WEBVTT
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Well I was just curious to find out.
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What exactly happened in the line of duty?
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I was a sergeant and um I had a call one night to uh back up two of my officers and uh there was a vehicle that had parked on somebody's private property and refused to move.
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And this is where?
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Uh this is in Manatee Springs, Colorado.
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Gotcha.
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Okay.
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So the um it's right butt's up right next to Colorado Springs.
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Uh so the uh individual did not want to move and he was uh hyper and uh they felt he was on uh drugs or and or alcohol.
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So they called for supervisor, and when I showed up, I walked in front of my car, which was a mistake, and he uh put it in gear and floored it, and he hit me and pinned me between his car and my patrol car, and then pushed me out of the way and then took off down the road.
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So it uh created uh a multitude of uh injuries, which then eventually turned into uh a severe rheumatoid arthritis and uh ended my career.
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Did you ever forgive the person that did this to you?
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Not completely, sure.
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To be honest with you.
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It's one of these things where you know I was anger, full of anger, full of depression, full of resentment on so many aspects.
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This individual caused me to lose a career that I had worked for since I was 17 years old.
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Uh, I'm sure the passion that you had in law enforcement at the time.
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It is.
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I say 17 years old, I 18 years old, I went into college to be a law enforcement officer, and uh I enjoyed my job and I wanted to go up the line.
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So he put a halt to that.
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I was a sergeant, getting ready to take lieutenant's test and move up.
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Um he changed my life drastically, my wife's life, my kids' life, my colleagues' life.
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So there's a certain amount of resentment that I still hold in regard to that because it it uh was difficult.
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It was a difficult journey.
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I went through eight operations to get back where I'm at now.
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We'll talk about that here, you know, obviously in a few minutes.
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But um, it's been a journey, uh, a painful journey, kind of a situation.
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So it was hard to forgive completely.
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Um, but at the same time, I forgive him a little bit because it allowed me to redirect my purpose in life.
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We all want to redefine ourselves sometimes and figure out where we fall in this lifetime.
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So it allowed me to redefine my purpose in life.
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Two questions.
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What got you over the hump of the anger and depression that you experienced?
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A lot of work.
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Yeah.
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Was that more of the self-awareness or the inner spirit?
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A little bit of self-awareness, a little bit of, you know, inner spirit, a lot of uh uh family and friends, and my wife and both my daughters and my sister, my brother-in-law, my colleagues, uh a family support, uh, uh a network of support that allowed me the confidence to say, we're here to push you from behind, we're here to pull you up if you need it.
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Right.
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We're here to walk side by side and hold your hand.
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So when you have that kind of environment with you, that they don't allow you to go down a very dark, dark path.
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They don't allow you to be able to take um the negativity of it all and make that the forefront of it.
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They give you a positive environment, a positive atmosphere, which makes it easy to to kind of start working your way out of that.
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And I guess that's a life lesson we here see today in individuals that perhaps are struggling, finding that support unit, whether that comes from friends, family, teachers, law enforcement, as an example.
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Oh, exactly.
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I think that we don't communicate enough with our family and our friends.
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And you know, and people in this position are Why do you think that?
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I well, I think it's because it it today's day and age, with all the chaos that's going around, I think in in the electronics and the digital age, it has taken us away from the one-on-one conversations.
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It's taken us away from the looking at somebody and saying, I want to talk to you about your day-to-day.
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How was this?
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How was that?
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Yeah.
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Being able to remember to say, I love you before somebody walks out the door, or I'm proud of you, or I appreciate you instead of doing it through a text and saying it face to face because it means more.
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Isn't that the same thing though?
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It isn't.
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A text is impersonal.
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A conversation is I agree, by the way.
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A conversation is personal.
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A conversation means you can look at somebody, you can look them in the eye, you can look them in the eye this way.
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Yeah.
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You can tell them We can feel their energy too.
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Exactly.
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Yeah.
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That what I'm saying to you is I mean to you.
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You know, my wife and I, every day before she walks out the door, we say, I love you.
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Every day when she makes it to work, I say, I love you, have a nice day, have a great day.
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Okay?
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It's it's a communication.
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Something I shall learn when it's not here.
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It's a communication that allows us the personal connection and to keep that personal connection because I think we as humanity, society, and culture, we have developed during this time period where we need people.
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We need people around us, we need friends, we need family, we need grandmothers and grandfathers, and we need sons and daughters, friends, coworkers.
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We need that commitment with each other.
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If we don't have that, then we isolate ourselves.
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And isolation creates its own problems, its own compounding of depression and anxiety and loneliness.
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And when those things start creeping up on people, it it changes people's lives.
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So I think the communication is more important than a text.
