Transcribe your podcast
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Blake Cook, welcome to the show, man.

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Thanks for having me, Sean. It's an honor to be here. It's an

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honor to

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have you. Yeah. Thank you.

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So we met through Kyle. Yep. Kyle Morgan. Awesome. 1 of my favorite guests ever on this show.

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Anamoy human. And, he is, man. He is. And, he connected with us, and and, I know you guys are working together.

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Yep.

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And, I'm just really thankful that that, that he made that connection because I've been looking forward to this interview since we spoke. So Appreciate it. So welcome to the show. But, so

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I wanna do a just a full blown life

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story with you, and I know you have a lot to say to the to the law enforcement community especially. Yep. I think a lot of those guys, the ones that are left anyways, are going through some some tough times

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Yeah. Sure. Sure. With everything's changing.

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And, and, man, it's just a shame what what has happened over the past, what, 4 or 5 years in law enforcement? Is that when it started? The whole 2020. Do you fund the police movement?

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Do you fund the police? The after after the George Floyd incident is when it just it just spiraled downhill. Man, that's, well,

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people are feeling it. People are seeing it. This is what happens when you shit on the cops. I mean Crime is up nationwide. It's crazy.

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I mean, I see these I see these videos in where is it? San Francisco where people are just looting That's mind blowing. All. They're lose they're looting the department stores, Apple store. I mean, I've seen reels of them just walking in Apple Stores and just

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Jewelry stores smashing glass, and then just leaving.

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It's crazy.

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That's not somebody has to pay for that. Yeah. Yeah. I would be I'd be infuriated if I was a owner of a store in 1 of those cities.

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I mean, what do you even do as a cop? Honest question. What do you do as a law enforcement officer when that's happening?

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Because if you Yeah. If you try to if you try to do anything, they're gonna send you to jail for enforcing the law. It's, I feel so sorry for people for law enforcement officers in those areas because, you know, God forbid I had this conversation. Those guys, their job is to escape by any means necessary. They're very brave and they're bold.

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They have no respect. They're broad daylight smashing glass, grabbing 1,000 of dollars of merchandise, and then leaving. We show up. What are we supposed to do? Ask them nicely?

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Yeah. No. We have to chase them. We have to go hands on with them. And if they fight us and we have to use force, now the the mayor or the the governor, god forbid, or the police chief, they're gonna say, why didn't he let him go?

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Was this is that a hill you wanna die on? Yeah. It is. Because you know what? I was hired to enforce the law, not different laws that you want me to enforce.

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I was hired and took an oath to do my duty and to protect the laws and to protect innocent folks who are trying to make a living. Yes. Did they physically harm anybody? No. But that store owner has to come out of pocket for that.

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You know? That hurts that family. That hurts the employees' families. They're not gonna get paid. Maybe they get laid off because of it.

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Maybe the store shuts down. It has a domino effect. Yes. They didn't hurt nobody physically, but somebody has to deal with that. How about the PTSD they just caused those people inside of there?

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They thought that they coulda died. I mean, they're getting robbed.

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That is a good point.

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Our job as law enforcement officers is absolutely. I'm gonna chase you down, and you're going to jail. But, unfortunately, those cops, this is their career too. This is how they feed their family. A lot of cops are not gonna go if they don't have the backing, man, they're gonna sit there and watch it happen.

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I mean, I I can't blame them.

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I mean That puts food on their on on their table.

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I mean, some of these some I I here's another question. I mean, a lot of there was a lot of people on the ban on the bandwagon for defunding the police. Yeah. A ton of them. You know?

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Now they're having to live in this shit. I mean, do you do you feel bad for them? You don't have to answer.

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No. I don't feel bad for them. You know? It's it's not fair to judge all of us off of 1 individual's actions. Let's take ownership that that man was also a criminal.

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Now I don't believe that a knee should have been in his back. He's in handcuffs. You could have put hands on the shoulders. There's there's 3 of you there. Somebody grab his feet.

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Somebody grab his shoulders until we can get a wrap to put him in. There's way better ways to have handled that situation, but we all got judged based off of 1 police officer's action. Law enforcement officers were killed during those riots. Mhmm. People are more still mourning their their their husbands and wives that were killed based off another person's actions.

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And because you went out and said defund the police, I think it's I think it went national that the most of the big movements of, the, BLM, like, spent the money that was donated to them on, like, houses and cars. Like

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Yeah. They don't

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care about their people. I know.

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It's hilarious. City down.

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That's hilarious. It's like, what are you doing? And and but I guess if you put it into perspective as police officers are like commercial airline pilots. You can't have a bad pilot because if you have a bad pilot and he crashes and kills a bunch of people, people are gonna be like, well, those guys aren't trained at that airline. Yeah.

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You know? We're not gonna fly that airline no more. We can't have bad cops. And you know how you stop that? Is when good cops, whether you're young or not, you step up and you stop it immediately.

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You be brave and you be bold, and you stand for what you believe in, and that is doing the right thing. That's how you stop that. Yeah. If I would have been there, I would ask him to get his knee off his back, and if he refused, I would have jerked him off of him and told him to stand by the car. Somebody should have done that, but nobody did.

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Nobody was bold and brave. So now 4 years later, now look at us. Crime is through the roof, murders throughout the country, robberies, and I'm a tell you something, everybody should have owned a gun. My fastest response time as a police officer was, like, 7 minutes. And now that we live in a time where criminals are are are braver than law enforcement officers, it's scary, man.

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It is. I carry it's why I carry everywhere I go.

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Me too. Me too. I'm very thankful, Beau, from for this town, though. Franklin, Williamson County, they do not fuck around here.

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Hell, I like this place, man. Did a little history last night laying in the bed, trying not to think about all the episode and all that, and this is a very historical place.

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Oh, yeah. It's awesome. Front lines of the civil war right now.

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Yeah. Yeah.

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There's a Chick Fil A down the road, pretty new, and when they broke ground there, they found the remains of of, like, 12 soldiers from the civil war.

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I love American history. I was reading, and there was a old plantation house here that still has bloodstains Oh, yeah. On the floors from Confederate soldiers because I guess they had turned it into a a hospital. Yeah. Man, that's that's so cool.

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Lot of history here. But, alright, Blake, let's Let's do it. Let's dive in. So everybody gets

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an intro here. So, Blake Cook

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Can we start a prayer?

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Would you like to start

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with a prayer?

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I would like to

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start with a prayer. Let's do it.

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Dear heavenly father, god, I ask you, lord, to be with us during this interview. Lord, I ask that you speak through me to to whoever needs to receive this. God, I give you thanks for bringing Sean into my life. I give you thanks for allowing him and giving him this platform to use for the good. God, I I'm I'm so grateful for you.

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There's a song that says the evil that the the devil tries to bring evil, but you turn it for good. And I'm I'm beyond blessed. Thank you, Lord, for everything you do for us. Lord, we give you the honor, the praise, the glory, and the love forever. Amen.

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I would just like to add that I pray that this message that Blake is about to share with us goes exactly where it needs to go. I hope it is full of positivity for the current and future law enforcement officers that are about to serve and and are serving in the United States and and all across the world.

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Amen. Amen.

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Thank you for that. Yeah. I feel good.

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Gotta give him the glory, man, because I'm telling you something. I'm not I don't feel deserving of this, but I'm here because he wants me to be here.

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Well, you do deserve it, man. Thank you. I hope you start thinking about that with everything you do. I I think I think there are a lot of people that never achieve what they want to achieve because they don't feel that they deserve it. And just knowing the little bit that I do know about you from from reviewing the outline and digging into your background.

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You deserve every piece of good that's coming to you. I appreciate that. So and I'm sure that, Jesus would would say the same thing.

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Yeah. Jesus chose wild wild man. It is true.

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Blake Cook, 4 years as army infantry

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in the 82nd Airborne Division, you are a Purple Heart recipient for an IED explosion in Afghanistan. You're a former gun gang and cartel detective and a SWAT team member in Fayetteville, North Carolina. You have attempted suicide more than once. You're a follower of Jesus Christ and recently baptized in 2023. Congratulations.

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Thank you.

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You are 1 year sober from alcohol. Congratulations. You received the 2018 gang unit of the year award. You are the recipient of the 2023 investigative achievement award issued by the United States attorney's office. You are currently the LE director of operations and lead CQB instructor at Blue Varying Solutions, and you've been married for 12 and a half years and the father of 1 son who's 16 years old.

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That's me. Quite the quite the intro. How did you meet Kyle?

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Man, let's save that. You wanna save that? Let's save that.

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Alright. We'll save that.

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Because it's, it's a testimony, man, of of the power of that of of god. I wanna let's save that.

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We'll save it. We'll save it. Yeah. So I have a Patreon. I know you and Kyle do

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too over at Blueberry, so everybody Subscribe to your Patreon.

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Go check that out. But, we ask so our Patreons, they've been with us forever. They're our top supporters. Without them, I wouldn't be sitting here and, neither would you be. Yeah.

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So 1 of the things I do is I give them the opportunity to ask each guest a question. So this is gonna be a heavy interview, so we pick something a little lighter.

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Okay.

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This is from Luke. What is the most embarrassing thing that happened to you during your law enforcement career?

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Oh, dude. Oh, man. I have a good 1 for that 1. Did a search warrant 1 time on a gang house. It's a nontraditional gang, which means it wasn't a gang that was, you know, it's like a neighborhood clip.

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Right? The guy that we were going after, he was distributing stolen guns from soldiers to to all the little hoodlums. So we went and did a search warrant, mom. I mean, just a horrible area in Fayetteville called Ferguson Road. So we go there.

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We execute the search warrant, the gang unit, not not the tag team. And we're searching through everything, and that morning, my bungee on my radio couch had broken. And I was like, oh, you know, whatever. It'll it'll be fine. So, we're about to wrap up.

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I'm searching a closet, and I've been down to grab something, and, I guess it had fallen off. And, I didn't know how it turned off. I'm in the house. And, so I'm we wrap up. We leave.

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Taking the evidence to, to to the station, and I'm driving down Murkison Road. And then I hear, hey, mister policeman. You left your walkie talkie in my house. And I'm like, oh, man. Somebody's in trouble with an idiot.

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But it I'm like, oh man, somebody's about to have been in a lot of trouble, and she is just on it. Next thing I know, both of my cell phones, my personal and my work number's ringing, and I answer it, it's my supervisor, and he's like, hey man, hey man, hey check, see if you got your radio. I'm like, hey dude, I got my radio, bro. I'm like, I got I got my radio.

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Oh, shit.

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And, he's like, no. No. For real, get hands on. I'm like, alright. So I'm driving.

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I'm feeling it. I'm pulling my vest up. I don't see it. My heart drops in my stomach. So I turn around.

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I pull over. I look. Can't find it. I'm like, hey. That's my radio.

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And I whipped that car around, and I am I am blue license irons to this house because she is on it. She is she is talking shit. She is she is just solid. Because, I mean, this is this is not, like, a channel just for us. This is a channel for Oh, shit.

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That district. She's on the radio. She's on my radio that I dropped, my police radio.

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Oh, shit. I thought you meant this is the station calling you.

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No. No. No. Cell phone. So she found my radio after we left the search warrant and turned it on.

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And it was now was on that district station. Like, dispatchers are trying to dispatch officers to calls. They can't because she's on it.

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Could you hear it in the car?

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I had an in car radio. I could hear it.

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Oh, shit.

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That's why I started laughing. I was like, what a idiot. Somebody's in trouble. Oh my god. I mean, I whip that thing around.

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By the time I get back to the house, the whole hood's out there. Everybody. Man, I get out the car. She's holding that radio by the antenna. She goes she goes, here, piggy, piggy, piggy, piggy.

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Sean, I felt this big. My tattoos didn't matter. My beard didn't matter. My long hair didn't matter. Nothing mattered.

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I was so humiliated. I had to walk over and was, like, sorry about that. Dropped my radio, got back in my car, but, man, I had I told everybody the story. Every day, I would have miss piggy. I would take it down the next morning.

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It would go right back on my desk. It was so embarrassing, because, I mean, you're talking a a channel for that district. Not just a channel for our unit, but for that district. So everybody, police chief, everybody in my chain of command, all the patrol officers who look up to us. I mean, I really it is what it is.

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I did it to it. You know? Thank god I didn't get punished because they realized that I was humiliated. Because when I got out, I had to turn my body camera on to make sure they didn't allow on me. So the whole interaction was on cam the whole miss piggy piggy piggy.

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I was like, everything. So they're like, man, we're not gonna write you out for this 1. We feel like that you're you're I'm the, hey, man. Thanks. Yep.

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I'm I'm really humiliated, and I'm sure I'm never gonna live this down. Damn. Yeah. That's it, man. That's that's the most embarrassing thing that's ever happened to me.

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That's a good 1. It was awful.

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It was awful.

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Wow. Wow. Well, hey. Before we before we dive in here, 1 last thing. Everybody gets a gift on the show.

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Yeah. Any guesses? Gummy bears. Man, I was hoping you wouldn't mess that

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1 up. Man, I watched the episodes. Oh, these are awesome.

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There they are. Legal in all 50 states still. Probably shouldn't be with all the, sugar and shit in there, but

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It's alright. But, hey, they taste amazing. I love gummy bears, man. Cool. Yeah.

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Thank you for that. Alright. Alright. Here's where it starts getting heavy from here on out, but, we'll take any humor. But, yeah.

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So once again, Blake, we wanna do a life story, so we always start at the very beginning. Where'd you grow up?

[00:18:03]

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Grew up in a small town in West Virginia called Pompa, West Virginia. Thousand people max in my hometown, 18,000 in the county. So, real small town. Everybody knew everybody. You know, the you start day care with the same people that you graduate with.

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So, you know, for for 13, 14 years, it's the same friends. It's the same people every day. Even in the summer, it's we all live next to each other. So it was a it was it was it was a cool place to grow up. Windows open, doors open, ride your bikes wherever till whenever.

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You know, we didn't have crime, you know, just just rednecks, you know, so it was a it was a great place to grow up. I grew up in a split house. You know, the the only memory that I have of my mom and dad ever together, my mom was trying to leave, and, my dad was punching a hole in the wall, screaming and yelling. It's the only memory I have of them together. And so they got a divorce when I was young, you know, 3 or 4, and, my dad built a house right next door, right beside my mom.

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And that was kinda cool. Why'd they get divorced? My dad cheated. Yeah. So my mom had a lot of hatred towards him, but she ultimately left him because he he was a cheater.

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He cheated on her. So Were you close with both? I am growing up, yeah, I was close with both. My mom was phenomenal, man. To this day, I still wish her happy Father's Day.

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She she did her best. She was young. She was, I think, maybe 21, 20 when she had us. I remember she'd take me to college with her, to community college so she could get her degree. I remember the only memory I have of it was

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Your mom would take you to community college Yep. So that she could get her degree.

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She'd get her degree. And, I

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have a brother.

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I have an older brother. He's, 4 years older than me. I love him more than anything. He was, he's always protected me. Always.

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We're complete different. He's well dressed, skinnier little fella. He's an attorney. Here I am looking like a convicted felon, but, you know, ultimately, man, we we to at the core, we're the same we're the same person. He's, even to this day, he's, he still looks out for me.

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He's, 1 of my biggest role models. So he's a phenomenal father. He's a great husband. He's just a a great human. So I have, a half sister and a and a half brother from from my dad's, you know, we don't consider I don't consider them that.

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They're my brother and sister. But, when my dad got remarried, he started another family. But my dad built in a house right next to us. It was cool as a kid because we would for us, right, we would just go back and forth whenever, but, man, it caused a lot of drama, you could say. My mom and my stepmom didn't get along.

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And, you know, there was there was constant arguing in the driveways. I remember and and, you know, I would say that that they were more of the instigators on it. You know, my dad liked to even though that they weren't together, like, my dad still pushed my mom's buttons. I remember 1 time I was going to school, and and my stepmom or somebody had called down to the house. My mom said something to her on the phone, and and my mom was taking us to school, and my stepmom comes running out of the house, boom, boom, boom, down the stairs.

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And my mom's like she she worked out every day. Like, she wasn't a typical woman. She was raising 2 boys, and she worked out every day. And and she was a social worker, so she was constantly dealing with drug addicts and stuff anyways, so she stayed fit. And, she had these heels on, man.

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I remember my stepmom getting to the bottom of her steps, and my mom just stacked her up in a headlock. I'm like a kid watching this, though. At a young kid, it's now I laugh about it. Right? But as a kid, it was kinda scary.

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You know? It's kinda like, what in the hell is going on? And then my dad come down, running down the stairs. You bitch. You better let her go.

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You better let her go. Man, he got close to my mom. My mom stuck them heels so far in his chest, just just took the breath out of him, and then then they just ended up splitting ways and trying to call the police or whatever, but, you know, it was always some type of of you know, if they were both in the driveway together, it was always, like, anxiety. Like, let's just hurry up and get in the car. You know?

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Like, my mom did a very good job at protecting us from it, but it was it was always there. And, you know, as a kid, that can be very traumatizing to to always have that anxiety of, let's just hurry up and get in the car. Let's let's just hurry up and get in the car. Oh, I hope mom and dad don't don't talk. Like like, if we were going out to the car and they were gonna out the car, like, it was always just like, please.

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Like, can we just not fight? And and my my mom was always the bigger person when we get in the car, but it was always something, man.

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Why did they not get along? Was was is your stepmom who your father had in the middle of?

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That's that's, you know, you know, yeah, like, my stepmom my stepmom some weird shit. My stepmom was 16 when my dad started dating her. My dad was, like, in his thirties, so it kinda will start it kinda tarnished our name a little bit. And now thinking about my older brother, my older brother is only a few years younger than her, so there was always that. There was always that, him and her.

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They never got along. There was 1 time Father's Day. We would always go up there. My mom would because he had he had every other weekend, so we'd have to go stay with him. And my mom would would leave, maybe go on vacation with her friends or something, maybe go out of town, and and we would stay with him.

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And, you know, my brother and my stepmom would always get into an argument. I mean, hell, she's only a few years older than him. Then my dad would always take her. My dad, my whole life, has always taken women over us or, you know, always put women first over his children. And he in in father's day, I'll I'll never forget this, father's day, she had said something to him, telling me that she was gonna whoop his ass or something.

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And my brother was, like, dude, you're, like, 2 year you're, like, 3 years older than me, 4 years older than me. What are you talking about? So my brother picked up a a 2 liter of Mountain Dew and chucked it at her, and he came over and got me and was, like, hey. We're gonna stay at the house. And, they end up calling the police on him, and there was a a cop at the time named Jim Hall who came up there and put my 13 year old brother in handcuffs, put him in the back of a cop car over that.

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You called the police on your own son because of of something that he did that you caused by marrying somebody that was only 2 years 3 years older than him. And, so it was constant. Like, my mom would leave. We would go up to my dad's for a few hours, and then me and my brother would go down to the house because it was just it was always something. It was always something.

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And my brother would cook for us. He'd take care of us, and then when, you know, my mom would we would call my mom the the day that she was coming back home, And we'd be like, hey, mom. We just came down to the house. We know you're coming home that day. And she had no idea that we were doing that, but it was he was my brother was protecting me from from the toxic environment.

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He's he's he's always protected me. Damn. And, you know, and I'm not saying that the whole childhood when my dad was back because that that would be a lie. You know, there were great times. You know?

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We would have Nerf gun wars and things like that, but, you know, and he was a good dad growing up. He he would play basketball. He'd teach me how to play basketball and things like that, but, you know, there was always something. Right? There was always something that would that would happen, that would run it.

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Always. And and and it it's just, and my mom did a great job at protecting us from that too. She tried to limit our time as much as possible, but, you know, I'm not gonna sit here and just beat my dad down, but because there were good times. He he ran our our community pool, and he he would take us down for night swims, and and, I mean, there were great, great things, but as we always felt like that we were just second because he had started a new family, and we were just secondary. And, and and that was a lot of my childhood until I became a young teenager.

[00:29:18]

You know, he he I was I've been playing sports since I was young, like, super young, and, basketball was always my thing. And, you know, we won every every you know, as a kid, it was cool, but we won every county championship until I was in the 8th grade. And the only games that my dad would really attend were the ones that were impoundable. You know? And and and then when I got into the 8th grade, there was a we won our county championship basketball game, and there was a guy in the stands that that had known me forever.

[00:29:52]

He said, hey. Won't you come try out for football? The way you move and how physical you are, you might be a great football player. I was like, man, I never play football. I don't wanna get hit like that.

[00:30:02]

I don't know if I'm tough like that. So my mom signed me up, and I started playing football. And and my first time ever on the field, man, 1 of my really good buddies, Nick Rizanica, came over, hit me so hard, put me off my feet, and took my took my my breath out. He said, hey, man. Welcome to high school football.

[00:30:21]

I said, dude, I gotta get in the weight room. I gotta get good. I suck. I suck at this. I'm out of my comfort zone.

[00:30:27]

And then, man, I I quit baseball. They only had me at baseball. They only kept me around. I sucked at baseball. Motor my, motor brother's name's JR.

[00:30:38]

His best friend, Derek Bolt, literally, they thought it would be funny. Derek was, like, 62 in in, like, 11, 12 years old. Threw a fastball, hit me right in the neck. I wouldn't stay in a batter's box ever again. I didn't wanna hit.

[00:30:52]

I don't want you to hit me in the neck again. I don't want nothing to do with it. They came around because I was fast, and they could sub me in to run bases. And, so finally, my freshman year, I was like, hey. Chief, I'm not playing baseball no more.

[00:31:06]

He's like, why? I was like, look. Me and you both know I suck. I wanna work out for football. And I dedicated, like, a lot of time in high school to for football, working out in football.

[00:31:14]

I was already pretty decent at basketball. And then, man, my junior year, I started getting really good at football, really good. And then when I started getting good and my name started getting in the paper, then my dad started showing up to all my games. Nanny wanted to come around, and then he really wanted to come around. My junior and senior year, we won back to back state championships in basketball.

[00:31:38]

And, he didn't really wanted to be around. Once we won the first 1, he came the 2nd year, he came to all the games, came to all the football games. You know? He wanted to be there now. Right?

[00:31:48]

That's how I

[00:31:48]

changed that. Resentment

[00:31:50]

because of that? I I did because, like, it was kinda like

[00:31:53]

At the time or looking back? No.

[00:31:54]

At the time, I I kinda did. And I've and I told my mom this as a kid because, like, the only times I ever saw you when I played basketball in in middle school in the 8th grade, and in the 8th grade, I'm, what, 13. Right? I'm I'm starting to see things and understand things a little little more. Like, why are you only at home games?

[00:32:13]

Is it because you don't wanna pay the $2 entrance at the other at the other games, and you get him free because he was a school teacher at the school. And,

[00:32:21]

he was the school teacher?

[00:32:23]

At Palmville Middle School. Then married a 16 year old girl. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

[00:32:31]

Weird. Very weird. I I didn't know any of this at the time. Right? But but my mom, again, she hid it from us because it was embarrassing.

[00:32:39]

Right? We live in a small town. Everybody everybody knows knows that. It was still to this day, it's embarrassing. Now that I'm an adult and I know that that's wrong, that's not right, like, you know, there's there's even some hatred that I have, resentment that I have towards him for giving us that bad name because we share the same last name.

[00:33:05]

You know? Like, I don't want people fathers of my friends to think, man, I'm gonna grow up sick like that because that's wrong. It's sick. It's weird. It is what it is.

[00:33:15]

It's weird. We come from a small town where everybody knows everybody. So, you know, when I started understanding these things, and then he started coming around in high school when my name started getting out there in the papers and and colleges started coming and looking, then it's like, hey, man. Like, where were you at, like, my earlier years? Now you wanna travel 2 hours down the road to a football game and wear a shirt with my name on it.

[00:33:42]

Like, hey, bro. My mom has been to every game, and my grandfather on my mom's side and my grandmother have been to every game since I ever played. My mom showed up to an AAU game 1 time. Her friends had a, like, a birthday thing that they had planned out for. I guess she we didn't think we were gonna be there all day playing because we kept winning and winning and winning.

[00:34:12]

She canceled her plans so I could finish that game out. Like, she's been there since day 1. Like, where have you been? Oh, now now people are starting to know who I am here. Now people are like, wow.

[00:34:26]

Blake's really good at this. Because, man, I exploded with football. Like, I found a passion for it. I was a slot, I was a wide receiver, and I was a, a quarterback. My junior year, I had, like, 13, 14 interceptions.

[00:34:40]

Wow. My senior year, I I broke the record for yak yards, yards after catch. I had, like, I don't know, a 7 1800, like, 13, 14 touchdowns. There's 1 game where I had 4 touchdowns, and that was unheard of at that time because you're talking 2,008 where people were still trying to run the ball. Everybody then now wanted to run the spread because then Pat White and Steve Slaton, West Virginia started throwing the ball more, and now we had some really we had some new coaches come in that were like, hey.

[00:35:10]

Let's throw the ball. And their their nephew was the quarterback. He'd moved, so they're obviously gonna let him throw the football, but, man, it was like everywhere I went. Like, high school was crazy because, like, I'm a be honest with you, Sean, I didn't do a single bit of homework. I don't know if I even did classwork.

[00:35:28]

I just got pushed through. As an adult, I'm like, man, that's I wish you woulda pushed me to do better. Let's rewind for a minute.

[00:35:36]

Yeah. So did you actually tell your dad that? Or I never told my dad that. You never told him that? That was in your head?

[00:35:44]

It's always in my head. It's all those questions.

[00:35:47]

Yeah. Just you know? Because he's my dad, man. I loved him. I didn't want him to feel like I was mad or disappointed.

[00:35:55]

I loved him. He was my dad. And like I said, my childhood all the time wasn't all the time bad. You know? He he did do things that was a great father, but there were things that, like and I have a 16 year old son.

[00:36:11]

Right? I've raised him since he was 3. His dad's nonexistent. I married my wife. She had a son, and I've I've I've raised him since he was 3 as my own.

[00:36:22]

He is my son. You'll never be able to convince me that he's not. I'll never look at him and say, hey, man. Remember that time I changed your tire? Hey, man.

[00:36:31]

Remember that time I did this for you and did that for you and did this and that? That was what it was like. It was always, hey, man. Remember that time you ran off you ran out of gas on Salazar Mountain or ran out of gas on Salazar Mountain, I brought you gas? Yeah.

[00:36:42]

That was yeah. Yeah, dad. Thanks. Thanks for being a dad.

[00:36:45]

Your dad was keeping tabs? Yeah.

[00:36:49]

He's keeping it's to this day, and we'll get to that. To this day, he still keeps tabs. And it's like, man, you're my father. What are you talking about? You're supposed to do those things.

[00:37:00]

I would give my life for my son. And never keep a tab on it. I'd be dead, but I never keep a tab on that. And I hope that he would never be like, oh, well, you know, like, that's what I'm supposed to do. And that's what I'm raising him as is, hey, man.

[00:37:14]

When you have a son or a daughter, you do things for them out of love. You'd never expect a thank you ever. And so a lot of my childhood was he would do something great for us, but we would be reminded. Like, okay. My mom never did that.

[00:37:34]

Do you think why do you think he did that?

[00:37:40]

I I think he I I think he just wanted us. You know what I really think, and and this is something I've dived into in my adult life is I felt like he was always trying to compete with my mother because she she always did right by us. And but what he doesn't know is we never we weren't thanking her either.

[00:38:06]

Do you think maybe he was dealing with his own guilt? I do. He felt extremely upset.

[00:38:13]

Conversation later on in my adult life, and he says he regrets cheating on my mom. And, you know, I I do. I feel like that he he he has his own demons that he, deals with, and I think that it is his guilt. Yeah. He did the right things, but, ultimately, I think at that age, he he just wanted us to tell him how great he was.

[00:38:35]

I thought, maybe he didn't feel like he was great.

[00:38:39]

Well, I'm sure he, I mean, all the clues are there. I mean, he built a house. Right?

[00:38:47]

He wanted to be in our life. He built a nice house. He did his best. He he, you know, he he he worked as a manager at a swimming pool in the summertime, and he took us on vacation every summer to Myrtle Beach with that money every summer. So he he tried.

[00:39:09]

It's just he always wanted to thank you that we never gave him. I mean, I'm a kid. You know? Like, I have 1 parent who gives me the world with with not ever thinking about it, and I have another parent who is trying, and and we're not giving the thank you to. I'm keeping tabs.

[00:39:27]

He's keeping tabs. One's not, and 1 is. You know? What am I supposed to do? My I don't know.

[00:39:32]

My mom doesn't keep tabs, but he is obviously keeping tabs. It's we're we're beyond grateful. Right? I had a decent childhood. I'm not gonna say I didn't, but it was always like he's always trying to compete with my mom.

[00:39:46]

And because my mom took us on vacations every year and, you know, to, like, Mexico and Cancun and and Disney World, and and it was always like he was trying to compete. And my mom never, like, shoved it in his face, but he would always shove it back. Like, oh, I'll pay child support. You know, I'll take the kids on vacation every summer. Like, it was always something like that.

[00:40:11]

You know? It was always it was always, you know, now that I'm older, I'm like, man, maybe I should have said thank you more. I I don't know. I was a kid. I didn't know any better.

[00:40:20]

I just thought it's what dads do.

[00:40:25]

Shit.

[00:40:29]

What's your relationship like with him now? He's dying of drugs. I've spent my whole adult life fighting drugs, and, I'm losing my dad to it. It's a nonexistent relationship. I broke it off.

[00:40:51]

What kind of drugs?

[00:40:52]

Heroin, meth, Fentanyl, cocaine, dulotids, anything that's a drug that will get you high.

[00:41:01]

How did that happen? When I

[00:41:04]

was 14, he fell off a ladder, 20, 30 foot ladder, changing a light bulb, like a floodlight, and, went to a doctor in a town in our county called Oceana. It's, nickname, Oxiana. He had a doctor who was prescribing OxyContins like crazy. I I guess he's in federal prison now, but he got addicted to oxycodones. Wait.

[00:41:29]

He got addicted to Fentanyl patches for his back, and then it went to Oxycodones. So and I think my dad's always fought depression too. A lot of times as kids, he would he'd sleep all day while we were with him. We figured maybe he's just tired. Right?

[00:41:46]

He was a volunteer firefighter. He'd get called out in the middle of the night, all that. And, but now that I'm older, I know what depression is. He definitely had depression. I think he battled his own demons every day, and, ultimately, they got the best of him.

[00:42:08]

You know, you talk a lot about the breakfast this morning, but a great prayer. To tell you're a Christian, with very strong faith. Have you ever tried forgiveness?

[00:42:29]

I have. So I attempted to save his life. Medical when I got out of law enforcement, so I found out that he was on drugs. Right? So Thanksgiving 28 2018.

[00:42:51]

We're back home. We're in West Virginia. Met my mom's house. And my mom lives in a whole another city, whole another county now at this point. Right?

[00:42:58]

She moved to bigger town of Beckley, West Virginia. It's got, like, 30,000 people in it. So right outside of Charleston, West Virginia, about 30 minutes away. She don't even live near him anymore. So and she got remarried and all that in my adult life, but we went to visit him, me and my brother.

[00:43:20]

My brother has a lot of resentment towards him. He's not he's not alive in my brother's mind. My brother completely shut him off. My brother had warned me several times, my older brother, several times to be careful, and, my brother was mad that he was on drugs.

[00:43:42]

Be careful in what way?

[00:43:44]

Like, he's toxic. Manipulation. Manipulation. He's he's gonna put women in front of you. Like, be careful with him.

[00:43:54]

What do you mean he's gonna put women in front

[00:43:56]

of you? If I have an argument with my stepmom remember, he had an argument with my stepmom at 12 years old, 13, and was put in handcuffs. My dad called the police on him and had a police officer put him in handcuffs. So I think my brother's always had resentment for that. It's terrifying at 13 years old.

[00:44:16]

Mhmm. Hell, it's terrifying at 9 watching your brother get arrested by by your dad. That was traumatizing. And then finally, my mom, like, rushed home and and fixed the issue. But so so my brother's always had some sort of resentment towards him.

[00:44:32]

So my brother's like, we have found we had heard that my dad got on drugs, like, hard drugs in 2018 because he was, well, he was on drugs, met this chick, got on drugs, got got away from this chick, and got sober. 2016, 2017. My my younger sister was in high school, so and her mother, my stepmom that we had issues with, had cheated on my dad and left my dad. So my dad was trying to raise this high school girl on his own. He did a good job, but after she graduated, he met this other lady named Melissa.

[00:45:15]

And Melissa comes from trash. She she was an addict, and she got him hooked back on drugs. So my brother wanted to drive down to confront him about all this, see if he actually is on drugs. This is on Black Friday, day after Thanksgiving. So so me and my brother, we drive down.

[00:45:38]

Knock on the door, Melissa answers. She's high as a kite. Like, hey. Is is my brother says, hey. Is Jim here?

[00:45:45]

It's my dad's name. She's like, yeah. Let me go get him. He's downstairs sleeping. I'm like, it's 7 o'clock, like, in the afternoon.

[00:45:53]

Like, what do you mean he's sleeping? Whatever. He's old. Maybe he went to bed. He comes up the stairs, and it's the first time in my life I've ever seen my dad.

[00:46:02]

So my dad never didn't drink when we grow up, and I hardly ever heard him cuss. I will say that. But for the first time in my life, I saw my dad physically, but I didn't know who my dad was. He was so high. And he invited us in, and my brother's like, hey.

[00:46:27]

You're high right now. What are you talking about? And they get into a heated discussion. My dad gets livid. Somebody that is on drugs, whether I think at the time, it was just I think cocaine and oxycodones is all he was on at that time.

[00:46:42]

Because he he he was on 4 DUIs for, driving while impaired from, not alcohol, but but narcotics. So he'd already been arrested for, like, 3 or 4 DUIs for this. So we were my brother was attempting to try to help him, but it went it went south. My dad filled with rage, and he took off running back downstairs, and I knew that's where he kept his revolver. I immediately grabbed my brother, and we ran out the house, ran down the stairs.

[00:47:15]

It's, like, 15 stairs. I run-in my truck, open my door, and I go to get my gun out. I'm like, he's gonna kill us. He is going to kill us. And, man, he comes running out, and I I never saw the gun.

[00:47:28]

I don't think I saw the gun. Everything was happening so fast, but the rage that he had. Sean, I I went out that driveway at probably 50, 60 miles an hour. I thought he was gonna kill us. I thought he was gonna kill us.

[00:47:42]

And then the whole 30, 40 minute drive home, me and my brother didn't talk. Got back to my mom's house, and everybody was already in bed at this point. And, man, I drank all night. I cried my eyes out. I went on his Facebook page, found photos of when we were younger.

[00:48:01]

I just lost it. I had a mental breakdown. That's the first time I ever saw him high. And, that was the biggest start of that was the start of my downfall. That was it.

[00:48:13]

That's what set the tone for the next several years of my life and what I was about to go through. So, no, I I have forgiven him once, and, I almost died from somebody else's drug addiction. I almost lost my family because somebody else's drug addiction, and I refuse to lose my family, or take my life from depression, or die from somebody else's drug addiction. I won't let it happen. I won't let it happen.

[00:48:46]

God got me once. God got me twice, but never again. No. No. No.

[00:48:54]

No. Your toxicity that you bring to the table, my childhood that you brought to the table, I'm not gonna let it flow into my family. I'm gonna protect my family. Yeah. And my wife is so sweet, Sean.

[00:49:06]

She she tries, and, you know, she's because she saw my dad before he was on drugs. You know? We got married in, beginning of 2012, and we only knew each other for, like, 30 days. We were married almost 13 years. And we'll we'll get to that.

[00:49:23]

That's a whole that's a whole another story, but, you know, she has always tried to because she's she's she remembers him. Right? She remembers who Jim Cook was before drugs. I mean and, and but now it's like, I I don't even remember who that person was. I don't remember.

[00:49:45]

I don't remember who he was because his his addiction has been so bad on me that it's hard for me to even see the good anymore.

[00:49:59]

Maybe there isn't

[00:50:00]

any. Sean, I don't think so.

[00:50:03]

You know, the only reason I was asking about forgiveness is, I've come to learn that it's for you, not for the person you're forgiving. Yeah. You know, I'd, I learned this from I interviewed this guy, Victor Marks. Yeah. And, it is without a doubt the most traumatizing childhood I have ever heard.

[00:50:40]

I mean, it is his dad made him shoot, kill a man, and shove him in a hole. That's horrible. Yeah. And, and that's that's how I grew up. And and so he talks a lot about forgiveness.

[00:50:59]

He's forgiven his dad. And, Yeah. And he called me up once. He called me. I had back in my tactical training days, there was this well known trainer.

[00:51:13]

I won't say any names because I've forgiven him. But, he sued me and tried to take tried to take everything when I had not much to begin with. But I was worried my home was gonna go. I was worried my wife was gonna go, and he he just wouldn't stop with the lawsuits. And, until we were able to prove that the whole case was a phony case and that he was gonna have to repay me all of my legal fees, which completely broke me now.

[00:52:00]

And, and, and so when he found that out, he quit suing me and and whatever. This is I'm just kinda giving you the context. I didn't have the money to go back after him and continue the lawsuit. But and so that just honestly, that's why I left the tactical industry. I was like, you know what?

[00:52:23]

Fuck this, man. I'm out.

[00:52:25]

Yeah. Who blames you? It's hard to trust people

[00:52:27]

after that. But I carried this rage with me forever. And this this is just, like, 1 example, but I'm telling you this because Victor Marx is who taught me forgiveness, and and and then I applied it to all these different aspects of my life to all these situations that I've been in with, you know, from military shit to agency shit to business stuff to friends, family. But this was the first this was the first time I that it actually sunk in. And and the reason I'm bringing it up is I can see the rage.

[00:53:00]

I can see it on you. And, I'm not I'm not comparing stories. This is so much more insignificant than what you're talking about. But but he said, he said he's friends with the person that sued me and said that they wanted me to forgive him. And I said, I are you fucking calling me to ask me to forgive somebody because they're worried that my growth is it's a different ball game than it was 10 years ago.

[00:53:42]

Yeah. Yeah. You know? Yeah.

[00:53:44]

Now We're way different playing field.

[00:53:45]

They ran a whole smear campaign on me and everything, and I was like, are you asking me to fucking forgive somebody who, like, tried to take everything from me? Smeared my name, lied about my service, like, wanted to take it all Yeah. And leave me in a fucking ditch because he's worried that I'm gonna I'm gonna do vengeance. And he said, yeah. And I was like, it's real hard to tell you no knowing what you've been through Yeah.

[00:54:23]

And that you've found forgiveness. And, I told him I would. I told him I never wanted to see him again. He wanted to talk to me. I said, we don't need to talk.

[00:54:34]

I said, you can tell him I forgive him, and you can tell him that I'm not gonna do vengeance on him. I'm above that shit. Man, just like fucking saying it to Victor Probably felt good.

[00:54:50]

Dude, it was like

[00:54:51]

because every time that name got brought up, every time that name got brought up, it would just fucking trigger rage. Yeah. And then and and and multiple people, you could you could insert into that, oh, I hear this person's name. I feel rage. But that was the first time I learned it, and it was like it was like being let out of prison, man.

[00:55:15]

Like, it just it was like, this shit doesn't bother me anymore. I dropped it. I'm never gonna talk to him again. I'm never gonna be around him again, at least if I can help it, but it doesn't affect me anymore, man. I don't live in that prison of rage.

[00:55:32]

Yeah. And I just hope that you can find that

[00:55:36]

because it's free. And I am finding it. Right? Because if I'm gonna say that I'm a Christian, I need to act like a Christian. And and it's hard, but parts of me is is trying.

[00:55:58]

And, you know, we'll get to the parts of of the why that I am the way that I am right now in this moment. And and you're gonna be like, wow. I kinda understand because I I tried so hard. And

[00:56:24]

Blake, I'm not saying I don't understand.

[00:56:26]

Oh, I know you understand because you have your own trauma with it.

[00:56:29]

I just want you to I think you're a really good person.

[00:56:34]

I appreciate that.

[00:56:35]

Just want you to be free. And that's the only reason I'm bringing it up.

[00:56:39]

And and that's what I need to work on because, again, I wanna be free of somebody else's addiction. Because if I don't forgive him, then I'm I'm I'm just as as I'm addicted to to hate towards him. Like, he's addicted to drugs. And until I can forgive him, I can let that go. You know?

[00:56:59]

And you're right, man. I thought I forgave him, but I don't feel it now that I'm talking about it. I don't feel that a true I might have told people we have forgive him, but now that now that I'm here in this moment and we're talking about it because I don't really talk about it often. I'll be honest with you. I don't talk about it at all.

[00:57:19]

I talk about it with my wife. My wife brings it up, I immediately go to shutdown mode. I would rather be angry and start an argument and piss her off than to than to have her try to talk talk about it.

[00:57:33]

You know? And the other thing is if you can take emotion out of this situation and actually look at it from a 30,000 foot view and just observe, Look at what he's what he's created for himself. Yeah. You know? I think a

[00:57:55]

part of me is I just love him, and I'm and I'm I hate that my my niece doesn't get to experience a grandfather. I hate that my son doesn't get to experience experience that. And, to be honest with you, man, I really just miss having a dad. It's truly what it goes down to. It's just missing.

[00:58:18]

And I've spent my whole adult career fighting evil and fighting drugs. I only need to lose him to drugs. You know? That's hard. I said I have voice mails of it's when he was trying to to to do better.

[00:58:37]

Hey, son. I just wanna hear from you. I'm trying. And I just sent him a voice mail. You know?

[00:58:44]

And so I have a lot of guilt for that, dude. Like, I just, maybe I coulda done better, and maybe I failed him. Maybe he did addiction because I failed him. You know? Maybe he's addicted because I wasn't there for him, or I didn't say thank you, or I didn't give him, what he was looking for.

[00:59:06]

You know? That's that's a tough pill to swallow, and it eats in me every day. Because I do, man. I'm missing. Used to call me a shadow boy.

[00:59:17]

There's no shadow anymore. And, man, that fucking hurts. It hurts. 35 years old, man, and and the the little boy inside of me still still misses, you know, misses his dad. When everybody else gave up, I still tried.

[00:59:41]

Man, I got burned. I got burned. I almost lost everything. So I'm trying. I really am.

[00:59:53]

Maybe I need to go to therapy.

[00:59:54]

You know? Don't give up, man.

[00:59:56]

I'm not. I'm not. I just need to take a break and figure realize that I can't fix everything right now. You know? When I was in the gang unit, we were an easy button.

[01:00:08]

Hey, man. Go go fix this gang unit. Fix this. I'm used to being an easy button fixing it right now, and, but those right now's were only temporary fixes. Somebody else is gonna come in and take that guy's spot, or somebody else is gonna sell dope and guns out the house.

[01:00:26]

Maybe that's what I'm trying to do. I'm trying to fix it right now. Right? And, I'm getting no results because you don't you can't fix a can't fix a 67 year old man or 65 year old man that's been addicted to drugs for

[01:00:42]

the last 8 years. You can't fix anything on anybody if they don't wanna fix it themselves.

[01:00:48]

That's the problem is he doesn't want it. He just doesn't want it. And I lied. I think a part I think a part of him, and I got to experience that. Right?

[01:01:07]

So 2,004 I met Kyle, I was teaching on my own. I have my own company, Black Flag Solutions. Wanna train SWAT teams. Guys just didn't get the training that we had. Well, I love law enforcement, man.

[01:01:23]

I love law enforcement so much, and I think the number 1 thing they lack is training. I was training people for free. Departments won't spend the money. My god, they'll go spend $20,000 to get new pencils that say, you know, Fayetteville police department. And not that Fayetteville did this.

[01:01:39]

It's just where I came from, but they won't put money towards training. It's it's mind blowing. So I was like, I I have to do something.

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[01:03:18]

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[01:04:23]

And my wife, it it was asking me to go do something because I was an alcoholic. So I was training a team 1 day, and, my aunt Judy calls me, my dad's sister. And says, hey, Blake. Do I have a second? I'm like, damn.

[01:04:44]

She about to tell me my dad's dead. I've been waiting on that phone call every day. I have my phone in my hand all the time because I'm waiting on the call. I'm like, is he alive? She said, yeah.

[01:04:56]

He's alive. I said, okay. Well, what's going on? Why are you calling me? I'm in the middle of training.

[01:05:02]

She said, he's dying. He's he's laying in the bed at his house with his with Melissa, his stepmom, and she's a really bad drug addict too. And she was so concerned that he's dying that she called the police for help. Man, where I grew up, those those boys don't know how to be cops, and we'll get into that. It's they they failed me.

[01:05:27]

So I said, hey. I said, what do you mean? They said, well, he walked in. They saw needles and everything everywhere. I'm saying, they they try to do a, what do they call it?

[01:05:39]

Like a, like, a self check, like a hygiene check or whatever on a on a purse well-being check. I said, he's on probation for hitting 4 cop cars on the side of the road high, but he's on, like, a probation. Not in jail, but on probation. I'm like, do is there needles in the house? Yeah.

[01:05:58]

Yeah. They said they saw needles. Okay? They need to take him to jail, get him out of the environment. Well, the it was the police chief.

[01:06:08]

There's only, like, 3 people in that apartment. Well, they said there's nothing they can do. I'm like, what are you talking about? He's a drug addict. Syringes everywhere.

[01:06:17]

He's on probation. It's drug paraphernalia. I don't care what it is. I don't care if it's 1 orange cap. Take him to jail, because if he goes to jail, they won't take him.

[01:06:27]

They'll make him go to the hospital before they can intake him. So they'll force him to get medical. They're like, oh, Blake, there's they said there's nothing they can do. I'm livid. Like, what do you mean there's nothing they can do?

[01:06:39]

That's your job. You just don't know what to do is the problem. You don't know how to be a cop is the problem. So I'm like, I know he's a probation officer. So I call him up.

[01:06:51]

I'm like, hey. My dad's dying. There's drug paraphernalia everywhere. The police chief went in there, saw it. Nothing they can do.

[01:07:00]

I'm like, can you go check on him tomorrow? He said, yeah. Went and checked on him, found all the needles, revoked his probation, took him in at his office. My dad calls me. He's like, mate, he's high as high as kite.

[01:07:18]

I'm like, hey, dad. He goes, Blake, you're gonna have to you have to help me. That's why they'll listen to you. I'm like, hey, man. You're going to jail.

[01:07:25]

I don't wanna go to jail. I'm like, hey, man. You're going to jail. Like, I can't keep doing this with you. You're going to jail.

[01:07:37]

So hang your phone up, and I have a breakdown. And I'm like, oh my god. Like, if he goes to jail, he's gonna get bare minimum care. He's gonna die. So I call I call him back.

[01:07:49]

Hey. I'm like, he can he go get so he's dying. He needs real medical help. Can we convince him to go to the hospital? Then he can go back on probation at at the house or whatever.

[01:08:01]

But let's see what's wrong with him. You see, yeah, we'll do that. Took him to the hospital, man. He was there at 2 hours. They lifelined him to some hospital on Roanoke.

[01:08:12]

Next day, he's having open heart surgery. He has done so much heroin and Fentanyl that he has vegetation on his heart. That he has what? Vegetation. What does that even mean?

[01:08:24]

Mold. Because drug addicts use back, They don't use they use faucet water with bacteria. So he had shot up so much that the bacteria in the water had went to his valve and started creating mold. That's how much heroin he was doing. Holy shit.

[01:08:46]

He had open heart surgery. He dies in surgery. They bring him back to life. They give him a second chance at life. Doctor calls me and say, hey.

[01:08:59]

He's got, like, less than 5% chance to live. I'm like because I'd had a conversation with him. I had a conversation with him afterwards. They're like, he he'll wake up, blah blah blah, but, like, we're not sure. And he was mumbling.

[01:09:16]

He's like, all I heard was cremate me and spread my ashes on the hill. The hill was his house was built on a slope, and that was the hill that's the hill that we played on as kids, and that's all I heard. And I was like, oh my god. He's gonna die. Like, Nicole, he's gonna die.

[01:09:34]

And, dude dude made a miracle just like, it was a miracle. He woke up the next day, infection, no infection. Vitals were good. Everything was good. So I told my wife.

[01:09:51]

I said, this is my opportunity. This is January of 2023. It's my opportunity, honey, to save him. I financially can do it. I'm medically retired.

[01:10:02]

I have the time. I have to go save him. So I packed some bags, went to the hospital, walked in. Didn't even know who he was. He's got no teeth.

[01:10:14]

He's weighing at maybe a buck 30. He's 5 510, 511, pale as can be. Looks like he's 90 some years old. They barely recognize him. He's talking to me, and I'm I'm talking to him, and, man, I stayed there.

[01:10:34]

I slept in my car, my truck, and I I slept with the hospital. And my wife has said, hey. He's agreed to let me help him. She said, alright. Like, we have we have you know, my stepmom tried to visit him, Melissa.

[01:10:49]

She was kicked out of the hospital for doing heroin in the bathroom. So, like, hey. She's got to go. She's living in his house. She's got to go.

[01:11:01]

So what I did is I came up with a strategy, is I created a renter's document and had my dad sign it. And I paid him a dollar a month as a renter to allow me access into the house. Because if not, I'm just breaking into the house, and she could call the police on me. But she can't no more because I have an actual contract signed by Jim Cook that I pay him a dollar a month for my room downstairs in the basement. So I can kick the door in, do whatever I want to to the house.

[01:11:32]

I'm a renter. If I break something, I just gotta pay the landlord, and that's him. Her name's not on the house, just his. I said, man, I went down to this house. I was like, hey.

[01:11:44]

Here's a contract, and I'm staying here. She's like, I'm out. I'm leaving. I'm like, cool. That was easy.

[01:11:50]

She gives me the keys. She calls some drugs, a drug addict, pick her up. I go in the house. Sean, I've been into thousands of dough palaces, users, dealers, just just disgusting people in general. The moment I walked in, I threw up.

[01:12:08]

The smell. The dog was overdosing also, had withdrawals, not overdosing, had withdrawals from dope and had diarrhea everywhere. There was a mop bucket full of water, diarrhea water, where she had tried to clean it up, but it's just sitting there for days. Diarrhea all over everything. The dog at 1 point had been chained to something in the door in a in a back bedroom and with carpet, and there was just shit and pee everywhere.

[01:12:41]

And I found out that the dog had been chewing on syringes, and it was getting high. And they haven't been using there because she'd been staying with somebody else. He's been in the hospital, so the dog's having withdrawals. I'm like, man, I gotta clean this house. I gotta clean this house.

[01:13:00]

I spent 1,000. My childhood best friend and my cousin on my dad's side, name's Josh Lambo, phenomenal human, Knew I was in town. I was actually staying with him, but I couldn't stay in the house. I would I'd get sick. I'm I'm on my hands and knees.

[01:13:19]

Spent 100 of dollars on cleanup stuff. I'm, like, shot back in diarrhea, ripping up carpet. He shows up and helps me clean this whole house. Most disgusting house I've ever been in, and we had it spotless. And she was gone.

[01:13:36]

I was I was still visiting my dad. I was making the house. I fixed the steps. I fixed I went and bought him a bed to to bring upstairs. I didn't want him sleeping on a dirty mattress.

[01:13:49]

We got him brand new everything. And she sorry. I'm having some getting kind of emotional. So I leave to go back home. This was about a month later.

[01:14:14]

See my family, do some things. My dad's still in the hospital. They release him. I get home on a Friday. They released him that same Friday.

[01:14:23]

They weren't supposed to. They weren't supposed to recently release him till the following weekend. I was gonna pick him up. See, it somehow convinced somebody something. Something happened where they released him.

[01:14:35]

So I went home. I was home, and my aunt Judy calls me and says, hey. They released your dad. I'm like, oh my god. I'm not there.

[01:14:43]

What do you mean? I can't watch him. Like, he's gonna go back. He gets home that Friday night, drops him off. He gets home immediately.

[01:14:54]

He had been in contact with my stepmom since he'd been in the hospital. He somehow got a cell phone and everything and was able to get in contact with her. We didn't think they had any contact. I thought I had fixed that problem. He gets home, and she pulls up maybe 10 minutes later, the neighbor says.

[01:15:13]

About 30 minutes later, my dad's drug dealer, Tammy. I figured out my dad's drug dealer. I've I got addresses, Sean, cars, mama's house, houses they were storing dope in. I had times of houses. I dedicated the whole month also to following her around everywhere.

[01:15:32]

I had built a case for the sheriff's office of Wyoming County. Everything they need. Tried to give it to their dope cop, crickets. Tried to give it to the sheriff, crickets. They wanted me out of that county so bad because I was forcing them to do a job they didn't know how to do, and I was calling them out on it.

[01:15:53]

I have everything for you because their excuse was is, you know, we don't have enough information on her. Cool. Stand by. Boom. Here's everything.

[01:16:02]

Phone numbers, license plates, houses, everything you need, her drop zones, the day that she gets her resupply, everything. I went to full straight detective mode again and got them everything in a big old folder, pictures. I took pictures of the cars, pictures of her, pictures of her mom, pictures of everybody, her dog. I had everything in there. They wouldn't touch it.

[01:16:25]

Wouldn't touch it. Didn't want nothing to do with it because that system down there is so corrupt. Where is this? It's in Wyoming County, West Virginia. It is the good old boy system.

[01:16:37]

Who pays the most money is in charge. I couldn't get help from nobody. I went to the sheriff's office, to the sheriff himself, who's known me since I was a child. I was told he's just a drug addict. I understand that, guys, but here is your number 1 drug dealer in the county.

[01:16:56]

This woman's not only serving him dope, but she is traveling from Pineville. So there's 4 towns in where I grew up. Pineville, Mullins, Bayleyville, and Oceana. She would come once a week and do a round in every little town and then go back home to Princeton. She didn't even live there.

[01:17:14]

She drove 30 minutes away. I gave them everything. I mean, they told me to fuck off. They didn't want nothing to do with it. They wanted me out of there so bad.

[01:17:26]

So that the night that they got home, my dad left with the drug dealer. The drug dealer came and picked him up. They came back home the next Saturday. Drug dealers stayed there a little bit. They went back to the drug dealer's house.

[01:17:40]

And everybody on that so the hill that I grew up on is was primarily of my whole family, and and the neighbors have known me since I was a kid. When I made when I tried to move in and made my stepmother leave, they them old women on that hill baked me brownies and cookies, and they were like, hey. Thank you so much because it has just gotten so bad. So they were calling me and and giving me updates, and I'm, like, trying to get home. I'm, like, I'm in I'm in North Carolina at this point, so I'm, like, man, I gotta figure out how to how to save my dad.

[01:18:11]

So I called my dad up. Now Sunday's came around. Sunday's here. I'm like, hey, dad. This is, like, Sunday night, 10 o'clock at night.

[01:18:19]

I'm like, what are you doing? The neighbors are calling me. You weren't supposed to leave the house. She's not even the Melissa is not even supposed to be there. The drug dealer's been up and down the driveway.

[01:18:30]

I was, dude, I was sending text messages out to deputies, to to police officers. She's there right now. This is the car. Nothing, man. Crickets.

[01:18:39]

So I'm like, I gotta get down there, dude. I gotta do something. So I'm like, hey. She's got to go. I've already contacted your probation officer.

[01:18:50]

They've already contacted your probation officer. Man, you're going to jail tomorrow. Like, you have to. It's not he thought I had some power. He's like, you need to fix this.

[01:19:01]

I'm like, dude, what do you mean I need to fix? There's nothing I can do. Only thing I'm trying to help you, I'm giving you a call right now telling you that your probation officer is showing up tomorrow. She needs to be out of the house. He's like, alright.

[01:19:14]

Alright. We'll figure it out. I'll figure it out. He had a call at 4 in the morning, from my dad's neighbor. She was a younger girl.

[01:19:26]

And Melissa would go down and ask for a cigarette and and and they pretty much just pestered her. She lived in the house that we grew up in. And I'd been trying to help them get Melissa out of there too and and trying to help fix some things around their house because my dad was on drugs and the house was falling apart and they were renters. And, she said she called and she says, Blake, Melissa called the cops on you. I'm like, how she called the cops on me?

[01:19:51]

I am literally 6 hours away. She's like, they lied. They said that you were laying down the street with a sniper rifle. I was like, well, I'm home. She goes, well, well, the police officer took her to the master's office, and she swore a domestic violence protective order out on you.

[01:20:13]

I'm like, what? And my dad's beeping in. I'm like, I gotta go. My dad's calling me. I answer the phone.

[01:20:22]

It's the last conversation I ever had with my father. He said, fuck you, you piece of shit. We took a DVPO out on you. I'm a go do my time in jail, and there ain't shit you can do. You're a piece piece of shit worthless son.

[01:20:37]

Hung the phone up. So I'm like, what is going on? Now I have a DVPO taken out on me. That's if found guilty of that, that's worse than being a convicted felon. So I'm like, immediately went into, like, I gotta go stash my gun somewhere else.

[01:20:58]

Because then first thing they do when they serve you that is they take your guns. But, luckily, I was 4 states away, and there's no communication with that crappy agency there. They didn't really they don't even know how to handle that properly. Thank god. It's like the the 1 mess up where I took advantage of.

[01:21:15]

She didn't have my address, so nobody could serve me anything. These dudes are calling me, asking me to come turn myself in. I'm like, dude, I don't know what you're talking about. See you later, alligator. So I got up with an attorney who was a friend of mine, Tim Lapartis, who so my dad so sorry.

[01:21:33]

I'm skipping. That Monday morning, my dad got arrested from probation. They took him to the courthouse. Some people in the courthouse know who I am and went to talk to him and said, Jim, you have to drop this. He he is a good person.

[01:21:49]

He trains law enforcement. He's not gonna be able to do his job. My dad said, fuck that piece of shit. Didn't drop it. So I got up with Tim LaParras, who's was my dad's really good friend growing up, who's an attorney there, represented me for free.

[01:22:08]

He helped me figure out a solution out. So I did some smart things while my dad was in the hospital. Right? Because he needed my help. Nobody else could help him except for me.

[01:22:18]

I made him sign his Social Security checks over to my house. All of his retirement money went to my mailbox in North Carolina, so she didn't have access to it anymore. And if he did that, I would buy him dinner while he was in the hospital. I'd help take care of him. I clean his house, do whatever he needed me to do.

[01:22:40]

Well, he did all this, and I was like, okay. I have an advantage here. She won't get any money for dope. It's end of the month. She's not getting any money for dope, and she needs a fix.

[01:22:56]

So I called her up. I said, hey. Tim LaParriss was like, hey. Let's let's offer something. I said, alright.

[01:23:02]

I was like, $450. I don't know. I came up with a number. It was 4.50. And I said, hey.

[01:23:09]

If you drop this, I'll pay $450, and every month, I'll mail my dad's checks to you so you can cash them. Because the little fast check general store, grocery store in our hometown was allowing her, knowing that my dad's in jail or in a hospital, sign the back of his checks and cash them and then go buy dope with them. So but they would get, like, a 10% of the of the whatever, 3%, whatever. They were making money. They didn't care.

[01:23:41]

So they allowed her to to fraudulently sign his checks and cash them. The whole town is crazy. So she says she goes, yeah. We could do that. I said, look.

[01:23:58]

Because it's 1,000 of dollars in his retirement, Social Security. I'm like, I don't care what you do with the money. I'll mail it to you every month. Soon as I get it, I'll mail it overnight it. I'm panicking, Sean.

[01:24:10]

I ain't slept in 2 days because what if she gets up there and BS's and some female judge believes her and I get convicted? I'm done. I'm I mean, there's your guns are gone, everything. Mhmm. What am I gonna do?

[01:24:26]

It's all I know is that I'll run a gun. It's all I've done my whole adult life. She said, I'll do that under 1 condition. I said, what? You have to write an apology letter to your dad's drug dealer because she knows you've been following her.

[01:24:48]

Because I'd knocked on her door and asked her to stop selling my dad drugs and stuff. Pretty much terrorized her to run her away. I'm trying to save my dad's life. Didn't break the law. I didn't do anything that I wasn't supposed to.

[01:25:02]

I just made my presence known. I said, you want me to write a a an apology letter to my dad's drug dealer? She said, it's the only way that I'm gonna drop this. I was like, oh, man. Oh, man.

[01:25:21]

What do I do? I wrote a letter. I had a conversation with Kyle about this not too long ago. That letter was not her. That letter was to myself.

[01:25:32]

That was an apology to myself for acting the way that I had acted out of character, risking my family's future to do things that I shouldn't have been doing. So I wrote the letter, and I sent it to her, and they dropped it. It's the last conversation I ever had with my dad. Man, I'm sorry. So it's a little frustration there.

[01:25:59]

And I heard from him about about a week ago. He got out of jail. He spent a year in jail. He said, hey, Blake. I love you.

[01:26:09]

He didn't respond. Hey. I just wanna know you're okay. And then 2 days ago, I got a text. I blocked the number.

[01:26:17]

I'd appreciate you letting me know that you're okay. I said, I'm not going back to this. I'm not going back to this because after they dropped that DVPO and after the justice system and law enforcement that I've dedicated so much time, I trained their little SWAT team for free 15, 20 times because I wanted to give back to my community that I grew up in. I have a a small skill set. I have a passion for this.

[01:26:53]

I wanna help you. But when I asked for help of just doing your job, it was crickets. I was trying to do the right thing. I was so close in my mind of helping him, and all I needed was a little help from the wall to do their job, and they felt me completely. So after they dropped that, I said, man, fuck law enforcement.

[01:27:24]

Fuck this community. And I went straight alcoholic, man. I drink every day, all day. Hate. Pushed my family away, passing out drunk in my backyard by a fire.

[01:27:40]

And I finally realized that I'm never gonna get over this, and the only way to get over this is to take my life. That was in April. I knew my son's birthday was May 22nd. I said, man, I can't take my life before his birthday. I can't take that from him.

[01:28:05]

And at the time, I'm not thinking straight. Right? Whether I take it before or after, still gonna ruin his birthday. Right? But I was trying to put his feelings first somehow and say, I'm gonna wait.

[01:28:18]

So that was about 2 weeks when I started really deciding that, you know, I'm dragging my family through the mud. I'm feeling like this. I can't. I need to set them free. I am failed I am I am dead inside from my dad's addiction, because I did.

[01:28:39]

I tried. I tried to save him, and I failed. I failed miserably, and I thought that I actually had a chance to save him. And I was taking it out on my family by drinking, pushing them away, staying on my phone. So I was like, hey, man.

[01:29:00]

It's time to prepare things for when you're gone. So first thing, bills. Made sure everything was on auto draft on 1 card. Boom. Paperwork for the house, for the cars.

[01:29:25]

Everything went in my safe, labeled to my wife. I said to my wife, here are the documents. Everything. Life insurance, whatever. Everything that was important for my afterlife to to help her have have somewhat of a smooth transition, in my opinion, was there.

[01:29:50]

May 22nd came. We were in Tennessee. Does she know this? She knows it now. I shared this story at our at our Blueberry couples camp last year.

[01:29:59]

It's the first time that anybody's ever heard it. I hold that in for months before I ever spoke about it out loud. And, May 22nd came. We were in Tennessee, visited my brother, had my son's birthday with my family. We came back home.

[01:30:19]

Got home. I texted Kyle. So I talked to Kyle previously on social media. When I was first went to help my dad, and then I had to drive home to get resupply, His this show gave me hope. I listened to his episode.

[01:30:41]

I don't listen to I don't listen. I'm not real big into listening to people's podcasts and stuff. If I listen to a podcast, it's like the legends of the old west, Billy the Kid, things like that. That's what I really like. But I was like, man, I need something that's I'm tired of listening to music.

[01:30:55]

I don't wanna listen to music. I tried listening to a couple other peoples, but I was just not mentally there. And there was something about Kyle's podcast. I talked to him a few times on Instagram, maybe 1 or 2 times. Remember, I was transitioning from Glocks to cigs.

[01:31:08]

I knew that he had just started shooting cigs. I was asking him some questions, small Instagram talk. And I listened to the podcast, and I heard his story. Right? And I was seeing I'm getting chills, man.

[01:31:20]

And And I was seeing what he was doing, and I thought, oh my god. He was he was addicted a little bit. Right? Look at him now. I can save my dad.

[01:31:30]

There's hope that people can be addicted and be saved. Because in my whole law enforcement career, it was just drug addicts dying all the time, overdosing. It was horrible. But now there's 1 positive story of somebody that has overcame this. I can help my dad, and that's what gave me the motivation to to do what I tried to do on those 2 or 3 months that I was there.

[01:31:52]

So at the time, I was training tactical teams through the colleges. So North Carolina, how that works is a college can because there's only, like, for, like, training wise. You know? A college can host a course, have me come as in as an instructor. It's free to law enforcement officers, and then the state reimbursed the college for paying me.

[01:32:16]

It's a great system. So I was doing that through the colleges. And I was like, man, I love I still love the law enforcement community. Even though I was mad at the certain group that failed to do their job, I love cops, man. I think I I think what they do every day is courageous.

[01:32:35]

And I was like, man, I'm gonna reach out to this guy. I'm a give I'm gonna give him the advice on how to teach cops through the colleges. If they're gonna get any training, it might as well be by somebody like him. It you because there's so many fake trainers out there. Mhmm.

[01:32:55]

Right? He's gotta be legit. He seems genuine. I reached out to him May 23rd and said, hey, man. Do you have time for a quick phone call?

[01:33:08]

He was like, sent me a picture. I still have it. It was a, it was weights, and he's like, hey. I'm working out. I'll call you in a little bit.

[01:33:16]

Or can I call you in a little bit? I was like, yeah, man. Absolutely. The day came. No phone call.

[01:33:23]

May 24th came. Didn't know this at the time. I didn't even know this until when I talked about it at the couple's camp. May 24, 2012 is the day I got blown up. May 24, 2023 is the day that I drove my truck.

[01:33:41]

My service dog goes everywhere with me. I put her in a kennel and kissed her, and, I drove to Marshall's parking lot in Wilmington, parked at the very end, and I rolled all my windows down. I wanted somebody to hear the gunshot, and I wanted somebody to call the police. I wanted somebody to find me before the birds come in and eat me away. Down my head on the steering wheel, and I said, god, please forgive me.

[01:34:13]

I'm in pain. I don't wanna go to hell. Please don't send me to hell for this. I'm just hurting. And, I said amen.

[01:34:25]

And, I went to grab the gun. My hand grabs the gun. My phone rings. I remember the last 2 digits of this number, 82. This last 2 digits, Kyle's phone number because I remembered he was in the 82nd.

[01:34:49]

It was Kyle calling me. As I had my hand on the gun grabbing it, he was calling me back. Squeaky wheel gets the grease. My phone made a noise. I grabbed my phone.

[01:35:14]

I am so grateful for that phone call. Man, I am so grateful for that phone call because the things I would have missed out on in life, Man, it just wasn't that bad. So a big beautiful man called me. I answered the phone, said hello, and, he said, hey, man. Hey, man.

[01:35:48]

Sorry I didn't call you back yesterday. I said, hey, man. You're calling to have a great time. You're calling to have a great time. I'm like, he said, you're busy?

[01:35:58]

I'm like, nope. No. I'm not, man. He goes, hey, Yeah. Yeah.

[01:36:07]

I I got your message. I was like, yeah. Started talking to him about the colleges. He's like, Yeah, man. That that sounds great.

[01:36:15]

That sounds great. He goes, hey. Do you know anybody that, I just had a cancelation in my protect your mindset course. Do you know anybody that you used to work with from on on the team that would wanna come and take it? I'm like, I don't know anybody right now.

[01:36:29]

Like, I'm in the middle of something. Like, I might know I don't. He goes, oh, alright. You wanna come take it? I said, you want me to come take your course?

[01:36:42]

No, bro. I'm about to I'm about to kill myself right now. You said that? No. No.

[01:36:45]

No. No. I didn't tell him. He didn't know this until months later till he heard it at the couple's camp. I'm like, dude, in my mind, I'm like, bro, I'm about to kill myself.

[01:36:55]

I'm not gonna tell you, yes. But the other half of me was like, gave me a little hope, gave me something to look forward to. Another I love CQB, man. I love shooting. I love this industry.

[01:37:12]

I tell you. I was like, yeah, man. I'll come take that course, dude. I'm gonna phone up, Sean. I was so excited.

[01:37:19]

I was like, oh my god, man. I'm gonna go take this dude's course. I've I've seen the videos. We had a mutual friend that had taken the course a month or 2 prior that was, like, it's the greatest course ever. I said, man, I gotta go try it out.

[01:37:35]

And, man, I'd sold all my stuff. Right? I didn't really have much. I was so mad at law enforcement. I was selling all my all my things, giving it away.

[01:37:44]

I drove over to OP Tactical in Raleigh. It's, like, 1 of the best, like, tactical stores. They have all the good name brand stuff. Man, I dropped a bunch of money. Got belts, got all this stuff.

[01:37:54]

I was like, man, I'm excited. I'm like, holy shit. I haven't felt like this since months and showed up to the course. I bought all that stuff on Friday. Of course was Saturday Sunday.

[01:38:08]

Showed up to the course Saturday morning, and I'm sitting in the back, and we're introducing ourselves and introduced myself on calls of care. You know? Blake's here. Blake has his own training company too, so it's it's it's cool to have him here. And I'm like, like, alright.

[01:38:28]

How y'all doing? I'm I'm truly a nobody, but how you doing? So an hour 45 minutes in this course, man, I do some demos with him. You know, he's showing the students corner fed, what 1 and 2 looks like, and I'm running reps with him. You know, maybe he just felt that I was capable of of helping him demo.

[01:38:50]

So after that, he's like, hey. Take this take these 6 students to do corner favor with them. I'm gonna take these other 6 and do center fit. I'm like, what are you talking about, dude? Like, I have a Delta, a former unit guy that's asking me to take 6 of his students that has entrusted in him with money that that he's trusting in me to to be able to teach them even this little bit of knowledge.

[01:39:27]

Gave me a little fire in my gut. Right? Nervous. What am I doing? I'm capable of doing this.

[01:39:32]

Why are you nervous? This is what you you're good at this. I'm like, but I can't believe it. I'm like, sure, dude. Yeah.

[01:39:40]

Whatever. Whatever you need. Roger that. So we go over there, and and then we're switching, and then spend the whole day I'm helping him teach. And then the next morning, 2nd day of the course, he said, hey.

[01:39:59]

I want you to run the first scenario with and then I want you to flow in with the students and kinda kinda help guide them a little bit if they get stuck. I'm like, yeah. Cool. Phenomenal course. So we're at the end of the course, and the students I'm in the back sitting down as a student, and these there's 12 students.

[01:40:20]

I'm, like, the 13th. And these students are given the pros and cons of the course, like, kinda like closing statements. Right? About every student is thanking Kyle, but thanking me for my knowledge. Everyone.

[01:40:36]

And I'm like, what is going on? I started feeling some self worth again. I started feeling like maybe I'm I'm worthy. Maybe I shouldn't die. Maybe there's a purpose for me here.

[01:40:56]

Because what really draw me into Kyle was as he started his course out as we're gonna talk about god, and if you don't like it, you can get out. I was like, dude, that's how I feel too. But, like, it's hard to to I'm in a bad spot right now. Right? So but the last student's like, yeah, Blake.

[01:41:15]

Thank you for everything. Thanks for your knowledge. Kyle's like, hey, man. You didn't notice this job interview, did you? I'm like, I got my own training company.

[01:41:24]

I'm just talking about job interview. I started my own training company. I was talking about, we're competitors. No. Not really.

[01:41:30]

But, you know, I'm like in my mind, I'm like, man, I I got my own training company. I'm not gonna come work for you. What are you talking about? And then we started talking at the end of that, and then saved my life. I've been with him ever since.

[01:41:47]

And that's that's the end of May, October 22, 2023, I was rebaptized because god gave me a second chance. He put the right people on my path to save my life, and I will spend the rest of my life honoring him. And that's what I'm gonna do because he gave me another opportunity, which I feel like I didn't deserve. He took something that the devil meant for evil, and he turned it to good, and he did it to save me. And had I met Kyle any sooner, I don't think we would have clicked the way we did.

[01:42:38]

I don't think Kyle was Kyle had just gotten back from his treatment that he needed to receive me into his life. Timing is everything, and I don't believe the day that I grabbed a gun and my phone went off, I don't believe in coincidences anymore. I believe in god's timing. I believe he is the power, and he will guide you in the direction that you need to be even when you feel like that you're carrying the load all by yourself. But guess what, brother?

[01:43:09]

You're not. He's carrying you, and he's carrying the load to help you get through it, and that's what he did. And that's how me and Kyle met. And we've been running and gunning ever since. He's my brother, man.

[01:43:21]

I love him more than anything in this world. I I I love that man and his family and Eric and his children. They are my family. And, I'm just grateful for the opportunity to even so I dropped my company. I prayed and prayed and prayed, man.

[01:43:41]

I was like, man, what do I do? This is I've always wanted to work for myself. And and then prayers, I kept you know, where 2 or more gather, there I am. I could do it by myself where we can partner up with Kyle as a team and use our platform to bring people closer to him. And that's what we're doing.

[01:44:13]

We're also teaching you to be men, but more importantly, we want you to be Christian men and women so the next generation sees what that looks like. Wow.

[01:44:30]

I definitely was not expecting to hear

[01:44:32]

that. Saved my life. I'm beyond grateful, man. I am the opportunities, man, Sean is is you know, I did it August last year. A couple months after I met Kyle, we got hooked up with Warren Perimeter.

[01:44:50]

We did this video shoot for him in Arizona. We're running around in Helos, and I remember sitting there hanging off the side of it. Kyle's to my right, 2 former, still team 6 guys on the on the back end. I'm like, what are you doing here? This is all god.

[01:45:14]

I'm just a cop. I'm just a at the end of the day, I'm just a cop. I have a former unit guy, and I have 2 former SEAL Team 6 guys behind me, and I'm the 4th man. God is good. When you submit to him, fully submit to him, after everything I just went through, here I am flying around on a on a on a little bird with with these guys.

[01:45:52]

And that was when I realized, man, this is all god. This is all god. Here I am. And here I am before you, Sean, on probably the most respected platform in the world, in my opinion. And I was just a cop.

[01:46:17]

God is great. He will put you where you need to be, whether it's 1 person or a 100000 or a1000000 that can be saved by this message, even if it's just 1 person, I am where I'm supposed to be on the day that I'm supposed to be here with the person that I'm supposed to be with. And I truly believe that.

[01:46:40]

I believe that too.

[01:46:50]

Powerful. Very. Wow.

[01:46:58]

That What did Kyle do when you he found out about that?

[01:47:11]

So my wife was the first time my wife ever heard about it.

[01:47:14]

That was the first time anybody had Anybody

[01:47:17]

had ever heard. Anybody at all. It was the 2nd night of the couple's week. Shit. Everybody was crying.

[01:47:26]

I was crying. My wife was crying. Wife was a little upset with me because she's a lot to him. Talking to me. I'm like, I wasn't thinking straight.

[01:47:36]

I was thinking that I was saving y'all from me is what I was thinking. I'm saving you from the monster. I swore when I married you, I promised you nobody would ever hurt you again, and I'm I'm saving you from from me. I'm no I'm not physically hurting her. I've never physically hurt excuse me.

[01:48:02]

Physically ever hurt my wife, but I was emotionally hurting her by just being an asshole, being a drunk. So I was gonna save my family. Does your son know? No.

[01:48:26]

He's going to now, isn't he?

[01:48:28]

Yeah. He listens to your podcast.

[01:48:30]

How are you gonna handle that?

[01:48:34]

Man, he's such a cool kid. He's so understanding. He is, he is just such a good son. And and we're gonna watch the episode together, and we're gonna have conversations. That's what I told him.

[01:49:03]

He asked, can I watch the episode? Yes. But not on your own. I'll watch it with you. Because I don't want him to hear that and think that I was giving up on them.

[01:49:21]

I wanted to protect them. I just wasn't thinking right at the time because I was mentally dying from somebody else's drug addiction. I'd put my dad in front of my family for the first time, thought that I could save him because I, like, can save anything. You know? And I failed, and I felt like a failure.

[01:49:46]

And then I felt like a failure as a father for putting them second, and then still failing. And then now I'm failing at home after my failure of my father. It's time for me to go. But I think he's understanding enough to know because he has watched the he watches everything I do. You know?

[01:50:16]

And I love that kid, man. He's my hero. He is you know, his his dad sucks. His real dad sucks. He's he and he knows this, but he smuggles drugs with boats.

[01:50:34]

He's a boat captain. Drives to Mexico and Florida all the time. He's been arrested. He's got a more rap he's got a longer rap sheet than, about any criminal I've ever arrested. My son Googled his he Googled his name 1 time, found out that a month prior, he had been in a hostage situation in Myrtle Beach.

[01:50:58]

He took his girlfriend hostage and threatened to kill the cops on an 18 hour standoff. So, you know, we we have some conversations. We talk, and, we're very open in our house about our emotions and feelings. And, he's 16, but and he's acts like a grown up. He's a he's a phenomenal human.

[01:51:23]

What's his name? His name's Henry Stacy Hayes. We used to call him Stacy. Got made fun of in high school, I think. So he goes by Henry, but I found out recently that Hank is short for Henry, so now I call him Hank.

[01:51:37]

Sounds cool. He likes it.

[01:51:39]

So you won't tell him this before he watches?

[01:51:42]

We're gonna talk about it. Yeah. I I don't want him to be a shock. We're gonna sit down as a family and have the conversation of, hey. We're gonna listen to this show.

[01:51:54]

We're gonna talk about this, and I'll explain to him everything that he's gonna hear that could harm him or hurt him or not hurt him, but he'd be confused on. I want him to hear it from me directly before the show comes out. How long have

[01:52:13]

you known this is how you're gonna do it?

[01:52:18]

Gonna do what? Talk to him about this? Yeah. Oh, man, Sean. This is

[01:52:27]

Did you know this before we spoke?

[01:52:31]

I've never told nobody, and I knew he would never find out. But when he heard I was coming on the show, he was excited because he'd watched some other episodes. And, he's like, you know, you're gonna talk about things I don't know? I'm like, yeah. So what is it?

[01:52:50]

I'm like, well, kinda why I've been hesitant to ever do anything like this is because I don't want him to be confused, but he understands trauma, and he understands that that relationship with my dad. He understands that PTSD from law enforcement. He understands my injury from when I was in the army. He understands that I I have some trauma, and he does a great job at at keeping me happy and keeping me active. He's a major part of who I am now, but I'm going to talk to him about it because I think he needs to hear it from me first rather than hearing it on a podcast as a family.

[01:53:35]

We're gonna talk about it, and we're gonna talk about this is what happened. This is why it happened. This is why I was upset. And he's so smart and understanding that I know that he's gonna understand because he's just he's just like that. He's just a he's a phenomenal person, and he's understanding.

[01:53:56]

And I don't think it's gonna be you know, is it something that I did? That was my biggest worry was, you know, was it me and mom? You know? But no, man. It was just me, my own demons.

[01:54:08]

Trying to save somebody that didn't wanna be saved was hard, and then failing at that when you thought that you could. And he understands that that we call used to call him papa Jim, my dad. He hasn't seen him in years, since 2018. Well, you saw him 2 years ago. We were back home, and we met with my dad at a state park at a little restaurant.

[01:54:42]

And my dad was, like, shaking and and it it looked horrible. And we had a long drive home and we explained it, and I told him that I'm not gonna expose him to pop out Jim anymore to protect him, and he understood. He was a little kinda scared why he was like that, and I was like, well, he's on drugs. Like, 15, man. I can't I can't hide it from you.

[01:55:10]

He's on drugs. Because you could just tell he's on drugs. I mean, scabs, shaking your mouth, doing all the things. You could just tell. So we had a long conversation that whole day about about that, and he agreed that he doesn't wanna see that no more.

[01:55:36]

Are you expecting some tough questions?

[01:55:38]

Yeah. He's intelligent. What do you think the I don't even know.

[01:55:44]

The first question will be? I don't even know.

[01:55:50]

I'm scared, to be honest with you. I am scared of those what those questions are gonna be, but I'm gonna answer them answer them with honesty. It's out. I'm not gonna hide anything or try to make it sound better. It's out.

[01:56:10]

Maybe he can take something away from this that you know? 1, that god is good, that don't ever give up on life, don't ever give up on yourself, and don't ever run when things get hard. Because now he sees positive growth. He sees what we're doing now. He's already seen me at my worst, but I didn't give up by the grace of god.

[01:56:42]

And things get better. Life is hard, but things always get better. At the end of every rainstorm, the sun comes out. You just gotta bear through the storm, and I hope that's what he learns from this. But he's gonna answer he's gonna ask some tough questions.

[01:57:03]

There's a lot of lessons to learn from in this already. Yeah. Just getting started.

[01:57:11]

Take a break. Let's take a break. Take a break.

[01:57:16]

You alright, Ben? Yeah. I'm good. I feel good. Some heavy stuff.

[01:57:22]

Yeah. Feel good. Good.

[01:57:26]

First time I ever talked about it other than with my wife and Kyle and Kyle's wife, Erica. So, you know, a lot of my followers on Instagram have a understanding of what I've been through, but they don't have a true understanding because everything you post online can be made to look a little better. Right? So but, you know, if you put yourself out there to to fight evil or to do anything in that line of work, trauma is gonna happen. We're not meant to see things that we've seen or do things that we've done.

[01:58:05]

And that's that's what I think he he really understands is I don't have a normal job nor did I have a normal job nor did I see normal things. And and with that comes some trauma. So, yeah, it felt good to get it out. Good. Been holding that in for a long time, and I hope that it just reaches 1 person.

[01:58:29]

I think it's gonna reach a hell of a lot more than that.

[01:58:32]

Yeah. You think so?

[01:58:33]

I know so.

[01:58:34]

Yeah. Felt good.

[01:58:37]

Blake, you gotta find forgiveness, man.

[01:58:41]

I am.

[01:58:41]

I hope you do. Now.

[01:58:48]

I'm trying to figure out how to find forgiveness without physically telling him my forgive me because I don't wanna talk to him.

[01:58:59]

It's for you, man. It's not for him.

[01:59:02]

Him. Maybe that's yeah. It's crazy you said it because me and my wife are having this conversation. She said the same thing. Maybe when I'm ready soon so I can move on, I need to call him and say, look.

[01:59:19]

I do love you. You are my father. And I forgive you, but I can't carry on this relationship. And I think maybe that's what needs to be said, truly. But, yeah, you're right.

[01:59:35]

I need to forgive him. And I feel like I'm ready to forgive him. I'm just scared of his manipulation. He's already messaged me, telling me he's sober. I'm 18 months sober.

[01:59:51]

Dog, that don't even make sense. You were only in jail for 9 months, and the last time I saw you, you were on drugs. Still with my stepmom, so I can't help him. She is she is I have videos of her. Can't even put her shoes on.

[02:00:10]

She is a he's a bad drug addict. She is the worst drug addict I've ever seen. As long as he is with her, he'll never get clean. He'll never get clean. Moment he went to jail, she had some other dude living in the house begging him.

[02:00:29]

She'll never get clean. And I'm so scared that that phone call for forgiveness is gonna lead to trying to save him again. That's what I'm scared of because where I am now and who I am now is not the same person I was. I'm a year sober from alcohol. I haven't had a drink or did I want to drink alcohol in this last year?

[02:01:03]

Because I can feel God in my soul. And it's not that alcohol is bad. You're going to hell for drinking. Man, it just doesn't do well with me. It brings the worst out in me.

[02:01:18]

And my problem is is once I get that feeling of the buzz, dude, it's like riding a bull, man. I ain't stopping. Maybe it doesn't have to

[02:01:32]

be a call. Maybe it could be a written letter. I thought about it.

[02:01:42]

I'm just gonna have to not put my return add they don't know they don't know my address. Anytime I mail those other checks, I didn't put a return address or I made 1 up,

[02:01:53]

but there's no think it does 2 things. It allows your dad to die knowing that you forgave him Yeah. And it set you free. Yeah. Let's take that break.

[02:02:29]

Yeah.

[02:02:38]

I'd like to invite you to gain access to an exclusive experience on Vigilance Elite Patreon. Our patrons are the driving force behind the success of this show, and their support allows us to keep doing what we do. Depending on the tier you choose, you'll get access to benefits like behind the scenes footage before each interview, early access to episodes, end of the month live Zoom calls with me, exclusive merch, and more. Join us and become a patron starting at just $5 a month by visiting patreon.com/vigilance elite. That's patreon.com/vigilance elite.

[02:03:18]

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[02:04:08]

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[02:04:18]

Alright, Blake. We're back from the break, and, wow. I was not expecting to get that deep that fast. And, Yeah. Deep quick.

[02:04:33]

Yeah. I did. It did. It definitely did. I am curious.

[02:04:37]

What did what did Kyle say when he heard that?

[02:04:46]

He gave me the biggest hug. He was crying, and, just told me he loved me and and said, I want you to know that as much as you needed me, I needed you in that exact moment. Wow. So that was that was just good to hear. That was really good to hear.

[02:05:11]

How much time had passed since Let's see. Between 6 months. 6 months. You'd known him for 6 months since that call.

[02:05:22]

That was, November. I think we did a couple's camp in October November, but that was May. May when it happened. And you found out. And I think it was November.

[02:05:36]

That is definitely some divine intervention. Yeah.

[02:05:41]

Truly was. By how long

[02:05:44]

Very amazing. Wow. Incredible. Well, let's move, let's move into wow. Let's move on past high school.

[02:06:09]

Let's go to college. Let's go to college.

[02:06:11]

That was a ride. Was it? That was a ride. I rode that train hard. So I got a football scholarship.

[02:06:21]

And, man, I was I I thought it was the greatest thing ever. So I got to Concord University, which is a school in West Virginia Southern West Virginia. And I got there, and coming from a small town, like, our partying was different, man. Our partying was in the fields, chugging Bud Light and drinking Bacardi 151 by fire. Right?

[02:06:50]

That's more dudes than girls, whatever. You know, it's the country. And when the hell I mean, I grew up with half I grew up with everybody that was there anyways. I've known them my whole life. So I go to college, man, and, went to I went early for for, summer practice.

[02:07:07]

It was kinda boring. It's just football all day. Meetings in the morning, meetings in the afternoon, practice in the morning, practice at night. I was like, oh god, this sucks. So then the rest of the students started coming in.

[02:07:20]

And right as football was starting up, I went to my first massive college party, and it was in, like, an apartment complex. It was like all these apartments were having 1 big party. You could go from apartment to apartment. So I go down to this 1 guy's apartment, and he's, nah, man. Football players aren't allowed in here.

[02:07:43]

I'm like, get out of here, man. Get out of my way. Big boy. I mean, I thought it was something. I was you couldn't tell me nothing.

[02:07:49]

I was 18. I was at a football scholarship. I was on the football team. I took 2 steps. This dude came up behind me and punched the living fire out of me.

[02:08:00]

Boom. Knocked me out. Fell down the steps. I woke up. My buddies are carrying me to the car, and, they went back in the party, and I laid in the car in pain.

[02:08:10]

There's a small bone that's, like, right here that he had broken. And I had to go to the doctor the next morning and had to go tell my football coach I can't play because I was at a party that I wasn't even supposed to be at. You know, we weren't supposed to party. He's like, well, fine. You're not playing.

[02:08:32]

He goes, you know, you're gonna be redshirted and and, you know, don't even know if we're gonna carry on your scholarship next year. I was like, alright. I understand. I understand. Whatever.

[02:08:45]

So, man, for the next, like, 2 or 3 months, I never went I didn't go to 1 class. Not 1 class. I didn't even know where my class was. I knew where the food hall was and the gym, and I stayed in my room and played Xbox all the time. That was back when, Call of Duty, when they had the zombies, zombie game.

[02:09:08]

Man, I was playing that all the time, partying at nighttime. Well, about November or October, right before Halloween, they go to my room, and on my door is this letter from the college. I'm like, what is this? Take it off, go in my room, open it up. It's like, dear mister Cook, you have 0 attendance.

[02:09:32]

Your grade point average is 0. We're informing you that if you don't bring your grades up 0. Literally 0? 0. Holy shit.

[02:09:43]

I ain't go to 1 class. And, if you don't bring your your grades up or make an effort, then we're we're gonna have to remove you from the college.

[02:09:53]

Well, that should be easy. There's nowhere to go but up.

[02:09:56]

I was like, are we in it? I was like, balled it up, Sean, in this most beautiful rounded, small little tennis ball. Kobe threw it away. I said, they're not gonna kick me out of here. No child left behind.

[02:10:17]

I'm like, dude. Now I'm like, bro, it's not high school. You know what I'm saying? Dude, month and a half later, we're coming up on Christmas break. People are standing by my door, go to my room, they're like, hey, miss Cook.

[02:10:31]

How are you? I'm so and so. Administrative office. I'm like, hey. Yeah.

[02:10:33]

How are you? Yeah. Did you letter yeah. Well, you got a letter, and you said you didn't go to class? No.

[02:10:38]

They were like, oh, cool. Make sure you leave nothing behind when you leave here for Christmas break. You're no longer enrolled here. I was like, oh my god. I'm like, no.

[02:10:48]

Let's work something out here. Right? I can't go home. I'm embarrassed. My mom's gonna kill me.

[02:10:55]

She's like, no, man. You gotta go home. So I called my mom. I'm embarrassed. She's like, ah, she's like, oh, you idiot.

[02:11:01]

Blah blah blah. She's like, you know what? Everything's gonna be okay. She's fine. I understand.

[02:11:07]

Maybe you just couldn't handle, you know, a a college, a university. I'm like, alright, mom. Yeah. You're just right. You can't.

[02:11:14]

She's like, alright. Cool. I'm gonna enroll you in a community college, and we're gonna get your grades back up, and then we're gonna go talk to them and see if we can get you back in there. I'm like, absolutely, mom. That sounds like a great plan.

[02:11:26]

I attended the 1st class for 15 minutes, and I was like, this ain't for me. I got up, left my notebook and everything in there, told the teacher I was going to the bathroom, never came back. Well, my my mom said that I couldn't find a party where I grew up. By this point, she was living in a little bit bigger city with, like, 20,000 people. What my mom didn't know is I could find a party in that city because Applebee's had happy hour at 12 o'clock, and I got drunk with a bunch of moms with their kids in the little carriers on the ground, like, every day.

[02:12:04]

So I didn't go to class, And my mom was infuriated because there she was she had tried. I kept telling her mom, maybe school's not for me. I'll get a job. I'll take a break. I'll mature a little bit.

[02:12:20]

She's like, oh, cool. She's like, let's try that. I was like, alright. So I stalled for, like, a year. I'd sleep all day, play Call of Duty all night.

[02:12:31]

I'm, hey, mom. I'm a be a professional gamer. She said, you know, you gotta go get a real job. You're a loser. I'm like, no.

[02:12:37]

I'm not. I'm working on a career. She's like, playing video games is not a career. So finally 1 day she comes home, and by this time, she'd she'd met my stepdad, and my stepdad was trying to get me to go like, he worked he did something, like like, delivering stuff for the coal mines, and he was like, hey. He took me to work with him 1 day, and I was like, oh my god.

[02:12:59]

This sucks. I don't wanna do this. And, finally, she came in, and she's like, hey. You need to find a job, or you're gonna have to go. I'm like, mom, where am I gonna go?

[02:13:09]

She's like, I don't know. You can't keep living here because I'm just supporting this. I'm like, okay. That's my mom. I'm the I'm the baby child.

[02:13:17]

You're not kicking me out. You kidding me? My mom and papa would light you up. You kicked me out of this house. That's her mom and dad.

[02:13:24]

So I'm like, alright. Whatever. So I'm playing video games. She calls me up. She's like, hey.

[02:13:31]

You find a job? I'm like, yeah. I know. I'm I'm yeah. I'm gonna try Hibbett Sports, up to that new shopping center complex.

[02:13:38]

She's like, okay. Alright. So I go up there, and I'm like, oh, man. Please give me a job. I'm like, I'm looking like a bag of ass.

[02:13:45]

Right? I got, like, sandals on and some and some gym shorts and a dirty shirt with Doritos cheese all over it and a hat backwards. I'm like, hey, man. Y'all hiring? They're like, oh, we're not hiring you.

[02:13:57]

I was like, oh, wow. I thought this was gonna be easy. So I go outside, and I'm sitting on the bench. I'm like, oh my god. She's really gonna kick you out of the house.

[02:14:08]

Where where are you gonna work? I'm like, I'm not going to McDonald's. I'm not no. We'll figure this out. Now here, this guy, he's like, hey, man.

[02:14:16]

You okay? You know, look up. He's kind of a bigger dude, and he's got the old digital camo on. It said United States Army. I was like, oh, man.

[02:14:30]

I'm not doing so good. I'm like, my mom's gotta kick me out of the house. I need a job. He's like, you need a job? How old are you?

[02:14:38]

I'm like, at at that point, I was 20. I'm like, I'm 20. He goes, come on inside. Let me talk to you. He's like, what do you do for fun?

[02:14:48]

I'm like, man, I play Call of Duty. He was like, oh, yeah. He goes, let me talk to you about real life Call of Duty. It's just like Call of Duty. I was like, I was like, shoot.

[02:15:00]

Just like Call of Duty? I'm like, I'm down. I'm like, let's go. We go inside. I do the little, like, computer ASVAB thing.

[02:15:09]

Got got my score. He's like, he's like, what do you wanna do? I'm like, I don't know. He goes, how about the infantry? I was like, what's it like?

[02:15:20]

He goes, call of duty, man. He goes, front lines. He goes, just like the game you play, all the cool gear. I was like, yeah. I wanna do that.

[02:15:30]

He's like, alright. Cool. Signed up, got a ship date for, like, that was ship date was in January or December of 2010. And, I go home. I'm on I'm playing video games, and she goes, still here.

[02:15:47]

Did you get a job? I'm like, I did. She goes, oh, man. I'm so proud of you. She goes, what are you doing?

[02:15:54]

I'm like, mama joined the army. She's like, oh my god. I killed my baby Tell him you can't go. I was like, I don't think that's how that works mom. I'm like, I've already signed paperwork.

[02:16:09]

I'm I'm fully committed She is. Oh my god. I killed him. She's, like, all hysterical. I'm like, no.

[02:16:15]

No. And then my sat down was like, no. It'd be it'd be it'd be it's good for him. It'll be alright with him. My grandpa was in Vietnam.

[02:16:21]

My grandpa called her and was like, Tammy, he needs it. My uncle was in the air force. He needs it. He is a bum right now. He has no guidance.

[02:16:33]

There's no discipline. Alright? Because I've been handed everything because of football. High school, like, it's Friday. You have a game tonight.

[02:16:43]

Put your head down. Take a nap. Basketball, Tuesday, Fridays, take a nap. Do you wanna go, hey. I'm kinda hungry.

[02:16:52]

I can't play tonight on empty stomach. Hey. Well, go down to the cafeteria. See if they'll feed you. Like, babied all through school.

[02:17:00]

Didn't do anything in school. And so I I was, you know, I failed myself as a as a young kid, but the people that were supposed to be molding me didn't do that either. So I had no drive, no discipline, no nothing. So I get sent to Fort Benning, Georgia, and I'm like, oh my God, what did I sign up for? As soon as I get off the bus, everybody's yelling, it's complete chaos, People are holding bags over their heads.

[02:17:34]

I'm like, oh, this I ain't see this on call of duty. This wasn't on call of duty. No. It wasn't. Y'all supposed to hand me some sexy stuff.

[02:17:44]

I got a bag, and y'all yelling at me. So, I did basic. Right? Recruiter didn't give me anything in my contract. Nothing.

[02:17:52]

I didn't have anything. So about 2 months in, and I I started asking people what they're doing. Some people are like, oh, man. I have, you know, the the 18 x rays, special forces. I got I got, airborne contract.

[02:18:06]

I got this, and I'm like, I mean, I got nothing. I got nothing. I got nothing. I don't have anything. I'm like, you know, people got bonuses, and I'm like, if I ever go back home, I'm a fight this dude.

[02:18:19]

He lied to me. It's not like call of duty. Everybody else in here getting paid pretty good. I don't have anything in my contract. So about 2 months in basic, the drill instructor comes in.

[02:18:28]

He's, like, reading off everybody's duty assignments of where they're going. You know, people with airborne contracts, some are going to Italy, some are going to brag. Obviously, the, 18 x guys are going to brag, and they're like, cook, Korea. I'm like, What do you mean Korea? Like, I'm the youngest child.

[02:18:49]

Like, when we went to, like, Chinese restaurants and stuff, my mom took me to McDonald's. I'm a I can't I'm not gonna eat their food. I don't know what food they got there, but I'm gonna starve. What are we talking about? I can't go there.

[02:19:01]

Are you absolutely kidding me? So I'm like, I'm panicking. I'm like, man. I'm like, some other guys are like, oh, man. South Korea, that's kinda cool.

[02:19:09]

I'm like, that's not cool. Like, at this point, I was dedicated. Right? I I wanted to go fight bad guys. Mhmm.

[02:19:21]

You know? Once I put the uniform on because I come from a family of of military people, and I'm the I'm the I'm that generation. Now my my younger half brother is now, and he's in the 82nd, but I was the first 1 from from from as the kids to go do something. So I was listening to all, like, the Toby Keith music and stuff before I left, getting myself all, like, hyped up, you know, the American soldiers. By this point, I was like, I was kinda in it, man.

[02:19:47]

I was like, man, it's kinda interesting, whatever. But I wanted to go do something. I didn't just I didn't know anything about what I was doing in the first place, but I know I didn't wanna go to Korea because I knew the guys didn't deploy from Korea to to go fight a war. And we were still in war. Right?

[02:20:01]

So if I'm here, let's go do it. I still had that as they were starting to mold me to understanding of of my purpose, why I'm here. Right? I'm here I'm here to go fight a war, go fight bad guys. So I'm, like, I go in there.

[02:20:15]

That was on, like, a like, a Friday. And, Sunday, it's, like, relax day or whatever, cleaning guns, whatever we're doing, and I find my drill sergeant. I'm like, hey, sir. I'm like, sergeant Rutherford. I'm like, hey, sergeant Rutherford or drill sergeant.

[02:20:31]

Can I can I talk to you? He's like, what you got? I'm like, hey. I can't go to Korea. He's like, why?

[02:20:36]

I'm like, woah. 1, like, for real, I don't I don't eat any kind of food like that. He's like, shut up and get out of here, private. I'm like, no. No.

[02:20:45]

For real. I wanna go do something. I wanna go to war. You have to help me get somewhere that's gonna deploy me. I didn't just sign up for this to have a job.

[02:20:54]

Now I know my purpose. I understand why I'm here, and I understand the importance of why I'm here. I understand that there are people who have died wearing this exact uniform that I'm wearing. I want a purpose. He goes pulls out.

[02:21:08]

He said, what what have you got on your last PT test? I'd maxed out 300 on all my PT tests. I actually trained for this. I didn't have a job. Right?

[02:21:16]

So I had 6 months to train. I trained every day. I ran all the time. I did everything I could because I had been told that you can get contracts in basic. So I'm like, I want I heard that I can get an airborne contract.

[02:21:31]

He's like, look. You got 300 on your next PT test. It it was it was coming up to be, like, the last PT test, before AIT. He's like, you get a 300 on your PT test, and I'll give you an airborne contract because you have the highest score here. You've had consistent 3 hundreds.

[02:21:52]

I'll give you an airborne contract. I was like, yeah. I was I was like, I can do that. PT test was coming up about 3 days 2 days before the PT test. I came down with the flu.

[02:22:06]

Diarrhea, throwing up, feeling weak. I'm like, oh, man, dude. I'm really going to Korea. And the night of the before the PT test, my bunkmate was like, hey, cook. He goes, no.

[02:22:20]

You ain't been feeling well, but you wanna buy something that'll give you energy? I'm like, what what what could you possibly have? Like, packs of sugar that you stole? Like, said, no. No.

[02:22:30]

No. I I was able to get a 5 hour energy shot from, the commissary. I was like, yeah. He I was like, how much? He's like, $100.

[02:22:41]

I was like, done. Done. I'll I'll get you the money when we get out. He goes, alright. And I ripped that thing the next morning.

[02:22:50]

Man, I I was thrown up on that run, but I was so dedicated to get out of a deployment to Korea or, speech stationed in Korea that I maxed out that PT test. I got a 300.

[02:23:03]

No shit.

[02:23:05]

So, I mean, I I'm pretty sure I'd I'd shit myself on that run. I wasn't stopping. I wasn't stopping to puke. I had I had to do this. Like, because the push ups and setups were easy for me, but it was always the run that I always came so close to to always passing to get to 300.

[02:23:22]

It was always by, like, seconds, and I didn't have seconds to spare. And I was feeling horrible. So they, Rutherford held up to his end of the bargain and gave me an airborne contract. So, we got the orders. Everybody else, again, was pretty much going to Italy.

[02:23:44]

Few going were going to Bragg, and, hey. We'll get you to Bragg. I was like, man, that's great. I'll take Bragg. An hour and a half from Myrtle Beach, 4 hours from home.

[02:23:54]

Like, that's that's that's okay. I can do that. I like that. And then I got to you know, I went to airborne school, and, man, it's just just another, you know, month of just being treated like shit. And, you know, now I'm talking to guys there that are like, yeah.

[02:24:12]

Yeah. I'm like, oh, where y'all going? Like, oh, you know, we're gonna RASP after this. And I'm like, well, what's that? They're like, oh, yeah.

[02:24:18]

Ranger selection. I'm like, dude, how did I not get any of this? Like, I forgot what my ASVAB score was, but it it it was it was high enough to get these qualifications. I don't know. I hear me or what it was.

[02:24:34]

It was like it was like, I don't know, like, 101 or something like that. I'm not sure, but it was high enough to get these contracts. My recruiter just I was easy.

[02:24:43]

Yep.

[02:24:44]

I was like a stray dog outside, and he gave me a little puppy chow, little little food, and I was happy. Or he gave me a job to I didn't think of a bigger picture. And I was like, man, I gotta get there. You know? It sounds cool.

[02:24:59]

You know? This is the kind of people I wanna be with. So I get to the 82nd, get to brag. It was really cool, man. I was just, like, seeing all these, like, maroon berets and just the kind of the vibe that people were putting out, and I was like, god.

[02:25:13]

This is I like this place. This is cool. But when I got to my company, man, you just get treated like shit. There's, like, no true leaders at that time in the 82nd. Everybody just treats you like shit.

[02:25:29]

There's nobody taking care of you. Nobody helping you or trying to be a leader. You got people that have never been leaders a day in their life, like e 4, like the e 4 mafia. Dude, those dudes would treat you beat you down and treat you like shit, physically hit you and treat you like shit, then expect for you to have morale. And then the squad leaders would come down after doing nothing all day long.

[02:25:54]

Instead of, like, going to do training, 5 o'clock comes around. It's time to go home. Hey. We gotta go do area beautification. That's just not what I signed up for.

[02:26:03]

I don't wanna signed up for it all. This is ridiculous. I was like, this I can't. Because at that point, I was like, 20 years. I can do 20 years.

[02:26:12]

Retire at at 40 years old. Yeah. I could do that. At this point, I'd I'd I'm I'm, like, committed. I'm in this.

[02:26:20]

I'm like, man, I'm type of people I wanna be around. But, man, that I I was very proud of wearing my maroon beret in in my 82nd patch, but it was, like, every day bad leadership was sucking the morale out of me. I'm like, I wanna do this, but I gotta I gotta get out. I gotta go maybe try out for something else, and that was when I saw my first SF guy. I was we were in a gym, and he was walking in.

[02:26:49]

I had a green beret, and I was like, man, what is that? He said special forces. I looked it up. I was like, man, that's I gotta get there. That's what I wanna do.

[02:26:59]

I wanna go be I wanna go to ranger school. I wanted to do this. And I had a horrible staff sergeant at the time. I mean, he was just a redneck from Louisiana that just was he had failed selection, like, 3 times, failed ranger school, didn't want any of his guys going anywhere. Right?

[02:27:19]

Because if I pass Ranger school and I have a tab, what does he look like? Jealousy. He didn't want any of us going anywhere. Dude, I was smoking them MPT. They would punish me by, like, stupid punishments by trying to smoke me.

[02:27:34]

I looked at it as a workout. Smoked me out for hours. That just means I don't go to the gym after this. I enjoy it. I'm working out.

[02:27:43]

I enjoy working out. I was taking all that hatred that we had talked about, and I would put it into working out. I enjoyed it. Push ups, front leaning rest, whatever. Because guess what?

[02:27:52]

You're not gonna do it till I die. Eventually, you have to stop, and I just gotta outlast you, and I can. But it was just all the time there. Just there was no training. I think I did CQB, like, twice.

[02:28:08]

Like, the rest of it was walking around area j in the woods acting like we were taking contact. Like, there's no real training. I'm like, man, this is this is not there's gotta be something better than this because my motivation I've been there for 8 months, and I'm, like, ready to leave. I'm like, this sucks. I'm getting treated like shit every day just for being good at PT or, like, not being able to take the machine gun, like, the the 240 at a certain time while people are yelling at me and while I'm doing jumping jacks.

[02:28:42]

I I can't take this machine gun apart fast enough, and neither could they. That's the problem. I was being asked to do things that they couldn't do. But because they had been there and they deployed some BS deployment to Iraq and didn't do anything, but set on a fob, they were superior to us cherries. They thought they'd done something for their country.

[02:29:04]

So instead of just taking us under our wings and teaching us the ways, you treated us like shit. You killed our motivation. Hey, brother. We are your backup. We are the people that are gonna be fighting next to you.

[02:29:18]

You don't want somebody next to you that hates you when you're trying to fight for your life. Because if you get shot, I'm gonna have to help you. You don't want somebody that hates you to help you. So how about you build us up? But it never got to that point.

[02:29:33]

It never it just I saw the first green beret, and I was like, that's what I wanna do. I wanna be that guy. I started looking into it. I'd see I see somebody that was in SF, and I'd ask them questions. They were they were nice guys.

[02:29:51]

Hey, man. What's it like? Hey. You know, we do this, this, and this. There's grown up rules, big boy rules.

[02:29:55]

I'm like, dude, I gotta get there. Because I spent, like, my whole youth being a part of a really good team. Football, basketball, always wanted to be the best. I wanted to be on the best team to win, and I wasn't on the best team to win. I didn't want to go to war not being on the best team.

[02:30:19]

So I asked if I could go to the selection. No. I asked to go to Ranger School. No. We're locked in.

[02:30:29]

We we have an appointment coming up, or we have training coming up. We don't have guys to spare. We're already short. I'm like, man, you should want me to go do these things. Like, as a leader, I want you to be better.

[02:30:44]

Because if you go and do these things and I and I help build you up, then that's an that's a, an example of what a good leader I am.

[02:30:54]

They probably didn't understand that because that's how their leaders were.

[02:30:58]

You're exactly right. It is a domino effect. They've been treated like that forever, and then it just keeps going and going and going. I think it's making a change now mainly because social media. Right?

[02:31:12]

I think a lot of these leaders have a lot of squad leaders on on Bragg that follow follow us and and want to be good to their dudes because they're learning from what we're doing. I think it is making a change, but back then, man, I hated going to work. I hated it. I couldn't get out of there because nobody wanted to send anybody because if you sent me and I actually came back with a tab, you know, and you didn't have 1, like

[02:31:40]

Yep.

[02:31:41]

It's it sucked, man. It it it it sucked. And then finally, I gave up because they're like, yeah, we're locked in on an appointment. So about November of 2011, we were supposed to deploy to Afghanistan. We went to Louisiana.

[02:31:59]

No. We were gonna go to Louisiana, JRTC, and it got canceled, then deployment got pushed. So we did a jump. Supposed to deploy, like, the following week, so I went in for a haircut at this place called, Frederick's Salon in Fayetteville. And I went in there and this girl cut my hair.

[02:32:24]

Did a great job talking to her. Super awesome person. Really connected with the person. Man, I thought she was the most beautiful thing I've ever seen in my life. Man, I thought she was beautiful.

[02:32:35]

And I left, said goodbye, and then we went to some other train oh, we went to Dahlonega to train for about 2 weeks. And they came back, and they were like, alright, guys. Their deployment got pushed again to February. So, alright. Whatever.

[02:32:53]

So I went in for a haircut, and my wife was the 1 that I connected with. She was like, hey. She she's just got out of a relationship. She's dating this guy that was in the Q course. He went to Germany and cheated on her and stuff.

[02:33:08]

She went looking for a relationship, neither really was I. And she was like, hey. Let's all go out tonight. I'm a I'm a hook you up. The girl that was in the chair next to me, she thought you were cute.

[02:33:19]

I'll set it up, and we'll all just go out tonight. Bring some of your friends. I was like, yeah. That's awesome. Let's do that.

[02:33:24]

And we go to to my, my wife's apartment, and the girl never showed. So I was like, alright. So we all just started hanging out. And then me and my wife started hanging out and, stayed all night with her. Didn't have sex.

[02:33:44]

Thought that was awesome. Got married, like, 41 days later. 41 days? 41 days. Yeah.

[02:33:56]

That date alone is crazy. January 4, 2012 is when I got, married. What we had just found out this past year, her grandparents were married January 4th. No way. I found out in a newspaper article that my aunt posted on Facebook that my dad's parents married January 4th.

[02:34:15]

Wow. No idea. We had no idea. Wow. We have them, hanging up in our house, both of the articles.

[02:34:22]

Hers is a wedding invitation, mine's an article. Super crazy. Very cool. So how I met my son is about that 3rd or 4th night, I was over at her house, and it was like in 1 of those old historical homes downtown Fayetteville that they turned into, like, an apartment complex with, like, 4 apartments. They had a backyard, so we had a fire going.

[02:34:42]

She had her son. She said, hey. I'm a he's in the bathtub. My mom's watching him. I'm gonna go put him put him in bed.

[02:34:48]

I was like, alright. Cool. I'm sitting out by the fire. I'm by myself. I hear, like, little footprints.

[02:34:55]

I'm like, oh, what is that? This kid runs over. He's, like, soaking wet. Sats on my lap. Looks right at me dead on my face and says, I love you.

[02:35:06]

I'm like, whose kid is this, first of all? Who's whose kid is this? I'm a little freaked out. She's like, oh my god. Stacy, mom, you're supposed to watch him.

[02:35:19]

She's like, he just ran out. And, you know, she she's she's got hip replacements. She can't really run after him. She's like, I'm so sorry. I mean, you weren't he wasn't supposed to meet you.

[02:35:27]

I was like she's like, you know, because she didn't want him to meet me, obviously, because she don't wanna traumatize him with with, you know, some some male at his house. And and I don't know. We got married 41 days later, and it was just instant the instant I just felt this instant love for them that I've never felt before. And, and What was your second interaction with them with your son? We had, I came over.

[02:36:02]

We had I had breakfast with him and stuff. And then, about a week, I just instead of staying at the barracks, I just stayed there at their house. And, when did

[02:36:14]

you start getting close to him?

[02:36:16]

Almost immediately, honestly. Yeah. What drew you in? He was so loving. He is just he was a good kid, but, man, he was hell on wheels too, though.

[02:36:30]

1 time I had a disciplining. I was like, hey. Go sit on your bed. He's like, little kid, man. He did some.

[02:36:38]

He wouldn't listen to his mama. Said, hey, man. Yeah. Go sit on your bed. You're in timeout.

[02:36:43]

So he goes and sits on the bed. I hear him in the air, like, messing with the bed. I'm like, hey. 5 more minutes just added. He looks at me dead in my face and goes, 5 more minutes.

[02:36:59]

I was like I was like I was like, hey. I can't whip this. I can't whip him. She's gonna have to go down there and deal with that. I was like, I'm about to lose it.

[02:37:10]

Oh, shit. What do you do? She starts busting out laughing. I'm like, no, man. Go down there and whoop whoop that tail.

[02:37:15]

What are you talking about? So, you know, we but we've had a great relationship since day 1, since since day 1. It is just it's it's just like he's my child since day 1. And I wasn't trying to be his dad. He already had 1.

[02:37:35]

I didn't know anything at the time. Like, his dad was was he knows this, but his dad was very abusive. Like, when I met my wife, my wife had screws screwing her windshields down. Not windshields. Sorry.

[02:37:48]

Her windows down in all of her on in all around the whole house, the whole apartment. She had, like, 5 or 6 locks on the inside of the doors keeping them from being kicked in. So it was a I always I never knew at the time. I didn't know I didn't know anything about that. I always thought it was weird.

[02:38:07]

I thought, okay. Well, maybe somebody previous did this, but, yeah, the windows were were locked. Back door had the same thing. It was a pretty bad situation that I came into, but I found it out weeks later. And I was like, ma'am, I she's like, she didn't tell me.

[02:38:24]

Her mom told me. I confronted her about it. She's like, I I don't want you to leave. She's like, I'm I'm I'm sorry, but I I figured if I told you, you're you would leave. You know?

[02:38:38]

It's hard to find somebody as a single mom anyways, but it's really hard to find somebody that has a a crazy abusive ex. I'm like, well, I'm not going nowhere. But but don't all I ask for from here on out is is honesty, and that's what our whole marriage has been, is honesty. And and that was a we got married January 4, 2012, like, 41 days later and went down. I had a marriage at the courthouse.

[02:39:07]

You know, got married in a in a red button up with a cheetah print tie, you know. Nice. Some vans, man. And she she was she's dressed up nice, had some had some guys from the 1 leader that was phenomenal, 2 leaders. 1 was named Nick Fredsey, and the other 1 was named Dakota Cartos Santos, which ended up becoming 1 of my best friends.

[02:39:34]

Really took me under his wing, phenomenal human being. He was a gym now in Pennsylvania, phenomenal human. He was man, he kept me going every day. He was a phenomenal leader, and if he would've stayed in, he would've been a phenomenal leader. But he was there at my, at my little wedding, and, you know, I didn't know any better or anything at the time, and I didn't tell anybody I got married.

[02:40:00]

I didn't tell anybody. And so finally, the training came for JROTC. Right? And I'm, walking around Louisiana. My phone is just.

[02:40:15]

I'm like, dude, who is calling me? They've been calling me for 10 minutes. I put it down. It's like, it's like 28 missed calls from mom. I'm like, dang.

[02:40:28]

She found out. I'm like, dang. This is gonna be bad. So we carry on with the with the little training exercise we were doing, and we get back to the, little hootches. And I call her, and she's she's like, my grandma my grandma will be her mom.

[02:40:51]

She should have been a CIA spy on Facebook. She could have found anything. She was the Facebook Farmville queen, man. She lived on it. She goes, well well, mom said that on so and so that so and so saw where you got married.

[02:41:06]

She goes, are you married? I'm like, yes. I am. Yes. I am, mom.

[02:41:13]

She's, oh my god. Oh my god. You're an idiot. I'm like, they have a great relationship now. But I was like she goes, I had to find out through your grandmother on Facebook.

[02:41:28]

I'm like, sorry about that. I was like, it makes you feel any better. Nobody else knew unless you lived here. And so finally, man, we we we got through that, and then, I deployed at the end of February. So I met my wife, got married in 41 days, went to training for a month right after I got married, and then deployed 2 weeks after I got home.

[02:41:55]

Wow. So

[02:41:57]

How'd you propose to your wife?

[02:42:00]

The private way. You know? There's a little bar restaurant downtown called Husk Hardware. It's the first place we ever went to. We, we had dinner, and we had a little little thing in the corner, and, you know, took an e, asked her to marry me, and I was shaking so bad.

[02:42:23]

I'm 21 years old. 22 at the time. I'm like, you know, couldn't couldn't even get it out. Right? And I just knew I loved her.

[02:42:34]

That's that's all I knew. I I I just knew that, man, I've I I don't even know like, I have never even felt this really this kind of love, like, other than, like, my mom. Like but I feel like I almost love her more than my mom. I loved her so much. And, yes.

[02:42:54]

I proposed at a restaurant. Right? And then we got super wasted. Went to dollar night at Lidos downtown. Everything was a dollar.

[02:43:03]

You know, we were high on life. You know? We were just living it up. She at the time, she's older than me. She's a cougar.

[02:43:11]

You know? She's 39. I'm 35. So, you know, she's she's older. And, you know, free haircuts for life, though, but, you know, whatever.

[02:43:20]

It's a perk. But, I deployed, and then a couple weeks into deployment, my son's father found out that I was gone. He was he was infuriated. He was livid at this point, and, because he hadn't been he hadn't even been around, really. But he just shows up and tries to cause violence.

[02:43:43]

When you were there? Never when I was there. But once he found out I left, it was game on. There's police reports. Like, when I became a cop at Fayetteville, I I kinda looked into some addresses and stuff.

[02:43:55]

He actually tried to cut a pipeline at that apartment and tried to blow the whole apartment up. What? Yeah. Before I was around. Like, did some shown some of the most horrific things I've ever heard of to her.

[02:44:11]

And I I don't wanna say them because they're they're her stories, but it was gnarly. It was really bad. So she's like, Blake, you know, I don't know what to do, so I call my mom. I, hey, mom. I got a favor to ask you.

[02:44:31]

I'm like, it's gonna be a hard favor, but I need Nicole and Stacy to come stay with you. I explained the situation. She said, tell them to come on, and, she took them in, took care of them, made sure they were safe. And, but my wife, every other weekend, my wife had to drive to Fayetteville, 5 hour drive. She'd drive drop Stacy off on Friday, drive back to West Virginia because his his grandfather, his real dad's dad had custody, not his dad, because because it's part of the good old boy system.

[02:45:21]

He had a bunch of money in Fayetteville and knew the judges, and how that even worked out is backdoor deals. But she would turn around and drive 5 hours Sunday to go pick him up and then drive 5 hours back. She was driving 20 hours in a weekend. Wow. So strong woman.

[02:45:42]

But, you know and my mom took him in, and, so it was just you know, it's it's a standard deployment. It was it was winter it was starting to phase out of that wintertime. Right? We're starting to get into the fighting season that you always kinda hear about. When we first got to, 5 Warrior, the Polish were still there.

[02:46:05]

And, man, Polish were crazy. Like, they were they were somehow making, like, whiskey and and or whatever they were making. Like, them dudes were them dudes were wild. Like, it was cool to see that. It was a cool experience.

[02:46:18]

And, you know, we we we were doing the exchange with him 1 time, and we were on a route, and there was an IED, and it was close to, you know, we were, like, an hour away from, like, surf and turf. Right? And then and, dude, we're like, oh, you know, we'll call EOD to come out and look at this. Man, these dudes just start chucking grenades. It's like, oh, we'll blow it up.

[02:46:40]

I'm like, oh, this is not how we operate. Right? Like, that seems kinda dangerous. They're like, oh, no. We gotta eat.

[02:46:46]

We got surf and turf. So I was like, this is what? This is wild. This is crazy. And, you know, so finally they ended up leaving, and then, you know, the rest of the big 80 seconds started coming in.

[02:47:00]

Right? Command sergeant major Love. Dude was a soup sandwich, man, and he was the head of of everything. And it just got to the point where, like, hey, man. We're at war.

[02:47:14]

We had mortared every day. Like, why do I gotta wear a PT belt to go to the bathroom? Why do I gotta wear a PT belt to go to chow hall? What are we doing here? And that was when I was like, I have to get out of the 82nd because this is this is this is crazy.

[02:47:30]

I'm wearing a PT belt, and I'm shaving in, like, horrible environments because I can't have, like, a little scruffle. Like, I'm shitting in MRE bags up at the outpost. Like and I'm still having to shave up there. What is going on? It doesn't make sense.

[02:47:50]

Everybody's stuck in this World War 2. Guess what? That was great. They did great things. It's not World War 2 anymore.

[02:47:58]

Right? It's a different environment. Y'all can loosen up a little bit. This is not that long ago. Like, that's a long time.

[02:48:04]

We can chill out a little bit. I don't need to shave and shit in an MRE bag. Like, nobody's bothering us. It was just everything was ridiculous. But it was it was fun, though.

[02:48:19]

The the I started to really get to know the guys. We started forming as, like, a little team. We had gotten a new squad leader at the time. His name was sergeant, Staff Sergeant Garcia Boaches. He was like, he's had, like, all these jumps.

[02:48:38]

He was a black hat for a while. He was, Pat Tillman was went to his class and jumped school. So he was a awesome guy, very old school though, but he he took he looked out for us.

[02:48:53]

Mhmm.

[02:48:53]

And then before him we had Nick Fredste who was he he deployed, like, 7 or 8 times to Afghanistan. Like, in my eyes, he was, like, a legend. Like, man, this guy's still alive. He's got 8 deployments in 10 years of his career. Like, he'd he'd been deployed, like, all the time, and he was, like, he was so chill.

[02:49:18]

Like, we had him go as a squad leader for, like, 7 months, and, man, he just taught you everything. Like, he just took care of you. He just taught you everything. But I still couldn't go anywhere because we're locked in on an appointment. So then he got sent to another company, I think, like Delta Company, and then we got Bocez, which was awesome to have, and then we deployed.

[02:49:41]

But, I mean, it it actually felt good because there are a lot of good young guys in the 82nd. There's a lot of there's a lot of good dudes in the 82nd. You know? The the conventional army has been overshadowed. People think it's not cool anymore, like, being in the infantry, like standard infantry, because of social media.

[02:50:02]

Right? Social media now, when when you think of something sexy, you think of beards and and, like, plate carriers and cutoff t shirts and, you know, the the the special operations community. Like, it's it it looks cool, and it's you know, a lot of guys in the 82nd are they're really good dudes, and I think they feel maybe over overlooked. You know? Maybe, like, we're not as important anymore because we're just in the 82nd.

[02:50:28]

I've heard guys tell me their story. Well, I was just in the 82nd. Hey, man. Be proud.

[02:50:33]

Yeah.

[02:50:34]

Be proud of what you did. You're still in the infantry. You're still in the 82nd. You're still jumping out of planes. Be proud of what I'm so proud to be in the 82nd.

[02:50:43]

I don't go around and try to act like I was in SF or anything. I'm proud of what I did because what I did set me up from where I'm at for where I'm at now. That was where I was supposed to be. So I tell all those guys, anybody to this day in the any second, be proud of what you're doing. Your service is not overlooked.

[02:51:03]

You guys, there's a lot of really good young dudes who are who are changing this. They're changing the 82nd. You know, I've been reached out by several guys, and I will go on post and train any of those guys for free from the 82nd because I didn't get that. I didn't get any CQB training except for basic, and it was the whole, like, grab, lean, rock, lean, rock, Like, old school stuff. My heart is with them guys, man.

[02:51:35]

If they ever need anything from me, like, they they message me all the time, and I will do whatever I can for you. If any training, any shooting, any advice for, like, after the military, like, I got you because I'm proud of what and I'm proud to know you. Be proud of your service. So we had 1 of the SF groups, I don't know who's 1, that was on our Enfav Warrior too. So we had seen them around, and and they just had, like, a different life.

[02:52:07]

Right? Everything was just kinda carefree and and big boy rules. You know? They're they're treated like big boys because they're they are. Right?

[02:52:17]

They come from an amazing group or amazing unit or amazing team. And and something about that, I was like, man, when I when I leave here, I talked to Bocez, and and he's like, I he's like, I'll help you. He's like, we'll we'll we'll get all the paperwork done. We get back. We'll do everything.

[02:52:34]

And I was so excited, man. I was, like, so excited. And then May 24, 2012 came. We were that week, we were the QRF, and whatever outpost that that the SF unit had, they were taking contact, and we were going out to help them. The fastest road to I later found this out.

[02:53:02]

The fastest road to them was they labeled it as a black road. It hasn't been cleared of an IED in 2 weeks, but it's the fastest route to them. So that's the 1 that our amazing leadership decided that we were gonna go take, And we had turned off highway 1, but maybe more than a half a mile. And I'm the gunner, and we're driving, and then it's so crazy. I mean, think about it now.

[02:53:33]

It's so crazy. I saw this massive bright light, and then it was like slow motion of seeing the dirt. I could see, like, piles of dirt. It was so crazy, like, slow. I never heard it.

[02:53:51]

I just saw it, and I saw the dirt come up. And I felt this heat pressure push me back, and my back plate broke in half. And then I came forward and snatched the whole left side of my face on the buttstock of the 240, and I woke up, they said about 10 minutes later, on a gurney. I'm hearing people scream. I'm hearing people talk about the QRF that's coming for us.

[02:54:22]

Just got ran over an IED. They're seasonal operations. I hear Apaches. I hear something about ambushes. So the vehicle in front took took the main blast.

[02:54:35]

Right? Our front half of our vehicle caught it because it was, like, kinda in between, but I got the the back blast. The pressure is what got me. It pushed me back and broke my plate, and then I got slung forward and then broke the whole left side of my face. Up to this day, still, I have no feeling on the left side of my face.

[02:54:53]

Damn. There's it's it's you can look at my nose and tell that it's it's broken. So I have no filling anywhere over here. This is they never fixed it. Never gave me surgery for it.

[02:55:04]

Nothing. It's just the nerves are gone. It's crazy. I feel this side, but not this side. So if you ever see me with a face tattoo like Mike Tyson, it'll be on this side, just so you know that.

[02:55:16]

Teardrops. But I remember laying on the on the gurney, and they're trying to get a bird in. Man, 1 of my really good friends, he's calling in the 9 line. His name is Josh Marshak. Were you aware,

[02:55:30]

or are you just conscious?

[02:55:31]

I was I was aware at this point. I could feel bleeding. I could taste the blood. I just didn't know where it was coming from. And, actually, I have a a scar on my head.

[02:55:43]

It was a massive massive gash. That that's mainly where I was bleeding from, And but I had no idea. I had a massive headache. My ears were ringing, and there was just tons of confusion. But I could I could see Marshak next to me, and he's calling in the 9 9.

[02:56:02]

I'm kind of I'm kind of hearing what he's saying, but, like, I'm kinda going in and out too. And I love that dude to this day. Like, we still talk, and I still thank him. Anytime I see him, I hug him. Hey, man.

[02:56:12]

Thanks for getting that 9 line for me. Then a bird came down, and they got me on the bird. And crazy story about that too. They got me on the bird, and I'm laying there, and, man, my head's killing me. I'm bleeding.

[02:56:31]

And on the ceiling is a flag. You know how some of them will put their team flag or whatever on the ceiling? Man, it was a black beard flag. It was this guy. And I didn't know my injuries.

[02:56:44]

I thought I was dying, the way everybody was acting. They're cutting clothes off on me, and, and I pass out. And, I wake up at the little medical spot on, 5 Warrior, and I got all these doctors around me, you know, asking me about filling in my legs, my brain, my brain I had a massive knot, like, a huge knot. They're like, oh, you know, they're trying to do all these things, but they couldn't find me to bother them. Weather was so bad.

[02:57:14]

What whatever they call it, the sky was red. I don't I don't know whatever they call it, but so I laid there for 2 days. Just I remember laying there, and, we'll get to that in a second, but so they give me some some morphine. Like, I'm feeling kinda good, and I'm laying there. And then the next morning, the command sergeant major, and the the commander walks in.

[02:57:44]

And they're like, hey, private cook. Like, did he talk to you about something? I'm, like, drugged up. I remember the conversation, and they're like, hey, We need you to call your wife. I'm like, okay.

[02:57:59]

I'm like, yeah. That'd be great. Can you am I got a phone? I can call her. Like because I had, like, 1 of those little hodge phones that you could buy with the minutes.

[02:58:06]

I was like, hey. Somebody give me my phone. They're like, but here's here's the problem is the 82nd and the family readiness group called my wife that night, told my wife that there was an accident, and I was deceased. Are you fucking kidding me? Next to my mom.

[02:58:28]

And your mom.

[02:58:29]

And my mom. And there was about an hour from my call from the call she received from the from from when I called her. They called her first they called her first thing that morning, not that night, first thing that morning, and then I was able to call her an hour later. And she goes her exact words was, who the fuck is this? I mean, hey.

[02:58:54]

It's me. I'm like, sound funny because I'm on morphine. I'm not dead. I'm alive. I'll call you in a little bit.

[02:59:03]

She's, like, so confused. I'm like, hey. I'm like, this is really me. I promise. They get on the phone.

[02:59:10]

They're like, ma'am, miss Cook, we're sorry about this. Like, she is he is alive. Nobody had died, but, like Holy shit. So for an hour, my wife and my mom thought I was dead. Like, how do you how do you fuck that up?

[02:59:27]

Because some army wife calls my wife and tells them news that shouldn't even been delivered to her. Why would you do that? It's not your responsibility. So that was I think that still bothers my wife maybe that she got that phone call, but I can't even imagine, man, how she felt. So but at least they were they caught it fast enough to where it wasn't a day, right, or hours.

[03:00:06]

It was about an hour. And I think what happened is the lady that was ahead of the FRG had told her husband that, hey. I called the wife. She's okay. I was like, well, hold on.

[03:00:19]

Nobody fucking died. He just got hurt really bad. So we're able to clear that whole mess up and you know, which was caused anxiety for the whole rest of the deployment for my family, but they finally gave me to bother them. I get to bother them, and, you know, I have massive headaches. I don't feel well.

[03:00:45]

I'm still throwing up. My legs are feeling weird. My back is, like, super sore, and I didn't break my back. Didn't have any spinal damage. I just had, like my whole back was black.

[03:00:57]

I guess just nerve damage. So they're like, hey. We can send you to Germany and then send you home. I'm like or I'm like, can I stay? They're like, well, that's how do you feel?

[03:01:12]

Like, I feel great. They can't send me home. That's an embarrassment. I failed at college. I'd failed my family about getting a job.

[03:01:22]

Like, I'm on a continuous path of failing. If I go home early, look like a bitch. I'm I I let my grandfather down. You know? I'm I'm not dead, so why do I need to go home?

[03:01:40]

So then they they they're like, that's fine, but you're not gonna be operational for a little while. Take it. Take these ambiance in the morning and at nighttime. Sleep. I was taking, like, 2 ambiance a day.

[03:01:52]

1 in the morning, I'd eat breakfast, take an ambiance, go to sleep. I'd wake up, go eat dinner, take an Ambien, go to sleep. And then then I was like, oh, I need pain medicine. They're gonna give me oxycodones over there. I was like, I stayed high and and tired.

[03:02:10]

Then, like, I kicked all of it to the curb because because now people, like, are looking at me like I'm a pussy. Like like, they don't know the extent of my injuries. When I got back, I told them nothing was wrong. They don't know that I I I have some brain scans that that, you know, they they told me I was fine, but later on when I got back home so I get back home, and we we do the appointment. I do a couple missions with them, and then I I get back home, and we do a battalion run.

[03:02:37]

I think I'm fine. I feel fine. I do the run, don't even remember the run. I remember walking out to the field, hearing, some ACDC. We're all lining up, and I remember drinking water.

[03:02:53]

That was it. That's all I remember. So then I was like, man,

[03:02:57]

how do you know you did the run? I don't know. How do you know you missed something? Because people had told me

[03:03:06]

that I was I ran, so I was in the formation. My shirt was wet. We had gray battalion shirts. My shirt was soaking wet. I thought maybe I was dreaming.

[03:03:16]

I didn't know what was going on. People told me I ran. I don't remember the run, and my shirt's drenched. I mean, you're talking October, North Carolina, 80% humidity. I'm soaked.

[03:03:30]

I thought, man, maybe I just blacked out. So a couple days go by, I start having these random nosebleeds, these massive headaches. My eyes, like, start hurting over here on the sides. I'm like, man, I don't feel right. Something something's not right.

[03:03:46]

I started getting like that That feeling that we have when we stood up and your legs are tingling, that would come and go. I felt like my legs were always asleep. I'd be standing, and I'd get this tingling, and I'd have to lean on with my wife. So finally, I I go I go to Walmart. And well, I I asked to go to Walmart, and I pretty much get told I'm I'm a pussy, being a pussy.

[03:04:09]

Suck it up. You're gonna be a sick call ranger? I mean, hey, man. Like, I got hurt. Like, I'd like to get a follow-up.

[03:04:19]

So finally, they let me get a follow-up and get these scans done, get a full body scan, and ended up being, committed to the hospital. I had some some I I had swelling in my brain, and I had some some optic nerve issues, and I had some nerve damage in my spine. So I'm in the I stayed in the hospital for, like, a week. And then they they they get the swelling down. They they bring in a doctor who enrolls me into the first Womack traumatic range injury pipeline.

[03:04:58]

There's 5 of us. 1 guy killed himself, 1 guy dropped out, 2 guys dropped out, and 2 of us completed it. Me and another guy completed it. So for 2 years, I did this pipeline. I met with, a world renowned brain doctor.

[03:05:13]

I can't remember his name. I'm a but me and my wife met with him once a month. To this day, Sean, I don't know why I was having the issues. It was never explained to me. Nobody ever got answers.

[03:05:29]

Nobody ever got anything. I had a doctor, a neurologist, told me that she thought I had STDs. What? Exactly. I got off the phone with my wife.

[03:05:40]

I'm like, what? And then she ended up getting fired because she was sexually harassing patients. The whole system was broken. To this day, I still don't know what happened. I did speech, memory, and physical therapy every day for 2 years or a year and a half.

[03:06:00]

And I got transferred to the Warrior Transition Battalion because I had so many doctor's appointments, and I couldn't ever get an answer. The army never wanted to admit that they messed up by letting me go back and not fixing me right then because that's on them. They let me go back. I'm sure that that doctor wouldn't 1, didn't that did the brain scans. There's no way you didn't find that my brain wasn't swelling.

[03:06:23]

Had a nod out to here, and I was throwing up with nosebleeds. You just gave me Ambien. I don't know if there was, like, hey. We can't send just send people to Germany unless you're, like, actively dying. I don't know.

[03:06:37]

I don't know. But to this day, I never got answers of what happened to me. I have a medical file that's this thick. I'm a 100 total impermanent, but I never got answers. I could never get answers ever.

[03:06:55]

So for a year and a half, I did speech memory and physical therapy with no answers to what was wrong. But whatever they were doing was working, so after a year and a half, I felt normal. I I had all these, like, like, shock therapies on my brain. I had these needles put all over. Had all these things done, but nobody ever told me why why I'm doing this.

[03:07:16]

Like, oh, you know, you got a brain injury. It's just something we're doing. Something we're testing out. I'm like, I'm not a rat in a lab. What's wrong?

[03:07:24]

What are you doing to fix me? You know, you have a great care team. They got it taken care of. Yeah. That's great.

[03:07:31]

But what are they doing to fix me? Have they not explained this to you? No. Bring it up to them. I bring it up to them.

[03:07:36]

Nothing. Nothing. It was it was horrible. You wanna know why guys are killing themselves? Because they can't get answers.

[03:07:45]

You don't care. You're a civilian or you're, in the military, and and and you're not giving people the answers that they need because you don't care. Something's wrong with me. What is wrong with me? If the army fucked up, that's fine.

[03:07:58]

I'm not gonna blame the army, but nobody ever told me what was wrong. So I got released from the pipeline. I had this little ceremony, whatever. Their call is so successful. I'm like, cool.

[03:08:13]

Send me back to my unit. Send me back. I can leave a Warrior Transportation Tower and go back to the 82nd. Get in the 82nd, everybody's, like, rigging up, getting all their stuff. They're like, hey, Cook.

[03:08:25]

Hey, man. Glad you're back. Go get your rock. It needs to be this weight. Blah blah blah, or you got a combat jump tonight.

[03:08:34]

Then we're gonna walk back to the company, and you're gonna jump to 240. I'm like, I just got back. Like, I just walked in the company. I'm like, what do you mean? I'm not jumping.

[03:08:46]

I just I just did this for a year and a half. This was, like, the end of the end of the end of 2013. So about about December of 2013, I'm like, I only have, like, 6 more months left on my contract. I'm like, I'm not jumping. They're like, oh, you're gonna jump.

[03:09:07]

You're not with the Warrior Transition Battalion anymore. You're gonna jump. I'm like, man, this is bullshit. This ain't right. First sergeant was mad.

[03:09:16]

They're all mad because I went to the war transition battalion and got help that I needed. Whether I got told what was wrong or not, whatever they did worked. I felt better. I still have some stuttering when I get excited. If you watch any of our videos on Instagram when I'm, like, trying to teach, sometimes I'll stutter.

[03:09:34]

But whatever they did, like, it was great, and I'm and I'm grateful for those people. But to this day, I'd still like to know. But so I get rigged up. I got no option. I'm an e 4.

[03:09:48]

You know? Like, you can't argue. They're either gonna give me an article 15 for disobeying orders 6 months before I get out, or I can just suck it up and jump. So I'm like, cool. Whatever.

[03:09:59]

I'll jump to 240. At this point, whatever. We jump. Jump out. Parachute opens.

[03:10:08]

Everything's fine and dandy. Bam. Head bust right off the windshield of a Humvee. Snacked a Humvee on the ground. I woke up, man.

[03:10:20]

I don't know. Maybe a I mean, it could it could've been long. 30 seconds later. I'm like, damn. I got a headache.

[03:10:27]

I'm like, dude, suck it up. Suck it up. Put my parachute up, met up at at at the meetup point, the rally point, and I'm laying on the ground, and and sergeant Beauchez is right there, and I'm just throwing up. I am just yacking. He goes, Cook, what's wrong?

[03:10:45]

I said, hey, man. I hit my head off the Humvee. He shined a light, and I I was I was bleeding down down around my face. He's like, are you sure you hit your head? I'm like, yeah.

[03:10:55]

I'm throwing up. He's like, hey. He goes, go to the medical tent right now. He goes, you only got 6 months left. Go to the medical tent right now.

[03:11:04]

Went to the medical tent, took me to the hospital, same doctor in the ER. Super cool. Right back into the Warrior Transition Battalion the next day. They treated my concussion for about 5 months, and then they're like, hey. You seem fine.

[03:11:24]

See you later. Go pick up your d I walked in still thinking I had treatment. I still had, like, a month left in my contract, and they were like, hey. You go pick up your your d d 214 and and take this leave. I was like, okay.

[03:11:40]

That sounds great. Is it am I okay? Am I good to leave? You've been like, yeah. Your doctor's cleared off all your paperwork.

[03:11:46]

We have all your paperwork. I'm like, nobody ran that by me. Nobody told me I was cleared. No shit. I was like, let me see my paperwork.

[03:11:54]

There it was. So they rushed you out. Rushed me right out, pushed me right out the door. I went to, a social support center, picked up my DD 214, and I didn't even hear I didn't even need any out processing. Dude, I still have I had, like, my helmet.

[03:12:14]

I didn't do any out processing. Never got a letter for to bring it in. Nothing. They rushed me right out. See you later.

[03:12:22]

And, man, that's why I do encourage people to if you wanna stay in this longer, try to get to those other units, man, because I I feel like you might get better treatment. Maybe it's different now. I mean, it's been my god. It's been 12 years now, but to this day, I I have no idea. I just know how I felt.

[03:12:48]

I just know that I was putting this important timeline. I know that I was sent to a a battalion that was made so people can go to their appointments because they're messed up, and then I was rushed right on out. And I had 2 months of leave build up, so I took it. Damn. And, still had memory issues.

[03:13:12]

Couldn't remember anything. Couldn't remember I put my keys. Couldn't remember nothing. And so I applied, so I got out early. So that was that was, like, February or, like, March March time frame.

[03:13:30]

I was like, man, what am I gonna do? So what am I gonna do? Because I didn't get out medically. Don't have a degree. Right?

[03:13:42]

Didn't take that serious. Shooting a piece of paper in a trash can didn't work for me. What am I gonna do? I have a son and a wife. She works.

[03:13:52]

She does hair, but she had to lose all of her clients when I deployed to move back home with my mom. So she's still trying to build her clientele up. She gave all of her clients away to for safety, and now she's trying to build all of them back up. It's hard. So, like, man, I'm gonna oh, we were driving down Bragg Boulevard, and I saw this this armored vehicle flying up the road, blue lights and sirens.

[03:14:20]

It said Fayetteville police emergency response team. I was like, that's it, man. I'm gonna be that. How do I get there? So I walked to the police station.

[03:14:33]

I walked in. Police station says, hey. I wanna be a cop. How do I sign up? Like, oh, you know, you gotta go over to the training center.

[03:14:39]

So I started the process and and did all the hiring process, and then, you know, May came, and I heard nothing. May June, crickets. I'm like, man, I didn't I didn't get this job because, you know, I had to tell him, you know so in that time period when I fell out of college, you know, because I was honest with him about everything. Right? Smoked some smoked some weed.

[03:15:05]

My stepdad had hernia surgery, and when he was healed, I stole the rest of his Percocets and sold them for money. So I had to be truthful on all this. They give you a lot of texture tests. I said, man, maybe they didn't really like that. You know?

[03:15:24]

Maybe that was maybe I should've tried to a lot. I don't know. May maybe they didn't like that. Man, like, June like, end of June, they're like, hey, man. Start be let next Monday.

[03:15:40]

It's like a week of be let. Basic law enforcement training. You're hired with the Fayetteville Police Department. You start you start BLAT next Monday. I was like, they were like, we're gonna report we'll get seen an email with all the instructions.

[03:15:53]

I was like, am I hired? Or, like, yeah. I was like, oh, man.

[03:15:57]

I am. Cool. Let's go be a cop.

[03:16:00]

Right? I have no idea what to expect, but let's go be a cop. So first a and b let, you know, we go and we're we're meeting with all the other people. There's there's, we had, like, a large class with, like, 18 18 18 to 20 of us, and, we lost 6 in for testing purposes. But Fayetteville has their own basic law enforcement training.

[03:16:25]

So everything is in house. You don't have to a lot of places you go to college, go to be let, and then you're sponsored by an age agency that then picks you up afterwards.

[03:16:34]

Mhmm.

[03:16:34]

But Fayetteville is a really good department because Fayetteville is a very dangerous city. So they have their own instructors, their own b let on-site at the training center. We have a whole training center. And so I I so I go to b let, and we're sitting down. They're doing orientation at city hall, and then we do that.

[03:16:55]

And then the next day, we we report to the training center. Get to the training center and they're explaining everything and they're like, every Friday, we're we have a test on see, there's a total of, like, 20 some tests because it's all about, like, law, 4th amendment, like, all the all the everything. Anything about being a cop. So they bring an instructor in on Monday, teach you for 4 days, and then Friday, you take an exam. You can only fail 2 your 3rd when you're out.

[03:17:27]

And I'm like I go home, and I'm like, honey, I'm screwed. I'm like, I can't remember. At this point, I can't remember. My memory is horrible. It's really bad.

[03:17:40]

I'm like, there's no way I'm gonna be able to to take sit down and and do this and to and go take a test. Already had, like, test anxiety. She's like, we're we're gonna get you through it. I'm like, you she's like, I promise you we're gonna get you through this. Like, alright.

[03:17:58]

I'm a I'm a try it. So every Wednesday Thursday night, my wife would come home from working 10 hours, help me make index cards, and she'd sit up all night flipping them for me, helping me study. All night, hours. We'd get up 5 o'clock in the morning before test, and she'd flip index cards. I was, like, top 3 in my class for academics, and there were some really intelligent people.

[03:18:32]

I had, like I was getting almost I never failed I never failed 1 test. It's because my wife stuck by my side and came home after a long day at work feeding our son and then staying up and flipping index cards with me. And that's 6 months of doing that. Damn. So she was exhausted.

[03:18:55]

I quit Terry now would never would have made it through be let testing if it wasn't for her. I owe it all to her and god, but, man, like, she made sure that I was successful.

[03:19:11]

It's a good woman.

[03:19:12]

Oh, man. Yeah. Yeah. Man, she was not gonna let me fail because she had saw my life the last 2 years of how I was treated in the army. She wanted to go talk to all these chain of command.

[03:19:29]

She was livid. I was like, no. Leave it alone. Leave it alone. She's like, Blake, I want answers.

[03:19:34]

Like, I do too. But I'm like, I don't wanna make nobody mad, Nicole. We don't understand. I don't wanna be punished. I'm afraid that if I roughed up too many feathers, they're just gonna send me back to my unit.

[03:19:47]

Just discharge me and send me back to my unit. I'm like, just be quiet so I can just keep doing the treatment. Because if you start pissing off people, they're gonna send you they're gonna send me back. If they send me back, then you have nobody to irritate except for that commander and first sergeant, and you're not their problem anymore. So she's like, okay.

[03:20:06]

Okay. Okay. So she was already living. I mean, she she had helped me shower. Like, there were times where my leg was would just go numb.

[03:20:15]

Like, just like a like a not a numb, like, not where I couldn't feel them, but, like, they were just asleep. And if I stepped, it hurt. It felt like knives were in my legs, only in my legs. Never my arms, never my upper body, always my legs. The only answer I got was nerve damage, and that it can take up to 3 to 4 years for nerves to heal themselves.

[03:20:38]

They're kinda like misfiring is what I was told. And that's what's happening. They're misfiring with my brain, and that's the feeling that I'm getting. Some BS answer. Not even a a true medical answer.

[03:20:49]

Sounded like a talking about a car engine. Like, tell me what's wrong. But she never let me fail, man. So 6 months, go to graduation. You know?

[03:21:01]

Right? She she pins my badge on me. You know? I'm just so grateful that that that that that she took the time to do all this. And, Your wife pinned her badge on you?

[03:21:11]

Yeah. That's awesome.

[03:21:13]

Yeah. It was awesome. It was because she should have been wearing a badge. By that point, she knew the law. She knew the law better than I did.

[03:21:24]

You know? Because it was it was because she she had to to read the chapters and pick out what she believed to be important things. And and while they were teaching, I would highlight things that they would be like, okay. You need to label the Sean Ryan show. Wink wink.

[03:21:43]

That might be a test question. Yeah. But she would go through all the highlights and make the index cards for me, and I would make them too. And and without without that, man, there's without her push, right, hey, man, don't give up. Don't give up.

[03:21:55]

You're not broken. Because I I could've laid around and made excuses. Oh, the army said I was zipped up. Right? Yeah.

[03:22:00]

And jacked up. You know? Because I wouldn't get any disability or not at the time. Nothing. Not not a not a thing.

[03:22:08]

No good. Nothing. No medical. No nothing. So, she pays my badge on me, and, I get assigned to Fayetteville's broken up into 3 districts, Hamilton, Central, Cross Creek.

[03:22:24]

It's a city of, like, 300 some thousand people plus all the craziness on Bragg. Right? A lot of people don't understand, man. There's there's more gang members on Fort Bragg than there is in the city of Fayetteville.

[03:22:35]

No kidding.

[03:22:36]

Hell, yeah. We'll get into that.

[03:22:37]

Well, before we do, before we get into your LA career, let's take a quick break. Let's

[03:22:42]

do it.

[03:22:46]

I know everybody out there has to be just as frustrated as I am when it comes to the BS and the rhetoric that the mainstream media continuously tries to force feed us. And I also know how frustrating it can be to try to find some type of a reliable news source. It's getting really hard to find the truth and what's going on in the country and in the world. And so 1 thing we've done here at Sean Ryan Show is we are developing our newsletter, and the first contributor to the newsletter that we have is a woman, former CA targeter. Some of you may know her as Sarah Adams, call sign super bad.

[03:23:25]

She's made 2 different appearances here on the Sean Ryan Show, and some of the stuff that she has uncovered and broke on this show is just absolutely mind blowing. And so I've asked her if she would contribute to the newsletter and give us a weekly intelligence brief. This is gonna be all things terrorists. How terrorists are coming up through the southern border, how they're entering the country, how they're traveling, what these different terrorist organizations throughout the world are up to. And here's the best part, the newsletter is actually free.

[03:24:01]

We're not gonna spam you. It's about 1 newsletter a week, maybe 2 if we release 2 shows. The only other thing that's gonna be in there besides the intel brief is if we have a new product or something like that. But like I said, it's a free CIA intelligence brief. Sign up.

[03:24:20]

Link's in the description or in the comments. We'll see you in the newsletter.

[03:24:28]

Alright, Blake. We're back from the break. You just got through the police academy. Where are we going?

[03:24:37]

Yeah. So like I said, my wife my wife pinned me. Right? So I'm super excited. Starting to really feel like a cop.

[03:24:44]

I got a badge. I got a gun. All the training that I feel like I need. So I get my assignment. You know, my assignment's central district, which is kind of the city's broken, like I said, into 3.

[03:24:56]

Central's the middle. So it's, covers a lot of the really bad areas. It covers an area called Bonny Doon, Massey Hill, a lot of, crime and gang members and and all these things. And,

[03:25:11]

what is Fayetteville? I've never been to Fayetteville.

[03:25:13]

So Fayetteville is obviously a military town, but it's a it's, it's weird. It's it's it's kinda nice, but it's kinda ghetto. It's, it's, you know, like, the street that my wife grew up on was a really nice street. It's called Devon Street. It's 1 of the predominant areas in Fayetteville because she's born and raised in Fayetteville.

[03:25:36]

Okay. And, the street behind it is 1 of the worst neighborhoods in the city. It's 1 of the worst roads on the city. And, you could be driving nice nice nice and then bam. Ghetto.

[03:25:54]

And then nice nice nice. It's, it's crazy. There's the I I really because I started out in this district, I got fascinated with gangs. Like, just how they operate, music, everything. So Really?

[03:26:14]

Yeah. I just I just got obsessed learning everything I could about gangs. What kind of gangs? So we have Bloods, Crips, and we have MCs, and we have some cartel. The New Generation and Sinaloa Cartel's pretty predominant in the area.

[03:26:36]

Sinaloa Cartel runs Myrtle Beach.

[03:26:39]

No shit.

[03:26:40]

Oh, absolutely. What do

[03:26:41]

you mean by that? Runs Myrtle

[03:26:42]

Beach? Like, runs it. They are Runs what? Like, everything. Strip clubs, drugs.

[03:26:49]

Anything that comes in and out of Myrtle Beach is Sinaloa Cartel. It used to a long time ago, it used to be kinda like the Russian mafia, but something happened when the Sinaloa Cartel came in and just took over.

[03:27:01]

Dominated it.

[03:27:01]

So dominated it. So I clubs,

[03:27:04]

drugs.

[03:27:05]

Probably all the stores, all the so when I was younger, when I would go there all the stores. Like, Subway. Remember how Subway used to like, Subway in Myrtle Beach, you would go there. It would be, like, foreign exchange units from Russia. The wings, the all the stores were had Russian.

[03:27:21]

Now it's just a bunch of Hispanic people. Growing up, it was always it was always Russian teenagers. Now it's not no more. Now it's it's it's Mexicans, Hispanics. So we train How do you know their cartel?

[03:27:38]

So the what? The cartel bought the businesses? We we just know

[03:27:42]

that they operate out of Myrtle Beach. So anything in Myrtle Beach is probably, like, drug wise and guns is probably all being filtered through the cartel Mhmm. Is what I mean. I'm not saying that they own the subways and things like that, but there's a increase of Hispanics in that area Mhmm. Since the Sinaloa Cartel has moved into that area, if that makes any sense.

[03:28:07]

Gotcha.

[03:28:08]

So because they operate off I 95. Right? So the halfway point from New York City in Miami, the halfway point is Fayetteville, North Carolina.

[03:28:19]

Is it really?

[03:28:20]

You can take several exits in and out of our city off I 95 and disappear. They operate a lot in Lumberton, North Carolina, which is so so so it's called the Lumbee tribe. They're not they're not they're not a national tribe. I think Trump was trying to make it, but they're not. But there's a lot of land, and they can disappear out that way.

[03:28:42]

Like, drugs and money and guns are just so predominant through Fayetteville and that Robinson County area because of 95. Interesting. You can gump off 595, and then boom. So what was your first encounter with gangs? What what what what initially

[03:29:00]

got you? You're fascinated with that?

[03:29:03]

There was this kid in Fayetteville called Kaboom Holy. I think his name was Andreas Flight. He was the leader of a nontraditional gang. So you have traditional, nontraditional. Traditional gangs are gangs like like Lil Wayne come came from, like East Side Maua Piru.

[03:29:23]

That is a gang that is nationally known everywhere, sets everywhere. Nontraditional was like a neighborhood clique. So he had a non clique called Money Gang. Right? And they were a blood set.

[03:29:36]

They were a

[03:29:37]

blood many people are we talking here?

[03:29:38]

What's what's a nontraditional gang?

[03:29:40]

20, 30. 20, 30 people?

[03:29:42]

Young young teenagers who are violent. Okay. You know, it's, you know, the the surf

[03:29:49]

Young like 13, 14?

[03:29:51]

14, 15, 16. Okay. 17, 18 is kinda old. Old? Yeah.

[03:29:56]

That would be old. Older. You're not you're dealing with those high school kids.

[03:30:00]

So hold on. We're I'm really you sound like the guy that I talked to. So 13, 14's young. 18, 19's old. Where do they go when they're 20?

[03:30:15]

So a lot of times they'll start at nontraditional gangs. They'll get older, then they'll move on and try to get into another gang. Like like, if they're a non traditional blood set, like money gang, they'll try to go once they get older, they went away from that little click, or maybe several of them have died off, and the gang has died off. They'll they'll go maybe they have a homie that's with East Side Mob Piru or Sex Money Murder. Those are those are traditional gangs.

[03:30:42]

So money, money gang is a blood set, a nontraditional blood set, but once they kinda age out, maybe they don't wanna be a part of this clique anymore.

[03:30:50]

What do you mean a blood set? So you

[03:30:52]

have Bloods and Crips. Mhmm. Right? That's just who you are, and then there's different sets. Like, a set is sex, money, murder.

[03:31:01]

That is a blood set. They're bloods, but then you have east side Mobiru.

[03:31:07]

So what is this shit? Like, the UFC feeder things?

[03:31:09]

Dude, it's it's Is

[03:31:10]

that what it's like?

[03:31:11]

It's very

[03:31:11]

organized. You're in the JV, and now you're in the varsity?

[03:31:14]

Pretty much.

[03:31:15]

You're in the

[03:31:16]

Do they have minor leagues? They have rules, bibles.

[03:31:20]

No shit.

[03:31:21]

They have it's it's What kind of rules? Like, like, you gotta be beat in for a certain amount of, like, 8 Trey Crips. Like, they had to be beaten for 83 seconds for 8 3. Right? 8 Trey.

[03:31:36]

3 is Trey. So you have to be beaten into the gang, or if you're a chick, you can be raped into the gang. You can be raped into the gang. Gang. Women choose to be raped into a gang.

[03:31:48]

Yes.

[03:31:51]

Why? What do they get out of that?

[03:31:54]

They're obviously missing something at home. They wanna be a part of that gang. Like, what does that entail? So, like like, man, who's the, What?

[03:32:03]

They gotta fuck somebody or they

[03:32:05]

Oh, yeah. They get raped by, like, multiple gang members. But is it rape? Pretty much. Yeah.

[03:32:10]

I mean, they're it's just beating

[03:32:12]

her ass, and they're they're fucking her. They're it's not like we're all just gang banging you. They're, like, forcefully, like, raping her. Like, maybe she'd because she's not like maybe she don't want to be a part of it. Right?

[03:32:25]

Maybe she might, like, change her mind, but once you commit to it, you've you've committed to it. There's no backing out. Yeah. It's sex, but then if they don't want to and they try to back out, there is no backing out.

[03:32:35]

So what's their role once they're in the gang? Once they've been raped into the gang?

[03:32:39]

Like, if they're blood, they're blooded. What does that I mean, are they just female, just hangs

[03:32:44]

Are they

[03:32:44]

are they actual gang members? They're gang members. They get to just hang out with the gang. They don't really do anything. They just hang out with the gang.

[03:32:54]

It's I'll show you some videos, but it's That's alright. It's no. Not of not of getting gang banged in, but, but, I mean, it's just gangs are very interesting. So if I go see, you know, you have to be Hispanic or black to be a blood. You can't be white.

[03:33:12]

Any white guy that ever says they're a blood, they're a complete liar. So in this day and age, if I see maybe a young 13, 14 year old African American kid, and he's wearing Chicago Bulls, and he can't tell me anybody on their current team, it's a validation point to be a blood. So I have to get 3 validation points to validate you on a sheet that gets submitted in to state that you're a gang member. But if you tell me you're a blood or a crip, I just need 1 other validation point. But a validation point is a lot of you see a lot of blood members wear Chicago Bulls.

[03:33:51]

Why? Because Bulls stands for bloods usually live longer and stronger. You see a lot of 8 Trey Crips, 83 Crips, they wear the Texas Ranger hats. The hats were blue, and there's a t on it. T stands for Trey, 8 Trey.

[03:34:09]

You see, like you ever seen the tattoos that say MOB and they're like, ah, money over bitches. Member of blood. You see a lot of tattoos that are RR, that stands for real right. That means you've done something for the gang. You've done something maybe violent for the gang.

[03:34:25]

There's, you know, the 5 pointed stars, 6 pointed stars. You ever see anybody with a Star of David on them? You know, they're a gangster disciple. It's just so much. Bloods operate on the right side, so if they're flying a flag, which is a bandana, they're on the everything should be on the right side.

[03:34:44]

If they're a crip, everything's on the left side. Now a lot of the younger kids will instead of carrying flags, they wear, like, red shoes or blue shoes. Vans is is highly popular.

[03:34:54]

Are those are these the 2 biggest gangs in the country?

[03:34:57]

Bloods and Crips. Yeah. No. It's what you Because to this day. Yeah.

[03:35:03]

Stoop Dog, Crip, you know, Lil Wayne. You can watch, there's a music video with him and Bruno Mars. This mirror on the wall, whatever that mirrors or whatever. If you actually watch the music video, Lil Wayne pays tons of respect to the bloods. He shows all of his blood tattoos, MOB, RR, 5 pointed stars, everything.

[03:35:25]

A lot of them will even have, like, red dreads. So there's another set of bloods called sex, money, murder. They are a blood set, but they were founded by a guy in, like, the sixties, Pistol Pete. They don't do this. This is blood.

[03:35:42]

Right? They hold this up, this is blood. You'll never see Crips operate on the right side. Crips will always operate over here. So they're a blood set, but they show they they'll throw up 2 pistols to pay respect to Pistol Pete, and they operate off the color green because Pete loved money.

[03:36:04]

Have you ever known Chicago Bulls to ever wear green? No. No. So why do they sell green jerseys and green hats?

[03:36:13]

No shit.

[03:36:14]

It's because they sell to the gang. They make a ton of money off of it.

[03:36:19]

No shit.

[03:36:20]

It's man, it's bloods will never eat at at Burger King because BK stands for blood killer. Like, it's a whole whole bunch of rules that you would never even think of.

[03:36:36]

Are these guys always are these 2 gangs always co located with each other, or do they have specific territories?

[03:36:42]

They have territories, neighborhoods, you know.

[03:36:44]

Within the city? Within the city. So they'll be both gangs within the same city.

[03:36:49]

Oh, yeah. There's then you have nontraditional gangs who have no authority or discipline because there's a bunch of kids that wanna make their presence known. They might attack a traditional blood set. Doesn't make any sense. The nontraditional gangs, Sean, scare me to death.

[03:37:09]

Why? More than the traditional gangs?

[03:37:11]

They're undisciplined. They're not answering everybody. They have no rules. They're not scared of us. Because why?

[03:37:19]

Because they're 15 and 16. I can't do nothing with them. 16 or 15 14 and 15, I can't do nothing with them. 16, you're mine, but I can't do nothing with you at 15 or below. Man, like, they are it just so I watched this first video.

[03:37:38]

My friend, 1 of my really good friends named Dave Franklin, huge mentor at the police department. He was in what was called GGVU at the time. It was called the, gang gun violence unit. So he came in and taught a gang class while we were in. That was 1 of the the classes.

[03:38:00]

And I watched this video. It's called gun weight, and it's a nontraditional gang, the money gang. And they're just in this shitty trailer holding up guns, talking about the gun weight. 3 of those kids in that video are dead from gang violence. 2 of them are in prison, and the leader is in and out of prison.

[03:38:24]

It's just man, I I it's just so fascinating to me. I used to listen to the music, all the all the rap music, just listening to terminology, how they talk, how they operate. Just there's so many different things, like, like Bloods, will, they'll make a sound. You hear a lot like Lil Wayne's music videos. If they're in a large crowd full of other blood gang members, that's signaling to them that 12 is around because it sounds like police sirens.

[03:39:06]

It's just so fascinating. And a lot of chicks really got into the to the gangs because of, Cardi b. Cardi b's a blood. She used to have blood blood dreads, and she had the whole 9 yards. She was a straight gangster.

[03:39:24]

She had a whole music video where there's, like, she's the OG back before she got super famous. She's Wow. It's

[03:39:33]

So Cardi b is a blood. Mhmm.

[03:39:37]

Lil Wayne's a blood. The song red nation that, like, it talks about, it pays respects even like Ocho Cinkos. Like, it gives him a shout out. Doesn't mean he's a blood, but it means he's affiliate. It's so interesting, man.

[03:39:53]

Like, I used to be obsessed with watching, because I knew this is what I wanted to do. How many gangs are in Fayetteville? Oh, man. A lot. Like, 20?

[03:40:05]

More than 20. 50? Man, probably probably 30, 40. 30, 40 gangs.

[03:40:11]

Yeah. Are they all rivals?

[03:40:14]

I don't think that they get along. I think Bloods try to hang out with Bloods and Cripps try to hang out with Cripps and GD is trying to gangs

[03:40:21]

in a town of did you say 300,000? 300,000. But that's not a huge town. No. Where do 40 gangs go without running into each other?

[03:40:32]

They're everywhere. They're everywhere. Like

[03:40:36]

Are any of them friendly? Do the MCs get along with the Bloods or the Crips? They don't even

[03:40:42]

really mess with them. The MCs don't get into that. They have their own rival. I mean, you've got

[03:40:52]

cartels. You've got the Bloods and the Crips.

[03:40:55]

Gangster Disciples, Latin Kings. You got all this shit in 1 area. Oh, yeah. We got Crips, Bloods, Latin Kings, Gangster Disciples, Folk Nation, Hell's Angels, and, like, 4 or 5 other motorcycle gangs. But all of those How do you categorize them?

[03:41:19]

Research. We a lot of them, we'll we'll admit. A lot of them, we'll see on their Facebook page hand signals, tattoos.

[03:41:27]

How do they not step on each other in a town of 300,000?

[03:41:30]

They do. They'll never admit it, but I mean, what do

[03:41:33]

they do? Prostitution, run drugs

[03:41:36]

Lot of it is running drugs. Run run guns. Run guns and run drugs and just be they're just outlaws. They just they have they just shoot each other. Like, nobody fights anymore.

[03:41:50]

It's just shooting. The money gang, they had a I forgot his I forgot that they brought in a boy from Charlotte, man. He he he sucked. I can't remember his name, but he has been arrested several times for sex trafficking. He was a big sex trafficker.

[03:42:12]

God, I can't even remember his his name on YouTube. They have all these videos out there, man. Like, there's a 1 gang in Fayetteville called Roo Gang. We completely dismantled them. They made a video that said, fuck the police, shoot anything blue.

[03:42:32]

Holding rifles, convicted felons, and this idiot at a surplus store sold all of it to him for a music video, plate carriers, then gave him patches to wear. They were raided by Homeland Security, had stolen secret radios, had 22 ops corps maritime maritime helmets that belonged to SEAL team 6. What? 22 of those. How'd they get them?

[03:43:03]

Supply guys bring them there and sell them to him.

[03:43:06]

No shit.

[03:43:08]

He's gone. They they raided him. I think he still has a store, but he's he's pending federal charges unless he snitched, which I'm sure he probably did. But that other gang is gone. Like, we dismantled them.

[03:43:20]

They were 2 brothers were the leaders, and, ecstasy or, Xanax bars were were were their big things. We did a search warrant on their house, couldn't find anything in their house. Went out to their storage unit, started digging through boxes, big old heavy boxes. I'm like, what is in these? Open them up, cereal boxes.

[03:43:42]

I'm like, this is weird. Open up the cereal boxes, bags, cereal bags full of Xanax bars.

[03:43:52]

Holy shit.

[03:43:53]

Probably 1,000. I don't know. I think about, like, 20, 30000. Just 1,000. I mean, they kinda keep to they all kinda keep to themselves until, at some point, they cross paths or they had beef.

[03:44:07]

Social media beef is the worst. People get mouled on social media, and then they go shoot houses up. Nobody fights anymore. It's it's shooting and killing. It's, man, Fabo's wild, Sean.

[03:44:21]

Is it really?

[03:44:22]

When the sun goes down, it is you get, like, a very eerie feeling because that's when all the goons come out. They all come out to play. And it is like any car you stop, you might be in a you might be in a gunfight because they don't respect law enforcement, especially after the past administrative chiefs and stuff that we've had.

[03:44:45]

Yeah.

[03:44:45]

Like, they just don't respect it. And, man, it's very, very interesting just how they operate because we'll find their Bibles and we'll study them, and, you know, a lot of them can't stay off social media. Right? A lot of them will always be on social media throwing up gang signs. So we'll go find them.

[03:45:05]

We'll do investigative stops on them, find guns. Man, the year that we got gang year of the year, man, we got, I don't know, like 4 or 500 guns that year, just guns everywhere. And it's a lot of it is because soldiers leave their cars in their apartment complexes unlocked with guns in them. And these kids, these gang members go around pulling pulling car handles, And then, man, they'd get 20, 30 guns a night. And then the soldiers threw his gun box away and don't even know his serial number.

[03:45:40]

So he can't sometimes can't even charge him with stolen firearm because they don't have the serial number. And they'll tell him, hey. When you get it, call it in so we can put it in the system, and they never do. It's, I mean, I've had some close calls in that city. That city never sleeps.

[03:45:58]

We've had broad daylight shootings. Wendy's parking lot, 1 o'clock in the afternoon, 3 people dead in a parking spot. It's crazy. Damn. I mean, I pul