Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:02):
And so I go past the twenty second Street exit,
which is right there in Portland, and it just it
was one of those things where like it wasn't like
an audible voice, but it was like, we're moving to Portland,
like God saying like, you're moving to Portland. And I
was like, okay, I don't know what that looks like,
but all right now, Remember I'm not from Louisville. So
(00:24):
I go down to Sean and I say, hey, you know,
I think we're supposed to move to Portland and he
was like, you mean Oregon. I was like, no, no,
in Louisville and he was like, yeah, no.
Speaker 2 (00:34):
No, you're talking about it. That ain't gonna be where
I'm moving to do because that's where you spy my
drugs in that neighbor I knew, like, this is not
the neighborhood for us to move too. And she was adamant.
She was like, now we're moving there.
Speaker 3 (00:52):
And I was like, okay, welcome to an army of
normal folks. I'm Bill Courtney. I'm a normal guy. I'm
a husband, a father, an entrepreneur, and I've been a
football coach in Inner City Memphis and at last part
somehow led to an oscar for the film about our team.
(01:13):
It's called Undefeated. Guys, I believe our country's problems will
never be solved by a bunch of fancy people in
nice suits using big words that nobody ever uses on
sinning in box, but rather by an army of normal folks. Y'all.
That's us, just you and me deciding, Hey, you know what,
(01:35):
maybe I can help. That's what Sean and Inga Arvin,
the voices you just heard, have done. They felt called
to move to a challenging Louisville neighborhood called Portland, and
have since reinvigorated a community center and a fish fry,
opened a school and a thrift store. All of it
(01:58):
is part of their nonprofit call called Love City, And
to them, it's as simple as neighbors loving neighbors. I
cannot wait for you to meet the Arvins right after
these brief messages from our general sponsors, Inga and Sean Arvin,
(02:33):
Welcome to Memphis. We thank you, thank you, thanks for
driving down. You drove down last night. It was right
was a raining cats some not about.
Speaker 2 (02:42):
And beautiful as as we got to about Jackson.
Speaker 3 (02:45):
And you're from the booming metropolis I believe of Portland, Kentucky.
Speaker 2 (02:50):
Yeah, on the askirts of Louisville. I mean just uh,
they were about the same years when they were incorporated
and then Louisville took took them as a metro.
Speaker 3 (03:04):
So yeah, and it's people in Portland, did they just
most of them just say I'm from the Louisville area.
Isn't that close?
Speaker 2 (03:11):
Oh?
Speaker 1 (03:12):
No, is that close?
Speaker 3 (03:15):
But I say so Portland is It's distinct thing exactly.
Speaker 2 (03:21):
It's no different than like here. We've learned just in
the last little bit that we've been here. You all
have all kinds of like name Germantown's it's called Lake
something or what. We were just at Starbucks and she
called it white Haven, white Haven white It's like that
in Louisville. Matter of fact, we were talking about this
(03:42):
last night. We were like, man, because we rode around
a little bit, just wanted to get the feel of
like where we're at. Uh, it feels a lot like Louisville, Kentucky.
I mean even uh, just to lay out in the.
Speaker 3 (03:56):
Uh, Louisville and Memphis are similar cities.
Speaker 2 (03:59):
Yeah, yeah, I would say.
Speaker 3 (04:00):
That for sure for sure. Well welcome, Thanks for coming
down for our listeners. You guys founded Love City, which
is a crazy story, and we're going to get to it, sure,
but first we got to kind of unpack you. And
(04:21):
we've got to give a shout out to Terry Holland,
which is how we know you. And it was a
quick message and it said, Hey, Bill, I would like
to share the story of two people, Sean and Inga
Arvin and their journey of establishing Love City in Portland, Kentucky.
You got to check them out, So shout out to Terry.
(04:42):
Who's Terry.
Speaker 2 (04:43):
Terry's most definitely one of our good friends foremost. And
then she also does a ton of volunteering that Love
City and loves to work with the kids in reading.
One of the pphysits across America, not just in Portland, Kentucky,
is kids can't read, so we're trying to teach these
(05:06):
kids basic skills of reading to make them lifelong learners.
And she's a board member now and her and her
husband are highly involved in Love City. Uh, they're amazing
people and just ordinary people are trying to change the.
Speaker 3 (05:22):
World in Memphis. You're a Memphian, if you're a Portlander,
what's a Portland.
Speaker 2 (05:27):
They do call that. They say they use the word Portlander.
Speaker 3 (05:30):
I guess, so, I guess Terry is a lifelong Portlanders.
She actually rides over.
Speaker 2 (05:41):
Yeah, she crosses the boundary cross over mepact. I don't
know about here in Memphis, but in the segregation parts
of like how the layout of louis Is, the west
end of louis was predominantly the empire'steria. And uh, we
have a street that's called the Nice Street and it's
actually a big thing in Louisville, Kentucky. I grew up
(06:03):
there my whole life, and she grew up in Washington,
d C. And coast don't coastal Carolina, North Carolina. And uh,
but there is a divide and it's called the Nice
Street divide. And literally people who live on the east
(06:23):
side of the Ninth Street will tell people don't go
past that, the proverbial other side of the train, don't
go past nine Street. And you will literally, if you're
down in that area, you'll see people like slam on
their breaks. Yeah, freak out and freak out like I
can go down.
Speaker 1 (06:43):
There, or they'll accidentally cross over and be like, how
do I turn around?
Speaker 3 (06:48):
Because those poor people are going to kill you. Yeah, yeah,
that's ridiculous. Okay, So let's to get to Love City
and to really understand how this happened. We kind of
got to go back a little first to set it up.
Speaker 2 (07:07):
Yeah, I totally would agree. So we might start that
story some for you.
Speaker 3 (07:12):
Yeah, I want you to start your story and inga,
I want to hear your story and then how your
story's collided and you met, and then we'll go from there.
Speaker 2 (07:24):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (07:25):
Sure.
Speaker 2 (07:26):
For me, it's a whole different story from the perspective
of I grew up in Louisville, Kentucky, so I lived
there mostly my whole life. I have traveled around the
world and never a period of time I was in
the military, but mostly I've grew up in Louisville, Kentucky
my whole life. By the age of two years old,
(07:48):
I had already been mentally, physically and sexually abused. My
mother was a prostitute, I had no father, and it
was just just a free for all. Was in the seventies.
I was born in sixty seven, so the seventies was
just like wild and I grew up seeing a lot
of things I probably shouldn't have seen and grew up
(08:11):
way too fast. By the age of eight years old,
I was already an entrepreneur, hustling living in the projects,
and I would take out people's trash because nobody wanted
to walk all the way to the dumpster for a dime.
So I started a whole entrepreneurial like how to raise
a couple of bucks, you know, to go to the
(08:32):
corner market. And then throughout life I went to eighteen
different schools. I was man just probably when I graduated,
I still own a couple of grade points. And then
I joined the military, and then I was a hot
mess in the military, did that for about eight years,
traveled around the world, served in Desert Storm with the
(08:55):
hundred and first Airborne, and decided I was going to
get out of the military in ninety two. And at
that period of time, I had just got married, I
had just had a son, and it was man just
trying to figure out life. So you have all this
trauma from your childhood, then you have all this trauma
(09:19):
from the military, and then you try to mix. It's
like the worst storm, you know, and then a lot
of people don't realize, you know, you have all this trauma,
so you're trying to find false love. So you're running around.
And then I get out of the military, have a
new wife, a new son, and I'm working five six jobs,
(09:41):
trying to go to college. It was just a mess.
And then I got into drinking from the trauma, and
then got a divorce, and then I started man doing
some drugs and got into drugs and loved cocaine. It
was my like thing that like kept me partying so
(10:01):
I could stay up. And then on the weekends that
I didn't party, I had to be a dad. So
on the weekends I was a dad, I would be
Disneyland Dad. You know. It was never showing them like
what a father really was and what it's supposed to
look like. And then I got into just by hustling,
got into different streams of like employment and security job,
(10:26):
being a buyer for a pretty large company, and then
went up through the ranks and it pretty fast, and
people love a hustler, right, And we helped grow a
company from about seventy million dollars to about two point
two billion dollars, and I watched it get sold and
(10:47):
we were doing a lot of acquisations back in that
period of time where we were just man gobbling up companies.
It was just like it was wild. It was just fun,
Jet said, and man, it was just crazy and I
loved every minute of it. And two thousand and thirteen,
twenty thirteen, in January of twenty thirteen, we got sold
(11:11):
out our company and then lo and behold, man, they
came in and they let me go, and all my
identity that I had wrapped it in my whole life,
man just come crumbling down. And I was just in
a terrible, terrible dark spot and started contemplating suicide. And
(11:34):
I just thought, man, I don't want to do this anymore,
this thing called life. And man, all the things from
my past, my childhood, the military, all the things I
did after all that, and man, I just it was
really super hard. It was really a crazy part. And
(11:54):
when I say I was contemplating, I actually went into
detail of like how I was going to do it.
One of my friends who lived in Miami, Florida, his
name was Colin, and he knew that I just had
lost my job and I had just went to like
a coroinary school to become like a chef, and he
was one of my instructors, and he had moved to Miami,
(12:15):
and he was like, Sean, won't you just come down
here and hang out with me for a little bit.
I was like sure, So bought a cheap ticket, went
down to Miami and I hung out with him. And
I didn't have no clue what I was going to
get into. I have no clue of like what we
were going to do, just hang out. And I get
(12:37):
down there and he goes to work that morning. The
next day and I go hang out in this park
and I run into this dude named David who was homeless,
and he was from Dayton, Ohio, and David had left
his wife and had become addicted to crystal meth. And man,
(12:58):
we just spent a old day telling each other's life stories.
I mean details you don't even tell people, you know,
intimate details about like this happened to me, and this
happened to me, and it was so similarities. And it
was about six o'clock that night. I mean, this dude
even had like in his backpack of beer can and
(13:21):
we started a fire beside the ocean and cooked up, man,
some hardboiled eggs and ate. I mean, we just like
just hung out for the whole day and it was
about six o'clock at night, and I really wanted to
go with him, you know, because he was going back
to his homeless camp. And he was like, nah, Sean,
you can't go with me. Man, it's just gonna be
(13:41):
too crazy there for you. And we were separating ways
and I said, well, maybe i'll see you in the
park again. And he was walking away and I was
walking away, and he yelled out my name. He said, hey, Sean,
I got something to tell you. And man, when he
turned around, he said, man, I still remember this to
(14:02):
this day. He said, I just want you to know
that God loves you. And I was just like, this
is crazy. Who are you of man, Dude, do you
see your life? Do you see who you are? And
you just telling me God loves me? And it was
probably one of the most craziest times from the perspective
(14:27):
of I was so mad that he said it. But
it was the very first time in my life I
ever felt loved and I just thought, man, what is
that feeling. I've never experienced that in my life, and man,
it was just so overwhelming that I went back to
my friend's house and I stayed up about the whole
(14:48):
night just trying to figure out, like, what is that?
What was that I didn't grow up in this thing
called church. I didn't grow up in this thing called
where people man this thing that other people call it.
Or I didn't know about God. I didn't know about Jesus,
didn't know any of that. And fast forward over the
(15:08):
next two weeks, Man, I had so many encounters with
just people, one after another telling me about God. It
was just so overwhelming and amazing. And on my last
day there, I was in Coconut Grove and it's right
outside of Miami, and we were at a culinary show
and there was this big art fairy going on, and
(15:31):
I just felt so much anxiety and overwhelmed, and I
was just thinking about all the things I just had
been through, and I was just trying to figure out, like,
what is going on with me right now? And I
walked across this open field. I told my friend, calling
him Mahn, and dude, I'm gonna have to leave for
a little bit and walk across something field and there's
this tent and this dude selling art and he looked
(15:55):
like Jerry Garcia from The Grateful Dead. Yeah, And I
and I'm thinking to myself, you know, man, I don't
want to get approached. I don't want the sales pitch.
I just want to look at the art that you
have going on there. And he had all these big,
huge posters and it was about how to be happy
and it was that he had created. And I walk in.
(16:18):
I'm looking at him and I'm not paying attention, but
I'm zoned in on this one. And it's talking about man,
connect with your creator and man lay in the field
and absorbed the sun and eat a donut and laugh
and man, just the simple things about life. And I
was just like, man, is that really how life is?
(16:38):
I never experienced that. And before I knew it, I
looked over and he was staying the right beside me
and he was looking at this poster with me, and
I said, I'm not here to buy anything, and he
said I know. I said, wow, man, this is really
powerful what you wrote here. And he said, yeah, Hey,
you know those two sets of eyes you have and
(17:01):
I was like, no, I didn't. He said, you know,
there's one that looks outward and you'll never find what
you're looking for. But if you'll use the side of
eyes that look inward, man, you'll find everything. You're looking for.
That's when I started to cry, and I thanked him
(17:26):
for coming over and talking to me, and he said, oh,
I didn't come over here for me, but God sent
me over here to tell you that he loves you
and you could be sept free. And now it's just
like so overwhelmed. I just fell on my knees and
just started bawling. And I was just like a little
child to get you, the kid that I never got
(17:47):
the experience. And it was so overwhelmed me that I
couldn't hardly even get up. And he helped me up
and he said, man, I used to be you dude.
You could be set free. And I end up walking
across this field and there's this big stone right there
(18:09):
in Coconut grove, this wall, and I'm sitting on it
and I'm overlooking the ocean and I'm just like, wow, man,
what is going on in my life? I don't even
know what this is. And man, this woman comes and
she sits beside me about the next two or three
hours and we just have this crazy discussion about the
living Jesus and who he is, and like, not the
(18:32):
church going Jesus, but the Jesus that is alive here
today in this kingdom that he has, and he she
just kept talking to me and she ends up getting
up and leaving and I'm sitting there and Man, I
have this encounter, this epiphany where man, I have the
living Jesus actually appear in front of me, and he says, Sean,
(18:54):
if you'll let go of your past, I will set
you free. And man, ever since that day, that's what
I've been doing, is I've submitted, surrendered to Lord. Whatever
you want to do, wherever you want to go, whatever
you need, Man, I'm here for you. And you know,
some people could look at that story and say, man,
(19:16):
I was in a space in my head where I
needed something like that. But Man, there's been so many
encounters leading up to where we are sitting today where
there's no doubt that man, that dude is real and
he for real talks to me, and he for real
(19:37):
has a kingdom of heaven here on this earth. The
question is where we repent and walk into it with him.
That's a little bit of my story of like how
I fell in love with Jesus and how we got
to where we are today. Then I think it'd be
great maybe if you could tell some of her story
(19:57):
because she grew up in it, and then we can
tell how we connected.
Speaker 3 (20:03):
I got some questions about you first, but before those questions,
a few messages from our general sponsors. The trauma of
(20:27):
growing up as a young boy with a mother as
a prostitute and then going straight to desert storm. And
if you were born in sixty seven, then you're fifty
seven years old, so that was the first.
Speaker 2 (20:48):
Year in one month older than you.
Speaker 3 (20:51):
How do you even know that?
Speaker 2 (20:52):
That's guys on year August twenty.
Speaker 3 (20:55):
Fourth, right? Good? Yeah, lord, clearly the trauma didn't your
memory well done? It feels to me like and I
get completely get not feeling like and I don't mean
(21:16):
this is a victim, but being robbed of a real
childhood a little bit sure, understand that. And then as
young man going straight to war and then coming back
and trying to do what you're supposed to do, quote
supposed to do, get married, have a kid, all that.
Speaker 2 (21:33):
Back into the real world because they don't do that
for better right, I understand they don't do.
Speaker 3 (21:37):
That, right, And then your identity becoming this this job
and this growth business, and then it being stripped away
from you. At must have been about forty four or
forty five years old. Forty five and you're talking about
having planned suicide and having not only suicidecies, but actually
(22:01):
having thought out how to do it. I got to
believe that that job was your world, was everything it
was because you really didn't have an identity other than
just chaos up to that. That was probably the only organized,
(22:21):
semi positive thing that you'd ever experienced your life. So
when you when the company got sold, and when companies
get sold oftentimes they look for economies of scale and synergies.
So if the company that bought you had that position
while replicated with you, we got to cut cost and
so you're gone. So not necessarily anything you did, but
(22:43):
I got to believe that your entire foundation of what
you were able to somehow hide all of this trauma
in your life behind because you had that one positive thing.
When it was ripped out from under you, you had to
have felt like you lost life.
Speaker 2 (23:00):
Yeah, I felt like and then you don't even realize it, right,
because you've built this like facade of like I have
this five bedroom house, I have these three cars outside.
Speaker 3 (23:10):
I have these You were making good money.
Speaker 2 (23:11):
Yeah, decent money, I mean, life was what I thought
was like what it was supposed to be. You know,
one of the stories that the crazy parts act, and
we'll get to that. But right after I fell in
love with Jesus, I came back to Louisville. And there's
(23:34):
a bunch of stories you know before this, but how
I got there. Woke up one morning it was Derby Day, Kentucky,
in Kentucky Derby, and I had all these plans in
my head, you know, like I'm gonna go hang out
with all my friends. And the crazy part is I'm
(23:59):
The part that hasn't been told yet is like even
though I barely graduated from high school on time, very
first person from my family to ever graduate from high school.
And then you fast forward and then I go to
colinary school and I meet this dude named Colin, and
then in the process I'm like, well, man, maybe I
(24:21):
should just instead of getting as sociate's degree, get a
bachelor's degree. And then I decided I'm gonna go ahead
and get a bachelor's greet Not knowing how to read
at thirty eight, I taught myself how to read, you know,
for education, for knowledge, not for just.
Speaker 3 (24:37):
You could read street science, but how to read and.
Speaker 2 (24:39):
Comprehend that lawn, yeah, right, to actually absorb something. And
I taught myself how to read it like thirty eight
And then that's when I went to coldinary school. Then
then I get into my bachelor's I graduated top of
my class with like a three point nine seven and
bachelor's in nineteen ninety two. When I got out of
the military, I had a part time One of them
(25:01):
part time jobs was a security guard at a local
college called Bellarmine University, which is a very prestigious school.
It's a private school in Louisville, Kentucky. And when I
used to walk the hallways there it's a security guard.
I used to dream like, man, I'd love to go
(25:22):
to school here, and knowing that, man, I couldn't even read,
you know, but you can still dream, right, And then
so when I'm finishing up my bachelor's degree, I decide, Man,
if I like apply to Bellarmine and if I get accepted,
then I'll go get my master's mat NBA, and lo
(25:47):
and behold, I got accepted into Bellarmine. And going back
to what I was going to talk about before that was,
you know, I had no dream of like this is
how my life would be. You know, I had no dream.
(26:08):
I thought I was going to get an NBA so
I could advance in that corporate world. And I had
no idea that all that identity was just going to
be just like stripped away. And you know, really, if
you think about Scripture, there's a verse I Love and
John tantan and says, the enemy comes to kill, still
(26:31):
seek and destroy, but Jesus comes to give us life
of abundance. And I can tell you, Bill, I could
look back and I could dwell in that forty five
years of what I would call living in hell. Where
I lived in hell. Yeah, all that's part of my story.
(26:51):
But I believe that God used let me experience every
single bit of that so I could be where I
am today. It's not a story of woe is me.
But I needed all that, every single integral detail to
be able to relate and to be able to love people.
(27:11):
Where I'm at today.
Speaker 3 (27:15):
Inga kind of beautiful, isn't it. Yeah, it's your story
over there, girl. You hadn't said a word yet.
Speaker 1 (27:23):
Different. So I was born in Fairfax, Virginia, right outside
of Washington, d C.
Speaker 3 (27:30):
Really nice, very nice, actually very nice. But one of
two of my kids live in d C and work
in d C. And one lives in d C. The
other lives in Virginia, just across which a lot of
young professionals to.
Speaker 1 (27:47):
Yeah, I mean it's I mean I love it. I
mean I love the DC area. I was born. So
I was born in nineteen seventy nine. And when I
was born, I appeared to be a healthy baby. But
then three weeks later, I was still nine pounds and
my mom took me to the doctor and I was
(28:07):
in open heart surgery within two hours.
Speaker 3 (28:09):
You're kidding me.
Speaker 1 (28:11):
So I was born with a it's called a VSD.
It's a hole. But you know, you got four chambers
of your heart, So I have a hole that's in
the middle, like where all those chambers come together. So
the auction dated versus on action. All the blood was
going the wrong way and not the way it should
be and all that, and then my aorda was pinched shut.
(28:34):
So the reason I hadn't gained any weight is because
my heart had expanded to fill my almost entire chest
cavity because it was trying to pump blood to the
right places and couldn't keep up. So I had my
first open heart surgery at three weeks. That that was like,
let's just put a patch on it. Let's see if
(28:56):
we can't like stop the bleeding so to speak. Then
I had another one at three months, Then I had
another one at one year, and then my last a
order repair I was five. So I was born in
this like kind of bubble window and time where if
I had been born a couple of years earlier and
(29:17):
had what I had, I wouldn't have survived because they
weren't doing open heart surgery then. But if I was
born five to six years later, they were catching it
in the womb and like being able to fix it
and then not having to go through any surgery. So
I'm in this like little micro population of people.
Speaker 3 (29:39):
Lucky. Unlucky, Yeah, lucky they could, unlucky that they didn't
have the advancement, right.
Speaker 1 (29:44):
So now there's like this group of us that are
now adults that have congenital heart defects, and so it's
it's it's a very small specialist for cardiologist. So I
still go to children's hospitals, no kidding, to see my
cardiologists because they're just there's not that many adults that there.
Speaker 3 (30:04):
Are the only ones that understand you.
Speaker 1 (30:05):
Yeah, so I still go to I go to Norton
Children's Level for my my my cardiologists and pediatric cardiologists.
I had my tea. Yeah, it's kind of like pretty cool.
He gets to have fun when we go. So when
(30:28):
you know, so my my mom, so, my my mom's
side of the family is all Catholic traditionally, and so
my mom when I was a baby just sort of
hands me over to God and was like, there you go,
(30:49):
she's yours, whatever you want to do. And then I
don't think when she did that when I was a baby,
like she had any kind of idea of what that
actually ended up doing in my life, even for herself,
Like you know, I don't. I don't think she realized
(31:09):
that he was going to be like no, no, really,
you need to let go, like you gave her to me,
like stop. So, so I I had a relationship with
Jesus Gosh. The first time I can actually remember talking
to him, I don't know, I was like five or
six really and like having conversations, and you know, grew
(31:36):
up my grandmother. So we're they all are traditionally Catholic,
but now I like to say we're all Catholic refugees
because like my grandparents were divorced and so you're out.
So my I grew up in the Episcopal Church, Catholic light.
And my my grandmother though, you know, she met Jesus
(32:02):
actually when I was born also, so she was like
in her fifties, and she went to a cursio, which
is a it's like a retreat, like a Catholic retreat
where you know, people actually meet the Holy Spirit. And
so she came back from that, both her and my grandfather,
and she had remarried by the time I was born.
Speaker 3 (32:24):
I think that's a lot like the Protestants walked to him.
Speaker 1 (32:27):
Man, yes, very much. Same type yeah, same type thing.
Speaker 3 (32:30):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (32:30):
So they came back from that and and like they
had both had encounters with Jesus, and you know, if
you talk to her about it, she would say, you know,
all my health problems were happening like simultaneously that that
cursio was scheduled, and so it was all kind of
like a catalyst in a way for like a lot
of people in my family to really meet Jesus and
(32:54):
get to know like who he really is and and
so then I grew up. You know, I my parents
divorced when I was five, and so we went to
go live in coastal North Carolina, closer to my grandparents,
so I became extremely close with my grandmother. We spent
I mean I spent. Also, there was no camp like,
(33:14):
there was no like, there's no money to go to camp.
So I just hung out with my grandparents all summer,
every day, all day. So we became very very close.
And then my mom got a job with the government
in DC again to go back to that, so I
went back to that area for high school. So I
went to Madison High School in Vienna, Virginia. Which it's
(33:37):
so funny, like I moved to Louisville when I was
twenty eight, and I didn't really understand a lot of
the Louisville culture. So when I first moved there, everyone
asked me where I went to school and in college,
I went to William and Mary in Williamsburg, Virginia, so
I would go I went to William and Mary and
they're like, no, where'd you go to high school? And
I was like, why do you care.
Speaker 3 (33:58):
That's the way it is in the South. When you're
from in Memphis, people did the same thing. Where'd you
go to school? Ole miss No, no, no, where'd you
go to school?
Speaker 1 (34:05):
Yeah?
Speaker 2 (34:07):
So it was and the more you know, dictates like where.
Speaker 1 (34:10):
Yes, it's a social graphic.
Speaker 2 (34:12):
Yeah, you know that's right, it's economic thing.
Speaker 3 (34:14):
You evoked white Haven. Yeah, I mean people will say
white Haven, Carrierville, whatever, but I get it.
Speaker 2 (34:21):
So it tells you, like how you grew up, like
it's the weirdest.
Speaker 3 (34:26):
It does indicate a lot of where you come from.
Speaker 2 (34:29):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (34:30):
Yeah, I mean, like later on in life when I
was in the corporate world and I had to do
training on like interview etiquette and what's an illegal question
to ask where you went to high school in Louisville.
Absolutely is an illegal question asked because that immediately gives
the other person an idea of like your financial status,
your background, like education, your education, all of it. So
(34:50):
that was very like I mean because for me, I
went to Madison High School in Vienna, Virginia, which, like
all the public high schools in Fairfax County were in
the top fifteen high schools in the country.
Speaker 3 (35:02):
You know, so like well, and obviously you went to
William and Mary, so you were well educated. Yes, William
and Mary is no slouch.
Speaker 1 (35:09):
Yeah, So I went to William and Mary.
Speaker 3 (35:11):
Would you major?
Speaker 1 (35:12):
I majored in political science and Middle Eastern studies, of course,
why not? So? So I was born in seventy nine,
so I was in college. Fall of my senior year,
nine to eleven. Happened, wow in my course load that
day because everybody always if you were if you were alive,
(35:35):
and you know, not ten like you remember where you
were and what happened on the day of nine to eleven.
So on nine to eleven, my course load was. I
started out with the American government. Then I went to
Arabic language class. No, no, Then I went to Middle
Eastern history class. Then I went to Arabic language class.
Then I had Arabic language lab. And then I finished
(35:55):
the day with women in Islam. That was my course
load eleven.
Speaker 3 (36:01):
Oh, aren't you an interesting person?
Speaker 1 (36:04):
So and by then, like that was my senior year.
So by then I had had summer internships at Marine
Corps JAG at Camp La June.
Speaker 3 (36:15):
Say, with your background, especially after that, your particular skill
set was probably how they sought after, was it not?
Speaker 1 (36:24):
It was? And I did go there, so I.
Speaker 3 (36:29):
Ended up that's really really interesting.
Speaker 1 (36:32):
I ended up spending five years working for the CIA
out of college.
Speaker 3 (36:36):
No kidding, we'll be right back.
Speaker 1 (36:54):
When I ended up leaving, I had to get my
resume cleared. So there's things that I can talk about,
and then that are on my resume, and then there's.
Speaker 3 (37:03):
Everybody listening right now, says tell us one juicy thing
you can talk about.
Speaker 1 (37:07):
So the things that I can talk about is I
ended up working for the terrorist watch list program. Really,
so what happened on nine to eleven is obviously the
big issue was a lot of these agencies weren't talking
to each other, right, So CIA knew who all the
hijackers were. State Department knew who all the hijackers were.
(37:27):
TSA had no idea, and Customs and Border Patrol had
no idea.
Speaker 3 (37:30):
What about the FBI?
Speaker 1 (37:31):
FBI had no idea, And there was.
Speaker 3 (37:33):
No Department of Homeland Security at that time. A lot
of people listening to us and need to understand, yeah,
there was, the Department of Homeland Security was born.
Speaker 2 (37:42):
You tell people like our age about your age that
because I'm sure you travel. But the craziest part about
all that for me was there used to be no check.
You can just like walk.
Speaker 3 (37:59):
Yeah, if your loved one was flying in and you
go to the gate, right, did.
Speaker 2 (38:06):
You walk into the plane?
Speaker 3 (38:08):
That's it.
Speaker 2 (38:09):
Yeah, Which people that today, they're.
Speaker 3 (38:12):
Like kids, My kids can't even imagine a life. You
don't have to be cavity searched to get into the
air and all that was. Yeah, all right, So you
worked on the job of connecting all of these departments.
So I had been fascinating.
Speaker 2 (38:31):
What it was.
Speaker 1 (38:32):
I mean it was to a certain extent. So like
when I started, Well, so the interesting thing was, I
actually never was a government employee. So I worked for
a private company because the intelligence community had been so
decimated under previous you know, multiple administrations and cost cutting
and all that that when nine to eleven happened, they
(38:53):
literally could not hire people fast enough. And my security
clearance took thirteen months.
Speaker 3 (39:00):
The old government independent contractor. So that's that's like a
that's like a dark web world. It is.
Speaker 1 (39:09):
It is crazy. It's crazy how it works. I mean,
you know, like they were hiring contractors to do the
work of government employees because they couldn't hire government employees
fast enough. And so that's how I ended up there,
I was doing the work of a government employee, but
being a contractor getting paid three times what a government
employee in that role makes it. I was twenty three.
Speaker 3 (39:31):
Wow. But yeah, the old political science and Middle Eastern
studies thing had a pretty nice ring to it. So
after that, how does this end up in Louisville.
Speaker 2 (39:45):
I go back a little bit until about like, you
work when you were in high school? You worked at
Camp David College.
Speaker 1 (39:53):
Yeah, so I so, like, and.
Speaker 2 (39:56):
You were a member of parliament.
Speaker 1 (39:57):
Yeah yeah.
Speaker 3 (39:59):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (40:00):
So by the time I by the time nine to
eleven happened, right, like, I was a senior in college,
so I'd had three three summers to do internships. So
one summer I was with the JAG office at Legion
because it for a for a hot minute, I thought
I wanted to be a lawyer, and then I was like,
you know, I don't want to do that, and.
Speaker 3 (40:20):
Then especially a type, Yeah.
Speaker 1 (40:24):
It's a different yeah. And then the next summer I
worked for the State Department in their Rabian Peninsula Affairs office.
And that was in two thousand, which was Clinton's last
attempt to do peace between Israeli and the Palestinians. So
I worked the Camp David, like peace talks where we're
(40:46):
being were there, Yeah, I mean I was like I was,
I was a driver, like I was, you know, whatever
around it. So I was at Camp David, going back
and forth every day, and then I my junior year
of college, I went I studied abroad in London and
worked for a Member of Parliament who was a crazy
(41:09):
Scottish dude who well.
Speaker 3 (41:11):
That's redundant Scottish and crazy.
Speaker 2 (41:15):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (41:15):
His name was George Galloway. He was Yeah, it was.
It was one of those things where like, you know,
the internship program that I went with only had two
connections in Parliament, and you know, we're trying to figure
out where we want to go and all this stuff
and what we wanted, what job we want, and they
were like, well we have this this member of parliament,
this member of Parliament. So I researched them and they
are like biggest issues were like sheep grazing rights or
(41:38):
like and I'm like and then I picked up a
newspaper and there was this huge article about this MP
from Glasgow had brought back to the UK this woman
named Leisla Ahmed, who was part of the hijacker group
in nineteen seventy three on in Heathrow and he brought
her back for a speaking tour and it was all
(41:59):
this controversy and all that, and I was like him,
I want to work for him. And so I went
to the advisors and I was like, send my resume
to him, and they were like, oh, we don't know him,
and we don't. I'm like, just just trust me, just
do it. So I said, just fax it over. So
they sent the resume and he called within five minutes.
Because I knew that on my resume was Arabian Peninsula
(42:22):
Affairs Office, State Department Camp David Piece Accords JAG. I
was like, just do it yea yeah, So so he
called me in. I might so he called me in
for an interview and he was like, you know, we
don't have this thing in the UK like Americans do,
like internships, Like we don't do that, like you get
(42:42):
a job, right, we don't. You don't come work for free.
And I'm like, I get that, but this is part
of a program. I get credit all that kind of stuff.
And he was like okay, well he said. He sat
down and looked at me and he said, well, you
have to look me in the eye and tell me
on you're on here that you're not a spy for
the US government. It was all I could do not
to bust out laughing because I was like, I'm not
a spy for the US government. He's like, okay, you
(43:04):
got the job. I was like all right, yeah, yeah.
Two years later that is where I was. So, so
I had all of that, you know, on my resume.
So I actually when I graduated college, I actually applied
to be with like full on with the agency, and
I went halfway through their like interview process, and they
(43:25):
do like a phone interview and then they do like
all kinds of you know, questions and surveys, and then
they bring you in for a briefing and you got
to sign this like confidentiality thing you're not going to
talk about what they say at the briefing. And so
I signed all that and they just tell you what
the jobs are at the briefing. That's all they do.
They're like, you know, I'm so and so, and I
do this, and I'm so and so when I do this,
(43:46):
and so when I was in that briefing, first of all,
I was like okay, so I'm looking around everybody else there,
and they're all like straight out of West Point Navy cap.
I'm like, they all look like white military dutes, like
y'all know where, like the major problems are here right
like like we're not sending any of you all to
(44:07):
the Middle East, like you're not going to blend in
like at all. And so I'm just kind of like, well,
this is interesting. And then everybody that got up to
say what their job was, they're like, I'm so and so,
and I do this for the agency, and my spouse
does this for the agency. And I was like, that's
a little weird. I get it, like, I get it right,
(44:28):
but it just didn't sit right with me. And I
remember coming home and talking to my mom about it,
and I was just like, I don't I just don't
feel like this is what I should be doing, because
it was one of those things where like you sign
up and you're in. It's like the military, like you
there's no like like, oh, I'm just going to be
done in three months, you know. So I actually self
(44:49):
selected out of the operative interview process and then I
answered a classified ad in the paper for research analysts
with a private company, and I went to their office
and It was one of those things where it's like
there's nobody there. It's a two room office with a
guy sitting at a desk.
Speaker 3 (45:05):
Oh, I'm more dark. Well, I go to do some
spy work or sell waterless cook wear door or door two.
Speaker 1 (45:17):
So I'm going I'm sitting there and he's like, well,
you know, we we do all of our contracts with
the agency. And I was like, oh, well, I just
came from there interviewing, and so they hired me. It
took thirteen months to get my clearance. And then the
main contract that they had was going back fifteen years
worth of agency records and looking for names that we
(45:40):
may have missed wow, and then sending them to this
newly created thing called the National counter Terrorism Center, which
put all those watch lists together to get make sure
that we weren't missing people. And so we were going
back and reading you know, agency communications fifteen years and
(46:01):
so you got to think, like fifteen years prior to that,
that was all Saddam Hussein and Iraq and all.
Speaker 3 (46:07):
That, even that Total Comite.
Speaker 1 (46:09):
Yeah, all of that for yep, all of that. So
you know, that was the project that I started on,
and then from there I moved over to the other
side of where we were sending the information and it
was getting put onto the watch list. So what happened
when when nine eleven happened and they did the study
and they were like, okay, this we screwed up big time.
(46:31):
Let's fix it. Is they created the counter terrorism watch list.
The intelligence the information gatherers would send information to the
watch list, it would get sort of declassified, and then
the information consumers would get a feed from it, right,
meaning meaning of the TSA FB like everybody right, So
(46:55):
the watch list. Now, if your name gets put on
the terrace watch list, there's a version of your name
and information that goes all the way down to local PD.
So if you're getting pulled over for a traffic ticket,
your local PD may not know that that's what's getting pined,
but the watch list is getting pinked. You get pulled
over for any traffic anything in the US, So Customs
(47:18):
and Border Patrol gets a version. TSA gets a version.
Speaker 3 (47:22):
We're way off the subject. I find this unbelievably fascinating
and candidly I could do an entire series of podcasts
on this. I find it amazingly interesting and by the way,
David Bellavia, who is the only living Medal of Honor
recipient from the Rock, has been a guest on the
(47:43):
show and he's a buddy. He went door to door
in Fallujah, Yeah, door to door and gotten hand to
hand combat with some insurgents. He won the Medal of Honor.
He's phenomenal guy anyway. He also worked at Camp David.
Speaker 2 (48:04):
Win the Medal of Honor.
Speaker 3 (48:07):
Recipient. Sorry, I know you don't win it. I say
it all the time. Wrong, I guess I did. In
trouble with Alex for it constantly. He's the recipient.
Speaker 2 (48:18):
Yeah, yes, well I tell you that because he just
passed away a couple of years ago. But I'm great.
Was great friends with Woody Williams, who was the last
surviving War One UH medal World War two Medal of
Honor recipient.
Speaker 3 (48:34):
It's amazing see from LOUV.
Speaker 2 (48:36):
Huntington, West Virginia. And he was a flamethrow operator.
Speaker 3 (48:40):
I know his story. Okay, Hold, we're going into many
circles and people.
Speaker 2 (48:46):
So great.
Speaker 3 (48:47):
So what I wanted to ask you? And this is
so far off the subject, but I don't care, and
I think people listening will find this interesting. There have
been for those of us who read way too much
much and who care about our history and our who
(49:08):
care about our independence, our liberty, that little document that
formed this wonderful republic we live in. How much work
was done when you guys were doing this work. I've
always wanted to know this answer. I cannot believe I
(49:29):
get to ask this completely off the subject, and we're
getting a Love City, guys. But maybe maybe we're getting there,
and it even makes Love City more fascinating, giving the
divergence of your backgrounds. But we'll get to that in
a second. But I just want to know this. It's
a complete side note. I worry deeply about people's civil
(49:51):
liberties with regard to be putting on Big Brothers list.
George Orwell had a lot right when he wrote nineteen
eighty four. And I have seen we all now take
for granted in our lives, cameras, getting tickets in the
mail because you're being watched, and all of these lists.
(50:14):
And I understand the balance of keeping our public safe
versus how far do we go into people's backgrounds and lives.
But when you hear putting on a government list, I
can't help but bristle a little how much attention was
given to that as you guys are doing this work.
Speaker 1 (50:35):
It's a great question, and I can give you two
stories to explain the answer.
Speaker 3 (50:40):
So, and this has nothing to do with Left City,
and Alex is probably going crazy, like Bill, get on
with the story. But this is vastly interesting.
Speaker 2 (50:48):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (50:48):
So, and I can only speak to when I was there, right,
So we're talking two thousand and three at two thousand
and five generally. So when I started on that program,
we were coming through all of the records. I was
twenty three, and I was given a team of like
twenty five to thirty people who that's what they did
(51:11):
all day was sit there and read stuff and look
for names. And we had a criteria list of like
what were the things you were looking for in order
to qualify as a name to get on the list. Right,
And then we're going through the list and I'm looking
at the criteria and there's this name that and I
was the glass quality control check before it went to
(51:34):
the list the list, right, So I'm looking at my
quality control check and I see this name, yusuf Ismael
come across and I'm like, okay, yeah, funding, yeah, providing Okay, yep. Okay,
check yep means the list. Send it over. Two weeks
later on the news, Kat Stevens detained at the airport
for being on the terrorist watch list. He's also known
(51:56):
as Yusuf.
Speaker 3 (51:57):
Is my l.
Speaker 2 (52:00):
Cat Stevens?
Speaker 3 (52:02):
Does Cat Stevens know that this twenty three year old
kid got him picked up at the airport? Are you
kidding that? God's honesty? Absolutely, that is absolutely hilarious. Are
you going to tell me the next story is about
led Zeppelin?
Speaker 1 (52:17):
No? No, those So I prevace that story because that
was the part where we were like at that.
Speaker 3 (52:25):
Point, did that go to you? Wow, I gotta be
more careful or did that?
Speaker 2 (52:30):
What did?
Speaker 3 (52:30):
How did that affect you?
Speaker 1 (52:31):
So what happened was I looked at it and I
was like is this real? And I did my due
diligence and I checked all the evidence and I'm like, yeah,
according to our criteria, this is what means it. So
what the trigger of what that ended up doing is
made us because at that point it was like, man,
we're looking for every possible name. I don't care if
(52:51):
you sneeze towards a tourist terrorist. Man, you're on the list, right,
So when that happened, which is dangerous, which is dangerous.
Speaker 3 (52:58):
Wrong. Yeah, when that's also the knee jerk reaction to
we just got in Yes, we just had more than
three thousand Americans get killed. Honestly, I believe there were
some of this mentality is we'll deal with several liberties later.
Let's deal with our with our safety first.
Speaker 1 (53:16):
Yes, and so, and I had twenty five people who
a majority of them were retired case officers from the
agency that had come back as contractors. Right, so they
had lived in this world of fighting the bad guys
their entire careers, and so they were all like, man,
we got to put everything on the list. So when
kat Stevens got picked up at the airport, then all
(53:38):
the higher ups went, Okay, maybe we should refine this
criteria a little bit. Yeah, maybe, And because and that's
how you got the differentiation between like no fly and
select D. So everybody was on no fly originally, and
then we looked at it and we were like, okay,
well that doesn't make sense. Let's do some select D.
Let's scream the crap out of them before they get
(53:58):
on the plane. But they could still get on plane, right,
And so then it just got refined from there, and
then I had you know, there are another store is
that's the second store I have is Another Another communication
came across my desk to check and it was for
(54:19):
Somali college students in Richmond, Virginia, and they had like
the right visa to come to school and they came
into the US and they over extended extended their visas
and local law enforcement couldn't find them because they overextended
their visas initially. And so when it came to me,
(54:42):
it came to me as submit to put on the
terrorists watch lists. And I looked at it and I said,
there is nothing in here that says they had anything
to do with terrorism, that that any like, there's nothing
o saying their visas and they happened to be from
a country like, there's nothing in here, like there was
(55:05):
even like communications going back to stations in Somalia going
any anything in foul. No, they're just kids, like you know,
you know, they're fine, you know, And so I said no.
So I said, no, We're not gonna put them on.
And I had a lot of backlash from the much
older people that were working for me at the time, going,
but you don't understand that. I said, but you but
(55:26):
you can't just say he's Somali and he's overstaying a visa.
They may just want to live in this country. Like
we can't. We can't say that they're terrorists and then
brand them for the rest of their lives as terrorists,
because once you get in that cycle, it is hard
to get out, Like, no, we can't do that. So
(55:47):
there was a there was a constant sort of like yeah,
they did, they found him. They just were hiding out
because they wanted to stay in the country. They weren't
doing anything you know, illegal, They were just trying to
get a job.
Speaker 3 (56:01):
And you have I mean, you talk about getting I
get off script sometimes, but you have taken me so
far off script. We're going to get to Love City.
Speaker 2 (56:11):
But I just want to take thank you so much.
Speaker 3 (56:14):
For that background look into what that that is really
really bad. I swear I could.
Speaker 1 (56:21):
Sit here for four I mean, then there were a
lot of other stories, you know, like they're in overseas.
What you'll find a lot is when you have business
competitors and they're trying to compete for contracts with either
US companies or the US government, they will walk into
an embassy and say that their competitor is a terrorist
to put them on the watch list.
Speaker 2 (56:39):
Wow.
Speaker 1 (56:39):
And so that's then that's how like the whole redress
system got started because we started seeing a lot of
that happening. And then I would work redress cases and
what a.
Speaker 3 (56:48):
Bunch of jerks using a system to protect lives to
try to earn business. I mean, it's just just unscreened.
Speaker 1 (56:55):
And that happened a lot like Latin America they do that.
Africa they do that, you know, And so I took
a lot of people off, and I'm like, this is
clearly what this is.
Speaker 3 (57:03):
Love it all right?
Speaker 2 (57:06):
The same thing that you just said, what's up that?
What a bunch of jerks to use the system to
get people to do something different. That's how we see religion.
Speaker 3 (57:17):
Yeah, explain that.
Speaker 2 (57:21):
I just rode just down the street down here. It's
the same thing in my neighborhood. There's with those buildings
they call churches on every corner. We have that many,
then why we have so many problems?
Speaker 3 (57:37):
And that concludes part one of my conversation with Sean
and INGA. Arvin, and you don't want to miss part two.
That's now able to listen to as we will mostly
talk now about Love City together. Guys, we can change
this country, but it starts with you. I'll see in
Part two.