May 2, 2025 • 44 mins
Join us this week for a great conversation with Tara and Nancy, retired Yellowstone National Park law enforcement Rangers and hosts of Crime Off the Grid. They share unforgettable experiences from their careers, from intense encounters involving tasers and unexpected rodeo moves to heartfelt moments helping park visitors in distress. We dive into the realities of being law enforcement in America’s wild places, debunk persistent conspiracy theories, and learn what "WWND—What Would Nancy Do?" really means in high-pressure wilderness scenarios. Whether you're an outdoor enthusiast or fascinated by true crime in the backcountry, you won't want to miss this episode!
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Check out our other shows on the Unknown Media Network:
Crime Off The Grid
Off The Trails
The Peanut Butter and Mountains Podcast
The Weirdos We Know
Who Runs This Park
New Patreon Shoutouts: Ralph Ferguson, Amy Creek, Anah Gilmore, & Heather Auger
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Presented by Unknown Media Group.
Hosts: Mike Van de Bogert & Joe Erato
Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/locations-unknown--6183838/support.
Learn more about Locations Unknown: https://linktr.ee/LocationsUnknown
Check out our other shows on the Unknown Media Network:
Crime Off The Grid
Off The Trails
The Peanut Butter and Mountains Podcast
The Weirdos We Know
Who Runs This Park
New Patreon Shoutouts: Ralph Ferguson, Amy Creek, Anah Gilmore, & Heather Auger
Want to help the show out and get even more Locations Unknown content! For as little as $5 a month, you can become a Patron of Locations Unknown and get access to our episodes early, special members only episode, free swag, swag contests, and discounts to our Locations Unknown Store! Become a Patron of the Locations Unknown Podcast by visiting our Patreon page. (https://www.patreon.com/locationsunknown)
All our Patreon only content (Audio & Video) can now be accessed via Spotify. (Active subscription to our Patreon channel is required.) -- Locations Unknown Subscriber Only Show | Podcast on Spotify
Want to call into the show and leave us a message? Now you can! Call 208-391-6913 and leave Locations Unknown a voice message and we may air it on a future message!
View live recordings of the show on our YouTube channel: Locations Unknown - YouTube
Presented by Unknown Media Group.
Hosts: Mike Van de Bogert & Joe Erato
Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/locations-unknown--6183838/support.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:09):
Thousands of people have mysteriously vanished in America's wilderness. Join
us as we dive into the deep end of the
unexplainable and try.
Speaker 2 (00:18):
To piece together what happened.
Speaker 3 (00:20):
If you are listening to Locations.
Speaker 4 (00:22):
Unknown, what's up, everybody, and welcome back to another episode
(00:59):
of Locations on I'm your solo host Mike van de Bogert.
Joe is not with us this week. We'll both be
back next week with a brand new case. This week
got a fun episode for you. So during our live
stream last week, our four and a half hour marathon
talking marathon, we did a very interesting and fun interview
(01:22):
with Tara and Nancy from Crime Off the Grid. They
are retired law enforcement park rangers and they have some
amazing stories to tell. I wish we would have had
longer to talk with them, So in the future we'll
be doing another episode with a much longer interview because
I'm sure they have so many more stories they could
(01:43):
tell us, but just some really funny stories. There's a
story of one of them. They tased this gentleman who
was probably inebriated multiple times and one of them ended
up riding him like a horse.
Speaker 2 (01:55):
So you're gonna have to listen to the interview.
Speaker 4 (01:58):
It's some really funny stuff and it sounded like a
really cool job. Before we get going, I want to
give some Patreon shout outs to new listeners. So thank
you to Ralph Ferguson, Amy Creek and A Gilmore and
Heather Augur. Thank you so much for supporting the show.
We say this every week, but we could not do
(02:18):
this without you. Your support means more than you'll ever know.
We use that money to get better equipment, better software.
Also we can bring you a better show every week,
So thank you so much for supporting the show. If
you're a new listener, we have other ways you can
support the show, so you can obviously join our Patreon channel,
you can join YouTube memberships, premium subscriptions on Apple, premium
(02:41):
subscriptions on Speaker, and eventually we will have a show
a store, new store coming out that'll have a lot
of cool swag or merch that you can buy, and
for a limited time we'll be running a special for
all of our supporters. You can buy anything on the
store at costs, so whatever it costs us, you'll get.
Speaker 2 (03:00):
We also have some really.
Speaker 4 (03:01):
Cool shows on our network, Unknown Media group that you
can check out, so Peanut Butter and Mountain Podcast, Off
the Trails, the Weirdos we know who runs this park,
and Crime Off the Grid. I urge you to go
and check out all of those shows. They're all very
interesting and they get two thumbs up for me and Joe.
So finally, as many of you know, we did a
four and a half hour live stream last week.
Speaker 2 (03:24):
It was exhausting.
Speaker 4 (03:25):
Never in my wildest dreams did I ever think talking
for four and a half hours could be so exhausting,
but it was.
Speaker 2 (03:32):
I was drained by the end of it.
Speaker 4 (03:35):
But we had a really fun live stream. We spent
an hour talking with the hosts from National Park after Dark.
They recently went on a big trip to Antarctica and
they have a new podcast out that they talked about.
Then we spoke with the host from Crime Off the Grid,
which you're about.
Speaker 2 (03:51):
To hear in a minute.
Speaker 4 (03:52):
And we also tried to speak with our Patreon supporters,
but we were having some audio issues, so we apologize
again to everyone who sports the show. We will do
another members only video call and dedicate dedicate the whole
episode to that at some point here in the near future.
We also spent a good amount of time listening to
a lot of voicemails that we've received, which, by the way,
(04:15):
you can call our show at two eight three nine
one six nine one three or text the show and
leave a voicemail.
Speaker 2 (04:22):
And we had we.
Speaker 4 (04:23):
Wrapped the show up talking to Evan Stone, the one
and Only, and we went through for people that didn't
know him, the history of who he is. He's an
extreme filmmaker, got his roots in the music industry in
the nineties with MTV, and he's been on a ton
of He's been the director of photography on a ton
of shows, like his most famous one is Expedition Unknown
(04:46):
with Josh Gates, and he went through a lot of
the different places he's been through that show and just.
Speaker 2 (04:52):
A lot of really cool stories.
Speaker 4 (04:53):
He's big into ghost on You Now and Joe and
I have been trying to get him to get out
here to Wisconsin. Joe Company, Joe works for our owns
an old hospital with a psychiatric wing that is absolutely terrifying.
I've been in it at night with the lights off. If
you're afraid of places like that, I would not recommend it.
But so we're hoping this summer to get them up
(05:16):
there to film an episode for ghost Hunting, because I
really believe there's ghosts, even though I don't believe in ghosts,
but if they exist, they're there.
Speaker 2 (05:23):
And if you'd like to check out the whole.
Speaker 4 (05:24):
Four and a half hour live stream, it's on our
YouTube channel, it's on our Facebook page, it's on x
so lots of different places you can check it out.
It was a lot of fun. We don't live stream
very often for this exact reason. It's a lot of
things can go wrong while you're live streaming and you
have to We don't have a staff or a crew
(05:44):
here to deal with stuff when it's live. It's me
and Joe, so we would have to figure that stuff
out on the fly. And there's times where we were
having some technical difficulties, but we kept the stream you're
running the entire time, so you can watch it in
all its glory and fast forward through some of the
parts where Joe and I are trying to fix things.
Speaker 2 (06:03):
It was very fun.
Speaker 4 (06:04):
It was to celebrate this amazing studio that we're gonna
have to leave here soon. So the building we're in
is being fully renovated into apartments and condos, so they're
kicking us out, giving us the boot, and our current
Our next studio location is funny enough, unknown, so we
have a couple places we're looking at, so we don't
(06:24):
actually know where we're going yet. But the show will
not stop one way or the other. We will be
recording new episodes throughout all of this, so stick with us,
and who knows where we'll end up, but we will
find somewhere to continue this show. Because I have so
much fun doing this, I can't imagine not doing this.
So with all of that said, Joe's not here this week.
(06:48):
I actually don't know where he is, but I just
know he's not here. But we will be back in
full force next week with a brand new episode and
I'm excited to get back in this studio, get back
to doing what we do. So, without further ado, I
present you the interview we did with the hosts of
Crime Off the Grid.
Speaker 1 (07:10):
In radio voice and we're back. All right, We're gonna
bring you in. Tara and Nancy. Hello, Sorry for that.
We had pizza delivered by my wife and son because.
Speaker 2 (07:23):
We're just gonna do here for a while.
Speaker 1 (07:25):
Yeah, that was like perfect timing with the Jade the
dog comment.
Speaker 3 (07:31):
You know, I felt so guilty about that for years
and years, and then I saw that they had a
patroon episode and I joined the patron just to see
what they said about Jade the dog, and they told
it exactly correct. They didn't miss anything anything incorrect. But
I felt guilt over that for days and days and
years and years, and I forgot my trauma until until
(07:53):
I listened to that again, and then I just felt
like I had to confess, So I sent that message in.
I felt like I had to confess that felt horrible
about it. It was a horrible head on collision, chaos,
life flights, all of that kind of stuff was going on.
And I was going to take the dog back to
my house because I was on of the only few
people that had like a fenceton yard, and she broke
(08:13):
free because her kennel was broken. Anyway, that's her story
I got it off into.
Speaker 1 (08:18):
So even though a tragic story, it's just shows kind
of how small this world is. Yeah, like they comment,
we have them on, you're actually the person that was
involved in it. That's actually a pretty crazy out of
all the negative of that case, it's really cool that
like that this happened.
Speaker 2 (08:32):
It all led to this.
Speaker 1 (08:33):
So yeah, with that, Tara, Nancy, would you want to
introduce yourselves and tell us a little bit about your show?
Speaker 3 (08:40):
Yeah, in your.
Speaker 4 (08:41):
History, I'm really once we en in this hearing about
your time in the National Park Service.
Speaker 3 (08:46):
So well, I've already been talking to Nancy. I'll let
you go for it.
Speaker 5 (08:52):
My name is Nancy, and I had a career with
federal government, both in the Park Service and the Forest
Service for about thirty two years. Most of my time
was working in Yellowstone with Tara, So we've known each
other for a very long time, long time, and it's
just been a great career for us both.
Speaker 3 (09:10):
Yeah. Yeah, So I we both did law enforcement, ranger rangering,
and most almost my entire was in Yellowstone. Nancy moved
on to bigger and better things. I stayed in Yellowstone
and then the last five years of my career I
worked strictly with victims of crime, okay, in the National Parks.
Speaker 4 (09:31):
So what Obviously you host the show Crime Off the Grid,
So what got you into wanting to do that? I know,
Joe and I the first couple of years we did
it was brutal. No one listened, so just a lot
of work for five listeners.
Speaker 1 (09:49):
You gotta love doing it. Yeah, So exactly.
Speaker 4 (09:53):
What made you want to transition to, you know, from
what you did in the Park Service to do in
a podcast.
Speaker 3 (10:00):
Well, I started the podcast, but I think right before
I retired. You know, a lot of us who have
loved our careers, we leave kind of kicking and screaming,
not really wanting, you know, we age out in law
enforcement in the National Park Service, and so I'm like,
I'm just not done. I'm not done. And I had
first had just really maybe a month or two earlier,
started listening to a true crime podcast. Besides, I've always
(10:22):
watched you know, every documentary. But I'm like, huh, there
are all these stories out there in the National Park Service,
and I had not discovered National Park after Dark at
that point, I didn't even know they existed. And I'm like,
there's these stories that need to be told, and there's
a whole bunch of reasons about. One of the things
is rangers do some crazy stuff. They risk their lives,
(10:44):
they do a lot of things that you cannot make up.
Yet people just assume they're that person who's at the
entrance station with a map, saying welcome to Yellowstone, or
you know, you see rangers pointing at things on the
you know, outside the guyser basin or whatever. That's not
what we're talking about. When we're talking about, you know,
a lot of crime, and then in national parks because
(11:04):
and then I named it crime off the Grid. I
don't know, without a good name, I don't know. But
we didn't want to just cover national parks. We wanted
to do you know, places, wild places.
Speaker 5 (11:15):
Well, and I got going because Tara is a wonderful
travel agent and she booked me on a guilt.
Speaker 1 (11:25):
She booked you on a what it broke up?
Speaker 5 (11:28):
On a guilt trip.
Speaker 3 (11:32):
I didn't have a partner to begin with, and so
I was trying to get all these rangers or these
other people to play do one with me, And then
they would disguise their name because they're still working, and
there's you know that might have been frowned upon with ethics,
blah blah blah. Nancy, we're exactly the same age she
was retired. I'm like, how about you do one with me?
And then I'm like, how about you do another one
with me? How about you can you just be my partner?
Speaker 2 (11:57):
Well, awesome. I have so many questions.
Speaker 5 (12:00):
It sounded like a job, and it has turned into
a job.
Speaker 3 (12:03):
It is a job.
Speaker 4 (12:05):
It's like an investment. You gotta There's a lot of
work and time you put in at the beginning, but
it slowly pays off, kind of like a snowball rolling downhill.
It picks up momentum as.
Speaker 3 (12:16):
You go, Yeah, yeah, it is, yes, but I.
Speaker 4 (12:19):
Have so many questions I want. There's probably not enough
time for him. I'll try to be as quick as
I can. But first of all, tell us some stories
that you can talk about. I don't know what the
rules are around that. While you were in law enforcement
in Yellowstone, what were some of the crazy things you
had to deal with on a day to day.
Speaker 1 (12:38):
I think you're retired. Spill the beans?
Speaker 3 (12:41):
Oh no, exactly, we don't care. What are they going
to do?
Speaker 2 (12:44):
All right?
Speaker 3 (12:45):
We're doing this? Yeah, well, okay, can I just say
this Nancy in our careers went sort of different directions
in a way. Like Nancy, I'm just gonna tell you,
Like I if you've listened to our podcast, if you
might to her, tous say me say wwnd what would
Nancy do? She was a bad ass as far As
(13:07):
and my kitten. She could bench a house, she could
whoop me if she had to. You want to call
her for backup? Seriously, yes, I'm sure she'sasstructor and all that.
And I'll say just one of my crazier stories. And
we did podcasts on this where we both had a
similar story. They had to do with tasing people. In
mine was in a campground, but literally we had three
(13:29):
crazy guys that were trying to quote kill us and
do damage to us with our ar fifteens blah blah blah,
all kinds of stuff and ended up we could tell
that they weren't armed. We had to transfer to taser.
Blah blah blah. Sorry I say blah blah blah. Anyway,
long story short, we triple tase these guys at the
same time and they just went right at dusk. Nobody
(13:51):
got that on a cell phone. I cannot believe that
they didn't see the campers are. But this is where
I say, like, when you taste somebody, you need to
bring them into con troll very very quickly. And so
I am tethered to a guy on the ground with
a taser. There's another ranger standing there not doing anything,
and then another ranger we accidentally both tase the same
guy and I look and this is happening in NOx seconds.
(14:14):
I look, I look, and they're just standing there like
dubases and I'm like, wwnd, And then so I jumped. Anyway,
I had to bring this big guy under under control
with cuffs because none of these other big rangers were
doing But that's the that's my WWND.
Speaker 2 (14:29):
That's fantastic.
Speaker 1 (14:31):
Freezed over the part where you like, tased one guy
twice on accident, well.
Speaker 3 (14:37):
Two rangers, Well, no, like we we separated them. We distracted.
There were three dudes. They were on leave from Afghanistan
Iraq and their dad was a Vietnam fed and they
were under the influence of all kinds of things, and
you know anyway, so they were holding arms like amebas
coming after us, coming back, coming after us, and so
(14:58):
we had a plan distract, separating tasem. So we just
two of us ended up tasing one guy, which is fine.
It didn't make him hurt anymore.
Speaker 1 (15:07):
Yeah, just sobered him up a bit.
Speaker 3 (15:12):
Yes, hopefully.
Speaker 5 (15:15):
And mine why we tased. I was at Mount Rushmore
as a supervisory park ranger at the time, and we
ended up tasing a guy that they had parked in
a no parking area. And I got to tell you,
these those and I was new to Mount Rushmore and
these guys were amazing. I mean, if there is car
out of place, because it's an icon park, they were
all over it. And so, anyway, long story short on that,
(15:38):
a guy comes up and he literally looked like Grizzly Adams.
I mean he was a mountain of a man, beard, mustache,
I mean the whole nine yards wearing car hearts, bibs,
and a jacket. And it was me and two other
officers and we ended up chasing him. After we got
him on his knees, we're going to try and handcuff him,
(15:58):
and he did a haymaker towards one of the other guys,
and two of us went to pull our tasers and
the other guy pulled his first because I knew we
were gonna have to jump on him, and so anyway
taste them. He goes down to the ground and I
jump on his back and I'm sure I look like
this little aunt on top of the back of him.
He's screaming like a girl. He does the full ride on.
Speaker 1 (16:21):
The tasers hold on, So you're riding him while he's
being tased.
Speaker 6 (16:26):
Yes about rushmore rodeo move, I could teach you things.
Speaker 5 (16:38):
This guy is so big. We can't get the cuffs
one set of cuffs, so now we're having to take
two sets out. We hook a set of cuffs, one
to his wrist, and then we hook our cuffs together
and then the other one has to go on his
other wrist. Well, while you're trying to do that, he
gets his whists a bottom and he starts to stand up.
This is where the real rodeo starts. So I have
(17:00):
to have my hand in between the wires and so anyway,
the ranger says, I'm gonna tase you again. I look
down at my hand and I realized I'm gonna get taste,
so I quickly I quickly ripped my hand out. Taser
goes off like instantaneously. Guys starts streaming again, flops down
on the ground, and we're able to handcuff him with
(17:20):
two sets of handcuffs, and then we get him up
and he says to us, who are you people? And
so he had never been tased before, so I'm sure
that that was quite the event. And of course you know,
he's got two little girls and his wife were there
and of course they thought we shot him because you know,
(17:42):
our tasers do look like weapons. And so anyway, it
was quite the ordeal. But they had several or multiple
garbage bags of stolen items from Walmart, and then they
also had several precursors to making meth. We were able
to find a photo album of them doing their wares
(18:05):
in the woods, and of.
Speaker 3 (18:06):
Course pictures Christmas card pictures to yourself.
Speaker 1 (18:13):
Always document, that's right.
Speaker 5 (18:16):
So the wife and the husband went to jail in
the cover of darkness. We took the children. I took
the children to meet with social services and they they
took the kids away. And so anyway, if we're lucky,
I believe that gentleman is still in jail. After he
finished his South Dakota time, he went to California on
some warrants. So my guess is he's probably.
Speaker 1 (18:36):
You can't tell anybody how he got there.
Speaker 3 (18:39):
This lady, this girl, Yeah, so you're you know, go ahead.
Speaker 4 (18:45):
Oh no, I was just gonna real quick. So your
role in the park really you're you're like a hybrid role.
So not only do you have to be like a
park ranger that everyone probably when you say park ranger,
you think of the person you know, walking down the
trail helping hikers.
Speaker 2 (18:59):
That's questions.
Speaker 4 (19:00):
But you're also basically lawn a cop in the park,
so you guys, so you also have to know how
to handle yourself with criminals and drunk people and so
that that's pretty crazy that you're basically really like a
hybrid role in the park.
Speaker 5 (19:17):
Well, most of the time we you know, terror and
I I mean it wasn't unusual for us to go
from medical to law enforcement to medical to law enforcement.
Aren't their ship because that's just what you had to
do back then. We just wore so many hats that
we had.
Speaker 4 (19:34):
Yeah, that's cool, And I guess the medical side that
brings me into probably you know, some of your time
or I don't know how much your time was probably
devoted to search and rescue operations. Especially a park like
Yellowstone probably has a lot of people in it and
probably a lot of people go missing and are found.
Speaker 3 (19:53):
But yeah, talked about this, Yeah, we talked about this,
and I can't remember somebody else asked us this question.
Yellowstone is not that big of a SAR park, not
like Yosemite or as far as rescues, there's a lot
of searches, just not a whole lot of rescues. And
Nancy and I were saying, like most of the searches
(20:15):
that at least I had been on, I think Nancy
was involved with water and people going off a big waterfall,
people going into a cold, cold, cold lake and never resurfacing.
So sadly, a lot of our searches that we've been
on resulted in not ever finding who we're looking for,
because you know, they were presumed dead. So anyway, Yellowstone
(20:37):
is different.
Speaker 5 (20:37):
It's not that or was the body recovery once we
did find them. So yeah, we didn't do a lot
of happy search and rescues.
Speaker 4 (20:45):
Okay, And did you ever I know, obviously Grand Tee
Ton is nearby yellow Stone. Did you ever, I know
sometimes the parks will other resources from different parks will
come in to help with the search. Did you ever
go on searches in another park to help them out?
Speaker 3 (21:03):
I never went to Tetons, but I feel like I've been.
I mean, I feel like I've been outside the park
in the forest. Like there's a lot of things that
still go on. Yellowstone ecosystem is surrounded by national forests
as well, and so I feel like I've been outside
the park. I could be getting confused with fires. We
also do wildland fire ems, wildlandfire search and rescue. But
(21:23):
we do have or I say we like I still
work there. I do have a technical rescue team. And
occasionally there's you know, somebody tries to skirt down the
Grand Canyon of the Yellowstone for example. It's not It's
also not a big climbing park. Where Tetons is a
big climbing park, they have you know, climbing rangers. But
(21:44):
Yellowstone is like a big open serengetti and with crazy
water rivers, cold lakes and you know, hazards that way.
But the things that Nancy I think we have been
most involved in, we're crimes against people. And I dealt
a lot with sexual assaults, intomestic violence cases, believe it
or not, you know, things that you would have really
(22:05):
in Milwaukee. There we have in the parks. And that's
kind of a lot of what we did, Okay.
Speaker 5 (22:12):
And I was also deputized as a deputy in the
county in Gardner, Montana, and so I would go outside
the park and assist the county when it was needed.
Speaker 2 (22:23):
Okay, one of those stories.
Speaker 4 (22:25):
I hiked in Grand Teton a while back, and it
was during a period where you weren't supposed to have
any fires in the park due to fire danger, and
I remember we woke up one morning, we had our
permits for one of the campsites, and probably five or
six park rangers were just running down the trail with shovels,
and I asked one of them what were they were doing,
(22:48):
and they said, there were people in the park illegally
starting fires. They're trying to start fires, and they were
trying to catch them. I was just I was kind
of like, we were kind of like, but they have
all the shovels, so I guess after the fact, maybe
they would use that to put any fires out that
might have been started, or or they're going to hit
them over the head with them.
Speaker 2 (23:07):
I don't know, but.
Speaker 1 (23:09):
That's what That's what Nancy would doc.
Speaker 4 (23:14):
Yeah, that was I just remember that sticking out when
I was in the te tons because they were I
mean dead sprint down the trail trying to catch up
to these guys.
Speaker 3 (23:22):
Well, what trail, what trail were you on?
Speaker 2 (23:25):
We went over the Paint Brush Divide.
Speaker 4 (23:27):
Oh yeah, yeah, yeah, so we were camping somewhere on
I can't.
Speaker 3 (23:30):
Remember solid solitude maybe.
Speaker 2 (23:33):
Yeah, that does sound familiar. We were.
Speaker 4 (23:35):
It was a lot of pines where we were camping that. Yeah,
it was several years ago now, but yeah, it was
definitely the went over the Paint Brush Divide. And yeah,
we got woken up one morning to these guys just
stomping down the trail with shovels, like wow, dead on sprint,
trying to.
Speaker 3 (23:51):
Catch You don't know when you're going to see it. Yeah, well,
I mean park could be anywhere. Yeah, not so much.
Now we lost Nancy.
Speaker 1 (23:58):
We lost her. She's going to go tackle a bear
real quick or something.
Speaker 3 (24:02):
You might if.
Speaker 2 (24:06):
So. I'm trying to think.
Speaker 4 (24:08):
So you spent most of your time in Yellowstone and
the National forests around there.
Speaker 3 (24:13):
Okay, well, working in Yellowstone, okay. But my last five
years I worked for the Washington Supervisory Office we call
it walso for sure, and so I was able to
start a victim assistance program through WASO. That's why I
worked with mostly just victims of crime and responding to
(24:34):
those kind of cases we were talking about and dealing
with victims and getting them the assistance that they need.
And so I did that the last five years.
Speaker 4 (24:42):
So I've got another question, and then we'll have an
audience question after yours. Okay, So this one, I'm sure
this guy was kind of the inspiration originally for me
to start the podcast. But I'm sure you've heard of
David Politis.
Speaker 3 (24:57):
Oh, the Missing for One one guy. Yeah.
Speaker 4 (24:59):
Yeah, So he's I would imagine for people that work
within the MPs, he's probably a pretty annoying figure.
Speaker 3 (25:10):
I don't know who it is he actually bothers, but
he claims he he bothers people, but I don't know
who those people are that he's getting his well, they're
not getting information from Yeah.
Speaker 4 (25:19):
So, like he's got a new documentary coming out about
disappearances in the National Parks, and he kind of brought
up the same thing that he's been saying for years,
and I thought it'd be great to have two people
that worked in the park, especially law enforcement. So his
claim is that there must be some conspiracy going on.
The National Park Service is not keeping a list of
missing persons, and it's like a conspiracy, something bigger is
(25:42):
going on in the park. You know, it's aliens or
Bigfoot or something, and.
Speaker 1 (25:46):
You're retired now, so you can blow the lid off
all of this. So and both of our shows will
skyrocket ratings if.
Speaker 2 (25:53):
You do so.
Speaker 4 (25:55):
I guess I'm just curious what your thought is on
his kind of it's been a persist thing of his
for years that the Park Service is hiding something from everybody.
Speaker 3 (26:06):
Well, I'm going to give you a very boring answer
to that, and I think this is the answer and
why he keeps on it. But every park is its
own entity. It's not stovepiped. I mean, there's some overhead
leadership like in Washington office, and every park essentially keeps
its own like stats, supposedly, there's no there just isn't
(26:29):
any database that. There was one that they came out
with several years ago, and nobody knew how to use
it and it took us and years and years for
people to figure it out. And this is for law
enforcement people to use that you know, you could learn
about a case in another park whatever, but that did
not capture missing persons or disappearances or things like that,
(26:50):
and so it's just disjointed. And I think if you,
I think, if you, it's just a record keeping thing,
and I don't think there's any I'm all about conspiracies,
but I don't think I love you're trying to.
Speaker 1 (27:07):
I think you're covering something up.
Speaker 5 (27:10):
I mean, you know, the Four Services like that too.
I mean, were supposedly had this great system that once
we entered the information that I could tell if somebody
got a ticket for poaching in Kentucky, I could tell
that a Jewel Cave National monument. And it just it
didn't work that way. I mean, it's just you know,
or somewhere in the Black Hills.
Speaker 1 (27:30):
It just sounds like something that should exist. Yes, if
you interact with somebody.
Speaker 3 (27:36):
Hard, it shouldn't be hard. It shouldn't be hard. You know,
you've got all kinds of national databases, national you know,
exploited and missing children, and but still somebody has to
enter that in and if people in this park aren't
entering it in like Yosemite, where he says, the hubby
is all the most missing, right, all the most missing people.
Which now I'm nervous because I'm going on a big
(27:58):
hike in June to assim Yusemite in the backcountry with
a former backcountry ranger there and I'm like, Okay, am
I going to go missing here? Yeah?
Speaker 4 (28:12):
Now, I think you're right. Everything I've read is I've
read the same thing. It's its own entity. And then
a lot of information and knowledge about specific parks kind
of resides with the rangers working there, and then when
they leave or retire, that information kind of goes with them. Yeah,
and it's not always well documented, and it's it's just
kind of the way it's always been. And I think
(28:33):
the Park Service has always been underfunded, so you know,
it's never been funded enough.
Speaker 2 (28:38):
So I think David Place is wrong. I do too.
Let's call him out.
Speaker 1 (28:43):
Yeah, you guys are you guys are a part officially
a part of Unknown Network. And and Mike's been going
Mike's got something cooking that could change a game in
this field. We won't talk about it right now, but.
Speaker 4 (28:53):
Oh well, I mean yeah, I've been working on building
from the ground up a custom web application that has
a map and it's kind of think of like all trails,
but for missing persons. Oh yeah, to track every wilderness
disappearance that has happened. We're kind of in the process
of gathering all the data and putting it together because
(29:16):
I originally started Locations Unknown as a website to kind
of track because I just found it fascinating that there's
all these cases that you know, can't be perfectly solved
with a theory that are covering up.
Speaker 2 (29:29):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (29:30):
Yeah, especially the ones with children where literally they turned
around and they were gone. And yeah, those ones are
the weird ones to me too. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (29:39):
Yeah, see, and that's interesting hearing from you that's been
out there, because you would expect if it was more normal,
you would say, oh, yeah, that's common because here's why.
But if it's weird to you guys, also, that does
make it that actually, that actually makes it more creepy
for me.
Speaker 3 (29:52):
Yeah, So.
Speaker 1 (29:57):
I was I was gonna finish your point because I've
a different question from a listener.
Speaker 3 (30:01):
So no, it was just going to be like, you know,
if it was an animal, you'd think that you would
see signed, you would see you know, clothes torn up,
you would see evidence, you know, drag marks. You just
don't see those things. And that's that's what's weird on
those ones. Getting that from that guy David what's his
last name again? Politas, Yeah, I mean I think those
are strange ones. But anyway, sorry, go ahead.
Speaker 1 (30:22):
So this is a question from a Holly Eklund. She's
a teen daughter. She said it earlier. She's a teen
daughter that really admires both of you. She loves listening
to the show. Her question was, is it hard to
become a park ranger in Yellowstone as an example for
most US national parks if you are not a law
enforcement or is that a requirement?
Speaker 3 (30:43):
It is not a requirement to be a law enforcement
park ranger in the National Park Service. Most people start
out by going to they have these seasonal academies, law
enforcement academies that they and then you can get hired
seasonally if you don't want to do law enforcementales like
maybe is that a requirement? I can't say right now
with all the cuts. A lot of other jobs, like
(31:04):
interpretive ranger type jobs and general ranger jobs, those are
kind of hard to come by. The general rangers INTERP
usually hires people with degrees in stuff like not law enforcement,
but maybe environmental education. They hire people with degrees a
lot of times in law enforcement. Your degree could be
criminal justice or it could be underwater basket even we
(31:27):
don't really care, but to do to get in there
on the ground. In law enforcement, you know, the best
thing is to do a law enforcement academy seasonal law
Enforcement Academy, and you could just google accredible. Yeah, if
you do that and get your EMT. No matter what
you do, get your EMT okay, yeah.
Speaker 1 (31:44):
Yeah, excellent, And just always think what would Nancy do?
Speaker 3 (31:47):
What Nancy do?
Speaker 2 (31:49):
You guys got to get shirts.
Speaker 1 (31:50):
I was just gonna say, shirts, like the bracelets, the
whole thing. Yes, they give you a recurring theme of
the show.
Speaker 4 (31:58):
Yeah, I'm actually next time I'm hiking, I probably think
of that.
Speaker 2 (32:02):
I'm pictures. What would Nancy do?
Speaker 1 (32:07):
Obviously the biggest person there and ride him as he
goes down? Y, you know.
Speaker 3 (32:14):
Normally, like when I would work with a partner, if
there was somebody you ended up having to wrestle, because
that does happen with drunks and people like that. And
you know, somebody's tall and I'm sure, and I'm like,
all right, you go, I go low kind of joking,
But Nancy and I are both the same height. We're
gonna down here for like those those wrestlers are not
Joe Lee Bright.
Speaker 6 (32:31):
You yeah, yeah, yeah, I feel like you could turn
Nancy and me lace and maybe'd be like this wrestlers.
Speaker 1 (32:37):
I just wish there was videos of all these things happening.
Speaker 2 (32:41):
You don't have body cam footage of that.
Speaker 5 (32:43):
Yeah, thank we didn't have to wear that back then.
Speaker 3 (32:48):
We kind of just barely missed the body cam.
Speaker 5 (32:50):
Yeah, that's right, the digital proof on that.
Speaker 4 (32:54):
Yeah, you would be like the front page of like
every park Ranger Rides a Taste.
Speaker 1 (33:01):
I mean, your show would be much bigger right now.
Speaker 3 (33:04):
Yeah, yeah, you know we do have on our show.
Speaker 4 (33:10):
We do.
Speaker 3 (33:10):
We do mostly cover cases like crime, crime off but
we also do Ranger tales where we get rangers or
former rangers to come on and tell a story, just
their story, and sometimes they're you know, them investigating a
horrific crime or they're something like, you know, the special
Response team in Yellowstone. We had to walk these lamas
(33:33):
out that came from Hari Christian's in a van. I mean,
crazy stuff that you can't make up. There's so some
of them are silly stories for the Ranger Tales and
some are pretty serious stories. We just recorded one. We're
an officer Arrangers involved in a shooting on the border
and he was telling that story, so it's kind of crazy.
Speaker 5 (33:50):
He's fine, but yeah, that'll come out in a couple
of people seem to like.
Speaker 3 (33:55):
Yeah, people seem to like the Ranger tales. I think
maybe Nancy and I might bore them a little bit.
Speaker 1 (33:59):
If it's just I don't think so. It might be
it's like it's really neat because it gives people a
different perspective of what goes on the parks. Because everyone,
I mean even people that listen to our show, Mike
and I hiked a lot, so it seems like it's
not interesting to us. But then we get comments of
like city slickers who don't are like afraid to go
in the woods, and they're like, oh, we're living vicariously
(34:20):
through your stories, and it seems so just normal to us.
So I'm sure things like you riding a giant man
who's tasted, you know, that's that's an outlier to you.
That's pure insanity to me, Like, that's not a normal Tuesday,
but it just happened. I'm like, that doesn't just happen
in my life. I've never seen that ever. Yeah, you know, and.
Speaker 3 (34:45):
I think we had different experiences being women just in
general and doing law enforcement, and sometimes it was it
makes things easier, sometimes it make things harder. Can you remember.
Just We would also do a lot of service things
in the park, like people like their keys out of
the car. I love, love, love unlocking cars for people,
and you know, some of us. There was another gal
(35:06):
as arranger, and we got really good at if we
didn't want the other, our male counterparts to get to
the lockout before we did, because we liked to unlocking him.
And I can remember driving up to some guy that'd
been sitting there nots and locked his keys in his
truck and as I rolled up, he's like, great, they
sent a girl.
Speaker 1 (35:22):
And I was like he literally said that out loud.
Speaker 7 (35:25):
He out loud, so IM like, I'm like, Nancy, what
would you do?
Speaker 5 (35:37):
You know, staying on the taser thing, I went to
Canyon one day with a trainee that I was training,
and a guy jumped out of a two story window
and he was extremely intoxicated. So we were trying to
arrest him and we looked up and there was thirty
people surrounding us, and we put the guy in the
car really quickly, and we stood back to back and
(35:57):
then we just we took off the carriges and we
spark tested as we're back to back and we're turning
in a circle, and I said, it isn't worth it.
Speaker 3 (36:09):
You know.
Speaker 5 (36:10):
They all hey, but you know you you look up
and see that and it's just like, oh my gosh,
this is gonna be bad.
Speaker 3 (36:17):
We had one of those two in Canyon and it
was like deliverance, and I'm hopefully you guys get that preference.
Speaker 1 (36:24):
Yeah, Like we.
Speaker 3 (36:25):
Were contacting someone who had violation whatever it was, in
the dark, and all of a sudden, these people just
come out for more, you know, and yes, it looked
like deliverance, and it was like, throw them in the car,
get him to the ranger station before it because and
that was I didn't taste this guy, but he got
tasted and he pulled off the probes and they were like,
(36:45):
oh my gosh, this is deliverance.
Speaker 1 (36:47):
That's terrifying when you taste somebody and they're like nope,
You're like, holy cow, what type of drugs are you
on that You just like, yeah, broke the laws of
physics and just said no electricity you can.
Speaker 5 (37:00):
That's why when Terra says you got to act quick,
you definitely have to pack that quick.
Speaker 1 (37:06):
Lose it. You guys are like the park Service. John Wicks.
Speaker 3 (37:10):
Yeah, I don't know. I don't know about that. I mean,
most most of the time we're not we're not totally.
We're not beating people up or affecting arrests or tasing people.
Speaker 1 (37:22):
You know.
Speaker 3 (37:22):
Most of our job, really and truly as a park
ranger is about helping people in the park. Ninety percent
of our job is like helping other people in the park.
And I love that. That's that's why I wanted to
do that, as opposed to just being a regular cop somewhere.
Speaker 2 (37:37):
Yeah, yeah, yeah, I would.
Speaker 1 (37:39):
I would love to be a cop in a park. Yeah,
any job in the park I would love.
Speaker 4 (37:44):
Hopefully most of the time you're just out there hiking
and talking with people.
Speaker 2 (37:47):
Yeah, not tasy.
Speaker 3 (37:49):
Well, there's freedom. I mean now they're really short handed
and they're just running from call to call to call,
and they just don't have as much freedom. I think
is probably Nancy and I did because it was one
wonderful just hanging out over at an overlook at a
pull out and people coming up and ask you questions
and then you know, then there would be that call
and you would run off to that call. And as
(38:10):
a arranger friend of mine List said, Hey, I got
to a license are and passing on curves. He thought
that was fun. But yeah, so then it was a
lot of talking to decent humans and then running to
help other humans.
Speaker 1 (38:23):
Is one that's awesome, very fulfilling work. Yeah, yeah, I
would say, yeah, that's fantastic.
Speaker 4 (38:29):
Well, I think we'll have to at some point do
a longer interview episode with both of you. Absolutely have
so many more questions and sounded so cool. I would
trade what I do for during the day for what
you guys did a thousand times over.
Speaker 5 (38:46):
You know, we we've talked about this before, and I
think I can count on one hand in thirty two
years how many times I said I wish I didn't
have to go to work today.
Speaker 1 (38:55):
Yeah right, just yeah, that's yeah, that's fantastic job. Both
are very blessed, and thank you very much for a
starting your show and be agreeing to meet with us
and start this whole venture. And this has been a
lot of fun. It's been great getting to know you both.
Speaker 3 (39:11):
Yeah, yeah, this has been great. I tell people we
belong to you guys, you know your group, and that's
I mean, it's actually helped us a lot and really
appreciate it.
Speaker 1 (39:21):
Yeah, absolutely, that's that's what we're trying to do. That's
what we've always been very big about the spaces. This
isn't a competition thing. We've always looked at it as
it's we can all help each other grow. And it's
such a small the outdoor true crime genre community is
super small, so it's awesome that we get to all
know all the people. You know, National Park after Dark
(39:42):
is huge and they just came on the show. Because
it's such a small space. You guys are going to
get bigger than us soon and that's gonna be awesome.
So you make sure you take us with you and
then no, this is gonna be a lot of fun
continuing to grow this.
Speaker 5 (39:54):
You know, you guys is we we did the Into
the Wild, we did the Magic.
Speaker 3 (40:00):
We did that, we did the Magic Bus too well.
We are going on a cruise in Alaska through the
Association of National Parks arrange A and pr Association of
a Park Rangers. They partner with Royal Caribbean to provide
speakers on Alaska cruises and so Nancy are gone to
be speakers on one of the cruises and so we
(40:20):
have to do everything about Alaska and we got. We
did that one on our podcast so that we can
present it as well. And I do want to say
one more thing about your the Unknown Media Group and
the thing that I like about that space we only
we kind of like closure. Like our cases all are
adjudicated if they're a case and or they're closed cases,
(40:44):
and you guys do all that other mystery stuff, which
I'm not able in my brain to research. And I
think that is such a good compliment to everybody in
the Unknown Media Group, is that you know, there's there's
mystery people, there's a true crime case, closed people. Yes,
(41:05):
I think it compliments a lot.
Speaker 1 (41:06):
That's fantastic And that actually answered the question. So Michelle Medick,
she was the one that guest hosts a couple of times,
and her and her husband are starting another show that's
focusing mainly on Alaska, so you're gonna have to go
on her show.
Speaker 3 (41:18):
Oh yeah.
Speaker 1 (41:19):
Like there's a lot of synergy that's happening organically, and
it's kind of like when we met and talked about
the group, I always say, I like to do cool
shit with cool people, and magic happens when you do that,
and you guys are great. I knew from the first
meeting that it was gonna be awesome. Keep doing your
show and then there's always gonna be synergies. We'll definitely
have you on her show again to talk more stories.
(41:41):
You'll have to go on Michelle's show when she gets
it off the ground. But no, we appreciate you guys
so much, and thanks for doing this too, and we
just hope we can help you keep growing and getting
bigger and bigger.
Speaker 3 (41:52):
Oh, thank you, thank you so much. Thanks for fun.
Speaker 2 (41:55):
Yeah, have a good nurse you night. All right, thank you, yah,
welcome back.
Speaker 4 (42:01):
So I really hoped you enjoyed that interview with Crime
Off the Grid. We had a lot of fun talking
with them. Their stories are so cool. I could spend
hours talking to them about their experiences in the National Park.
And I hope down the road, very soon we get
to do another interview with them, because I'm sure they
have a lot of other things to tell us that
(42:22):
we weren't able to touch on in the interview. So
that is the episode for this week. Remember, if you
want to support the show, you can find us on
all of the social media platforms, Facebook, YouTube. You can
also support us through Patreon, YouTube subscriptions. Apple subscriptions, Speaker subscriptions,
(42:43):
all that stuff our Facebook store. And remember this if
you don't remember anything else I ever tell you. When
enjoin the beautiful wonders of our National Park, always remember
to leave no trace. Thank you, and I will see
you again next week
Thousands of people have mysteriously vanished in America's wilderness. Join
us as we dive into the deep end of the
unexplainable and try.
Speaker 2 (00:18):
To piece together what happened.
Speaker 3 (00:20):
If you are listening to Locations.
Speaker 4 (00:22):
Unknown, what's up, everybody, and welcome back to another episode
(00:59):
of Locations on I'm your solo host Mike van de Bogert.
Joe is not with us this week. We'll both be
back next week with a brand new case. This week
got a fun episode for you. So during our live
stream last week, our four and a half hour marathon
talking marathon, we did a very interesting and fun interview
(01:22):
with Tara and Nancy from Crime Off the Grid. They
are retired law enforcement park rangers and they have some
amazing stories to tell. I wish we would have had
longer to talk with them, So in the future we'll
be doing another episode with a much longer interview because
I'm sure they have so many more stories they could
(01:43):
tell us, but just some really funny stories. There's a
story of one of them. They tased this gentleman who
was probably inebriated multiple times and one of them ended
up riding him like a horse.
Speaker 2 (01:55):
So you're gonna have to listen to the interview.
Speaker 4 (01:58):
It's some really funny stuff and it sounded like a
really cool job. Before we get going, I want to
give some Patreon shout outs to new listeners. So thank
you to Ralph Ferguson, Amy Creek and A Gilmore and
Heather Augur. Thank you so much for supporting the show.
We say this every week, but we could not do
(02:18):
this without you. Your support means more than you'll ever know.
We use that money to get better equipment, better software.
Also we can bring you a better show every week,
So thank you so much for supporting the show. If
you're a new listener, we have other ways you can
support the show, so you can obviously join our Patreon channel,
you can join YouTube memberships, premium subscriptions on Apple, premium
(02:41):
subscriptions on Speaker, and eventually we will have a show
a store, new store coming out that'll have a lot
of cool swag or merch that you can buy, and
for a limited time we'll be running a special for
all of our supporters. You can buy anything on the
store at costs, so whatever it costs us, you'll get.
Speaker 2 (03:00):
We also have some really.
Speaker 4 (03:01):
Cool shows on our network, Unknown Media group that you
can check out, so Peanut Butter and Mountain Podcast, Off
the Trails, the Weirdos we know who runs this park,
and Crime Off the Grid. I urge you to go
and check out all of those shows. They're all very
interesting and they get two thumbs up for me and Joe.
So finally, as many of you know, we did a
four and a half hour live stream last week.
Speaker 2 (03:24):
It was exhausting.
Speaker 4 (03:25):
Never in my wildest dreams did I ever think talking
for four and a half hours could be so exhausting,
but it was.
Speaker 2 (03:32):
I was drained by the end of it.
Speaker 4 (03:35):
But we had a really fun live stream. We spent
an hour talking with the hosts from National Park after Dark.
They recently went on a big trip to Antarctica and
they have a new podcast out that they talked about.
Then we spoke with the host from Crime Off the Grid,
which you're about.
Speaker 2 (03:51):
To hear in a minute.
Speaker 4 (03:52):
And we also tried to speak with our Patreon supporters,
but we were having some audio issues, so we apologize
again to everyone who sports the show. We will do
another members only video call and dedicate dedicate the whole
episode to that at some point here in the near future.
We also spent a good amount of time listening to
a lot of voicemails that we've received, which, by the way,
(04:15):
you can call our show at two eight three nine
one six nine one three or text the show and
leave a voicemail.
Speaker 2 (04:22):
And we had we.
Speaker 4 (04:23):
Wrapped the show up talking to Evan Stone, the one
and Only, and we went through for people that didn't
know him, the history of who he is. He's an
extreme filmmaker, got his roots in the music industry in
the nineties with MTV, and he's been on a ton
of He's been the director of photography on a ton
of shows, like his most famous one is Expedition Unknown
(04:46):
with Josh Gates, and he went through a lot of
the different places he's been through that show and just.
Speaker 2 (04:52):
A lot of really cool stories.
Speaker 4 (04:53):
He's big into ghost on You Now and Joe and
I have been trying to get him to get out
here to Wisconsin. Joe Company, Joe works for our owns
an old hospital with a psychiatric wing that is absolutely terrifying.
I've been in it at night with the lights off. If
you're afraid of places like that, I would not recommend it.
But so we're hoping this summer to get them up
(05:16):
there to film an episode for ghost Hunting, because I
really believe there's ghosts, even though I don't believe in ghosts,
but if they exist, they're there.
Speaker 2 (05:23):
And if you'd like to check out the whole.
Speaker 4 (05:24):
Four and a half hour live stream, it's on our
YouTube channel, it's on our Facebook page, it's on x
so lots of different places you can check it out.
It was a lot of fun. We don't live stream
very often for this exact reason. It's a lot of
things can go wrong while you're live streaming and you
have to We don't have a staff or a crew
(05:44):
here to deal with stuff when it's live. It's me
and Joe, so we would have to figure that stuff
out on the fly. And there's times where we were
having some technical difficulties, but we kept the stream you're
running the entire time, so you can watch it in
all its glory and fast forward through some of the
parts where Joe and I are trying to fix things.
Speaker 2 (06:03):
It was very fun.
Speaker 4 (06:04):
It was to celebrate this amazing studio that we're gonna
have to leave here soon. So the building we're in
is being fully renovated into apartments and condos, so they're
kicking us out, giving us the boot, and our current
Our next studio location is funny enough, unknown, so we
have a couple places we're looking at, so we don't
(06:24):
actually know where we're going yet. But the show will
not stop one way or the other. We will be
recording new episodes throughout all of this, so stick with us,
and who knows where we'll end up, but we will
find somewhere to continue this show. Because I have so
much fun doing this, I can't imagine not doing this.
So with all of that said, Joe's not here this week.
(06:48):
I actually don't know where he is, but I just
know he's not here. But we will be back in
full force next week with a brand new episode and
I'm excited to get back in this studio, get back
to doing what we do. So, without further ado, I
present you the interview we did with the hosts of
Crime Off the Grid.
Speaker 1 (07:10):
In radio voice and we're back. All right, We're gonna
bring you in. Tara and Nancy. Hello, Sorry for that.
We had pizza delivered by my wife and son because.
Speaker 2 (07:23):
We're just gonna do here for a while.
Speaker 1 (07:25):
Yeah, that was like perfect timing with the Jade the
dog comment.
Speaker 3 (07:31):
You know, I felt so guilty about that for years
and years, and then I saw that they had a
patroon episode and I joined the patron just to see
what they said about Jade the dog, and they told
it exactly correct. They didn't miss anything anything incorrect. But
I felt guilt over that for days and days and
years and years, and I forgot my trauma until until
(07:53):
I listened to that again, and then I just felt
like I had to confess, So I sent that message in.
I felt like I had to confess that felt horrible
about it. It was a horrible head on collision, chaos,
life flights, all of that kind of stuff was going on.
And I was going to take the dog back to
my house because I was on of the only few
people that had like a fenceton yard, and she broke
(08:13):
free because her kennel was broken. Anyway, that's her story
I got it off into.
Speaker 1 (08:18):
So even though a tragic story, it's just shows kind
of how small this world is. Yeah, like they comment,
we have them on, you're actually the person that was
involved in it. That's actually a pretty crazy out of
all the negative of that case, it's really cool that
like that this happened.
Speaker 2 (08:32):
It all led to this.
Speaker 1 (08:33):
So yeah, with that, Tara, Nancy, would you want to
introduce yourselves and tell us a little bit about your show?
Speaker 3 (08:40):
Yeah, in your.
Speaker 4 (08:41):
History, I'm really once we en in this hearing about
your time in the National Park Service.
Speaker 3 (08:46):
So well, I've already been talking to Nancy. I'll let
you go for it.
Speaker 5 (08:52):
My name is Nancy, and I had a career with
federal government, both in the Park Service and the Forest
Service for about thirty two years. Most of my time
was working in Yellowstone with Tara, So we've known each
other for a very long time, long time, and it's
just been a great career for us both.
Speaker 3 (09:10):
Yeah. Yeah, So I we both did law enforcement, ranger rangering,
and most almost my entire was in Yellowstone. Nancy moved
on to bigger and better things. I stayed in Yellowstone
and then the last five years of my career I
worked strictly with victims of crime, okay, in the National Parks.
Speaker 4 (09:31):
So what Obviously you host the show Crime Off the Grid,
So what got you into wanting to do that? I know,
Joe and I the first couple of years we did
it was brutal. No one listened, so just a lot
of work for five listeners.
Speaker 1 (09:49):
You gotta love doing it. Yeah, So exactly.
Speaker 4 (09:53):
What made you want to transition to, you know, from
what you did in the Park Service to do in
a podcast.
Speaker 3 (10:00):
Well, I started the podcast, but I think right before
I retired. You know, a lot of us who have
loved our careers, we leave kind of kicking and screaming,
not really wanting, you know, we age out in law
enforcement in the National Park Service, and so I'm like,
I'm just not done. I'm not done. And I had
first had just really maybe a month or two earlier,
started listening to a true crime podcast. Besides, I've always
(10:22):
watched you know, every documentary. But I'm like, huh, there
are all these stories out there in the National Park Service,
and I had not discovered National Park after Dark at
that point, I didn't even know they existed. And I'm like,
there's these stories that need to be told, and there's
a whole bunch of reasons about. One of the things
is rangers do some crazy stuff. They risk their lives,
(10:44):
they do a lot of things that you cannot make up.
Yet people just assume they're that person who's at the
entrance station with a map, saying welcome to Yellowstone, or
you know, you see rangers pointing at things on the
you know, outside the guyser basin or whatever. That's not
what we're talking about. When we're talking about, you know,
a lot of crime, and then in national parks because
(11:04):
and then I named it crime off the Grid. I
don't know, without a good name, I don't know. But
we didn't want to just cover national parks. We wanted
to do you know, places, wild places.
Speaker 5 (11:15):
Well, and I got going because Tara is a wonderful
travel agent and she booked me on a guilt.
Speaker 1 (11:25):
She booked you on a what it broke up?
Speaker 5 (11:28):
On a guilt trip.
Speaker 3 (11:32):
I didn't have a partner to begin with, and so
I was trying to get all these rangers or these
other people to play do one with me, And then
they would disguise their name because they're still working, and
there's you know that might have been frowned upon with ethics,
blah blah blah. Nancy, we're exactly the same age she
was retired. I'm like, how about you do one with me?
And then I'm like, how about you do another one
with me? How about you can you just be my partner?
Speaker 2 (11:57):
Well, awesome. I have so many questions.
Speaker 5 (12:00):
It sounded like a job, and it has turned into
a job.
Speaker 3 (12:03):
It is a job.
Speaker 4 (12:05):
It's like an investment. You gotta There's a lot of
work and time you put in at the beginning, but
it slowly pays off, kind of like a snowball rolling downhill.
It picks up momentum as.
Speaker 3 (12:16):
You go, Yeah, yeah, it is, yes, but I.
Speaker 4 (12:19):
Have so many questions I want. There's probably not enough
time for him. I'll try to be as quick as
I can. But first of all, tell us some stories
that you can talk about. I don't know what the
rules are around that. While you were in law enforcement
in Yellowstone, what were some of the crazy things you
had to deal with on a day to day.
Speaker 1 (12:38):
I think you're retired. Spill the beans?
Speaker 3 (12:41):
Oh no, exactly, we don't care. What are they going
to do?
Speaker 2 (12:44):
All right?
Speaker 3 (12:45):
We're doing this? Yeah, well, okay, can I just say
this Nancy in our careers went sort of different directions
in a way. Like Nancy, I'm just gonna tell you,
Like I if you've listened to our podcast, if you
might to her, tous say me say wwnd what would
Nancy do? She was a bad ass as far As
(13:07):
and my kitten. She could bench a house, she could
whoop me if she had to. You want to call
her for backup? Seriously, yes, I'm sure she'sasstructor and all that.
And I'll say just one of my crazier stories. And
we did podcasts on this where we both had a
similar story. They had to do with tasing people. In
mine was in a campground, but literally we had three
(13:29):
crazy guys that were trying to quote kill us and
do damage to us with our ar fifteens blah blah blah,
all kinds of stuff and ended up we could tell
that they weren't armed. We had to transfer to taser.
Blah blah blah. Sorry I say blah blah blah. Anyway,
long story short, we triple tase these guys at the
same time and they just went right at dusk. Nobody
(13:51):
got that on a cell phone. I cannot believe that
they didn't see the campers are. But this is where
I say, like, when you taste somebody, you need to
bring them into con troll very very quickly. And so
I am tethered to a guy on the ground with
a taser. There's another ranger standing there not doing anything,
and then another ranger we accidentally both tase the same
guy and I look and this is happening in NOx seconds.
(14:14):
I look, I look, and they're just standing there like
dubases and I'm like, wwnd, And then so I jumped. Anyway,
I had to bring this big guy under under control
with cuffs because none of these other big rangers were
doing But that's the that's my WWND.
Speaker 2 (14:29):
That's fantastic.
Speaker 1 (14:31):
Freezed over the part where you like, tased one guy
twice on accident, well.
Speaker 3 (14:37):
Two rangers, Well, no, like we we separated them. We distracted.
There were three dudes. They were on leave from Afghanistan
Iraq and their dad was a Vietnam fed and they
were under the influence of all kinds of things, and
you know anyway, so they were holding arms like amebas
coming after us, coming back, coming after us, and so
(14:58):
we had a plan distract, separating tasem. So we just
two of us ended up tasing one guy, which is fine.
It didn't make him hurt anymore.
Speaker 1 (15:07):
Yeah, just sobered him up a bit.
Speaker 3 (15:12):
Yes, hopefully.
Speaker 5 (15:15):
And mine why we tased. I was at Mount Rushmore
as a supervisory park ranger at the time, and we
ended up tasing a guy that they had parked in
a no parking area. And I got to tell you,
these those and I was new to Mount Rushmore and
these guys were amazing. I mean, if there is car
out of place, because it's an icon park, they were
all over it. And so, anyway, long story short on that,
(15:38):
a guy comes up and he literally looked like Grizzly Adams.
I mean he was a mountain of a man, beard, mustache,
I mean the whole nine yards wearing car hearts, bibs,
and a jacket. And it was me and two other
officers and we ended up chasing him. After we got
him on his knees, we're going to try and handcuff him,
(15:58):
and he did a haymaker towards one of the other guys,
and two of us went to pull our tasers and
the other guy pulled his first because I knew we
were gonna have to jump on him, and so anyway
taste them. He goes down to the ground and I
jump on his back and I'm sure I look like
this little aunt on top of the back of him.
He's screaming like a girl. He does the full ride on.
Speaker 1 (16:21):
The tasers hold on, So you're riding him while he's
being tased.
Speaker 6 (16:26):
Yes about rushmore rodeo move, I could teach you things.
Speaker 5 (16:38):
This guy is so big. We can't get the cuffs
one set of cuffs, so now we're having to take
two sets out. We hook a set of cuffs, one
to his wrist, and then we hook our cuffs together
and then the other one has to go on his
other wrist. Well, while you're trying to do that, he
gets his whists a bottom and he starts to stand up.
This is where the real rodeo starts. So I have
(17:00):
to have my hand in between the wires and so anyway,
the ranger says, I'm gonna tase you again. I look
down at my hand and I realized I'm gonna get taste,
so I quickly I quickly ripped my hand out. Taser
goes off like instantaneously. Guys starts streaming again, flops down
on the ground, and we're able to handcuff him with
(17:20):
two sets of handcuffs, and then we get him up
and he says to us, who are you people? And
so he had never been tased before, so I'm sure
that that was quite the event. And of course you know,
he's got two little girls and his wife were there
and of course they thought we shot him because you know,
(17:42):
our tasers do look like weapons. And so anyway, it
was quite the ordeal. But they had several or multiple
garbage bags of stolen items from Walmart, and then they
also had several precursors to making meth. We were able
to find a photo album of them doing their wares
(18:05):
in the woods, and of.
Speaker 3 (18:06):
Course pictures Christmas card pictures to yourself.
Speaker 1 (18:13):
Always document, that's right.
Speaker 5 (18:16):
So the wife and the husband went to jail in
the cover of darkness. We took the children. I took
the children to meet with social services and they they
took the kids away. And so anyway, if we're lucky,
I believe that gentleman is still in jail. After he
finished his South Dakota time, he went to California on
some warrants. So my guess is he's probably.
Speaker 1 (18:36):
You can't tell anybody how he got there.
Speaker 3 (18:39):
This lady, this girl, Yeah, so you're you know, go ahead.
Speaker 4 (18:45):
Oh no, I was just gonna real quick. So your
role in the park really you're you're like a hybrid role.
So not only do you have to be like a
park ranger that everyone probably when you say park ranger,
you think of the person you know, walking down the
trail helping hikers.
Speaker 2 (18:59):
That's questions.
Speaker 4 (19:00):
But you're also basically lawn a cop in the park,
so you guys, so you also have to know how
to handle yourself with criminals and drunk people and so
that that's pretty crazy that you're basically really like a
hybrid role in the park.
Speaker 5 (19:17):
Well, most of the time we you know, terror and
I I mean it wasn't unusual for us to go
from medical to law enforcement to medical to law enforcement.
Aren't their ship because that's just what you had to
do back then. We just wore so many hats that
we had.
Speaker 4 (19:34):
Yeah, that's cool, And I guess the medical side that
brings me into probably you know, some of your time
or I don't know how much your time was probably
devoted to search and rescue operations. Especially a park like
Yellowstone probably has a lot of people in it and
probably a lot of people go missing and are found.
Speaker 3 (19:53):
But yeah, talked about this, Yeah, we talked about this,
and I can't remember somebody else asked us this question.
Yellowstone is not that big of a SAR park, not
like Yosemite or as far as rescues, there's a lot
of searches, just not a whole lot of rescues. And
Nancy and I were saying, like most of the searches
(20:15):
that at least I had been on, I think Nancy
was involved with water and people going off a big waterfall,
people going into a cold, cold, cold lake and never resurfacing.
So sadly, a lot of our searches that we've been
on resulted in not ever finding who we're looking for,
because you know, they were presumed dead. So anyway, Yellowstone
(20:37):
is different.
Speaker 5 (20:37):
It's not that or was the body recovery once we
did find them. So yeah, we didn't do a lot
of happy search and rescues.
Speaker 4 (20:45):
Okay, And did you ever I know, obviously Grand Tee
Ton is nearby yellow Stone. Did you ever, I know
sometimes the parks will other resources from different parks will
come in to help with the search. Did you ever
go on searches in another park to help them out?
Speaker 3 (21:03):
I never went to Tetons, but I feel like I've been.
I mean, I feel like I've been outside the park
in the forest. Like there's a lot of things that
still go on. Yellowstone ecosystem is surrounded by national forests
as well, and so I feel like I've been outside
the park. I could be getting confused with fires. We
also do wildland fire ems, wildlandfire search and rescue. But
(21:23):
we do have or I say we like I still
work there. I do have a technical rescue team. And
occasionally there's you know, somebody tries to skirt down the
Grand Canyon of the Yellowstone for example. It's not It's
also not a big climbing park. Where Tetons is a
big climbing park, they have you know, climbing rangers. But
(21:44):
Yellowstone is like a big open serengetti and with crazy
water rivers, cold lakes and you know, hazards that way.
But the things that Nancy I think we have been
most involved in, we're crimes against people. And I dealt
a lot with sexual assaults, intomestic violence cases, believe it
or not, you know, things that you would have really
(22:05):
in Milwaukee. There we have in the parks. And that's
kind of a lot of what we did, Okay.
Speaker 5 (22:12):
And I was also deputized as a deputy in the
county in Gardner, Montana, and so I would go outside
the park and assist the county when it was needed.
Speaker 2 (22:23):
Okay, one of those stories.
Speaker 4 (22:25):
I hiked in Grand Teton a while back, and it
was during a period where you weren't supposed to have
any fires in the park due to fire danger, and
I remember we woke up one morning, we had our
permits for one of the campsites, and probably five or
six park rangers were just running down the trail with shovels,
and I asked one of them what were they were doing,
(22:48):
and they said, there were people in the park illegally
starting fires. They're trying to start fires, and they were
trying to catch them. I was just I was kind
of like, we were kind of like, but they have
all the shovels, so I guess after the fact, maybe
they would use that to put any fires out that
might have been started, or or they're going to hit
them over the head with them.
Speaker 2 (23:07):
I don't know, but.
Speaker 1 (23:09):
That's what That's what Nancy would doc.
Speaker 4 (23:14):
Yeah, that was I just remember that sticking out when
I was in the te tons because they were I
mean dead sprint down the trail trying to catch up
to these guys.
Speaker 3 (23:22):
Well, what trail, what trail were you on?
Speaker 2 (23:25):
We went over the Paint Brush Divide.
Speaker 4 (23:27):
Oh yeah, yeah, yeah, so we were camping somewhere on
I can't.
Speaker 3 (23:30):
Remember solid solitude maybe.
Speaker 2 (23:33):
Yeah, that does sound familiar. We were.
Speaker 4 (23:35):
It was a lot of pines where we were camping that. Yeah,
it was several years ago now, but yeah, it was
definitely the went over the Paint Brush Divide. And yeah,
we got woken up one morning to these guys just
stomping down the trail with shovels, like wow, dead on sprint,
trying to.
Speaker 3 (23:51):
Catch You don't know when you're going to see it. Yeah, well,
I mean park could be anywhere. Yeah, not so much.
Now we lost Nancy.
Speaker 1 (23:58):
We lost her. She's going to go tackle a bear
real quick or something.
Speaker 3 (24:02):
You might if.
Speaker 2 (24:06):
So. I'm trying to think.
Speaker 4 (24:08):
So you spent most of your time in Yellowstone and
the National forests around there.
Speaker 3 (24:13):
Okay, well, working in Yellowstone, okay. But my last five
years I worked for the Washington Supervisory Office we call
it walso for sure, and so I was able to
start a victim assistance program through WASO. That's why I
worked with mostly just victims of crime and responding to
(24:34):
those kind of cases we were talking about and dealing
with victims and getting them the assistance that they need.
And so I did that the last five years.
Speaker 4 (24:42):
So I've got another question, and then we'll have an
audience question after yours. Okay, So this one, I'm sure
this guy was kind of the inspiration originally for me
to start the podcast. But I'm sure you've heard of
David Politis.
Speaker 3 (24:57):
Oh, the Missing for One one guy. Yeah.
Speaker 4 (24:59):
Yeah, So he's I would imagine for people that work
within the MPs, he's probably a pretty annoying figure.
Speaker 3 (25:10):
I don't know who it is he actually bothers, but
he claims he he bothers people, but I don't know
who those people are that he's getting his well, they're
not getting information from Yeah.
Speaker 4 (25:19):
So, like he's got a new documentary coming out about
disappearances in the National Parks, and he kind of brought
up the same thing that he's been saying for years,
and I thought it'd be great to have two people
that worked in the park, especially law enforcement. So his
claim is that there must be some conspiracy going on.
The National Park Service is not keeping a list of
missing persons, and it's like a conspiracy, something bigger is
(25:42):
going on in the park. You know, it's aliens or
Bigfoot or something, and.
Speaker 1 (25:46):
You're retired now, so you can blow the lid off
all of this. So and both of our shows will
skyrocket ratings if.
Speaker 2 (25:53):
You do so.
Speaker 4 (25:55):
I guess I'm just curious what your thought is on
his kind of it's been a persist thing of his
for years that the Park Service is hiding something from everybody.
Speaker 3 (26:06):
Well, I'm going to give you a very boring answer
to that, and I think this is the answer and
why he keeps on it. But every park is its
own entity. It's not stovepiped. I mean, there's some overhead
leadership like in Washington office, and every park essentially keeps
its own like stats, supposedly, there's no there just isn't
(26:29):
any database that. There was one that they came out
with several years ago, and nobody knew how to use
it and it took us and years and years for
people to figure it out. And this is for law
enforcement people to use that you know, you could learn
about a case in another park whatever, but that did
not capture missing persons or disappearances or things like that,
(26:50):
and so it's just disjointed. And I think if you,
I think, if you, it's just a record keeping thing,
and I don't think there's any I'm all about conspiracies,
but I don't think I love you're trying to.
Speaker 1 (27:07):
I think you're covering something up.
Speaker 5 (27:10):
I mean, you know, the Four Services like that too.
I mean, were supposedly had this great system that once
we entered the information that I could tell if somebody
got a ticket for poaching in Kentucky, I could tell
that a Jewel Cave National monument. And it just it
didn't work that way. I mean, it's just you know,
or somewhere in the Black Hills.
Speaker 1 (27:30):
It just sounds like something that should exist. Yes, if
you interact with somebody.
Speaker 3 (27:36):
Hard, it shouldn't be hard. It shouldn't be hard. You know,
you've got all kinds of national databases, national you know,
exploited and missing children, and but still somebody has to
enter that in and if people in this park aren't
entering it in like Yosemite, where he says, the hubby
is all the most missing, right, all the most missing people.
Which now I'm nervous because I'm going on a big
(27:58):
hike in June to assim Yusemite in the backcountry with
a former backcountry ranger there and I'm like, Okay, am
I going to go missing here? Yeah?
Speaker 4 (28:12):
Now, I think you're right. Everything I've read is I've
read the same thing. It's its own entity. And then
a lot of information and knowledge about specific parks kind
of resides with the rangers working there, and then when
they leave or retire, that information kind of goes with them. Yeah,
and it's not always well documented, and it's it's just
kind of the way it's always been. And I think
(28:33):
the Park Service has always been underfunded, so you know,
it's never been funded enough.
Speaker 2 (28:38):
So I think David Place is wrong. I do too.
Let's call him out.
Speaker 1 (28:43):
Yeah, you guys are you guys are a part officially
a part of Unknown Network. And and Mike's been going
Mike's got something cooking that could change a game in
this field. We won't talk about it right now, but.
Speaker 4 (28:53):
Oh well, I mean yeah, I've been working on building
from the ground up a custom web application that has
a map and it's kind of think of like all trails,
but for missing persons. Oh yeah, to track every wilderness
disappearance that has happened. We're kind of in the process
of gathering all the data and putting it together because
(29:16):
I originally started Locations Unknown as a website to kind
of track because I just found it fascinating that there's
all these cases that you know, can't be perfectly solved
with a theory that are covering up.
Speaker 2 (29:29):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (29:30):
Yeah, especially the ones with children where literally they turned
around and they were gone. And yeah, those ones are
the weird ones to me too. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (29:39):
Yeah, see, and that's interesting hearing from you that's been
out there, because you would expect if it was more normal,
you would say, oh, yeah, that's common because here's why.
But if it's weird to you guys, also, that does
make it that actually, that actually makes it more creepy
for me.
Speaker 3 (29:52):
Yeah, So.
Speaker 1 (29:57):
I was I was gonna finish your point because I've
a different question from a listener.
Speaker 3 (30:01):
So no, it was just going to be like, you know,
if it was an animal, you'd think that you would
see signed, you would see you know, clothes torn up,
you would see evidence, you know, drag marks. You just
don't see those things. And that's that's what's weird on
those ones. Getting that from that guy David what's his
last name again? Politas, Yeah, I mean I think those
are strange ones. But anyway, sorry, go ahead.
Speaker 1 (30:22):
So this is a question from a Holly Eklund. She's
a teen daughter. She said it earlier. She's a teen
daughter that really admires both of you. She loves listening
to the show. Her question was, is it hard to
become a park ranger in Yellowstone as an example for
most US national parks if you are not a law
enforcement or is that a requirement?
Speaker 3 (30:43):
It is not a requirement to be a law enforcement
park ranger in the National Park Service. Most people start
out by going to they have these seasonal academies, law
enforcement academies that they and then you can get hired
seasonally if you don't want to do law enforcementales like
maybe is that a requirement? I can't say right now
with all the cuts. A lot of other jobs, like
(31:04):
interpretive ranger type jobs and general ranger jobs, those are
kind of hard to come by. The general rangers INTERP
usually hires people with degrees in stuff like not law enforcement,
but maybe environmental education. They hire people with degrees a
lot of times in law enforcement. Your degree could be
criminal justice or it could be underwater basket even we
(31:27):
don't really care, but to do to get in there
on the ground. In law enforcement, you know, the best
thing is to do a law enforcement academy seasonal law
Enforcement Academy, and you could just google accredible. Yeah, if
you do that and get your EMT. No matter what
you do, get your EMT okay, yeah.
Speaker 1 (31:44):
Yeah, excellent, And just always think what would Nancy do?
Speaker 3 (31:47):
What Nancy do?
Speaker 2 (31:49):
You guys got to get shirts.
Speaker 1 (31:50):
I was just gonna say, shirts, like the bracelets, the
whole thing. Yes, they give you a recurring theme of
the show.
Speaker 4 (31:58):
Yeah, I'm actually next time I'm hiking, I probably think
of that.
Speaker 2 (32:02):
I'm pictures. What would Nancy do?
Speaker 1 (32:07):
Obviously the biggest person there and ride him as he
goes down? Y, you know.
Speaker 3 (32:14):
Normally, like when I would work with a partner, if
there was somebody you ended up having to wrestle, because
that does happen with drunks and people like that. And
you know, somebody's tall and I'm sure, and I'm like,
all right, you go, I go low kind of joking,
But Nancy and I are both the same height. We're
gonna down here for like those those wrestlers are not
Joe Lee Bright.
Speaker 6 (32:31):
You yeah, yeah, yeah, I feel like you could turn
Nancy and me lace and maybe'd be like this wrestlers.
Speaker 1 (32:37):
I just wish there was videos of all these things happening.
Speaker 2 (32:41):
You don't have body cam footage of that.
Speaker 5 (32:43):
Yeah, thank we didn't have to wear that back then.
Speaker 3 (32:48):
We kind of just barely missed the body cam.
Speaker 5 (32:50):
Yeah, that's right, the digital proof on that.
Speaker 4 (32:54):
Yeah, you would be like the front page of like
every park Ranger Rides a Taste.
Speaker 1 (33:01):
I mean, your show would be much bigger right now.
Speaker 3 (33:04):
Yeah, yeah, you know we do have on our show.
Speaker 4 (33:10):
We do.
Speaker 3 (33:10):
We do mostly cover cases like crime, crime off but
we also do Ranger tales where we get rangers or
former rangers to come on and tell a story, just
their story, and sometimes they're you know, them investigating a
horrific crime or they're something like, you know, the special
Response team in Yellowstone. We had to walk these lamas
(33:33):
out that came from Hari Christian's in a van. I mean,
crazy stuff that you can't make up. There's so some
of them are silly stories for the Ranger Tales and
some are pretty serious stories. We just recorded one. We're
an officer Arrangers involved in a shooting on the border
and he was telling that story, so it's kind of crazy.
Speaker 5 (33:50):
He's fine, but yeah, that'll come out in a couple
of people seem to like.
Speaker 3 (33:55):
Yeah, people seem to like the Ranger tales. I think
maybe Nancy and I might bore them a little bit.
Speaker 1 (33:59):
If it's just I don't think so. It might be
it's like it's really neat because it gives people a
different perspective of what goes on the parks. Because everyone,
I mean even people that listen to our show, Mike
and I hiked a lot, so it seems like it's
not interesting to us. But then we get comments of
like city slickers who don't are like afraid to go
in the woods, and they're like, oh, we're living vicariously
(34:20):
through your stories, and it seems so just normal to us.
So I'm sure things like you riding a giant man
who's tasted, you know, that's that's an outlier to you.
That's pure insanity to me, Like, that's not a normal Tuesday,
but it just happened. I'm like, that doesn't just happen
in my life. I've never seen that ever. Yeah, you know, and.
Speaker 3 (34:45):
I think we had different experiences being women just in
general and doing law enforcement, and sometimes it was it
makes things easier, sometimes it make things harder. Can you remember.
Just We would also do a lot of service things
in the park, like people like their keys out of
the car. I love, love, love unlocking cars for people,
and you know, some of us. There was another gal
(35:06):
as arranger, and we got really good at if we
didn't want the other, our male counterparts to get to
the lockout before we did, because we liked to unlocking him.
And I can remember driving up to some guy that'd
been sitting there nots and locked his keys in his
truck and as I rolled up, he's like, great, they
sent a girl.
Speaker 1 (35:22):
And I was like he literally said that out loud.
Speaker 7 (35:25):
He out loud, so IM like, I'm like, Nancy, what
would you do?
Speaker 5 (35:37):
You know, staying on the taser thing, I went to
Canyon one day with a trainee that I was training,
and a guy jumped out of a two story window
and he was extremely intoxicated. So we were trying to
arrest him and we looked up and there was thirty
people surrounding us, and we put the guy in the
car really quickly, and we stood back to back and
(35:57):
then we just we took off the carriges and we
spark tested as we're back to back and we're turning
in a circle, and I said, it isn't worth it.
Speaker 3 (36:09):
You know.
Speaker 5 (36:10):
They all hey, but you know you you look up
and see that and it's just like, oh my gosh,
this is gonna be bad.
Speaker 3 (36:17):
We had one of those two in Canyon and it
was like deliverance, and I'm hopefully you guys get that preference.
Speaker 1 (36:24):
Yeah, Like we.
Speaker 3 (36:25):
Were contacting someone who had violation whatever it was, in
the dark, and all of a sudden, these people just
come out for more, you know, and yes, it looked
like deliverance, and it was like, throw them in the car,
get him to the ranger station before it because and
that was I didn't taste this guy, but he got
tasted and he pulled off the probes and they were like,
(36:45):
oh my gosh, this is deliverance.
Speaker 1 (36:47):
That's terrifying when you taste somebody and they're like nope,
You're like, holy cow, what type of drugs are you
on that You just like, yeah, broke the laws of
physics and just said no electricity you can.
Speaker 5 (37:00):
That's why when Terra says you got to act quick,
you definitely have to pack that quick.
Speaker 1 (37:06):
Lose it. You guys are like the park Service. John Wicks.
Speaker 3 (37:10):
Yeah, I don't know. I don't know about that. I mean,
most most of the time we're not we're not totally.
We're not beating people up or affecting arrests or tasing people.
Speaker 1 (37:22):
You know.
Speaker 3 (37:22):
Most of our job, really and truly as a park
ranger is about helping people in the park. Ninety percent
of our job is like helping other people in the park.
And I love that. That's that's why I wanted to
do that, as opposed to just being a regular cop somewhere.
Speaker 2 (37:37):
Yeah, yeah, yeah, I would.
Speaker 1 (37:39):
I would love to be a cop in a park. Yeah,
any job in the park I would love.
Speaker 4 (37:44):
Hopefully most of the time you're just out there hiking
and talking with people.
Speaker 2 (37:47):
Yeah, not tasy.
Speaker 3 (37:49):
Well, there's freedom. I mean now they're really short handed
and they're just running from call to call to call,
and they just don't have as much freedom. I think
is probably Nancy and I did because it was one
wonderful just hanging out over at an overlook at a
pull out and people coming up and ask you questions
and then you know, then there would be that call
and you would run off to that call. And as
(38:10):
a arranger friend of mine List said, Hey, I got
to a license are and passing on curves. He thought
that was fun. But yeah, so then it was a
lot of talking to decent humans and then running to
help other humans.
Speaker 1 (38:23):
Is one that's awesome, very fulfilling work. Yeah, yeah, I
would say, yeah, that's fantastic.
Speaker 4 (38:29):
Well, I think we'll have to at some point do
a longer interview episode with both of you. Absolutely have
so many more questions and sounded so cool. I would
trade what I do for during the day for what
you guys did a thousand times over.
Speaker 5 (38:46):
You know, we we've talked about this before, and I
think I can count on one hand in thirty two
years how many times I said I wish I didn't
have to go to work today.
Speaker 1 (38:55):
Yeah right, just yeah, that's yeah, that's fantastic job. Both
are very blessed, and thank you very much for a
starting your show and be agreeing to meet with us
and start this whole venture. And this has been a
lot of fun. It's been great getting to know you both.
Speaker 3 (39:11):
Yeah, yeah, this has been great. I tell people we
belong to you guys, you know your group, and that's
I mean, it's actually helped us a lot and really
appreciate it.
Speaker 1 (39:21):
Yeah, absolutely, that's that's what we're trying to do. That's
what we've always been very big about the spaces. This
isn't a competition thing. We've always looked at it as
it's we can all help each other grow. And it's
such a small the outdoor true crime genre community is
super small, so it's awesome that we get to all
know all the people. You know, National Park after Dark
(39:42):
is huge and they just came on the show. Because
it's such a small space. You guys are going to
get bigger than us soon and that's gonna be awesome.
So you make sure you take us with you and
then no, this is gonna be a lot of fun
continuing to grow this.
Speaker 5 (39:54):
You know, you guys is we we did the Into
the Wild, we did the Magic.
Speaker 3 (40:00):
We did that, we did the Magic Bus too well.
We are going on a cruise in Alaska through the
Association of National Parks arrange A and pr Association of
a Park Rangers. They partner with Royal Caribbean to provide
speakers on Alaska cruises and so Nancy are gone to
be speakers on one of the cruises and so we
(40:20):
have to do everything about Alaska and we got. We
did that one on our podcast so that we can
present it as well. And I do want to say
one more thing about your the Unknown Media Group and
the thing that I like about that space we only
we kind of like closure. Like our cases all are
adjudicated if they're a case and or they're closed cases,
(40:44):
and you guys do all that other mystery stuff, which
I'm not able in my brain to research. And I
think that is such a good compliment to everybody in
the Unknown Media Group, is that you know, there's there's
mystery people, there's a true crime case, closed people. Yes,
(41:05):
I think it compliments a lot.
Speaker 1 (41:06):
That's fantastic And that actually answered the question. So Michelle Medick,
she was the one that guest hosts a couple of times,
and her and her husband are starting another show that's
focusing mainly on Alaska, so you're gonna have to go
on her show.
Speaker 3 (41:18):
Oh yeah.
Speaker 1 (41:19):
Like there's a lot of synergy that's happening organically, and
it's kind of like when we met and talked about
the group, I always say, I like to do cool
shit with cool people, and magic happens when you do that,
and you guys are great. I knew from the first
meeting that it was gonna be awesome. Keep doing your
show and then there's always gonna be synergies. We'll definitely
have you on her show again to talk more stories.
(41:41):
You'll have to go on Michelle's show when she gets
it off the ground. But no, we appreciate you guys
so much, and thanks for doing this too, and we
just hope we can help you keep growing and getting
bigger and bigger.
Speaker 3 (41:52):
Oh, thank you, thank you so much. Thanks for fun.
Speaker 2 (41:55):
Yeah, have a good nurse you night. All right, thank you, yah,
welcome back.
Speaker 4 (42:01):
So I really hoped you enjoyed that interview with Crime
Off the Grid. We had a lot of fun talking
with them. Their stories are so cool. I could spend
hours talking to them about their experiences in the National Park.
And I hope down the road, very soon we get
to do another interview with them, because I'm sure they
have a lot of other things to tell us that
(42:22):
we weren't able to touch on in the interview. So
that is the episode for this week. Remember, if you
want to support the show, you can find us on
all of the social media platforms, Facebook, YouTube. You can
also support us through Patreon, YouTube subscriptions. Apple subscriptions, Speaker subscriptions,
(42:43):
all that stuff our Facebook store. And remember this if
you don't remember anything else I ever tell you. When
enjoin the beautiful wonders of our National Park, always remember
to leave no trace. Thank you, and I will see
you again next week
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