Tony Marquez (Firefighting, Military Service and Healing through the Boulder Crest Program) - Episode 1064

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to the Behind the Shield podcast. As always, my name is James Gearing and this week it is my absolute honor to welcome on the show firefighter and Air National Guardsman Tony Marquez. Now in this conversation, we discuss a host of topics from his journey into the fire service, the parallel path into the military, notable calls, and then in my opinion, the most powerful part of his

story, his mental health journey. For people who listen to this podcast a lot, you've probably heard Boulder Crest and the Struggle Well program mentioned many times. Well, Tony takes a deep dive into that program, his experience through Warrior Path, which is the military arm of that, and details the incredible healing power he found

through those programs. Now, before we get to this incredible conversation, as I say every week, please just take a moment, go to whichever app you listen to this on, subscribe to the show. Leave feedback and leave a rating. Every single five -star rating truly does elevate this podcast, therefore making it easier for others to find. And this is a free library of well over 1 ,000

episodes now. So all I ask in return is that you help share these incredible men and women's stories so I can get them to every single person on planet Earth who needs to hear them. And one more note, I was sick as a dog with a cold when I did this interview, so I apologize for my voice. That being said, I introduce to you, Tony Marquez. Enjoy. Well, Tony, I want to start by saying thank you so, so much for taking the time and coming on the Behind the Shield podcast today.

Oh, man, it's a pleasure. It's wild to be here. We were just discussing before we got on here that I reached out to you, I don't know, five, six years ago, just random comments on Instagram. And I was like, oh, there's no way this guy's going to reply. And then we started chatting it up for a little bit, lost touch, and got in

touch again. And here we are. Pretty cool. yeah no it's funny because people you know there's this almost perception i think when you have a platform that you're now some different kind of person and you're not you know i mean you're just a firefighter that just happened to plug a microphone into a computer that's it so so it's funny when uh you know when you hear that but i think you know sadly obviously when people get get very very famous and yeah this is it's

so much like i see it with some of the you know the actors i've had on the show i mean you just got to be so careful because you don't want to overwhelm them but uh no for any any police officer or firefighter behind a microphone i don't think any of us have that level of level of fame so we should be answering all the questions yeah well so many trolls out there right like oh what's this guy's angle what's gonna happen if i respond but that was very cool and we had like really

good chats for a while i mean i don't know what happened It's very cool. Yeah, no, and I think that's the problem. The old page, there was like 200 ,000 people on there. And this is the problem is that, yes, from one perspective, okay, that's a larger audience disseminate information, but you also lose the core people that are actually there to make changes, to interact, you know

what I mean? So I think that's the sad thing about getting more of a platform is you lose the most valuable people kind of get lost in the white noise there. Sure. Well, here we are. Very cool. Exactly. All right. So you say here we are. Where on planet Earth are we finding you today? I'm in Tucson, Arizona right now. Beautiful. Well, I would love to start at the

very beginning of your journey. So tell me where you were born and tell me a little bit about your family dynamic, what your parents did, how many siblings. All righty. So I was born in Harvey, Illinois. It's a suburb just south of Chicago. Not the most fun place to grow up in, but I'm sure we'll get into that later. My mom was a stay -at -home mom. She worked in a nursing home, and she got injured there, messed up her back pretty good. So she's on disability and staying

at home. And my dad, he was in the Navy for a couple years, kind of during Vietnam era. I think he did four, and then he was a firefighter for Harvey, Illinois. So he did 20 years. He had

a heart attack. was forced to retire and then four brothers uh i'd never call them my half brothers but since we're getting into it um two for my mom's previous marriage two for my dad's previous marriage and all older than me so i was kind of the young one in the family and uh unfortunately my brother david passed away when he was around 22 and i think i was 12 from cancer so there's that That's the family dynamics. My

dad passed away in 2019. My mom actually lives with us here in Arizona along with my father -in -law. Yeah, so that's the family dynamics. Yeah, it's so sad because you hear a lot of people that come on the show and their parents were first responders and more often than not, it's a short lifespan from that generation too. Yeah, his kind of sucked. I mean, he had the heart

attack and he was still good to go. i think he was 79 when he passed away and just uh i still don't know all the details but from my understanding is uh just a mix up of medications and too many blood thinners and it bled out in his brain because all the crap that he was on from he was 79 pushing 80 so he he was still fighting strong but it went down fast and that's crazy i know we'll get into it but that's kind of part of the reason i ended up uh taking a break from the fire service

and going into uh full -time active duty with the uh Air National Guard because when uh when he did pass away he lived in the district that I work work in so I called 911 and you know the guys didn't know was my dad and they rolled in and they looked at me shocked and I was like yeah it's here so I got to watch my friends work my dad and they did what they could do and he ended up dying in the hospital but When I went back to the firehouse, I worked in a community

where there's older people. So every time I'd go to a call and see someone laying in the bed, all I saw was my dad. I was like, I need a break. And I didn't realize in the moment that's what it was. But through the work that I've done, that's what came to fruition. Yeah. I mean, this is the thing you hear with the volunteer fire service. More often than not, they're working their colleagues, their friends, their kids they taught, or school classmates in high school.

This is who they're running on. And we don't think about that, you know, in the career side is, you know, not many of us really live and work in the same place these days. A lot of us can't afford to. But yeah, having that proximity and working on your loved ones. I mean, that's another layer of trauma in itself. Yeah, absolutely. So, yeah, I guess real quick, if you wanted to talk the path to service, how I got in the military, is that the kind of way you wanted to go? Well,

let's go back. You made the comment about the rough upbringing in Harvey. So expand on that. It's funny because I used to hear a lot of jokes of like, hey, if there's criminals running from Chicago, they're going to Harvey. I've heard that before. And then I actually ran into a cop pretty recently because a lot of people from Chicago retired here. They're like, oh, crap, you're from Harvey. I was like, yeah. I was like,

oh, OK. Yeah, I was. so because of where my dad worked he worked for the harvey fire department and the city mandated that you live where you work and so a lot of the guys didn't even want to live in harvey so some you know had didn't have they had fake addresses and lived somewhere else or they actually lived in the city so that's why we were forced to live there but yeah it was rough i mean um a lot of drugs a lot of violence a lot of gangs all the things you know when my

uh i was out in the streets a lot just running around because that's just what we did in you know in that time frame riding bikes and it didn't seem very safe but in reality it wasn't so you know especially my brother passed away because he was into gangs and drug dealing unfortunately and when he passed away i actually ran into A kid that I played soccer with and ran into his older brother and his other brother was like, Oh shit, you're David's little brother. And they

were wrapped up in the gang. So they kind of took me under their wing for a long time and kind of got wrapped up in that life pretty early. And it was a rough go. Talk to me about that crossroads. Cause I think this is what's so. important for people to understand. We have a lot of issues on our streets at the moment, from homelessness to sex work to gangs. And you look at other places in the world and they don't have it anywhere near as rampant as we do in the US.

What was that crossroads? Because there's people that... Well, I never went in the gang. Yeah, because you probably had certain family dynamics and certain mentors in your life that steered you towards the military, the fire service, law, whatever your thing was. But those same mentors can also be in your community, the gangbangers and the drug dealers and those kind of people. So what was kind of missing up to that point?

And then talk to me about that pull for a young boy in Illinois being pulled into that life. Yeah. And again, I know we'll get into it, but all these memories and me figuring this out came about through my work with therapists, doing the struggle well in the warrior path, which we'll get into later. But reflecting on it, it wasn't that my dad wasn't there or my mom wasn't there. They were older when they had me and they did their best. And I wouldn't say there was

any neglect there. But the thing that happened was because my brother was involved with the

gangs and the drugs, we were really close. really close growing up and he had cancer too so I remember when he was diagnosed with cancer he tried to come around and he wasn't really allowed around the house because there's people looking for him there's just a lot of danger surrounding him so when he passed away it was a Super Bowl Sunday and I remember being left at my parents friend's house and they came back and they're like hey David passed away and I never got to

say goodbye there was no closure there's no closure at all and there's no closure around actually how he died like was it drug related was it overdose was it gang related was it the cancer no closure whatsoever and so and i didn't get to see him as often as i wanted so reflecting back you know running into guys that hung out with david that were good friends with dave that loved him and then me being brought under their wing like oh your david's little brother let's take care of

you was my way i think you know looking back is my way to interact with my brother and be with my brother and find that connection because as much trouble as they got into and as much things as they did it was kind of weird because they still wouldn't let me get involved i was kind of like a hang around almost the whole time because i was so young i was 14 years old hanging out with 20 25 year olds going to clubs downtown going to certain bars and and parties and i was

just there and i think i was desperately seeking that connection with my brother that i couldn't have and these guys were essentially just like them and trying to find some closure and just trying to fit in because it's very difficult to fit in right group as well because my dad's mexican descent my mom's white uh predominantly african -american community so depending on which block i was in i never fit in i wasn't full mexican you know i'm not african -american and and i

went to a catholic grade school and i didn't fit in there because i was literally the only kid from harvey in that school so I would ask kids to come over and play, and their parents were like, oh, where do you live? I was like, Harvey. They were like, absolutely not. You can come to our house. So, yeah, I think that crossover was just much like you hear all the time, trying to find some type of connection, family, and a group to fit in with. And unfortunately, mine

was a little rougher than most groups. So when you were in this age, and obviously, like you said, this other group was a lot older, what about the sports and exercise? What were you playing and doing back then? Soccer. Soccer was a big deal. In Chicago, they have this league called CLASA, Chicago Latin American Soccer Association. So all the guys that were in the mix played for this league. And if I remember correctly, all the teams were like a subset of cities in Mexico.

So I played for La Piedad. So everyone from La Piedad that lived in that community played for

that team. they're all all close -knit both on the soccer team and then both in the streets as well so soccer was a big deal indoor soccer outdoor soccer and then high school soccer but the indoor and the summer leagues were just that big group and those became gangs because then one team didn't like the other and there's some gnarly rivals like got into got into a lot of fights on the soccer field for whatever reason yeah i grew up in the 80s you know in england

where we're watching people like stabbing each other and pushing walls on each other over a football team and it just never made any sense to me i get it on the pitch you know that's where you're actually having this competition but the fans fighting each other stabbing each other over a bunch of dudes in shorts that just never never computed me that's why i never had a team growing up because i was just like that that to me through my lens was the violence associated

rather than the actual game itself Yeah, I remember watching a ref get hit in the head with a beer bottle because he made the wrong call. The game went on. It was like nothing happened. It was pretty wild. So what about career aspirations? You're surrounded, obviously, by this kind of street life that you found yourself in. Were there any career dreams that you had at that time? Oddly enough, I always wanted to be a Navy pilot and go to Annapolis because Top Gun was

big at that time. My dad was in the Navy. My other brother had enlisted into the Navy, and

he left. and um so that was a big thing like grade school type issue i mean high school transition is where everything changed but that was a big thing and then throughout high school i just i didn't try hard enough i could have done a lot better as i mean we all say we can do but um it was strange i didn't know what to do like my dad was like hey you should go in the fire service he didn't really push it on me but he he mentioned it quite often and then the military

was always kind of there you know then you you meet you have a girlfriend you don't want to leave i got a job i didn't want to leave the the area so it's kind of in between jobs after high school and then uh my brother from my mom's side they own a company and they got me in as a union laborer and uh if you ever seen that movie um blues brothers where they're flying over the top and you got the steel mills that's kind of the area i worked yeah i worked there

in east chicago indiana It's not the steel mill, but it was where they provide the coal for the steel. And so I was cleaning chutes, doing all the things, making really good money because you're a union worker in the city. So that's a good gig to have. But I'd take about an hour to hour and a half with Vaseline and Q -tips to clean all the coal out of my eyes and ears. And I just remember walking up a ramp and I couldn't breathe. I was like coughing up all this black

crap. I was like, I can't do this anymore. So I go to the control room and one of the guys I knew, he was in the army. And I was like, hey, man, I was like, what do you think about the military? I was like, my brother was in Desert Storm. My dad was in Vietnam. My uncle was in Korea. My grandfather was in World War II. There's a lot of service. I was like, what do you think about it? And it's funny because he was like, well, he's like, hey, man, there's no wars going

on right now. And there probably won't be any. So don't go in the Marines or Army. Go in the Navy or the Air Force. You can learn a trade. I was like, all right, Air Force sounds cool. And then win the Air Force. I mean, I think that was like a Monday. That Wednesday I enlisted and then I shipped out. And then went to tech school and did all the boot camp and all the things. And my second day of work was 9 -11 and everything changed after that. Before we progress

forward, I meant to ask you this before. With the Vietnam generation, unlike the World War II and I would argue the last 20 years or so, that generation specifically was so poorly received when they came back home. And I've heard so many horror stories of people getting pissed on and

spit on and all these other things. what are some if any of the stories that that you remember from your father's experience in vietnam zero he you'd always say one cool funny story that when uh before he went into country he was in japan and because uh he actually looks uh kind of asian so a lot of guys thought he was japanese and so he the japanese mafia actually took him under his wing at this one bar and like you just hang out with them and and some marines would

come in and start a fight with them and they and the japanese guys would protect them because they called him uh i don't know if this is a derogatory term i don't mean it that way but he said they would call him nisi boy and i don't know what that means but that's they said they would call him and like he was like a friend of theirs he would tell me that and then he would tell me how my uncle was in the air force my dad spent more time in planes than my uncle did

in the air force my uncle spent more time on ships than my dad did and that's the extent of the uh military stuff that he would talk about he wouldn't talk about it at all yeah there's a lot of them i think just bottled it in yeah but i'm talking through my mom with some of these problems that you know again stuff that i learned through warrior path and struggle well i actually had some open conversations with my mom and she brought up that my dad had some significant events

happen in vietnam and and she didn't really elaborate either but i guess he went through some pretty gnarly stuff and took some lives and was in the mix but he just never talked about it and i don't know if he talked about it with my brother either i mean i just can't imagine you know whether you know you enlist or whether you were drafted to go out there fight with you know the american flag on your shoulder do the things that your country asks for you to do whether people back

home agree with it or not and then you come back And, you know, that's the environment that you return. So there's no, you know, you listen to Sebastian Junger talking about the Native Americans

coming back from war. There was storytelling and, you know, rituals and all these kind of things and the celebration for the warriors returning to come back to such a, you know, betrayal basically by the country on those actual men and women that were out there, regardless of the politics, how absolutely crushing that must have been for our men and women in uniform. Yeah. Absolutely.

And some of my studies through the social work and other studies, they also, you know, I don't have all the details, but they talked about, again, like the World War II guys. I mean, they had two to three weeks coming back on ships and they had a lot of time together to decompress before they got home. And then Vietnam guys,

I mean, they're home almost instantly. And Desert Storm and the GWAC guys, you know, one plane and you're home pretty quick with not a lot of time to decompress and you're thrusted into a

whole different world that, you know. yesterday i was just getting shot at today i'm you know at the supermarket and that's a lot to deal with in such a short time it's amazing when i ask these early life questions a lot of times it's either father if it's an older guest or grandfather was a world war ii veteran and you know we've romanticized those guys you know they came back they rolled up their sleeves and they got back to work greatest generation and they were hands

down the greatest generation for the courage and sacrifice they made you know fighting true true um tyranny overseas but actually when you hear the you know the children's version of how dad was they did struggle they struggled immensely but we almost you know closed the door for them to be able to talk about the struggles like usually no no don't ruin everything you're the greatest generation you took care of it And they didn't, you know, a lot of them were, you know, it was

alcoholism and domestic abuse and all these other things, just like we see with our firefighters and cops and the military members more recently, like you can't go overseas and do that and then come home. And like you said, now you're, you know, working in construction and just bury the fact that, you know. you discovered Auschwitz or you had to kill a German with a rock in the middle of Holland somewhere and just bury that

down and not talk about it again. So it's interesting when you hear these actual family stories that we need to give grace to that generation and understand that they did struggle and rightly so. Oh, absolutely. My mom speaks about that as well. My grandfather coming back. And certain things that happened in her childhood as well, which you can easily relate. I mean, you spent

how many years in World War II? And I'd venture to say World War II is pretty rough as well, because from readings I've had and things that I've looked up is like when you're deployed, you weren't coming back until it was done. Like sometimes you have like, hey, you're gone first. You almost have like a timeline, like you're going to get here and leave here. And a lot of times that doesn't happen. But those guys and gals were like. Yeah, we'll see when it's over

and could spend years out there. That's that's rough. Absolutely. Well, we stopped at 9 -11. So you're now in the Air Force. You've gone through your training. Talk to me how that day unfolded through your eyes. And then let's kind of walk through what happened next in your career. That was a crazy day. So my first job was military intelligence. And I had got stationed at a headquarters building in Scott Air Force Base, Illinois, which is funny because I put. I wanted to go all overseas,

get out of Illinois, all the things. And I get my orders and it said Scott Air Force Base, Illinois. I was like, where the hell is this at? And so I go home on leave, collect all my stuff and drive down. And I had never been out of the city or suburbs. I thought Illinois was one big city and the rest of suburbs. I'm driving through cornfields and all the things. I was a shock within itself. But I just remember that day sitting in the vault and, you know, we would have camera

or TVs with the news going on. And there's this pretty big secure vault. And the first plane hit. And I remember the lieutenant was like, Marquez, get over here. And we were watching it. We're like, we didn't realize it was a big plane. And, you know, people are like, oh, man, some air traffic controllers getting fired today. Like, how does that happen? Like, what the hell? And then the second one hit. It was like dead silence. And then the phone started ringing and

everyone just scattered. The base shut down. There's Humvees everywhere with 50 cals mounted.

It was like game on. just it got real busy real fast and i was in charge of these certain kits that we'd send out uh communication kits and started shipping those out real quick nobody knew what the hell was going on we just knew that something was going to happen real soon just got busy real quick and then i had requested to deploy right away and they're like well your upgrade training's not done so Hurryed up with

my upgrade training and all the things. And because I worked for AMC, Air Mobility Command, so it's the big cargo planes, there weren't any in -country. There's some, but not the ones that we dealt with. So I got sent to Ramstein like five times to go do the intel briefs for the planes going back and forth from in -country, just giving them their threat briefs and escape and evasion charts and updating all their information in case something happened. Ramstein's Germany.

Yes. Okay. Yeah. Yeah, that's the main hub. So where did that lead you? So I was at Scott for about three years. Went to Spain a few times, Germany, a bunch of other places, Turkey, Kuwait, all kinds of stuff, just doing those intel briefs, doing training stuff. And then my boss was like, hey, man, you got to get out of Illinois. You got to get to another place. And I went to Korea,

Kunsan Air Base for a year. and worked with the fighters and that was a whole other crazy experience that was at the time when uh north korea started doing their nuclear tests and being in that mix and almost being on edge the whole time where nothing's really happening right now but it could and if it does it's going to go real bad real quick and and that that uh i think that started the real like mental health type issues because when i was at scott i was only four hours away

from home so i could go home and see my buddies but then i'm in korea for a year completely isolated from every anybody can't go home all the things and drinking was big there i mean there was a lot of drinking going on in korea and that's what we did we worked and drank because you couldn't have your families there either as a remote tour so folks that were married and had kids are there alone as well so you got really close it was really close in the community but also there's

a lot of drinking involved which didn't help the isolation of being away from family and whatnot and it was a very high tempo uh ops as well so it was good it was cool uh learned a lot but it was definitely uh i feel like that was the start of my struggles well i guess exposing said struggles from even earlier in childhood it's interesting i saw a documentary on um people trying to escape north korea and there was a graphic which i'd seen actually shared on the

internet before but it showed you know the advance of the north koreans through korea and how like close they were to be completely overrun and our you know the americans and the allies put literally pushed them from like the very tip of korea all the way back to the point that we know today and again it's so sad because that's the kind of as they say the forgotten war the heroism of that generation is also not really acknowledged by our country no not at all and

i would have to give some of the intel briefs of the newcomers and just talk about how you know if things shake out what it looks like and it was kind of a scary brief and i would tell him he's like hey we're gonna win the war but we're not gonna be around for the parade like we're just a speed bump for the people in korea like if this kicks off it's gonna get ugly real quick what about korean culture when you know one of the big kind of through lines of this

podcast is is literally having guests from around the world and so many countries this there's areas that they do really well that i think if we knowledge shared and have the humility to ask each other we could you know the the rising tide lifts all ships you know the whole planet could elevate were there any things about uh korean culture or kind of technologies or anything else that they had over there that you were kind of thinking wow this is pretty impressive um

not so much like technology or anything like that i you know unfortunately i was in those young stages so i just hung around the bars and and that type of scene but the culture was really cool i really enjoyed it they had a uh a program at in kunsan where you can help teach english to uh korean students to children and that was an amazing experience so i would do that uh mostly on the weekends mostly saturday mornings and you would go to the school hang out with these

kids for a couple hours help them with their english and And whatnot. And then the teachers would take you to traditional restaurants or to their home and teach you about culture. And everywhere they took you was a place that typically Americans or foreigners did not go. And that was an incredible experience. I love that. And I got to go volunteer at a Catholic nursing home in Korea, which was super cool. Like we learned

how to make kimchi from. from scratch that was a really amazing experience so just the friendliness and the the accepting was really cool and just like anywhere else the older community really embraced uh from what i saw a lot of the americans because they because of the forgotten war and some some kids you know get some college kids that were against us being there but overwhelmingly it was a very positive experience with the culture and whatnot I tried to learn a little bit of

the language and it was difficult, but I'm all in on the Korean food and bulgogi and kimchi and overall it was a great experience. I would love to go back and do more sightseeing and seeing some of what it has to offer. Going to the DMZ, that was an incredible experience. You go into the meeting house and you technically go to North Korea. When you go into the meeting house, you cross the blue line and you hurry up and run

around. running around the table and seeing just the standoff with the Korean soldiers and the North Korean soldiers just standing there, literally staring at each other for hours on end, just, you know, like a little mini show of force. But I loved it. All the places I've been to were phenomenal, like Germany and all around Europe and Spain and even Turkey was pretty cool. Qatar, all the places I had really good experiences.

Nothing negative to say about those at all. It's interesting seeing how much Korean culture has blown up in the West now. I mean, if you look on Netflix, there's so many, you know, Korean shows and films. And then we have K -pop. And, you know, when I remember, I think it was J -pop when I lived in Japan, like 20 plus years ago. But it was more then an adoration for the West, even though actually, like many areas, technology and fashion, they were way ahead of us. It was

the other way around. But now I feel like it's side by side. Like all these artists, you know, are collaborating with each other. And it's it's so good to see that the Internet has kind of merged a lot of these countries, which is in a beautiful way. Yes. One of the benefits like social media and the Internet, just the positive connections that can be made. And you can definitely see it through the sharing of cultures, which

is super cool. And I remember going to like a fake pizza hut and a fake Starbucks, you know, the logo. But it really wasn't. And stuff like that, seeing that adoption of American culture

throughout the communities and the cities. pretty funny and cool yeah it's sad as well because you think about north koreans and again we only get the images that are sent but you know this this adoration of the leader and this you know these parades for them and you know obviously the the propaganda that they're fed forget the west but just their brothers and sisters to the south these are the same people and you know if you allow a tyrant to rise and i know the

origin obviously was post world war ii But how tragic it is that you can divide. I mean, look at even, you know, East and West Berlin. You can just simply put a barrier or a wall up and you can actually condition people to hate each other, even though they're the same people. Yeah, that's crazy to see for sure. All right. Well, then after Korea, walk me through what happens next. So I was in Korea and I was supposed to have a follow on tour to England and I was working

with fighter pilots in Korea. Didn't have the best experience. I just don't think I was good enough, to be quite honest, to work with them because they're so high speed. And so I denied my follow on to England and I went back to working with the heavy aircraft, the AMC command. So I ended up in McGuire Air Force Base in New Jersey. And that's when I kind of started my firefighter

journey. Like I started really talking to my dad about the fire department because I realized like sitting in an office, especially in vaults

with no windows. just something was missing and he he'd always talk about how much he loved the job but he didn't push it it was just little little uh snapshots here and there and i started remembering uh going to the station and how cool it was and how fun it was uh meeting the guys and when i was home on leave my dad had already been retired and starting to hang out with him and uh going to retirement parties from guys that i remember when i was really little and

just seeing the camaraderie i was like man this is this is really cool i like what this is about so when i went to new jersey I actually started volunteering at the local volunteer fire department in Lumberton, New Jersey. So I went to their academy at night and started volunteering with them because I figured I was like, well, let me start slow. If I volunteer and I like it,

well, then obviously I should pursue it. And if I don't, then it was a good test with, I don't want to say minimal effort, but minimal risk. Right. I didn't have to leave anything to get into it. So I fell in love with it quickly. And then I actually. changed jobs in the Air Force to become an Air Force firefighter. So after McGuire, I went to the Department of Defense Fire Academy in Goodfellow, Texas, and then got stationed in Davis Mothlin in Tucson. So that's

why I'm here. So I was here for about two years. I got out of active duty and got a civilian firefighter job out here and just stuck around. I started off at Tohono O 'odham Indian Nation and then moved to where I'm at now. What were the idiosyncrasies about the military firefighting that are different to the civilian side? There wasn't much difference, but the thing that made the Air Force fire department weird was obviously the focus on protecting the

runways and aircraft. The ARF side of it was significantly different, but it was a very cool, weird experience. They, at least the fire, because I only have experience at one Air Force fire department, but it was treated like a civilian fire department where it was based on your position on the truck of your, of the hierarchy, you know. And so I came in as an E -5 staff sergeant, you know, not commissioned officer, but I was the

new guy. So I was sitting backwards. So although I outranked the guy driving, it didn't matter because I was the new firefighter. So like your military rank didn't matter. It was all about your position on the truck. So that was kind of like a weird thing to navigate, like trying to fit in and that role. And then the schedules aren't that great because there's less shifts. So we're 24 on 24 off with a Kelly day. So every, so I think it equated to like a six, three, six

24s on, and then you got three days off. Other than that, it's fairly similar because you have base housing, you have buildings to worry about

just adding in. you know trying to figure out how to how to cut out a pilot out of a fighter jet or egressing that or shutting down aircraft which is pretty scary when they're running and you gotta jump you know do some emergency procedures and chalk and tires and whatnot while there's a huge engine over your head that's a little scary but other than that it was pretty similar i've had a few air force firefighters on the show um there's there's one side where you know

they're on the space pretty much as soon as the the aircraft stops landing They're pretty much good for the rest of the night. And then you've got others that are almost acting like a municipal department. They're running calls through the night. Which of those two kind of sides was yours more familiar with? Us both, because there was two stations. So there's one right on the flight line, which primarily dealt with the aircraft things. And there's one that was closer to base

housing that did the housing. But yeah, it just depended where the call was, whatever closest was. If there was somebody working a 24 -hour shift, let's say in the command post, and it was next to the flight line, well, if they had a medical emergency, we went. So it was both. They always said, though, the primary focus would

be the flight line. Like if a plane was coming in, emergency, and there was a house fire, we're going to the plane first, and the local fire department could take care of the house fire. But, yeah, it was a nice combination of both. Well, you mentioned about being on a Native American reservation. Again, this is another kind of group of people I don't think get the kind of exposure

and conversations that they need. You have obviously this kind of native heritage and then this loss of tribe, literally in this term, where some of these tribes were smited from the States. And then I also hear about poverty, desperation, addiction in some of these areas too. What was your experience in that particular place you worked? It was incredible. I loved it. Unfortunately, ego and not understanding how things really work

made me leave, right? I was like, oh, we're sitting in this single wide trailer with just two to three of us fighting this fire. I should go to a big city department and really get after it. But I fought more fire there than I did at the fire department I'm at now. I don't regret the move, but yeah, there was a lot of sadness there

as well. and the culture and some some trust issues as well which i completely understand you know they did a bunch of hiring and there's a lot of non -natives that were hired and it took a lot of effort to to uh fit in and you know and i understood and i think that was a benefit of my military experiences is being in different cultures like hey look this isn't your home Don't come in here and think it is or try to run things just because you got hired on to

the fire department. These guys have been here longer than you. They know the culture. They know the language. They know the area. You need to fit in and be humble. And it was an awesome experience. It took a lot of time to learn the culture, go to the different events. And it took a little bit of time, but I feel like I've built some trust while I was there and really integrated

myself as much as I could. so please please carry on oh and then the crazy thing is it's a pretty big nation it's the size of connecticut i believe with four stations so sometimes our response times are like 45 minutes it which is pretty wild and then it borders it borders mexico and there's kind of a kind of almost like free passing because a lot of the uh the natives uh extend into mexico so that same tribe has uh tribal members in mexico as well so But there was also

a lot of the drug trafficking or immigration and whatnot. So summers were rough. I have a lot of bad memories of running on people that were simply trying to find a better way, got lost in the desert and needed help. But, you know, sometimes it's too late and sometimes it's right on time. I had some scary ones, too. I remember going to a wildland fire at night and we had to be escorted by a border patrol. And he was sitting there just racking his AR -15,

making noise. he looked over at me he's like you know i'm doing that i was like i have no idea why you're doing that he's like look in the mountains and you see these little spotlights because there are spotters for the people running running drugs it's like oh got it so he wanted them to know that we were there and you know we leave the lights on the fire truck on purpose so they know we're there and whatnot so sometimes it's a little hairy but yeah it's definitely

interesting for sure so what kind of kind of town um city did you find yourself as far as the dynamic of your current department the current one is um we have 10 stations so it's in a town of oral valley so it not as big as a city so a nice uh size municipality i guess like a suburb type deal so as you and it's pretty i'm sorry and it's pretty cool um while i was while i went to orders they started automatic aid with another town's fire department and then uh tucson fire

department trying to almost mirroring what phoenix does without that automatic aid or doesn't matter what it says on your truck whoever's closer goes so it kind of turned into a really big uh department pretty quick have you had the chance to figure out how they did that because when i worked in anaheim for example that's what we had and we even trained together there was a couple of training centers and and all the neighboring departments would come in and we do drills and we do class

time and You know, you go on a fire and yeah, you just, as you said, however many engines you need, right? Three Anaheim, two Fullerton, whatever it is. And we make this compliment. I've worked in other places where county and city won't even talk to each other, which nauseates me. I mean, if you have that kind of narcissism in your leadership,

then you need a clean house. When you kind of think back, what were the things that were put in place to allow the humility and the leadership in your area to create such a great relationship? Yeah, it's a good question that I don't know. You know, I was either at the engineer or captain level when that happened. We just knew it was in the talks, but I think we're kind of spoiled being close to Phoenix. And from my understanding, they're the ones that really implemented that

into the Valley. So I think just the Arizona Chiefs Council got together, figured out how Phoenix did it, and then Tucson Fire, Northwest Fire, and our fire department just got together and was like, hey, how do we make this happen? And they just made it happen. So I don't know how long it took. don't know the ins and outs, but from the outside looking in, it seemed pretty

seamless. But again, we don't know what talks are being had between district members, board members, city council, and all those, all that goodness. Brilliant. I'm actually about to interview John Brunicini soon. So I'll ask him. Yeah. He may or may not have some insight on that. All right. Well then let's kind of go before we hit

the mental health side. When you reflect back now as a firefighter, now a municipal firefighter, what were some of the career calls and then if there's any that you want to weave in that actually contributed to you know the downwards uh spiral that you encountered yeah it's interesting to say that because it will it will dovetail nicely with the uh struggle well course and the warrior path there's there's probably two main calls that really stick out in my head like new year's

eve will never be the same so i remember getting toned out like right at midnight like you look at your watches like is this a movie right at midnight and uh it was a 17 year old kid that got stabbed in the heart and uh you know it's kind of like through gang violence so i remember getting there and pulling them out of this big bonfire and i remember all our looking back you know after we did our after action like a lot of our gear was burned because it fell in the

fire but there was a A lot of animosity, like, yeah, that's what you get, you know, almost like cheering on his death. And I just remember doing compressions and the blood coming out of his chest, like there's no way. And his uncle being there because it was a small community. And I just remember him, you know, passing away in the firehouse. And as soon as he got back in the truck, it was just another call. Like we left the station at midnight. We didn't get back

until I think four or five. So no time to sleep, no time to decompress, no time to talk about it. And we just didn't talk about it. So that

one sticks out in my mind a lot. you know uh and then there was one where we saved a guy and um you know we're all excited and pulled him out of the car pretty gnarly accident and uh you know we found out later that the family was kind of upset because now he has the uh the brain capacity of a five -year -old so it's almost like he would have been better off dead because although we saved him saved his life he was in such a bad way that he doesn't really have a

quality of life anymore so that that one that one stings a lot and then uh Yeah, just a lot of I remember opening up a semi truck that Border Patrol called us on and we opened up the door and there's just a bunch of people crossing the border, a bunch of immigrants there. And one young girl, I think she was 20 years old, died of hyperthermia. Just couldn't couldn't bring her back. Those are the big ones that stand out

to me. But I think pairing that as far as. with the mental health and the struggle well in the warrior path was that I just didn't have any ways to deal with it. There was no ways to process that. There was no wellness practices involved other than, hey, let's go get a beer. Let's go meet up at the, you know, zero seven in the morning and get a six pack type deal. That's the only

way to deal with it. And like my friend, Molly, she was telling me that she instructs at the local community college and she likes to talk about the mental health aspect as of. You know, we're seeing recruiting, hurting and PD and military and fire. And it's because we hear a lot about post -traumatic stress disorder. We hear a lot about no sleep. We hear all the bad things associated

with the firehouse. And although we got to take some responsibility and ownership is what she's trying to teach them is, yeah, these things are going to happen. You're signing up for trauma, but you also have a choice of, hey, am I going to go get hammered because this happened or am

I going to. go for a hike or call somebody or talk about it or do some meditation like what wellness practices are you doing and prepared to do uh when these things happen as opposed to just throwing your hands up like i have no idea what to do Yeah. And I think that's the problem we've had with this conversation is a lot of times I've seen people put it on the shoulders of the firefighter. When you get home, your sleep hygiene and this and this and this, the answer

is both. Yes, we absolutely have to have ownership and understand the value of our sleep. And when you're reaching for a beer, asking yourself why, and like you said, could it walk or a meditation or a swim or a cold plunge, take away that urge. But we've also got to look at the working environment, you know, and I think that the way you process trauma is sleep, you know, so we have to look at the way that we work our firefighters and say, is this working? Is this the right environment?

And I know I beat a dead horse talking about this. But, you know, this is what I don't see departments doing is looking in the mirror and go, what are we doing wrong? It's always even with the cancer. Oh, it's it's the it's the PFAS. That was the latest thing. Well, that's still you pointing away from yourself. You know, sleep deprivation is also a carcinogen. I know departments that never run fire that have lost numerous firefighters to cancer. So if it was just the carcinogens,

then be easy fix. But yeah, so I think it's such an important conversation that we address both simultaneously because then you'll have a double effect. Yeah, absolutely. Definitely takes a team effort for sure. You know, it's easy to blame the environment, easy to blame the individual. It's easy to point fingers. It's really hard to. to put in extra work to see how we could

really figure this out. You're never going to figure it out perfectly, but sure as hell can make some, some different strides to make it better for sure. Yeah. And the schedule, it's, it's, it's crazy, right? Cause I remember my dad, you know, this is the best schedule in the world. And we look at it like, well, is it? So, so some, it has its benefits, especially at slower stations, but at a busy station, you know, stand at 24 for me and then getting home and trying

to operate is not fun. No. No. And again, I put a post out a little while ago. I did the math where I figured out how many days a year a Monday to Friday person works, you know, and it was 260 days a year because they have the weekends off. And that's before obviously vacation. If you factor an eight hour day as a firefighter, so that's apples to apples, it equates to 364

days a year. So you get a day off. every year that's it so I mean I've been harping about this we do not have a great schedule unless you're listening and you do a full platoon system and then it's much better still not great because civilians that don't save lives work 40 hours a week but you know a lot better than a 56 but but yeah I mean we have to debunk that myth because it's just completely wrong yeah and guaranteed sleep right we don't have we might get some sleep

but The 40 -hour jobs, even if you're working shift work, which isn't very healthy, you're still at least guaranteed a chunk where if you can't sleep, it won't get interrupted. Absolutely. Well, you talked about some of the traumas. You talked about initially working your father and then watching your crew. Where was the lowest place that you found yourself? And then let's

walk through how you found Boulder Crest. this journey started a long time ago probably around i would say sometime after when i got back from korea and started uh working in new jersey at that air force base just something was off always angry tired drinking was uh top of mind you know the bad habits the addictions whether that was uh porn womanizing boozing whatever bad decisions just something going on so that started then and a lot of uh i guess bad relationship decisions

and just being an asshole just across the board whether it was with friends or intimate relationships and just not being a good dude and they started getting a little bit of help and and this is what actually uh led me into social work as well finishing up that degree is I remember I was like all right I'm gonna start getting help and I went to one therapist and I told her the stories that I shared here and and a few others I'm just gonna spare you the details but she got up crying

and left the room and then came back and was like okay we're done here I was like oh sweet all right that's how this works and then I remember going to another therapist and he gave me like a bunch of like homework and asked me some random questions and He ended it with like, do you wish your parents were dead? I was like, not really, but I don't know where we're going with this. I was like, all right, we're done here. So I

was like completely turned off from that. And then witnessing three different firefighter buddies, two were told, hey, it's too hard for you. You should just retire. And they're really good firefighters. So they did because they didn't give them any ways out. And then another one was told that, hey, when those calls that trigger you ring out, just don't go. He's like, that's not how this works. I can't just knock on a call. And so that

happened. And then I don't know how I got turned on to the therapist I ended up finding, but she had worked specifically with first responders and veterans. And that's what opened the door. I was like, okay, this might actually work. And then that came around the same time of meeting my wife, Aniella. And when I met her, I was like, I knew she's the one. Like, no questions asked. Like, this is going to work. And I was like, well, I got to really un -F myself if I want

to make this work. And so that's when I started really hammering out all these issues and whatnot. So, yeah, I think it's just been a long time coming. And I finally realized that, you know, and when I talked to people, I was like, yeah, you know, I was 14, hanging out with a bunch of gang members, going to parties, drinking. Isn't that normal? And they're like, no, it's not normal. And then when the therapist was like, tell me about your childhood. I was like, I don't

remember much. before 17 she's like yeah that's a problem so when i was like actually starting to figure out that whatever normal is it is what it is it's all relative but what i was going through what i was thinking and the things that happened to me i wouldn't say aren't normal or normal they were normal for where i grew up but they were having significant impact on on who i was and my health mentally and and my way to be a and getting in the way of me being a better

person for sure yeah I mean, it's funny if you think about it, you know, a child growing up in a nuclear family in suburbia somewhere and the parents actually are madly in love with each other. You know, that's their normal. A little child growing up in Gaza at the moment, that's their normal. Two very different normals. So normal doesn't necessarily mean healthy. Yeah, exactly. Because, yeah, it's all relative for sure. Absolutely. All right. Well, then how did

you find Boulder Crest? And let's start talking about the program that you went through. All right. So I first, so, you know, I've taken all the critical incident stress management, the compassion fatigue classes, all the CBTs we've got to do with the military, the same with the fire, all the assist training and suicide trainings, like how to, how to help somebody else, how to look for your friend, make sure everybody's taken care of, make sure your wingman's taken care

of, all those courses. My commander at the time, he went through the Struggle Well course because he was friends with someone at Tucson Police Department. And apparently Tucson Police Department and Miami Police Department are the vanguards of the Struggle Well portion of Boulder Crest, which is specifically focused, I think it was on law enforcement. Now it's reaching out to fire and then it's reaching all first responders. So he went to that course and he knew I was very

invested into mental health. And he was like, hey, bro, you should go to this course. And it's

funny. i think i told him this but i guess he'll find out but i was like no i'm way too busy i'm good because in my mind i was like i'm not going through another resiliency course like they're not like what is going to make this different he's like okay cool and another one came up he's like hey i'm not really asking you this time you're gonna go i was like fine so i go into the struggle well course and um day one i was like ah here we go it's the same crap over and

over again and then when we really got into it and really got into the work nothing they teach is new nothing they teach is cosmic or nothing we've heard before but just the way they packaged it the way they made it about like how can Tony help Tony how can James help James instead of hey Tony make sure James is okay and he'll make sure you're okay then you both will be okay it was like no no shit like how can you reflect on yourself reflect on your day -to -day reflect

on your past understand that there are traumas that happened but what could what goodness can you get out of there and and so that's how i got exposed to boulder crushers through the struggle world course which was phenomenal and i thought that was like the capsule i tell everyone hey like this is my capsule of my mental health journey and then i started i did some guiding so they don't really call instructors they call them guiding and i guided with two other individuals

and they're like hey you need to go to warrior path i was like nah that's not for me I didn't feel worthy to go. Like, I didn't feel like I did enough as far as the combat side of the house. Like, no, you need to go. And I went through that and man, I was like struggle on steroids. And it was absolutely phenomenal. Like that one really pushed me over the edge from the things

I learned. And the biggest takeaway from the struggle, well, they do this really cool thing where they, they put up a graph and they're like, Hey, in your job. So if I were to ask you, James, In your job as a firefighter, do you think it was good to be hypervigilant and understand your surroundings and have situational awareness? Yes. Yes. Is it good to have attention to detail, you know, making sure your hose lays are good to go, making sure your air pack is above 40?

Yes. And, you know, things like that. Boom, boom, boom. Is it good to have all these things? Like, absolutely. Then they flip the script and then

they put the DSM -5 symptoms of PTSD. you know hyper -visionally um always looking around uh easily easily uh upset if something's not correct all these things are like holy so they made a parody of like this is the training you got to do your job and this is how you it bleeds over to your everyday life and you need to install a dimmer switch of when to turn that on and off instead instead of just on off when can you turn it up and turn it down and then they go into

how you're training growing up Like, were you trained to shut up and color in your house because you were scared? Were you trained to be overly aggressive because of the neighborhood you grew up in? Like, was it feast or famine? Did you have to be the strong one to fight? Well, that's your training. So nothing's good, nothing's bad.

It's just how you were trained. And now once you get an understanding of how you were trained, both professionally and in your childhood, then you can understand why these things happen and install that dimmer switch. And that was remarkable for me, just that little exercise. Incredible. Talk to me a little bit more about unpacking your childhood. I think one of the mistakes that a lot of the general conversation make is, oh,

PTSD. Oh, it's because you had that call, you know, that decapitated child, that gangbanger, whatever it was. And when you actually dive in, as you have done into this world, you realize that, you know, for example, the ACEs, the Adverse Childhood Experience score, excuse me. A lot of us supposedly are at six out of 10. A lot of the incarcerated population are at six out of 10. You know, there's that crossroads for

us. So understanding that a lot of the reasons that we even put the uniform on are because of our childhood, which I would argue is great if you've processed those traumas, not so good if you've kind of stuffed them down. So what was some of the aha moments? Because you've touched on it a couple of times that that was really when you kind of were looking that far back as

far as being being. taking the spotlight off your career and actually shining it to your formative years yeah absolutely that was the most incredible thing because all those those calls were bad right they didn't i guess they didn't have the impact that i thought they would have on me especially when i didn't before i had my daughter i remember going on uh on um pete's calls and like hey i'll i'll take care of it doesn't bother me i don't have kids and i thought being numb was my superpower

like it helped a lot uh quite actually so what made me realize that it's more than just the calls or in our duty was uh i was doing studies for social work one study was talking about combat veterans marines and they they talked about how like hey i was doing my job in combat that's not the problem because that's when they start figuring out like no it's the childhood thing and much like you said there was a study that was brought up at warrior path where the majority

of people that enlist have the high ACEs scores. Majority of first responders have the high ACEs scores because they want to, whether it's consciously or subconsciously, they want to go into an environment to protect others because they were not protected themselves. So yes, we sign up for trauma when we do these jobs. And yes, in a typical life, you'll see your grandparents pass away, your

parents pass away, maybe your brother. brother sister maybe uncle and down the line like a parent should never bury their child so on and so forth but in the first responder world military world you're going to see all that trauma like within a year like maybe five times over but um going back to the the childhood thing so in struggle while they talked about they have this tony robbins video and it said uh if you're going to blame him for all the bad you got to blame him for

all the good and and that helped and then there was also uh unpacking your rucksack like figuring out the goodness out of the bad things that happened so they talked about that and that's when i started reflecting back because when i was gosh i think it was like eight or nine i remember um going down the street and playing street fighter video games tournaments like i was awesome at it you know all day and out of nowhere the uh one of my friends was like hey come over here and he

showed me a gun showed me a revolver explained i have any revolvers better because it holds the shells and then showed me crack and then um uh sold it to the neighbor we watched the neighborhood hide like their mom and it was pretty bad experience fast forward like a week later there was a uh the older brother came back from jail he's like oh you think that's funny i'm gonna show you what jails look like and i was sexually assaulted at a young age and and uh

that struggle well made me realize like oh um maybe that's why i never sold drugs maybe that's why i never did anything illegal because i remember my answer when hey, do you want to sell this stuff that fell off a truck? Do you want to sell those drugs? Do you want to do this, do that? And I was like, no, I don't want to go to jail.

So it's like peeling back that I was like, oh, that's a gem I could find out of that rock is that really crappy thing happened to me, but it prevented me from doing things to go to jail because I was scared to death to go to jail because of that experience. So learning that and then Warrior Path may help me process my brother's death as well and made me realize like that was. the focal point of all this childhood stuff.

So now when I go back to the firehouse in Maine, now with my work in the military, I'm like, I have all these wellness practices. I have a solid understanding of why certain things trigger me, why certain things are upsetting to me because of the past. And now I'm able to process it a little better as opposed to pointing fingers. And another thing it did for me is it made me realize that, you know, I had a lot of shame

and guilt. I did a lot of bad things that people i cared about i you know i'm really good at isolating and shutting people off and all the things those are all just deep defense mechanisms and it taught me not to do that and taught me to get away from that and and to really uh build that trust and connection and have some good friends so i mean it just all like just came together and and really yeah the childhood stuff was a a big deal to process all that and get me to a better place

and i don't i can't i don't think the traumas exposed in the firehouse and military were what made me do bad decisions i think those were crutches because i could also use as a crutch like hey i'm treating you bad because i had it bad or i'm getting hammered every night because of this and it should be okay you should just leave me alone that's that's not the case and yeah just figuring out why things what's what where the training came from and how to stop it is probably

the most important things that i've i've learned I was really taken aback how many men, especially, were sexually abused when they were young on this podcast, a lot of them in uniform. I think it's woefully underappreciated how frequent it is. Obviously, the curtain's being pulled back a little bit more, and this sexual predator thing has been put into the center stage. Our generation and before, like I've heard so many stories of men who have been molested, who became firefighters,

cops, soldiers. And if that is put in, you talk about guilt and shame, you know, a lot of them, it was only when they realized that they were a victim of this. They stopped blaming themselves. You know, what did I do? You know, did I, I must've been, you know, the reason that they did that. No, it's okay to, in that situation, just be a victim. You were young, you were preyed upon, and this happened. But that is an extremely toxic cancer that's buried in that chest for some of

our men and women. Yeah, absolutely. And going through these courses and learning that as well and hearing other people's stories. I talked to one guy and I was like, it's really shitty,

but it's also kind of in a weird way. good because then you're not alone like you don't wish it upon anybody but you also don't want to be the only one like it's just kind of a weird dynamic right like it it helps i think both both of us heal and like hey we're not the only one and and this does happen and like you said you're just you're just a little kid like you you look back and and that's one thing one of the therapists brought up was like you have a scared little

child inside of you but you're a grown man and you're trying to keep both safe and that's a very difficult thing to do and just forgiving yourself and having that grace like it's not your fault it legitimately was not my fault like i didn't ask for it and i sure as hell couldn't protect myself as a little nine -year -old against a huge man so yeah it's it's rough going but just facing it facing those demons and getting after it and getting after the help and realizing

you're not alone is powerful absolutely well another area that that i talk about a lot now because i think it's so important and obviously most of the guests that have come on here are an example of this when we talk about mental health in our profession i feel like we've just got stuck on the stigma oh we've got to smash the stigma well that doesn't mean anything of course you know don't don't shame someone who's struggling but there's so much more of this conversation

than that i think where there's real um you know, hope there's almost excitement is the post -traumatic growth going through this, this unique toolbox that each one of us puts together, whether it's, you know, Boulder Crest Struggle Well and EMDR and psychedelics and, you know, canine therapy or whatever that unique cocktail is for you. The incredible growth that I see these men and women have. And just like you said, this happened to me and this happened to me and this call shook

me. I did this work and now I found value in each of these. And I think, you know, like the Japanese analogy, they fix the pottery with the gold glue. I think that's it. I think there's a lot of hope in simply doing the work and realizing the other side is worth it. Like you will be a better version of yourself, a better firefighter, a better father, a better husband or wife. So

talk to me about that part. You know, when you reflect back to when you were struggling, you know who are you today and let's and let's kind of you know unpack post -traumatic growth a little bit more yeah the kintsugi ball that's a really cool analogy i love that one i think the biggest one that that was taught in both programs was the just the trust and connection because in both programs you do share and and like you said you feel like you're gonna get judged and you

feel like you're gonna get shunned and people are gonna turn their back on you and if they really care about you that's not gonna happen and hell even in those to uh experiences i had just met these people and when everybody shared all all that was said was thank you for sharing there was no advice given there was no blame given i mean even right now i could have told you all all this stuff and historically right like oh you went through all that you could have

just responded with well just suck it up man you're good now like you got a good family you got a good job like what's the problem like uh it's more than that that's that's just the facade i put on that's my instagram reel i want you to see all the highlights but there's a lot more going on because again that could turn into an addiction of like why i need to be successful to hide all this other stuff so really just the vulnerability and i remember doing it uh with

one of my crews one time i was like i don't know how this is gonna work but i'm just gonna be super vulnerable around the dinner table and tell them how i feel about these certain calls and see what happens and holy cow did that just open up the conversation and we became a super tight crew and that was incredible i was like oh It actually works. Like people want to hear everyone's stories. And it's just the problem of like, I got to be strong. I got to be, I got

to be trusted. I'm not going to be trusted if I'm weak. And that's not true at all. So that's the biggest thing I learned is like, I can still go out and run a fire and I can still have it affect me a certain way and just be open about it. I can still run a bad medical call and let's, let's dope it out and talk about it. Let's not just bury it. I feel so much more present with my family. I feel present myself. I've forgiven myself. I'm open to hear other people's stories

and and a lot less judging as well. Like you don't know what people are going through. And just understanding that, you know, being on your phone or hitting people up on text, that's not the way to do it. You got to actually talk and connect and be with people and and get past that

service level. conversations just open yourself up that's how you're going to create deep conversations if we just sat here and talked about you know sports scores in the weather all day no one's going to listen to that no one cares we're not getting after uh what it means to be a human not and forget about man a woman this that and the other it's it's about human human connection that's why fire isn't so so important you know come together at the the bonfire and share your

feelings and whatnot so from where i was to where i'm at where i was i was the fun loving party drinker let's get after it but then i was home alone i was a mess now i whom i'm good by myself and good with others and that's a great feeling of not feeling lonely when i am by myself and just being trying to stop that trauma line for my daughter as much as i can and just be a a better person for myself and others like i can't help anybody else i don't help myself Absolutely.

It's funny, I've been reflecting on courage and cowardice a lot recently, I just posted an article, which I'm sure, I'm sure upset some people, but that's because they probably see themselves in it. But if you actually think about, and again, I'm six years removed now, but what I'm assuming is probably still continuing to get better, which is, you know, the safety as far as a fireside, and the more infrequent that a lot of house fires

are coming. If you think about a firefighter's 24 hours, how often do we actually have to be courageous operationally, running into a school shooting, you know, going through a second floor window and a VES search for a kid that you know is in there? It's hardly ever. We train for it

and rightly so, but it's hardly ever. Where there's courage, where we really need people to be that brave man or woman is courageous vulnerability, having the courage to actually open up, talk about, you know, Not just struggling, just talking about how fucking awful that call was. And not even so much the victim, but the shrieks of the family when we pulled that yellow sheet over them. You know what I mean? Those kind of things. And also the courage of advocating for an environment

that supports you. Because if we're just identifying as the sooty -faced, mustachioed firefighter leaning on a pike pole, that's a once in a blue moon that you truly, truly get to do that. But every single day you get to be courageous advocating for your family's health and you get to be courageous by opening the doors for others to talk by you being vulnerable. Yeah, absolutely. That's what I'm really proud of. My fire district is they have adopted the struggle. Well, it's really

cool. Every class is opened up with our fire chief telling his story in front of everybody.

So it's twofold, right? you can be in a position of power and still be vulnerable you don't have to keep a mask on to to make rank and be quote unquote successful but also it also also opens the doors like look the fire chief just spilled his guts everyone else can too this is a place of trust and yeah i think it's easier to um you see in the struggle well courses and i've heard it from other guys it's it's a little easier for the firefighters to talk they want to talk

they want to open up about these things i i worry about sometimes our police brothers and sisters because they're mostly alone they're in their squad cars by themselves at least we're either on a ambo with another person or in the in the engine talking it out and i think it's imperative for the captains or whoever's leading on the box or whoever the leader informal leader or leader in the fire station for them to set the tone you know you start shutting down these conversations

and don't let them happen that's It's not going to go well at all. And then for the younger guys and gals coming up, that's how they're going to learn, just like we did. Like, oh, you don't talk about that stuff. No, don't bring it up. But if right away you're talking about it, opening up, advocating for yourself, advocating for the crew, advocating for patients, whoever, inviting PD over for dinner because they just ran a crappy call with you and building those relationships,

that's so much stronger. It's just like a family unit. If you've got a family that you just. One person's in each room watching TV and they're not talking. That's not going to be a strong family. There's no different from the fire service as well. Like there's a part of me that wishes we could bring back open bay bunks. So we're always together, but there's some niceness as well as having your own room, but it just has

to be done. We got to get back to being little mini tribes and, and not tribes where we hate other people and we're trying to fight, but just

these little tight knit groups that. you can be trusted and have that connection and no one's going to burn you like i've never been burned i've never been burned for being uh authentic and vulnerable as far as like who i am as a person my feelings yeah if you mess up on the training ground or you do some bonehead thing yeah you're gonna get made fun of or second guess but when you're no talking about how you feel who you are your values and having these deep conversations

i just don't feel like that's a place anyone's going to burn you and it's it's important to do yeah where i see the people that do are actually the ones that are struggling you know this is kind of talking shit the whole time but so again it's like you know as i say on here a lot it's not my quote but i love it um you know don't ask what what's wrong with you ask what happened to you And I think that crotchety old fucker is probably hurting. He's probably drinking himself

to sleep every night. So maybe rather than lash out at them, kind of start figuring out how can you access that person as well. But I mean, the firehouse is set up in many, many ways for us to be vulnerable, for us to have conversations. And if you look at our forefathers, what they did well, they had a dog in the station. I don't know why we got rid of that. or this bullshit lawsuit mentality that we have in this country.

But then also the dining room table. Like I think individual bunks are great, but just have a policy where all, you know, there's times where you eat together, you sit together, you know, work out together, play volleyball, whatever it is. And then, yeah, absolutely. Go in your bunk and, you know, call your kids. And obviously when you sleep, you shouldn't get woken up by other rigs that are running. So that's what makes those bunks great. But yeah, if you're going to have

this kind of layout in the station. create a culture where during the day you're all together because that's what you should be doing and that gives you then the opportunity to actually start sharing stories and offload some of the stuff that you just went through yeah absolutely i just went to a teach back for the struggle course and it was pretty cool one of the captains was uh talking about how they're gonna because they i mean there's so many different practices they

teach you in these courses i mean we could spend hours talking about it but one of the things he was going to adopt is hey we come back from our four days off One of the first things I'm asked to cruise is like, how was your week? How's your wellness triangle? Cause they talk about your wellness triangle, your mind, body, mind, body, financial and spirit. How's your triangle doing? Is there anything that happened on your

days off that you want to talk about? Is there anything that happened that may affect your performance or just how you want to be interacted with? Are you on edge? Like, and just going through the

table and letting them do that because. if a lot of people went through the course and they're speaking the same language and that's really cool and putting gratitude boards up in the in the house and i know some of the police stations have put gratitude boards up and just simple things to put up there and it's a really cool uh barometer as well right like if i got a guy that or gal that's um every day they put gratitude up there or some cool quote and three days in

a row they don't put anything in there moping around i know something happened and we're gonna have a conversation it's not a i'm gonna come down on you what's going on i need you to perform conversation it's gonna be like hey i've noticed this how you doing what happened what's going on so just meeting everybody with uh with wonder instead of questioning like i wonder what's going on with them i wonder what happened absolutely well you mentioned about your department adopting

struggle well what does that look like um so i don't have all the ins and outs but they're they're hosting the struggle well and i think their goal i think the ultimate goal is to get everybody through but they don't want to push it and i can't speak too much on them i'm been there but what i've seen and heard is the goal is to get everybody through especially those that want to get through and the really cool thing is they've opened it up so they'll fit

it with mostly people from the fire district but they've opened up to local pd other fire and other people that want to get in there too so it's just not a hey if you're not a part of us you can't get this they see the value in it and they want to expose as many people as they can to it as well because I was able to sneak some of the military members into a few classes, and that was very beneficial. Absolutely. Now, did you mention that you transitioned back into

the military for a while? Yes. So I got out of active duty in 08, took a little break, and then bounced around between the Guard and Reserve. So right after my father passed, and this was some reflection I did, I realized why I was so hesitant to go back to fire, why I isolated from the fire service. I was like, oh, I just... I'm going to do this military thing and this is what I need to be doing. So I was on orders for five

years and that's coming to an end in May. So I'll retire from the Air National Guard and then go back to the firehouse in May and do some training. However long that's going to take and get back on the rig. Brilliant. So a lot of back and forth. Beautiful. Well, I want to throw some closing questions at you before I let you go if you've got time. Yeah, of course. All right. The first one I'd love to ask, is there a book or are there

books that you love to recommend? It can be related to our discussion today or completely unrelated. Yeah. So shameless plug for you. Definitely the kinder book. I mean, that was incredible. I really enjoyed that. And I liked our back and forth about that. I almost ripped you off if it didn't end the way I wanted it to. The Struggle Well book, there's actually a Struggle Well book, which is pretty incredible. Comfort Crisis is great. And then Dr. Edgar, The Gift and The Choice.

Those are really cool. Talking about the difference between being a victim and living in victimhood because we're all going to go through something. It's just how do we end up on the other side? You know, like the fun books that I wrote down was like Any Jack Car. Manhunt's pretty cool. It's about the assassination of Abraham Lincoln. Very detailed. That's a fun one. Never Ending Story. I rewatched that movie and realized how traumatic that movie is when I was little. And

that book was pretty cool. Beautiful. So for books, that's what I got. And then the Ryan Holiday, the stoic one's always good. Well, you mentioned Neverending Story, the film. What about other films and documentaries that you love? Growing Up in Chicago, Last Dance was incredible. You know, the Chicago Bulls story, that was cool. And I just watched that Unstoppable movie with the wrestler from ASU with one leg. That was

pretty cool. I mean, most of our movies now are Moana or Clifford the Big Red Dog and Tumble Leaf with my daughter. Not a lot of adult movies going on right now. Yeah, I just watched that documentary as well. I mean, sorry, The Unstoppable as well, and it was amazing. I'm going to see if I can get the actual guy on the show. Oh,

that'd be cool. That'd be really cool. All right, well, speaking of amazing people, is there a person that you recommend to come on this podcast as a guest to speak to the first responders, military, and associated professions of the world? Oh, man, I'd have to throw out probably Ken Falk, the founder of Older Crest Foundation. that would

probably be really cool. Some of the people that I've guided with and that I've been involved with Boulder Crest and struggle well, some of those guides would be pretty powerful because there's some police, there's some military and fire. It's a good mix. If able, Dr. Tedeschi and Dr. Calhoun, the ones that coined PTG and

started that academic research. as well that would be pretty cool to hear their story because it's an incredible program it did a lot for me beautiful all right well then the last question before we make sure everyone knows where to find you and boulder crest what do you do to decompress oh so i just started uh jiu jitsu about two years ago that's been incredible i was scared to death to do it i've wanted to do it for a long time and so that's been really helpful hiking rucking

uh working out so most of the things i do to decompress a lot of daddy daughter time time with the family so that's very helpful meditation all the stuff i learned through warrior path and uh struggle well journaling brilliant all right well then for people listening if they want to reach out to you or find you online where are the best places for that uh probably nowhere to be quite honest i don't i don't follow my social media anymore i don't have any big platforms

If for some random reason someone wanted to talk to me, I guess they could reach out to you and get my email. But yeah, that's a tough one. I don't feel that I'm that special. I'm still super honored to be here. And yeah, I don't really have a big platform. Like, hey, come find me. Yeah, well, it doesn't matter at all. I mean, that's good. It's funny because I was doing research

before. before the show and i'm like oh shit i actually don't know much about tony's tony's life because most people have a linkedin or something but i mean for us in the fire service you know what's the point you're not really trying to sell anything you know what i mean you're not networking in business so so yeah um what about boulder crest uh struggle well warrior's path where are the best kind of places to find those yeah just i think just google boulder crest it's

all under there google struggle well warrior path or boulder crest and all the information's on there um you know to apply for warrior path and then so another one so the warrior path is mostly focused around veterans but then they have the struggle well experience which is for first responders so kind of same thing with different cohort because it's very tight -knit group there's eight of us in the course and we're still every day we talk on signal and it's uh the cool thing

about the warrior path and struggle well experience is it's not a catch and release it's a five to seven day in person and then it's still another 90 days after that where you have biweekly meetings with your team and daily homework. So it's a very long process, which is very helpful. So just Google those and then struggle well. You can Google that one as well. And that one's more of the five day in person that's hosted by an agency. So if your local agency is doing it,

get after it. If something you want to do, pitch it. There's plenty of POCs on there of like how to how to get it. to your organization you know i know they go out and do i think they call it executive days one and two day exposure to the uh the decision makers and show them what it's all about and it goes from there but definitely powerful brilliant Well, mate, I want to say

thank you so much. I mean, not only for talking about, you know, Struggle Well and Boulder Crest and all these solutions, these tools that people can add again to their toolbox and kudos to your department for actually bringing that in themselves, but also to underline your courageous vulnerability for going to these places. and opening the door and talking about these traumas that you had early and then this incredible strength that you've gleaned from them now working through.

So I want to thank you so, so much for being so generous with your time and coming on the Behind the Shield podcast today. Yeah, appreciate it, brother. Hopefully I didn't disappoint. This was a fantastic opportunity. I'm just glad to have this time with you and tell a story. Hopefully you can help somebody. We all got something going on. I know from the outside, they look at me like successful in the military, wearing the red helmet, like, oh, that guy's got his shit

together. It couldn't be further from the truth. It was a nice mask I wore for a long time, and I'm ready to peel it back and be open and help anybody that's willing to get that help. At the end of the day, we're all going to experience something bad, and you can call it big T's, little t's, whatever name you want to put on it. How do we overcome it? And we're all strong enough to do that. I mean, that's why we're human. And we've all survived 100 % of our trauma so far.

So there's light at the end of the tunnel. Some tunnels are longer than others, but keep pressing. You can get through it. It's a lot of work, but it's worth it to live the good life that we deserve.