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Oct. 28, 2024
Courageous Conversations and Culture with Captain Hunter Rankin
Hunter Rankin, an esteemed sheriff's commander from Arizona, joins us for an open-hearted conversation about his two decades in law enforcement and his personal struggles with the culture that often accompanies it. From navigating the stress of the job to battling alcohol dependence, Hunter's journey is both inspiring and cautionary. Raised in a small town where his uncle served as the chief of police, Hunter's path into law enforcement seemed inevitable. However, it was not without its challenges, particularly the unhealthy coping mechanisms that were once normalized within the profession. Hunter's candid reflections offer a window into the evolving culture of law enforcement, underscoring the essential need for wellness and responsible leadership.
We also shine a light on the critical importance of addressing mental health and personal struggles before they escalate into public crises. Hunter's story of overcoming toxic relationships and alcohol dependency highlights the transformative power of compassionate and supportive leadership. By sharing his experiences, Hunter illustrates the profound impact that a supportive workplace can have on individual recovery. This episode is a testament to the power of storytelling—not just as a tool for personal healing but as a means to inspire others who may be on similar journeys. Tune in to explore the courage required for open conversations and the pivotal role of understanding and support in fostering recovery and resilience within professional environments.
Read the series of articles by Hunter Rankin.
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Transcript
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Welcome to Courageous Leadership with Travis Yates, where leaders find the insights, advice and encouragement they need to lead courageously.
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Welcome back to the show.
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I'm so honored you've decided to spend a few minutes with us here today, and we've been trying to get this interview set up for quite some time, so I am really excited to have Hunter Rankin here.
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He's a sheriff's commander in Arizona with over two decades of experience.
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He's a graduate of the Northwestern Police School of Staff and Command and the Arizona Leadership Program.
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Hunter's a proven leader and instructor with a specialty in wellness, as well as a leadership consultant and addiction recovery coach.
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Hunter, how are you doing, sir?
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I'm doing great man.
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Thank you for having me on.
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I really appreciate it.
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Well, you're there in Arizona doing your thing.
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I appreciate you spending some time with us, and your story is so unique and so inspiring.
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I've been wanting to have you on for quite some time.
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I guess, before we get going, just kind of walk us into law enforcement.
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How did you get involved in law enforcement and how has your journey been?
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Yeah, so you know I was introduced to law enforcement, you know, at a really young age.
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My uncle was the chief of police in the town that I grew up in, so I kind of grew up around it, you know, always at the office, always riding in his car, things like that.
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So I really took an interest to it early on.
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And the town that I grew up in the jail was there.
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All the prisons were there.
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So a lot of my friends went to work for the county in the jail and seemed like something cool that you know I would like to do.
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So that's kind of how I got my foot in the door as I started in our jail before I went to went to the road.
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I started in our jail before I went to the road.
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Yeah, so you have a typical, you know entry into law enforcement and your career is going very, very well.
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But there were some issues behind the scenes and I think many people face these issues early on.
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The profession is so unique.
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It's never what we completely expect and some of us deal with those issues better than others.
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Kind of talk to us about some of those early signs that were occurring and kind of go from there.
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You know, I think mine may have even been before law enforcement and I think we've all heard this before.
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You know, you grow up in a small town and a lot of people will blame it on small towns, but it just it is what it is.
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I grew up in a small town with not a lot of things to do, so it was very common for us to start drinking at a really early age.
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So I was one of and I started at 16, but I was a late bloomer.
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You know there were a lot of my friends that started at 13, 14 years old.
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So I jumped into this profession and right out of high school I mean the Monday after I graduated high school I started at the sheriff's office.
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So I'm going from a high school kid to now I'm in this adult world and environment, dealing with real life, adult issues, and I found that it was really common for everybody to just hang out and drink.
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So I was like, hey, this is no different than than high school man.
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You know, we go to work, we get our job done and then we all go hang out and drink.
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And I found early on that that was kind of recommended for how to deal with all the stress and all the BS that we put up with all day.
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Hey, let's go hang out.
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We'll drink our problems away and then we'll start over tomorrow.
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Yeah, and you were speaking to a culture, right, a culture is very much still alive in a profession, and I have to think that as a 18, 19 year old kid, you went from hey, we're sort of doing something we shouldn't be doing, but we found a way to do it.
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I'm similar to you.
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I grew up in a small town and I can still remember the invites to the car wash on the weekend where there was nothing to do but drink beer, right, and things like that.
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Somehow I was able to avoid much of that, but that was very much every weekend.
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That's all there was to do.
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They'd go to the lake or they'd go to the car wash, or you know.
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We're talking towns of three, 400 people and this is what the kids would do.
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And I have to imagine that from a perspective of an 18 or 19 year old, you went from sort of doing something that was seen as man we better not really do this out in the open to now it's welcomed.
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You're working in a job where it's not only welcomed, it's encouraged.
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That must.
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You must have been on cloud nine, right?
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Oh yeah, it was awesome, man.
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It was like everything, you know, that that I wanted.
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I have this cool job, I'm getting paid and I still get to hang out and act like it's high school.
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You know, and that was, you know, mid, mid nineties.
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Uh, when I started, and I mean, I had my bosses were the ones that were, you know, organizing these events and getting me into these drinking functions.
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You know, being under age, but again, culture it's just, it's what we do, you know.
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Yeah, and you know, I I started in 93, very similar timeframe, and and I don't think it happens to the extent it did back then but I remember, as you know, hey, you're in uniform after work in the parking lot, right You're.
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You're stripping uniform off in the bathroom when you're going to the bar with the guys.
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I mean, that was that was, uh, very, very common.
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Nobody thought much of it until recently, a decade ago.
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You know, I'm familiar with the swat scandal to where the swat team was doing that for a long time and then when they started getting trouble, they went hey, hold on a minute, look at all these photographs of all these chiefs and sheriffs and upper commanders doing this with us.
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So it's very much a culture, and so you likely partaked in that and got away with that, like everybody else for a long time.
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But it probably at some event probably turned to the negative, because there are some people that can do this once in a while and it's OK.
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I think probably you have a story to tell to where, hey, there was a point, to where you should have turned back and you didn't and kind of lead us down that road.
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What happened with that?
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Yeah.
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So alcohol definitely became a crush for me.
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So I took it to the extreme, I took it to the next level because I still suffer from social anxiety.
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You know, throwing a couple beers down, I could go to any event.
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Is that why you didn't go to lunch with me a couple weeks ago, when I said, let's go to lunch, and then you were nowhere to be found?
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Hey, I couldn't find you man, the man of the hour.
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Yeah, yeah.
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So I found out, hey, that's a really easy way to to, to be calm and cool, you know.
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And then it became, it became my go-to for everything.
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You know, you have a rough day.
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You drink, um, because the feeling that you know I would get from drinking and partying and hanging out with the guys I got to hide from all the bull crap that was that was messing with my mind.
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So what it turned into is I never wanted the party to end.
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If I could keep drinking, I could keep that feeling going Right.
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Well then, one day you're still drinking, but the feeling's not going away.
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You know, I can remember I was sitting in my backyard and you know I was.
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I was down on a bottle and I remember, you know, just looking at that bottle, going man, it's gone and and I'm still not finding what I'm looking for.
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Yeah, you know, and I don't even know the answer to this, but I've been around this so much I want to just guess and you tell me what the answer is.
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I bet you were a very high performing officer.
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I bet your job reviews were good.
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Everybody thought you were the man to go to.
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It's weird with that personality right, because so many people can get away with both right, until they can't.
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Is that sort of your story?
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Absolutely man.
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I was a big game hunter man.
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I loved being out there, getting in the mix, getting in the thick of it, you know, arresting everybody.
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I can fights, foot pursuits, car chases.
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I loved it, loved being in the middle of it and I was very high performing and I did.
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I kept it up for a long time until I just couldn't anymore.
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Well, let's talk about that from a leadership perspective, because you're in middle management now.
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Middle management, quasi upper management, and so what should leaders be looking out for?
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Because I've seen us fail in this so many times, where we're given all the kudos to the high performers, all the kudos to high performers, but we're sort of blinded to what's also right in front of us.
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Right, and that's you know.
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There's been a few incidents on the forefront here lately of, you know, on duty public safety professionals that are getting popped on duty for DUIs.
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You know this latest tragedy out of Atlanta where they think that one of their guys was, you know, high on drugs when he got into this incident.
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And I'm telling you, I guarantee you, there were clues, there were clues there that people missed and again, we're good at hiding that stuff.
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So bosses need to look out for even just the subtle changes.
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And it comes down to learning and knowing your people as well.
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You've got to be close with your people.
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So I had those changes.
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I went from even as a Sergeant.
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I went from, you know, 15 traffic stops a day to maybe two or three a week.
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I had never used sick time in my.
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I mean, I had so much sick time it wasn't even funny.
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I was going home early every night.
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I was calling off multiple days in a row because I had to take care of things and it just it became a pattern that if somebody was really paying attention they would have seen that something's not right here.
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He's, he's out of character.
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So basically, you're just looking for what is this person doing that's out of character.
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Are there complaints going up, you know?
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Are they getting into more physical interactions, more verbal interactions?
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Because when you're fiending for that alcohol, all you can think of is getting through that shift so that you can start drinking again.
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So you have a very, very low tolerance for anybody's crap.
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So you may start having conflicts with fellow employees and you're not known as that type of person.
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There's those kind of things that come up because you're not yourself.
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Yeah, and it's so interesting.
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In fact, a few weeks ago, when we were together at that training event, I got a call during lunchtime and it was from a sergeant at an agency I won't name and he was dealing with an employee in a similar fashion, a high-performing guy.
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He showed up to in-service a few weeks ago with alcohol in his breath.
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We just sent him home.
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I got a call from a friend of his that said he's been drinking a lot, he's going through a divorce.
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He's like Travis, you know what can I do?
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He hasn't really done anything on duty.
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I'm like, okay, we'll figure out the in-service part right.
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But he's showing up to work, he's performing well, there's no issues.
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And I said man, listen, you can't separate private and personal because private's going to jump into personal.
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I said you need to get him in your office right now and we walked through the resources that he had.
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So the sergeant was thinking the right way, but he was very confused on well, it hasn't manifested into a complaint, it hasn't manifested onto anything.
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And I said no, you've got to interject that, you've got to get there before that.
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I just don't know your thoughts on that.
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So I think that's it's a very uncomfortable area for everybody, because I think a lot of people don't know what they can do either.
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I think a lot of people don't know what they can do either.
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You know, in this world of the world that we live in right now, you know HR is very, very strong and very powerful in organizations and you have to be careful of what you do, what you say, what you ask.
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So I think that may cause a little bit of apprehension as well, but, bottom line, you're looking out for the safety of your employee and we just need to put that fear aside and that apprehension, and be courageous and actually address the issue.
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And we became leaders for a reason.
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We know that there's going to be uncomfortable conversations, so we have to start making these normal conversations just like any other employee related issue, especially when you care about your employees, you just need to sit them down and just be straight with them and be like hey, look, um, you may not like this, but I've noticed some things here and I may be wrong, I may be off base, but this is what I'm noticing and what can I do to help you, because if you keep going down this path.
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It could have some bad consequences for you.
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Yeah, call them out.
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Yeah, you refer to the courageous conversations we talk about in our seminars and one thing that sort of lit a fire in this sergeant.
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I say, listen, if you do a search warrant tonight and he makes some mistakes, are you going to talk to him?
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He goes well, of course, like well, man, this is no different.
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This is no different, right, if you care about him, you've got to get him in an office and you've got to have a discussion with him and, uh, I haven't heard back.
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I think it went well, but so you, you kept going down this path, uh, hunter, and it got real bad, sort of what was the culmination of that?
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And then walk us through what your department did and any help, if any, that they provided for you.
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Yeah, and you know I do have to say that I work for a great agency and they really have even administrations previous to this one got on top of this issue, maybe a little sooner than others, and they really started putting mental wellness at the forefront, which wasn't the case when I started.
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And it's really good to work for an agency like that and to seeing other agencies start to get on board.
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So for me, it just got to the point where, um, I just couldn't handle it anymore.
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Um, so I was dealing with personal issues.
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So, of course, for me, alcohol always affected me in the relationship area.
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So I either got into bad relationships or, you know, I I saw red flags and I aimed for them instead of steering away from them, right?
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So the, the girl that I was with um, you know I had twins with her and um, it got bad.
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You know, when I met her, she was a cop.
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She ended up in ex-con by the time we were done, um, so you know we could do a whole podcast just on that alone, but essentially there were some things.
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I bet there were some fun times.
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I know there's relationships, right.
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We'll leave that for another day.
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Yeah, we'll leave that for another day because, yeah, that's a whole chapter.
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So I mean, essentially, she had moved her drug dealer into her house and was living with him and I could not, I couldn't figure out how I was going to get my kids out of that situation and, um, I just didn't handle it, right, man.
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So I started drinking really heavy one night and, um, I called my brother and said hey look, I can't do this on my own.
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I need help, I need you to take me somewhere.
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So he did.
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He took me to this place up in the Valley in Arizona and I met this doctor.
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And so weird the way things happen.
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This doctor was a retired sheriff sergeant out of LA County and we had a really good talk and he told me.
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He said, all right, I'm going to get you through this, but I'm telling you, when you get out of this, if you drink alcohol again, you're going to die.
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And I said, yeah, yeah, I believe you, absolutely.
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Like.
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No way I would touch the stuff again.
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The whole time, in the back of my mind, I'm thinking, man, when am I going to get out of here, because I haven't had a drink in a couple hours and I need to get back to drinking.
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So they convinced me to stay.
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I stayed like two or three days in a detox and that third day, when they move you onto the floor, I met with the intake person and I basically told him right, I'm ready to go home.
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You know I'm cured, I'm good, you know I'm dried out.
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Basically told him right, I'm ready to go home.
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You know I'm cured, I'm good, you know I'm dried out.
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He said, no, you need to stay.
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And I said, no, I'm, I'm good, like uh just had a bad day, like I'll be able to handle it.
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So I left against medical advice and uh they've only heard that a million times before.
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Right, right.
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Yep, but it was going to be different this time, right, so I left, ama, got a ride home from my dad.
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When I did leave, the people that I talked to when I left they did say hey, you're on a bunch of hospital medication right now.
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Do not drink, if you drink you're going to die.
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I said not a problem.
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So my dad dropped me off.
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I said not a problem.
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So my dad dropped me off.
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I walked through the front door and I went to the refrigerator and I opened it and I grabbed a beer and started drinking.
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So I don't know, six pack in, I'm on alcohol, hospital medication.
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Then the texting starts.
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You know I'm texting her to say, hey, we got to fix this, we got to figure this out.
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I can't have my kids around him.
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I can't do this.
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Well, fast forward, I'm on all this hospital medication, my normal prescription pills that I use, and it just it becomes a blur Right what I think and I'm still not convinced.
00:17:27.967 --> 00:17:28.428
One way or the other.
00:17:28.428 --> 00:17:31.435
I don't know if I tried to kill myself or I just didn't care if I died.
00:17:31.435 --> 00:17:35.109
I basically texted her and said, hey, well, you know, it looks like you got it figured out.
00:17:35.510 --> 00:17:37.076
You and your boyfriend can take care of the.
00:17:37.076 --> 00:17:38.367
You know, take care of the kids.
00:17:38.367 --> 00:17:39.029
Thanks a lot.
00:17:39.029 --> 00:17:53.640
And I went to my chair and I sat down and I was content with going to sleep and I hear it was like just one of those dreams where you know you're kind of in and out and I could hear this knocking noise.
00:17:53.640 --> 00:18:01.096
So I opened the front door and it's it's a city cop that I know and he's standing.
00:18:01.096 --> 00:18:05.834
He was a Sergeant and he's standing there and I was like what's up, man?
00:18:05.834 --> 00:18:06.214
And he goes.
00:18:06.214 --> 00:18:07.787
Hey, you know, she called.
00:18:07.787 --> 00:18:12.207
I guess you guys are having some issues and she's kind of worried that you might want to hurt yourself.
00:18:12.207 --> 00:18:14.792
And I said I'm good man.
00:18:14.792 --> 00:18:17.605
I said you know she's crazy and she's just trying to get me in trouble.
00:18:17.605 --> 00:18:18.507
It's all good, dude.
00:18:18.507 --> 00:18:21.209
He's like okay, you don't need anything.
00:18:21.209 --> 00:18:22.009
I said, no, I'm good.
00:18:22.009 --> 00:18:28.556
And he left, shut the door and I went back and sat back down on my chair and I was content again.
00:18:29.517 --> 00:18:31.137
So again I get.
00:18:31.137 --> 00:18:43.608
I get woken up by this loud banging and knocking and, uh, later find out it was about an hour and a half worth of knocking.
00:18:43.608 --> 00:18:44.349
Um, that I finally responded to.
00:18:44.349 --> 00:18:44.851
I opened the door.
00:18:44.851 --> 00:18:55.069
It's the same sergeant and about four or five officers and he says hey, we saw the texts and I said come on in, so I sit down.
00:18:56.165 --> 00:18:58.334
You knew this would be a longer conversation at this point.
00:18:58.664 --> 00:18:59.548
Yeah, yeah.
00:18:59.548 --> 00:19:12.847
So I sit down, fire shows up, meds show up and next thing I know I'm loaded up and I'm on my way to the hospital now you have to have a lot of things going on in your mind because this could affect your job, could affect your status.
00:19:13.229 --> 00:19:18.248
That's got to be a big concern at this point, right amongst other things you're dealing with yeah, it was well.
00:19:18.307 --> 00:19:27.574
Of course, at the time I was drunk and high off my ass, so, uh, those weren't as serious at the moment, but they were definitely there.
00:19:27.574 --> 00:19:34.067
I was like I've got to cooperate, I've got to do exactly what I'm supposed to do to be able to get out of this Right.
00:19:34.067 --> 00:19:42.152
So it's definitely there, um, but I spent the next couple of days, uh, in the hospital totally unconscious, like I was just out of it.
00:19:42.152 --> 00:19:52.354
Um, I come to I don't know, maybe on day three, and uh, my dad and brother were in the room with me and I was kind of confused where I was, what was going on.
00:19:52.354 --> 00:19:58.212
But a case manager was there and said you know, we're sending you to a psych ward.
00:19:58.733 --> 00:20:02.607
I was like I'm not going to a psych ward, like you're out of your mind, like I need to go home.
00:20:02.607 --> 00:20:10.854
And he probably gave me the first kind of slap of reality where he says, okay, well then, I'm going to petition you.
00:20:10.854 --> 00:20:13.385
If I petition you, your job's not going to like this.
00:20:13.385 --> 00:20:16.692
And that set off that bell, that crap.
00:20:16.692 --> 00:20:19.759
He's right, okay, I'll sign where I need to sign.
00:20:19.759 --> 00:20:30.661
So I went to, I went to a psych hospital for a couple of days psych ward for a couple of days, and that was an interesting experience, I can tell you that.
00:20:30.661 --> 00:20:49.730
But while I was in there, my brother, who works for the agency as well, showed up and he had a packet of paperwork and basically said hey, the sheriff and the chief wanted me to come bring you this and tell you, you know, to sign this, they're going to help you out with FMLA, but you're going to rehab.
00:20:49.730 --> 00:20:53.025
And I said, no, man, I'm not going to rehab.
00:20:53.025 --> 00:20:54.069
Like, what are you talking about?
00:20:54.069 --> 00:20:56.432
Like, I probably have to be here a couple of days.
00:20:56.565 --> 00:20:58.834
You already graduated from rehab just a few days earlier.
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