.
• 37:22
  So we we respond. And we don't go Sirens because
• 37:28
  we don't want to look, we don't know what's going on.
• 37:30
  On to you have to be very tactical and how you respond to
• 37:33
  certain things. You don't want to alert your
• 37:35
  presence before you actually get there and get in position.
• 37:37
  So we're going lights and you know, we're doing 70 75 miles an
• 37:40
  hour down residential streets. And when we get it's a townhouse
• 37:45
  complex, where what we go into, there's three of us that show up
• 37:49
  there park. My car right in front, which was
• 37:51
  the worst thing and you'll find out why afterwards And I get out
• 37:55
  of the car. I once again that Halligan bar
• 37:57
  which I used a lot, it's just it's like a fireman's crowbar.
• 38:01
  I bring I it was in my backseat for some reason.
• 38:05
  We go up to the door and we can hear yelling in the background
• 38:08
  and we pound on the door and all we hear is don't come in here.
• 38:12
  Don't come in here. So my partner goes around the
• 38:16
  back and it's a, it's a middle unit so the deck, there's only
• 38:20
  one way in one way out. Well actually that's not true
• 38:22
  three ways in. So if you count the garage, I'm
• 38:25
  at the front door with another, with another police.
• 38:28
  He was a lieutenant in my partners in the back and on a
• 38:31
  signal, I start pounding in the door.
• 38:35
  It's a big steel front door. And It's not easy kicking in a
• 38:41
  door. So forget the move looks easy on
• 38:43
  TV. Yeah, their closet doors,
• 38:45
  they're Hollow doors is a big steel door.
• 38:47
  There's a there's a method to do it.
• 38:49
  You pound by the lock and you try to make a gap and then you
• 38:52
  put the crow in there and you you pop it.
• 38:57
  So on a signal, I start pounding.
• 39:00
  And then I hear pop pop, pop, pop.
• 39:04
  If we're done, I put through the Crowbar to the side, I get
• 39:09
  behind. Cover was there's a little
• 39:11
  window I get behind and your it was.
• 39:13
  It's a holy shit moment. Yeah, shit.
• 39:16
  What's the hell just happened? I go over the radio.
• 39:19
  I say shots fired. I want to, I really want to
• 39:21
  alert the surrounding towns. Right to give us help.
• 39:24
  We ran on like, three people at midnight, you know, is a 7 p.m.
• 39:29
  7 a.m. shift and we need help and we don't know what's
• 39:33
  happening. We all know who's in there.
• 39:36
  I just have to make sure that my father has never been in a
• 39:39
  situation where you heard gun shots like that.
• 39:42
  Yo, yeah, yeah. I mean I spent a lot of time in
• 39:45
  Atlantic City growing up and I've heard guys don't know, I've
• 39:48
  seen as a police officer where shots are fired on the job in
• 39:53
  anger or you don't know what's going on in Anger.
• 39:56
  No, okay. Not at this time.
• 39:58
  Okay. So You know shooting deer and
• 40:00
  stuff like this, it was Suburban town right?
• 40:02
  You know dear that are injured by cars.
• 40:04
  Yeah you put them down and so I run around the back.
• 40:09
  Other officers are showing up and they're covering the front
• 40:12
  door. I run around the back of the one
• 40:14
  to check on my partner. He's you know what?
• 40:16
  The, he's my primary concern right now, you make in your
• 40:19
  head, you categorize everything that's going on split.
• 40:22
  Ya que you did triage everything.
• 40:24
  Okay, this is the most important I run to the back.
• 40:27
  I find my partner, he exchanged gunfire with the guy inside, we
• 40:31
  find out later on that. The guys his name's Anthony Boca
• 40:35
  Toro. He had recently broken up with
• 40:37
  the woman who lives In the house, her son was in there as
• 40:40
  well, and he was going to kill her.
• 40:42
  So as he raised the gun to kill her, my partner, shot through
• 40:46
  the, the sliding glass door, the back deck.
• 40:49
  It's like a little essay 8x8 privacy Deck with patio
• 40:54
  furniture on there. So he retreated after the shots
• 40:57
  were fired and I go back there, other officers were showing up
• 41:03
  and we make a plan, our plan is is to go up on the deck.
• 41:06
  We can't say and we can see Victim of the side.
• 41:09
  She's, you know, our knees are up with our chest and after the
• 41:13
  shots were fired the first time, her son was able to get out.
• 41:16
  And he that's how I knew. We knew a little bit more
• 41:18
  information. He's like he's going to kill
• 41:19
  her. It says that her ex-boyfriend
• 41:21
  held his head. He probably 1819.
• 41:26
  He wasn't tested an adult. All right.
• 41:28
  He almost got he almost got shot because as I'm running around
• 41:32
  knowing that the only person in the back is my partner, he
• 41:35
  comes, I see him first, so he he got the real good look down the
• 41:40
  barrel of a gun. Once I find out he's no threat
• 41:43
  okay, go get out of here, we go back there so we get up on the
• 41:47
  deck and there's maybe a 4-foot entrance.
• 41:50
  I get off to the right side because from the right side, the
• 41:54
  entrance would be on my left. From the right side, I can see
• 41:57
  everything in the sliding glass door.
• 41:59
  I can see the victim. I can't we can't see this guy
• 42:02
  who shot, we have no idea where he is but we know he's in there.
• 42:06
  So from where I was, it was a very sound tactical position.
• 42:11
  I couldn't be more wrong in my life.
• 42:15
  So I'm standing in the corner and I see, you know, I'm looking
• 42:19
  around. I'm like, okay, there's patio
• 42:20
  furniture I can get cover behind their.
• 42:22
  It's why your patio furniture? It's like swiss cheese, it's not
• 42:28
  it's going to do my thing, right?
• 42:32
  But our plan was me my partner and a sergeant.
• 42:35
  We're up there and we're going to throw a chair through the
• 42:37
  sliding glass door and we're going to make entry.
• 42:40
  We have to get the life. We have to go save life at all
• 42:43
  costs. Her life is the That's the
• 42:45
  triage her life is the primary importance in our mind.
• 42:49
  So I you the minute, we throw the minute, we throw the chair
• 42:52
  through the door. I mean the second I see The
• 42:58
  brightest flash, I hear the bang.
• 43:01
  I feel the grains of gunpowder hit my face and I feel my left
• 43:06
  with left ear wiggle. Okay, so this guy, so if the
• 43:10
  sliding glass doors here, if I'm going to paint a picture, he was
• 43:12
  right. Here is standing behind a wall
• 43:15
  where we couldn't see him. And he reached around like this
• 43:17
  and fire, okay? The bullet goes right past my
• 43:21
  ear. I hit the ground.
• 43:23
  I hit the, I hit the deck hard. Now I fall on broken glass.
• 43:27
  People, and it's July. So, it's hot as hell.
• 43:32
  And I fall like this on the glad this on the glass.
• 43:37
  I'm my shoulder hurts. The other two officers were
• 43:41
  closer to the entrance. They were able to retrieve, but
• 43:43
  I'm stuck. I know if I try to crawl out,
• 43:45
  he's got a, he's got a real good shot at me.
• 43:47
  I'm dead. So I'm thinking, I don't know
• 43:52
  whether I'm shot. I'm figuring.
• 43:53
  I'm going to die and everything just slows down for me.
• 43:57
  Very clear that my clarity of thought was probably the most
• 44:01
  clear that it was ever in my entire life.
• 44:05
  I think about my kids, I had a three-year-old and a, like a
• 44:11
  seven or eight month old. My wife would have to raise them
• 44:14
  all alone. And my three-year-old at see me
• 44:16
  in uniform but he's, you know, he's not going to, he's not
• 44:18
  going to know his dad. My seven-month-old.
• 44:23
  He's, he'll never remember me. I'll just be a name and a
• 44:26
  picture in a scrapbook. My wife to your mind at the time
• 44:31
  this placenta previa time. Yeah, Split Second and I said
• 44:34
  it's like slow motion video. Yeah.
• 44:37
  Just you don't understand. How how slow everything I was on
• 44:42
  there for maybe I don't know, anywhere from 45 seconds to a
• 44:46
  minute and a half but I just I could see everything.
• 44:49
  Yeah. But my knew my wife was going to
• 44:51
  have to raise these kids all by themselves.
• 44:54
  Oh, by herself. And you know, she's going to
• 44:57
  have to live with the fact that her husband died.
• 45:00
  Now, here's the good thing. This even goes through my mind
• 45:04
  in the police World, in New Jersey, if you're killed in the
• 45:06
  line of duty, your wife gets three times your yearly salary
• 45:13
  plus 50% of your pension so financially.
• 45:15
  I'm like so I was able to I just I remember going well at least
• 45:19
  that's taken care of. Okay.
• 45:21
  Well if I'm going to die, you're coming with me.
• 45:24
  So I get into a shooting position and I hear the other
• 45:26
  officers in the back, they're like, are you shot?
• 45:28
  And I like, I don't know, my shoulder hurts, but I see blood
• 45:30
  everywhere because my arms, I still to this day, I actually
• 45:32
  have some glass in here that they could never get out to
• 45:35
  close to a vein. And I see blood everywhere, my
• 45:39
  shoulder hurts. I don't know whether I'm shot
• 45:40
  but I don't care at that point to tell you Sky down.
• 45:44
  He's going little, did I know that after he shot.
• 45:49
  He ran upstairs when my partner exchanged gunfire with them.
• 45:53
  They hit him in the back. And he ran upstairs.
• 45:57
  I didn't see it. And my, the other officer is now
• 46:03
  the one Lieutenant that showed up.
• 46:05
  He, this is and I'll never forgive him for this.
• 46:07
  He ran he ran from from the scene, that's really bad.
• 46:12
  Nope, the other officers, the two officers that were there.
• 46:15
  They saved my life because they were there.
• 46:16
  And there's going to stay and fight this guy because he was an
• 46:19
  administrator ran away and had to go call the chief for
• 46:22
  whatever reason you got to do. You got an active shooter going
• 46:25
  on in? And he I'll never forgive him
• 46:27
  for my life. I'm to this day.
• 46:29
  The only thing that I still hold anger to, I do, I'm not even mad
• 46:31
  at the guy who shot at me. I'm mad at this guy hits, you
• 46:35
  you left me to die. So the other officers were able
• 46:39
  to get me off of the deck, they grabbed the back of my belt to
• 46:42
  assist me because I'm an, I'm on my stomach and I was able to get
• 46:46
  off the deck and we clear the area.
• 46:48
  We clear the victim were able to get the victim out.
• 46:51
  She went out the front door through the garage so she's
• 46:54
  clear. She's done a good job.
• 46:55
  Wow, he can stay in there for five years for all I care,
• 46:59
  right? He I don't care will starve them
• 47:01
  out. So I'm thinking I'm talking to
• 47:04
  the other guys, I'm like, oh my god.
• 47:06
  What the, what the, what the hell just happened?
• 47:08
  I don't understand this. This is this is not supposed to
• 47:11
  happen in this town, right? But the thing of it is is it can
• 47:16
  happen in any town at any moment.
• 47:19
  Any time and your life changes. So we held perimeter for like
• 47:24
  two hours until the hostage negotiating.
• 47:27
  Pink shows Al, I got blood everywhere and you know, it's
• 47:30
  stinging from the sweat in there.
• 47:33
  Fully exactly the time Kevin that you got grazed on the side
• 47:37
  of your head. No, no there's just a little
• 47:40
  trickle of blood coming out of my ear and that's that's about
• 47:42
  it. We fully expected the guy to
• 47:46
  come running out and do what's called suicide by cop.
• 47:48
  You know, he's obviously wants to die.
• 47:50
  He shot a police officers twice. But he never did we get out of
• 47:56
  there that the hostage team takes over.
• 47:59
  And I clear the area, and I have to go to the hospital, and I had
• 48:03
  to get a bunch of glass. Picked out of my arm, I realize
• 48:05
  I'm not shot, but parking my car in the front of the building was
• 48:09
  the worst move ever because I never carried by cell phone on
• 48:12
  me. This is, you know, this 2013.
• 48:15
  It's not like today where you can't go anywhere without it.
• 48:17
  All the notifications you can't get away from your phone.
• 48:21
  I heard that when you're talking about This is a matter of fact,
• 48:26
  I think I don't even have a SmartPhone.
• 48:28
  I had a LG like flip phone, I will put down.
• 48:31
  Yeah. Yeah.
• 48:32
  So I didn't have my phone to call my wife now all the wives,
• 48:37
  the police wives, they talk to each other.
• 48:39
  Sure. And I was, I was really afraid
• 48:42
  that somebody was going to hear that there was a shooting in
• 48:44
  town called my wife. And hey, there was a shooting in
• 48:47
  Roseland. They is your husband working.
• 48:49
  Well, yeah, he is and I can't get in touch with him.
• 48:51
  So I grabbed one of the EMTs phone, Bones.
• 48:54
  It's about 2:00 in the morning by 1:30 in the morning, I guess
• 48:57
  g. One of the EMTs phones and it's
• 48:58
  one of the few numbers thankfully that I know off the
• 49:00
  top of my head, I think, I know like to, we don't know,
• 49:03
  anybody's numbers anymore because they're in our phones,
• 49:05
  right eye. This is one that I knew so I
• 49:08
  call her number and I said, look, imagine, imagine for a
• 49:11
  second, being a spouse hearing this phone call.
• 49:15
  My wife's name is Trisha Trisha. There was a shooting.
• 49:19
  I'm involved. I'm okay, I'm not shot.
• 49:22
  I have to go to the hospital. I have to get glass removed from
• 49:24
  my arm. I will I'm calling you from and
• 49:27
  bars in these phones. I'm call you as soon as I can
• 49:32
  and then that's it. I can't imagine getting that
• 49:34
  call. I can't imagine that.
• 49:36
  I mean, it wasn't even your phone it was coming from an
• 49:38
  unknown number, right? And, you know, she can't leave
• 49:42
  the two kids home. They're, they're too young.
• 49:44
  She can't leave her. I'm alone.
• 49:45
  So she stuck dared to her own devices, trying to find out
• 49:48
  little pieces of information. So I go there officers they take
• 49:53
  me there and I get it and I'm in I'm in a good mood.
• 49:57
  I'm happy that a good job was done.
• 50:00
  Like when you make a when you do a good job and any kind of
• 50:03
  should have been killed right. Those shooter and they escaped.
• 50:07
  Yeah. And you guys made that happen
• 50:09
  and yeah. Absolutely.
• 50:11
  So you know I felt really good about it.
• 50:13
  I get back to the scene and After I get back, I have to go
• 50:17
  get my car. The guy, the guy was talked out
• 50:19
  and arrested. I get to my car, get my phone, I
• 50:23
  get everything. I talked a little bit with the
• 50:25
  detectives. I write a report, so I get out
• 50:27
  of the police department about 5 a.m. in the morning.
• 50:30
  And I go home and I'm my adrenaline is just going at the
• 50:34
  time. I was a real big Runner.
• 50:35
  So I actually went out for a run before I went to sleep, ran it
• 50:39
  off and I'm just thinking about stuff.
• 50:41
  My wife was overjoyed but by me coming home and And I go to
• 50:45
  sleep, I get about four or five hours of sleep really good.
• 50:49
  Solid sleep. I wake up to about 50 phone
• 50:52
  calls from other cops from cops that you know saying what
• 50:55
  happened because they all want to know they're like it's a
• 50:57
  giant sewing Circle. They all want to know what
• 51:00
  happened but I guess some guy went crazy and tried to kill
• 51:03
  her. And then so that night, which is
• 51:09
  it. So it's now Thursday that night
• 51:11
  me and my wife just want to get away.
• 51:13
  We get her mother, watch the kids, we just want to, you know,
• 51:15
  just have some us time. We go to the movies and to this
• 51:19
  day, I can't watch this movie. We went to see.
• 51:21
  We went to go see a Seth Rogen comedy called This is the End.
• 51:24
  Okay? Okay.
• 51:26
  Just to laugh. Well, there's a scene in the
• 51:29
  beginning of that movie where everybody sort of getting sucked
• 51:31
  up to heaven and like I think the bad people stayed on Earth,
• 51:35
  that's what it was but it was really loud and it was a bang.
• 51:41
  I felt like a cinderblock went on my chest.
• 51:43
  Like I started, I started breathing heavy, I started
• 51:45
  sweating. I started really just felt like,
• 51:49
  you know, bugs are crawling on my skin and I was really
• 51:52
  uncomfortable. And my wife sees this and I say,
• 51:54
  you know what, I gotta go to, I didn't want to alarm her, she'd
• 51:56
  been through or not. I say I'm going to go to the
• 51:58
  bathroom. I got to go to bathroom, I'll be
• 52:00
  back, I get out in the hallway. And it's still like what?
• 52:07
  I I know that feeling just scared the hell out of me,
• 52:10
  because I'm sitting there and all away and I can't catch my
• 52:13
  breath. My heart's beating a million
• 52:15
  miles an hour. What are you wearing?
• 52:18
  Kevin that that's what that was. I mean were you aware that?
• 52:21
  That whatever that sound you heard was creating that affect
• 52:26
  your body? Or were you just responding to
• 52:28
  oh shit. I feel weird.
• 52:31
  I'm leaving. I'm going outside or what where
• 52:35
  was your mind with that? Were you like oh shit, this is
• 52:39
  all coming back. Because I've been through all
• 52:41
  this and that sound was something I can't deal with or
• 52:44
  were you just like I don't know what's Putting but I gotta get
• 52:47
  out of here. Some police detective that I
• 52:50
  would have made because I never put the two together.
• 52:52
  Okay. You know, the evidence is
• 52:54
  staring me first base and I never put it together.
• 52:57
  I just thought I was getting sick or I was whatever it was.
• 53:02
  So I'm out in the hallway. My wife comes out and she says,
• 53:05
  are you okay as a gay? You know, my stomach's hurting,
• 53:07
  I made up something. I had my stomach's hurting, you
• 53:09
  know, I just, I'll be back in there in a minute.
• 53:12
  She was now, you know what she knew, like, they're not stupid.
• 53:16
  Hmm, she knew what was going on and it was when we left we
• 53:21
  walked out of the movie. Thankfully, we did, you know,
• 53:25
  and so that night, the nightmare start, you know, and Nightmares
• 53:29
  the nightmares are starting something like you're stuck in a
• 53:32
  situation, you can't get out or there's there's somebody needs
• 53:37
  help and you can't get to them or you pull out your gun and the
• 53:40
  bullet just droops out, or bang flag.
• 53:43
  Comes out like the old cartoons. And you wake up in the middle of
• 53:48
  the night. So drenched in sweat that.
• 53:52
  I actually the first couple times it happened.
• 53:55
  I had to check to see if I wet the bed.
• 53:56
  Wow, there was one night where I I rolled over and I grabbed my
• 54:04
  wife's arm, it was like a night terror, I grabbed her arm and
• 54:07
  really scared the hell out of her.
• 54:10
  The trauma that that and it went on and on and you try to hide it
• 54:13
  the best you can because you think I'm better than you.
• 54:15
  What's going on? What like, what Kevin will you
• 54:18
  like these nightmares had happened?
• 54:21
  You probably hadn't had them this starts coming on.
• 54:24
  You been in this movie, you get these night.
• 54:26
  These sweats you start having these nightmares.
• 54:29
  Sweats are you thinking? Holy shit.
• 54:33
  I just think it's kind of weird going on.
• 54:36
  Or what was your what was your thought process with that?
• 54:40
  You knew something was off, something was something was
• 54:43
  happening, but you figured, it was the duration which I've had
• 54:46
  nightmares before about everything that I've done.
• 54:50
  But you figure his, the nightmares are going to stop
• 54:52
  relatively quickly, it's going to be a short duration thing,
• 54:55
  right that weekend, my parents still lived in South Jersey.
• 54:59
  And we want to bring we're going to get away, we're just going to
• 55:03
  get away from everything and we're going to bring the kids
• 55:05
  down there and be a nice little day trip and see my parents.
• 55:11
  The right down was fine and I'm I'm sitting there and I'm
• 55:14
  talking to my brother and my brother wants to know what
• 55:18
  happened and this is where stuff starts really like I really
• 55:22
  start to identify something's going wrong.
• 55:24
  My brother wants to know what happened.
• 55:25
  I'm like hey you know what I really don't want to talk about
• 55:27
  it. I really don't want to talk
• 55:28
  about. It was my brother's a cop as
• 55:30
  well. I know I mean I think that
• 55:31
  that's interesting because he is a cop and somebody you could
• 55:35
  identify with because you're in the same thing.
• 55:40
  But you didn't want to share it with him.
• 55:42
  You're a type, A personality that is that is exhibiting signs
• 55:45
  of weakness. That doesn't happen.
• 55:47
  Like you, you can't do that, right?
• 55:49
  You shall weakness on the street, they'll Eat You Alive.
• 55:53
  And so I was agitated and on the way out, as we're leaving my
• 55:58
  three year, old spell spills, chocolate milk on his car seat,
• 56:02
  I lost my mind. I yelled at him, like, I would
• 56:05
  yell at somebody, who, who just assaulted, you know, my wife.
• 56:12
  That's right. I got ya.
• 56:13
  Here's two-year-old like he's crying.
• 56:15
  And that now that there was a two and a half hour ride home,
• 56:18
  two hours and 15 minutes. I yelled at everybody in the car
• 56:22
  like a maniac. My wife is begging me to pull
• 56:25
  over on the Garden State Parkway and let her out and walk home.
• 56:28
  That's how bad it was. Something's wrong.
• 56:32
  I know something's wrong. We get home.
• 56:34
  No, something's wrong. You both know.
• 56:35
  Something's wrong, right? Something's wrong.
• 56:38
  You know, they'll because We get home and I call an organization
• 56:43
  called cop to cop because I just need help.
• 56:45
  I don't know where to turn. I know, something's broken and
• 56:49
  they hook me up with a therapist that but the therapist wasn't
• 56:52
  happened until like Tuesday. My department had scheduled
• 56:56
  what's called a critical incident stress management The
• 56:58
  Briefing. Yeah, let's go to 17.
• 57:01
  The only problem is my department was so they did a
• 57:04
  really piss poor managing stress like this because you're
• 57:07
  supposed to have those like the no later than 48 hours.
• 57:11
  H supposed to have those set up the debrief to make people
• 57:15
  aware. This could happen.
• 57:17
  In this case, these are the dangers of the things that could
• 57:20
  happen. They didn't do it.
• 57:21
  They didn't do it until the following Monday.
• 57:23
  Wow. So the the Monday comes and I
• 57:28
  have a, I have a therapist appointment on Tuesday, I think
• 57:32
  everything's going to be fixed. This is just a temporary speed
• 57:35
  bump. I would go into the doctor's
• 57:37
  office. I had to go get a check-up for
• 57:38
  my arms, which are still wrapped up.
• 57:40
  And the doctor there is Glass, is she still grabbing a little
• 57:43
  pieces of glass out of my arm still?
• 57:45
  And she, I remember, she asked me.
• 57:48
  She was, are you okay? I'm like, yeah, you know, I'm
• 57:50
  okay. It's got some glass in my arms
• 57:52
  not a big deal. She does not understand what I'm
• 57:53
  talking about you. Okay, you okay.
• 57:58
  I broke. I'm not a huge cry and now I am,
• 58:01
  but I was never a huge crying. Have his the older you get?
• 58:05
  Yeah, I'd probably, you know, start seeing you killed you
• 58:07
  exactly aggravate the hell out of your.
• 58:10
  You love them so much. You just want to hold them under
• 58:12
  the water, till the bubbles stop.
• 58:15
  So she asked me if I'm okay and it break down crying.
• 58:18
  I'm just hysterical crying in this.in.
• 58:20
  This and this doctor. She's a she's a, you know, she's
• 58:23
  a medical doctor. She's not a brain, she's not an
• 58:26
  instant, she's an internist or whatever she is.
• 58:28
  Yeah. And she doesn't know how to
• 58:30
  handle this stuff but you give me a hug like the doctor, her
• 58:34
  Humanity came out, and she showed a little bit of kindness
• 58:37
  to somebody who had nowhere to turn your name.
• 58:40
  Who's lost scared, all these new things going on, she gave me a
• 58:45
  hug and she says you need, you're not going back to work
• 58:48
  yet I said okay and said, fair enough, I got in fighter on it,
• 58:53
  I walk into the police department for this critical
• 58:55
  incident debriefing and Something that happened a while
• 58:59
  ago. On the police department where
• 59:01
  they took our shotguns, out of the cars because somebody left
• 59:03
  around in one of the barrels or whatever was but they were above
• 59:06
  our heads. So there was really no danger.
• 59:09
  Well, we find out when I go in there, they're going to start
• 59:11
  putting the shotguns back in the cars.
• 59:13
  My good. That's that's a good thing.
• 59:14
  Oh but they're only going to be in supervisors cars.
• 59:16
  Anybody Sergeant or above. I started yelling and screaming
• 59:22
  like switch to flip of a switch here guys.
• 59:27
  I lost it and I start yelling at a lieutenant which you don't
• 59:31
  yell at your superiors. You don't do that.
• 59:35
  I start yelling at him like you tell my wife the next time.
• 59:38
  This happens day, only you get protected with a shotgun and so
• 59:41
  much like I was going to get charged.
• 59:43
  I was going to get her fired, sir.
• 59:45
  The guys picked me up and walk me downstairs and took me
• 59:48
  outside. Wow.
• 59:49
  Because they knew they knew it was.
• 59:50
  They knew what was about to blow.
• 59:53
  That was the last time I was in the police department.
• 59:55
  Wow. Wow, I go home and down to goes,
• 1:00:00
  it just keeps going down. This is when the spiral starts.
• 1:00:04
  This is when the real spiral starts because now, what's the
• 1:00:07
  worst thing I told you about being a cop?
• 1:00:09
  What's the worst time silence for?
• 1:00:13
  And that's all I had left was no, your you, you just start
• 1:00:20
  doing anything to cope. What's your, uh, your wife
• 1:00:23
  thinking at this time? Is she is she I know that she
• 1:00:28
  has to understand she was scared to death because of what
• 1:00:32
  happened, you're in a situation to where she knows.
• 1:00:37
  She's probably not you guys. Probably haven't even talked
• 1:00:39
  about it that much she knows when you left that movie
• 1:00:41
  theater, there's something wrong, even though you're not
• 1:00:44
  putting it together, she knows when you're grabbing her arm,
• 1:00:47
  when you're in that bed, and scaring the shit out of
• 1:00:50
  everybody that something's not right now you're at home.
• 1:00:54
  Are you guys having any conversation about the elephant
• 1:00:59
  in the room? She's trying.
• 1:01:01
  I'm resistant to it. I don't want to talk about it.
• 1:01:04
  I don't want to show weakness, you know.
• 1:01:06
  But I so with I get it when you when you go through the trauma,
• 1:01:11
  your the synapses in your brain, get damaged, all right?
• 1:01:15
  So that little part of you that has that little buffer that
• 1:01:18
  says, this is a bad idea, that's all gone.
• 1:01:21
  You know, you you see somebody walking down the street that you
• 1:01:24
  It like and you say, look at that jerk.
• 1:01:25
  I if I see him, I spit in his face, well, that that part of
• 1:01:28
  your brain that says now that's not a good idea, is gone.
• 1:01:31
  So my poor wife knows that her husband went to work.
• 1:01:34
  When I came home and never came home, right?
• 1:01:38
  He never came home. Somebody totally different
• 1:01:40
  showed up at the doorstep the next day.
• 1:01:42
  She's with him now, now she's got to live with this monster
• 1:01:45
  and she took the brunt of everything.
• 1:01:48
  You know, if I got met at her for something, say, the remote
• 1:01:51
  without a place, I screamed that, or I took the remote, I
• 1:01:53
  threw Must have broke five or six remotes, throwing it at it.
• 1:01:57
  Like this is what this woman had to endure.
• 1:01:59
  I would call her every bad name, you know.
• 1:02:02
  You know what's the worst word? You can call a woman.
• 1:02:05
  My poor wife has been called that several times and the
• 1:02:10
  nightmares never stop seven days a week.
• 1:02:12
  I stopped sleeping in the bed and started sleeping downstairs
• 1:02:15
  on the easy chair. Just because I didn't want to
• 1:02:17
  wake her up. I didn't want her to show that I
• 1:02:19
  was hurting. I didn't know what to do.
• 1:02:22
  So Boredom plus trauma was not being able to sleep.
• 1:02:29
  I start drinking a little bit. I start drinking more in a
• 1:02:33
  little bit. I start drinking a lot because
• 1:02:35
  when I'm drunk, I forget, yeah, you know, I don't the thing,
• 1:02:38
  right? Yeah, I'm running away from
• 1:02:41
  everything, right? And I drank so much, I would say
• 1:02:48
  anything in the house. I would drink from the minute.
• 1:02:50
  I got up to the minute. I went to bed and that and I was
• 1:02:53
  always a big gym guy. Like I always love going to the
• 1:02:55
  gym. I lost all interest in anything
• 1:02:57
  that I used to love. I stopped going to the gym.
• 1:03:01
  Yeah, I just went to do so many things.
• 1:03:02
  It'll keep you being you. Yeah.
• 1:03:05
  Yeah. I just didn't see any point in
• 1:03:08
  it anymore. Life was just going downhill.
• 1:03:11
  And you know, sleeping downstairs about a month, a
• 1:03:15
  month into month and a half two months.
• 1:03:19
  I'm drunk all the time, and I can't take it no more.
• 1:03:23
  Like I've had enough, I don't know what's going on with me.
• 1:03:26
  I can't, I've seen a therapist but I wasn't really seeing any
• 1:03:30
  benefit. They send you to workers, comp
• 1:03:31
  therapy to, and that sometimes can make it worse because
• 1:03:35
  they're the worst of the worst. What's really going on with you,
• 1:03:38
  either? One guy I was Okay, one guy, I
• 1:03:42
  was, but the workers comp doctor, he said to me, he goes,
• 1:03:45
  well, you were police officer, didn't expect to get chewed up
• 1:03:48
  shoot shot at I said, and he got some very Choice words for me,
• 1:03:53
  but I said, do, you know the statistic of that?
• 1:03:58
  Only point zero five percent of police officers, get shot at
• 1:04:01
  only point zero one percent shoe.
• 1:04:04
  So the likelihood of that happening is very, very, very
• 1:04:07
  small and he's lucky. He didn't get thrown out of his
• 1:04:10
  second-floor window that that's it, because I II had anger
• 1:04:15
  issues back on the, like you said, Kevin.
• 1:04:18
  There's you know, guys, it'll do 35 40 years and never ever end
• 1:04:23
  up in a situation that is retire.
• 1:04:26
  They get the, you know, the party, and everybody goes home
• 1:04:30
  and, and, and celebrates the the nice career or you get shot at
• 1:04:35
  and grazed across your head in a night that you didn't expect.
• 1:04:40
  So there's there's the Everybody Loves Raymond comes back into
• 1:04:46
  this deal, is that? That moment of horror can happen
• 1:04:50
  to a very few, but it does happen.
• 1:04:53
  And the sad, the sad part in police work, is those guys who I
• 1:04:57
  know? I know more than my share did 25
• 1:05:00
  years, 30 years, never did a damn thing in our life.
• 1:05:03
  There were two laziest people on the planet and they get the gold
• 1:05:06
  watch. They get the big retirement
• 1:05:08
  party. You know what I got?
• 1:05:09
  When I left? I got my police chief saying,
• 1:05:13
  well, I think he retired because he had glass in his arm.
• 1:05:17
  That's what I got. I got called because your people
• 1:05:21
  when you when people aren't seeing you come in, they turn on
• 1:05:24
  you. They start calling you, you're
• 1:05:26
  working the system, your scam artist, I got called a jerk off,
• 1:05:29
  I get called everything and they don't know.
• 1:05:32
  Like, they're not around me, they're not communicating with
• 1:05:34
  me because some people watch out with you, right?
• 1:05:38
  Some people would reach out but I didn't want to talk to
• 1:05:41
  anybody, right? I want to tell him anything.
• 1:05:42
  Yeah, like things are really bad.
• 1:05:44
  Things are really dark, I'm drinking a lot.
• 1:05:46
  You know, you isolate, right? You just isolate yourself and
• 1:05:50
  you don't want to be around anybody, anybody.
• 1:05:53
  So, one night, when I'm sleeping downstairs, I can't take it and
• 1:05:58
  I get the bright idea that I'm going to end it.
• 1:06:02
  That I'm going to go kill myself because if I remove myself from
• 1:06:06
  the situation, my wife doesn't have to deal with this monster
• 1:06:08
  anymore. My kids, my kids saw it, you
• 1:06:12
  know, their 3 year olds, going to remember that stuff.
• 1:06:14
  I would throw things, I would I would Yell at them, my hair
• 1:06:17
  trigger. They walk on.
• 1:06:19
  I shells around me constantly. I don't want to be that person.
• 1:06:22
  You know, I grew up with an abusive father.
• 1:06:24
  I don't want to be an abusive father so I just I tried to do
• 1:06:29
  the best thing that I knew how to do at the time, which was to
• 1:06:32
  remove myself from the equation. But so how do I do that?
• 1:06:34
  And still provide for my family. So I told you that, you know, if
• 1:06:39
  you're killed while working You get three and a half, that's
• 1:06:42
  what was going on in my head. I'm like, all right, my wife
• 1:06:44
  will get financially taken care of.
• 1:06:46
  It's not exactly true. By the way, that doesn't, if you
• 1:06:49
  if you commit, I don't like to say the word commit suicide, but
• 1:06:52
  if you end your life, you do not get that.
• 1:06:55
  You just use the the families get 60 days of health insurance,
• 1:06:59
  whatever your contribution was to the pension system.
• 1:07:02
  Hey, have a good life and so, I really would have left my, what
• 1:07:05
  my family, and I go into my office teacher, she know, Kevin,
• 1:07:10
  because at that time, Time when you're talking because I hit a
• 1:07:15
  rock, bone bought a moment to. But when you're talking about
• 1:07:17
  this, it's interesting how you can take the irrational and
• 1:07:22
  turning rational because you were thinking through, okay?
• 1:07:26
  If I do this then, okay, I exit stage left.
• 1:07:29
  This will be good for the kids. This will be good for my wife.
• 1:07:32
  This will be fine. And it's interesting how that
• 1:07:34
  happens because it's the most irrational thought that can
• 1:07:38
  happen, but you're rationalizing.
• 1:07:41
  It. And that's the only way you can
• 1:07:44
  get to that point. Is that the, the world gets so
• 1:07:48
  dark. The whole gets so black.
• 1:07:51
  And so big and wide that you feel like you can't grasp on
• 1:07:54
  anything and nobody's listening. Nobody cares and it doesn't
• 1:07:58
  matter because it'll be better with you gone.
• 1:08:00
  That's a very dark place to be and you were at that point.
• 1:08:05
  So lead us through. I was ready to make a permanent
• 1:08:10
  solution to a temporary condition, right?
• 1:08:12
  And you brought something up its we believe what we want to
• 1:08:15
  believe even if their lives right?
• 1:08:18
  And I believes I strongly believe that by removing myself,
• 1:08:22
  my family will have a better life.
• 1:08:24
  I thought I was trying to be somewhat magnanimous by doing it
• 1:08:29
  big, big lie, big, big lie, I write a note.
• 1:08:32
  You know, I take my time and I was a literature major, and I
• 1:08:35
  can write pretty good, you know, right?
• 1:08:37
  All right, a good note. No tie.
• 1:08:38
  I apologize to certain people for letting them down not being
• 1:08:41
  what I want, but they expect of me or not being what they wanted
• 1:08:45
  me to be. I I said, I'm sorry, I'm so
• 1:08:47
  weak. I have that nose and father and
• 1:08:50
  that point, right? My grandfather was most
• 1:08:52
  important person in my life and he saw great things in me as
• 1:08:56
  most grandparents do in their grandchildren.
• 1:08:58
  And I identified with that when you said that because I had a, I
• 1:09:01
  was very close to my grandfather.
• 1:09:03
  So when you said that at that time, it really resonated You
• 1:09:07
  know, I wrote a book years ago and it says was self-published
• 1:09:10
  book. It was called losing grandpa,
• 1:09:11
  just all that it was my love letter to him.
• 1:09:15
  For all the great things, he taught me, everything about
• 1:09:17
  being a man, never taught me to go kill myself and that's what
• 1:09:21
  that was. What was why you make such
• 1:09:22
  apology? Yeah.
• 1:09:24
  Which is why I was so disappointed that I was this
• 1:09:28
  week where this is what it's come to.
• 1:09:30
  It's like you sit there and you're like wow this is, this is
• 1:09:32
  what life is come to me. And I was ready.
• 1:09:35
  I was ready to do it night. There was a, I had louvered door
• 1:09:39
  closet, sit, I get on my knees and I, it's kind of stupid,
• 1:09:43
  because it was about 2:00 in the morning and I'm thinking if I do
• 1:09:46
  it, my kids are gone. My kids could have found me and
• 1:09:50
  I even point, I even point my back of my head away from the
• 1:09:55
  wall because I the stupidness of my head with, if I get blood on
• 1:10:00
  the wall, somebody's going to have to clean that.
• 1:10:02
  I don't want it to go through the wall and put a hole in the
• 1:10:04
  wall. To the outside can come in bugs,
• 1:10:06
  might come in. I mean that's what's this is the
• 1:10:07
  the craziness that goes on in your head.
• 1:10:10
  So I point my back towards the door, figuring the blood spatter
• 1:10:13
  will go on the rug. You just tear up the rug.
• 1:10:15
  It's not a big deal. I put this, this 38 Special in
• 1:10:20
  my mouth and, you know, I still, I still to this day, I feel
• 1:10:26
  everything I taste everything, and I cock the hammer back as
• 1:10:32
  his double-action. Cock the hammer back to make it
• 1:10:34
  easier trigger pull, because you always want to be surprised by
• 1:10:36
  the pop. That's what everybody tells.
• 1:10:37
  You always want to be surprised by the pop of the the weapon and
• 1:10:42
  I'm I say my goodbyes to everybody you know I Whoever if
• 1:10:48
  you're a religious person, I guess I was talking to God at
• 1:10:51
  the time, even though I didn't expect them to listen and I
• 1:10:57
  close my eyes and I start just putting tension on that trigger
• 1:11:00
  waiting for that pop, put the tension on the trigger.
• 1:11:03
  I'm actually putting my tongue in the barrel, and I want to
• 1:11:06
  make sure that the gun is pointed in such an angle that
• 1:11:09
  because I don't want to survive. Its, you know, that's the worst
• 1:11:11
  thing in the world, right? And then something after I
• 1:11:16
  replay the incident in my head from the being, from the
• 1:11:20
  beginning, to the end, I just, I stopped, I pause and I pulled
• 1:11:26
  his gun out of my hand. Now the gun weighs about 1 Point
• 1:11:29
  9 pounds, it was like a 50 pound lead weight in my hand, like I
• 1:11:34
  can barely hold it up, but I'm looking at it I'm sobbing
• 1:11:36
  crying. Like I just I put the gun on the
• 1:11:39
  floor and I stare at it for probably a half an hour.
• 1:11:44
  Thinking to myself, you know, it was just a brief moment of
• 1:11:47
  clarity. And then you start thinking
• 1:11:50
  about all the bad stuff that could have just happened.
• 1:11:51
  Like, I could have just put a bullet through my head, where my
• 1:11:54
  kids come down and three year old, and a three year old sees,
• 1:11:58
  his dad's head. Missing your rational, brain
• 1:12:01
  comes back. Yeah, and I are after that night
• 1:12:05
  and I didn't sleep at all that night, I put my gun in a gun
• 1:12:10
  safe and I gave it to a friend of mine who I still spoke with I
• 1:12:13
  said, You got to keep this, I can't be trusted with this
• 1:12:16
  anymore without having without telling them what was going on,
• 1:12:19
  right? But they know like they knew and
• 1:12:22
  I had heard I recently heard there was rumors going around
• 1:12:27
  the police department that Kevin's in a real bad spot.
• 1:12:31
  But nobody, you know, there was there was one or two people that
• 1:12:34
  came by and checked on me. There was that wasn't the only
• 1:12:37
  time there was, there was one other time where I got a call
• 1:12:41
  from somebody. I used to work at somebody was
• 1:12:43
  still on. Like a Kevin, are you?
• 1:12:45
  All right? And I said, I can't talk right
• 1:12:46
  now is actually getting in the back of an ambulance, get taken
• 1:12:48
  to a psych ward because I threatened to kill myself, and I
• 1:12:51
  just left the house and they put out an alert for me.
• 1:12:56
  Once again, torturing my wife Jan.
• 1:12:59
  Torturing. Yeah, she's living through all
• 1:13:02
  this lose Imam day every single day.
• 1:13:06
  She never knew she says it to this day.
• 1:13:08
  She never knew whether she was going to wake up and see her
• 1:13:10
  husband dead. But my drinking my drink, and
• 1:13:14
  never stop, because that was the only time I felt a little bit
• 1:13:17
  normal, but it got so bad. That finally, I said, I got a
• 1:13:21
  good dry out. I gotta go to rehab and that's
• 1:13:24
  why. I had enough Clarity of thought
• 1:13:27
  and with some help of a very good therapist named dr.
• 1:13:30
  Eugene stefanelli, he gets me into a rehab.
• 1:13:35
  I was supposed to go down to Florida but I couldn't leave.
• 1:13:38
  I don't want to leave for 30 days.
• 1:13:39
  I'm not ready to make that commitment.
• 1:13:41
  I go to a rehab that's within driving distance.
• 1:13:43
  Like two hours away. Check myself in And now I feel
• 1:13:48
  you want to talk again, you're going to be able to relate to
• 1:13:52
  this. Those are all.
• 1:13:53
  Yeah, it was walls close in. So I got strip-searched.
• 1:13:58
  I couldn't have a, my bag was, you know, some guy looked at my
• 1:14:02
  ass. I mean, he looked at he spread
• 1:14:03
  the cheeks and it's to make sure nothing is Waters.
• 1:14:05
  And while it was a dehumanizing, it really is, is and you realize
• 1:14:11
  nobody knows I'm a cop in there, but you you you get the ideas of
• 1:14:16
  what a prisoner goes. Through woman on it, on a daily
• 1:14:19
  basis. But I put in a room with a guy
• 1:14:21
  who's an addict. And I remember I told you my
• 1:14:25
  brother's a cop and so I'm talking to him, he doesn't know
• 1:14:27
  I'm a cop and I at the time I grow my beard.
• 1:14:30
  This is probably four or five months later from the shooting
• 1:14:33
  that grow beard. My hair was longer and looking
• 1:14:35
  top didn't look like and I was like oh you know what here?
• 1:14:39
  Because I got caught with some heroin and as it did you get the
• 1:14:42
  rest in? Because yeah, I got arrested
• 1:14:44
  bunch of jerk-off cops. I said, okay, really, where did
• 1:14:47
  you get arrested? And he says the name of the
• 1:14:48
  department. I'm like shit.
• 1:14:51
  It's my brothers. It's my brother's apartment.
• 1:14:54
  Okay, and I were you I really know where this is going.
• 1:14:57
  Like, I already I could tell you right now where this is going as
• 1:15:00
  like do you remember the officer that arrested you any because
• 1:15:02
  I'll never forget his name and he says my brother's name.
• 1:15:07
  I'm in a room in rehab with the kind with we and I never said my
• 1:15:13
  last name, you know, and you can't have your phone and so on
• 1:15:17
  the way down there I tell the workers comp therapist.
• 1:15:21
  I said, look, I got to check myself into rehab.
• 1:15:22
  I got problem. I call him on the way down there
• 1:15:26
  and they didn't let us have our phones.
• 1:15:28
  So they let me check my phone, he never called me back.
• 1:15:32
  I spend like three or four days in there and I can't take the
• 1:15:35
  the closure and it kind of scared me straight.
• 1:15:37
  I was like you know, I've seen some true alcoholics in there.
• 1:15:40
  Sure. I just had I just had a
• 1:15:41
  momentary problem. I checked myself out.
• 1:15:45
  Was it hard and I become self out?
• 1:15:47
  I mean was. Yeah, yeah, so you got to, you
• 1:15:50
  got to do what you got to sign? What's called a 48 and they put
• 1:15:52
  you on a 48-hour. Hold.
• 1:15:54
  Okay. And I knew I was in there, like
• 1:15:58
  they segregate you and I knew I didn't want to be there anymore,
• 1:16:03
  so I'd be I, when I, when I become uncomfortable.
• 1:16:05
  Becomes very belligerent. Okay, and I'm just, I wouldn't
• 1:16:09
  eat. I want, I figure I'm gonna go on
• 1:16:10
  a hunger strike, stupid stuff we need and I was like, I'll eat
• 1:16:17
  when I get out of here. I'm not eating while I'm here,
• 1:16:22
  so I I get out of there and I finally get a hold of this
• 1:16:26
  therapist like three. Four days later.
• 1:16:27
  He says, you know what? I can't reach anymore.
• 1:16:29
  I'm like, why can't you treat me?
• 1:16:30
  Because, well, you checked yourself into rehab, obviously.
• 1:16:33
  I was like, why. So I check myself into rehab and
• 1:16:36
  you're going to drop me in sir you too.
• 1:16:38
  That's a good doctor right there.
• 1:16:40
  So there's some called psychological abandonment.
• 1:16:43
  Wow, no. So psychiatrist.
• 1:16:45
  Can't do that. Like I should have done
• 1:16:47
  something, but what's the point? You know, at this point But
• 1:16:51
  after that, I get involved in group therapy.
• 1:16:55
  Okay, and this is where stuff starts to turn.
• 1:16:57
  Okay, so group therapy this dr. Stephen l, he's a, he's a police
• 1:17:01
  doctor. As a matter of fact, this
• 1:17:02
  license plate is cop doc. I love it and, and which we make
• 1:17:07
  fun of because it could be said a different way.
• 1:17:11
  I get involved with officers who are involved in shootings and I
• 1:17:15
  realized that these feelings that I had that I always thought
• 1:17:17
  that I was alone and you feel alone, right?
• 1:17:20
  There are other people feeling it.
• 1:17:22
  Yeah. And then I and II had this one
• 1:17:26
  guy tell me he goes, if you go back to work, here's what's
• 1:17:29
  going to happen. Wanna you're either going to get
• 1:17:34
  fired, you're going to get arrested, we're going to die
• 1:17:37
  because he had been at three shootings and heat after each
• 1:17:39
  shooting. He got more aggressive, he got
• 1:17:41
  more and more hyper-vigilant where you know, somebody comes
• 1:17:43
  and just says, hey how you doing any slamming up against award
• 1:17:46
  Jack and people up? Yeah.
• 1:17:49
  And I just learned so much from these people, and it was the one
• 1:17:53
  place where I felt somewhat back to normal.
• 1:17:57
  Because I could be myself around these people.
• 1:17:59
  I could show vulnerability around these people and they
• 1:18:02
  wouldn't think I was weak. Now, I think that makes sense
• 1:18:04
  though, Kevin, because you're in a group of people who have a
• 1:18:08
  shared experience that they are basically sharing their
• 1:18:16
  experience almost mentoring, you into their world.
• 1:18:19
  World that it's okay, you know, you're all right.
• 1:18:23
  I mean we're going to be okay. We're going to get through this,
• 1:18:26
  whereas you were in a box on your own thinking.
• 1:18:31
  I'm all by myself on an island. And you go into this group
• 1:18:34
  there, that makes total sense to me.
• 1:18:36
  All of a sudden you're in a world where these guys are
• 1:18:39
  sharing stories, sharing feelings and all of a sudden
• 1:18:42
  you're realizing, oh my God, this is exactly what I'm doing.
• 1:18:47
  I was I, I was right where I was supposed to be at that time and
• 1:18:51
  there was one time. We went down somewhere as a
• 1:18:53
  group to talk to somebody, and we went out to eat and at this
• 1:18:58
  time you got to remember you. I didn't I didn't like being
• 1:19:01
  around crowd. I didn't like I didn't like
• 1:19:04
  talking to people but we went out as a group and we actually
• 1:19:07
  went to a restaurant. The first time I was at a
• 1:19:09
  restaurant and it was like it was I was hanging out with my
• 1:19:13
  buddies, there were everything was normal.
• 1:19:15
  It was, I said wow, you know, But there's there's something to
• 1:19:18
  this, there's something to this and you know, each week I would
• 1:19:22
  look forward and somebody each week somebody would have a bad
• 1:19:25
  week, but I noticed that the nightmares which were seven days
• 1:19:29
  a week, went down in the maybe the next week I'd only have sex
• 1:19:32
  in the next week I'd only have five and then you were down the
• 1:19:36
  like once a week or every other week and it just started getting
• 1:19:38
  real less and less because I started unburden myself.
• 1:19:41
  I started letting all this stuff out and I started that's when
• 1:19:44
  the healing process began. So when you say, You started
• 1:19:47
  out. You start letting it out to the
• 1:19:48
  people. You were within that group.
• 1:19:51
  Yeah. And I learned how to associate
• 1:19:53
  with, with my wife through here. I, you know, I started, I
• 1:19:57
  started learning the that, you know, hey, Trisha this stuff.
• 1:20:01
  This isn't just me, the other people who do the same thing and
• 1:20:04
  we went out as, as a fat as a group with the wives, once and
• 1:20:08
  the wives got along really well because like, hey, you're yeah,
• 1:20:11
  your husband's best thing remaining.
• 1:20:13
  Yeah, so they got they felt a little A bit normal.
• 1:20:17
  Yeah, but I go I go through the retirement process, I realized
• 1:20:20
  that I'm broken. Like my brain is not normal,
• 1:20:23
  right? I can't go back to doing what I
• 1:20:25
  really love doing, right? So it's time to retire.
• 1:20:28
  I go through the retirement process and I mean, group, the
• 1:20:31
  whole time and there's many different little problems going
• 1:20:34
  through and there's a stress of retirement.
• 1:20:37
  But after retirement, the most important thing that I did was I
• 1:20:40
  stayed in group because again I'm a service oriented person
• 1:20:45
  and those those people that helped me get through my worse
• 1:20:49
  than the worst times. I felt like I owed.
• 1:20:52
  Nothing. I never take anything for free
• 1:20:55
  even as a cop, which cops want everything for free.
• 1:20:58
  But even even even as a cop. If somebody gave me a cup of
• 1:21:02
  coffee that cup of coffee, usually cost me more than what
• 1:21:05
  the cup of coffee was worth it. I would lay down five dollars.
• 1:21:08
  I could I never take stuff for free.
• 1:21:09
  So these guys gave me free advice, but now it's my turn to
• 1:21:12
  pass it on. So I stayed in for a couple of
• 1:21:15
  years after we're gonna help many guys get through retirement
• 1:21:17
  who are in similar situations and that's kind of believe it or
• 1:21:20
  not. So let's call him.
• 1:21:22
  I started killer, I love that. So that's what started filling
• 1:21:24
  you up. Kevin is you stayed in that
• 1:21:27
  group, but then you became you were not.
• 1:21:30
  The new be anymore. You were the veteran and you
• 1:21:33
  started helping these guys along that were in dark spaces.
• 1:21:37
  That you were in that you were getting through now and you were
• 1:21:40
  walking beside them helping them with that.
• 1:21:42
  I get. That is so cool though.
• 1:21:45
  I don't care that you found it. So cool that you found that
• 1:21:49
  because that was amazingly different way, different deal,
• 1:21:52
  right? I was in that right place.
• 1:21:54
  I was right where I was supposed to be.
• 1:21:55
  Yeah. And so one day in I've been
• 1:21:59
  through retirement the 2014. I see this guy walk in And I was
• 1:22:03
  like, hey Mike now, turns out I used to work with Mike's brother
• 1:22:07
  before I was a cop. Okay, and I knew I knew Mike, I
• 1:22:11
  met like several times but I didn't know I knew he was a cop
• 1:22:14
  but I did. I'm in Nome I'm like hey Mike
• 1:22:16
  what's going on? Mike is now my podcast partner.
• 1:22:21
  It's crazy and well World stuff. Yeah.
• 1:22:24
  And he walks in, he was I was in that shooting in my department
• 1:22:27
  and and we bonded over that like we didn't know each other but
• 1:22:32
  the wouldn't know we really started knowing each other and
• 1:22:36
  you know, that that's a friendship that's lasted and
• 1:22:39
  it'll last for the rest of our lives because we Bond over that
• 1:22:42
  common trauma because he had gone through very similar
• 1:22:44
  things. And I said, okay look out for
• 1:22:47
  this. Look out for this.
• 1:22:48
  He would call me up and say, hey, you know, what do you think
• 1:22:50
  about this? And, and we bounce ideas off
• 1:22:52
  each other and so those people in the group and they're still
• 1:22:56
  my phone's going off as we speak because I'm still on a group
• 1:22:59
  chat with the group. Hello?
• 1:23:01
  Really inappropriate really inappropriate stuff gets said in
• 1:23:04
  there but that's the place where we were stuff, right?
• 1:23:08
  That's the place where we can be ourselves.
• 1:23:10
  We can laugh. Yeah, there's nothing heavy no
• 1:23:12
  judgment. Yeah.
• 1:23:13
  I mean how many people get that opportunity?
• 1:23:16
  So, you know, time moves on, I try to move on with my life, I
• 1:23:22
  missed a clown's, not the circus, the police department,
• 1:23:26
  but I never looked back and I just sort of I started just
• 1:23:29
  walking through life looking for my new purpose.
• 1:23:31
  Looking for my new way in life. How did you find it by chance
• 1:23:37
  though? Covid.
• 1:23:38
  Hits lockdown heads. And I started getting involved.
• 1:23:43
  I started listening to a lot of podcasts.
• 1:23:44
  I'm like you know what, I can do that, I can do that.
• 1:23:47
  And all my podcast concept was was take group therapy.
• 1:23:50
  How do I take group therapy and the joy of group therapy of all
• 1:23:53
  of that. Comment, trauma, and move it
• 1:23:56
  onto the next platform to this. Kevin, that's why your podcast
• 1:24:00
  is so good. You you take?
• 1:24:03
  And I feel like I've never been in group therapy, but when you
• 1:24:07
  listen to your suffering prod, cast its It is group therapy and
• 1:24:12
  whatever you learned, and however, you created that Vibe,
• 1:24:16
  you share that. And I think it's so meaningful
• 1:24:21
  because so many people are out there searching.
• 1:24:26
  You know, there's so many people that are just looking.
• 1:24:29
  How do I get to the next step because they're, you know, I say
• 1:24:31
  that, you know, people build up prisons in their own mind and
• 1:24:34
  they get so stuck in that ugly routine that they can't step
• 1:24:39
  into what they want. That will set them free.
• 1:24:41
  Yeah, but your podcast lets people believe that suffering is
• 1:24:45
  okay. If you turn it into success, I
• 1:24:48
  don't know how you got there. I don't know how this works, but
• 1:24:51
  it became a tremendous success, but covid Incredibly became your
• 1:24:59
  your science center of, of create.
• 1:25:02
  I learned how I learned how to embrace my own suffering.
• 1:25:06
  Yeah, like instead of instead of marrying, that is a week as a
• 1:25:09
  weakness. It's not a weakness.
• 1:25:11
  You going to prison print. It's not it's that's what your
• 1:25:16
  strength is. You wear it as a badge of you
• 1:25:18
  wear it as a badge of honor. I've seen you do this on other
• 1:25:21
  shows where that is, it doesn't re so much become.
• 1:25:25
  Or identity. But you're like, yeah, that's
• 1:25:27
  right. It's part I went to prison,
• 1:25:28
  right? And now, you know, now, when I
• 1:25:31
  go out and speak over, if I'm speaking gave up, yeah, I had a
• 1:25:34
  gun in my mouth. What are you gonna do about it?
• 1:25:36
  That's, that's what makes me me. And, as I've learned to embrace
• 1:25:40
  it, that's the thing, though. It's liberating not only to you
• 1:25:44
  Kevin, but the people that are listening to you, and I think
• 1:25:48
  that's what makes, you know, you look at, you know, you've got
• 1:25:51
  one of the most popular podcasts that are around the reason.
• 1:25:54
  Why is because It's authentic, you are so honest with how you
• 1:25:58
  come at it and people identify and connect with it.
• 1:26:02
  So that's whatever that that intangible thing is.
• 1:26:06
  That's what people are looking for, what?
• 1:26:09
  Whatever that is. And I don't know what that is,
• 1:26:12
  but people feel it and it's like glue.
• 1:26:16
  They will attach to it and listen to it and feel it.
• 1:26:19
  And that's what I think is so cool about your story is that
• 1:26:22
  you went so far down to the rock bottom Mm.
• 1:26:26
  I mean when I was you know, I was pedaling today and I was
• 1:26:29
  like God, how's he going to get out of this?
• 1:26:31
  You know, oh my God. But you did.
• 1:26:34
  And then what you did with it, you know, it's so and you know,
• 1:26:40
  I think inspiring might be something that's overused.
• 1:26:43
  But when I see things that are inspiring You feel it and you
• 1:26:49
  know what you're doing Kevin and I God, I hope you just continue
• 1:26:52
  to grow it and, and become more of it because it's so needed in
• 1:26:57
  the world that we're in. Now, you know, I was, I was
• 1:27:00
  watching Seth ferrante's nightlife.
• 1:27:04
  You and I were talking about this before the, yeah.
• 1:27:07
  You know, man, what an eye-opener that is because, you
• 1:27:10
  know, for both sides, you know, the people that are walking the
• 1:27:13
  streets at 10:00 to 2:00 in the morning, the minister the Vern,
• 1:27:17
  that's such a big powerful, you know, character in that
• 1:27:21
  documentary. But at, then I go back to The
• 1:27:26
  whole thing that's going on our society between the police
• 1:27:30
  officer and society. And I had a guy on his Darryl
• 1:27:35
  would senior and he was wrongly convicted of murder and he
• 1:27:40
  served 28 years in prison as an innocent man.
• 1:27:44
  Most people would curl up on a ball and take it as this is the
• 1:27:50
  most unfair thing that could ever happen in my life.
• 1:27:53
  Darryl would senior, who's in Michigan, he's become one of the
• 1:27:56
  biggest change makers and what he does which I think is
• 1:28:02
  amazing. Is he takes police officers,
• 1:28:07
  gets him out of uniform, takes gang members gets them out of
• 1:28:11
  their stuff and shows up and they play horse.
• 1:28:15
  It's a little bit of basketball cornhole and whatever the nobody
• 1:28:19
  knows who each other is. And he's barbecuing and then
• 1:28:22
  they get around and around. Kitchen table and they introduce
• 1:28:24
  each other, but they realize, when they were doing this, for
• 1:28:27
  the last hour that they have things in common, and what
• 1:28:30
  happens is, is Daryl would seen your nose.
• 1:28:33
  Is if you can get enough, people talking and get enough
• 1:28:36
  communication going and knowing that there's enough commonality
• 1:28:41
  you can plug in and that's one of the things I think that's
• 1:28:44
  happening with what you're doing.
• 1:28:46
  Kevin is that you're getting people to plug in because
• 1:28:49
  communication is what we're missing.
• 1:28:53
  R sitting on opposite Islands in our society and we used to drift
• 1:28:59
  to the middle to where we could all talk anymore.
• 1:29:03
  We have different channels, different things that we can
• 1:29:07
  read and we don't see each other anymore, but there are things
• 1:29:11
  out there like your podcast and the things that you're doing.
• 1:29:15
  If people listened enough, they'll find that commonality.
• 1:29:18
  And that's the thing that we need.
• 1:29:19
  I think that will bring us closer to Where we want to be
• 1:29:26
  with my show at, you know, again it's every Everybody suffers and
• 1:29:31
  everybody tries to run away from suffering.
• 1:29:33
  Absolutely, but what what, I try to make people realize has don't
• 1:29:37
  run away from it because that is the essential.
• 1:29:39
  That's a suffering, is the way to sustainable success because
• 1:29:42
  you can have small successes, but if you don't know the
• 1:29:44
  downside of it, you're never going to fully succeed because
• 1:29:48
  you're never going to appreciate right.
• 1:29:49
  I used I used a lottery winner analogy so if you won the
• 1:29:52
  lottery, Tomorrow, you're a billionaire overnight.
• 1:29:55
  Most lottery. Winners are not going to
• 1:29:58
  appreciate it. You're going to spend every last
• 1:29:59
  dime. They're probably going to be
• 1:30:00
  broke within 2-3 years. Yeah, but but if you work your
• 1:30:04
  way off and you remember, the Blood Sweat and Tears that you
• 1:30:08
  put into every dollar, you're going to hold onto that.
• 1:30:10
  You're going to cherish your freedom.
• 1:30:14
  Okay, I will bet you without knowing this You took your
• 1:30:19
  freedom for granted prior to going away.
• 1:30:22
  Sure. You know you will you woke up
• 1:30:23
  every day and it was in it was another day.
• 1:30:26
  But boy when you got out how good was that first meal?
• 1:30:29
  It was unbelievable. You know but and every guy who
• 1:30:33
  goes away can tell me what their first meal out of prison and
• 1:30:35
  your inventory that was Taco Bell by the way.
• 1:30:38
  Yeah, everybody remembers. Yeah.
• 1:30:41
  But the thing about that is so Kevin is that it does whenever
• 1:30:47
  you can never you can take hold and take inventory of your life
• 1:30:53
  as you did as I've been able to do and have that gratitude and
• 1:30:59
  then you find out what fills you up, you know that, what fuels
• 1:31:03
  you what that passion is, you know, that, that, you know, I
• 1:31:07
  always like to say, you know, in the Shawshank movie, you know,
• 1:31:10
  Andy to friends, got the Zihuatanejo, you know, you can
• 1:31:13
  see it when he talks about it to read, you know, it's the the
• 1:31:16
  widest of the White Sands, the blues, the blue water, as he's
• 1:31:18
  going to take that boat and he's going to fix it up.
• 1:31:21
  So he can take his, his people out on a fishing.
• 1:31:23
  And he's going to have the little end where they can have
• 1:31:25
  drinks and watch the sunset. Everybody's got to have that
• 1:31:28
  Zihuatanejo and their life. And you know, the You don't you
• 1:31:35
  don't want to be the guy at 85 years old rocking in her chair
• 1:31:39
  and say, I wish I would have done that.
• 1:31:41
  I sure wish I would have taken advantage of that when I was you
• 1:31:45
  know 35 40 years old. You don't want to do that.
• 1:31:48
  My biggest thing. And Kevin, what I love about
• 1:31:50
  your story is that you just take an action.
• 1:31:54
  You know, you could have I don't know what could have happened to
• 1:31:58
  you when you were talking through all the stuff that
• 1:32:01
  happened in your dark times. It you stepped out of that, you
• 1:32:06
  found the group, you found the people that you connected with,
• 1:32:10
  didn't you became the mentors of them and then you took it even
• 1:32:13
  further and you took suffering and showed that it could be a
• 1:32:19
  success, which is so important in our society, because
• 1:32:23
  everybody suffers. And the other thing that I think
• 1:32:26
  and I want you to talk about this, what is the dented
• 1:32:28
  development project? It's a nonprofit that you're
• 1:32:30
  part of So my partner and I, Mike releases his name, we can
• 1:32:38
  sue proof before the nonprofit was started, we considered
• 1:32:41
  ourselves dented individuals, and if you get into a car wreck
• 1:32:46
  with your, it's a minor car wreck.
• 1:32:48
  You front fender is all dented up that car will still operate.
• 1:32:52
  It will go down the road. It just won't look as pretty as
• 1:32:54
  it once was, but it will still operate.
• 1:32:56
  So we consider ourselves dented, not broken.
• 1:32:59
  When we when something's broken, can it no longer move forward.
• 1:33:02
  So even though We have a couple scarves and a couple marks on
• 1:33:05
  us. We can still move forward.
• 1:33:08
  So Dental development project was our, it's our attempt to
• 1:33:12
  just those First Responders and their families.
• 1:33:17
  They're going through a little bit of suffering.
• 1:33:19
  We can ease their suffering. I'll give you an example.
• 1:33:21
  So there was a, there was a fireman in one of the local
• 1:33:24
  municipalities that just drop the head.
• 1:33:27
  Heart condition drop died. Well, now wife is left there
• 1:33:32
  too. To fend for herself with the
• 1:33:36
  kids and we were just able to pay for say, we gave her a
• 1:33:41
  little bit of money to pay for a week to groceries.
• 1:33:43
  So listen, all these things that are coming at you.
• 1:33:45
  That's one thing and small nonprofit for that.
• 1:33:49
  One thing that you don't have to worry about, I'll go out and buy
• 1:33:52
  them for you if you want to. Yeah.
• 1:33:56
  The that's some of the things that we've been able to we were
• 1:33:58
  able to give a scholarship to a family.
• 1:34:01
  We put it out for First Responders.
• 1:34:03
  Ponder's family, the scholarship, his father is a
• 1:34:07
  police officer, or stepfathers a police officer, his father's as
• 1:34:10
  a fireman, and he is autistic, he's got, he's got the mentality
• 1:34:15
  of say like a ten-year-old He went, he wrote this essay, that
• 1:34:20
  would make you cry. It really would make you cry and
• 1:34:23
  encapsulated what a first responder is to him and he
• 1:34:26
  talked about his father tells us that father and beautiful, it
• 1:34:29
  was absolutely beautiful. And these two people that have
• 1:34:32
  been raising this young man with his special needs and just in
• 1:34:36
  special needs is a is not a word.
• 1:34:38
  I like it's just somebody needs to be taken care of a little bit
• 1:34:40
  different where, but he has to pay for special schooling and
• 1:34:44
  it's a burden on them. So, Hey listen, they can We can
• 1:34:48
  just go get a little bit of help off of it.
• 1:34:50
  That it's been. The helping people is what we
• 1:34:54
  always wanted to do with the podcast.
• 1:34:56
  But you know, podcast as you know, don't really make all that
• 1:35:01
  much money, right? With this.
• 1:35:03
  We actually can get donations to put them back out into the world
• 1:35:07
  new stuff for good and and show people that just because you've
• 1:35:10
  gone through something doesn't mean that there's not help
• 1:35:13
  available, you're not alone ever and that's what dented
• 1:35:16
  development project. I love it.
• 1:35:19
  I got to ask you Kevin as much as you've been through and
• 1:35:22
  you've had you've got you have had quite a journey you know
• 1:35:25
  with your life. I always ask people this.
• 1:35:30
  What do you think your biggest takeaway through everything
• 1:35:32
  you've been through? The road to the top.
• 1:35:38
  Is this long and Winding Road, one of my favorite movies and it
• 1:35:42
  never really did very well as if you ever seen Joe Versus the
• 1:35:45
  Volcano Tom Hanks, back when he was really young.
• 1:35:48
  Yeah, sure. And if you watch that movie
• 1:35:52
  again, with different eyes, there's this imagery throughout
• 1:35:55
  the whole thing that when he's walking into the factory in the
• 1:35:57
  beginning to when he's walking up the mountain at the end, it's
• 1:36:00
  this long craggly. Sometimes it goes down,
• 1:36:03
  sometimes it goes up and there's long way.
• 1:36:05
  Winding road that gets up to the top and it's the people who make
• 1:36:11
  it to the top or the ones that are willing to walk that long
• 1:36:13
  mile to persevere. And really understand that just
• 1:36:19
  because you're at the bottom now, doesn't mean you got to
• 1:36:21
  stay at the bottom if you take your hardships and keep moving
• 1:36:25
  forward every single day, that's that's what I've taken away from
• 1:36:29
  this journey. You will never stop me from
• 1:36:32
  moving forward. I will never go back to that
• 1:36:34
  place. I was in.
• 1:36:35
  Because I've been there. Yeah I know what it's like.
• 1:36:38
  I know this despair in the hopelessness that they're my
• 1:36:42
  Humanity. Never left me.
• 1:36:43
  Thank God. And my hope, my hope waned at
• 1:36:47
  times but my hope will never leave me again, man.
• 1:36:52
  I love that. Kevin, that is a good place to
• 1:36:55
  stop. That is brilliant.
• 1:36:57
  I love it. And Kevin, what a story I am.
• 1:37:02
  So glad that you Ron here today, as a guest, I mean, I think
• 1:37:06
  people will listen to this and they'll see themselves in so
• 1:37:09
  many different facets of your story.
• 1:37:13
  But I'm so proud of what you're doing.
• 1:37:15
  Your story, you're using your, your overall life experience and
• 1:37:19
  helping people. And I mean, you can't can't ask
• 1:37:22
  any more than that. So it's so cool for those that
• 1:37:26
  are out there. I just got something new that
• 1:37:27
  happened. I want to give a big shout-out
• 1:37:30
  to Travis Richey. The got me up an opportunity for
• 1:37:33
  this but nightmare success in and out.
• 1:37:35
  It's now in end of oh and it's available in over 200 prisons
• 1:37:40
  and jails across the country. If you you guys are listening
• 1:37:44
  Behind the Walls, I'm talking to you.
• 1:37:48
  You can listen to the 50-plus episodes, you can go to the
• 1:37:50
  Discovery section and type in Nightmare success in and out and
• 1:37:55
  you'll see all the episodes and I am very honored to be a part
• 1:38:01
  of this and be a part of this education process within 33
• 1:38:05
  States here and in the United States.
• 1:38:08
  So this is new for me. Just going to start here this
• 1:38:12
  next week. Week.
• 1:38:12
  So it's a big deal. Hey, for all those who are on
• 1:38:16
  social media, the likes, if you guys want to leave a review on
• 1:38:22
  Apple, you just hit those three little dots there, follow the
• 1:38:26
  show, share the show. We like that, right?
• 1:38:28
  Kevin, we like it when they do that.
• 1:38:31
  That's the most important thing to me like that.
• 1:38:34
  If anybody wants to leave me a message broadcast, e.com is a
• 1:38:38
  good place to go. I love that when we can have the
• 1:38:40
  back and forth I used to say when I was typing my e-mails
• 1:38:46
  back and forth when I was in prison, stay strong and I'll do
• 1:38:48
  the same. Now, I measure success in and
• 1:38:51
  out. Kevin Donelson, thank you so
• 1:38:52
  much today, right? I can't.
• 1:38:54
  Thank you enough. Thank you so much.
• 1:38:56
  Thanks a lot.