Vegas Flames and Dirty Truths: The Uncensored Story of Kat, a Female Las Vegas Firefighter

The sirens fade. The weight doesn’t. Kat didn’t plan on becoming a firefighter, but a chance conversation pushed open a door and she ran through it—into academies, midnight tones, and two decades on Las Vegas rigs. What followed is the story most people never hear: a first fatal fire involving a child and a body that learned to go numb; a station culture that prized stoicism over support; the rare save that sticks and the dozens of losses that burn in around it. When a call with orphaned kids finally sent her home mid-shift, she began to see what the uniform had kept quiet.

We trace the arc that institutions rarely teach: how stress lodges in the body, how autoimmune alarms and sleepless nights are messages, and how EMDR can cut the hidden wires that keep yesterday’s scenes firing today. Kat talks about divorce and the relief of claiming a life; caretaking a loved one at home through end-of-life and what “sacred hard” really looks like; and the hit-and-run that tethered every similar call from her past and made the old boxes burst open. She shares the truth about station anger as a contagion, why leadership choices matter, and how small acts—naming what hurts, protecting recovery, checking on the quiet ones—can change outcomes.

This conversation holds space for compassion in unexpected places, including those who make terrible choices in terrible seconds. It’s also a field guide for anyone wearing a badge or running a rig: build a net before you fall, talk out loud after the hard calls, learn evidence-based tools like EMDR, and let identity rest on more than a shift schedule. Kat’s parting wisdom is simple and hard: get comfortable being uncomfortable. That’s where the real change happens.

If this resonated, share it with a teammate, subscribe for more candid stories on trauma and resilience, and leave a review so others can find their way to this conversation. Your share might be the lifeline someone needs today.

Gift For You!!! Murders to Music will be releasing "SNAPSHOTS" periodcally to keep you entertained throughout the week! Snapshots will be short, concise bonus episodes containing funny stories, tid bits of brilliance and magical moments!!! Give them a listen and keep up on the tea!  

Hi, I'm Aaron your host and I would love to invite you to leave a review, send some fan mail or email me at Murder2Music@gmail.com. Does something I'm saying resonate with you...Tell me about it! Is there something you want to hear more about...Tell me about it! This show is to provide value, education and entertainment and hopefully find its way to the WORLD! Share, Like and Love the Murders to Music Podcast!

www.StreamlineEventsLLC.com
www.DoubleDownDuo.com

@StreamlineSEE
@DDownDuo

Youtube-Instagram-Facebook

Chapters

• 0:00 Meet Kat: Firefighter from Vegas
• 2:20 Serendipity to Service: Kat’s Origin
• 9:00 Testing, Academy, and Breaking In
• 16:30 First Fire, First Child Lost
• 24:30 Culture Then: No Space for Feelings
• 31:00 The Call That Sent Her Home
• 38:21 Saves, Near-Misses, and Burned-In Images
• 45:51 Anger, Station Culture, and Union Shifts
• 53:21 Therapy, EMDR, and Divorce
• 1:01:44 Identity, Adrenaline, and Life After
• 1:09:14 Caregiving and End-of-Life at Home
• 1:16:44 The Hit-and-Run That Opened Every Box
• 1:25:14 Compassion for Offenders and Hard Truths
• 1:32:44 Processing Trauma: What Actually Helps

Transcript

SPEAKER_00: 0:23

Ladies and gentlemen, welcome back to the Murders to Music Podcast. My name is Aaron, I'm your host, and thank you guys so much for coming back for this show and a special guest tonight. On tonight's show, we have a very, very special guest. Now, this young lady has made a career out of being a professional firefighter in Las Vegas, Nevada. She climbed the ranks, she's got stories to tell for days, and she will talk about all the ins and outs, ups, downs, twists and turns that you can't even imagine are happening out there. You know, we see these heroes on the red trucks with all the lights, and unless we're in that world, we really don't know what they're experiencing or what they're going through. And that's what we're gonna talk about tonight. But we're gonna go deeper than surface level. And we're gonna get to know her story, her story of resilience, and we're gonna see the human side of firefighting. So Catherine is a very special young lady. I met her actually on a whim in Las Vegas. We were both standing in line to go to the same restaurant. One thing leads to another, and uh, she finds out my history, I found out hers, and here we are. So I would love for you guys to get to know her, sit back, relax, and stick around, because this is gonna be a long, extended episode. When you hear Kat's story, I think it'll be pretty clear why we didn't break this up into sections. There's some conversations that we have in life that just need continuity. You know, there's nothing worse than getting into a deep conversation and then having the bell ring, and you have to come back to it a later day. You lose the feeling, you lose the emotion, you lose the heart. And in tonight's episode, Kat is going to open up and talk about the dirty truth that lies in emergency services and being a female in a male-dominated fire department world in the great metropolitan city of Las Vegas. I don't think you're gonna want to miss any of it. So let's start the conversation, and here we go. What made you go into the fire service?

SPEAKER_01: 2:23

So weird. I had no clue that that was even an option. Never even thought about it. Never grew up as uh a kid who wanted to be a cop or firefighter. I used to want to be a veterinarian when I was a little kid. Uh a dancer. I wanted to be a dancer. I loved all that until I got too tall. And and uh I loved gymnastics. And uh the lady was like, You can't you can't be a gymnast, you're gonna be too tall. And that kind of crushed my whole. I just wanted to be a little ballerina girl, right? Like I was a tomboy, but I was a girly girl too. So never really had a direction of what I wanted to do with my life. I just knew that I wanted to make money. I was capable. I was going to UNLV, the college here for engineering. I I thought I'd do well in that. I'm I'm a math person, I'm science, I love all that stuff. Uh, but I was working, I'd open the Palms Casino uh as an extra board and valet. And eventually, once I think that was uh end of 2001, and almost within a year, I got full-time and I became swing shift supervisor, and we started splitting up. When we started, we weren't making great tips, they weren't running it real well, people were kind of pulling off the top. So after about a year, we had it all settled, and uh I became a supervisor, so I had a say, started making great money, but I started hanging out with security guys that worked that drive around, you know, on their on their bikes or cars or whatever, and we'd just chit-chat. And I was interested in guns. My dad had guns uh when I was growing up, hunting rifles and whatnot. And I always had a uh curiosity but uh deep respect. My dad taught me how to respect firearms, and uh so I wanted to learn more, so then I wanted to get my CCW. So security guards were this, I know it's a long story, but this is I get to the answer. Um, so I started going to the shooting range with these guys, hanging out, and uh I decided to get my CCW. Well, I worked swing shift like 7 p.m. to 3 a.m. And uh it was just hard. They only did offered the CCW class that had to be at uh on Saturdays. So I kept rescheduling it, rescheduling it. I finally was like, okay, I gotta get this done. Kept procrastinating. I go into this class and I end up being there that day with a city captain for city uh fire department. And I'm I'm a pretty uh I'm tall, I'm five foot eleven, you know, I'm this big tall woman and not afraid of, you know, I own my space, and this guy's like, what do you do? I'm like, I'm valet, I just park cars for a living. He's like, man, you should think about a career in the fire service, and I'm like, what? I mean, you mean a firefighter? He's like, yeah. He's like, I think you do really well. Like, I feel like you you'd you'd mesh, you'd you're look like you're athletic, capable, strong, whatever. And I was like, huh. Yeah, that sounds kind of fun. That sounds cool. Like, I just like whatever. Uh he's like, I know we're not hiring, but I think county is hiring. I'm like, oh, okay. I don't know anything about the hiring process. I don't know how competitive it is. I don't know that five people show up at a freaking convention center to take a written test to weed down to a 200-person list or whatever, you know. Like, it was there was it was way more there was way more applicants back when I was getting hired than there is now. It's it's I think it's just hard for any entity at this point to hire quality uh humans that are like healthy and functioning enough to to do these positions. Um so uh I'm like, yeah, whatever. So I think about it. So that's Saturday, and I get to hang out with this guy. You know, it's like a half-day class or whatever, you're there for four or five, six hours. Um, and then I just go about my business. And by Monday, I think about it enough, and I so I go, I look it up and I go down, you know, you gotta get on a computer, there's no smartphones. This is this is 2001, right?

unknown: 6:14

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01: 6:14

Oh, and I and I had just gotten back, you know, yeah, September 11th of 2001, and I just uh backpacked Europe from May to July of 2001. Uh I just went and saw a bunch of countries. So I started doing this job, doing uh valet, going, I know I can make good money at it, but is this really like, do I I don't want to do this 10, 15, 20 years from now, still parking cars? Like if I don't show up to work, I don't make money. Whereas the benefits, you know, I start that's what the City Fire guy was talking about. He's like, you get a pension, you get you know insurance, get benefits, they take care of you, blah, blah, blah. I'm like, oh wow, it's like it's a career. It's a I get to do different things and make a difference. Like I really wanted to to do something that I felt was helping, you know. Sure. So I that all went through my head between Saturday to Monday, and I went down and I applied, filled an application. It was the last day the county was taking applications for firefighter. And I was like, wow, I guess I got in. Whatever. What do I gotta do? Right. I didn't have any EMT skills, I didn't have any fire knowledge. I literally talked to a guy at the gym that was also uh testing for fire, and he suggested a book I study. I got that one book. There were several books I could have studied. The only thing I studied in that that dang study guide was some tools. There were fire tools that I'd never seen before. I'm like, I don't know what these are, but like the the whole book was, you know, it's kind of a general aptitude test. It's you know, math, reading, writing, you know, some some force motion pulleys, you know, you got to figure out which way things are motions going, whatever. But the only thing I studied out of any study guide I had in front of me was the tools. That was the only thing on the written test that I went to that I didn't know that I got right. Like I aced the test, I got like a 90-something percent on the test. I was terrified of going down to the um training center because they're firemen, like there's all these firefighters, and I'm just this valet Parker female, 23, not sure what the heck I'm doing with my life. And I gotta take this physical, you know, it's just they call it the CPAT. Um, I don't know if it's it used to be a nationally accredited uh test, physical test. So you gotta wear 50-pound vest, 25 pounds on your fifth, 12 and a half, 12 and a half. So you're wearing a total of 75 pounds, you gotta do three and a half minutes on the stairmaster, they take the two shoulder weights off, and you gotta use your noodle legs to like pull hose, you know, hoist, um, carry tools, uh strike a sledge, do all this stuff. And I'm like, I watched the video to learn what the test was, and then we could have gone down there and practiced it, but I wouldn't, I didn't do that because I was afraid to go down there and fail or mess up, you know. So I just go to the gym, put weights in a backpack, practice. I'm like, well, if I got you three and a half minutes, I should be able to do 10, right? So, you know, just just train more than you're going to play, and you're gonna be fine. And I went in, no one knew who I was. I went through, I passed the test the first time, and they were like, Who are you? What's your name? Gonna look on my list. Like, you haven't been been through here to I didn't I didn't understand, like you actually, it's okay to to seek help. It's okay to to fail and get better. Like, I didn't grow up learning that stuff. I grew up with expectations because I'm gen gen X of feral children that my parents were great parents, but they weren't exactly hands-on parents. They were just like, We love you, you're awesome, go figure it out. And I would just do it on my own. So I was always self-sufficient, independent, and I was like, I just have to be able to do this thing. I just have to be good. And so I came in and I just passed through everything and I went to the interview and I was shitting bricks. I was so nervous because I didn't know what to say. I had no, like, I hadn't done anything to prep. You're like, I know, you know, you had a stellar interview. You're like, yeah, I've been doing right-along since eight. I got to the Explorer Gram at 13 and I volunteered and did all this stuff. I I listened to a thousand interviews to help hire people, but I was never that person. I walked in, my hair was long. I had I did have like a suit, skirt, thing on, but my makeup, you know, I wanted to look pretty and nice, and I walk into the like the sitting room, and there's all these people with high and tight, and all I'm like, oh shit, what did I what am I doing? You know, all the guys have really short hair, the women have their hair up, and I'm like, oops. But I just I walked in and I was honest. Um, I was like, honestly, this is uh I know I'll be good at this job, you know, just kind of told them what I had to offer. I said, but I I don't have the skills of a firefighter or an EMT. I have life skills. I've done construction, I know how to talk to people. I'm not afraid of hard work, I'm not afraid of tools. I grew up working on cars, etc. And they were just they're like, okay, cool, you're in, you know, just like we like you. I was like, oh, sweet. I just I left there going, I think I did okay. They were all smiling, you know. And the one chief, uh Chief Plank, is such a sweet man. He's like, he's like, Kat, you walked in that door, and I was like, who is this lady? He's like, you started talking, I was like, oh, we're hiring her. I was like, oh thank Thanks, Chief. I just I felt like it was a place I belonged, and I it just kind of stumbled into my lap, and I I didn't I I I went through an academy of we had the largest academy in Clark County fire department history. We started with, I believe, like 69 cadets. That is a huge class for us. Uh we've had classes as small as 12. So um they decided to do this jumbo uh class because we were so behind. They need bodies to seats, and uh we ended up graduating 47 out of you know 70, 68 to 70 is where we started. Um and uh there were guys in there that had been trying to get hired for a decade. And I was like, what? What? They're like, yeah, I've been trying to get on the fire department for nine years. I'm like, holy sh holy shit, man. I'm sorry. Like, I know being a woman definitely helped, but I was capable as well. And and then it but it made me respect it and appreciate it more. It's like I I understand, you know, some people get mad at that, like, oh, you're only there because you're a woman. Well, maybe I got more of an opportunity because I was. You're right. But you know what? There was 12 of us on the entire force of 700, and I'm as good, if not better, than half of the men driving these fire trucks. So I don't feel like I was just handed a badge. I earned it, and I and I do the job, and I'm done my part, and I've given back, and I've been involved in the union, and I've given back and taught, and I've learned my job and did it well.

SPEAKER_00: 12:57

So how many years how many years were you on total?

SPEAKER_01: 13:01

Total, I got hired in January of 03 and I retired September of 14 or 23, and uh it was just over 20. I think it was like 20 years and like seven months or something. Um and then I bought I had to buy the time to make up the rest to not take any penalties to retire. Yeah. I just it was time. I was getting to the point to getting to the point where uh it was hard, some calls. I had some really tough calls, and uh I didn't I didn't go home on a after a bad call until my last year, my last year on the floor. I had a really bad kid call. Kids didn't get hurt, but basically parents were separated. Dad comes to pick up the kids from the mom at the apartment complex, tells the kids, go ahead and go to the pool for a minute, I'm gonna talk to your mom. We just need to talk parent stuff for a little bit and then we'll head out. Well, he ends up shooting mom in the face and shoots himself and leaves his kids orphaned, and they don't know what the hell's happening. And uh, we show up, the cops are already there, they're already taping everything off. We gotta go in to call the call the parents and make sure that they're dead, um, or work them or whatever. And I'm standing around, I I was an engineer, I drove a fire truck for uh probably over a little over 16 of my 16 years out of my career, and uh so I just take care of the rig and take care of my crew, and I'm just kind of kind of like the informal leader to my captain. You know, I was my captain and I were like this, like he didn't need to speak, I knew what he needed, I knew what he wanted, I knew what he was looking at. So I just and I'm just intuitive, just kind of very aware, you know. You just when you get these fields, you just can't not see things. You're profile and constantly, you know, it's it's a survival, it's it's it's necessary. It helps you, it helps everyone around you. Just so I'm watching these kids wander around trying to figure out what's happening, why can't they walk past the tape? And and I start talking to them, and there's a baby also, so the one the the sister, she's probably early teen, she's got a little baby in her arms, and then there's uh another boy. I don't remember if he was younger and older, but they were both fairly young, preteen to teen. And uh I was like, Well, you guys can't go in there right now, you know, since I was like, Do you have any other family? You know, have have the cops said anything to you about like getting a whole do you have a grandma? Like, why? Like, well, since both your parents are gone, they're like, What? And right then I was like, you motherfuckers, you motherfuckers. And I'm looking around, there's like five cops standing around with their fucking thumbs in their pockets, and I'm like I I I I was like, I can't do this. You I just felt like I just walked right into a fucking trap.

SPEAKER_02: 15:46

Yeah, totally.

SPEAKER_01: 15:46

But I can't, I can't not help these people, like these poor children. All of a sudden the boy's like, What? What do you mean my parents are gone? And he starts screaming at me, and he's like, My dad's dead, my mom's dead, and I'm like, uh starling, yes, I'm yes. And the sister starts to like sit down, and I'm holding the baby for her, and I'm looking around at these cops, and I'm just I'm like pissed, but I'm my heart's breaking for them. And at the after the hall said and done, I was just trying to keep it together. We had to ride into the hospital on with one of the parents. Uh and uh after that was all done, I looked at my captain and I called my husband and I was like, I don't, you know, this is what's happening. He's like, just let me know what you need, come home, I'll be here, whatever. And I looked at my captain, Mac, and I was like, Mac, I I've never done this before, but I don't I can't be here right now. I don't know what to do. He's like, go. He's like, go home. It's okay, it's fine. And that was the first time that I think I really had uh yeah, I had I had calls throughout my career that were significant and impactful. Um but that you know it just it they start to build, I guess. It's just a it becomes a big heavy pile that you end up getting stuck underneath. It's I don't know. I just the best way I can explain it is you know, I end up being pretty depressed. And to me, depression is just being at the bottom of the ocean and not wanting to come up, you know, and just everything's so heavy and quiet and dark, and you just it's almost like you just kind of want to stop and give up.

SPEAKER_00: 17:19

Yeah, I've been there. Was that one of your last calls that that last one you told me about? Yeah, it was one of the well catalyst for retirement.

SPEAKER_01: 17:30

It got me off the floor. I went into training after that, uh, shortly after, probably a couple months after that. And uh I just I taught I taught engineer academies and I ran a test, a whole test for an engineer list uh right before I retired. So it was like a year and a half, a year and a half that I trained and taught before I uh retired. So I retired out of the training center. You know, my very first fire ever was super traumatic. I and it was situational. I was uh working in, you know, you hit the floor as a rookie. I'm I'm running around like a chicken with my head cut off, trying to do everything, trying to be, you know, implement all these new tools I've learned and skills and assessments and cooking and cleaning and just and just being on point, not making any mistakes, and you know, those four tones go off or fire and your butt puckers, and you're like, oh fuck, here we go. This is what I've this is what I'm here for, right? Not this, I mean I enjoy all the camaraderie, the cooking, the cleaning, etc. You know, I'm always been a tomboy, so like I I got accepted for, especially for being a woman. I was kind of like one of the guys, you know, but there's always there's always a there's always a layer, there's always a separation layer. It's it's for unfortunate, but I understand it um as a female in the department. But um, my first fire, so I'm still like a blue helmet, which means I'm still within my rookie year. You have that that uh you know five months of an academy, and then you hit the floor for that rest of that other six, seven months, and that's when you get to hands-on, you're you're doing the shifts until you kind of like you with your one year, you get your yellow helmet and you you kind of go on, and you're supposed to be pretty proficient. You take your firefighter two test, you get certified, and it's like, all right, man, now if you fuck up, you better have a good reason, you know. Um chances to fuck up are over.

unknown: 19:20

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01: 19:21

So I'm I'm terrified. I'm going in on my first fire. I've only been on the floor for maybe a couple months, and I'm over on the east side of Las Vegas. Uh it's uh station 20. It's off of uh Lake Mead and Nellis, not a great area. Um and we head out to uh this house, and it's kind of like a house, but there's no power. You know, there's these neighborhoods that are all messed up. Um, it's a brick home, not much, just lick literally brick. Nothing on the outside. It's on a like on a corner of an industrial area, dirt lot. You know, it's amazing what you remember and don't remember. Um, I know my crew, we go in, the house is still burning on the inside. There's uh a couple that's outside. They're explained to us that there's no electricity, and it was summer, so it's super hot in Vegas. So they had candles inside this home burning in the different rooms, and they had fans blowing to kind of cool it down while they fall asleep. Uh mom has left this little girl with these two people. I don't know if they were a couple or what, but you know, everything's always just I don't know. In those areas, it's always convoluted. There's always like these layers of like trying to get down to what the frick is actually happening, you know, like who are you? Who do you belong to? Whatever. Um, and I think I found all this out after the fact, but we go in to search for this little girl. She's hasn't come out of the house. We don't know where she's at. Mom has dropped her off with these people at the middle of the night to go turn tricks to make money to support her kid, and leaves it with these two people, tweakers, meth heads, whatever. Um no electricity, no power, you know, burning candles, and they run out because they freak out, and the house then just completely ignites. You got air blowing into this place with candles lit. So the little girl hides in the corner and dies. So we have to go in and search, and you know, everything that you're you're terrified of experiencing in your first fire, like blackout, you can't see, it's hot, you know there's fire in the rooms, but you have to go in and start searching. So your adrenaline's just you know, going through the roof, and I'm just trying to breathe and hear you got your mask on, you're trying to hear the communications, like all this amazing stuff that happens in a fire that you've just never like you don't know until you know, right? You got to experience it, you have to go through it. And then the more you do it, you know, the easier it gets and the calmer you get, and the more you can breathe and and see and feel and hear and and be effective. So I don't remember a whole much other than I'm just trying to search and I'm feeling, and I'm just trying to go back to what I learned at the academy to just to do a left-handed search, right-handed search, whatever I was doing. Following my captain, and uh I'm falling behind him, and and I hear him yelling, and we've like gone through the house. Pretty much there's other people putting out fire. We have a hand line with us, we're kind of putting out little spot fires, and we're a search, uh, and we find this little girl, man. And uh first fire, first victim, first child. Uh it was all just like uh what did I just do? And we find this little girl, she's in the corner of some room, and she's literally like you would think in a you know, they teach you in the commercials or whatever, the stories. She's like curled up like this, hiding. And we, you know, my captain, I watch him, he reaches down, you can barely see through the smoke, and he reaches to kind of touch and kind of wisps her hair, you know, and just kind of all comes off in its hand, and I was just like, She's gone. Wow. And we have to leave her there because we need the investigators to make sure she's you know really gone. Um the smoke inhalation got her, and then she probably cooked a little bit.

SPEAKER_00: 23:05

Um we didn't pull her out.

SPEAKER_01: 23:12

Yeah, she was it was too too far along, and uh we walked, we came out, took our stuff off, so I never saw her come out of the house. And I don't know at the time if my captain did that intentionally or you know what command had decided. They definitely verified she wasn't viable. Um we're not moving her. And so we came out, which is not normal. Like, right, we're normally even if they're they're gone, we're gonna pull the body out. Um, so I'm not sure. I mean, this is 20 24 years ago now, so I'm not even you know, now that you say that, I'm not even sure why we didn't pull her out, but um so that was a lot of first cat.

SPEAKER_00: 23:53

I mean, that's that is like the shittiest first call ever. Right?

SPEAKER_01: 23:59

Yeah, my mom was like, what are you doing? I don't think you should do this job anymore. This is not gonna be okay for you. I'm like, I'm fine. It didn't like it. I was like, wow. That was crazy. You know, it was just kind of like uh huh, alright, moving on, you know. Okay, so we didn't really have a good a good like hug. We call them the we called her the hug lady. Like that's what we called our you know, EAP, whatever.

SPEAKER_00: 24:23

Yeah. Um let me ask you this about that call. Um did you afterwards did you think about it? Did it haunt you, or was it just part of the business and you moved on and then a new day, new problem?

SPEAKER_01: 24:39

Yep, just moved on, new day, new problem. We went back to the station. Uh we weren't as good with debriefing and taking us out of service, and you know, hey, we finally had uh probably less than a decade ago while I was still in the department. We finally uh it was after October one. We really didn't value mental health and ways to take care of ourselves that way until after October 1. That's how uh it's really it's really uh disappointing to even say that out loud. Uh, but it is what it is, it's gotten better. Our union started a PST, a peer support team um committee. I was part of that towards the end of my career. I just wish uh we did better. I think we're getting better, or the fire service, my fire department is getting better. Um but we had our hug lady come out to the station after the call, like that night. We were out of service for maybe half hour, and she came in, sat down, and Kathy Risded is her name. No one liked her because she didn't keep her mouth shut. She would talk about people's dirty laundry, you know, which is illegal. She can't do that. But so eventually she left. But she sat there and she's like, I know this is hard for you guys, you know, the economical stuff, economical status of these individuals, and she just starts talking jargon. And I'm like, these aren't these guys aren't gonna talk to her. This isn't the shit that they want to talk about. They want to talk about this how they saw this little girl dead, you know. Like I have to go home and hug my little girl because I'm not okay. Not about how they're poor and using fancy words to call them poor and fucked up. Excuse my language.

SPEAKER_00: 26:14

That's fine.

SPEAKER_01: 26:15

Uh I curse. I'm sorry if that's you're totally good.

SPEAKER_00: 26:19

You're totally good.

SPEAKER_01: 26:20

So I was like, this is a crock of shit. This is fake, this is stupid, I'm okay, and I moved on.

SPEAKER_00: 26:26

That's kind of how Which just supported this. What year did you start?

SPEAKER_01: 26:31

Uh 2003.

SPEAKER_00: 26:33

Okay, so I was 2002. So you and I both started in a time where we didn't talk about feelings, and this is the reason why, is because our hug ladies would come in and do this. My partner was killed in the line of duty. My partner was killed in the line of duty in 2002, and we never debriefed it, Kat. We didn't sit around and participate in a debrief. Um and you know, a few people spoke about it, whatever, you know, they they talked and there was like a small meeting, but it wasn't mandatory. I wasn't there, I don't even think I knew about it. And um it was and I was directly involved in it. So crazy. Yeah, it's a stigma. And the fact that you say that that call, right? I think anybody listening to this right now is go is just in awe of your first call. And like, I can't believe it. That's the first time the bell rings. But the fact that you went I'm gonna use the word numb. Your nervous system goes numb. You don't think about it afterwards, you move on to the next call. That is not normal. Um, and but but that's our you spoke a moment ago about the way the body tries to protect us in that moment, in those tra traumatic moments, and I think the nervous system shutting down and going numb is one of those things. And in one side it protects us, but the other side it allows us to compartmentalize these things, not think about them, until 24 years down the road when you're unpacking more mental boxes and you know what to do with. You know, my no. My first call, uh, I was 13 years old, I was an explorer, and I uh so I was an ex- I went on my first ride-aline when I was eight years old.

SPEAKER_01: 28:18

Wow.

SPEAKER_00: 28:19

I know Alaska. Yeah, that was pretty cool.

SPEAKER_01: 28:22

That's awesome. Lucky.

SPEAKER_00: 28:25

I went on my first ride-aline when I was eight. When I was thirteen, I joined the Explorer Post, and one of the very first calls that I went on was a somebody found a body in the woods. And the department that I was work riding with, we were a town of about 7,000 people, so there's four or five guys on shift at all times, or officers, there was no women at the department at that time. And um we went out to this body, it was just me and the cop that I was with, and the body had been there for a while, it was decomposing, and I was nervous, totally nervous and scared, and I'm 13 years old, I don't know what we're about to see. And as we make our way out to that call, we're in the parking lot, and I'm like sitting there because I'm brand new, I don't know what to do. And he's like, Well, you're not gonna learn anything if you don't get out of the car. So I get out of the car and we walk up to this body, and he's like, You got gloves? So I put the gloves on, and he's like, Alright, help me roll them over. So I reach over and grab him, we roll him face up, you know. But all that nervousness that I felt up until that moment went away the instant that he was face up. And all of a sudden, it was just business. Let's just do what we gotta do. And unfortunately for me, that is what happened over the next I mean, I was 13 and I came out of law enforcement at 46 years, 45 years old. So for the next however many years, I'm not good at math. I went to a small school. But however many years this is. A lot of years to have your nervous system shut down.

SPEAKER_01: 29:50

And again, I had it in you at thirteen.

SPEAKER_00: 29:53

Do you say that again?

SPEAKER_01: 29:54

You already you already had that in you at thirteen, too, which is remarkable.

SPEAKER_00: 29:59

And um You know, and then here we are the rest of our careers, not until we get out that we start to unpack these boxes and all of a sudden, you know, we realize how screwed up we are at point at times. Um but you know, the nice thing is there's awesome therapists out there.

SPEAKER_01: 30:15

Right. And it's it's cool to talk to you because I've been retired for uh two years, uh the 14th of this month. Uh I retired September 14th, 2023. It was the day of my dad, it was his birthday. Um it was important to me. Uh Justin, my husband, convinced me to retire. I was not going to retire when I did. I didn't want to. Uh why, why? I'm fine. I'm fine. I know I'm not okay. I know I'm I'm struggling a little bit more, but it's fine. You know, it's it's but that's what I don't know from my my experience uh growing up through the fire service. I got on at 25, so I was still young, but I had life experience. I had done a lot of things. I knew I wanted to work.

SPEAKER_00: 30:58

So uh what about so we spoke about your first call where there was this tragic loss. What about saves? Were you ever involved in any saves? And tell me about that. That's gonna put a smile on your face. Tell me about saving somebody.

SPEAKER_01: 31:51

Uh we saved an old man from choking, which wasn't uneasy. Choke, choker, choke, choking calls aren't easy. Like they're usually they're gone. But um, this was towards the end of my career. I was at the Silverton casino, and it was uh an elderly male. Uh, he was choking on his sandwich, like he had like a cheese sandwich or grilled cheese or something. Uh he guess he didn't chew it well enough. But uh Silverton uh casino also had like a small like a timeshare tower on property, just not exactly attached to the casino. And so a lot of people would stay in there um for there were some outpatient medical things around the area, and I think he was they were staying there for that, and you know, they trying to make a little bit of vacation, staying in a hotel that's close to the casino and a timeshare, but doing some medical stuff for pops or whatever. And there was two adults, uh, we came in, he was blue, like he had full-on choke, no air getting through, and we all worked together as a crew, and the medic got in there, has a little forceps, started pulling, like the cheese was coming out in little strings. That was pretty gross. But then he like he got he just it held together and he was able to get a good bite on it, and he freaking pulled out this whole like giant wet blob of cheese. It was like, holy moly, man, like did you swallow? Did you chew anything before he swallowed?

SPEAKER_02: 33:11

It's funny.

SPEAKER_01: 33:12

But we we got him back, like we were, you know, we were doing CPR on him until he was able to clear the airway. You don't go you don't get the airway, you don't get anything, man. You your guy's gonna die. You can keep shit circulating, but if oxygen isn't getting in to the feed the cells, tissue's dying quick. So we're able to uh do CPR until we cleared his airway, got pulses back, got his heart going again. Um we didn't get him conscious, you know, by the time he got at the hospital, but that wasn't uh common. I don't have a lot of good saves. I really don't. I don't have a lot of good memories of those. I have I have some really bright, defined moments, typically uh just just intense, intense experiences that just burned an image, you know, into you into your skull. And it's almost like a feeling more than anything. You know, it's just a whole wave of stuff that happens when I think of things.

SPEAKER_00: 34:08

Yeah. Um can you talk about any of those? Do you are you feel do you feel can you talk about any of those?

SPEAKER_01: 34:15

Sure. Sure. Tell me about one. Um one of the worst, um one of the worst calls I've ever been on. It's like that little girl dying in the fire, that was, you know, it was too new. It's like, meh, whatever. That sucked. And you know, I was like, wow, she was young, and it was a story that I thought about that bothered me. But moving on, whatever, you know. Um, years down the road, uh, I worked at Station 15, which uh is down by Chinatown, it's Valley View and Spring Mountain. Um, and we used to run to the Palms quite a bit, and there was a lot of uh there's a lot of old apartment complexes right around the palms behind it that aren't, you know, it's not a great neighborhood. You have industrial and apartments and casinos, so a lot of transient people, a lot of drinkers, you know, a lot of partying and probably drunk driving. So uh there was an apartment complex just behind uh the palms, and they're on the sidewalk. Vegas is notorious for construction. They're on the roads constantly, like we call you know, the the orange cone our state flower. It's just every road almost has construction, and no one's ever working, you know. Like once in a while you'll see somebody working, and you're like, but they'll put cones up two months before they do work, and then they'll leave it up four months after the work. And it's just like they it's crazy.

SPEAKER_00: 35:32

I don't know if it happens elsewhere, but he's it's four years to fill two potholes. You know, they're almost done. They're almost done.

SPEAKER_01: 35:39

Almost, maybe next week, you know, it's whatever. But so there'd be all this construction. So on this road, there was um those plates, you know, they'll put down before they finish underneath. And uh, and one night, I don't know, middle of the night, this guy's flying, he's drunk, drunk driving, and he hits these plates going, I don't know, 100 plus miles an hour in his car, and it pops them up onto the sidewalk, and there's a woman walking with uh a grocery bag of groceries and diapers. Um, I don't know, I don't know her story because she was dead uh when we got to her, but he pops up on the curb, hits her. Like we had to figure this all out when we got on scene, you know, where all the parts were to put the story together. Uh, but he manages to hit her so hard that she splits up into pieces. She has jeans on, so her her lower half is is still together, except for from the knee down on one leg, the foot and leg are completely gone, but like the jeans are just shredded off, like almost like a shark just ripped it off, you know. Um and we couldn't find that foot. Like we ended up laddering the apartment buildings, looking on the roofs and the balconies, and looking like one something went through someone's one window. It wasn't a body part, but something broke one window. You know, we're we we couldn't put the rest of her body together. We found we found her hair. There was none of her in the car except for her hair. He hit her so hard it went through the car. I don't know like how through the the windshield wasn't completely punctured, or the door, or something. Her hair was in the backseat of this guy's car. But he had he he hit he hit her, and then he hit one of those power boxes that are just off the side of the sidewalk, uprooted that, so you had live wires coming up out of the ground, removed the engine out of his car, edited it between two trees. There was like just goo dripping like mad body matter, whatever, hanging from the trees. There was a something was on fire. There was part of her leg over here, there was part of her body over there. He was completely unscathed, not a scratch on him, and he was just pacing. You know, that's always the way. They're they're always they right, it's so weird. Always. I mean, I know you can you can you can apply science to it to a certain extent, but I just it's still remarkable how unscathed these uh the ones that end up doing the doing the damage. Um I know they're loose, their bodies they don't, you know, they don't tighten up and don't have as much injury that way, but not a scratch on this guy's body. And he's just kind of confused as to what the heck's happening. And we pull up, and I'm still fairly new, and I'm like, what do I do first? You know, and my engineer at the time's like, fire, take care of the fire. Like, pull the pull the jump line over there, I'm gonna pull this line over here, I'm gonna secure this, you know, power, this live power over here. Our captain at the time wasn't a great captain, so he's who knows? He's running around on the radio squawking. Me and me and the me and the rookie firefighter just trying to listen to, you know, if you're a good engineer, you're if you have a bad captain, you sure hope you have a good engineer.

SPEAKER_00: 38:50

Did you, were you enrolled in therapy? Did you go to therapy during your career, or was that something after?

SPEAKER_01: 38:56

Um, I did a little bit of therapy. Uh, well, I guess I did for the last few years before I retired, but it wasn't about the job. I had gone through a pretty ugly divorce and some trauma through all that. Uh I was in a pretty uh unhealthy marriage for most of my career. Um he's also on the fire department. He has his own issues. Uh he hopefully can get healthy with his. I had to figure out mine and we weren't really good together. So um we divorced in 2019. And it was glorious and tr traumatic at the same time. Like it was it was really like I was finally like living my life for me and doing what I wanted, and realized that this whole career and life up until this point was was always based on other people's p opinions, you know. What do you what am I supposed to be? What do I what's it supposed to look like? Who am I supposed to marry? What am I supposed to do? You know? Um I'm I'm a people pleaser, I'm a public servant, I'm a helper, I want to do that. I've always been good at a care being a caregiver. Um so it definitely fit. It just, you know, your biggest strengths also are your biggest weaknesses. So we're great impasse caregivers, uh, leaders, whatever. Um, but that also if we don't recognize that, that it all also can be to our detriment, then we're we're going to get in trouble. We're going to have problems for sure. Um, and you know, a lot of things weren't taught growing up. We weren't taught all this stuff. Why wouldn't you go see a doctor for your head? You go see a doctor for everything else, you go see a financial person to take care of your money. Why wouldn't you go to someone that helps your brain? The biggest, you know, the most important organ in your body that makes everything else work, that makes you healthy, happy, you know?

SPEAKER_00: 40:50

Because our profession calls us weak. Our profession calls us weak. It calls us uh quitters. PTSD was a crutch to get out of real work. It was a cop-out. Um, that's why we don't. And because as human beings, it starts in like a kindergarten. You walk into kindergarten the first day, and you scan the room to who the coolest kids are, and you go sit with them because that's what you want to be with, right? Little Timmy in the corner that looks like a goober, you don't go sit with him because you don't want to be associated with that. No, I want to be a bird. Yeah. So now we're in this world, especially you being a female in a male-oriented world, a male-dominated world. The last thing you want to do is be looked at as any weaker. Um, that's why we don't do it. And that's why you know suicide rate is so high, is because we don't want to face our demons.

SPEAKER_01: 41:44

Yeah. Yeah, and it's really sad because a lot of times I think we can see those people before they go. Um I really do. I really see their erratic behavior, the unhealthy, unstable uh emotions, just the personality shift is shifts that can be extreme, just vile hatred. Like I don't know how it is with the with our police, but for the fire service, what my experience is there's just we become so hateful, so angry. And it's it it feeds, it feeds on everybody in the station, and it uh it it's a cancer. And if if your captain's an asshole and angry all the time and MFing everything and complaining about the the the medic crew, you know, the ambulance crew, the the ER staff, his boss, the chief upstairs, this guy over this station, or these, whatever, like it just feeds and it just consumes everybody. All of a sudden, everybody is miserable, everybody's complaining, everybody's unhappy. It's like, hey man, you chose this. Why are you here right now? And you know, my ex was a lot like that. He was very I don't know how he is now. I hopefully he's not as angry, but he was super angry. And it was just it's unhealthy, it's toxic, it it's poison.

SPEAKER_00: 43:00

It it really is, and we and we see those things, but I think that you know, and and I've got an experience I'll share here in a second, but people are scared. They are scared to step into a world they don't know about. And while we see these people spiraling around us, and I'm guilty of it as well, you know, I can back you up on the street. Um, you know, somebody can come in and rescue you from a fire, but when it starts talking about mental health stuff, you know, all of a sudden we feel like we're in a world that we don't know anything about, which is one of the reasons I do this podcast, because you and I are not the only two people that's ever felt this way. And there are, I mean, this week, I don't know, there's 3,000 downloads this week or something. So there's 3,000 people out there listening to this that is, you know, getting something out of it, which is super cool. And like I said in the text message earlier, we all have a pain, but you know, we've got to use it for a purpose. In 2012, I was in a really rough spot, and uh mentally with work, I was destroying my marriage, and uh I was spiraling bad. And you know, I would come to work every single night, and we're on a at this time I'm working on in the Portland metro area, my department, um, 150 cops. So there was 20 of us going out of shift, 25 of us going out of shift, and uh, I'm sitting in the locker room for months and getting dressed up for night shift, bawling, like absolutely bawling. And these guys are walking around me like they don't even see it. I go out on the street, I was getting into fights with every single person that I contacted. I don't care if you were 14 years old or 64 years old. We were getting into physical altercations and fights every single night. Um, and it was just and and again, nobody saw I'm pissing off the dispatchers. The dispatchers won't refuse to talk to me. My records clerk refused to talk to me for two years because I pissed her off so much. Um I was just a flaming asshole. And uh then June 12th, 2013, I'm in the woods with a gun in my mouth because I have hit rock bottom. And, you know, thankfully I didn't make that fateful decision. And I'm here to talk about it today and hopefully help people. But I mean, our stories are so similar in what you've seen in your career and what I've seen on my side. You know, there's always this feud between cops and firefighters, right? And to be honest with you, I'm just jealous because uh, you know, I made the wrong decision twice a couple years ago. Your guys' trucks are much sexier.

SPEAKER_01: 45:28

Absolutely. I have a lot more toys than you do.

SPEAKER_00: 45:31

Oh, they're so freaking cool. So cool. Um but uh yeah, no, you know, there's always this feud, but uh but I mean, seriously, we're we're facing the same things, and you and I literally have the same career. We started within nine months of each other and we ended within nine months of each other.

SPEAKER_01: 45:47

Uh it's crazy.

SPEAKER_00: 45:49

And it's uh it's nice to know one that I'm not the only one that feels this way, you know? And it's it's cross-cultural, you know, uh, from departments and that kind of stuff. So what uh so you were an engineer. Was engineer is that a rank in the fire department? What is that?

SPEAKER_01: 46:08

Yeah, if for for our department it is. It goes firefighter, engineer, captain, battalion chief, assistant chief, deputy chief, chief.

SPEAKER_00: 46:16

And you were with which department?

SPEAKER_01: 46:19

Uh I was with Clark County Fire. So we drove the yellow fire trucks, so we encompassed all of Clark County, and then you have the city of Las Vegas, which would have been the s is which is or was the second largest department, and then you have North Las Vegas, which is a very small department. Their budget is quite tiny, uh, the area. There's just not a lot of you know, we get our budget off of property tax. So uh people that own homes pay our pay our bills, pay our budget, and uh like North Las Vegas, uh they're pretty small. They do brownouts, at least they used to. They might have minimum manning now.

SPEAKER_00: 46:53

Have you been able to unpack these boxes uh since your career?

SPEAKER_01: 46:58

I've just started. I just started recently, yeah. The May 13th, uh my buddy Patrick got got killed. Like I said, that was just uh I just I didn't think that I was too good to for it to hurt me or to affect me, you know. I've just been doing what I normally do. I'm not I haven't been trying to repress, suppress, pretend, whatever. I'm willing. I'm willing. I'm I'm I I choose honesty. If I can be honest with myself, everything else will be fine. I've learned that. I learned that in my 2019 when I divorced my ex. If I can be honest with myself and everybody else, it'll be okay. It might be tough, but it'll be okay. I choose happy and I choose to to be honest and real. Like I'm you know, we all have egos, but uh I'm really willing to let mine go and to not be too stuck in on any one thing. You know, everything's constantly changing. I know I'm getting older, I'm not unaware, you know. I'm not gonna pretend like I'm not affected more or less by things as I change and grow. It's just inevitable.

SPEAKER_00: 48:14

How do you so in therapy? Um, have you done do you know what EMDR is, and have you have you done it? I do. I have, and I love it. It's amazing, isn't it?

SPEAKER_01: 48:23

It is amazing.

SPEAKER_00: 48:25

EMDR. Earlier when you the first thing I thought of when you said earlier about you know the calls all connecting, right? The hidden run calls all connecting. Um, like that is total EMDR, right? You you find that first one that affected you, you sever those ties, and then all of a sudden the rest of them don't have any meaning. And you clear those, you might clear 15 of them, you know, and all of a sudden you got 15 boxes that have been unpacked, and you're like, holy shit, that was easy. Um it is EMDR is so amazing. So amazing.

SPEAKER_01: 48:56

Yeah, it is uh fantastic. I've done it several times. Uh I go, I was going once every other week for a 45 to an hour uh long session, uh processing through my divorce and my kids, etc. And then once I retired, um no complaints, right? I'm like, I can't really complain to someone that I'm retired. I got to retire at 46 years old, but I'm struggling.

unknown: 49:25

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01: 49:26

Who wants to hear that, right? Like I loved having a routine. I loved having a schedule. I came off the floor to teach, and that was super difficult because I was used to just driving the fire truck for 24 to 72 hours at a time and just doing the same shit, different day, just a little different, you know, whatever it might be. The the adrenaline spikes, I'm definitely, definitely, you know, attracted to that. I like the I'm an adrenaline junkie. Um so I'd rather stay on the floor, even though it's taking more than I'm feeling at this moment, it's still easier.

SPEAKER_02: 49:57

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01: 49:58

And that doesn't that doesn't make a lot of sense to most people. I think it does for s for people like us. It's I I was comfortable there. These people, you get institutionalized. I'm I don't want to leave this place. Even if it's like we have guys that worked in some of the dirtiest, worst firehouses in in town, but they love their crew, they felt safe with their crew, and so they wouldn't leave. They wouldn't leave the constant beatdowns every night of not sleeping and seeing just everybody's worst nightmare, and it's your frickin' Tuesday, you know?

SPEAKER_02: 50:29

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01: 50:29

Um, but it's almost harder to believe and change than to just keep doing that because you know what pain, what you're what the cost is, you know what you're giving and getting, and you're willing, you sacrificed and survived, it's not that bad. It could be worse. Yeah. I don't know how it is when you get on the police department, but for fire, um, you know, you have to be this amazing, you have to be Superman. You have to be this hero that wants to volunteer and constantly give and do. And while that's all great and and honorable and admirable and and we want to, there is a threshold. And they don't teach you that uh going through. They just teach you that you just have to keep uh being okay and keep giving. And it's like, how much more blood can you ask for? I need it, I need it to survive. But it's just like just and and you you you work your way up through the ranks, so everybody has been tainted that way. You have the top of the food chain, you have the chiefs that are expecting us to keep doing more with less because they want to to to impress people, they want to make people happy, they they do want to be number one in safety and whatever. Um, but at what cost? Like we still have to take care of our members and remember what we're giving.

SPEAKER_00: 51:44

But but it's give so much. But at the end of the day, um, I found, at least in my career, and I I'm totally with you, uh, you know, do more with less, bleed, bleed, bleed, give, give, give. And a couple things that's doing. One, uh, to you or I who have a passion for the job, that is just concreting our identity in our uniform and our badge. And when you leave tomorrow for whatever circumstances, and you can't look back and go back and do the job again, you can't go back to the floor, I can't get back into a patrol car. Now your identity's gone. And who the hell am I? And what am I doing in this life? And then you realize that the more they do that, the more it drives that stigma because mentally we're being affected, but we don't have anybody to talk to about it because there's a stigma of PTSD. You know, and all of that is um super difficult, and that is what ultimately drives us to shambles at the end of our career. You know, and there's those people that we worked with that are like, you know, and recently on my podcast, I've been talking about uh hummingbirds and hawks. And the hummingbirds, the hummingbirds buzz around, get involved in everything, they're super busy, they're going, going, going. That's you and I. We're going, going, going all the time, and we die in early death because our little hearts give out. And then there's the hawks that like soar into work, barely having a pulse. They do a C plus job, they get the job done, but they're there, you know, there are no crisis in their world. They've got a ton of time for after work for family and friends and clubs and bowling and whatever the hell else they do. Oh no. And we judge them. Like all we do our career judging. I don't want to work for that slug. And then now looking back, I'm like, dear God, just make dear God, just make me a hawk, please.

SPEAKER_01: 53:30

A hawk. Yeah.

unknown: 53:32

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01: 53:34

They were the turds. They were the turds when I got on. You know, you get these guys that were out of my class. There was this this other, you know, and very small group of women in my department. Um, and as I progressed through through the years in my department, we we lost numbers of females in service. Uh, we got down to literally a dozen towards the in the second half of my career. Like, that's what the hell is happening? This is wrong. This is all ass backwards. But anyways, um, but I had another girl out of out of my academy. There's three women that graduated my academy, which is a lot. And I was outcast out of those. I wasn't accepted with them. I was the only one that shaved my head. I didn't care that they didn't. I wanted to for me. I yeah, this is a sacrifice that I want to give. And I don't, and I I walked in like G.I. Jane, ready to do with a smile on my face, unfortunately. I didn't know to to just to be unhappy and sir, yes, sir, and many.

SPEAKER_00: 54:36

You didn't know to be a grumpy ass.

SPEAKER_01: 54:37

I'm just like, hi. And they're like, you know, let's start. I'm like, oh shit. Prayed rest, you know, wipe that smirk off your face, Dean. And I'm like, oh, what the sir, yes, sir. Oh, uh, what? You know, I knew it was paramilitary, but I I didn't know, you know, I hadn't experienced it. So I'm just this happy go-lucky girl. I'm like, what? Why are they yelling at me? And it really stressed me out. It was really heavy on me. But like this other woman, she had been a volunteer, she'd been out in the rurals, she knew how to work the system. Kudos. I wish I would have had more tools and knowledge of how to work the system and make it a little bit easier, right? It's not that you don't earn it. Even if you have tricks and tools, it doesn't make you less uh worthy of your position. It just you were just had extra ability that you could use to your advantage. If you have tools, use them. You're still doing the job. You don't, it doesn't mean you're cheating the system. You just it helps you mentally. Like she did she still stressed out a lot and she had more knowledge and to and ability just because she had knew what to expect. I didn't know anything, so I was terrified. But she ends up bidding out to the slow station at the very beginning of her career, and she freaking sails the rest of her career unscathed, just enjoying her. She still ran calls, she still she still worked overtime and worked at awful stations, but the majority of it, she was more of a hawk and got to just saunter through her career and not constantly get beat upside the head and run around like you know, trying to do everything and fight every fire and be Johnny Fireman and you know, she enjoyed it, but at the same time, she had more probably more balance. Yeah, but you know, like how many people come into our profession with with without problems, without already pre-existing trauma, right?

SPEAKER_02: 56:29

Yeah, totally.

SPEAKER_01: 56:29

Like what what kind of truths have you told yourself? I had to sort that out with my therapists, which is also linked to, you know, you know, you get into this job because it makes you feel good about yourself. It gives you a better identity than what you had.

SPEAKER_02: 56:43

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01: 56:44

You know, I came in with these preconceived notions that I'm not worthy, that I don't deserve things. You know, so I start going through my EMD, I my EMDR, I'm going dept back down to my childhood, and I've got little Katie that's now in a room with me that's holding my hand saying that she's not gonna leave me. Like that's what EMDR has done for me. It's been yeah, life-changing. I did multiple one hour, 45 minute sessions, but then after my buddy Patrick got killed, I just um it's just it's it's very recent, you know, all it's all fairly recent for me for going through this PTSD and um it was just so heavy and hard to function. It's the best, I don't know, it's the best way I can explain explain it for for me. It was all of a sudden I felt like I was already struggling. I've been retired for you know a year and a half. I was having a blast, I was enjoying it, but yet I just kind of felt like I was all over the place. I'm not good at maintaining a routine if I'm not held to a strict schedule. So one night I'm going to bed at 2 a.m. The next night I'm going to bed at four. I have a hard time sleeping anyways. I've had a hard time sleeping for years. So, but now I don't have accountability because I don't have to get up for a job. So now I'm sleeping till noon one day. Um, now I don't want to leave my house the next. It just I just felt like I just kept becoming more of a recluse and things just like I got stuck in the mud and it got heavy. And it and then I started hating myself for that because now I'm like I'm not a good mom, I'm not a good person, I'm not a good wife. Why can't I do these? What am I complaining about? I'm retired. Why is this bothering me? This shouldn't be that big of a deal. You know, it is, but it's not. Let yourself feel, but let's move on. And I just realized like it's not going away, it's still not going away. And then my therapist was like, hey, you know, you come every other Thursday. I just had an opening. And now I have Mondays at 11. Would you like to take that spot? You could come every week now for one session. And I'm like, yes, that would be great. And as I'm saying that, he's like, and I still think you should keep every other Thursday. And I was like, Oh.

SPEAKER_00: 58:49

We're there. Oh, we're we're there, really.

SPEAKER_01: 58:51

Oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, okay. And he's a great I love, I'm so grateful that I it's really hard to find a good therapist, in my opinion. Uh, if you can find don't stay with one you don't like. If you don't feel like they're not helping you, don't stick around because they probably aren't.

SPEAKER_00: 59:48

Yep.

SPEAKER_01: 59:48

Honestly, like you you know if they're helping you or not.

SPEAKER_00: 59:51

They can do more damage than good.

SPEAKER_01: 59:53

Uh, they can, and it's it's unfortunate, it's scary. Um, I've had bad ones, and uh it's it's I feel bad for people that that suffer from bad care.

SPEAKER_00: 1:00:05

When you came out when you came out, and since you've been out, uh did you experience an identity crisis, identity loss?

SPEAKER_01: 1:00:15

No. No. Um I I kinda I kind of started another identity and did my own thing, um, became a different person for a little while.

SPEAKER_00: 1:00:26

Is that good or bad?

SPEAKER_01: 1:00:28

Um good. I think good. Like I was having fun. Um What'd you do? I s I I started I enjoyed the attention, so I started doing some wrestling stuff. I do competitive I don't do like JJ Su competitions, but I do competitive wrestling, like mixed wrestling with other females. Um I did uh last year I did a fight night event where I actually learned some WWE moves.

SPEAKER_00: 1:00:52

And uh did it include tables or chairs or anything?

SPEAKER_01: 1:00:56

No, I wanted to use them this year, but this year um I'm not doing it. I've already stopped. So uh I did it last year and I had like I had my hair in like a mohawk, like this cool faux hawk, and I had on like a wrestling suit, wrestling shoes. I had a like, you know, David Bowie. Um I love David Bowie, love that kind of music. Um 80s girl. But the lightning bolt across his face. Yeah. I did that. I painted my face and I had this match with this girl. She was a she's actually. a professional um professional wrestler, like real wrestler, call it collegiate wrestler. And uh her name was Psycho. She's from Quebec. So she's she her and I like she had knee problems. Um her cardio wasn't as good as mine, but she was bigger and so she was heavy to push around. So it was a 10 minute round in the ring. We were one of the main card matches. And uh it was so I used to uh I'm very into women empowering things. Like I'm not you know I'm not into a Me Too, but I am I believe that women need to feel empowered to feel like they belong instead of apologizing for every step of the way. I think that's just been uh a way we've learned to adapt and it's not necessarily healthy you know how you talk you know people are treat you a certain way. So um you need to have confidence. You don't need to be cocky but you need to have confidence and feel that you belong and not that you have to earn it. I had a a women's recruitment group before I retired and that was kind of my my main goal is just let them know that hey I can help teach you tricks to to do the job to lift heavy things to lift a you know a 20 foot uh ladder you know but you need to also own your space and know that you can learn it and you can be you're just as valid and valuable as the next person whether you're man or woman whatever so once I retired I met women that did this stuff they they do wrestling and they're just these badass strong females you know they do they do more of like content and modeling and other stuff um but I really like this this just women empowered kind of so fight night is it's it's all based off of one woman Jennifer Thomas she used to be uh she used to try she was trying to be WWE she never went pro but karma was her karma was her stage name back when she did WWE so now she runs Karma Club which is a nonprofit for abused women to help them assist them and get out of bad situations etc so she she she's a beautiful gorgeous human being inside and out so she has uh she basically has a website where women can get on and they they they do profiles and they do wrestling sessions and stuff and I won't get too deep into that because it's kind of fringe and weird um but she just she cultivates this this community of of women that are all eclectic and different and accepted and like there's no cattiness there's no you know you're prettier your hair is nicer whatever it's like you're you're weird in this way and I'm glad you're happy and healthy and let's let's wrestle and beat each other up and have fun. Like they're just they're physical aggressive alpha females that aren't in aren't catfighting all the time you know so it's a lot of fun. So I did that last um September. So I just kind of went off on a tangent for I don't know maybe about a year a year or so of of just being this character. And it's almost like an alter ego you know yeah it's it's it's odd and I didn't know it was in me.

SPEAKER_00: 1:04:25

But I also think you know as I go through my therapy and focus more on my my my career and how it's affected me and where I am today I'm an adrenaline junkie and uh it was just thrill seeking you know and I had fun um but I'm done I gotta you have to send me a picture of you with a lightning bolt across your face because I am totally using I'm totally using that for the release of this podcast. Awesome awesome send me one of those and send me one of in your fire gear.

SPEAKER_01: 1:04:58

I will absolutely that is awesome so how are things going now in your world? I don't know it's been a tough um it's been tough since last November uh uh Justin lost his mother and we had to go back to California and help her pass and uh so I got to be her basically her nurse uh and hospice at home until she passed it which was pretty traumatic and uh just kind of was rough from there on so it's been we've lost multiple people and it's been a challenge.

SPEAKER_00: 1:05:36

I'm sorry to hear that. I was talking it's funny you should mention that yesterday so I I own a business that does um DJ live music and stuff for weddings. Oh cool it's super fun. And yesterday I was talking to a couple that I've got their wedding here on the 18th of next month and she um does patient care but she was talking we were talking about the podcast and she's like have you ever had anybody on talking about patient care, end of life care. And I'm like no not really and she started she went into detail you know about how people experience and all of a sudden you know they're no longer your parent you're now parenting them and she's like it is so deep you should totally have tough you should totally talk about it. It's super tough. Yeah sucks I'm sorry to hear that.

SPEAKER_01: 1:06:21

Thanks um it's just it's very interesting you know because I've been in the you know medical field uh the fire service and seen a different aspect and now it's hitting home and it's somebody that I care about that I have to dealt now take care of and everybody handles that stuff differently and I don't think um our society as a whole really appreciates that phase of life. It's a phase whether you like it or not it's inevitable right everybody has to go through the dying phase and it's sometimes it's quick sometimes it's it's not sometimes it's peaceful other times it's awful and uh we don't uh I don't think we really give it enough attention and uh consideration. It's it was an honor to be a part of it but at the same time it was uh I'm so grateful I was there because no one else in that family would have been able to do what I did with the medications with it I mean I was it was I was writing notes I was writing reports that I knew how to do you know to keep track to to take care of her and had I not been able to be there and do that it would have been so much harder for for my husband and his family. Like it just it was uh she ended up drowning in her own blood. Uh she she she was so stubborn she literally wouldn't go she wouldn't let go and uh I had to get on the phone with the nurse and I was doubling up her pain meds. And they were like the nurse was like if it was my mom I would double it. Just do it. Give it more just you gotta stop. You have to just she she basically hemorrhaged from the inside and it filled up her lungs and out her mouth and nose like I could hear it coming up and it was just like it like something let loose and it was filling up and I could hear it like gurgling up and like you're like bloop bloop and the last air bubbles going out. I could hear that in her lungs and I turned and looked at Justin I was like get out of here now you're she's she's gone she's gone she's she's not going to you're not gonna get any better than this in fact she it's gonna she's gonna bleed here pretty soon I don't want you to see it because he is not good with that stuff at all. But of course he didn't he stood there and looked at it and then was like in pure shock turned and left and he doesn't you know it's weird how the how the body tries to protect you. I think that's where a lot of the PTSD stuff comes from you just not quite processing it and accepting acknowledging it and uh you just have moments that are missing out of your time you know whenever cortisol levels are high you get your temporary uh memory is is not not so so good. You forget a lot of things I have a lot of time um blocks of my history just with the fire service and being in a bad place uh marriage emotionally mentally um that I just don't remember yeah remember a lot of stuff but uh yeah so November was rough and then uh I just kind of snowballed from there we lost a dear friend and more my friend than than his friend but still uh friend of the families that was he was a good person uh he overdosed and passed in February and then uh my sister's dog was like a friend of the you know family member Thor she had rescued him from a baby she had to put him down finally that was like you know the we were dreading that day and then I had a dear friend get killed in a hit and run walking through the crosswalk on May 13th and that is when things start to really go bad for me mentally and what date what date was the hit and run? May 13th. Okay about about 1 a.mady hit my friend 32 year old guy hit him in the crosswalk he was crossing uh he had a skateboard he uh is trying to do do better trying to make money to take care of his son he split up with the mother 18 month old son love of his life happy look good lucky guy we met him a little less than a year prior kind of introduced him into a profession and and work that he thrived in and loved and was having the time of his life and he just walked the crosswalk and this lady uh you probably you've probably seen it where you someone gets hit so hard that their shoes don't leave yeah totally everything else everything about else about them is is somewhere else that's kind of yeah it's it's uh it tells you that impact was hard and fast so that that kind of like um he wasn't real close but I think just the fact it's always the circumstances at least from my my um experience my career it wasn't necessarily the uh blood and gore that's come to bother me more now um but it was always this this the story like the the soccer mom driving to pick up her kids and the junk driver hits her you know that's the the sad part that got to me anyways that bothered me so I think just being personal with that guy on that level that's it just and then it tethered me to every hit and run call I've ever ran. And it's it was I've never it's insane.

SPEAKER_00: 1:11:19

Isn't it crazy how that happens? Um you you that one trigger all of a sudden everything is connected and you think back and there's memories that you don't even remember that happened 20 years ago and all of a sudden you remember them just like they were yesterday.

SPEAKER_01: 1:11:34

And they're vivid. I I don't I don't know how to explain to people other than it's very loud and I can't ignore it. It's just kind of in it's in your face like in your head you know I just uh brain matter I've seen it multiple times I've always found uh biology you know fascinating the human body even after it's been mangled or whatever you know what it's capable of what it looks like um and it just it's never really bugged me until my buddy and then I I never even saw the accident you know I've just I'm just playing this whole movie in my head about what it looks like and I try to process that with my therapist.

SPEAKER_00: 1:12:13

Yeah I go to therapy a couple times a week right now it's pretty awesome yeah highly recommend it yeah I've been there I have so been there what um you you said that after the uh hit and run on on May 13th you said that's where things really started to spiral what happened there um I just got really depressed I don't uh I couldn't stop thinking about it.

SPEAKER_01: 1:12:38

I'm sorry I'm getting emotional it's totally fine it's uh I'm a lot better I just couldn't stop replaying it in my head and it was close to home um so I drive by the intersection it was just weird there was a city fireman um that came to this place I work out I do like heated Plotties boot camps those kind of classes high intensity um like 100 degrees 50% humidity and uh the city guy just happened to come in I've never seen him before and he just I don't know you can kind of I assume it's pretty similar for cops you see when you you are a cop you you know when you can spot another cop yeah totally there's something about him and sometimes you don't even know what it is you're like ha I know you you're familiar right yeah and I was like I was like this guy he's he's and I don't know why I approached him I was like hey man you work for fire he's like yeah I work for Cindy I was like oh really and I go do you know anything about uh there's a hit and run uh this this intersection I'm not sure what station it might have been 43 blah blah and he's like yeah it sounds like truck 43 might have ran that I was like yeah it was my good friend and right then he was like I'll I'll figure out what I can for you I said I just would really like to know that it was quick that he was called on scene I had my friend uh pull up the the run you know we have access to things that's kind of nice you know you don't quite ever leave your position you always have the ability to to gain insight and I think that helps I think that helps people around you as well um just to disseminate though that kind of information to me is important. He didn't suffer. He got hit hard enough that they called him on scene they didn't try and work him you know there was no pain and suffering. So um but it was weird because he's like yeah I'll find out I don't remember the nice the guy's name now but then like I come to class like not the next day but I wait a couple days I walk in and he's there again. I swear to God I think the universe uh the universe gives you what you need most of the time I think it actually gives you what you need all the time it just maybe doesn't look like how you want it to.

SPEAKER_00: 1:14:41

And sometimes you don't even recognize it because uh you're so caught up in your own head or your own moment or your own minute and you don't recognize what's going on around you until you look back and you're like holy okay this is what was a play.

SPEAKER_01: 1:14:52

Yeah yeah but he like he was there that and I haven't seen him since so I saw him two times and both times were very um important moments. I saw him again and he's like yeah it was you know truck 43 ran on him he did not suffer it was you know they called him on they gave me a little bit more insight they thought it was uh it took a while to find it was a hit and run they didn't the lady didn't turn herself in uh she got caught by the the auto body shop which I guess is quite common um she tried to take her car and say she hit a she said she hit a light pole and then she said she hit a coyote um it was a white Tesla so the body shop guy I guess took the bumper and said I gotta work on this fixed it and then he saw the the the news this is like almost uh at least a week later saw the news and was like wait a minute that bumper he turned it in and they caught her wow well good I'm glad they caught her I'm glad they caught her um I don't I feel bad for her I can't imagine what it feels like to take a life like that I don't think she intended to I'm sure she wasn't sober or something um she's 63 64 year old woman like in that area town I I feel sad for her um yeah it's not uh good for anybody it's not and and one of the things that you know on my side of the fence so my last 11 years was homicide child abuse and I see these these homicide suspects that you know just had just killed somebody right some of them are intentional some of them are murder some of them are gunshot knife whatever um and you talk to these people and out of all of the interviews that I have done and we're talking thousands of interviews and hundreds of homicide interviews out of all of them true evil really is reduced to about five or six everybody else is a good human being that in a split second made a really poor decision.

SPEAKER_00: 1:16:49

You know and I'm even talking gangsters even gangsters there is humanity there is love they are there they are somebody's brother sister son daughter whatever it is and in a moment that if they could go back and take it back they would completely reverse things. They don't want to be in that position either and it was you know but but on the news if we're watching the news and we see you know somebody get shot or whatever I think it's human nature as you know they're a terrible person. Well it's not necessarily the case sometimes it is and sometimes you know there's pure evil but a lot of the times it's a split second decision usually under the influence of drug or alcohol drugs or alcohol right or mental or mental illness yeah that is what potentially due to substance abuse yeah that's what hounded yeah that's what causes that you know split second decision and it's um and I send these people off to jail and that was one of the things that I always wanted to do. When I'd go into that interview I would strip all of the stigma and the you know ethics and morals and all that crap out the door because I just want to talk to a human being you know um today we're talking about their secrets and the good thing is I get to keep mine in a closet for a while you know uh nobody gets to hear about mine today but we have to explore yours. And when you go in there and realize that they're worried about how they're gonna pay the next bills, how they're gonna get their daughter to gymnastics, whatever it may be, that's the same problems I have. And it's uh you know I think you've got to you've got to change the way we look at this.

SPEAKER_01: 1:18:25

Absolutely 100% absolutely I um it's I appreciate you sharing that information because that's my feeling. I I can almost I don't truly hate much if anything like it's a really to me I was always taught that was a serious feeling like you don't truly hate things that's not evil everybody you don't you cannot like what some people do. They make mistakes but it doesn't mean you don't have you don't like the person. Yeah it's I I can love people that do terrible things but I love the person. It's they made a mistake. They made a bad choice they they were in a bad place they were scared whatever. Like I can I can find compassion with almost anything. Very rarely is it just would I ever look at anything and say you're not redeemable or you're worthless or anything like that. You know I just I don't believe that I believe we're all we're all struggling with this experience. It's everybody has their own and it's nobody's the same and everybody has their own problems. It's just uh nicer to each other.

SPEAKER_00: 1:19:35

I I I totally agree. I totally agree and I think that um you know this heart that you and I are talking about right now is what made us good at our jobs for so long.

SPEAKER_01: 1:19:44

But on the flip side it's also what made us soak up all this you know trauma and stuff that we're involved in and now we are in therapy multiple times a week right yeah it it's a double-edged sword it makes us it made us good at what we did and effective in the moment but man you know and for me I don't know about you but for me all those years that I did the job I um didn't realize it was affecting me I didn't realize that the stuff was seeping in and soaking my internal sponge until my sponge was saturated you know and it nearly ended my life yeah yeah um I knew I was getting saturated I just didn't think it was affecting me I just I was mindful you know my very first fire ever was super traumatic and it like how did you learn when you were working how did you learn to process those difficult calls early on you don't know what you're doing but I mean as you move through your career how do you process those difficult calls and if there's somebody listening to this who is in that same boat what would you tell them and what worked for you process difficult calls talk to somebody talk it through um I think what it's I think the people around you is paramount the the support around you whether it's your crew your partner uh your spouse at home uh I think if you don't have a healthy community around you you're not gonna be able to process anything well you're going to look to uh unhealthy vices to deal with all of it that's just been my experience I don't I don't you know it's not gospel but um I don't think I really had any routine of processing uh I think I just kinda I never felt like it really bothered me until it did. I ended up with a lot of autoimmune issues uh stress stress can be some stress is good right um a little bit of stress is healthy too much stress is detrimental and uh mental physical uh emotional you know professional personal whatever I mean we all have stress in some form or another but you can't do all of it all the time it's gonna crush you and that's I ended up having um really bad autoimmune issues I got super sick but I wouldn't stop working I had two babies they were 23 months apart so I had a two year old and a newborn I had a really hard time getting back to work after my second one was born I took six months to because I just wasn't I was you know I'm like oh I can do this no problem I can be a firefighter I can be mom I can be wife I can whatever I can do it save the world yeah just just throw me another plate I can balance it right I can spin it um so I found myself married bought into a house right after right before the market crashed so we're upside down in our house we have another house we weren't able to sell we're holding on to we have three mortgages two kids I'm working a 36 hour work week plus I'm working extra you know I work overtime I don't work four hours of overtime I work 24 hours of overtime I get a full shift so now I'm working a 48 I'm working day on my day off I'm working I'm missing my kids I have a whole household that I have animals kids I have a nanny come in to take care of the place because me and my husband are on the same shift um so I didn't have any downtime I didn't process much and I think because of that I got really sick um I got to the point where I was whittling away I couldn't I had constant um body aches low grade fevers um food intolerances uh canker sores stomach issues sores throughout my body like I was uh I ended up I had systemic inflammation I ended up going blind in my left eye uh while when I thought I was actually getting healthier I stopped running because um that put me in the hospital I did a Ragnar race it's like a it's a really long relay race they do in Vegas um usually I don't know why I like to do races when it's cold but they do it's like November December January time and you're we're running this 200 mile plus relay race and I'm running 20 miles of of this race and uh I've got canker sores all throughout my mouth um everything nothing like nothing is feeling good for me. So I'm constantly taking like ibuprofen and vitamins and herbs and I'm trying to take care of myself you know holistically and I don't want to go to doctors and get on medicines and stuff and ended up in the hospital for a couple days and I just kind of went I got really really sick and doctors like you know you do a lot you're under a lot of stress and like yeah well whatever no big deal I never really I you know people were pointing it out but it's just so weird how you just don't you don't see it until you do and I don't I don't know what that is or why I I guess you know I just gotta meet things on my own terms and my own time. I wish sometimes I was smarter and quicker to figure things out but just whatever it doesn't happen. So it took me a couple years of um and realizing that I was I think I just didn't like myself honestly I think I was just hurting myself I would go out and I'd go run for 10 miles and toenails are falling off and I feel like shit still and I'm skin and bones and I got a two year old and a a newborn or three and a one or and my marriage wasn't well my my uh husband at the time I have these two little babies and he's not helping me with them. So I just never had any downtime to stop and process anything. I was always fighting fighting the next fight. So for me like my my nervous system was constant fight or flight. You know I'm going to work and I'm up down up down for 24 hours and I come home I'm walking on eggshells because my husband's uh angry all the time and I got two small kids and I feel like crap. So it just deteriorated me until I was trying to fix myself it took a few years um and at the end of it the last thing was fortunately unfortunately I I divorced my my husband at the time and that was like an elephant walked off my shoulders and that was the first time and I was terrified to tell him because I was afraid he was going to get so mad at me which he was he still is but I'm still okay you know it's not like he got mad and I can't I can't do that thing now. No I can still do it. I just have to let him have his feelings over here and I have mine and this is what I need to be happy and healthy. And once I started making those decisions like that was life changing and that's when I think I've finally started to accept and and process some of the stuff I'd been through um and the calls I've ran. It was always hard to go on the call where it's a dead body you know it's the spouse has passed away expected unexpected but now they're in the home with that body their loved one is gone you know the trauma of them losing losing their favorite person they've been married to for 50 years or whatever um those calls were super hard for me. I always had uh empathy for those people and to the point where it started to affect me. You know I'd be on scene or waiting for metro to show up because we were making sure the scene's safe and transfer transfer the patient to the the body to the metro for the coroner to come out and uh I'm well enough because I'm watching the wife sit there in shock or weep or whatever and uh I had to learn how to insulate myself. So it wasn't really like a therapist but I would work with this lady and I learned how to you know I use a lot of imagery and I I use it now like I I I have a bubble. I live in a frickin' bubble man and it is pretty it is beautiful. I'm not into news I don't like it it doesn't I know it's per you know there's important stuff out there I I want to know what's important but my day-to-day functioning that hampers and hurts more than it helps so I had to uh to to not I want to be professional on scene I don't want to break down and cry in front of these these people so I just had to learn how to put myself in this pretty pink bubble that I imagined and breathe and I learned some techniques to deal with those calls then when I was on scene um and that helped me with my own health moving forward but after retirement um I've still had to I kind of I kind of still live in that bubble right I'm processing my trauma but I'm trying not to add any more trauma trauma to it right now.

SPEAKER_00: 1:28:47

What uh what do firefighters I know what this answer is on the cop side of things but what do firefighters carry spiritually and emotionally that the public rarely sees the public sees you guys on your truck and everybody looks sexy and you got your little yellow jumpsuits on with your red suspenders or whatever and uh I s I stop and salute you every time you pass me.

SPEAKER_01: 1:29:09

But that's what the public sees but what is really going on inside of those people um a lot um sorry there's a lot of pain we try in uh the rigs you know we have we run our calls have our days the kids these days they don't have any downtime we have like City Center is one of our fire stations 32 um uh it was uh an awful station you'd run 25 to 30 calls in a 24 hour period like what the fuck are you supposed to do with that right you know you're 30 years old and you have heart problems um they're just in pain they don't know how to deal with it they don't know how to process it uh you come back and uh you're just uh if you don't have good support it's just everyone is it's it there's some some of the most amazing people I've ever met are on the fire department um they're just some beautiful humans and there's some tortured humans too you know um you know we get in the trucks after a call and we we can talk some mad shit and it's how we deal with things you know you come back to the firehouse you sit at the table you talk shit you make fun of the the dead body or the asshole that got arrested you know that's puffing paint or whatever to deal with the pain it's all painful um and some people are better at dealing with it than others some people absorb it um other people it affects them like kryptonite and is slowly killing them um spiritually I I you We have a couple people that are church affiliated that'll come out and talk to you. Um I'm not really um I'm not really religious in that sense. I don't I don't go to a church or I'm more spiritual than religious. I don't I don't really like organized religion. I don't know. It's hard to say.

SPEAKER_00: 1:31:59

I mean I honestly asked that question and I think the first fifteen seconds of silence answers that question. There's a lot of pain. Um and looking at you, I mean watching you.

SPEAKER_01: 1:32:16

We had a guy Paul Lopez, who we all knew he was an asshole. He was mad and angry. He couldn't get out of running calls because his back hurt. He would get a doctor's note so he didn't have to write rescue and run the medical calls. He just wanted to drive the fire truck and uh not have to get out of the fire engine, honestly. Uh he couldn't stay at a station and get along with everybody. We all knew he had problems, but no one really, really wanted to. I mean, we reached out to him, but if you don't want help, you're not gonna get help. You're not gonna take it, you're not gonna be willing to receive it. So how hard do you push, right? You keep pushing, you try and get him to talk to his friends, talk to his family. He was basically isolating himself from everybody. He went up to a station on a nice round of town up in Summerlin. He called him sick one day and he had it all planned out, and he walked in front of a semi truck on the freeway in his station's area so that his crew would find him dead. He wasn't more than mid-40s, had kids, and just ended it. So um that just uh to me that that sums up a lot of what uh of what we struggle with. Um it just uh you know, um it's kind of cool to I mean it's uh amazing to talk to you and learn about you. I'm sorry for all your trauma that you've been through, but it's nice to talk to someone that can relate.

SPEAKER_00: 1:33:52

Yeah, it really is. It really is. It's nice. Um so often we think we're alone in these things, you know. I don't know, I don't know how much of the podcast you've listened to, but you should go back to episode number one and start because all the stuff you and I are talking about, and I can tell we're at different stages in this, um, but all the stuff you and I are talking about is fleshed out in this podcast. And I'm raw, I'm honest, I'm vulnerable, I'm transparent, I cry, I get pissed, all of it. And it's all memorialized in the last hundred episodes. So I think it'll help, you know. Everything that I do on this, I try to do in such a way that somebody can learn from whatever the circumstances are mine or the guests, just like having you on here, somebody's gonna learn something from this conversation, and I think that is so important. You know, um, I am religious, I I do go to church, I've been in church, and I do believe that God gave me my pain for a purpose and you yours for a purpose. And if we if we don't use that, we spend our entire careers helping other people at the sacrifice of our own families. I was willing to save other people's lives while I watched my family crumble underneath me, and that was acceptable to me, which is absolute bullshit. Right? But I was failing, but I was willing to do it. And now, you know, since I'm on the other side and I'm out, I did have identity crisis, but I worked through all of that. But now that I'm out on the other side, you know, there's gotta be lessons there because you and I aren't the only two people that let our family sacrifice for our career. So if somebody else can hear that and realize that they're not alone, man, I mean, our job is done, you know. It's so cool.

SPEAKER_01: 1:35:40

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00: 1:35:41

Well, yeah, I I really appreciate you taking time to chat with me tonight.

SPEAKER_01: 1:35:45

Um thanks for asking me to come on. I'm honored.

SPEAKER_00: 1:35:49

It has been so, so cool. So, what is one thing you've learned since you've been out of the fire business and through therapy and just looking back on your career? What's one thing you've learned you could pass on to somebody that might be listening to this today?

SPEAKER_01: 1:36:06

I end up doing the things I don't want to do. You have to get comfortable being uncomfortable. Um, that's when the real good change happens.

SPEAKER_00: 1:36:14

Yeah. I am I'm so glad that you came on. Um you you didn't have to you didn't have to tell me about the anxiety. I could totally see that. I can read I can read that from a mile, see that from a mile away. Um I'm glad that you came on. And I think that you know, you said something earlier that talk therapy is good or talking is good. And I think that one of the real benefits for me in this podcast, and my partner, who's female, who knows me just about as well as my wife does, um, she, you know, tells me this is therapeutic for me. And uh I don't think she's listened to a single episode. She uh right, she tells me this is therapeutic for me. And uh it really keep doing it. Yeah, I get to talk it out. So I'm so glad you came on. If you need anything, call um here at 24-7, and uh you're not in this alone. I'm so glad we met that day at uh Herbs and Rye.

SPEAKER_01: 1:37:08

Yes, thank you for staying in touch. That's uh not my strong suit. Um, so I appreciate it a lot. No worries.

SPEAKER_00: 1:37:14

So next time we come to Vegas, which we've been there four times in the last year, so I don't know what the hell is going on with this, but the next time we come to Vegas, give me a heads up. Yeah, so hopefully, uh, I don't know, mid-next year. Stacy and I like coming out there. It's super, it's a quick flight and it's a nice break from here. Yeah. So I'll definitely give you a heads up.

SPEAKER_01: 1:37:33

Absolutely, please do. I look forward to it.

SPEAKER_00: 1:37:35

All right, you take care.

SPEAKER_01: 1:37:36

Thank you.

SPEAKER_00: 1:37:38

The things that make this podcast uh impactful is the transparency, the vulnerability, and the realness of the guests and the messages that are on here. And you know, if you've made it this far, you're into this about an hour and 40 minutes, and I really appreciate you sticking around. And I think Kat was so vulnerable, even in her time of high anxiety, to come onto the show and just share her message. And I really applaud her for that. Ladies and gentlemen, that was Kat, a professional firefighter out of Las Vegas, that obviously has had a toll taken on her as a result of her profession and helping others and allowing herself and her family to crumble so other people could be saved. Thank you so much, Kat, for coming on. I absolutely loved having you as a guest. Uh, ladies and gentlemen, thank you so much for listening. And this is a heavy one, I know. But uh it's real life. Next time you see a firefighter out there passing by, remember what Kat said about what they're carrying with them. Pray for them, give them an extra hug, shake a hand, hold the door. Ladies and gentlemen, that is the Murders to Music Podcast.