Jocko Podcast 296 w/ Sara Wilkinson

2021-08-30T21:22:13Z

Underground Premium Content: https://www.jockounderground.com/subscribe Join the conversation on Twitter/Instagram: @jockowillink @sarawilkinson7 @goruck @echocharles 0:00:00 - Opening 0:10:21 - Sara Wilkinson 2:48:10 - Final thoughts 3:13:28 - How to stay on THE PATH. JOCKO UNDERGROUND Exclusive Episodes: https://www.jockounderground.com/subscribe Jocko Store Apparel: https://www.jockostore.com Jocko Fuel: https://jockofuel.com Origin Jeans and Clothes: https://originmaine.com/durable-goods/ Echelon Front: https://www.echelonfront.com 3:40:01 - Closing Gratitude.

AI summary of episode

you got a some people might not like mango probably a small number people some people might not like orange some people might not like sour apple sniper some people might not like jockel Palmer some people might not like whatever so the recommendation is try on try one see what you like yeah let me know but let echo Charles know if his signature flavor is the best well it senses factually the best you love your flavor the best well you ever drink another different kind but just the fact that the military families out there and what they put up with and what they go through and usually I mean in my mind I have to worry more than the people that are than the military themselves so on on top of all this just you know the families that are out there that the the the spouses you know come on down too because like it just get to know other people that are living that life you know I know that might might my wife you know she wasn't around we didn't have any family around like we didn't have any family we lived in California we lived in Virginia Beach I was gone almost the entire time she didn't know anyone she ended up doing what you did which is going to live with my parents for a while and, you know, like, he disappears, you know, like what, that's what I was just thinking like, what was that in your head of like, hey, you know what, he's, you know, he probably is going to see his parents or he's, you know, going to go freaking surfing or whatever he's going to do Like he had everything and, you know, that, that, that made me think of this, you know, Sarah, when you're like talking about Chad and when I've talked to people that, like our art depressed, straight up depressed, their heads in, in like this, their heads in a storm, their heads in like darkness and, and it's really like from the outside, you look at him and you think, oh yeah, well, hey, man, it's, you know, you're in this bad situation, but it's only, it's only just right around you and if you come over here a little bit, you'll be out of the storm, like, come on over, but from their perspective, no matter where they look, it's like darkness and they just see the storm and they don't see that if they can move forward more, they can go a little bit further and they don't see that everybody's on the outside going, hey, like, it's okay, man, it's super sunny and bright and like there's a rainbow over here and everything's cool, just, just, just move over here a little bit It was almost like, like in pictures, it was almost like I'm going to kill you, you know, like that whole like, it just, it's just not like him. I know we don't need quite health and energy drinks in the same thing didn't you still no we do know we do now new era discipline go any different flavors best flavors mango kind of by far to pass and that's like an activity and that's saying a lot because the orange is freaking good you know on the sour out like these are like good flavor they taste good and he had just like collapsed like face first on the bed, kind of like the letter T, like arms out to the side, has his head just side like, like just exhaustion. I don't know though so is it normal like what do you let's say you had a salad like not like a side salad but up a rope us salad you know you stick salad chicken salad whatever what do you drink with that what's the norm what pairs with that that don't say I know you can say water I guess the reason I'm asking you that is because I don't know various conversations in my, I've had in my life with various people at various times and the conversation is something like, you know, you know, that little exploration of wait, I'm worried about him and then there'll be some kind of an explanation like, what do you mean? I think the beauty of it is anybody can do this workout because a step up is not technical, we're not snatching, there's no muscle ups that you know anybody can do a step up and then obviously we scale it and you know you have this huge fitness background, you're well aware not everyone has to do the 20 inch box not everybody has to do that weight but being able to go do a workout and honor of someone in our military that that generally brings people together anyway because they want to kind of pay their humble respects but the potential that it could bring for people to have a conversation whether it's you're doing the step ups and maybe you start to realize in that hour time frame where your brain does go what do you think about you know your struggle the person you're doing it for the friend you lost do you do it with a friend and you guys can talk to each other I mean just the the decompression aspect of it meaning for 30 days like you're just gonna eat nice food and like not do anything not blown anything up or whatever there was and and guys felt I definitely know some guys that got a lot out of going to it clearly there's some shortfalls especially if they find issues and they're like and then that was day one lots of setup you know you can kind of get into the characters a little bit day two stuff starts getting a little bit going sideways day two Deb openly weeping that I can visually watch her crying that's like reading like the some parts of the story that are heavy so final spin if you don't know what that's all about check it out but you know the whole idea of charging that much for jeans like whatever they're doing there like it's not a matter of like hey we got a you know People are caught off guard and I know you mentioned a couple of friends where there was real signs of, you know, hey, not things aren't going good for the individual but a lot of times I hear it's like, you know, there's been some suicides in the seal community where there was no indication at all, at all of any kind. but you know anybody anybody that that served the way that Chad served like the guys I served with you don't want people to walk around depressed after you're gone you want them you you don't want that I also think like a lot of I just think the more we do talk about it the the easier it is for someone else to say me too so if you want to come to that ftx September 20th in 21st we're getting close I'm out of already past that we also have an online training academy called extreme ownership extreme ownership.com where you can learn leadership and keep your leadership edge sharp mm if you want to help service members active and retired their families gold star families I talked a little bit about the hyper bearer chamber today and that's one of the one of the things that mama leaves charity organization does is pay for veterans to go into a city and stay for like 30 days and get 30 days worth of hyper bearer treatments that are so helpful they're even helpful for these kind of injuries that we talked about today if you want to donate or you want to get involved go to america's mighty warriors dot org and if you want more of my pathological pauses or you need more of echoes vacant verbalizations you can find us on the inner webs on twitter on the gram on facebook echoes adecotrails i am at docker one and and once again for chad 1000 x go to chad 1000 x dot com if you want to check out Sarah Sarah's instagram it's Sarah Wilkinson seven and then Jason and everything that he's doing on go rock you want to find out where you can get get involved in that it's a really good stuff check out at go rock and thanks once again to Sarah Wilkinson and Jason McCarthy for joining us today and thanks to both of you for your service and thanks for to both of you for everything that you're doing today to try and help raise awareness and prevent suicide straight up and all the veterans out there you've been through a lot and we just this is going to require something that is not kind of normal this day and age it's going to require us to kind of work together you know like how to support transitioning folks better how to kind of build stronger communities in the real world how to like that's what we need we don't you don't need guys coming out it's it's a form we fill out that basically says what's gonna happen should your husband get killed or or wife your spouse gets killed and everything from who's gonna show a pet your door are they gonna weather uniform is it military honors are they buried are they cremated who's gonna take your kids all all those you know pretty important questions it's kind of sad that when you fill it out so many times it's commonplace I remember the first time I filled it out we mold over these questions for so long and and by the end of the deployments I mean I'm like making dinner and I'm like the no you are going to get that's kind of the nature of going hard same saying no just like and work out just like with anything else but don't worry supplementation will help us all through those dings dance so anyway chocolate supplements a lot more you've seen chocolate supplements so first thing we're going to be compressing you know you made me chuckle a little bit we're trying over here decompression and they can't, they, they don't see it, they don't see it, they can't see it, they can't see it because it's there, that's what they're, that's what's around them and so like, it just causes them to do things that don't make any sense to us because we're looking at him from the outside going, hey, like, no, it's sunny, it's sunny, and they can't see it and it's like trying to convince people, it's almost impossible, it seems almost impossible to try and convince someone that that storm that they see 360 degrees around them, thunder, lightning, winds, that's what they see and to convince them that hey, man, right over here, it's sunny and it's nice beach day and it's 80 degrees and we're gonna, it's okay, they, they can't see it and it's so hard to get them out of that cloud Have you put together technical question here have you put together like a ramp up program for people to do you know two months out do a hundred and then whatever break it down like you know those marathon programming things where yeah there's working the program I mean we were there my flight was late that that afternoon and you guys are still you know there was still a big crew there just like social it was social and so it's not a depressing you know it's not it's not like you just people can't live inside that space forever and so what we're trying to do and what we are doing is bringing people together in the real world not in a shrinks office with the waterfall you know that you don't want to be there and it's like hey you know physical health mental health somehow those are definitely we don't have to study chimpanzees to know that those are definitely tied together and obviously Chad did not suffer from physical but I could tell you his sleep is shit they did a test where they are trying to realize are you the guy that's gonna I'm trying to figure the best way they said this basically are you the guy that's gonna see a problem and respond right away like rapid fire like bull in a china shop are you the guy that's gonna like take a minute assess it right a lot of you can look at you know you can do them harder you can scale them to whatever the the hardest the hardest workout in the history of CrossFit that's ever been done was how she did Chad the first time she went into into their garage and she put on Chad's Rucksack by herself and did Chad so think about that when you're feeling sorry for yourself out there you know because it's a hard workout and it is right and and that's what it's supposed to be everyone's selling easy that that's you don't think about anything when when life's easy except the next easy thing you're going to get right you know I was kind of losing it because you know I already don't like fashion people in the first place now they want to be a person charge 400 because they're trying to they're trying to keep the control the market right trying to keep that thing elevated because they want to charge 450 for their pair of jeans and so it was really telling when we did this in Virginia Beach and and guys it chatted served with showed up you know quietly kind of did the work you know they showed up in the big f9 50s you know it's like yes we're hosting so you know call it a big giant monster start start getting your your train on you got a thousand box steps with a forty five pound rock bro that's a get some evolution that's a get some evolution for sure you know he used to do that I don't know if you know this I mean my my neighbor two doors down is a top gun instructor I mean these things are just normal around us and it's great they're just good people that are just you know this talk about you know the greatest generation coming back to America and just doing great stuff getting educated and working their asses off and building America into America and you know we need more of that So people think they know you and what happens is your friends come and join the gym and I had kind of established at the very beginning like we're friends, but at the same time this is, this is a, you know, a business and you do, if, if you're a team life, you don't talk about it in this gym. So, that idea of we think we know, we think we know what someone's going through, we think we know what's going on in their heads And you know, but if you blow your back out or if you, you know, you get shot or if you do, you know, things that are acceptable injuries, you know, by team room standards of sorts, right? And so I get in the shower and he's sitting on the bathtub and he just had been over and he's got his hands on either side of his head and he's holding this hair and he's kind of like gripping his hair and I kept saying what's wrong, you know, what's going on and he got to talk to me and he just kept saying I don't know. well but the thing is again for your your other parts of your body it's kind of like there's kind of a protocol you can check in and be like okay for the brain so mysterious it's like we can try and we are kind of trying to do that and you know this this came about through that partnership and and you know Chris had called me up and he was like you know nobody knows how to deal with this man everyone wants to deal with it and nobody knows how to deal with it and you know you do all the things I mean there there is a lot of assessment that happens at that place and could be potentially good it told me almost all the things I already knew about him as a spouse I are you know they did personality tests and different stress tests and I mean yes I don't know the scientific sleep lab study for a reason like they're doing what's their thing what are they doing like that thing I think I'll tell you what they're doing they know that people want to buy American made stuff and I can see her she's like laughing she laughing like laughing like laughing at me like nodding her head Yeah, you know, when I, when I kind of started off talking about this, that's the connection that I made as I was like listening to your story hearing it is, you know, we've made all these developments and all these different wars from the problems that the wars cause, right? and but you're just strengthening bonds right you bring people together in the real world this is very counter culture and we're very cool with that you know and a world where kids are grown up text messaging each other to instead of talking instead of sitting in the captain's gap like like we are right now and they absolutely need the individuals that have these kind of attributes that you're talking about and there is absolutely a new mission when you get done with the military to go out in the civilian world and have an impact make people's lives better and build great products and build great companies and and do great things and that is absolutely available and you are needed in the in the civilian world and that's the way it is we need them too all right like our country needs people with this kind of experience spread throughout our our country spread throughout our companies spread throughout our communities spread throughout our our neighborhoods and one of the things that makes San Diego such a great town is it's it's a military there's it's a military town you've got this just underpinnings of San Diego the foundation is strong it's the same where I live in Jacksonville beach So like, you know, we started this in football, you've got the concussion, measurements and if you get a concussion, you've got to come out and you know, if it's your star player, he's still got to come out.

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Episode transcript

[00:00:00] This is Jocco podcast number two, 96 with me, Jocco Willink.
[00:00:06] The Chief of Naval Operations takes pleasure in presenting the Silver Star Medal to Special
[00:00:12] Warfare Operator First Class, Chad M. Wilkinson, United States Navy.
[00:00:20] For service as set forth in the following citation, for conspicuous gallantry and
[00:00:28] intrapetity in action against the enemy while serving as a mission support sight team leader
[00:00:34] while assigned to a joint task force in support of operations in during the freedom on 24 April
[00:00:41] 2011.
[00:00:43] The officer Wilkinson displayed superior guidance during a daytime assault targeting a Taliban
[00:00:50] commander while under significant enemy fire.
[00:00:56] Upon arriving into the objective area, Petty Officer Wilkinson and his assault element came
[00:01:01] under a hail of enemy fire.
[00:01:06] He and his teammates led his assault to set containment on the objective area.
[00:01:13] After receiving friendly wounded in action from direct enemy fires and grenades within 20
[00:01:17] meters of the target compound, Petty Officer Wilkinson boldly exposed himself to the enemy
[00:01:24] and suppressed the incoming fire that allowed his element to move to safety and enable
[00:01:28] the combat medic to move to their positions to treat a head wound of one of his teammates.
[00:01:37] He directed two additional assaults on the target compound and coordinated with higher
[00:01:42] headquarters for three rotary wing, close air support missions after evacuating all non-combatants
[00:01:48] from adjacent buildings.
[00:01:53] Petty Officer Wilkinson's actions eliminated the enemy combatants, enabled the evacuation
[00:01:58] of the wounded casualties and allowed for the safe extraction of the assault force.
[00:02:06] By his bold leadership courageous actions and total dedication to duty, Petty Officer Wilkinson
[00:02:13] reflected great credit upon himself and upheld the highest traditions of the United States
[00:02:19] Naval Service for the President Jonathan W. Greenert Admiral United States Navy chief of
[00:02:31] naval operations.
[00:02:38] So there you have the award citation of a hero from one of our recent wars.
[00:02:52] Afghanistan.
[00:02:55] And war is in some ways timeless.
[00:03:02] There are heroes, there are sacrifices, and there's fear and pain and loss.
[00:03:16] And war also evolves over time and there's new weapons, new technology, new tactics,
[00:03:24] there's lessons that are learned, there's solutions that are created with the advent of
[00:03:35] poison gas.
[00:03:36] World War I came the advent of the gas mask.
[00:03:41] From the creation of machine guns came the creation of the tank.
[00:03:48] Was responsible for the creation or the advancement of radios and radar and atomic weapons
[00:03:56] and energy and jet engines and electric computers and war creates problems.
[00:04:03] I think create solutions to those problems.
[00:04:10] Or at least it's supposed to.
[00:04:18] There've been great advances in medicine from war.
[00:04:25] The Civil War in America brought about the significant use of anesthesia.
[00:04:34] The World War I men were now being gravely wounded by these newly developed machine guns
[00:04:40] and they were losing massive quantities of blood.
[00:04:42] And so doctors started regularly using blood transfusions for the first time.
[00:04:49] World War II saw the expanded use of antibiotics to fight off infections.
[00:04:59] World War II's also where they started using metal plates to repair broken bones and fractures
[00:05:05] from these explosions, from these new weapons.
[00:05:08] And the Korean War helped advance the idea of life flights.
[00:05:14] Then using helicopters to get wounded soldiers the care that they needed is quickly
[00:05:18] as possible.
[00:05:24] And the Vietnam War started using Nae Palm regularly.
[00:05:32] Not brought about advances in burn care.
[00:05:36] And they started using antiseptic and antibiotic infused the dressings to reduce infection.
[00:05:45] So war creates new forms of physical trauma and then creates ways to help ease that trauma.
[00:06:02] And then there's unseen trauma.
[00:06:07] And the conclusive blasts, the traumatic stress every war has its own form.
[00:06:19] And World War I, it was shell shock.
[00:06:22] And the horror of going over the top.
[00:06:28] World War II, the dreadfulness of close killing.
[00:06:33] The Vietnam, the confusion over who's good and who's bad.
[00:06:41] In our current modern wars, there's something else to contend with for our professional
[00:06:49] warriors.
[00:06:53] And that is the idea of an unending war.
[00:06:59] Because World War I, as heinous and awful as it was, was also finite.
[00:07:09] World War II is similar.
[00:07:11] I mean absolute horror, yes.
[00:07:14] But a horror that ended in four years.
[00:07:21] Korean War lasted three years.
[00:07:22] Korean War is also where we started to see this idea of tours where soldiers would go over
[00:07:29] and do a tour.
[00:07:32] And then go home.
[00:07:36] And that was it.
[00:07:38] And the same thing in Vietnam.
[00:07:41] We all kind of know that story.
[00:07:43] Service members were required to do their hitch.
[00:07:45] And now.
[00:07:49] One year, count the days.
[00:07:57] And in all those cases, for a majority of soldiers, war was a finite thing.
[00:08:04] Yes, brutal, yes, horrific, yes, sickening.
[00:08:12] But had an endpoint.
[00:08:18] So many of this generation, our current generation, there's been no endpoint insight.
[00:08:29] It's been a constant exposure to violence, conclusive explosions, stress, deployment after
[00:08:41] deployment after deployment after deployment.
[00:08:46] And the training is elevated to, and that's repetitive over and over and over again.
[00:08:52] Explosive breaching of doors, firing rockets over and over again, improvised demolition shots,
[00:08:59] and then back on deployment again.
[00:09:09] And that can become a never-ending cycle of trauma.
[00:09:22] And that's taken its toll on the mental health of some of our nation's finest warriors.
[00:09:36] And like, Chad Wilkinson, who received that silver star and who finally met his end,
[00:09:47] not on the battlefield by the hands of the enemy.
[00:09:55] Who sadly took his own life with suicide.
[00:10:12] And we have to learn from that.
[00:10:17] And here today to talk to us about Chad, and what he went through is his wife.
[00:10:25] Sarah Wilkinson, and joining her as Jason McCarthy, former Special Forces soldier, founder
[00:10:32] of Go Rock, and a friend of Sarah's.
[00:10:36] And together, they had been trying to share the message of mental health, remove the
[00:10:40] stigma's raise awareness, and encourage people to reach out if they need help.
[00:10:49] And encourage us all to help each other.
[00:10:56] With that, Sarah, Jason.
[00:10:58] Thank you for joining us.
[00:10:59] Thank you.
[00:11:00] Good to see you guys again.
[00:11:03] Yeah, Jason came on before.
[00:11:05] You're on podcast 208 talking about your experiences in the Special Forces, in Florida,
[00:11:12] tennis champion.
[00:11:14] Almost championed.
[00:11:15] My mom was the dad of the mental growth champion.
[00:11:19] And Sarah, thank you so much for coming out.
[00:11:21] It's very, very awesome to meet you.
[00:11:24] And I just want to, you know, get right into your story and the story of you and Chad.
[00:11:29] And let's start at the beginning.
[00:11:31] Where you from, where'd you grow up, how did it all start?
[00:11:35] I'm a military kid born, born, bread.
[00:11:39] My dad was marine.
[00:11:40] I'm the youngest of two.
[00:11:42] I have an older sister.
[00:11:44] My mom and dad met pretty young and got married.
[00:11:47] My dad joined the military, became a marine, and set off their path to move around every
[00:11:52] couple of years.
[00:11:54] Was he from a military family?
[00:11:55] No.
[00:11:56] He's randomly joined the Marine Corps.
[00:11:59] Uh, yeah, it was kind of like right where he just missed the draft.
[00:12:03] But yet, still felt the need to serve, I guess.
[00:12:07] He, they come from a small town in Ohio, where everyone kind of just stays in that same
[00:12:12] town.
[00:12:13] I think he wanted to find something bigger, maybe more challenging.
[00:12:17] I can relate.
[00:12:18] He wanted to serve his country.
[00:12:20] So yeah, his marine, I was a military kid, moved around all the time.
[00:12:25] My dad was an officer, so that means we moved every two to three years.
[00:12:30] We spent most of the time on the East Coast.
[00:12:32] We lived once overseas in Okinawa.
[00:12:36] And yeah, I, I mean, I went to 15 schools before I graduated.
[00:12:42] So do you become super adaptable when you go to 15 schools?
[00:12:46] I guess you could either come super adaptable or just super in a shell and not talk to
[00:12:51] anybody.
[00:12:52] I, I really think you could go either way.
[00:12:53] You're either out there or you're, or you're rigid.
[00:12:56] I consider myself more like a chameleon because of that.
[00:12:59] So I can blend in in a room where I can stand out what needs to happen.
[00:13:04] So growing up moving all the time, I mean, I went to a different school fifth, sixth,
[00:13:09] seventh, eighth, ninth grade, different school each year for those years.
[00:13:16] So yeah.
[00:13:17] And then, and so then what about Chad?
[00:13:18] When did you meet Chad?
[00:13:20] First day of high school.
[00:13:21] And where was this?
[00:13:22] A quannico Virginia.
[00:13:24] So so my dad marine, right quannico's marine corpace.
[00:13:28] And his dad was Navy.
[00:13:30] His dad was a former seal.
[00:13:32] His uncle was also a seal.
[00:13:34] So he always wanted to be a seal from the time he was like 12.
[00:13:39] But his dad had switched rates.
[00:13:41] And then was kind of on the helicopter duty with the president.
[00:13:46] And so that's what brought him to quannico.
[00:13:50] Because otherwise, I don't think we would have mad.
[00:13:52] He would have never been there.
[00:13:54] Yeah, we went to a really, really small school.
[00:13:57] It's a DOD high school.
[00:13:58] It doesn't exist anymore.
[00:14:00] So a high school that's on base that's just for the military kids.
[00:14:04] Our kids well behaved on the military school, on the military base school.
[00:14:08] Well, when I went, yes, because, you know, we're talking early 90s.
[00:14:12] But also on base, not on quannico when I moved to Lysun, this was the case.
[00:14:17] But a lot of times you would have a plaque in front of your house.
[00:14:20] So my house said there's a plaque that's at Colonel Trilice, out in front of her house.
[00:14:24] So you can really do too much because not only, you know, could they report to your dad.
[00:14:29] They knew where you live.
[00:14:30] So you're in a controlled environment.
[00:14:32] Pretty much, yeah.
[00:14:33] What kind of music were you listening to?
[00:14:36] Like grunge, you know, poppy type of music.
[00:14:39] Because what year is this?
[00:14:41] Well, when I met him, it was 91.
[00:14:43] So you're a freshman in high school in 91.
[00:14:47] Yeah, so it was kind of peak grunge.
[00:14:49] Yeah.
[00:14:49] You were just getting your Nirvana.
[00:14:51] Oh, yeah.
[00:14:51] Yeah, yeah, yeah.
[00:14:52] He loved Pearl.
[00:14:53] Yeah, yeah.
[00:14:54] Yeah.
[00:14:55] I still listen to it and just smile.
[00:14:58] So you guys meet and what?
[00:15:00] It was a love at first sight.
[00:15:01] Is there?
[00:15:02] For me?
[00:15:03] Oh, yeah.
[00:15:04] I mean, I don't know about him.
[00:15:07] Yeah, he, we, so go into a military school right off the bat the first day.
[00:15:13] There starts to be buzz about who the new kids are, who's this kid and this kid at
[00:15:16] the school is so, so small.
[00:15:18] And they were talking about the Wilkinson brothers.
[00:15:20] The girls were like, have you seen the Wilkinson brothers?
[00:15:23] I was like, what's the deal?
[00:15:25] But I smile because I just remember this so clearly sitting in the bleachers on the
[00:15:31] first day, traditional like PE coach just like intense colon roll and this kid was sitting
[00:15:38] in front of me.
[00:15:39] I saw the back of his head and they called Chad Wilkinson and he turned his head to the
[00:15:42] side and he said, here.
[00:15:44] And I was like, oh, well, I'm done.
[00:15:46] I like him.
[00:15:47] And that was it.
[00:15:48] How did you connect then?
[00:15:50] Well, I mean, a small school, we kind of, you, you just end being military kids.
[00:15:54] I think it was pretty natural for all of us to just be friends.
[00:15:58] There really wasn't like a cool group and a not cool group.
[00:16:03] Everybody, you were kind of forced to be friends with everybody because the school was so
[00:16:07] small and we got so small.
[00:16:08] How many people per grade?
[00:16:10] His graduating class was 24.
[00:16:11] I think.
[00:16:12] Oh, 24.
[00:16:13] That is really small.
[00:16:14] Yeah.
[00:16:15] Yeah.
[00:16:16] And so.
[00:16:17] That's like one classroom.
[00:16:18] Yeah.
[00:16:19] Yeah.
[00:16:20] We actually, the school was a middle school in high school together.
[00:16:23] It was just in a different hall.
[00:16:24] So high school took up like one hall and a half and the middle school took up like another
[00:16:29] hall and a half.
[00:16:30] And we didn't cross paths with the middle schoolers, but we were all in the same building.
[00:16:34] Now, were you guys in the same grade?
[00:16:36] Was he a freshman year freshman?
[00:16:37] No, he was just, he was a year older, sophomore.
[00:16:39] He was a sophomore.
[00:16:40] I was, yeah.
[00:16:41] And so then, like, what did he like say what's up, sister?
[00:16:47] I mean, what did he do?
[00:16:48] How do you roll?
[00:16:49] How did he just happen?
[00:16:50] He was pretty cool.
[00:16:51] I mean, I say there wasn't a cool group, but he was, I think he was pretty cool
[00:16:54] in high school and he was super athletic.
[00:16:56] And, I mean, for anybody who's listening, he's really good looking.
[00:17:01] So, you know, he had that going for him.
[00:17:04] We were just friends the first year or two.
[00:17:07] What sports did he play?
[00:17:09] Soccer, primarily.
[00:17:12] I think he was on the golf team one year.
[00:17:14] And I think he was the kicker for the football team one year because they just knew
[00:17:19] he could kick it.
[00:17:20] So he'd run out there, kick and then come off.
[00:17:24] But yeah, for two years, we were more or less just friends.
[00:17:27] I mean, in that period of time, he did ask me to go to homecoming.
[00:17:32] And I was super pumped about it.
[00:17:35] So homecoming is what?
[00:17:39] Like, yeah.
[00:17:40] The thing is, I went to a really small school too.
[00:17:42] I think I had 80 people in my graduating.
[00:17:44] I don't really remember the home.
[00:17:45] I know my, because I have kids too.
[00:17:48] And my daughters went to some kind of homecoming.
[00:17:49] But what's the deal with homecoming?
[00:17:51] I know the team came to my house.
[00:17:53] They were dressed up.
[00:17:54] The boys were wearing ties and like this tucking part.
[00:17:56] Yeah, it's basically a reason to get dressed up and have a party.
[00:17:59] And you know, back then it was big deal because it's a small school.
[00:18:02] And you have a huge pepper alley on Friday.
[00:18:04] And that was rally.
[00:18:05] Yeah.
[00:18:06] And we were pumped.
[00:18:07] I mean, my kids dread pepper alley is now they're like, that's lame.
[00:18:09] I'm not going.
[00:18:10] I'm like, why not?
[00:18:11] It's awesome.
[00:18:12] That's what we did.
[00:18:13] There was a football game.
[00:18:14] And then after the football game, you had a dance.
[00:18:18] And you get dressed up.
[00:18:19] And you got the like corsage and the flower and the whole thing.
[00:18:23] Yeah.
[00:18:24] It's a different time.
[00:18:26] You know, I was looking at a boot camp, a picture of myself the other day.
[00:18:31] And the picture was taken in 1990, right?
[00:18:35] So I posted, I was like, I posted on my social media page.
[00:18:39] Right?
[00:18:40] Hey, you know, here's a new boot camp.
[00:18:41] And I thought, so that's 1990.
[00:18:44] That's 31 years ago.
[00:18:48] That means when I was in boot camp, if I would have looked at a picture that was
[00:18:53] 31 years old, it would have been from 1960.
[00:18:56] Yeah.
[00:18:57] Crazy.
[00:18:58] And then I have sometimes on the podcast, I'll have guys on that run, you know, World
[00:19:04] World 2 career Vietnam, but recently had a bunch of Vietnam guys on.
[00:19:07] And they're just like, they're talking about pepper rallies.
[00:19:10] Like these kind of things.
[00:19:11] It was just a different time.
[00:19:13] I think you caught the end of it.
[00:19:14] I caught the tail end of it.
[00:19:15] I think I did.
[00:19:16] I think I found like the sweet spot of high school before all that.
[00:19:20] I was blew up and diminished.
[00:19:23] I don't know.
[00:19:24] Okay, so you get started to sidetrack.
[00:19:27] I kind of needed to know about homecomings.
[00:19:29] Because my two daughters went to home, the homecoming thing.
[00:19:32] They got picked up by some dudes at the house.
[00:19:35] The guys were wearing ties and whatnot.
[00:19:39] I tracked it, no one.
[00:19:40] We're good.
[00:19:44] Okay, so you get asked the homecoming, my Chad?
[00:19:46] Yeah.
[00:19:47] And it was just the dance and then later.
[00:19:52] Well, so we asked me after we got in a food fight in the cafeteria.
[00:19:57] Where you got in a food fight?
[00:19:58] No, he got in a food fight.
[00:19:59] Okay.
[00:20:00] He's great.
[00:20:01] And he came up, he had food on a shirt and stuff.
[00:20:05] And then he's like, hey, as he would say, you want to go to homecoming with me?
[00:20:09] I tried to act not really excited, but I was like, all right.
[00:20:12] It was like, yes.
[00:20:13] Score.
[00:20:14] So yeah, and we just went homecoming.
[00:20:16] And then that was that.
[00:20:17] We didn't date or anything.
[00:20:18] And then fast forward to the following spring.
[00:20:22] One more thing about homecoming and dances in high school was their particular like songs
[00:20:29] that were repetitive.
[00:20:31] Because when I went to high school, every single dance that I went through, which started
[00:20:36] in mid-School, which was, I guess, it was 7th, so 7th, 8th, 9th, 10th, 11th, and 12th grade.
[00:20:42] Every single dance that I went to.
[00:20:45] That's where we had dances, I don't know what they're called now.
[00:20:47] But every single dance we went to, every single one.
[00:20:50] So there's probably 4 or 5 a year, you know, 6 or 30 times.
[00:20:54] The song that would play at the end of the night was, was, stay where it had a Led Zeppelin.
[00:20:59] Oh, yeah.
[00:21:00] Is that a normal transition?
[00:21:01] Is that a worldwide tradition?
[00:21:03] I think it's just a really good march-out song.
[00:21:05] They're like, yeah, beat it.
[00:21:08] Lights are coming up.
[00:21:09] Mozy out the door.
[00:21:11] Right on.
[00:21:12] Right on.
[00:21:13] So you go to this dance and I cut you off.
[00:21:16] So you go to the dance and that was it.
[00:21:18] Nothing really became of it.
[00:21:20] But then fast forward a couple of months later, towards the end of the year, he would go
[00:21:25] by me in the locker.
[00:21:26] You know, I'd be see him in the locker and he'd walk by and he just, hey, the whole, hey.
[00:21:30] And I just, I kind of just did the whole girl flip out thing.
[00:21:34] Like, oh my god, he said, hey to me.
[00:21:37] And then he needed help with a history paper, apparently.
[00:21:39] They asked me to help.
[00:21:40] They asked me to help.
[00:21:41] Yeah.
[00:21:42] So I was like, okay, and then he asked me out to dinner.
[00:21:46] I went to dinner and we started dating pretty much.
[00:21:48] So that was-
[00:21:49] Where'd you go to dinner?
[00:21:50] We went to this Mexican restaurant.
[00:21:51] I don't think it even exists anymore.
[00:21:53] I don't know the name of it.
[00:21:54] And a quiet harbor.
[00:21:55] We'll shout out.
[00:21:56] I don't know if I actually asked a girl to dinner until I was in my twigs.
[00:22:01] Who are you at class?
[00:22:04] Well, I don't even know if I should share all this.
[00:22:07] But we actually also went to a movie.
[00:22:09] And we bought tickets to some stupid movie because we couldn't get in a radar movie.
[00:22:13] And then we snuck into the movie, sliver.
[00:22:17] Do you guys remember that movie?
[00:22:18] Harbor movie?
[00:22:19] It's like sexy smutnik.
[00:22:20] Oh, oh.
[00:22:21] And I'm like, on this date, now I was like, oh, there's a lot of artists sharing stone.
[00:22:26] I, oh, I think so.
[00:22:28] I actually don't remember who was in it.
[00:22:30] I mean, this was a long long time ago, but I just remember being like completely red.
[00:22:35] Thankfully, in a dark movie theater.
[00:22:37] And Marist.
[00:22:38] Yeah, but we did.
[00:22:39] But dinner and snuck in a red at our movie.
[00:22:41] Crazy.
[00:22:42] Crazy kid.
[00:22:43] Kids were getting crazy.
[00:22:44] I know.
[00:22:45] That's what you was at.
[00:22:46] Was this one his senior year?
[00:22:48] I was, it was the end of my sophomore year.
[00:22:51] His junior year.
[00:22:52] Okay.
[00:22:53] And so this was 1993.
[00:22:54] Okay.
[00:22:55] Really started dating.
[00:22:57] So now you're legit dating.
[00:22:58] Yeah.
[00:22:59] Through the summer?
[00:23:01] Well, so then I was coming in the fall.
[00:23:03] Yeah.
[00:23:04] Well, then it was for us.
[00:23:05] I don't know if it changes.
[00:23:06] But it was like October.
[00:23:08] I have a really great picture from that day.
[00:23:10] I should pass it to you just because it's good.
[00:23:12] But no, my dad got stationed in Lajoon.
[00:23:18] So I had to leave after my sophomore year.
[00:23:20] Yeah.
[00:23:21] And that was the only time I was ever really pissed, honestly.
[00:23:25] Every move I'd be like, okay.
[00:23:27] We didn't get family vacations.
[00:23:28] We moved.
[00:23:29] That's what happened.
[00:23:30] And then you're on a new adventure.
[00:23:32] And this was the only time I was mad.
[00:23:33] And so.
[00:23:34] What were you into for?
[00:23:35] Were you doing sports as well?
[00:23:36] I was.
[00:23:37] I was a swimmer.
[00:23:38] I was a swimmer.
[00:23:39] Cool.
[00:23:40] Yeah.
[00:23:41] So I was that person and it's like, you wake up at five.
[00:23:42] You swim.
[00:23:43] You go to school.
[00:23:44] You swim.
[00:23:45] You swim a lot.
[00:23:46] Yeah.
[00:23:47] Okay.
[00:23:48] So now you have to go to Camp Lajoon.
[00:23:49] Yeah.
[00:23:50] So I managed to work a deal.
[00:23:53] And I stayed at my best friends house.
[00:23:56] Steph cutty.
[00:23:58] So I could hang out with her.
[00:23:59] But really, so I could hang out with Chad.
[00:24:02] Let's be honest.
[00:24:03] I want to already.
[00:24:04] And yeah, I just hung out that summer as a lifeguard.
[00:24:07] I got the pool on base through high school as a lifeguard.
[00:24:10] And I pulled butts at the shooting range.
[00:24:12] Dang.
[00:24:13] You know, like, rolling up.
[00:24:14] And we, all the high school kids, we just sit there like in this little dugout with
[00:24:18] your pro on and you'd see the bullet go and you pull the target, slap the sticker on it,
[00:24:25] throw it back up.
[00:24:26] It's how we spent our weekends.
[00:24:27] Minimum wage?
[00:24:28] Oh, yeah.
[00:24:29] I was barely making anything.
[00:24:30] Well, I mean, I was actually in the Navy.
[00:24:32] And I did that.
[00:24:33] But I did have for each other.
[00:24:34] That's what we did.
[00:24:35] Well, I have.
[00:24:37] So people to come down and do it for us.
[00:24:39] I guess that's some wrinkle or officer thing.
[00:24:41] Well, our friends dad pretty much ran the rain.
[00:24:43] So I think he just like, I'm going to make these kids do something.
[00:24:46] And so we could hang out with our friends all day on the weekend.
[00:24:49] It makes me sound like such a nerd.
[00:24:50] Not that I'm saying this.
[00:24:51] I didn't do anything like super crazy in high school.
[00:24:53] But we could hang out with our friends and get paid a little bit of money.
[00:24:57] Okay.
[00:24:58] So that's where you spend the summer and this whole time you're hanging out with Chad.
[00:25:01] So you guys are a tight, getting tight at this time or a thing.
[00:25:05] But you're going to bail.
[00:25:06] Yeah.
[00:25:07] I'm just ticking.
[00:25:08] And yep, so I moved to Lajoon.
[00:25:10] We continued dating.
[00:25:12] I'm a junior.
[00:25:13] He's a senior.
[00:25:15] And he would drive down on the weekends.
[00:25:17] Which was kind of a big deal because you know, he was fairly newly licensed, you know,
[00:25:22] and his mom and dad would let him drive.
[00:25:24] The minivan or what was he driving?
[00:25:26] No, he had an old oldsmoble.
[00:25:29] I think at my time, it belonged to his grandpa.
[00:25:31] And like the front seat was busted.
[00:25:34] So it like sat crooked.
[00:25:36] And he was a hoopty.
[00:25:37] It was great.
[00:25:38] And he would drive that down on the weekends and see me and then drive back.
[00:25:42] Not every weekend, but as much as he could.
[00:25:45] Stay the night.
[00:25:46] Mm-hmm.
[00:25:47] Parents were cool.
[00:25:48] Yeah.
[00:25:49] This was like a thing because my parents, my mom said to me recently, like in the last year,
[00:25:53] we had some conversations just about this, Chad and I are youth.
[00:25:57] And she said, I don't know what it was.
[00:25:59] I just, we just always knew that the relationship with you and Chad was just something
[00:26:05] different.
[00:26:06] And he stayed.
[00:26:07] I mean, he stayed in the separate room.
[00:26:09] He wasn't my room, but yeah.
[00:26:10] Well, at least as far as the birds know.
[00:26:13] I mean, yeah.
[00:26:14] He was getting tactical.
[00:26:19] I'm sure at some point.
[00:26:21] I am.
[00:26:22] You're playing the fair thing.
[00:26:24] Cool.
[00:26:26] So then how long does this long distance relationship work?
[00:26:30] So we, and so we date and then when I, so he graduates, an homiceneer.
[00:26:35] So I'm a senior.
[00:26:37] He graduates high school.
[00:26:38] His mom and dad moved to Florida to Orlando now.
[00:26:43] When he's in high school, is he talking about joining the Navy?
[00:26:45] Has he talked about going in the dreams?
[00:26:47] He always kind of, I think he just always knew that's what he was going to do.
[00:26:52] It wasn't that he talked about it in excess.
[00:26:54] So he has two brothers.
[00:26:55] He's the oldest.
[00:26:56] Two brothers in the necister.
[00:26:58] And his house was just full of, you know, every classic, seal movie.
[00:27:05] You know, speck up movie, you know, he had posters on his wall, which I think I still
[00:27:12] have that you probably can't even find anywhere anymore.
[00:27:15] But I think it was just something he always knew that's what he was going to do.
[00:27:19] I don't ever remember him talking about anything else.
[00:27:22] Like, oh, I might go to business school or something.
[00:27:26] No.
[00:27:27] It was so obvious to him and you that it was not even really a big subject.
[00:27:31] It was like, yeah, well, what else am I going to do?
[00:27:33] That type of thing?
[00:27:34] Yeah.
[00:27:35] And I mean, even then, I don't think at my age, I was even thinking about, you know,
[00:27:41] our life together.
[00:27:42] Like, oh, I'm going to marry him.
[00:27:44] I doodle this name a lot on all my notebooks because that's what you do.
[00:27:47] And I am his, your grunge t-shirt and your boy crush.
[00:27:50] But I just always thought, I'm just going to be wherever he is.
[00:27:56] You know, I wasn't thinking like marriage, but I just knew whatever he is is where I want
[00:28:01] to be.
[00:28:02] Right on.
[00:28:03] So what happens?
[00:28:04] Oh, we break up.
[00:28:05] So that kind of.
[00:28:06] Yeah.
[00:28:07] So we broke up.
[00:28:08] Oh, this is your senior year.
[00:28:09] My senior year.
[00:28:10] So he's going.
[00:28:11] Yeah, so he moved down to Florida.
[00:28:13] And so the deal was, is he wanted to be an officer.
[00:28:18] And at that time, so he enrolled in the University of Central Florida.
[00:28:23] His mom and dad are in Orlando.
[00:28:25] He's down there with them.
[00:28:26] He's thinking, I'm going to go to college.
[00:28:28] I'm going to get a four year degree and then I'm going to go do the whole Navy, Buds
[00:28:32] Deal.
[00:28:33] But they were saying, hey, we're not really taking officers right now because we just
[00:28:37] don't need them.
[00:28:38] So you can go get your degree, but it's not that's not going to work out.
[00:28:42] And so basically a year in college, he said, OK, I'm out and joined.
[00:28:51] So we broke up my senior year.
[00:28:55] Did you break up before or after he joined the Navy before?
[00:28:58] So before he's in Orlando, I'm in Luzune.
[00:29:01] We break up.
[00:29:02] Really, just because I think you got friends are like, why are you dating some boy that
[00:29:07] looks so far away?
[00:29:08] That's stupid.
[00:29:10] All the things.
[00:29:11] So we broke up.
[00:29:13] And we spent two and a half years pretty much went by in that time.
[00:29:19] The time he was in college and my senior year.
[00:29:24] And then my first year after graduating high school, we just didn't really speak to each
[00:29:30] other.
[00:29:31] And this was before cell phones or social media.
[00:29:35] You can't properly cyber stalk somebody back in the day.
[00:29:39] Right.
[00:29:40] And I would stay in touch with his sister, his little sister.
[00:29:43] So she's 10 years younger than him.
[00:29:46] She was pretty young.
[00:29:47] I mean, I don't know when she was five.
[00:29:48] So she's pretty young.
[00:29:50] But.
[00:29:51] And so I always kind of knew what he was doing.
[00:29:53] And I knew he joined the Navy and you know, went to boot camp and was going to buds.
[00:29:57] And I really wanted to be there for his graduation of buds.
[00:30:03] But I thought that might be weird if I just show up.
[00:30:08] Plus I'd never been a California, the whole thing.
[00:30:10] I'm living.
[00:30:11] I'm going to confirm that would be weird.
[00:30:13] Yeah.
[00:30:14] Yeah.
[00:30:15] And so during this time, you know, he goes to college, joins the military.
[00:30:19] I finish high school.
[00:30:20] My family moves to Tampa because my dad is at St. Com.
[00:30:24] So his family is Orlando, my family is in Tampa.
[00:30:28] I'm going to community college.
[00:30:31] And I think I want to be there for his buds graduation.
[00:30:33] But I can't do that.
[00:30:34] So I need to put myself in a position that doesn't allow me to do that.
[00:30:37] So I went on a cruise.
[00:30:38] And I thought if I'm on a boat, I can't get off the boat.
[00:30:42] And I'm like 19 or something.
[00:30:44] And we doted and we doted in New Orleans.
[00:30:46] And I told my girlfriend, I was like, I'm getting off the boat.
[00:30:49] I'm going to go get on a plane.
[00:30:50] And I'm just going to show up there.
[00:30:52] And she's like, OK.
[00:30:53] And I realize it didn't have any money to get there.
[00:30:56] I'd spend it all in the cruise.
[00:30:57] And were you, but you hadn't been communicating with him?
[00:31:00] No, during this time period.
[00:31:01] No, just keep an in touch with a sister.
[00:31:03] And like his mom would check in from time to time.
[00:31:05] And his mom still liked you.
[00:31:07] Yeah, I hope.
[00:31:09] You know?
[00:31:10] So yeah.
[00:31:11] So then he graduates buds.
[00:31:13] So he graduates buds.
[00:31:14] And now what happens?
[00:31:15] Well, I knew he graduated buds.
[00:31:18] And then I also knew he was coming back to Orlando.
[00:31:20] So I took a couple days off work and just waited.
[00:31:25] And then he called and said, hey, I'd really like to see you.
[00:31:28] And I was like, oh, that's cool.
[00:31:31] Let me see if I can get off work.
[00:31:34] You know, you got to play tough.
[00:31:35] And yeah, I didn't drove there.
[00:31:39] Was super nervous.
[00:31:41] His brother, I think, opened the door.
[00:31:43] He was wrestling his other brother in the background,
[00:31:46] probably trying to play it cool.
[00:31:47] And pretty much the same thing as that day on the bleachers.
[00:31:50] And now as soon as I saw him, I was like, man.
[00:31:54] So he had graduated buds at that point.
[00:31:58] So now he must be on orders got orders to a team.
[00:32:00] Yeah.
[00:32:01] So he had to go.
[00:32:03] This is when they were had specific rates.
[00:32:07] Your time for him, probably too.
[00:32:08] So he went to the medics school.
[00:32:10] Oh, so yeah.
[00:32:11] So actually, so he what he got was he must have been a corpsman.
[00:32:14] And then they would take corpsman and after buds,
[00:32:16] they would take corpsman and send him to 18 delta,
[00:32:20] the special forces medics school.
[00:32:23] What's interesting about that?
[00:32:24] And I might mess this up a little bit.
[00:32:26] But his dad then had orders to Fort Bragg
[00:32:31] and his dad ran that school.
[00:32:33] So he went through the school that his dad was running.
[00:32:37] That's interesting.
[00:32:38] That's awesome.
[00:32:39] I guess he got some good grades.
[00:32:41] Hopefully.
[00:32:41] Yeah.
[00:32:42] He's a smart guy.
[00:32:43] It's good in school.
[00:32:45] So so so then what happens?
[00:32:47] So then he's going to that school.
[00:32:49] Now are you two back together?
[00:32:50] Is this like we're back?
[00:32:51] We're back.
[00:32:52] Yeah.
[00:32:53] So we're back together.
[00:32:54] And this is I had 96.
[00:32:57] And so I decide because I want to be wherever he is,
[00:33:00] I'm going to go to college at Methodist,
[00:33:02] which is a really small school in Fayville.
[00:33:05] So I go up there for semester.
[00:33:07] I had to do a whole presentation of my dad,
[00:33:09] my dad, right, Colonel Marine Corps.
[00:33:11] He always says when you want to do something
[00:33:12] you've got every ducks lined up and come to me.
[00:33:14] And I did like a report and figured out how much it was cost.
[00:33:17] I got scholarships.
[00:33:18] I got different things.
[00:33:20] How much it would be paid for?
[00:33:22] Really because I just wanted to be closer to Chad.
[00:33:26] Was that part of the briefing or not?
[00:33:28] I think he probably understood that.
[00:33:30] But I lasted one semester.
[00:33:32] I hated it.
[00:33:33] And I left.
[00:33:33] I went back to Florida.
[00:33:35] So he did the medical school.
[00:33:36] And then he was off to Silti Mait.
[00:33:38] And then what?
[00:33:38] Once he got to Silti Mait,
[00:33:40] did you guys reconnect again?
[00:33:41] Well, so we are dating long distance now.
[00:33:46] He's at teammate down in Florida.
[00:33:49] And then I end up going to the University of Florida.
[00:33:52] And we're thinking, OK, I'm going to do college down here.
[00:33:56] You're going to do that.
[00:33:56] And then we break up again.
[00:33:58] Yeah.
[00:33:59] So two pretty big breakups.
[00:34:02] It's hard to check into a team and have a girlfriend,
[00:34:07] or whatever, no offense to girlfriends of the world.
[00:34:10] You get to a team that is like you are going down.
[00:34:12] You are a, when you're a young new team guy,
[00:34:15] you have so much on your mind as far as work goes,
[00:34:19] it's like, hey, I don't have time for anything else right now.
[00:34:23] And I don't know.
[00:34:24] That's probably has at least a little something to do with it.
[00:34:27] You're down in Florida.
[00:34:28] He's up there, like, wanting to make sure he's
[00:34:30] good to go for this.
[00:34:30] And that.
[00:34:31] Yeah.
[00:34:32] Just had, I mean, he would drive down still on the weekends.
[00:34:35] Oh, we're still dating.
[00:34:35] We're still dating.
[00:34:36] Yeah.
[00:34:37] Like that gets full credit.
[00:34:38] Yeah.
[00:34:38] And, um, but yeah, we broke up.
[00:34:41] And that was just terrible because I really thought
[00:34:46] that that was probably it.
[00:34:47] I thought I probably lost him forever.
[00:34:51] And then how long are you guys broken up for?
[00:34:54] Ah, trying to think of the timeline.
[00:34:56] I was probably like a year, year and a half.
[00:35:00] Something like that.
[00:35:00] Did he do, did he do his first deployment?
[00:35:02] Yeah.
[00:35:03] He did a deployment of his on the enterprise.
[00:35:06] He was on a ship.
[00:35:07] Only a time he was on a ship at that time.
[00:35:08] And what you was that?
[00:35:11] Um, probably 97 or 8.
[00:35:16] Okay.
[00:35:17] Somewhere in that.
[00:35:18] Right on.
[00:35:19] Yeah.
[00:35:20] So he's, he does a deployment.
[00:35:22] He's a medic.
[00:35:23] Yep.
[00:35:24] You guys are broken up.
[00:35:25] You're going to, you're going to college in Florida.
[00:35:28] Yeah.
[00:35:29] And I'm still hearing in touch with his sister.
[00:35:32] And we had, you know, we had email.
[00:35:36] So, you know, like the dial-up.
[00:35:38] I would do the dial-up email and check to see if you'd ever email me.
[00:35:43] And then all of a sudden one day he did.
[00:35:45] And he just said, I just, I told the guys, I keep thinking about you.
[00:35:49] And I want to see you.
[00:35:50] I was like, yes.
[00:35:52] So.
[00:35:53] So did he say come up to Virginia Beach and he comes down to Florida?
[00:35:55] No.
[00:35:56] I said, you know where I live?
[00:35:59] Well, first of all, he was still in deployment.
[00:36:00] He was quite home yet.
[00:36:02] And so I didn't know.
[00:36:03] And I'm in college.
[00:36:04] And yeah, he drove down and showed up at my doorstep.
[00:36:09] And I did the same thing.
[00:36:11] I did in high school.
[00:36:12] I just couldn't believe he was there, you know?
[00:36:16] And just excited.
[00:36:19] And we said to each other, I said to him before he comes, came down.
[00:36:24] If we see each other again, we're going to know.
[00:36:26] Like this is either going to be forever or it's just not.
[00:36:30] And he came down.
[00:36:32] And pretty much roll over herself when I went to Orlando and he asked me to stay
[00:36:36] in extra day.
[00:36:37] I said, do you think you could stay in extra day?
[00:36:40] And that was it.
[00:36:41] So that was the summer of 99, I think.
[00:36:49] May of 99.
[00:36:50] How old are you at this point?
[00:36:51] You're going to make me do bath.
[00:36:53] I don't know.
[00:36:54] I'm like, 29.
[00:36:55] So you're, oh yeah, you're in college.
[00:36:57] You're a young college girl.
[00:37:00] And he's swoops in.
[00:37:03] Yeah.
[00:37:04] And says, all right, we're going to do this.
[00:37:07] Yeah, I mean, did you drop out of college?
[00:37:09] So what'd you do?
[00:37:10] No, I stayed in college.
[00:37:12] You're slightly more responsible than that.
[00:37:13] Yeah, stayed in college.
[00:37:18] We, we got engaged that summer in July.
[00:37:21] We got married on paper as a lot of military people do.
[00:37:26] We've got married up in Virginia Beach
[00:37:29] in the, in the sky's backyard.
[00:37:31] And so we were at least married and had all that.
[00:37:35] And I spent time down in Florida.
[00:37:39] And then I worked it to graduate.
[00:37:41] I had to do an internship to finish my degree.
[00:37:44] So I got an internship with the city of Virginia Beach
[00:37:48] because I wanted to be where he was.
[00:37:50] So you guys, you, you get married.
[00:37:53] Well, he proposes to you.
[00:37:55] And then you get married the old school like what I did.
[00:37:59] My wife and I got married at the San Diego
[00:38:01] courthouse and my chief was like the wet
[00:38:03] because you have to bring a witness.
[00:38:04] So I was like, hey, can you come with witness
[00:38:07] my wedding?
[00:38:08] He's like, you're getting married?
[00:38:09] Yeah.
[00:38:09] OK, so we went down there.
[00:38:11] And this judge goes, all right, you two are married.
[00:38:14] And then we walked out and then we went to
[00:38:16] Danes and had a hamburger.
[00:38:17] That was the honeymoon.
[00:38:19] Oh, bad husband.
[00:38:22] But that's what we did.
[00:38:22] That's sort of, that's what you guys did, too.
[00:38:24] I mean, I think for me, that's a better story.
[00:38:27] Our story.
[00:38:28] We went and got married in this guy's backyard,
[00:38:30] nobody knew.
[00:38:31] We were living in a house with team guys.
[00:38:32] I was living with him and four other team guys in a house.
[00:38:36] It was just like that.
[00:38:37] That was a good guy.
[00:38:38] We can at Bernys, you know, just my poor wife,
[00:38:41] my poor wife did that, too.
[00:38:44] She, well, it wasn't 14 guys, but it was me.
[00:38:47] My running mate team guy roommate who is just the best guy
[00:38:53] ever and also just like you can say, we were all crazy.
[00:38:56] And then so we lived in the upstairs apartment
[00:38:59] and then two other team guys lived below us.
[00:39:01] And it was just, well, I'm sure it was very similar
[00:39:04] to the environment you were in.
[00:39:07] You know, like the furniture was cruise boxes.
[00:39:11] Dinner was dominoes, breakfast was Guinness.
[00:39:15] Lunch was Yager Meister.
[00:39:16] And it was just me.
[00:39:18] Yeah, Chas Brother likes to say,
[00:39:20] remember his coming to visit and he got out of the shower.
[00:39:23] And it was so disgusting.
[00:39:24] He just took a paper towel and like pat it his body dry
[00:39:27] because he didn't want to use anything.
[00:39:29] I mean, I don't know if it was that gross maybe for him.
[00:39:31] But, you know, it was due to house.
[00:39:34] And you know, I got to live there.
[00:39:36] And there was one giant sofa that was the ugliest
[00:39:42] Chad had bought it.
[00:39:42] It was a scanned and navy in print.
[00:39:45] It was the tackiest ugliest thing.
[00:39:46] And literally his entire life, he still talked about that
[00:39:49] stupid sofa.
[00:39:51] So my wife and I, but my old running mate,
[00:39:55] we had this freaking couch that was gold.
[00:40:00] I think it's called velvet velvet.
[00:40:02] Is that what it's called like this kind of like a
[00:40:04] like really soft push back and forth.
[00:40:06] So it was gold velvet.
[00:40:08] It had some kind of wood carvings at the end.
[00:40:10] It had to have been more than 10 feet long.
[00:40:15] It was freaking huge.
[00:40:17] We couldn't do this.
[00:40:18] Yeah.
[00:40:19] And it was the most comfortable couch ever.
[00:40:21] And I think we got it at a whatever a thrift store for
[00:40:24] whatever $38 or something, best couch ever.
[00:40:27] That's what he says.
[00:40:28] And we could fit like three to four full size dudes on it.
[00:40:31] I think it was more typical.
[00:40:32] We'd wake up and one of them would be on the sofa
[00:40:34] just because it was comfortable.
[00:40:35] And they, the house, it was, there was a sofa.
[00:40:39] And there was a calculator.
[00:40:40] Is it?
[00:40:40] And when I told him to put decorations up,
[00:40:44] I was like, you guys need stuff on the wall.
[00:40:46] They hung shooting targets.
[00:40:47] Like the real ones, the pictures, the man on the woman,
[00:40:52] you have on the side.
[00:40:53] Does he have a weapon?
[00:40:54] Does not do a shoot him.
[00:40:56] That was when I froze in our house for a little while.
[00:40:58] Yeah.
[00:40:59] So you got like a heart of really nice welcome to the team community.
[00:41:04] It was.
[00:41:05] Yeah.
[00:41:06] It was such a different life back then.
[00:41:10] Yeah.
[00:41:11] And you go and out with the boys, like when my wife came over
[00:41:15] and we weren't married yet, but when she,
[00:41:17] when we started, which started living with me,
[00:41:19] she would like come out with us, you know, and hang.
[00:41:22] Oh yeah, we'd go out and burn it down.
[00:41:27] I, for, you know, I'm in Virginia Beach.
[00:41:29] And there's this bar that's been there forever.
[00:41:31] Hot tuna.
[00:41:31] They've since read done it.
[00:41:33] But it's hot.
[00:41:33] Hot tuna.
[00:41:34] I just went back literally like two weeks ago
[00:41:36] for the first time.
[00:41:37] And I thought I haven't been here in forever.
[00:41:39] And it took me back to a one night in particular,
[00:41:42] Chad drove a green Jeep Cherokee.
[00:41:44] Still was favorite car, always.
[00:41:46] And we went out with a bunch of guys.
[00:41:49] And we just lifted up the back gate,
[00:41:51] you know, and just shoved them in there.
[00:41:53] Instead of actually, you know, this is a one time go
[00:41:55] for get the seat belt shoving there.
[00:41:57] We went hot tuna.
[00:41:58] Sure enough, there was a fight.
[00:41:59] We got kicked out, told to leave.
[00:42:01] And I just remember running out there,
[00:42:03] throwing up the back gate.
[00:42:05] The guys getting in and we're out.
[00:42:09] And this lifestyle to you, what were you thinking?
[00:42:11] We were like, okay, well, this is the way it is.
[00:42:14] Yeah, I don't even think I thought anything.
[00:42:17] I just was in it.
[00:42:19] And you're military and military kid.
[00:42:22] And you understand just the camaraderie
[00:42:26] that can happen there and the sense of family
[00:42:30] that it can create.
[00:42:32] And I was really happy.
[00:42:34] And I think he was too to have made it to be a team guy.
[00:42:38] He was at teammate.
[00:42:40] Yeah.
[00:42:42] Yeah, I don't know if there's anything better
[00:42:50] than being an E5 in a seal put to.
[00:42:53] It's just freaking awesome.
[00:42:55] And it's everything you just said.
[00:42:56] Well, we had a big wedding later, right?
[00:42:59] So we had a big, I think for our family,
[00:43:01] they wanted like the bigger wedding.
[00:43:03] So in May of now we're gonna go to 2000, I guess.
[00:43:08] We got married.
[00:43:10] And so the boys all decided they were gonna come
[00:43:13] and they rented an RV and they drove from Virginia Beach
[00:43:18] to where we got married.
[00:43:20] And all my girlfriends from college had come
[00:43:23] and they were, you know, don't ask a dumb question.
[00:43:27] They were in the perception and you look around the room
[00:43:30] and there's one huge round table
[00:43:31] with all these really good looking dudes around it.
[00:43:33] And they grow so like, I think that's the Navy seals.
[00:43:35] Not only are they like a bunch of dudes
[00:43:37] and they're good looking.
[00:43:38] And couple of them had like a butterfly stitch on his forehead
[00:43:41] because they stopped in Savannah on that and bar fight.
[00:43:44] So it was like so appropriate, you know?
[00:43:46] It was good.
[00:43:49] When once you moved to Virginia Beach,
[00:43:51] he must've been in a workup.
[00:43:53] When did he go into employment?
[00:43:56] That's when I started to forget.
[00:43:57] So he's already done one to point him
[00:43:59] and he's on the ship.
[00:44:00] And then he comes back and then he did two more there.
[00:44:04] I honestly can't remember the months.
[00:44:05] And so he's going on to point for the first time
[00:44:10] or the first time that you're married.
[00:44:11] So it is, I guess it'd be his second appointment.
[00:44:13] Yeah.
[00:44:14] And now you're like, what did you just say in Virginia Beach
[00:44:17] did you go?
[00:44:19] So this was like I had to do the whole,
[00:44:23] I live there, I did my internship
[00:44:25] and we got really married for real.
[00:44:28] And oh, that's right, because he did deploy
[00:44:30] and I moved back home with my family during that second appointment.
[00:44:35] We were in the middle of like not living anywhere.
[00:44:37] So we lived with the team guys.
[00:44:39] We had our own apartment for a little while.
[00:44:41] And which was also one of the greatest times
[00:44:44] because you don't realize it at the time
[00:44:46] when you're young and you have no money
[00:44:48] and you live in an apartment I think it was $425 a month.
[00:44:52] Pleasure House Road, Shore Drive, Chicks Beach,
[00:44:55] like where everything goes down.
[00:44:57] Just how great that is.
[00:44:58] Who have nothing and you kind of need nothing.
[00:45:02] It's such simplicity.
[00:45:04] So anyway, we moved out of that apartment.
[00:45:06] He left on deployment.
[00:45:07] I went back home to stay with my family.
[00:45:09] What do you mean when you're living that little apartment?
[00:45:12] You know, like what makes that so good?
[00:45:17] I mean, there's nothing to take care of.
[00:45:19] It's an apartment.
[00:45:21] Our friend Lance Vicaro, who passed away in 2008,
[00:45:26] he lived in the same complex.
[00:45:27] So you should the shit with him when you see him.
[00:45:29] And yeah, just like making dinner and eating it on
[00:45:33] that we had a cruise box.
[00:45:34] One of those metal folding collapsible ones.
[00:45:36] Remember those?
[00:45:37] Oh yeah.
[00:45:38] That was our coffee table.
[00:45:39] He just put a little like table cloth over it.
[00:45:42] We'd eat there.
[00:45:43] I was like cooking meals in a crock pot.
[00:45:45] Terrible.
[00:45:46] Me and my buddy had a cruise box that we had,
[00:45:48] like by the big gold couch, we had a cruise box
[00:45:51] that had the phone on it.
[00:45:53] And then on the cruise box was in Sharpie,
[00:45:55] was written everyone's numbers from the different
[00:45:58] tunes and like the T-Merry number.
[00:46:00] Yeah, those are good times.
[00:46:02] I was talking also about the, as you advance in life
[00:46:08] when you get an apartment, that's like step one.
[00:46:11] But then when you get an apartment that has,
[00:46:13] tell them my kids this,
[00:46:14] when you get an apartment that has a washer and dryer,
[00:46:17] like on-site, and that's a big deal.
[00:46:20] And then if you have one that has parking,
[00:46:22] that's like the next big step up in life.
[00:46:24] Yeah, yeah.
[00:46:25] Those things are, those things bring you joy
[00:46:27] when you're young and broke.
[00:46:28] Yeah.
[00:46:29] I've driven by that apartment a few times
[00:46:31] in the last two years,
[00:46:32] and all the places we've lived in Virginia Beach, you know.
[00:46:36] Okay, so you do the big wedding.
[00:46:39] Yep.
[00:46:39] And all these, your girlfriends are there from college.
[00:46:42] There's a bunch of team guys there.
[00:46:44] That sounds like an awesome time.
[00:46:46] And then he's going on to play me again.
[00:46:51] Yeah, so he, we get married.
[00:46:55] He goes on deployment.
[00:46:58] I think before he left on deployment
[00:47:00] is when I found out I was pregnant.
[00:47:03] Mm-hmm.
[00:47:04] Okay.
[00:47:05] Yeah, which was another reason
[00:47:06] they like took me home.
[00:47:07] Okay.
[00:47:08] So we weren't planning it,
[00:47:10] but we weren't not planning it.
[00:47:11] It was kind of like, you know,
[00:47:12] we've been together forever.
[00:47:14] And it is what it is.
[00:47:16] So, so you get pregnant.
[00:47:19] He goes on deployment.
[00:47:20] Yeah.
[00:47:21] You go home to,
[00:47:22] Florida.
[00:47:23] Okay, you're home to Florida.
[00:47:24] And you're living, you know,
[00:47:27] doing whatever you're doing.
[00:47:29] Yeah, and this again was before we didn't have cell phones.
[00:47:33] So, you know, this,
[00:47:36] it's interesting when people are like upset
[00:47:39] because they didn't get to like face time
[00:47:40] what there has been on deployment in today's world, right?
[00:47:43] Because I would miss phone calls.
[00:47:45] And then you don't know when he's going to call you again.
[00:47:47] And we have so many letters he wrote me.
[00:47:50] I'm pretty grateful for that.
[00:47:51] And so I'm in Florida.
[00:47:52] He's deployed.
[00:47:54] Trying to talk to him when I can.
[00:47:55] Go on a baby in my belly and all the things.
[00:48:00] And they come home.
[00:48:01] When did you have the baby while he was on the plunder?
[00:48:03] Did he come home in time?
[00:48:04] Yeah, he came home.
[00:48:05] So, because I was like super newly pregnant when he left.
[00:48:10] So, we know what we're still staying in Virginia Beach.
[00:48:12] So, I go up to Virginia Beach.
[00:48:15] Super pregnant with my mom and buy our first house.
[00:48:18] So, while he's gone.
[00:48:19] So, we.
[00:48:20] Yeah.
[00:48:21] And then he came home from deployment.
[00:48:24] May 2001.
[00:48:27] And my daughter was born in August.
[00:48:30] And now he's still at teammate.
[00:48:32] He's done two deployments.
[00:48:34] And yeah.
[00:48:36] And it's your daughter was born in August of 2001.
[00:48:41] Mm-hmm.
[00:48:42] And he's in another platoon at this point?
[00:48:44] Yeah.
[00:48:45] And he.
[00:48:47] So, he gets there as deployments.
[00:48:49] And for the rest of his time there, he goes to night school.
[00:48:54] Because he's trying to finish his degree.
[00:48:56] So, he finishes his degree at ODU.
[00:48:58] We have a new baby.
[00:49:00] And then he finishes his time.
[00:49:03] He was at trade-et.
[00:49:04] Okay.
[00:49:05] So, we're just like a young family, you know.
[00:49:09] When September 11 happens.
[00:49:11] So, is he at trade-et when September 11 happens?
[00:49:15] He was at, ah.
[00:49:19] Yeah, I think he might have been, actually.
[00:49:21] Yeah.
[00:49:22] And so September 11 happens.
[00:49:24] Now, what are you thinking?
[00:49:26] Ah, that's such crazy.
[00:49:28] Everyone remembers where they were when that happened.
[00:49:33] I don't even think I have the ability to think about it in the scope of the military.
[00:49:39] And what the military was going to do or our country was going to do to react.
[00:49:43] I just was dumbfounded.
[00:49:45] Keep trying to call them at work.
[00:49:46] Couldn't get a hold of them.
[00:49:48] He eventually showed up at the house.
[00:49:50] And we just kind of looked at each other and he's like, holy shit.
[00:49:54] So, and at that point, did you, was he like, okay, I'm going to go back on deployment?
[00:50:01] Was he, what was his plan at that point?
[00:50:06] I mean, I think his plan was to just stay.
[00:50:09] He, at that point, I think he always wanted to just be a career seal.
[00:50:15] So, whatever was going to keep him in the game.
[00:50:17] Quite honestly, we had a conversation after a deployment that he wanted to go to Damneck.
[00:50:22] And I was like, no.
[00:50:27] And I don't even know why I said no.
[00:50:30] I never said no.
[00:50:31] I always like supported him and encouraged him and pushed him.
[00:50:35] But for some reason at that point, I didn't want him to go.
[00:50:39] I don't know how it would have turned out if he would have gone then.
[00:50:42] But yeah, so he stayed in the military, but then, because in all this, when he came home
[00:50:51] from that last deployment, I got pregnant with our son or his third deployment at eight.
[00:50:57] And that was when.
[00:51:00] So, 2001, but fast forward, you know, we're in 2004.
[00:51:05] And I think we both kind of, well, I would say it's more me, we wanted something different.
[00:51:14] So Chad wanted to be a seal.
[00:51:15] He always wanted to be a door kicker.
[00:51:17] That's what he wanted to do, you know, hide in the bushes and do all the things.
[00:51:20] And as military kids, I was really trying to do something different.
[00:51:25] And the grass is greener on the other side, right?
[00:51:28] I moved all the time and I didn't want my kids to have to move all the time.
[00:51:31] And I didn't want their dad to be gone all the time.
[00:51:34] We talked about it and we were making the decision to get out of the military.
[00:51:37] So he had been in 10 years at this point.
[00:51:40] And it's 2004.
[00:51:43] His son is born.
[00:51:44] He wrapped up that last deployment.
[00:51:48] And we got out and moved to Raleigh, North Carolina.
[00:51:50] Do you know where he went?
[00:51:52] No, did he go to Iraq, Raff Ganeson on that deployment?
[00:51:55] Or did he do a different deployment like over to you, Com, or something?
[00:51:57] Uh, I should know these statistics and facts better, but I don't.
[00:52:02] I mean, I'm like 23 with a baby.
[00:52:04] Yeah.
[00:52:05] Well, this would be very similar to asking my wife what I went on to point to you.
[00:52:09] Like I had no idea he was gone.
[00:52:10] That was my wife's attitude too.
[00:52:12] Yeah.
[00:52:13] He's gone.
[00:52:14] He'll be back later.
[00:52:15] Yeah.
[00:52:16] So you all make this decision to get out.
[00:52:21] Right.
[00:52:22] And then what's the plan?
[00:52:24] So at that point, his family's now living in Raleigh, North Carolina.
[00:52:29] And he has his college degree.
[00:52:32] He's done 10 years in the military and he thinks, okay, I'm going to get out and I'm going
[00:52:36] to provide for my family and a civilian world.
[00:52:39] And that's what we did.
[00:52:40] And he got a job in pharmaceuticals.
[00:52:42] You know, there's a lot of research there.
[00:52:45] Um, kind of irony in that when I'm sitting here thinking about him and his life and the
[00:52:50] path that he chose.
[00:52:51] But he was in pharmaceutical research and we just hated it from moment we left.
[00:52:59] I think most people are creatures of habit.
[00:53:02] It's my belief, right?
[00:53:03] People are creatures of habit whether you like that habit or you don't like the habit.
[00:53:07] It's, it just is what it is.
[00:53:08] And our habit is that we are military kids.
[00:53:12] We are used to adversity and challenge and changing dynamics on the regular.
[00:53:19] We're used to different situations and the idea of living in the same house, doing the same
[00:53:25] job with the same people for the rest of your life is nauseating.
[00:53:29] And I don't think it was challenging for him.
[00:53:32] And while he did one of his last jumps with the guys before he left, the guys jumped out
[00:53:38] of the plane and they're like, you're not going to do this with your pharmaceutical
[00:53:41] dudes, you know, and I think that always bugged him.
[00:53:49] And I think like most of these guys, they don't want to feel like they quit, I guess.
[00:53:56] And for Chad anyway, separating from the military and not retiring, he probably felt like
[00:54:02] he wasn't finished.
[00:54:04] And I felt that too because he was miserable.
[00:54:05] He was miserable.
[00:54:06] How long did it take for buyers to set in?
[00:54:10] Like when you get to North Carolina, was there any sort of like honey mood period?
[00:54:13] Hey, we can go on a picnic today and we don't have to worry about anything.
[00:54:16] Oh yeah, yeah.
[00:54:17] How long did that last?
[00:54:18] I mean, I think it lasted for about a year, even though I think in the back of our
[00:54:24] minds, we'd lay in bed and we're like, he'd say,
[00:54:26] what are we doing?
[00:54:27] What are we doing?
[00:54:28] Like, how do they get real?
[00:54:30] Yeah, at night, you know, but then it's like, okay, we're doing it, though, because
[00:54:36] because at the same time, you see it as a challenge in some ways.
[00:54:39] You're like, and I doubting myself because I want to go back or my doubting myself, because
[00:54:43] now I just have this new challenge and I got to like overcome it.
[00:54:46] What was he doing for the pharmaceutical company?
[00:54:49] He was a project manager and I think he was I candy for all the girls and off.
[00:54:56] I know this because my sister in law works in the field too and she would tell me stories,
[00:55:01] but yeah, he tell, I just, he said to me, he came home and he's like Sarah, I was
[00:55:11] sitting in the break room today, celebrating a baby shower, eating a pink, fucking cupcake,
[00:55:18] and I'm questioning my life.
[00:55:20] And you're like, okay, I don't think this is going to work.
[00:55:24] And as cool as it is to have him home every day and he had a good job, we made good
[00:55:30] money, the American dream.
[00:55:31] I mean, our house had a wrap around porch, no joke.
[00:55:35] The picket fence.
[00:55:36] I mean, by most standards, I don't even know if that's fair to say any more in today's
[00:55:42] world, but it was the quote American dream, but it was not our dream.
[00:55:49] How far into it was the cupcake incident?
[00:55:51] Was that like two months into it?
[00:55:52] No, that was closer to the other.
[00:55:53] Those are towards that and that was probably about two years.
[00:55:55] That was like the cupcake that broke the camel's back.
[00:55:58] Totally.
[00:55:59] Pink cupcake broke them.
[00:56:01] I think it just was a real pivot point and this isn't to bash cupcakes or baby showers
[00:56:06] or any of those things, but he's just a dude, you know?
[00:56:13] He's a military dude.
[00:56:15] He's a knife-carrying, you know, dude.
[00:56:20] And for him to put on a business suit in a tie every day, you just, people shouldn't be
[00:56:27] things they're not and that's not who he was.
[00:56:31] So what was the total time that he made it in the pharmaceutical?
[00:56:36] So he left the military in 2004 and we were back in the military September of 2007.
[00:56:44] So like two and a half, two and a half years.
[00:56:46] Yeah.
[00:56:47] When he, like, okay, so he comes home from the cupcake incident, or you just like,
[00:56:53] you can see the misery in his face and you're like, all right, I'm good.
[00:56:56] Let's go.
[00:56:57] Yeah.
[00:56:58] Yeah.
[00:56:59] I, that, we also, I mean, I remember being in the living room and hearing about red wings
[00:57:06] and I was sitting in the living room and watching it on TV and just, him just, you know,
[00:57:12] he was just sitting there, kind of had his hands on his head and he was totally shit.
[00:57:16] I think that probably had a large part, even though we didn't come back for some time,
[00:57:21] I think those things weighed on him.
[00:57:24] The way the world was changing.
[00:57:25] It was ramping up.
[00:57:26] We're now a couple years past 9.11.
[00:57:29] He, he felt called to go back.
[00:57:34] Then he makes a phone call, talk to like some guy or whatever and team guy recruiter or something.
[00:57:40] Yeah.
[00:57:41] We didn't really know how that was going to play out, right?
[00:57:42] I mean, they could have just said, no, you left.
[00:57:45] But I think at the time, you know, he, you know, he was a team guy that done a few deployments.
[00:57:51] He had good service, respected.
[00:57:53] They said sure.
[00:57:55] But they told him because he hadn't deployed in, you know, almost three years.
[00:58:00] He had to go back through, um, oh, S-t-t.
[00:58:04] Well, it was S-t-t when he graduated.
[00:58:06] Yeah.
[00:58:07] S-t-t-t.
[00:58:08] S-t-t-t.
[00:58:09] Yeah.
[00:58:10] So, we, I mean, he left for work one day.
[00:58:13] He had talked to this guy.
[00:58:14] He was kind of figuring out if this was going to work or not.
[00:58:16] And he left for work one day.
[00:58:17] And I just said, his tie and his suit and all of the, I said, this is stupid.
[00:58:22] We got to go back and we sold our house and he signed up to go back and we sold a lot
[00:58:30] of what we owned.
[00:58:32] And because there was no need to have it, we were going to move to California.
[00:58:36] He said if he had to go back to their S-t-t again, he wanted to just go to a West Coast
[00:58:39] team, um, just so we could all be out there together.
[00:58:43] And we put a little bit of things in a U-hall and the kids and I flew out to San Diego.
[00:58:51] And I had never been there.
[00:58:52] Oh, I came out and like house-hunted, try to find an apartment for us a couple weeks prior,
[00:58:56] but other than that, I hadn't really spent any time out here.
[00:58:59] And he drove a U-hall across country, chowing down on some flower seeds and just going
[00:59:05] like 90 and like, you know, jacked up on caffeine and got there.
[00:59:13] Then where did you guys move into?
[00:59:14] Did you guys move to Coronado?
[00:59:15] Yeah.
[00:59:16] We found this cool little, I just got lucky, found this cool little apartment.
[00:59:20] Same thing, kind of like our first apartment.
[00:59:22] It, I mean, this place can be more than 800 square feet.
[00:59:26] It was two bedrooms, one bathroom.
[00:59:29] It was our entire B-A-H, maybe even a little bit more, and our kids shared a room.
[00:59:35] Did you say you had been to San Diego before or you had not?
[00:59:38] I had only come out like a week or two before to try to find a place to live.
[00:59:43] What were you thinking when you drove from San Diego over the Coronado Bay Bridge and you
[00:59:47] see Coronado first?
[00:59:48] I was flipping my live.
[00:59:50] I just was like, yes, amazing.
[00:59:53] It's one of the craziest sites I think.
[00:59:56] Were you bringing anyone to San Diego and you going to Coronado and you drive over the
[01:00:00] bridge and you just see Coronado?
[01:00:01] Yeah.
[01:00:02] It's ridiculous.
[01:00:03] It is.
[01:00:04] It's ridiculous.
[01:00:05] I've spent most of my youth on the East Coast and almost always close to a beach.
[01:00:11] I always, you know, I don't want to live more than 30 minutes from a beach.
[01:00:14] Let's be honest.
[01:00:15] So the fact that I could flip coast and live here and on Coronado is, yeah.
[01:00:21] And there's the mosquitoes here.
[01:00:22] I had the friend coming out and him and his wife and like it was getting to be dusk.
[01:00:29] And they were like, oh, the mosquitoes are going to call him.
[01:00:31] Like there's no mosquitoes here.
[01:00:32] They didn't believe me.
[01:00:33] They didn't believe.
[01:00:34] They didn't believe.
[01:00:35] And you're talking about how could there be no mosquitoes?
[01:00:37] It's totally crazy.
[01:00:40] So now you're living in Coronado.
[01:00:42] Yeah.
[01:00:43] Kind of living the dream, taking bikes around the sidewalk, walking to get coffee and
[01:00:48] all that stuff.
[01:00:49] Oh, yeah.
[01:00:50] I got a rad little beach cruiser, chatbot me and kids were little and my son learned
[01:00:55] to ride a two-wheeler at two.
[01:00:58] And he had this little mini bike and we made friends with the guy in the bike shop and
[01:01:02] his name's my son's Hudson and Hudson would ride in the bike shop on Monday.
[01:01:05] The guy's like, hey, little man, come here and he swapped out.
[01:01:08] I should show you a picture of this.
[01:01:10] He swapped out at the handlebars of his bike for a-pangers.
[01:01:13] Oh, dang.
[01:01:14] So he just like he turned three and he was a three year old with this like little
[01:01:17] mini bike and he's a pay-panger handlebars.
[01:01:20] That's great.
[01:01:22] And chat's going to ask you tea this time.
[01:01:24] So ask you tea just serve on those.
[01:01:26] When you get done with buds, you go.
[01:01:29] You graduate from buds and after buds they start to teach you some stuff in this thing called
[01:01:33] that's QT.
[01:01:34] You don't really learn anything in buds other than how to go through suffering and then
[01:01:38] you get to ask you tea and they start teaching you like all the fundamental basic individual
[01:01:44] skills of being a seal at a higher level.
[01:01:47] And occasionally like Chad's a perfect example.
[01:01:50] Guys, guys out for three years, hey, we got new radios.
[01:01:54] We need, we can't just throw them back in a cartoon.
[01:01:56] All right, send them through ask you tea.
[01:01:57] So occasionally that happens.
[01:01:59] Sometimes God doesn't even have to get out.
[01:02:01] If a guy's on short duty for three years and he's been in some billet where he's not
[01:02:05] operational for three years, that'll be like, hey, you know, you go back to rescue tea and
[01:02:10] use a guy's a cool, you got it.
[01:02:12] And so you're doing individual skills, but he, in that position, all the other guys, first
[01:02:18] of all the other guys don't even have their tridents yet.
[01:02:21] So he's a actual seal.
[01:02:23] And they're, they're just not even new guys yet because they don't even have their
[01:02:28] tridents.
[01:02:29] So he's in a position of like real mentorship and to help them out and they're looking
[01:02:36] up to him.
[01:02:37] So that's, that's what's happening with him.
[01:02:39] Definitely.
[01:02:40] He, one thing I always loved about Chad is he is very good at teaching you what he
[01:02:47] knows without making you feel dumb.
[01:02:51] I think he gets a lot of that probably from his dad and his, the way his dad is.
[01:02:55] But I think that that's a real skill and try to like foster your own learning while he's
[01:03:02] teaching you something.
[01:03:03] And so I think it was a really natural fit for him while he was in SQT to just be the
[01:03:09] guy that would, you know, lean into guys and say, hey man, this is how I like rig my gear
[01:03:14] up this way.
[01:03:15] And I, you know, do this this way.
[01:03:18] And I think it was a good experience, hopefully, for the guys that were with them, you
[01:03:23] know, to have this more senior person around, but it was also good for Chad.
[01:03:28] And this didn't you start doing CrossFit at this time out here?
[01:03:31] Oh, yeah.
[01:03:32] Yeah.
[01:03:33] And was that Andy's gym?
[01:03:35] Andy stopped.
[01:03:36] Yeah.
[01:03:37] So the reason I'm laughing is because, you know, you're talking about how Chad was the type
[01:03:42] of person that could teach you something without making you feel bad about what you don't
[01:03:47] know.
[01:03:48] I think Andy might be the opposite of that.
[01:03:50] Andy, like, enjoys their feet got to teach somebody something.
[01:03:53] He teaches me stuff that I already know he makes me feel stupid.
[01:03:56] Yeah.
[01:03:57] That's definitely more his personality.
[01:03:58] He likes to have fun with it.
[01:03:59] Yeah.
[01:04:00] Yeah, definitely.
[01:04:01] So you, so this is Andy had like a CrossFit gym in Coronado.
[01:04:05] Yeah.
[01:04:06] And so you just rolled in there and signed up.
[01:04:07] Did you know anything about CrossFit at the time?
[01:04:09] So when we were in Raleigh, Chad started doing CrossFit.
[01:04:12] This was like 2005.
[01:04:14] And he was so into CrossFit.
[01:04:17] I was so not into CrossFit.
[01:04:19] It was kind of how that played out.
[01:04:20] I remember Cook and Dinner one night and he said, you need to come in the garage.
[01:04:23] I got this thing called a muscle up and I was like, oh, and I opened the door and he did
[01:04:27] it and I was like, cool.
[01:04:28] And then slam the door.
[01:04:29] Like a total jerk.
[01:04:31] So he had put me through some workouts and our garage in Raleigh, but I, that minimal exposure,
[01:04:37] you know, and living in Coronado and having two little kids and he's busy with work.
[01:04:42] I feel like, you know, I'm a mom with two kids.
[01:04:44] I probably need to exercise a little bit more.
[01:04:46] Right in my bike one day, I just passed the gym and it was news like literally like just
[01:04:51] opening and I called him.
[01:04:53] Didn't know Andy Stomp at the time.
[01:04:55] Called him up and said, hey, can I come to your gym and that was it?
[01:04:58] That was it.
[01:04:59] Was he teaching?
[01:05:01] Not as much as wife Jamie was teaching a lot.
[01:05:07] Sage Castro.
[01:05:08] Dave Castro's wife was coaching their son.
[01:05:11] Right on.
[01:05:12] It was such, you know, this was the early days.
[01:05:14] We were talking 2007 of, you know, of CrossFit gym kind of expanding.
[01:05:21] And so it was a small gym, not a lot of trainers.
[01:05:24] Yeah, this is so like this is when Dave Castro was teaching SQT.
[01:05:31] Yes.
[01:05:32] And like I think they ran a level one course at SQT.
[01:05:39] And I went and went through it and just like hung out and got whatever some kind of
[01:05:43] certification for that.
[01:05:45] And then that's probably the first time that I met and started hanging out with Dave Castro.
[01:05:50] I think that's it because he was running that and he was like helping me out.
[01:05:53] And then we eventually, well, when we opened this gym that we're sitting in right now, that
[01:05:58] was 2007.
[01:05:59] That was late 2007.
[01:06:00] So we had the, you know, I had to go to the like the shirts and stuff like this that
[01:06:06] you have to get back in the day.
[01:06:08] Yeah.
[01:06:09] He's going to try to keep your gym.
[01:06:11] Yeah, to keep your gym.
[01:06:12] And so you get, you get into it.
[01:06:14] You kind of get into it.
[01:06:15] Yeah, I do, I get really into it.
[01:06:19] I just, you know, I like the challenge.
[01:06:21] I like the physical challenge.
[01:06:22] I like the way my body was changing.
[01:06:25] Remember I'm a mom, a two kids.
[01:06:26] So yeah, I get into it.
[01:06:30] And so I got the opportunity to go to my level one.
[01:06:32] Didn't want to coach people ever, never, never my plan.
[01:06:36] I just wanted to know more about it.
[01:06:37] So I went to my level one in San Diego one weekend.
[01:06:42] Yeah.
[01:06:43] Okay, and then Chad, what's SQT 6, 6 months?
[01:06:46] Something like that.
[01:06:47] Yeah.
[01:06:48] And he's thinking West Coast team, you're living the dream, living in Coronado.
[01:06:52] Yeah.
[01:06:53] And then what happens there?
[01:06:55] Well, Bill King happened.
[01:06:59] The CEO from Damneck came to the West Coast to talk to the SQT guys and to explain
[01:07:06] to them down the pipeline if they want to ever, you know, bridge that gap and head
[01:07:11] over to Seal Team 6.
[01:07:14] Here's kind of what you need to do.
[01:07:16] Most of those guys when they finished SQT as you said they get their trident, they go to
[01:07:19] a regular team, they've got to do two to three deployments, you know, become maybe a little
[01:07:25] less green and then they can screen to go to Damneck.
[01:07:29] And that's when Chad went and took it upon himself to introduce himself to him and say,
[01:07:33] hey, my name is Chad Wilkinson.
[01:07:35] Here's a little bit of my story.
[01:07:37] I'm going to finish this up.
[01:07:38] I'm going to go to West Coast team and then in the future, I plan to go to the West Coast team.
[01:07:41] And I'm coming to screen and he just said, how about you don't and just come screen right
[01:07:46] now?
[01:07:47] That was that.
[01:07:49] Yeah, and he didn't consult me at all.
[01:07:52] So what did you get six months in the nodo?
[01:07:55] Yeah, that's just about it.
[01:07:57] I was pretty upset.
[01:07:58] I mean, but not, right?
[01:08:01] I mean, this is our life and this is our path, but I did not want to leave.
[01:08:05] Yeah, he came home and he said, hey, I'm going to fly to Virginia Beach next weekend and
[01:08:09] do this thing to screen and if that's the case, we're moving.
[01:08:13] And yeah, fast forward, we moved back to Virginia Beach April of 2008.
[01:08:18] Did you move back there even before like while he's starting to go through green team and
[01:08:22] everything?
[01:08:23] Oh, yeah, yeah, we moved like with him.
[01:08:25] Like he left to go to green team, we moved back.
[01:08:30] So then he makes it through green team and starts the cycle over there, which is deployment,
[01:08:36] deployment, deployment, work deployment, work deployment, work deployment, work deployment, work
[01:08:39] deployment, work deployment, work deployment.
[01:08:40] At that time, yeah, 2008 it was fast and furious.
[01:08:45] It was busy.
[01:08:47] And when you get to Virginia Beach, are you, what'd you do with your CrossFit deal?
[01:08:51] So I moved back to Virginia Beach.
[01:08:54] I check out, at the time, there were only two other gyms in the area and I couldn't
[01:08:59] really take my kids because this was before there were a lot of kids spaces in CrossFit
[01:09:05] gyms and there was really no where safer them to be.
[01:09:08] We rented an apartment when we came back to Virginia Beach not knowing where we wanted to live.
[01:09:13] And also not knowing if the whole green team thing was going to pan out.
[01:09:16] I think for Chad, he just was like, I don't really know.
[01:09:20] And he rented a garage in this apartment complex and we bought enough equipment so that
[01:09:26] we could put two people he and I essentially threw a workout.
[01:09:30] And then my girlfriend said, well, can I come work out with you?
[01:09:34] I was like, sure.
[01:09:36] And then that just kind of grew and grew and then we had a whole bunch of people outside
[01:09:41] of the garage one day and fast forward October 2008.
[01:09:44] I opened my gym.
[01:09:46] So he's in green team and anybody who's listening and has lived that is very stressful.
[01:09:55] Especially when you're doing all these things and you come home and you got your wife
[01:09:59] and your kids and you got to do the family man thing too.
[01:10:02] And then I go ahead to take it upon myself to start this whole business venture.
[01:10:07] Yeah.
[01:10:08] You rented, how many of you was the space that you rented for that CrossFit gym?
[01:10:12] Oh, the first one?
[01:10:13] Yeah.
[01:10:13] Who?
[01:10:14] It was like 12 to 1300 square feet.
[01:10:17] And I just remember saying in the car, I was like, I need to do this because this is,
[01:10:24] this is about to take off and this is what all I want to do.
[01:10:28] I think he was a little worried because, you know, in our,
[01:10:33] in our, in our, in our, in our world, you live a really quiet life and he didn't want anything that I was doing
[01:10:41] to not overshadow but have any sort of imprint on what he was doing.
[01:10:48] Yeah.
[01:10:48] You know, and of course in a military town, the, the interesting part about Oating the gym is
[01:10:55] what you're doing is you're providing a service to people and it's a very personal service.
[01:11:01] So people think they know you and what happens is your friends come and join the gym and I had kind of
[01:11:07] established at the very beginning like we're friends, but at the same time this is, this is a, you know,
[01:11:13] a business and you do, if, if you're a team life, you don't talk about it in this gym.
[01:11:18] You don't, I don't want to hear when your husband's coming home.
[01:11:21] I don't want to hear when your husband's leaving.
[01:11:23] I don't want to hear about another spouse.
[01:11:25] That just wasn't going to fly.
[01:11:27] So, so we were busy.
[01:11:30] I would too little kids.
[01:11:31] And how did the gym take off? How did it do?
[01:11:33] It went, it was awesome.
[01:11:35] My whole hope was just to be able to cover the rent and my expenses and we exceeded that the first month.
[01:11:42] The first month.
[01:11:44] And we were still working on a lot of things though, you know, the first person that came
[01:11:48] beyond my kids and they had a little kid, I didn't know what to do with them. So I stacked up some
[01:11:53] tires and I just stuck the kid in the center of the tires. I like to just stay there,
[01:11:58] to where done. Because it was such a small space. I look back at those pictures now.
[01:12:02] I'll land anybody from CrossFit listening. And I do not know how someone didn't get clubbed
[01:12:07] in the head of the barbell. How close we were, but it all worked out.
[01:12:12] In meanwhile, Chad's, like you said, this is now 2008. So it's just, um, it's on.
[01:12:18] Yeah. And he's going on deployments. And now we kind of already talked about this. And I mentioned
[01:12:24] that my wife would be like, I don't even know where my husband's at. He's gone. And he'll be back later.
[01:12:29] And that was kind of her attitude. And it's, I think quite frankly, well, I can't speak for
[01:12:35] everybody, but it definitely worked for my wife. You know, she just, hey, you go do what you
[01:12:40] got to do. I'll be here. I'll be here, man in the fort, back home. And that was good.
[01:12:45] Maybe it would have been more stressful if she knew where I was or what I was doing or anything
[01:12:49] like that. She just was like, you go do what you got to do. Did you guys have that? Was that sort
[01:12:54] of the way you guys operated? Yeah. I mean, when he, when he was deploying, it was Iraq, Afghanistan,
[01:13:01] then it became Africa. And I knew, generally, you know, what country he was in. But beyond that,
[01:13:09] that's how we always operated was you do your job. And I'll do my job, meaning take care of our
[01:13:16] kids when you're gone. And when you're gone, you're gone and when you're home, your home.
[01:13:21] I know some other spouses, they share a whole lot. And they, they know probably way more stories
[01:13:26] about their husband than I know. And maybe almost too much, but Chad really, really lived by the fact
[01:13:34] that you don't talk about it. And it could have much to what you said, maybe he just didn't want
[01:13:39] me to worry either. That's what I'd like to think. And vice versa, I didn't call him and say,
[01:13:46] I mean, my hot water heater busted one time in the attic and flooding everywhere. What's it
[01:13:51] going to do if I call him? And now, so you know, seal why it's a tough to. Yeah, definitely. And I think,
[01:14:00] you know, you said, you said you weren't sure if Chad didn't want you to worry. I can almost
[01:14:05] guarantee you that the attitude was like the last thing he wants you to do is worry. And I remember
[01:14:11] one of my guys, Mikey Montsour, who, you know, he died at the end of our deployment. But when
[01:14:17] when I got home and talking to his family and his sister Sarah was, you know, just telling me,
[01:14:25] this was, we were in this place called Ramani. It was a really kinetic deployment with a lot of
[01:14:31] casualties. And he had told his family, you know, when he would call them, oh yeah, we're just,
[01:14:38] you know, we're just training some Iraqis. We're, yeah, if we're not doing anything, it's boring,
[01:14:42] like all these kind of things. I mean, these are just outright not true at all. But he just didn't
[01:14:46] want his family to worry about what he was doing. Yeah, and we had certain like code things. I knew
[01:14:51] when he would call me and he would say, okay, I'll call you when I can and I love you,
[01:14:57] he was going out. He was going out to do stuff. And I, you know, what he called me in a day,
[01:15:02] would it be three or four days? I don't know, but I knew that meant he was going to be busy.
[01:15:08] And I'll also say, like, from my perspective again, this is just me. But I don't want to talk to my
[01:15:14] wife about that stuff. You know, I don't want to talk to my wife. I don't want to explain to her what's
[01:15:19] going on with this. And what I don't want, I don't want to talk to her about like what are kids are doing
[01:15:24] or what we're having for dinner or whatever. I want to talk about other stuff. That's what I want to
[01:15:28] talk about. I don't want to talk about team guy stuff with my wife. That's not, so maybe that,
[01:15:34] you know, plays into it too. And yeah, I mean, like I said, my wife would shoot barely know
[01:15:41] what I was going or whatever. And it's partly because I didn't want to worry about, but also,
[01:15:45] I just don't want to talk about other stuff. Yeah. Talk about work. You know,
[01:15:51] 19 hours with these dudes. I want to talk about it with you, darling. I don't want to talk about
[01:15:56] something else. But at some point, you must have realized, or did you start to see like,
[01:16:03] hey, these things are wearing on Chad? These deployments are like, was there a change in his
[01:16:09] attitude and his personality in the way he carried himself? Yes, and no, I think it's hard to
[01:16:22] distinguish when exactly that was. And I'm going to bounce around a minute. I just had to scroll
[01:16:29] through a bunch of photos, Jason and I were working on something. And they're scrolling through
[01:16:33] those photos the other day. What I realized is when he really got bad, it was two years before he
[01:16:40] died. So 2016, I can almost see it through photos. But even before that, I do know, I know some
[01:16:51] stories now since he's died that he never shared with me in 2012 was a pretty big deployment,
[01:16:57] I guess, or crazy deployment. I don't know the best way to say that. And I think some stuff
[01:17:02] happened there. And 2014, he was starting to change a little bit more. But what a spouse says is,
[01:17:13] well, that's just how they are. And the world, the media talks, you know, maybe seals are big
[01:17:21] in the news now, right? Since 9-11, since May of 2011, they're all over and they're made to be
[01:17:30] larger than life. And they use these words. And so if a guy has always told how brave and fearless
[01:17:37] and heroic and strong they are, then he's got to believe that. He's got to live that. And then on
[01:17:44] the same token, you see with our special operators how they are, you know, quiet and how they do
[01:17:51] sit in the corner of the room. And their back is always, you know, to the wall. And they're always
[01:17:55] facing the door. And they don't want to engage in conversational all the time. And just
[01:18:00] chalk up all those PTSD symptoms that people like to throw out. But it's, I think it's very easy
[01:18:07] for someone like a spouse to say, well, that's just kind of how the guys are. Because they have a
[01:18:12] stressful job. And they're beat down. Their bodies broken. So, so you said when you're looking at
[01:18:19] pictures now and you're going through the years, you can kind of start to identify things that you
[01:18:25] saw that you, when you look back, it becomes a little bit, this has become more obvious as you look back.
[01:18:30] Yeah, yeah. I mean, I, I couldn't tell you then. But it's, it's more obvious to me now.
[01:18:37] This might be a dumb question. But do you think that that has to do with the fact that we don't
[01:18:43] get taught anything about this kind of stuff? We mean, and maybe it's more prevalent now. But
[01:18:50] you know, I did a couple podcasts on here about Louis Poler, Louis Poler Jr. He was the son of a
[01:19:02] famous Marine, the most famous Marine named Chester Poler. And Louis Poler was, he, his dad,
[01:19:11] Chester Poler was like the, the most iconic Marine ever. And he received five Navy crosses. And he,
[01:19:22] the, here's a good way to describe how iconic he is. He, the Marine Corps has a, has a,
[01:19:30] what is it a mascot? And they've had one. It's a bulldog. And yeah, the mascot, I think they're on number
[01:19:36] 17, but the mascot is named Chester. And at boot camp, they sing a good night Chester,
[01:19:42] whatever, you may be. That's what they do in Marine Corps, Lucas. So this guy, Chester Poler,
[01:19:46] the most iconic Marine of all time. And he had a son. And his son was, uh, not quite cut from the
[01:19:55] same cloth as his dad. You know, his dad was this kind of gruff guy. And this son was sort of
[01:20:01] a more mild guy. He wore glasses. He went to college. He, uh, was just more of a cerebral type guy.
[01:20:10] And he gets done with college. And he's not really sure what he's going to do with his life.
[01:20:14] So he decides to, well, you know, my dad was in the Marine Corps. So he goes to join the Marine
[01:20:20] Corps. He can barely get in because his, his eyesight's bad. The people that are looking at his
[01:20:26] application are like, wait a second, this is Lewis Poler Jr. Are you Chester Poler son? Is that,
[01:20:31] yeah, but we can get you in. So he gets in the Marine Corps. Goes through Hofstra County School,
[01:20:37] goes to the basics school. And then it's 1968. So he goes to Vietnam. And when he gets to Vietnam,
[01:20:49] going on rotations in these three different spots. And eventually, uh, goes on an operation.
[01:20:55] And he steps on a landmine. Get severely wounded. He loses both of his legs. He loses a bunch of his
[01:21:03] fingers and dexterity in his hands. Almost dies. I mean, it's just a miracle that they were able
[01:21:09] to keep my life. And he, he does stay alive. Um, it comes back to America. You know, devastating
[01:21:17] for his dad, the great iconic Marine hero is breaking down when he sees his son. Chester Poler,
[01:21:29] Lewis Poler, you know, eventually recovered from his wounds. And uh, wrote a book called
[01:21:36] Fortune at Son, which is an incredible book. And sort of, you know, he was, he'd gone down the path of
[01:21:42] alcohol and being an alcoholic and all this. And, um, eventually comes out of that writes this book,
[01:21:50] the book, it's published. And in 1994, he fell out of his wheelchair injured himself, went back
[01:22:00] in the hospital. Um, they put him on painkillers. He got addicted to painkillers again. And, and he killed himself.
[01:22:08] Um, and what was, when I, when I did this series of podcasts about this, what was crazy was
[01:22:17] every single Marine, every single Marine, 100% knows who Chester Poler is. But,
[01:22:26] a vast majority of Marines that I talked to as that podcast was coming out, did not know
[01:22:32] the story of his son. And it seems like the perfect way to educate people about the
[01:22:44] hardships that people face when they come home for more and they, you know, obviously,
[01:22:47] Lewis Poler had a multitude of hardships as well. But it seems like the education that we receive
[01:22:55] and not just us in the military, but then the families just that there's things, hey,
[01:23:00] this is what we need to be looking out for. And it, it seems like if you're, if you now are looking
[01:23:09] back at pictures to be able to say, man, I see this. I remember this. These are the kind of things.
[01:23:16] Is this like, like part of the things that you're trying to share now so that people have
[01:23:21] better education about this kind of stuff? Oh my gosh. Yes. Yes. And again, I'm no scientist. I'm
[01:23:28] no doctor. I don't have a research under my belt, but I have what I've lived. And sitting in my chair,
[01:23:36] having been with this person for so long. You know, we, we, I didn't just like meet a team guy,
[01:23:42] and then we got married, and that's not to bust on anybody that did. But, you know, I've known
[01:23:47] him almost his entire life. And then to watch him through his career and then to lose him in this way,
[01:23:55] I didn't see all these signs and symptoms prior. I think if Chad, I want to believe that if Chad
[01:24:05] thought something was wrong with him that he was probably trying to hide it from me. I have
[01:24:12] other girlfriends, widows, whose husbands took their life. And they have said that their husbands
[01:24:18] expressed to them the struggle they were having and what they were thinking about. And you know,
[01:24:24] their signs and symptoms, and I didn't have that. And it's not going to be the same for everybody
[01:24:29] or humans or all different. Biological DNA, I'd express itself differently. But if we could maybe
[01:24:36] educate people a little bit more about the toll your service takes. And, and to know that even if you're
[01:24:47] not killed in action or killed in training or you don't die by suicide, but you've led a very
[01:24:54] active career. You are going to be impacted some more than others. And let's really have a conversation
[01:25:02] about what you might see and when is it going to be really problem?
[01:25:06] So as these deployments are adding up for Chad, I mean, is when he's coming home, is it
[01:25:17] what is the kind of things you're noticing? Well, he's always super quiet guy, never the loudest guy in
[01:25:27] the room reserved. But as time goes on, he's even less. And when we first, you know, a teammate
[01:25:38] we hung out with people and had friends and when we first got to the command, we did that too.
[01:25:42] And then over time, we just didn't. We didn't do social things. I mean, we almost never
[01:25:47] ever had anyone over to our house, ever. He never wanted anybody in our house. He, he any
[01:25:55] says he likes to be home. He like to be home with the kids and I kind of what you mentioned. He's like,
[01:25:59] I'm with those dudes all the time. Like, I don't need to go hang out with them because I've just spent,
[01:26:04] you know, a rut trip in Chicago with them and I'm home now. But it, it, it, what got really bad right
[01:26:11] away was a sleep. And I think that that's true for a lot of the guys is that, you know, sleep is so
[01:26:19] valued. And it's, if you think of your body, I like to think of it as a computer. And if you don't
[01:26:23] turn the computer down every once in a while and reboot boot it and it gets jacked up, right?
[01:26:27] Doesn't run well. And that's what sleep provides all of us every single night. And if you've got a guy
[01:26:35] who has his body hurts, I mean, Chad fell off of a ladder, pretty high up and Jack does back up.
[01:26:42] He messed his neck up off of a couple of blending. He did. He was in the helicopter crash in 98.
[01:26:48] So, you know, I mean, his body, and I say this because I know so many of the guys are like really
[01:26:56] broken and he's probably the least of it in terms of broken bones and this and that, but his body
[01:27:02] is beat up as most of them are. And then you add on top of that just the mental strain of war.
[01:27:08] Just deployments, you know, sleep and over and some shitty ass village compound, you know,
[01:27:19] you're listening to blast coming in. The high cycle of just like missions going out, going out,
[01:27:25] going out, okay? Being away from your family and even though I didn't call my husband and say,
[01:27:30] hey, this is broken or I need this. Maybe that's all other spouses communicates. And now there
[01:27:36] might be stress because they got shit going on back home with their family and so let's all
[01:27:41] add all that on to it. And now let's add at least for our special operators, the whole blast injury
[01:27:47] concept. And the guys that have spent time and I'm going to talk teams because that's what I know,
[01:27:55] but time and the teams, the last 10 to 20 years, they 100% in my opinion are affected by blast injury
[01:28:04] because it comes from them breaching doors, which they do not just overseas, but in training,
[01:28:09] you know, he lows RPGs all that and that constant impact to the brain is
[01:28:17] terrible. It's terrible. And so you add all this stuff this guy's a con through and he can't sleep.
[01:28:26] He can't get a good night's sleep. So there's nothing helping him for his body to at least try to
[01:28:32] recover something. So his sleep went down bad. See, as he seen doctors or anything, as he
[01:28:39] talking to anybody about trying to get sleep. I mean, sometimes, you know, at some points, they were
[01:28:42] given away like the sleep potions like it was nothing. Oh, yeah. I mean, he did, he tried to do a lot of
[01:28:49] his own stuff, just like normal regular remedy stuff and better sleep hygiene. And then he was
[01:28:55] diagnosed with sleep apnea, which a lot of them have. So they have a CPAP machine. I mean, why are
[01:29:01] their dudes in their 30s and 40s with sleep apnea? Doesn't, and not weird. And then, you know,
[01:29:08] and then what you also see in these guys is they get low testosterone and because of, you know,
[01:29:14] there are adrenal glands or jacked out. Their cortisol levels are jacked up. And so their testosterone
[01:29:19] is jacked up. And I don't know how many of them are really willing to talk about it, but I think
[01:29:24] there's a really large number of dudes in special operations that are in their 30s
[01:29:29] that are on testosterone. And they're not, I can't speak for everyone. I mean, I think they're
[01:29:35] on it for like the next time they want to be jacked. They're on it because their teeth really low.
[01:29:39] And that's needed, you know? Oh, yeah, that's not getting fired up. Yeah. So, you're seeing all this
[01:29:48] stuff. Is there a point where you start like trying to intervene yourself or is Chad just like,
[01:29:55] you know, again, I'm comparing this to my experience. Like, I would never, my wife didn't know
[01:30:02] if there was anything going on. Like, with bad things, we're happening at work. My wife would not know.
[01:30:07] Well, and this is where like regret comes in and just kind of guilt. A lot of guilt.
[01:30:17] Because it's really easy to sit here now and list all the things I could have done to be a
[01:30:22] better wife. But at the time, I... Chad and I, Chad and I are both the type of people that
[01:30:38] we want to work really hard at what we do and we want to be really, really freaking good at it.
[01:30:47] Being married to him while there are spouses and they choose to, to, whatever they're out,
[01:30:51] maybe they work, maybe they stay out with their kids, everybody gets a choice, right?
[01:30:55] And my choice was to work and go this whole fitness CrossFit path. So, when you're married to someone
[01:31:01] who's its neighbor, you see, and does all these awesome things and gets these awards,
[01:31:05] I was super proud of them, but I also wanted my own identity and I wanted my own success.
[01:31:11] And in a lot of that driving force, truthfully, was always because I wanted him to be proud of me.
[01:31:17] And so he's working hard in the teams and I'm working really hard on this whole CrossFit side.
[01:31:24] And I don't think it's that I didn't want to intervene. I just kind of thought we both were
[01:31:33] almost like handling our shit. If that's fair to say. Like, okay, you're working, you're busy,
[01:31:39] you know, you're moving up, you know, within your troop and squadron and the whole thing. And
[01:31:46] I'm doing it over here and then we come home and we take our kids and
[01:31:52] I guess I just didn't take enough of responsibility for that.
[01:32:03] Is there, is there some point where you say, okay, this was sort of
[01:32:09] where you said, you said when you were looking through pictures, you said two years before you died,
[01:32:14] you were like, yeah, I look back now and that this is a time period where there was definitely
[01:32:20] he was, you know, over the edge. Yeah, I mean, he really got a shorter fuse for sure.
[01:32:28] And it generally wasn't with me. It tended to be more with our kids. He would just snap,
[01:32:34] which was really out of character for him. And he would not listen. And I think a lot of
[01:32:43] spouses say, you know, my husband doesn't listen to me. I've doesn't listen to me when I'm talking,
[01:32:47] but it's like he had no idea I was talking to. And I'd be sitting right next to him. And
[01:32:56] I've shared this story before, but I think it really says something that he,
[01:33:01] I said, Chad, you never listened to me. Like, just look at me. I need you to look at me and I need
[01:33:06] you to focus. And he said, you know what, when you talk to me, I have to look around and think,
[01:33:12] well, that's not going to kill me. And that's not going to kill me. And I remember thinking,
[01:33:17] that's so weird. But now I realize if you're kind of in this hyper state and you don't have a way to
[01:33:26] get out of it, you go into a poignant and you kind of have to stay on point, right? Heads always
[01:33:30] on a swivel, you may win your in bed, you got to be ready for the next thing. How do you turn that off
[01:33:35] when you come home? I'm not sure. I'm not sure. They've really figured that out. So they come home
[01:33:42] and they're still kind of like overloaded. And that's something that you notice because you're talking
[01:33:47] to them and he's like not responding. And yeah, and in the pictures two years prior and the pictures
[01:33:53] when I look at it, he just had a completely different look on his face. It was almost like,
[01:33:59] like in pictures, it was almost like I'm going to kill you, you know, like that whole like,
[01:34:04] it just, it's just not like him. Yeah, that's the interesting thing that you pointed out is like
[01:34:12] you've known him since he was whatever 15. Yeah. And so you see this entire arc of a human
[01:34:19] whereas, you know, if you cut out, if you met him in 2010, you would see this much smaller picture
[01:34:28] that maybe wouldn't paint such a dramatic change in his character and the way he acted. Right?
[01:34:35] But you saw him since he was 15 years old and, you know, and then you see this whole story play out.
[01:34:43] And so it becomes real clear. There also being said, since you're with him every day,
[01:34:50] you know, you're around him all the time. So there's also that that thing where,
[01:34:55] you know, you don't notice that someone, you know, like, you don't notice that my hair's going
[01:34:59] right, right? Because like my wife doesn't, she might notice it now. But, you know, over time.
[01:35:05] So like, oh, your hair went great today, right? It's like happens gradually over time. And so
[01:35:09] there's some of that. I'm sure it play too where, you know, one deployment, there's three degrees
[01:35:14] of change, right? The next deployment, there's four degrees of change. The next deployment,
[01:35:19] there's five degrees of change. Okay. So you look up in six deployments and that little bit each time
[01:35:25] you may not notice it so dramatically. But from the, the, the amount that he's on a different course,
[01:35:31] mentally is dramatic. Yeah. And I, and I, I tried to take it back through chunks of our life.
[01:35:38] And go back as far as our childhood. But more like when we were at teammate, how he was with his
[01:35:45] fellow team guys and peers in the way that we interacted with them. And then when we got out of
[01:35:49] the military, the way that he was. And, you know, we had friends and did all the things normal
[01:35:54] couples and families do. And then coming back and then being at the command for the first couple
[01:36:00] years, it was that way. And then slowly he just did less and less socially. He was a little more
[01:36:08] cut off. And then as it got farther along, he just was a little quieter. And, you know, the last
[01:36:16] year or two of his life, I'm, I'd sad. I'm like, gosh, I don't even know how much he smiled.
[01:36:27] Yeah. And no, um, no, no, him saying like, hey, I got to talk to somebody.
[01:36:34] No, no.
[01:36:46] Which, um, I mean, I, I'm guessing it's changing now. But I mean, that's the culture from
[01:36:53] buds, from basic seal training. Don't go to medical. Right? Don't go to medical. Don't talk
[01:37:01] to anybody. If you've got a stress for action, your leg, let it break. Don't go to medical.
[01:37:06] Hobble around as long as you can. Don't like that's, and again, it's not like anybody.
[01:37:11] Of course, what do the instructors say? Yep, go to medical. Check in if you've got it. If you're feeling
[01:37:14] but the, the culture is, and it's the same in every unit. It's, it's every unit. It's like this.
[01:37:21] I mean, and it's special operates every unit. It's every unit in the military.
[01:37:23] Lock it up. Don't say anything. Don't go to medical. Hand like you said, handle your shit.
[01:37:43] Yeah, I think the guys are just to, I, I, I don't know what they think. I don't know if they think
[01:37:49] maybe this is just me. Like, what's up with me? Am I fucked up? I don't want to tell my buddies. I'm
[01:37:54] might be a little fucked up. Or they don't want to hurt their service. Or they just want to
[01:38:00] ignore it and hope it'll go away. They think they'll just like muscle through it. I don't know what
[01:38:07] they think. But somehow we need to shift the little needle a little bit to recognize
[01:38:14] is you do all this training. I mean, millions of dollars are spent on these guys. You guys to
[01:38:22] train millions of dollars. And, you know, I mean, Chad was a sniper and free-falled jumpmaster and,
[01:38:28] you know, name all the things. And you took the time to teach him that.
[01:38:35] So why wouldn't you take the time to also teach them about maybe some ways that they're going to be
[01:38:42] potentially impacted after multiple years of service? It's 2021 and right now what we're about to
[01:38:50] see are people that have served their entire career post 911. So this suicide epidemic,
[01:38:59] it is not going away. It's only ramping up.
[01:39:04] Yeah, you know, when I, when I kind of started off talking about this, that's the connection that I
[01:39:09] made as I was like listening to your story hearing it is, you know, we've made all these developments
[01:39:15] and all these different wars from the problems that the wars cause, right? And yet, and I'd even
[01:39:21] talk about like, like, these current wars, the prosthetics, you see the prosthetics that people have
[01:39:26] now, they're amazing. You know, they can do all these incredible things. And we make these massive
[01:39:31] advancements. And yet, this is just like over here in this dark corner, not really being addressed.
[01:39:38] Now, I take that back. There is, there are things that are happening now that they are starting
[01:39:43] to address. I know that they're doing like baseline studies of guys. I don't know what you know about
[01:39:47] the stuff Jason, but they're doing like baseline studies, brain studies on guys, so they can kind of
[01:39:53] tell where they're at, so they can see what kind of impact they've had over over time. So I think
[01:39:58] maybe it is starting to come to light a little bit now. But certainly, I don't think the culture
[01:40:05] has a big change to it yet because, I mean, it takes time to offer to change culture.
[01:40:12] It would crush the recruitment process, wouldn't it? We've known for years because of history
[01:40:18] and wars that when you go serve your country, there's likely how do you could die? You're choosing
[01:40:23] to serve and die potentially by your flag, but it would really crush recruitment if insert army,
[01:40:33] navy, whoever. And you say, hey, you want to be a seal? You want to be a green beret? You want to be a
[01:40:40] and you say, you're going to come, you're going to do your service, you're going to do cool
[01:40:43] shit, you're going to jump out of airplanes, you're going to shoot guns and you're going to kill bad
[01:40:47] guys. And if you make it by the end of it, you might also have some pretty severe mental health issues
[01:40:53] and some brain injury. Are you going to go with that? It's hard for them to pony up and say that
[01:41:01] because, well, man, is that going to crush our number? I think people still show up for that.
[01:41:08] I mean, it's like, is everybody, when you do this, you're like, well, I'm going to happen to me.
[01:41:13] Oh, I know. I mean, I, I, other guys, not me. I did the cake of form before every
[01:41:21] deployment and I was fully prepared as you can be as a spouse in the world we were living in.
[01:41:30] I mean, we attended many funerals in those last 10 years that my husband might not come home.
[01:41:36] And if he doesn't come home, he's going to come home and a call from with the flag over it.
[01:41:40] That's not what I got. So where does it go towards the end? What do you
[01:42:05] see towards the end? One of the biggest things was, well, he started putting on weight and, you
[01:42:13] know, he would joke because he was over 40 and he's like, you don't love me anymore because I'm
[01:42:19] getting heavy, which would never be the case. But he started running weight, but what really
[01:42:25] started to happen and pretty drastically, I would say the last six months that I can look back
[01:42:30] now is he got really puffy. His face got puffy almost like the sounds terrible like,
[01:42:38] have you ever seen a fish in water instead and it's kind of like bloated? That's always face got.
[01:42:44] And, and I, he also is weird as this is, I would always kind of kiss him on his temple and he
[01:42:52] didn't smell the same. And I thought, oh, that's weird. Well, I've learned since then a lot more about
[01:43:02] the way the brain's affected and to go back to that kind of systemic derailment. When you have a
[01:43:11] blast injury, you know, it's, it's a wave, right? It goes through the air and basically your brain
[01:43:18] shakes up inside your skull and that's what it's built to do. That's why we have a skull and that's
[01:43:23] how it's made. But it's not made to get that over and over again. So when that happens and they're
[01:43:29] swelling in the brain, it then starts to affect everything else because the brain is connected to the
[01:43:35] rest of your body and you see where not only hormones get derail, but, you know, your metabolism gets
[01:43:44] jacked up. So the guy is start to gain weight and when your metabolism gets jacked up, it also messes with
[01:43:50] the ketones in your body which would be like, you know, factoring it with your urine and different
[01:43:55] things and that's what changes the way they smell. And the puffiness is because we'll sure if he's
[01:44:02] got brain injury and there's any swelling or there's just systemic swelling in the body,
[01:44:07] it's got to go somewhere and so we start to notice it in the face and again, I didn't know any
[01:44:15] of this stuff prior and that's not to say someone listening, you're sitting there and you look
[01:44:20] over at your husband. You're like, my husband's face is puffy, but there's something to be said
[01:44:26] that PTSD is a genuine thing. I believe I also believe it's overused a lot and this is a whole
[01:44:37] step further than PTSD. Well, and also you're talking about it's not just hey, your face is
[01:44:46] puffy, we have an issue. No, it's this, this, this, this, this, you add all these things together
[01:44:52] and you get that many red flags. Yeah. Then that's, you know, you've got the, the, the, the, the
[01:44:58] the, the, the, the, the, the, the, you smell different. Hey, you're not talking, hey,
[01:45:04] you know, you're, you're, you're, you're not working out as much as you should just start adding
[01:45:08] all these red flags together and it's like, okay, you know, we have, we have, we have to address this.
[01:45:14] Well, and, and when you think about the different parts of the brain, you've got your, your
[01:45:19] limbic brain, your monkey brain, deep inside, that's what tells you what's safe.
[01:45:23] Is this dangerous? Is this why we don't walk into the street, right? We know that's dangerous.
[01:45:27] The prefrontal cortex kind of is, hmm, how do I feel about that? So if, if the brain is affected,
[01:45:35] that's when we see them, you know, the short fuse, how do I feel, I'm angry, I'm aggressive,
[01:45:42] maybe I'm sad, different emotions, but when it's brain injury and we've heard CTE, right,
[01:45:48] punch drunk, NFL players, our guys get it too. Our guys are getting interface,
[01:45:54] astral glial scarring, and that's almost like think of like a ricochet, almost bullets through
[01:46:02] the brain, and that's what comes from the blast injury, and that's able to penetrate that deep
[01:46:08] monkey brain of like, is this safe for me? And that's why guys make decisions that are really,
[01:46:13] really bad, whether it's, you know, drinking too much, um, in fidelity or, you know, I have a friend
[01:46:23] who he's good now, but he had his daughter in the car and had been drinking and was
[01:46:34] speeding well far above the speed limit. Any father would know, none of that is good,
[01:46:43] but he wasn't able to make the right decision. So, so I started to see
[01:46:51] looking back, I can see how he had changed, and I've shared with Jason to Chad
[01:47:02] climbed Mount Auckland, Cogua in January and of 2018, and that's the second highest summit in
[01:47:10] the world. It's the highest in South America, it's in Argentina, and he went and climbed this,
[01:47:15] it's a little over 23,000 feet, and I will never know, but I do believe that him climbing that
[01:47:24] mountain exacerbated any of his brain injuries that he had, and I've since talked to
[01:47:36] a doctor who I respect highly. She's been studying blast injuries in Cosevo soldiers since the
[01:47:42] early 90s, or at least that's who she started with, and I asked her about that, and she,
[01:47:48] you know, again, she didn't test Chad's brain, but she was pretty confident that that was
[01:47:53] probably the case too. Yeah, I mean, how long was that? That's going to be a couple weeks at least
[01:47:59] of a three-week evolution. Yeah, and it was lack of a two-highly, stranyous. Yeah, and so now you've
[01:48:06] got this brain that's injured, what encourages healing in the body blood, blood flow, right? You
[01:48:13] have surgery, okay, cool, you need surgery, once you get up, once you move your knee, because we got
[01:48:18] to get blood flow to it, because we're going to heal, right? Brain's injured, wait, now I'm going to
[01:48:22] go up 23,000 feet, and I'm going to be without oxygen, it really needs to heal itself. Yeah,
[01:48:27] one of my, um, the guys go through the hyperbaric chamber, right, which is just O2, pressure O2.
[01:48:35] It's the opposite of climbing a 23,000 foot mountain, and it provides a lot of healing, a lot of healing
[01:48:41] to guys. So to have to do the opposite of that, I mean, it seems. I asked her about that, and she said,
[01:48:48] I said, is that something that would help, and she said, yes, but not initially after injury?
[01:48:53] I mean, we're talking different things, because you're talking about guys that've been back for a while,
[01:48:57] and we do see people who have a little bit exacerbated symptoms at a higher elevation. My
[01:49:07] best friend's husband, they live in Colorado, and I said to the doctor, I said, what would you say,
[01:49:14] if there was a 20 year Navy seal veteran who's done upwards of probably 10 deployments,
[01:49:22] without a doubt, probably does have some some brain blast injury and lives at 8 to 10,000 feet,
[01:49:31] and before I could even finish the sentence, she just shook her head, no, no, she's kept shaking her
[01:49:35] head, no, and she said, bad, bad, very bad. I'd tell him to move. What was Chad's,
[01:49:44] like debrief points on the mountain climb? What do you say about it? He said it was really hard,
[01:49:50] really hard. I think he was really proud of himself for doing it, but when he came home and walked
[01:49:59] in the door, I mean, he was so skinny, just, you know, what do you about lose 15, 20 pounds?
[01:50:06] Probably, and he came in, and he just said, baby, that was really freaking hard,
[01:50:13] and I just didn't really ever hear him say that about anything. Like, it was like, oh,
[01:50:18] well, you did it, you know, a good job, and he said, didn't always next.
[01:50:24] That was his plan. And when was that, that wasn't January of 2018? Yeah.
[01:50:33] And how about the interactions? Like, with the kids at this point, the family, like,
[01:50:39] is it, you notice, and more? Is it plateaued out?
[01:50:44] Well, at this point, it's with teenagers, and I remember saying to him,
[01:50:50] they don't even want to like hang out with us or be home, anything. And he's like,
[01:50:55] I don't want to hang out with my parents when I was 14, 17. We did take a family trip that June of
[01:51:04] 2018, we went to the Grand Canyon. And again, I look back at those pictures, and he definitely was not there.
[01:51:13] Like, he wasn't on the trip. You know what I mean? He was obviously there. But we stayed in a couple
[01:51:24] different cities. We kind of jumped around Arizona for a while, and you know, we're staying in this
[01:51:28] really nice hotel, and he didn't want to leave the room. You know, it's the Grand of its June and
[01:51:33] Arizona, so it is very, very hot. But, you know, he didn't really want to come down to the pool.
[01:51:38] He just wanted to sit in the room. And you're like, okay, but we're on a family vacation. And
[01:51:42] one time he was sitting down by the pool, and I saw him from a distance, and he just was kind of like
[01:51:51] leaned over in the chair, just like zoned in out. He was just not there. And I said, I walked up. I said,
[01:51:57] hey, what are you doing? He's like, nothing. Just, yeah, just things like that. He just wasn't,
[01:52:04] I don't know what he was thinking about. So where's the go from there?
[01:52:20] Well, and in the timeline? Yeah. Yeah. So he, he this year in 2018, I think, is when it started. He switched
[01:52:35] squadron, so he was moving around within the command. And he, he said that he didn't think that
[01:52:46] this is what he was supposed to be doing. I remember him saying, I just, I don't think this is right.
[01:52:51] I don't think this is really the path I'm supposed to be on. And again, he didn't really share a lot with me.
[01:52:57] And he, and I said, well, you're someone who's always accomplished every goal you've ever set for
[01:53:04] yourself. You make a goal. You go do it. So he had this goal for himself. He had, was in the process.
[01:53:11] I guess, of attaining the goal. And I said, maybe this is just the first time you change your mind.
[01:53:16] Like, you just don't want to do it. That's okay. You can, you can decide to change your mind. And
[01:53:21] he was like, well, they've spent so much time and money on, on doing this. And again, he didn't
[01:53:26] tell me any details. And he said he goes, I know I'm not really telling you much, but it makes me feel
[01:53:30] good to talk about it. And I was like, okay, because if he's gunna talk, I'm going to listen.
[01:53:34] And yeah, so something was bugging him. And I don't, I don't know what, but something was really
[01:53:43] bugging him. And at the beginning of October, he started hanging up his awards and things in the
[01:53:51] house, which he never did before. So we had, you know, like a lot of guys, he'll plaques and awards
[01:53:57] and he has a silver star and a maybe Marine Corps medal and a bronze star and all the things.
[01:54:05] And we had them all framed years ago, but he never hung them up. And he just thought it was really
[01:54:11] weird to hang that stuff up in your house. Because he said, what's someone's going to come in the house.
[01:54:16] And it's just like, look at me. And I always thought that was weird that he had to struggle with that.
[01:54:22] But yeah, he hung him up in our stairwell to our house. So maybe like you and your wife,
[01:54:30] marriage is a compromise, right? And I thought, you know, almost no one comes in our house anyway.
[01:54:37] And if someone were to come in our house, the only way they would see him is if they went up our stairs
[01:54:42] basically to our bedrooms. But in my mind, I just thought, well, at least he's hanging him up,
[01:54:47] so they're not going to get like broken or busted or anything. And he talked about hanging a
[01:54:54] Somali flag on one wall, what you would have seen when you come in the front door. And I just
[01:55:02] remember thinking, that's so weird. And I thought he was really messing with me. And when I turned
[01:55:09] around to kind of laugh, I realized he was serious. He was dead serious. And he was like, yeah, I guess that's
[01:55:14] dumb, huh? And I was like, well, maybe I asked him if he was okay. I remember kneeling down in
[01:55:23] front of Elman, I said, are you okay? And he said, yeah, okay. But if there was any sort of
[01:55:34] like first feeling, it was like he's off. I would have never thought three weeks later, he would
[01:55:42] take his life, but that's what happened. So it's interesting. And while I, I won't share
[01:55:50] her story, I, my other girlfriend will tell you who knew that her husband was struggling about
[01:55:59] two months prior. There was just like a switch. Two months and he was gone. So for me, I think it was
[01:56:07] three weeks and he was gone. I think they just meet this like threshold. And I don't know how we
[01:56:15] figure out where that is. That's going to be half to left to scientists. But, but there is some
[01:56:24] threshold that happens and then the switch is flipped. And it's still going to work. I mean,
[01:56:33] this, you kneeled down in front of them. You say, are you okay? He says, yeah, do you buy it?
[01:56:41] You want to buy it? I did buy it. And this again is one of those post-death struggles
[01:56:49] when someone takes their life, you military or not. You are left with so many questions. And I think
[01:56:56] that's, that's the beast to not have answers. And I believed him because there is nothing I didn't tell
[01:57:09] him. So I believed that if there was something he needed to tell me, he would tell me.
[01:57:20] And then he goes into work. Yeah. He went into work. He had a, he had a, he had a work trip three
[01:57:25] week before. This is when he gets really weird. So he had a work trip. And he could drive there.
[01:57:31] And he was supposed to come home on a Friday. And he called me on a Thursday. They had used
[01:57:35] rental cars to go up there. And he said, hey, I'm coming home early. Can you pick me up
[01:57:41] from the rental car place, forever? And I was like, oh, okay. And pick him up. He,
[01:57:49] we had to take her, I had to go get my son from a football game. So I drive him back home. And he
[01:57:57] instantly comes in the house. So Chad had been doing had had a concealed carry license. And he'd been
[01:58:03] roll him with a concealed carry, you know, when he's home around town for probably the last year or
[01:58:08] two. And again, I didn't really think much of it because I mean, well, crap is a team guy. And
[01:58:15] this is America. So we come home and he instantly goes to the safe and gets his gun. And I said,
[01:58:23] it was just kind of frantic. And I said, you realize that we're going on a school to pick up
[01:58:28] cuts. And he said, I'm not getting out of the car. And it was very like short. And I was like, okay.
[01:58:35] So we go, no big deal. In the whole time he's in the cities, just like, he just seemed uncomfortable.
[01:58:42] Um, I learned later that, and I don't know any details of whatever he was doing, but he was in a
[01:58:50] course, and he withdrew from the course. I he never quit anything. He never like stepped down from
[01:59:00] anything I'd ever known. So that conversation about, I'm not sure I'm doing what I'm supposed to be doing.
[01:59:07] That came later that night when he got home. And this was on a Thursday. And on Friday, I had to leave
[01:59:18] to go. I was working out in Raleigh. I could drive there for a seminar. Across it seminar. Yeah.
[01:59:25] And we talked about it that he needed to call his doctor because he felt like he just needed to check in,
[01:59:31] like maybe his testosterone was off. Maybe he's something. He's like, he wasn't feeling good.
[01:59:35] Earlier that week, he told me that he had some headaches and like some stomach aches. He had said he
[01:59:40] didn't feel good, which again, Chad never said. I mean, I don't know if ever he said, I don't feel good.
[01:59:47] I mean, he didn't say it like that, but he would never say that to me. But he did. He didn't feel good.
[01:59:51] And so the deal was when I left, he was going to make an appointment with his doctor and he was
[01:59:55] going to make an appointment to talk to his boss about whatever his work situation was to try to
[02:00:01] figure out what his path was going to be. And I left. I told our kids, hey, you know, dad's kind
[02:00:08] of stressed out just just saying, no, he's got a lot on his plate right now. And when I left,
[02:00:14] I'm leaving Virginia Beach and I just had this like gut and like pit in my stomach. Like I just
[02:00:19] felt like I shouldn't be leaving him. But I did. And went to Raleigh, worked, talked him on Saturday.
[02:00:30] And on Sunday, kids like called and said that dad's acting really weird and he's just laying
[02:00:37] on the landing and he's just staring at the ceiling. And I just, I just, that's just weird.
[02:00:50] That's just weird. And I was for his way and I had to work still full seminar and
[02:00:56] I just knew I had to get home. So the seminar finishes and I get in the car as quick as I can
[02:01:09] and try to raise home and he called me at one point and he just said, I love you. And I kind of
[02:01:16] laughed at him and I said, I love you too. And he's like, no, I mean, I really love you. I love you so much.
[02:01:23] I love you so much, Sarah. And he knew I loved it when he would say my name. And I said, you know,
[02:01:30] I love you too, but can I call you back? I really bad headache. And honestly, I was just really
[02:01:35] trying to get home. So fast forward a couple hours later, I get home and I go in the house and
[02:01:43] he's upstairs and he's rummaging below the bed for something and I come in and he turns to me
[02:01:50] and I hug him and kiss him and he kind of just like, like, collapses in my arms a little bit.
[02:02:00] So I just hug him for a second and I just think of my mind, well, I'm home now. So I'm near you.
[02:02:07] And I'm going to try to just, I didn't think at the time that I needed to necessarily keep you safe.
[02:02:13] I thought I just had to keep you close and make you feel better. And so I got, I had to get a shower
[02:02:22] and I said, come talk to me while I'm in the shower. And when I went around in the bathroom to start the
[02:02:26] shower, he wasn't right behind me and I looked out the door and he had just like collapsed like face
[02:02:32] first on the bed, kind of like the letter T, like arms out to the side, has his head just
[02:02:36] side like, like just exhaustion. And I said, what what are you doing? Come on, come in. And so I
[02:02:43] get in the shower and he's sitting on the bathtub and he just had been over and he's got his hands on
[02:02:50] either side of his head and he's holding this hair and he's kind of like gripping his hair and
[02:02:55] I kept saying what's wrong, you know, what's going on and he got to talk to me and he just kept
[02:03:01] saying I don't know. Anyway, I asked him to pass me a towel and he looked at me and he was not.
[02:03:13] He wasn't there. His eyes were just like, I was just like looking straight through his eyes.
[02:03:20] And I just lay down with him and bed and I just thought if I could keep him next to me then
[02:03:26] he would feel better. But that wasn't the case. So I woke up in the middle of the night and he was
[02:03:36] standing there dressed looking out the window and I said what are you doing? And he just said,
[02:03:43] I don't know. I said, well, come lay back and bed with me and he did and the next morning,
[02:03:52] early, I woke up. I woke up to see just him walking out the door. I saw like the back of his shoulder
[02:04:01] leave leave. And I, I, it's like I couldn't talk. It was like I couldn't get up. I don't know if it's
[02:04:11] just because I was sleepy or what or I wasn't really processing like, oh, he's leaving right now
[02:04:16] and then I couldn't find him. So I woke up, you know, a little while later I couldn't find him.
[02:04:25] So I looked around and I thought, well, maybe he went for a walk. Maybe he went for a run.
[02:04:31] Maybe he went to go get coffee. How did I call him? He didn't answer. I texted him. He didn't answer.
[02:04:38] And went round in my head trying to figure out where it could be. I got in my car at one point.
[02:04:44] I thought I'll drive around and then I thought, where am I? Where literally, like which direction would I drive?
[02:04:49] What's happening? Thought, well, did he leave for work? You supposed to leave on a work trip?
[02:04:54] But I figured he was also going to talk to his boss. So, you know, did he go to work? I just didn't know.
[02:05:01] I called his dad. But because he was so weird the night before I just thought it was weird that he left and he didn't
[02:05:07] say bye. He never didn't not kiss me goodbye. Never. He actually would do this. I'd be upstairs and he'd say,
[02:05:15] okay, bye. I'll see you later and he would slam a door in the house just to see me
[02:05:20] run down furiously down the steps because he knew I would get so spun up if he left and didn't kiss me.
[02:05:26] So, I don't know what I was thinking. I just know I wanted I just wanted confirmation of where he was
[02:05:40] and I finally called the command and I talked to the psych there and
[02:05:47] she asked me a bunch of questions. One of the questions she asked was how does he feel about
[02:05:57] and he asked he said chat's boss's name and I felt that was a really weird question
[02:06:06] because another thing I really loved about chat is he really never said anything bad about people.
[02:06:11] So, you know, if he liked you or didn't like you, I didn't really know. That's how he walked and
[02:06:19] I was like, I have no idea. But she, she just kind of let me think he's on his way to work.
[02:06:30] You know, like he's probably left and he's on the straining trip and a little while later I
[02:06:34] had talked to her again and I said, you know, everything's here. His toothbrush is here. His medicine
[02:06:39] is here. His sunglasses are here. He wouldn't leave with all that stuff and she told me
[02:06:46] due to the privacy of his job. It would be likely that he wouldn't be answering his cell phone.
[02:06:53] And I said, okay, so like the wife that I was, I kind of just thought, okay, so he must have gone
[02:07:03] and it was driving trip up the coast a little bit. So I thought, okay, he was supposed to be back the next day
[02:07:07] and so I think about that and my kids came home from school that day and they said, where's dad?
[02:07:20] And I said, oh, I don't know. I think he left on this work trip. He should be home tomorrow. And I'm
[02:07:24] saying that almost feeling like I'm lying because I don't believe it. But I'm trying to believe it
[02:07:29] because that's what I was told and why wouldn't you, right? So this point, you know, he disappears
[02:07:40] Monday morning, probably I'm saying somewhere between three and six AM and Monday goes by,
[02:07:49] we started demolition on our house. We were doing renovations. That started that day and Tuesday
[02:07:55] comes and I went my house sits near a lake. You can see it from my front porch and I went for a run
[02:08:05] and this is why I'm sharing it. It'll make sense in a minute. But I went for a run and I ran past the
[02:08:10] lake down the bike path all around and I was going to sit at the lake from an end of October.
[02:08:15] It's Virginia Beach. The weather was really beautiful that day and I was going to sit on the bench
[02:08:20] at that lake. But I didn't because I wanted to go inside and shower and like curl my hair and look
[02:08:26] nice for winning at home. So I did that and dropped my son off at a friend's house. He's going to play
[02:08:34] going to a football game. And as I was pulling back in, a psych from work called and said,
[02:08:39] ma'am, your husband didn't report to a master. We're heightening the alert. And I said, that's bad.
[02:08:47] That's bad. That's very bad. And I pretty sure I hung up the phone on him. And when I got out of my car,
[02:08:53] so now where my car was, it's in this coldest acne or buy and it's facing that lake and my house
[02:09:02] is on the left and as I'm walking up to my house, the head contractor for the renovations comes out
[02:09:07] and he says, ma'am, there's two police officers at your back door.
[02:09:11] I called my best friend Courtney, her husband and my husband were in Buds together. And I said,
[02:09:26] you need to come to my house right now. And I just hung up phone. And I didn't know what was going
[02:09:35] on. I just thought something is like seriously. And I went in my front door and out my back door
[02:09:41] the way the house is and there were two cops in my garage and they were, we stood outside the door
[02:09:47] and they said, ma'am, do you know where your husband is? And I said, no, I can't find him and I haven't
[02:09:54] been able to find him. And I asked him if they could move farther down into the street because we were
[02:09:59] right underneath my daughter's window and I knew that she was upstairs and I just didn't want her to be.
[02:10:06] I just didn't know what was happening. So we moved on to the street and
[02:10:18] this cop just opens his door and he like dig something and I have this car and he just turned
[02:10:25] the police. And he said, ma'am, I'm really sorry to tell you but we found your husband and he took his life.
[02:10:35] And now is all alone.
[02:10:42] So, right, right.
[02:10:44] I ran about that time. Courtney pulled up. Sorry. Sorry.
[02:10:59] Courtney pulled up and I think I was screaming and she bare hugged me from behind and I think
[02:11:06] we pretty much took her to the ground, I think. And she said, you don't know that. So she screamed at him.
[02:11:13] You don't know that. Well, he's taken his life at that lake and he could see her house from where he was.
[02:11:23] At least that's what they tell me. So, my daughter's upstairs in her room by herself and she can see
[02:11:37] in here everything. And my son is at a friend's house and I think pretty sure my neighbor went to pick him up.
[02:11:47] So he told me son. So, I have to understand like logistically speaking, there's a lot of things that just
[02:12:07] don't make sense. Where my car was when I got out of it and that guy said the cops were at the back door.
[02:12:20] If they had just found his body, I didn't see anybody over by that lake.
[02:12:26] It had been like 36 hours since I couldn't find them. We went back later and I do think he was at the lake.
[02:12:44] And this is why we went back later in our neighborhood so many people have cameras on their house
[02:12:50] and there's footage of Chad and the bike path that lines that lake if you walk to it at kind of T's and if you go left
[02:13:01] it takes you all the way up to the main road that cars go in and out of the neighborhood. And I think we timed it so that
[02:13:10] cameras caught him walking that way and that would have been right at the same time he would have watched our kids leave for school.
[02:13:27] So, when um, when this is happening, when this is getting like, when when when
[02:13:39] he leaves in the morning and you start thinking like where is he? Is there any part of your brain that's thinking
[02:13:46] he could kill himself? No. So, well, I take that back.
[02:13:51] I did ask Chad's dad. I was trying to get into the safe. So, I guess there was a part of me that did but
[02:14:10] this, he, this was a little farther on in the morning. So, when I first couldn't find him I just
[02:14:14] couldn't find up in the napkin or a while, I think it might have been his dad that said have you checked the
[02:14:19] safe? And so, it took me a minute to try to remember the combo and I got in there and to my knowledge
[02:14:29] all the guns were there but apparently they weren't. I guess the reason I'm asking you that is because
[02:14:39] I don't know various conversations in my, I've had in my life with various people at various times
[02:14:45] and the conversation is something like, you know, you know, that little exploration of
[02:14:54] wait, I'm worried about him and then there'll be some kind of an explanation like,
[02:15:00] what do you mean? Well, I'm just worried like he might kill himself and then the conversation is
[02:15:08] he would never do that. Right? So, that idea of we think we know, we think we know what someone's
[02:15:19] going through, we think we know what's going on in their heads and I think that we don't know,
[02:15:26] we don't always know and, you know, like, he disappears, you know, like what, that's what I was
[02:15:34] just thinking like, what was that in your head of like, hey, you know what, he's, you know, he
[02:15:40] probably is going to see his parents or he's, you know, going to go freaking surfing or whatever he's
[02:15:45] going to do but this crazy idea that he might go kill himself. It seems so unbelievable, you know,
[02:15:59] for someone that's like, hey, he's been through whatever, 10 deployments. He's done all this.
[02:16:03] He's done this. He's done that. We got kids. We got a house. We got all these things going on. All these
[02:16:07] good things going on in our lives. That's not, that's not going to happen. And it seems like
[02:16:14] oftentimes people are caught off guard by it. People are caught off guard and I know you mentioned a
[02:16:21] couple of friends where there was real signs of, you know, hey, not things aren't going good for
[02:16:28] the individual but a lot of times I hear it's like, you know, there's been some suicides in the
[02:16:34] seal community where there was no indication at all, at all of any kind. And it seems like we're
[02:16:47] conditioned to sort of not even think that it's a feasible thing. I, guilt. I, you know, I was just as bad as,
[02:17:07] as the military makes the guys out to be because as I said in his funeral,
[02:17:15] to me, Chad was unbreakable. I mean, to me, he had done all these really amazing things in
[02:17:28] his life. He, he's, you know, he, everything he did, he did well, everything he did. And
[02:17:38] it's seal, you know, great ridiculous high GPA when he's going night school and he has a life and a
[02:17:45] baby and really good in sniper school and went and got his project manager license certification,
[02:17:52] all that in the business world. And whatever, fill in the blank, climbing mountains,
[02:17:59] qualifying for the CrossFit games, like insert whatever, he just was so unbreakable to me. And,
[02:18:07] and I guess that's part of my, what I want people to recognize with your person is that
[02:18:17] they are, they're Navy seals, but at the end of the day, you're just dudes, you know, your dudes,
[02:18:23] and humans, and with heart and conscience and dads and husbands and brothers and sons and, um,
[02:18:37] not unbreakable.
[02:18:43] So, I'm a book written by a guy named David Hackworth who is a Vietnam Korean War veteran and one of
[02:18:50] the things that he talks about is the fact that like people are different, right? And as you mentioned,
[02:18:55] people are different and something's in fact different people different ways and he described like
[02:19:00] there's a cop that people have and, and when it gets filled up with like the stress and the trauma,
[02:19:08] once it overflows like that's it. If you, if it overflows, that's it, like you, that's it. And
[02:19:15] different people have different sized cops and some people got a freaking five gallon jug and some
[02:19:20] people got a tea cup and everything in between and I compare that to another war veteran, Dick Winners,
[02:19:29] who is the character of Bandar Brothers, he was saying that, but he's got a book about about war as well
[02:19:37] and his big thing was like, when that cop, they use a different metaphor, but
[02:19:42] when the cop starts to get filled up, you need to get the person out of a situation and if you
[02:19:49] get him out of the situation, the cop like the the water will dissipate and it'll go back down
[02:19:56] and they can continue, they can go back, they can continue to perform their job. But same thing,
[02:20:01] if you let the cop overflow, then it's, it's, it's, can't you can't put the water back in there.
[02:20:08] You know, I always talk, when I talk to people about this kind of stuff, I talk about the
[02:20:13] check engine light in a car, right? If the check engine light comes on, you take it in for a service.
[02:20:19] You stop driving it and as long as you take it in for a service and it gets some downtime
[02:20:24] and the engine cools and you put in fresh oil, whatever the engine is going to be okay.
[02:20:29] But if the check engine light comes on and you just keep running that engine,
[02:20:32] you're going to burn that engine out and you'll destroy the engine. And you know, I think that
[02:20:40] all these things come into play and that's what makes this so difficult is everyone's just got
[02:20:45] a different size cup and everyone's got a different time that they're check engine light comes on
[02:20:50] and how much it's going to take to get that thing cooled back down and it makes it, it makes it so
[02:20:55] challenging to universally say, okay, well here's the limitation that people have. So I think what
[02:21:02] you're doing, talking about how to identify that check engine light so people can see it.
[02:21:10] And then also trying to help people to recognize that you've got to kind of, you've got to do
[02:21:18] your best to see your own check engine light and when that freaking thing comes on,
[02:21:22] you've got to do something about it. And if you don't do something about it,
[02:21:25] you're going to blow out the engine and then you're no good.
[02:21:27] Yeah, and as we've said a couple times that the guys don't want to worry the spouse or I say
[02:21:37] spouse or first responder like who's who is your go-to person, right? They don't want to worry the
[02:21:43] spouse, but if I were to ask someone that was struggling right now, maybe they're sitting there
[02:21:51] and they're they thought about taking their life and they say, I don't want to bother my spouse. I don't
[02:21:56] I would it would be better for her if I wasn't here and I can't speak to the relationships that
[02:22:02] people have, but sitting on this side of it, sorry, I didn't like total cry or today.
[02:22:11] He didn't even give me the chance to help. That hurts. So it's on one hand you can say,
[02:22:22] well he didn't want to burden you, you know, he just he didn't want to cause you any worry,
[02:22:29] but I mean look at where I am now. Did he not think that this wouldn't like devastate me forever?
[02:22:36] He didn't even give me the opportunity to like try to help.
[02:22:41] You know, Jacob, the hard part comes in when you've got guys who you're your bread not to talk about this
[02:22:51] stuff. It is constantly bread and the interesting part for me in this journey of learning
[02:22:59] Chad's story and my wife Emily and I get into to know Sarah and her family really well and
[02:23:04] going really into this issue is there's actually something that happens to your brain, right? This
[02:23:11] is not something where it's not like, oh, you know, I've just got this inexplicable weakness going on
[02:23:21] because that's what it is in the teams, right? It's like, oh that dude's weak if he goes and does this.
[02:23:27] And you know, but if you blow your back out or if you, you know, you get shot or if you do,
[02:23:34] you know, things that are acceptable injuries, you know, by team room standards of sorts, right?
[02:23:43] And the thing that's like, my best friend and basic training killed himself and I didn't unpack
[02:23:49] that at all, right? I mean his dad was a general and that was something that in my training,
[02:23:56] it's just, you know, I couldn't sit and think about this at all. It's like days of thunder, right?
[02:24:03] When, you know, coal gets, Tom Cruise gets injured, right? I mean the injured driver goes way over there
[02:24:10] and nobody ever wants to be around them. And for me personally, I had to just kind of take that and say,
[02:24:16] all right, I have a job to do and he was weak. Good friend of mine and he just, that's that could happen
[02:24:23] to him and there's something, what I told myself was there's something that he was born with
[02:24:29] that made him do that and this just kind of brought it to life. And when you hear Chad's story,
[02:24:35] if you think that you didn't hear the story, because, you know, that's the word of caution to the
[02:24:41] guys and our profession and to millions of Americans out there, right? The, this idea that
[02:24:49] you're born with this or you're not, I mean situation brought this, brought this out, right?
[02:24:55] It's chronic stress, chronic pain going on from injuries and just the way that you train,
[02:25:02] the way that, I mean it takes its toll and then that leads to all sorts of things and, you know,
[02:25:08] the brain is something that we don't really study that well. We don't study it much at all and,
[02:25:13] you know, it's one of those things where we're able to, you know, cure this virus almost a year
[02:25:19] later with a huge national surge because we give a shit in the matters and this is something
[02:25:25] that is just kind of still floating around over here. I mean, what's it going to take? We're losing
[02:25:31] our, some of our most valuable people in our country, right, to, to something that we just don't
[02:25:38] understand. But what I know, my mental shift is to say there wasn't one that of weakness in Chad
[02:25:43] Wilkinson. There was something that is inexplicable that we just have not explained yet that,
[02:25:49] that changed inside of him and some decision-making process, you know, it just, it changed
[02:25:57] and we have a long ways to go. Yeah, there's a famous football player from San Diego,
[02:26:02] a guy named Junior Sayow, have you heard of him? Oh yeah, like the most beloved, probably San Diego
[02:26:09] charger, maybe even the most beloved San Diego athlete, total stud, you know, a beast of a human,
[02:26:18] like a super nice guy. He was just, just this incredible human being. He returned from the
[02:26:23] NFL and killed himself. Like he had everything and, you know, that, that, that made me think of this,
[02:26:32] you know, Sarah, when you're like talking about Chad and when I've talked to people that,
[02:26:40] like our art depressed, straight up depressed, their heads in, in like this, their heads in a
[02:26:49] storm, their heads in like darkness and, and it's really like from the outside,
[02:26:55] you look at him and you think, oh yeah, well, hey, man, it's, you know, you're in this bad situation,
[02:26:59] but it's only, it's only just right around you and if you come over here a little bit,
[02:27:03] you'll be out of the storm, like, come on over, but from their perspective, no matter where they look,
[02:27:10] it's like darkness and they just see the storm and they don't see that if they can move forward
[02:27:16] more, they can go a little bit further and they don't see that everybody's on the outside going,
[02:27:21] hey, like, it's okay, man, it's super sunny and bright and like there's a rainbow over here and
[02:27:26] everything's cool, just, just, just move over here a little bit and they can't, they, they don't see it,
[02:27:33] they don't see it, they can't see it, they can't see it because it's there, that's what they're,
[02:27:36] that's what's around them and so like, it just causes them to do things that don't make any sense to
[02:27:42] us because we're looking at him from the outside going, hey, like, no, it's sunny, it's sunny,
[02:27:47] and they can't see it and it's like trying to convince people, it's almost impossible, it seems
[02:27:55] almost impossible to try and convince someone that that storm that they see 360 degrees around them,
[02:28:03] thunder, lightning, winds, that's what they see and to convince them that hey, man, right over here,
[02:28:11] it's sunny and it's nice beach day and it's 80 degrees and we're gonna, it's okay,
[02:28:18] they, they can't see it and it's so hard to get them out of that cloud and
[02:28:25] I think that's where people get stuck and it's so frustrating from the outside because
[02:28:34] we can see all that other good stuff that they just don't have the ability to see anymore.
[02:28:38] So I think it's like a combination, you know, you got like I said, Junior say, I'll
[02:28:43] what better life could that guy have set up for himself? You know, he's got
[02:28:48] everything that a person could want and yet he's in this cloud and it consumes him.
[02:28:55] I mean, so to Chad, right? I mean, I exact great family, great life, he had respect, hit honor,
[02:29:02] you know, everything, it doesn't get better than that, right? I mean, that's the
[02:29:07] currency when you're in that line of line of work. You just want, you want to be respected and
[02:29:13] you want them to think, oh, he's doing a good job and you know, you look at, you look at where
[02:29:20] he went and what he did, he had that and when you can't see it, there's just something else going on.
[02:29:28] Absolutely. And so when you kind of look at that, I mean, you know, it's like, what's the
[02:29:34] responsibility moving forward, right? I mean, there's some command responsibility. I'm not
[02:29:38] sitting here pointing fingers backwards. I'm sitting saying like, you know, part of what we want to do
[02:29:43] is educate the next, the next crop and I know you're huge on this as well and I mean,
[02:29:50] the hardest thing to do sometimes is it takes someone out of the game. So like, you know,
[02:29:55] we started this in football, you've got the concussion, measurements and if you get a concussion,
[02:30:00] you've got to come out and you know, if it's your star player, he's still got to come out.
[02:30:04] And you start to look at like, how are we doing this in the military, you know? We kind of say
[02:30:11] the military's not a social experiment because it's not. But the truth of the matter is is that
[02:30:17] when you get into these, especially units like DevGrew and Delta and SF, right? I mean,
[02:30:23] your job is to go win wars. I mean, this is not, that requires, I mean, the American Alpha male
[02:30:30] is very special kind of thing in the history of history and it requires a special type of training,
[02:30:38] it requires all sorts of things that make it very difficult to stop them from wanting to keep
[02:30:47] going after that. You just, you, it's like we're breeding it into them. So like you take American
[02:30:51] Alpha males and you make them more alpha. I mean, it's, it's quite impressive and you create these
[02:30:57] units. I mean, they're story units. I mean, DevGrew, SEAL Team 6, I mean, the SEALs, these are, these are,
[02:31:05] you know, it's very impressive. And so how do we, how do we protect the guys though?
[02:31:13] And I say this from a two-way street, you know, it's one thing is here and say, oh, you know,
[02:31:18] we got to know that if we're not sleeping well that there's something wrong and that's going to be a problem.
[02:31:22] Like, okay, I'm like, I'm like, I'm on a team on my get. Got it, right? Take another pill. Right?
[02:31:27] Work out a little harder. Maybe I'll sleep better. Yeah, good. You know? And it's like,
[02:31:32] that's not going to work. Right? It's not going to work. It's at some point we have to, we have to
[02:31:38] put more of a systematic approach in here to mental health. We've done that in SF, right? I mean,
[02:31:45] they're starting to treat green berets like professional athletes, which is great. You know,
[02:31:49] you've got a locker room, you've got, you know, the physical trainers, you get physicals, you get
[02:31:53] checked up, you get all these things. And you know, if we don't, then it's too much of the loss is in vain.
[02:32:01] Yeah, no, and they definitely are moving in that direction in the teams and the
[02:32:06] seal teams, like the baseline studies that they're doing. They are absolutely moving that direction.
[02:32:12] I mean, they have whole organizations within the organization that are focused on that. And yeah,
[02:32:20] I mean, their lessons have definitely been learned. That's great. I mean, Chad killed himself
[02:32:26] three years ago. Yeah. Like they were not moving. We're not moving fast enough. Here. I mean,
[02:32:30] the VA, you know what the budget is for veterans who saw I prevention, it's 10.2 billion.
[02:32:34] Wow. That's a big number. That is a big number. Right? And, you know, the VA gets just
[02:32:42] shit on all over the place, right? The VA is actually trying. I mean, if you look at budget,
[02:32:48] they're some trying, they're they're trying experimental stuff, anti-depressant nasal spray, right?
[02:32:55] Virtual reality-based suicide prevention training. I mean, these kinds of things, they are,
[02:33:00] there are things that we are trying. We as it a nation. And it's, at some point, you know,
[02:33:11] the guys that are close to the guys and, and gals, I don't want to exclude the female service
[02:33:19] members either because it affects them as well. I mean, you're actually statistically more likely
[02:33:24] to commit suicide if you did not deploy than if you did.
[02:33:27] Explain that again. So, if you did not, I mean, it's saying, you know, just because you were
[02:33:37] on seal team six or just because you saw intense combat, right? That's not a predictor of suicide.
[02:33:44] So, it might be a predictor of, you know, TBI and those kinds of things because, you know,
[02:33:50] if all you do is explosive breach charges next to doors all day long, I mean, you know, commanders
[02:33:55] have to figure out a way to limit that stuff. Like you can only do this so many times. I got it.
[02:34:01] You don't want the first one to be on, you know, the, the house down range. You have to work with
[02:34:06] live explosives. But, but at the same time, you can't, you can't just go through the same
[02:34:12] repetitions a million times. And, you know what I mean? The other part is you have your, your team
[02:34:18] time and you roll off a team and there's always guys behind you. And, and this is credit to America
[02:34:25] first off and credit to just who we are, we sign up when we say send me. And, and there's a lot of
[02:34:31] us that that answer that when you're on that, when you're living that life and you're on these
[02:34:37] deployments doing this cool stuff, you don't want to miss any of it. You're like, this is my slot.
[02:34:43] Nobody's coming in behind me and, you know, Sarah, you told me this. You're like, you know,
[02:34:47] in the truth of the matter, there's, there's a lot more seals right behind you. And so,
[02:34:52] commanders have this at their, at their discretion. They have this, this ability to kind of
[02:34:57] how do we, we can take a look back now, right? Remove all the politics about, you know, the
[02:35:02] wars are ending. Well, the wars aren't going to end for the tier one units ever, right? But, at
[02:35:07] the same time, we have an operational, we're not cool. There's less going on. There's less work.
[02:35:14] And we have this ability to kind of reset a little bit the way that we're, the way that we're approaching
[02:35:19] this. Yeah. Yeah. Well, this kind of conversation right here is a thing that can hopefully
[02:35:26] move this in the right direction. And I know that's the main reason that you're sitting here today
[02:35:32] is to try and move this in the right direction. And, and you're actually, when let's talk about
[02:35:39] how you're doing that, let's talk about, you know, the actual charities and stuff that you guys
[02:35:44] are doing to try and ways or what raise awareness. Yeah. So, the one thing Jason and I are
[02:35:50] partnered on is the workout and honor of my husband. We refer to it as Chad 1,000 X. Again,
[02:35:57] I spoke about this at his funeral. As he prepped it, he climbed that mountain. He did it by doing
[02:36:03] step-ups on a box and he did it on a 20-inch box with a 45-pound pack working up to a thousand
[02:36:10] over a period of time. And then once he got there, then he would just like pump out a thousand every
[02:36:15] couple days. Chad was super disciplined. He was incredibly focused and every goal that he had. And
[02:36:23] that's definitely something that I'm trying to have live within me. This workout I talked about
[02:36:31] it as funeral and so more or less organically kind of just became a thing. Right? Dave was there.
[02:36:38] CrossFit friends were there. Dave Castro was there. Yeah. And they just did it on their own
[02:36:44] just because they thought, oh, challenge, right? That's cool. A thousand step-ups, 45, you know, man stuff.
[02:36:49] Let's do it. And then fast forward. I'll stop you there. I won't speak for Dave, but I will say,
[02:36:58] Dave knew Chad. They served, they served together. And he doesn't know how to process that.
[02:37:04] You know? I mean, he doesn't know how to process the loss of a friend,
[02:37:07] especially to suicide. And so, you know, he's trying to do, it is amazing how many people want to
[02:37:13] help. How many people this is affected? I mean, Chad's life ripple effects huge, but everybody has this,
[02:37:22] there's some, this, this epidemic has touched so many people and nobody knows how to deal with it.
[02:37:29] Nobody knows how. I mean, my supposed to do 22 pushups and from my, you know, phone and and publish it on
[02:37:34] social media. I mean, is that helping? 22 is not the number. Right. That's not even an accurate number.
[02:37:41] It's 17 now, which is, which is better. You know, it's just so many people want to want to help.
[02:37:48] So I think, you know, Dave, for his part, I mean, I know he, he wanted to honor Chad and, you know,
[02:37:56] I think he wanted other people to honor Chad as well. And that's, yeah. So, so we established Chad
[02:38:05] 1,000 X into an annual fundraiser. And there, there are many spouses like myself, Goldstar
[02:38:14] spouses, and they've gone on and there's golf tournaments and there's five keys and there's the
[02:38:18] like and they raise money for different organizations. This workout specifically, we want
[02:38:24] around veterans day because while it's Chad's face and I have kind of stepped into the role of
[02:38:33] sharing his story for me, it has less to do with with Chad Wilkinson and more to do about the
[02:38:41] struggle that our veterans currently have. And so why not really focus this around veterans day
[02:38:48] when that's what we're doing, honoring those serving and create a platform for them to talk to
[02:38:53] one another. We did this last year and it was kind of a late rollout and we're like, let's just
[02:39:00] like do this and see what happens and very we really had no expectation and I can't even express how
[02:39:08] humbled we were by the response and I mean it, it went global and went around the world. People
[02:39:15] people did this workout. I think the beauty of it is anybody can do this workout because a step
[02:39:25] up is not technical, we're not snatching, there's no muscle ups that you know anybody can do a step
[02:39:31] up and then obviously we scale it and you know you have this huge fitness background, you're
[02:39:38] well aware not everyone has to do the 20 inch box not everybody has to do that weight but being able
[02:39:44] to go do a workout and honor of someone in our military that that generally brings people together
[02:39:54] anyway because they want to kind of pay their humble respects but the potential that it could bring
[02:40:02] for people to have a conversation whether it's you're doing the step ups and maybe you start to
[02:40:08] realize in that hour time frame where your brain does go what do you think about you know
[02:40:14] your struggle the person you're doing it for the friend you lost do you do it with a friend
[02:40:20] and you guys can talk to each other well I think Jason and I have confirmed that once you get
[02:40:25] to probably about 500 you don't really talk anymore but the idea of doing it with a friend
[02:40:32] the symbolism there is to me everybody needs somebody. Have you put together technical
[02:40:40] question here have you put together like a ramp up program for people to do you know two months out
[02:40:47] do a hundred and then whatever break it down like you know those marathon programming things
[02:40:53] where yeah there's working the program yeah yeah and so you know part of the the bigger
[02:41:00] message here is you know I've never met the guy that I served with ever who said man I'm really looking
[02:41:08] forward to going to that shrinks office with the waterfall in the background and it's really quiet
[02:41:12] and let's go talk about feelings but I've never met that I've never met that person right especially
[02:41:17] from our community well have you heard a night go Chad went okay do you want to know how I feel about
[02:41:25] it sure I mean I've I've talked to a lot of guys I went to it that thought it was awesome
[02:41:32] and I don't know when Chad went December 2016 and we went to years he was dead if I found seven
[02:41:38] TBIs on his brain and they laughed what do you mean that wasn't very many one of the guys we were
[02:41:44] with have 42 he made a joke he said yeah I got to walk around with Vupal helmet because I can't
[02:41:49] risk falling over the guy you know I mean they can joke among each other but it's just like
[02:41:53] seven TBIs so that wasn't very many but you know what you can't find on all those screens
[02:41:59] CTE or interface astroglovescarring so you know I am of I am an advocate of whatever you find
[02:42:10] works if that works for you do it 100% I believe it feel it live it but I am not convinced by any
[02:42:24] military centered organization that they're really doing any sort of good yet and I don't know if
[02:42:34] they just want to talk about it and not be about it but less than two years later Chad was dead
[02:42:42] and you know you do all the things I mean there there is a lot of assessment that happens at that
[02:42:46] place and could be potentially good it told me almost all the things I already knew about him as a spouse
[02:42:57] I are you know they did personality tests and different stress tests and I mean yes I don't know
[02:43:04] the scientific sleep lab study but I could tell you his sleep is shit they did a test where they are
[02:43:12] trying to realize are you the guy that's gonna I'm trying to figure the best way they said this
[02:43:17] basically are you the guy that's gonna see a problem and respond right away like rapid fire like
[02:43:22] bull in a china shop are you the guy that's gonna like take a minute assess it and you're not going
[02:43:27] to be very fast but it's gonna be methodical and it's gonna be perfect well that's Chad if you would have
[02:43:31] ever watched him pack a car for a family trip that's Chad so all the things that they did there you know
[02:43:38] I don't feel like it gave me any more insight than I already had and I'm not so sure that's the
[02:43:46] case for Chad I mean and they do art therapy and they do dog therapy and they do music therapy
[02:43:53] and I mean even them making him walk a dog he finally said to him hey man I'll do whatever you want
[02:43:59] me to do but I'm not walking this damn dog he's probably one of the few team guys that like he
[02:44:03] didn't like dogs so yeah if it works for people and they got something out of it great but the
[02:44:11] way I see it is it's a way for the guys to go fat in their medical records so they can punch the
[02:44:15] ticket on where their medical disability lies which to be totally frank as a spouse every single
[02:44:21] one of those dudes should be a hundred percent disabled yeah no I I never went to it it wasn't I don't
[02:44:28] think it was it was in existence maybe but I never went to it but I do know a lot of guys that went
[02:44:33] to it that got a lot out of it and part of what they got out of it yeah they're looking at
[02:44:37] their medical record but you know they're I mean just the the decompression aspect of it
[02:44:42] meaning for 30 days like you're just gonna eat nice food and like not do anything not
[02:44:49] blown anything up or whatever there was and and guys felt I definitely know some guys that got
[02:44:54] a lot out of going to it clearly there's some shortfalls especially if they find issues and
[02:45:02] they're like oh yeah this is no factor that seems kind of crazy but yeah you mentioned that
[02:45:06] CTE thing because they can't they can't CTE follow your alive right it's post mortum so
[02:45:12] same thing interface out of school of scarring right now there is no test for it so to some degree
[02:45:19] those guys out there that has served multiple deployments and know you have some TBI's
[02:45:24] you might want to almost assume that that could be in there what what I think could be a great
[02:45:33] way and an extension of service for some of our military as this cakeo form we fill out
[02:45:38] before the guys deploy and for listeners it's it's it's it's it's it's a form we fill out
[02:45:48] that basically says what's gonna happen should your husband get killed or or wife your spouse
[02:45:53] gets killed and everything from who's gonna show a pet your door are they gonna weather
[02:45:57] uniform is it military honors are they buried are they cremated who's gonna take your kids all
[02:46:02] all those you know pretty important questions it's kind of sad that when you fill it out so many
[02:46:09] times it's commonplace I remember the first time I filled it out we mold over these questions
[02:46:14] for so long and and by the end of the deployments I mean I'm like making dinner and I'm like oh yeah
[02:46:19] that's fine yep that's fine wait change that because she moved and she's not gonna be able to get
[02:46:23] here in time so make it this person I mean that's how it is but and there's there is some there is
[02:46:31] gonna be some limitations and I don't know what they are but we were able to donate Chad's brain
[02:46:35] because he he was state side and you have to do it probably within 48 to 72 hours I'm not quite
[02:46:42] sure with the time frame is and his brain was studied and that's how we were able to determine
[02:46:47] that he did have that and I don't know if it would be applicable if you're overseas because of
[02:46:53] travel time etc but if you were to add that on the cakeo form that if you were killed you would
[02:46:59] like your brain donated this is in no way to encourage anybody to take their life by any means
[02:47:08] but either way if you're a team guy and and you get in a car accident and you die fill in the
[02:47:15] blank if you could also put on there or at least have a conversation with your person that you
[02:47:21] also want your brain donated that would be a great extension of service I think that's a straightforward
[02:47:31] ask I mean yeah the straightforward ask brain study is kind of a big it's a big topic in
[02:47:37] those circles right now there there's so many elements that go into this but you know there's
[02:47:42] the two places where the brain's really being studied right now are China and Japan and Europe
[02:47:49] you know they're just protests on chimpanzees excuse me and so you know because they're the closest
[02:47:54] to the the best way to study the brain is while it's working you know you can't make sense right
[02:48:01] and so you know we have issues doing that here with chimpanzees you know they're they're
[02:48:08] chasing off the European equivalent of pedas chasing off you know scientists from Europe they're
[02:48:15] they're just setting up shop in China and so like yeah we're gonna we're gonna graph this brain you know
[02:48:20] and so there's a lot of there's a lot of challenges that we will we will face what what we do
[02:48:28] know is that mass veteran suicide is not a thing guys don't all get together and kill themselves at
[02:48:35] the same time what we need we need to create communities with with bonds of people that were
[02:48:42] able to take some of the lessons that that Sarah's bravely sharing with us and and so many behind
[02:48:49] or behind and around her are sharing about their journey what they've seen we need to strengthen
[02:48:54] the community so that we're able to kind of watch after each other because the military has a
[02:48:59] stronger social fabric than pretty much anywhere and in sort of normal you know middle America or
[02:49:08] anywhere America right and still you're your 1.5 there's a lot of different statistics but you're
[02:49:13] 1.5 times more likely to take your life if you're in the military than if you're not and it's just you
[02:49:20] know how is this happening like how is this okay well it's not okay and so what we're trying to
[02:49:26] do and what we are doing is bringing people together in the real world not in a shrinks office
[02:49:31] with the waterfall you know that you don't want to be there and it's like hey you know physical health
[02:49:36] mental health somehow those are definitely we don't have to study chimpanzees to know that those
[02:49:41] are definitely tied together and obviously Chad did not suffer from physical you know like he could
[02:49:48] do a thousand step ups just fine and climb mountains and stuff but you know all these things you know
[02:49:52] you're not sleeping well great work out you know you talk about this all the time jocco right you know
[02:49:59] and and so bring people together yes think about this and so it was really telling when we did
[02:50:04] this in Virginia Beach and and guys it chatted served with showed up you know quietly kind of
[02:50:09] did the work you know they showed up in the big f9 50s you know it's like just awesome this is
[02:50:17] America god bless us right and you know they showed up and if this was a group counseling session
[02:50:24] to talk about you know the mandatory briefs away nobody's showing up for that stuff but you show
[02:50:29] up and you do the work in honor of you know to honor Chad's life and to think about veteran
[02:50:35] suicide prevention to think about this unbreakable guy right I mean go ask anybody in the navy
[02:50:40] that go on to be a seal do you want Chad's career they're like yes that's I want that to be me and
[02:50:47] you got guys showing up and you know there there's some community around it you know everyone's
[02:50:53] then bend in seris ear that's you know because it's issue is so close to so close to so many people
[02:51:00] in the community and but you're just strengthening bonds right you bring people together in the
[02:51:06] real world this is very counter culture and we're very cool with that you know and a world where
[02:51:10] kids are grown up text messaging each other to instead of talking instead of sitting in the
[02:51:15] captain's gap like like we are right now right and we need this where social animals and we need to
[02:51:22] be a part of something bigger than ourselves and so that's that's what we're about and physical health
[02:51:29] and mental health and raising awareness and it's it can't just be you know trying to beat it into
[02:51:36] people right like oh I'm a hammer I see a nail let me just tell let me tell you about veteran
[02:51:40] suicide prevention people just tune that out but when you've got a story as got a story like
[02:51:47] chas and you got some like Sarah that's that's able and willing to tell it I mean this is hard
[02:51:52] she's got to she's got to saddle up every time every time for this and she's doing it because she
[02:51:57] wants to change the number and she wants other people to not go through what she's had to go through
[02:52:03] and there's there's a lot of bravery that goes into that and you know and so that's I'm I'm proud
[02:52:10] that we get to I mean I work for her in this go rock works for her and you know we don't do anything
[02:52:16] that that she's not on board with in terms of Chad's story or just the way that we're running the
[02:52:22] event around and you know we just have this is just a unique opportunity in the kind of veteran
[02:52:29] suicide prevention space that that nobody wants to be too close to but unfortunately you know some
[02:52:36] of us are and and so it's a real honor this is this is the thing I'm most proud of that have been
[02:52:42] a part of because it is it's it's it's it's changing lives helping people and bringing them together
[02:52:51] and raising awareness for something that is is really important to me because I know I know you've
[02:52:56] lost people in your circle I'm sure people in my circle there's you know you have to
[02:53:01] Sarah sit right there I mean this is this is her life and so it just this is this matters this
[02:53:08] matters hugely to us well I'm on board like what do people need to do when they're on board what
[02:53:15] are we doing what's what's our deal well we we want people to take to the workout and that
[02:53:23] might look different for a lot of people you can go to your local gyms jump on it do it in your
[02:53:28] garage find a buddy we're hosting larger scale what we call live events this year and we're doing
[02:53:34] those in some we'll call like flagship cities one of them's here in San Diego so we're hoping maybe
[02:53:40] you might come and show up right home no number six San Diego it'll be across fit humanity so
[02:53:47] not too far from here I passed it actually on the way we're doing it November 3rd well let me
[02:53:52] back up November 5th we're gonna be doing it in four piers florida at the UDTC old museum so
[02:53:58] it's their stumpmaster we can I'll be speaking and doing some other things down there so
[02:54:02] places outstanding if you get a chance go to four piers florida and visit the UDTC old museum it's awesome
[02:54:08] it is it is it is really really cool um so that's November 5th November 6th we're in San Diego
[02:54:15] November 11th is gonna be New York City November 13th is gonna be Virginia Beach my hometown and
[02:54:23] jacks jacks is actually November 6th now oh is it we've moved a little bit earlier yes we're hosting so
[02:54:29] you know call it a big giant monster start start getting your your train on you got a thousand
[02:54:34] box steps with a forty five pound rock bro that's a get some evolution that's a get some evolution for
[02:54:43] sure you know he used to do that I don't know if you know this but he used to do it in the garage
[02:54:48] I've video of this him doing step ups and he would do it and you know the garage and just shorts
[02:54:53] and his backpack he cut all the tags out of his gear right ounces equal pound Sarah ounces equal
[02:54:59] pound so he knew he was carrying but he used a projector and he projected a concoge on the back
[02:55:04] of our garage door so when I talk about focus that's how focused he was and that's that's how
[02:55:12] focused I am with this so and then and then what what we're raising money is that what we're doing
[02:55:17] we are raising money okay so um this this came about through a partnership that go rock at
[02:55:22] had with the Navy seal foundation also you know one of your brothers Chris Irwin who was Sarah was
[02:55:27] his level one cross fit instructor in Virginia Beach way back when I mean you know everyone is so
[02:55:32] close to to everyone and he had he had called me and said hey you know because did you
[02:55:39] look teach you any of these ones out here on the west coast I taught some in Delmar
[02:55:44] yeah I think I probably went to two or three of those over the years in that time frame too yeah
[02:55:50] yeah yeah I'm really surprised yeah I was like I was the massive deadlift now
[02:55:55] yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah
[02:55:58] no you would not remember me from my physical attributes at a cross fits ever not yeah so we're
[02:56:03] raising money so we're raising money and you know this this came about through that partnership and
[02:56:09] and you know Chris had called me up and he was like you know nobody knows how to deal with this
[02:56:14] man everyone wants to deal with it and nobody knows how to deal with it and you know so you get
[02:56:22] guys that are in positions that you're at the seal foundation and go rock whatever right it's like
[02:56:26] we we want to deal with this we still didn't know how to deal with it and it's like well I think I got
[02:56:31] I think this Chad workout is the way that we can deal with this he goes but I got to call Sarah
[02:56:37] because obviously you know you don't do anything without the family and the family's not on board
[02:56:41] especially the this spouse I mean spouse is the that that's the that's the that's the deal and you know
[02:56:47] she had to think about it you know said no and then thought about it we ended up chatting with me and
[02:56:52] Emily and and Chris and Sarah and a call amount you know it's Florida we have you know it's hot
[02:56:59] about side my kids are inside pure chaos we're chatting on zoom or whatever it was in the middle
[02:57:03] of the pandemic and she's finally like okay let's do this and I'm like I kind of said okay well you
[02:57:08] know if you change your mind she's like no I've made up my mind we're doing this right and so to
[02:57:13] to throw her another like cross if there's a lot of hard workouts in CrossFit right a lot of you can
[02:57:19] look at you know you can do them harder you can scale them to whatever the the hardest the hardest
[02:57:26] workout in the history of CrossFit that's ever been done was how she did Chad the first time
[02:57:33] she went into into their garage and she put on Chad's Rucksack by herself and did Chad
[02:57:38] so think about that when you're feeling sorry for yourself out there you know because it's a hard
[02:57:44] workout and it is right and and that's what it's supposed to be everyone's selling easy that that's
[02:57:50] you don't think about anything when when life's easy except the next easy thing you're going to get right
[02:57:55] you're you're meant to dig deep you're meant to think about this and and that's that's the goal and so
[02:58:01] raising money half of it's going to the seal foundation Sarah has a nonprofit called the step up project and
[02:58:09] and that's you know it's it's veteran mental health stuff it's all going to support that
[02:58:15] yeah well that's outstanding and you know I have to throw this out there because like earlier you
[02:58:22] we were talking in the middle of whatever some high emotion moments and you said something about the
[02:58:27] the the families right and I just I I thought about it but then you know we kept talking but
[02:58:34] just the fact that the military families out there and what they put up with and what they go through
[02:58:40] and usually I mean in my mind I have to worry more than the people that are than the military themselves
[02:58:47] so on on top of all this just you know the families that are out there that the the
[02:58:53] the spouses you know come on down too because like it just get to know other people that are
[02:59:03] living that life you know I know that might might my wife you know she wasn't around we didn't have
[02:59:09] any family around like we didn't have any family we lived in California we lived in Virginia Beach I was
[02:59:13] gone almost the entire time she didn't know anyone she ended up doing what you did which is going to
[02:59:18] live with my parents for a while but yeah just families right military families too come and get it
[02:59:24] that's what I'm thinking family friendly kid friendly we don't discriminate come on down all of them
[02:59:30] it was it was so awesome in Virginia Beach it was such a great vibe you know we were there at the
[02:59:35] crack a dawn right set and box is up and then you know it's like all of a sudden people start
[02:59:41] to show up in waves because you need a box right so there's waves of people getting on the box
[02:59:46] and people I mean we were there my flight was late that that afternoon and you guys are still you know
[02:59:52] there was still a big crew there just like social it was social and so it's not a depressing
[02:59:58] you know it's not it's not like you just people can't live inside that space forever right
[03:00:03] you have you you have your your difficult moments and you think about it and it's in it's hard
[03:00:08] but you know anybody anybody that that served the way that Chad served like the guys I served with
[03:00:15] you don't want people to walk around depressed after you're gone you want them you you don't want that
[03:00:22] I also think like a lot of I just think the more we do talk about it the the easier it is for someone
[03:00:29] else to say me too and so it's hard to come out and talk about this all the time and I've had
[03:00:38] this week has been a very busy week for me so I'm pretty it's been hard but I have to believe that
[03:00:45] the more I talk about it and share Chad's story or share the story of of other friends that have
[03:00:52] passed took their lives that other people will start to speak up at this virginian beach event I had
[03:00:58] three people separately pull me aside and confide in me struggles that they had I've had people
[03:01:05] reach out to me through social media like long messages I don't care I don't care how long it is I don't
[03:01:10] care how short it is and I respond back and I I think that it's slow and I think it's a trickle
[03:01:18] but the potential for this workout done around veterans day so we can talk about people's stories
[03:01:26] so that it might encourage someone else to say me too maybe all if all they need to hear is that
[03:01:32] they're not alone and that someone else feels that too maybe that's what someone needs and that's great
[03:01:37] yeah that's uh when you know what's happening it makes me so much easier and I talk about this
[03:01:47] like you get a new guy like Jason you get a new guy that looks really nervous before their first
[03:01:51] operation and if you go hey bro here's what's going on your nervous it's cool you're a little
[03:01:56] crazy your stomach's a little messed up yeah because they're they're scared they're nervous and if
[03:02:00] you go yeah that's normal it's just no big deal you're gonna feel that that way a little bit before
[03:02:04] you go on an ops uh no big deal don't worry about it that's your body preparing to go into combat it's
[03:02:08] all good and you can see like relief on their face that's mentorship right there yeah yeah we need more
[03:02:13] of that yeah and this to me this this whole thing is like if you can tell someone oh yeah you you've
[03:02:21] breached 47 doors in your last three week trip which is not an extraordinary and I'm like that
[03:02:27] that's you know oh you you've got crashed in the room however many times you shot a coral goost off
[03:02:34] 29 times you or you were the rate the RSO so you had you know two troops go through and shoot
[03:02:41] one per man and you rate you RSO all the fun that's whatever you know 80 freaking blast next to your
[03:02:49] head that you sat through and there's some things that are going on inside your brain here's what's
[03:02:54] going on here's what you need to watch out for here's how you can get ahead of it that kind of
[03:03:00] conversation about this stuff is the same thing that it impacts that young new guy that goes okay
[03:03:06] got it now I can grab it now I can get a hold of it and I can move forward it's awesome
[03:03:15] Chad 1000x dot com that's where we can go to find out about this stuff go rock your at go rock
[03:03:23] cross the board cross the board Jason if you want to talk to Jason at go rock and just go rock
[03:03:28] if I live in Idaho can I do go go rock yes what if I live in Nebraska so look here's the thing
[03:03:37] we have we have 500 official go rock clubs around the the country and and part of it is
[03:03:44] we we're activating all of them for this we really believe in this world of people getting together
[03:03:50] in the real world and this is not about you don't have to be of a veteran to do this you don't
[03:03:55] have to be anything except willing to show up right and you get so much out of that and got through
[03:04:00] a freaking thousand stuff up it just that fly out yeah it's an hour you know it's an hour yeah
[03:04:06] okay slow and steady slow and steady wins the race yeah I mean yeah and you want to train up
[03:04:13] yeah well that's maybe we need to release some kind of a preparatory workout so I want to
[03:04:18] wrap though people coming up you're worried about people coming at you after for for a
[03:04:25] wrappedo now come on I've imposed a wrappedo on a few people and it it doesn't feel good I feel
[03:04:31] comfortable you know I always feel like I don't do it anymore I kind of figured it out like it's just
[03:04:38] it's not I don't like doing that to people no no we it's same thing so this claimer is you need to
[03:04:44] train yourself up this is an hour it's it's step ups yeah you got it up up so the 45 found
[03:04:49] played on your back yeah scale it down if you're not right do we need to train what we need to
[03:04:53] train for yes that's what I'm saying so it's a buy-in for your your workout it's it's a cash out
[03:04:59] for your workouts whatever else you're doing just just integrate a box if you've got a cooler
[03:05:03] in your house use a cooler if there's you know like whatever the case may be you have steps
[03:05:08] yep get it uh Instagram you're on Instagram yes Sarah Wilkinson 7 number 7 yep
[03:05:20] Jason you got anything else did I miss anything I don't think so and do we miss anything
[03:05:28] oh well I guess just to bring just to make the point one more time and is that where we find the
[03:05:34] guys are very fragile I'm gonna say fragile is in their transition time so when people are
[03:05:42] separating from the military maybe they didn't hit retirement maybe they've done 10 years in
[03:05:47] their transitioning out or their at retirement and now they need to transition to civilian life that
[03:05:54] is a very for a seal I'm gonna say that's a very delicate time for them and I would encourage
[03:06:04] families peers to really be on the lookout for them during that time because as we've talked so
[03:06:12] much about the brain and PTSD there's also that loss of of tribe or at least they feel as though
[03:06:20] there is and what we see is sometimes that increases the likelihood of maybe someone not making a
[03:06:28] really good decision so I would just encourage people to just be of the best support for those people
[03:06:36] during that period of transition yeah interestingly that's when a that's when a seal platoon is
[03:06:43] most exposed when they're transitioning from the water to the land or the land to the water and there's
[03:06:50] not only a perceived loss of tribe like you're talking about but also that perceived loss of
[03:06:55] mission because what have I been doing my whole life and all of a sudden what am I gonna do now?
[03:07:01] Yeah when Chad when Chad was close to 20 years we were at the discussion of what we do you know my
[03:07:06] dad served 26 years his dad served somewhere about that I can't quite remember and you know the hard part
[03:07:15] is I I really kind of hope he would pick us I thought okay we've done 20 years like we've done 20
[03:07:22] years me Sarah Chad Kinsey Hudson we've done it boom pick us and he didn't and I again believe he
[03:07:33] had a warrior's heart and he was born to do this but I said to him well you know we talked about
[03:07:44] jobs and I just remember he looked at me and he said I don't have any skills that's what they think
[03:07:51] I mean he was dead serious and you're thinking what I mean I know that you're not gonna go work
[03:07:56] for someone and be hanging out in bushes and kicking down doors most likely but what the skills these
[03:08:03] guys do have I mean most of them are are very intelligent critical thinkers analytical
[03:08:11] problem solvers think outside of the box can make decisions quickly
[03:08:16] that is a lot of really great attributes that many organizations and civilian world would want and so
[03:08:25] again just to speak to I you know it's that loss of identity and it's like I've been shooting guns
[03:08:31] and busting down doors what what else do I do?
[03:08:38] one of my first put to chief said he there was a old Vietnam seal and he was a male man now
[03:08:45] and they would go over there and like drink beer or whatever it is house and he'd tell stories
[03:08:50] about nom nice and he had this picture on the wall and it was like a shop from behind like a picture
[03:08:59] of of a guy's back and the guy's the guy whose back you see is clearly a Vietnam seal with a floppy
[03:09:06] hat and a stoner and his web gear on and his jungle cammy top and his blue jeans and he
[03:09:11] standing in front of like a corporate desk and the corporate desk there's the boss guys looking
[03:09:17] at him in the caption underneath this I'm sorry sir we don't have any jobs for appointment here
[03:09:24] which is true but to your point and believe me I see this all the time I work with companies
[03:09:28] all over the country and all over the world actually and they absolutely need the individuals
[03:09:34] that have these kind of attributes that you're talking about and there is absolutely a new mission
[03:09:39] when you get done with the military to go out in the civilian world and have an impact make people's
[03:09:44] lives better and build great products and build great companies and and do great things and that is
[03:09:49] absolutely available and you are needed in the in the civilian world and that's the way it is
[03:09:58] we need them too all right like our country needs people with this kind of experience spread
[03:10:05] throughout our our country spread throughout our companies spread throughout our communities spread
[03:10:09] throughout our our neighborhoods and one of the things that makes San Diego such a great town is
[03:10:14] it's it's a military there's it's a military town you've got this just underpinnings of San Diego
[03:10:19] the foundation is strong it's the same where I live in Jacksonville beach I mean my my neighbor
[03:10:24] two doors down is a top gun instructor I mean these things are just normal around
[03:10:29] us and it's great they're just good people that are just you know this talk about you know the
[03:10:35] greatest generation coming back to America and just doing great stuff getting educated and working
[03:10:40] their asses off and building America into America and you know we need more of that and so we need
[03:10:47] we need the transition is it's to echo her point I mean it's just sucks I mean don't underestimate
[03:10:53] it under any circumstances it can happen to you it will happen to you it will be terrible and and
[03:10:59] just now that you know it's common brace for it a little bit take it easy on yourself build out
[03:11:04] some support structures around you you know stuff like that and we just this is going to
[03:11:10] require something that is not kind of normal this day and age it's going to require us to kind of
[03:11:17] work together you know like how to support transitioning folks better how to kind of build stronger
[03:11:25] communities in the real world how to like that's what we need we don't you don't need guys coming
[03:11:30] out and it's like hey you don't you need to do you need to be an influencer on Instagram right
[03:11:35] like no you know how about not that right and and so you know it's it's it's difficult it's difficult
[03:11:44] and and we have to keep having the conversation that that's why I respect you and then and I
[03:11:50] respect this long form podcast stuff that you do because it's it forces people you know it's not
[03:11:57] just soundbites it's like hey here's the story this is nothing's as simple as it looks on someone's
[03:12:03] feed and you know that that's kind of what real life is like and and I think that we we need more of
[03:12:09] that not less totally agree well speaking along form I've kept you in here for over three hours
[03:12:20] Jason thank you for what you're doing thanks for your service you know we covered that last time
[03:12:26] and thanks for what you're continuing to do build and go rock and forming communities out there
[03:12:31] real communities I can see this look in your eye when you when you start saying that and and I get it
[03:12:35] man and for me it's a lot through jiu jitsu but look that that's a real thing and getting people together
[03:12:42] to get together and sweat and work to positive thing man appreciate what you're doing and Sarah
[03:12:50] obviously thanks for coming on thanks for your service thanks for your sacrifice thanks for holding the
[03:12:57] line and while your husband was gone and gone again and gone again and and being there and
[03:13:05] raising the family and building a business and doing all those things the all the military families
[03:13:11] that are listening right now for what you go through and and what they risk so thanks to you
[03:13:21] thanks to your kids as well for what they've gone through and of course Chad um thanks for your service bro
[03:13:36] we won't forget amen thank you and with that Sarah Wilkinson and Jason McCarthy have
[03:13:47] left the building and echo Charles we need to go a little bit old school I think on this one for
[03:14:01] the decompression right so if you've never listened this before the original purpose of
[03:14:11] when we would get done with the podcast echo Charles and I would just kind of start talking about
[03:14:16] stuff for a little while it was to decompress from a heavy subject as we started doing podcast
[03:14:24] I started hitting some heavy subjects along the way this we would originally just kind of start talking
[03:14:29] and I would just kind of let echo talk for a little bit while I did the decompression because I'm
[03:14:35] usually the one that's all wrapped up in whatever subject is we're talking about so certainly
[03:14:42] a in need of a little decompression after that one just a just a very tough subject and and
[03:14:52] that's why we're talking about it right we're talking about it as you know Sarah said something
[03:14:59] that she doesn't want anyone else to have to go through and that's why we talk about these things
[03:15:04] so for a little decompression I'll let you talk a little bit echo Charles we we want people to
[03:15:17] take care of themselves it's true so you you like it's weird because so that there's so many
[03:15:22] mysteries to the brain so and with your body like your physical your other parts of your body
[03:15:29] it's like less of a mystery right so like yeah you go in you know you're in a combat scenario you get
[03:15:35] shot in the abdomen then it's like okay it's gonna be pretty straightforward as far as hey can we save
[03:15:41] this guy can we not you know all the stuff and like he can bleed out he there's all these things and
[03:15:45] then there's these you know you can take specific actions and then hopefully we can save them all this
[03:15:51] you get shot on the leg or something while you're running or you blow out your knee or something
[03:15:55] it's like okay it's broken he can't run anymore it's like pretty straightforward but the brain
[03:15:59] gets damaged and one way or another it's kind of like there's no telling what's gonna happen
[03:16:03] a lot of the time you know and you don't know when either it's it is the brain is the mysterious
[03:16:10] part of the anatomy right now and nerves right and I don't really know how they work it's
[03:16:15] very hard to like repair them and and then yeah as we said you take that brain and rattle around
[03:16:21] inside of a inside of your skull over and over again we don't know what it's gonna do but we know
[03:16:28] it's not good we know that yeah and then you have to make it kind of in a way we're okay remember
[03:16:34] cursed the NS yes right so she she got jammed out she got injured and she still had her leg you know
[03:16:40] she's she's doing this thing and then but she's constantly being checked in upon you know checked on
[03:16:44] and be like okay and then over time they were like hey okay we're at a point where we got to
[03:16:49] make this very specific decision and we know what could and you know all the stuff and it was
[03:16:53] pretty it was pretty clear and then you make the decision but that's an example of
[03:16:57] incurring an injury and then it's still having lasting effects last and effects last and until you
[03:17:02] got it you know either risk actually dying or risk a huge or bigger injuries or just say
[03:17:10] top it off or amputated and you know remember her talking about she knows she because she could still
[03:17:16] walk yeah yeah and she was taking her last walk on the beach in the sand yeah exactly right
[03:17:25] but a perfect example of like you can incur the injury it's still handle still you know go about
[03:17:31] your business sure you jumped up here and they're here and they're there and then but the injury
[03:17:35] is still progressing yeah it's getting you know getting worse yeah and then you got and mean
[03:17:40] well but the thing is again for your your other parts of your body it's kind of like there's kind
[03:17:43] of a protocol you can check in and be like okay for the brain so mysterious it's like we
[03:17:48] can try and we are kind of trying to do that but it's so mysterious that it's not as cut in dry
[03:17:53] like that and it's the same exact thing he incurred all these injuries at some point and that
[03:17:59] thing just keeps lasting and lasting getting worse and worse and worse you know until it gets you
[03:18:06] it's hard to like get a grip on exactly what's happening
[03:18:10] you just crazy though it's the unknown frontier of the human body probably the most unknown
[03:18:16] frontier of the human body yeah the nerves and the brain and there's so many illusions too even
[03:18:22] like with yourself where you can be like I just do this in this situation or that situation or I
[03:18:28] would never choose to do that but you get in a certain like situation you do some stuff that's
[03:18:32] real unexplainable or only explainable later even though you thought from before hand you see
[03:18:38] you were you were so convinced of something and then afterwards you're like oh she also
[03:18:43] surprised on what you did you know kind of thing so it's like so there's this big illusion like
[03:18:47] it's like oh yeah you could just make the decision not to or whatever but it's like back to
[03:18:52] the work like that lots of factors come into play well we do want people to like I said
[03:19:01] want people to take care of themselves yeah and the ones around them and around them but we got
[03:19:06] a kind of like the analogy goes with the the plane and the oxygen got to put the oxygen on your
[03:19:12] own face before you put it on your kids it's true so so you got to do a little something to
[03:19:16] kind of keep yourself in the game Sarah mentioned something where he said oh I don't have any
[03:19:21] skills right and he's talking about getting a job or something like this and I was thinking yeah
[03:19:24] you know I can see why someone might think that off like for at first but the fact is you have
[03:19:30] a lot of skills because one of the main skills is straight up capability in all these different ways
[03:19:36] where you know you can learn this specific thing or learn that specific trade and all this other
[03:19:41] stuff but if someone who's just a more capable person across the board that guy's going to excel in
[03:19:45] those skills for sure so in my opinion that's an important thing to be capable and to stay capable
[03:19:52] sure that's on this path of capability hopefully it takes a minute some heavies it happens that's
[03:20:01] kind of like you mentioned you just do and you just if you're going hard are you not going to get
[03:20:06] ding the no you are going to get that's kind of the nature of going hard same saying no just like
[03:20:13] and work out just like with anything else but don't worry supplementation will help us all
[03:20:18] through those dings dance so anyway chocolate supplements a lot more you've seen chocolate supplements
[03:20:25] so first thing we're going to be compressing you know you made me chuckle a little bit we're trying
[03:20:30] over here decompression okay yeah so chocolate has a new era of energy drinks straight up healthy for
[03:20:36] you I know we don't need quite health and energy drinks in the same thing didn't you still no we do
[03:20:41] know we do now new era discipline go any different flavors best flavors mango kind of by far
[03:20:49] to pass and that's like an activity and that's saying a lot because the orange is freaking good
[03:20:56] you know on the sour out like these are like good flavor they taste good but like mango is just
[03:21:01] so much better it's like crazy it's saying a lot you're saying yeah the good thing is that these
[03:21:07] drinks they taste different you you got a some people might not like mango probably a small number
[03:21:13] people some people might not like orange some people might not like sour apple sniper some people
[03:21:19] might not like jockel Palmer some people might not like whatever so the recommendation is try
[03:21:27] on try one see what you like yeah let me know but let echo Charles know if his signature flavor is
[03:21:36] the best well it senses factually the best you love your flavor the best well you ever drink another
[03:21:41] different kind yes yeah okay see that's what's weird only because I don't want to come on I
[03:21:47] don't have any I got a cup of tea and right in them and you know there's that but if you had
[03:21:51] all flavors in a fridge every for one year yeah I can do one year yeah and I was restocking years
[03:21:59] whatever after replace a sour apple sniper you would never have to know here's a thing I could do
[03:22:05] one year but in the spirit of you know nature and all that stuff like if you're eating steak
[03:22:11] every single night and someone offered you to throw off the path of the of the mango man in
[03:22:16] the spirit of variety yes okay for sure well that's you know that's the I think that's natural
[03:22:21] I'm pretty sure I would only drink jockel Palmer because it takes so good to me yeah but I also only
[03:22:29] stakes so there you go see because you're different all right so we got a drink is what you're saying
[03:22:35] it doesn't matter what flavor you choose to drink at any particular time regardless if mango is the best
[03:22:41] flavor it's all healthy for you so you drink in the energy drink you get in the front end the
[03:22:47] energy a little boost that we sometimes want boom but you get the health benefits as well as
[03:22:54] opposed to the poison benefits or lack of benefits or whatever that's your next year on a
[03:22:59] summer adventure either way discipline go you can get this at wall wall vitamin shop
[03:23:05] yep Amazon yeah and origin USA.com also we have jockelfield.com jockelfield.com
[03:23:13] yeah but jockelfields the easier you remember yeah yeah that's the direct one of you
[03:23:17] you don't got to click around all that stuff also that joint where for this for your joints
[03:23:22] when you're lifting hard doing jiu-jitsu like you don't want to worry about the joints if you
[03:23:25] don't want to worry about your joints this is the one that we need I don't want to worry about
[03:23:29] that joints yeah it's gonna be pretty rare you can want to worry about your joints but I don't know
[03:23:33] some people are more in touch with that kind stuff and that's cool too either way
[03:23:36] join our her and super krill oil will make sure that they're still in the game longevity man
[03:23:42] hey if you had the greens yet no well we have greens now all right and decide to come up with a creative
[03:23:49] name jockel greens we made some very good greens and so you can check those out to live you if
[03:23:59] you don't eat enough vegetables like me or fruits like me yeah now you can put in a scoop yeah that's
[03:24:08] good and and again you know true jockel style apparently you're making these things taste good
[03:24:14] yeah which is very not hard core of you by the way but it is very efficient and when it's a little
[03:24:19] it's real low drag it's also results related right we're not trying to feed not trying to get you
[03:24:24] to drink something that tastes like junk yeah and then you don't drink it because it tastes like junk yeah
[03:24:30] why would we do that you're not trying to offer up another element of resistance in a good
[03:24:35] path that we're all on yeah yeah it's true that's a good move also vitamin D3 cold war immunity
[03:24:40] stuff this is essential so don't forget about that kind stuff also mok he's talked about stakes
[03:24:46] I get it but sometimes you want to extra this back on the strawberry path right now you are going
[03:24:52] hardcore strawberry for like a week and a half I was going hardcore peanut butter for at least a
[03:24:57] month what's the what's your normal probably putting anything in there in the little banana
[03:25:01] little whatever what are you just straight mok mok and some variety of milk could be cooking up milk
[03:25:09] could be almond milk could be the milk could be the milk could be the milk milk milk milk milk milk
[03:25:15] milk but yeah mix it up with one of those and they all taste legit they all have their own little
[03:25:20] sshsh you know yeah you don't know my protocol watch up in freaking on and it's freaking solid and
[03:25:25] it tastes good I don't know though so is it normal like what do you let's say you had a salad like not
[03:25:30] like a side salad but up a rope us salad you know you stick salad chicken salad whatever
[03:25:37] what do you drink with that what's the norm what pairs with that that don't say I know you can say
[03:25:42] water I know okay what's the jam you don't want to say water all right well water kind of
[03:25:47] goes with everything you always get what at the restaurant thinking to give you the water first
[03:25:50] that's the given but what is you know what's the jam your story your thing is not going anywhere
[03:25:55] swear where you go with this okay you're a lot of my what I pair with a big salad it's called
[03:26:00] the big salad chicken very robust salad um mok shake but just a plain one though plain like
[03:26:10] not usually I had a banana or frozen banana there or whatever not I don't know whatever
[03:26:14] so I'll go the peanut butter peanut butter chocolate and then milk or the almond milk or whatever
[03:26:19] just you know you don't add the oatmeal or bananas or whatever if you want to make it all luxury or whatever
[03:26:25] you can see but it like pairs nicely right off all right well either way these things again
[03:26:31] jockelfuel dot com subscribe if you want to influx you know where you don't got to remember
[03:26:38] to reorder or run out and all that stuff you don't have to remember you don't have to pay shipping
[03:26:43] oh yeah those are two real solid elements true so we mentioned origin us a dot com
[03:26:52] this is where you can get your American made denim yeah kind of a big deal no it's a real big deal
[03:26:57] yeah when you kind of go down the line it's like sure you get in good jeans I can't it that's this
[03:27:01] good it's great actually but I hear something crazy when we first looked into making these jeans
[03:27:07] hmm we were talking to people we were talking to people in the fashion industry legit
[03:27:15] I know yes I understand you don't much they wanted us to charge for a pair of jeans American
[03:27:19] made jeans you don't look the value placed on American 100% American made jeans were taken guess
[03:27:24] I'm much 118 I'm not kidding you they said the good market price
[03:27:31] $450 for a pair of jeans this was like a New York city with fashion paper and I like
[03:27:42] kicked Pete under the table like but I started $450 for a pair of jeans no that's not happening
[03:27:49] and we walked out I'm like that's not a big six not happy I was like he's a calm down you know
[03:27:53] I was kind of losing it because you know I already don't like fashion people in the first place now they want
[03:27:58] to be a person charge 400 because they're trying to they're trying to keep the control the market
[03:28:03] right trying to keep that thing elevated because they want to charge 450 for their pair of jeans
[03:28:08] yeah but you know the whole idea of charging that much for jeans like whatever they're doing
[03:28:14] there like it's not a matter of like hey we got a you know and it makes this logistical
[03:28:19] sense not that they're doing something oh no they're inflating the prices yeah for a reason like
[03:28:24] they're doing what's their thing what are they doing like that thing I think I'll tell you what they're
[03:28:27] doing they know that people want to buy American made stuff they know they can't make it they want
[03:28:33] us to price it out of the markets then after worry yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah
[03:28:36] yeah that's what we've been doing that makes sense what I'm playing there games well the good news
[03:28:41] is it doesn't cost 450 999 whatever you should so boom there you go you also got boots on there
[03:28:48] yeah by the way saying American made 100% bringing back the industry by the way expanding like
[03:28:54] cheese Luis for us cheese Luis goes but I'm saying there's a bit of there's a lot going on
[03:29:01] there's a lot going on there's a bit of conflict that's a bit of a lot of things yeah but yes so
[03:29:07] ordinary USA there's a lot of cool stuff and you did so stuff on there as well yeah you get that
[03:29:11] key yeah you get the key if you're getting back into you just to where you get your staying in
[03:29:15] digits you want another key okay I want to come you did it not you talked about with Jason
[03:29:20] Go Rock awesome good community do you do you also community you sure also we have a store
[03:29:26] it's called jocco store so boom if you're on the path you want to represent discipline equals freedom
[03:29:32] good take the high ground or the high ground will take you
[03:29:37] swirking your shirts and hoodies and hats and whatnot some shorts on there utility surfing swimming
[03:29:44] cruising left in jiu jie I said it all of it everything they're a little at hybrid or whatever
[03:29:51] anyway got some shorts on there too you know we talk of shorts with cargo pockets no
[03:29:55] well you can't be wearing them for swimming or jiu jitsu if they have the pocket on them the big
[03:30:01] pockets for the cargo cargo pockets no you can have a little cargo pocket on there not a freaking baggy
[03:30:08] like from the gap store cargo pocket from 1994 it does not have that no but the hate like the
[03:30:16] the pocket that you stick your hands into on the front you can't do jiu jitsu with those and swimming's
[03:30:20] not recommended oh yes you can trust me can well you might be able to it's not off
[03:30:28] yeah well maybe I'll put like zip can you put zippers on them that would be making a little bit better
[03:30:32] we need to do a pair of shorts with a slim pocket on the leg no wait and I think these are
[03:30:41] yeah I don't have to double check but they have like the pocket is kind of it breeds like through
[03:30:46] so the water can pass through I'm wearing them right now they do have that but that still see
[03:30:52] but you know what I'm doing right now working I'm paed get their good their excellent for podcast
[03:30:56] yeah right there excellent for cruising for sure swimming is marginal because that even though the
[03:31:02] water is made to drain out of them it's still your there's big pockets hold water we're not
[03:31:07] setting we're not swimming in the English channel yeah actually no no that's a thing so yeah so there's
[03:31:12] that and then jiu jitsu you know your toes get in the pond there or whatever so let's redesign
[03:31:18] yeah sir I always didn't redesign well are we lagging we're working on that one okay no it's
[03:31:25] it's a working progress or whatever but the good thing about this is swimming jiu jitsu I know
[03:31:31] you toes get stuck in there and it's true but it's they're not ideal because really what's ideal
[03:31:37] for jiu jitsu really it's like spats on our ashguard same thing we're swimming what's ideal for
[03:31:41] swimming go limpics check it out that's what's ideal for swimming okay a lot of us sometimes we don't
[03:31:45] on a way that can't stuff when we go swimming yeah some of us I don't understand if we're not
[03:31:49] swimming though English channel I get it we can jump in the in the in the surf zone if you if we're
[03:31:55] just cruising right now and then we just find yourself at the beach I don't know or like
[03:32:00] frickless go body surfing you can wear those shorts as I'm saying yes and they're gonna work great
[03:32:06] they're gonna be acceptable very it's not optimal they'll be appropriate oh but that now they're
[03:32:13] really good for normal life yeah which is what I wear them for but if I'm gonna roll I'm gonna put
[03:32:19] on a different pair of shorts that we need to make jocco store dot com let's see where you get all
[03:32:24] let's say if you like something get something how about that including but not limited to the shorts
[03:32:28] right on um subscribe to this podcast and if you want to also have some other podcast jocco and
[03:32:35] ravling me and Darrell Cooper the grounded podcast or your kid podcast we also have that underground
[03:32:41] look we don't know what's gonna happen with these platforms so if something does happen these
[03:32:46] platforms will be on jocco underground dot com if you want to subscribe to that it helps us build it
[03:32:53] $8.18 a month thanks for the support if you can afford it co will support you email assistance
[03:33:01] at jocco underground dot com we have a YouTube channel which there's a lot of high level
[03:33:08] assisted directing happening on there yeah yeah yeah actually I've accepted it factually that yeah
[03:33:18] I dig it even like with setup right you've been you know you've come along way you do some great work
[03:33:23] so thank you but yeah the YouTube channel video version of this podcast yeah also yeah
[03:33:27] other way it's becoming more and more coming way to consume as it were yeah check that out
[03:33:34] origin USA also has a little uh YouTube channel that you can check out
[03:33:41] just a little also psychological warfare you know what that is it's an album with tracks
[03:33:46] jocco getting you and me and us all past our moments of weakness that to come everyone's in a great
[03:33:52] while visitations of moments of weakness just saying it happens it's all I'm saying since
[03:33:59] psychological warfare will help you with that do I have to make a psychological warfare track about
[03:34:04] foster family yeah you know I had a question mark in my head like should I even say that because
[03:34:10] it's gonna trigger you to start you know talking to me about this kind of stuff and maybe the
[03:34:15] answers just I don't know but the current psychological warfare where you can get wherever you by
[03:34:20] MP3's that will help you with weaknesses that it addresses check also flipsicampus.com to code
[03:34:27] a mile order some cool stuff to hang on your wall got a bunch of books I just finished the
[03:34:32] audio version of final spin which is the next book that I've come out think it's coming out chill
[03:34:39] November six there's something like that which I just realized means I will not be
[03:34:44] in this area for the chat one thousand X event because I will be on the road okay I just recorded
[03:34:57] I just recorded the audio book and it was the first time that I got to see someone's reaction live
[03:35:05] to the book because there was a there was a worker there was a audio engineer yeah
[03:35:10] she was named Deb she was in their work in the work in the
[03:35:15] this is what this is what this is what's fired up there's funny parts in that book
[03:35:25] right and she she's outside the glass right I'm in the I'm in the room right she's outside the glass
[03:35:31] and I'm watching her and like I would read a funny line and I can see her she's like laughing
[03:35:35] she laughing like laughing like laughing at me like nodding her head and then there's a
[03:35:39] couple point parts in the book that are kind of like fired up like they're gonna go and she was
[03:35:43] literally raising your hands like I look at her like raising her and like they're gonna go
[03:35:49] and then that was day one lots of setup you know you can kind of get into the characters a little bit
[03:35:55] day two stuff starts getting a little bit going sideways day two Deb openly weeping that I can
[03:36:03] visually watch her crying that's like reading like the some parts of the story that are heavy
[03:36:11] so final spin if you don't know what that's all about check it out dang that's crazy
[03:36:16] it's like like she was like your little audience she had an audience of one yeah yeah yeah
[03:36:20] and you know what check this out she's supposed to be a professional they know really
[03:36:23] like no that's perspective Deb she is a professional she did a great job and I was much
[03:36:28] appreciated she's not supposed to be in there laughing she ring and crying right that's not right yeah
[03:36:35] yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah
[03:36:37] would you be stoked if your doctors doing a surgery on you like high five and then laughing like
[03:36:42] not right right you're gonna be stoked on that but I was definitely stoked yeah it was
[03:36:50] think about it's like a you're right it was an audience or one and she's not supposed to be
[03:36:56] showing emotions and she's in there getting emotional all emotions revealed so if you want to
[03:37:02] feel some of those emotions here about it also did a little the additional the additional commentary
[03:37:10] for the audio track is with good deal Dave Burke because he read it and he interviewed me and
[03:37:16] they talked about it so that's that we uh final spin check it out pre order it now if you want
[03:37:22] that first edition who knows with that kind of emotional reaction you could that first edition maybe
[03:37:27] hold on to some special move hold on to some special something like pat song to your kids when
[03:37:32] they're old enough yeah I talked to Dave Burke about that and like hey would you let your how old you
[03:37:38] can how old when your kids have to be before they're allowed to read this book and he's like I
[03:37:44] say I want him to read it as young as I can but all the there's swear words in it yeah there's
[03:37:50] F bombs quite a few mm mm so he's a kind of you can just real soon yeah you know 13 14
[03:37:59] he said because the the perspectives that it gives a personal life so powerful he wants him to have it
[03:38:04] so that's final spin leadership strategy intact he's field manual the code devaluation
[03:38:07] a protocol discipline equals freedom field manual brand new versions out way the warrior kick
[03:38:12] boom two three and four mic in the dragons haquorth about face and of course
[03:38:18] extreme ownership and the dichotomy of leadership that I wrote with my brother Dave Babin
[03:38:22] we also have a consulting company we saw the we saw problems through leadership
[03:38:29] go to astronaut front dot com for details on that if you want us to come and help your company
[03:38:34] if you want to come to one of our live events the next mr is in Las Vegas october 28th in 29th
[03:38:42] so if you want to come to that ftx September 20th in 21st we're getting close I'm out of already past that
[03:38:49] we also have an online training academy called extreme ownership extreme ownership.com where you
[03:38:57] can learn leadership and keep your leadership edge sharp mm if you want to help service members
[03:39:06] active and retired their families gold star families I talked a little bit about the hyper bearer
[03:39:11] chamber today and that's one of the one of the things that mama leaves charity organization does
[03:39:17] is pay for veterans to go into a city and stay for like 30 days and get 30 days worth of
[03:39:25] hyper bearer treatments that are so helpful they're even helpful for these kind of injuries that we
[03:39:30] talked about today if you want to donate or you want to get involved go to america's mighty warriors dot org
[03:39:37] and if you want more of my pathological pauses or you need more of echoes vacant verbalizations
[03:39:49] you can find us on the inner webs on twitter on the gram on facebook echoes adecotrails
[03:39:59] i am at docker one and and once again for chad 1000 x go to chad 1000 x dot com if you want to
[03:40:08] check out Sarah Sarah's instagram it's Sarah Wilkinson seven and then Jason and everything that he's
[03:40:15] doing on go rock you want to find out where you can get get involved in that it's a really good
[03:40:20] stuff check out at go rock and thanks once again to Sarah Wilkinson and Jason McCarthy for joining
[03:40:29] us today and thanks to both of you for your service and thanks for to both of you for everything
[03:40:37] that you're doing today to try and help raise awareness and prevent suicide straight up and all
[03:40:46] the veterans out there you've been through a lot and you start feeling like maybe you're in that storm
[03:40:56] remember that you can get out of that storm ask for help get help there's things that you've been
[03:41:05] exposed to that can physiologically damage your brain psychologically damage your brain that can be fixed
[03:41:15] so talk to someone get help if you need it please and the same thing goes to police and law enforcement
[03:41:23] firefighters out there paramedics and mt's dispatchers correctional officers bought a patrol
[03:41:29] secret service all first responders you live in a stressful environment you get exposed to things
[03:41:34] that can damage you physiologically and psychologically if you're feeling it talk to somebody
[03:41:45] and it's a really the same thing for everybody else out there talked to people
[03:41:50] there's no shame in asking for help you don't have to face the darkness alone hold on
[03:42:03] ask for help take another step because there is light and however dark it may seem
[03:42:13] in that storm there is light so take another step and to Chad Wilkinson
[03:42:21] thank you for your service brother and until next time Zekko and Joko out