SPECIAL EDITION: Justin Dodge

It was the event Nuggets fans had been waiting for since pro basketball came to Denver: a Championship Parade. On June 13, 2023, an estimated 750,000 people flocked to downtown Denver to celebrate their team who had just beat the Miami Heat in the NBA Finals.  

The parade was like previous parades for the Broncos and the Avalanche with players and coaches on top of fire trucks, traveling slowly through the streets of Denver. The final truck was the main attraction, carrying fan favorites Nikola Jokic and Jamal Murray and the Larry O’Brien Championship Trophy. The crowds got closer and closer to the truck as items were being tossed up, autographed and tossed back down.  

Denver Police and SWAT team members initially had a comfortable security perimeter around the truck but began to lose their space as the crowd swelled.  SWAT Sergeant Justin Dodge was on the passenger side of the 80,000-pound truck and next to a wheel well as he worked to keep parade goers safe while the truck turned at 13th & Cherokee.  

But when the truck turned, the wheel came out of the well 3 feet, catching Justin off guard and finding himself pinned by his leg under the wheel. His story about those vital seconds and what followed is incredible. Even more amazing: he returned to his SWAT team less than a year after losing his lower leg.

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
The tire caught my left leg and caught my foot.
I can't get out, Like nothing I can do. I
pulled one time and it was like, Nope, this isn't happening.
I can feel my foot starting to be crushed as
this behemoth is running over me. So I got low

(00:22):
to keep my tib and my fib from snapping, and
tried to get myself in a spot where I could
get the truck to roll over the lower portion of
my leg and not take my knee and certainly not
get into my hip, because I knew if it got
into my hip that I would die.

Speaker 2 (00:40):
On National TV, Welcome to Cut, Traded, Fired, Retired a
podcast that typically features conversations with professional athletes and coaches.
This one's a little different. I'm your host, Susie Wargen.
In June of twenty twenty three, the Denver Nuggets won
their first NBA championship in franchise history. As the city
had done in the past when the Broncos and Avalanche

(01:00):
one championships, they held a parade. It was no surprise
that hundreds of thousands of people lined the streets of
downtown Denver to celebrate and catch a glimpse of their
favorite players atop several fire trucks that rolled slowly through
the parade route. The last truck in the parade had
the NBA Trophy, the owners of the Nuggets and highest
profile players like Nikola Jokic and Jamal Murray. Of course,

(01:22):
there was security around the truck, and that's where this
episode's guest comes in. Justin Dodge, a sergeant with the
Denver Police Department SWAT team, was positioned on the passenger
side near a wheelbase, and as the crowd started to
move in closer to see their favorite players, Justin found
himself right next to the truck. Then, as the truck
slowly turned on thirteenth in Cherokee, the wheel swung out

(01:43):
three feet and caught Justin's foot, pinning his leg under
the tire. The noise was deafening between the crowd and
the truck's engine, and communication to the driver was nearly impossible. Still,
Justin's fellow first responders sprung into action, and the following seconds, minutes,
and hours were critical. Justin did lose his leg below
the knee, but was determined to return to his SWAT team,

(02:05):
which he did less than a year later. This is
an amazing story. Ladies and gentlemen, Justin Dodge, Justin Dodge.
Should I call you sergeant Justin Dodge or just justin?

Speaker 1 (02:16):
Justin? I just hate it when people call me sergeant
or officer or anything like that. Oh okay, I don't
even want my guys calling me sergeant. Okay, it's Justin.

Speaker 2 (02:25):
You're just Justin. You are a special addition to the
podcast because while you're not a professional athlete or coach,
and you've never been cut, traded, fired, or retired, you
are part of a team that is a very important
team here in Denver. And you also have a crazy
story that involves one of our professional teams here. So
we're going to go through that. And I appreciate you

(02:47):
coming in today.

Speaker 1 (02:48):
Absolutely, You've been so happy to be here.

Speaker 2 (02:50):
Very much in demand lately, so it's cool to have
you here. We're going to start way back, just like
I do with all of my guests. As far as
you growing up, you are from Minnesota. Correct, Dad was
a US Marshal That was a US marshal for the
state of Minnesota.

Speaker 1 (03:04):
I assume, so no US marshall is a federal agency,
so he's a United States marshal, and he was actually
in charge of the witness Protection program.

Speaker 2 (03:14):
So when I thought all the marshals were in charge
of a state.

Speaker 1 (03:17):
No, Like, there are marshals that are appointed by the
president per district. Yes, and some states, like the entire
state of Minnesota is a district. But then they have
deputy marshals that are assigned to those different regions and
different task forces and teams. And my father was the
chief deputy for the witness Protection program in that region.

Speaker 2 (03:40):
Wow. Yeah, Okay, so you grew up in law enforcement,
did you get to kind of know much about what
he did? I mean, witness protection's kind of secret.

Speaker 1 (03:48):
Right, there was a lot. There was a lot of secrecy.
But let me back up real quick because before that,
my grandfather was a World War Two veteran and then
went directly into law enforcement and ended up being a
chief of police in Racine, Wisconsin. My father started his
law enforcement career in Racine under my grandfather when my

(04:10):
grandfather was a captain.

Speaker 2 (04:11):
Oh interesting, Yeah.

Speaker 1 (04:12):
And then my dad left to go to the federal
agency after five years and then got transferred to Minnesota,
and that's where he that's where he is.

Speaker 2 (04:21):
You really have it pumping through your veil.

Speaker 1 (04:23):
So right now we are eighty years consecutive between my grandfather,
my father, and myself eighty years.

Speaker 2 (04:30):
Calling you're a third generation of law enforcement.

Speaker 1 (04:33):
Third generation, Yeah.

Speaker 2 (04:34):
So growing up, did you know that's what you wanted
to do?

Speaker 1 (04:37):
I loved it. My dad has since passed, so I
can tell some of these stories. But they would have
a certain amount of ammunition that was allotted to him,
and that ammunition had to be shot twice a year.
If there was ever extra ammunition in the office, my
dad would take myself and my little brother out and
we would get to shoot MP five's and M sixteen's

(04:59):
and oozzies. And so I'm this twelve year old kid
shooting automatic weapons and like learning how to do all
of these different things. And we actually went to a
farm in southern Minnesota that had pumpkins and squash and
all that kind of stuff. So at the end of
the year, you know, they would pick all the different
things that they needed and they would leave a lot

(05:21):
of the different fruits and your veggies out there, and
we between sniper rifles and uzzi's and like us, you know,
M fourteen's, we just had ammunition and my Dad would
sit with a cup of coffee and make sure that
we were obeying all the firearms safety rules and doing
the right thing, and we would just go shoot guns

(05:43):
all the.

Speaker 2 (05:44):
Time and just blow the year, blow up pumpkins.

Speaker 1 (05:48):
It was. It was so much fun. So yeah, so
I went with that, and then actually going to college,
I made a hard turn and I decided to become
a school teacher because my mom was a school teacher
and I really really had a desire to be part
of the education program. I actually wanted to do like

(06:11):
physical education pee, yeah, like PE. You know. My ultimate
dream was to be like a strength and conditioning coach
at a high school, be able to teach and then coach,
you know whatever, various sports and just be part of that.
It's something that I absolutely loved. So I started school
and then I was going to college. Needed a job,

(06:33):
so I got a job teaching and I was I
was like a student aid at my mom's elementary school.
They put me with a classroom of special needs kiddos,
and it was such an incredible experience for me because
you had the older you know. Of course, at this time,
I'm like nineteen twenty years old, so I have a
bunch of what I think of as old ladies. They

(06:55):
were probably ten years younger than I am right now,
but right right, exactly exactly, And there are all of
my mom's friends, and they loved having this big, strong
college kid in there with these special needs kids that
would use me as a playground, you know. And as

(07:19):
the summer kind of progressed with these kiddos, I was
really really enjoying the educational part of it. But what
I started to figure out is when we would venture
out onto the playground, or we would start going on
field trips. We went to the beach, we would go
to the museum, we would do some of those different things.

(07:40):
And I was assigned to make sure that the kids
in my class were accounted for and were safe and
protect felt secure, yeah, exactly, And all of a sudden
I started to have a role where I was the guardian,
right And I absolutely remember sitting there one day driving

(08:02):
home on the school bus. It was a long day.
There must have been too much sugar that day because
kids were maniacs, and it was an exhausting day getting
them all on the bus and just feeling this overwhelming
sense of relief but joy and accomplishment because I was

(08:23):
watching over these kiddos, and all of a sudden, I realized,
you know what, this is actually a purpose of mine.
Like it's when I really first developed a purpose in life.
I figured out, I want to be a guardian. I
want to be a protector. And can I be a
protector as a school teacher? Yeah, to a degree. But
I understood where my grandfather and my father got that

(08:43):
in their blood. And so I had to go and
talk to my dad and you know, tell them, hey,
I want to switch majors. It's going to extend college
by a year, but this is something I'm passionate about.
This is something I really really want to do.

Speaker 2 (08:55):
What was his response.

Speaker 1 (08:57):
My dad was always incredibly supportive of me. As long
as I was moving forward, right, as long as I
was progressing and I was doing something productive, he didn't
care what it was. I was a pretty good athlete
growing up, and he never pushed me to do anything.
He encouraged me to do things, obviously, but as long

(09:19):
as I started a season and finished the season strong,
that's all he cared. And if you didn't want to
play again, you didn't want to play again. So it
was my choice to do all of these things, and
same thing with this. This was my choice to do this.
So he said, hey, if you're going to do this,
just go all in like you always have and I've
always expected you to do so, and I support you fully.

Speaker 2 (09:40):
Why can't all parents be like that?

Speaker 1 (09:42):
I know? Yeah, I was very blessed.

Speaker 2 (09:45):
Yeah, oh my gosh, no kidding. So then you make
the switch. Now at this same time, are you a
goalie in the United States Hockey League.

Speaker 1 (09:54):
That was all beforehand, so oh okay, yeah, So generally speaking,
in the USHL, they take eighteen nineteen twenty year olds.

Speaker 2 (10:01):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (10:02):
I ended up trying out for the Saint Paul Vulkins
when I was sixteen and making the team. I was
a backup goalie, so I will caveat it with I
was a backup goalie Patrick wa I was not Patrick Wah.
But at sixteen I was out there playing with twenty
year olds. Yeah, there's a huge difference between a sixteen.

Speaker 2 (10:23):
Year old and it's poisoned men.

Speaker 1 (10:24):
It is. It is literally boys and men, and I
was able to compete with them. I was able to
do all those things. Again, I was a backup goalie
and I knew my role and the coaches knew what
my role was, but they loved having me there. Anybody
who's seen the movie Slap Shot, Oh yeah, that is
what the USHL in the early nineties was. It was

(10:45):
a fighting league. I mean, we produced some incredible players.
We produced some NHL players, sure, you know, but it
was going to some of these small towns from thunder
Bay all the way down to Debuque and Waterloo, Iowaha, Nebraska.
It was the thing in Omaha at the time. Wow,
And you'd be playing in front of ten or twelve

(11:06):
thousand people. You're sixteen years old, you know, on the bench.
Sometimes I'd get to go in and play a little bit,
but just being in that environment it was really cool.
It made me grow up. It made me push myself
and realize that they don't care if I'm sixteen, They
care whether I can perform or not. So that was

(11:27):
kind of my first introduction.

Speaker 2 (11:29):
To probably a team, to a team.

Speaker 1 (11:32):
You know, I've been playing on you know, I'd been
playing on fairly high level teams, but it was always
within my age group, right right, So the Vulcan experience
was really good for me long term and especially now
fast forward to what I'm doing now where I play
for an incredibly competitive team and an incredibly important team,

(11:56):
where they don't care how old you are. They don't
care anything thing except for can you perform?

Speaker 2 (12:02):
Can you do your job?

Speaker 1 (12:03):
That's it?

Speaker 2 (12:03):
Yeah? Wow, okay, So you do your hockey thing, you
do your teacher thing, then you switch over to law
enforcement and you're you're at Metropolitan State College in Saint Paul.

Speaker 1 (12:12):
In St. Paul. Yeah. I thought there was another one,
and I didn't know there was, and I didn't know
this one existed.

Speaker 2 (12:17):
I was like, wait, he was already here in Debt. No,
he wasn't he was in St.

Speaker 1 (12:20):
Paul. Yeah. No. So Metropolitan State started a program and
I was the first graduating class where you actually got
a degree in law enforcement. Because most degrees are like
in criminal justice or some type of entity that has
to do with law enforcement, but you don't get necessarily
a law enforcement degree. So what this program did is

(12:42):
you went through all of the things you would with
criminal justice, but then you also went through a post certification,
which is like a police officer standardized training. So you
were a certified police officer when you graduated with your
four year degree. Here's the only problem with it. You
were a post certified officer in Minnesota. All fifty states

(13:03):
have their own post certifications. Of course they do, Yes,
of course they do. And I just made the decision
even before internet was like really a thing, kind of
dating myself a little bit. But I got an encyclopedia and.

Speaker 2 (13:16):
I looked at I used to use those two on
mold as well.

Speaker 1 (13:19):
Yeah, I know, right kids nowadays, Yeah, you're like, no,
we had to open this book and we.

Speaker 2 (13:26):
Had sometimes it was right or it was outdated, and
we just went with it.

Speaker 1 (13:29):
It was just it's just what we had. Yeah, And
we couldn't copy and paste or anything like that. We
actually had to. Yeah. So I went and I looked
up the most popular metropolitan areas in the United States,
like literally one through twenty five, you know, starting with
New York City. I actually put in an application for
NYPD LAPD and down the line. Denver obviously was in

(13:52):
the top twenty five. And Denver had two things. They
had an application process that was coming up quickly, and
they had a fast track program because they were looking
for out of state candidates.

Speaker 2 (14:05):
Interesting.

Speaker 1 (14:06):
Yeah, so some of the agencies made it really difficult
because you have to do so many different processes in
order to become a police officer that if you are
not in state or local, you'd almost have to rent
a hotel.

Speaker 2 (14:19):
For six weeks residency.

Speaker 1 (14:22):
Yeah, get in state residency in Yeah. So Denver actually
had a program where they would kind of pile things
together so you had to be here for like I
can't remember if it was a week or ten days
or whatever, but they would get your background, your polygraph,
your physical you're all these different things they would like
kind of jam in at once because they were looking
for out of state candidates. They wanted to go and

(14:44):
find people from all over the nation.

Speaker 2 (14:46):
To where was that.

Speaker 1 (14:47):
I think just at the time there was so much
competition to become a police officer and they were looking
for top rated recruits. When when I went to Kerigan Hall,
there was four thousand people that applied for thirty five spots.

Speaker 2 (15:03):
Oh my gosh, yeah, wow, this is mid nineties.

Speaker 1 (15:07):
This craz Yeah, this was in nineteen ninety six, Okay,
and I came out number twenty dan And I was like, okay,
so I got the letter. I told my dad when
I got the letter with a conditional job offer, my
dad was just about to retire, So we perfectly overlapped
to the point where I was with the Denver Police

(15:30):
Department right as my dad was retiring from the US
Marshall Service. Pass the torch, So pass the torch.

Speaker 2 (15:36):
That is really cool. Yeah, So you come here as
just a regular police officer, and then where does your
path go from there for you to become a number
one swat team member.

Speaker 1 (15:49):
So swat teams were a thing at the time. LAPD
was the big push. They were the ones who kind
of were the pioneers of swat teams.

Speaker 2 (16:01):
They had a lot of stuff going on in LA.

Speaker 1 (16:03):
They had a lot of stuff going on in LA
and they actually started back, I want to say maybe
in the early eighties, okay, and really had developed this
concept of a swat team. So I come out to
Denver and Minneapolis and Saint Paul had tactical units, but
I just didn't know a lot about them. And I
also never knew that there was such thing as a

(16:27):
full time tactical unit. I always thought all tactical units
were you're a patrol officer or a detective, or you
are some type of sworn officer, and then when something happens,
you get together, you go try to solve that problem,
and then you go back and you work on cases
or you go handle calls or something like that. It

(16:49):
was only maybe a week into the Denver Police Department
that I remember being in a big hangar, and inside
the hangar, we have a house, like a little house
that you do different type of training. Sure, I walked
into that hangar, I'm this young little recruit and just yeah,

(17:11):
number twenty and I'm pie eyed, and I wasn't a
cadet here, so I didn't know anybody. I didn't know
anything about the department. I knew nothing. And I saw
these guys dressed in all black carrying the same weapons
that my dad let me shoot for years and years

(17:31):
and years, and I became pretty proficient with them. I
was like, what is that? Like one of those guys, like, who,
I think that's a swat team, But what is that?
One of the fellow classmates of mine said, well, that's Metro,
and Metro is Denver's full time tactical unit. And I
remember just staring at him and being like, there's such

(17:53):
thing as a full time tactical unit. He goes, Yeah,
that's what Metro is. It's Denver Metro SWAT. Then I
come to find out that Denver has actually had a
tactical unit. It was called SSU at the beginning Special
Services Unit, and we're the third oldest full time tactical
unit in the nation.

Speaker 2 (18:11):
No kidding, you don't know that, Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Speaker 1 (18:13):
So if you go to our unit, there's actually a
couple of signs that we have from the original SSU unit. Cool, yeah,
before it was switched over to Metro SWAT. But I'm
watching these guys train and I'm talking to my fellow
classmate and he was a cadet, so he knew the
ins and outs of the department, and he said, you

(18:34):
aren't from here, you don't know anybody, You are not
a cadet, you will never It is an unobtainable vision
for you to even think about trying to get to
Metro because so few people make it to that that
you don't have a chance.

Speaker 2 (18:49):
And I was like, okay, challenge, challenge, accept it.

Speaker 1 (18:53):
Like I've always been a very very driven person, Like
trying out for the USHL at six, my drive wasn't
always hooked to a purpose. So sometimes my drive, which
is kind of that engine, would just be racing out
of control. But when you put my drive and a
purpose together, that guardian purpose and that drive, I want

(19:17):
to be at the top of whatever it is that
I can be at. And I knew that being part
of Denver's Metro unit would be the top of what
I can do. So it wasn't like I'm doing this
because people said I couldn't. I'm doing this because I
truly believe that I can make a difference and that

(19:37):
I can be part of this.

Speaker 2 (19:39):
Explain for the layman what is a tactical unit? What
does that mean? What does SWAT do?

Speaker 1 (19:44):
So SWAT teams, special weapons, and tactics. There's so many
different acronyms and names for different tactical units, but basically
you have a group of officers. Like for Denver Metro,
we're a full time unit, so our assignment is that
tactical unit. We train together, we do operations together. Everything

(20:07):
we do is revolving around high risk operations and our model,
our creed, everything we live by is saving lives. It's
two words. If you know nothing else about our unit,
our creed is saving lives. Actually, when people ask what

(20:28):
is SWAT stand for, we don't even say special weapons
and tactics. It wasn't until you kind of asked about
that when people ask what is METRO stand for or
what is SWAT stand for? It's saving lives. That's what
it is and what we do. The way we dress,
the equipment that we use, the vehicles that we drive,
all of those things. The purpose behind it is we

(20:50):
want people to just stop doing what they're doing and
give up and really dangerous situations without anybody ever getting hurt.
That's our bottom line. That's that's our whole goal.

Speaker 2 (21:02):
How many are in new unit?

Speaker 1 (21:03):
So we have twenty two technicians in our unit, We
have five sergeants, and then we also have a canine
unit that is attached to our team. So we actually
have like Metro is the unity, and then we have
Metro SWAT and Metro Canine and all of us work together,
all of us. Anytime you see SWAT guys, you also

(21:25):
see canine guys. So between command officers, supervisors like I am,
and all the rest of the of the guys you're
looking at kind of like mid thirties.

Speaker 2 (21:35):
Okay, how many canines?

Speaker 1 (21:36):
I believe we have five canines right now?

Speaker 2 (21:38):
Really do you ever train with them?

Speaker 1 (21:40):
We trained with them all the time.

Speaker 2 (21:41):
Oh okay, you so like the canines. Can they be
with anybody? They have to be with a certain members.

Speaker 1 (21:46):
Our canines are assigned to an individual officer, But we
socialize well with the canines because they have to be
around us all the time. Our canines will sit in
the back of a bearcat with us for ten hours
while we're trying to negotiate and peacefully end a situation.
So our dogs are with us.

Speaker 2 (22:04):
Are they take a command from you? Or do they
only take commands from the one they're with.

Speaker 1 (22:08):
We actually are kind of in the forefront of working
in the tactical canine world where we can have the
dogs being fairly responsive to everybody else in the team
in order to get them to like look in a
certain spot and do certain things.

Speaker 2 (22:24):
It's fascinating. Those dogs are amazing.

Speaker 1 (22:26):
Dogs are absolutely incredible. They are such a great tool.
And you talk about an ability to end a situation
quickly when the dog starts barking or the dog alerts
on something. The amount of times that people give up
without getting bit, without getting hurt, which is what we want.

(22:47):
We just want you to give up.

Speaker 2 (22:49):
Yeah, you know what's coming, Just stop, Yeah, so just stop.

Speaker 1 (22:52):
That's all we want. Yeah, we just want you to
stop what you're doing, give up, and we'll let the
justice system do its job. But we use those dogs
all the time and they are fascinating.

Speaker 2 (23:01):
Yeah, that would be cool. Okay, So let's fast forward then,
justin through a lot of your career. I want to
go to June fifteenth, twenty twenty three. That's the big
day that the Nuggets are celebrating their championship parade on
the streets of downtown Denver. Go through kind of like
how you guys prepared, and then we'll get to what
happened with you. But what kind of the day setup

(23:24):
was like with the fire trucks and where you were
going to be and where your whole team is going
to be.

Speaker 1 (23:29):
Without giving away too much operation.

Speaker 2 (23:31):
Oh yeah, no, you don't need to do that.

Speaker 1 (23:33):
Security stuff, right. Part of Metro's job is to go
out there and be a visible presence to ensure the safety. Again,
you know, we're our only job is to keep the
community safe.

Speaker 2 (23:48):
Right.

Speaker 1 (23:49):
Let me back up real quick. I would love to
live in a world that didn't require swat teams. Yeah,
I think I think it would be so awesome if
my job was absolutely not necessary, right, but that's just
not a reality.

Speaker 2 (24:01):
It's to you guys exactly.

Speaker 1 (24:04):
So between all of the different events that you've seen happen,
when you get a lot of people together, that's what
we're there to mitigate. We're there to hopefully be enough
of a presence so that somebody.

Speaker 2 (24:16):
Wouldn't nothing that happens, exactly, and.

Speaker 1 (24:19):
Then God forbid, something does happen, we would have the
resources there to try to again take care of that
as quickly as possible and save as many lives as possible.
So as far as the parade goes, we've done well.
We had the ABS the year before, yes, so we
kind of had a general idea. You know, obviously the
Broncos have worn before, Denver has a has a history

(24:42):
of good sports. Yes, So we had some Metro units
that were assigned inside the parade route that we were
driving ATVs. We were driving like side by sides for
guys to an ATV. And again I'm not giving anything
away because if you watch any video you can see
Metro guys driving around in ATVs. Yeah, and our job
was to be able to rush up and down the

(25:02):
parade route and God forbid, we had something like what
happened in Vegas or a Boston style bombing. It's super
sad that I can actually like name things as opposed
to being hypothetical with what things are.

Speaker 2 (25:17):
There are real life things that have happened that you
guys have to prepare for.

Speaker 1 (25:20):
Exactly every time something tragic happens in this country, we
study it and we evaluate it and figure out, all, right,
how would we mitigate that as quickly as possible. How
do we have the right training, do we have the
right gear? Do we have all of that? And just
so people that are listening, we are fortunate in Denver

(25:40):
that the Denver Police Department has put a lot of
faith in metro They've put a lot of energy and
effort and resources into making sure that we have a
very prepared tactical unit. So that and then all of
the sister agencies that work around us, from Aurora, Appo County,

(26:00):
Douglas County, Jefferson County, we have a phenomenal relationship in
the metropolitan area with the different tactical units. So people
should rest peacefully at night knowing that there are well trained,
well equipped officers out there to go out and try
to save people's lives. God forbid, something would happen.

Speaker 2 (26:22):
Good.

Speaker 1 (26:22):
So as far as getting to the parade, the parade starts.

Speaker 2 (26:26):
Out, you're walking along, No.

Speaker 1 (26:28):
No, so I'm in an ATV.

Speaker 2 (26:30):
You're on an ATVA.

Speaker 1 (26:31):
I'm in an ATV, just like I was in an
ATV the year before with the AVS. And as the
parade starts going further along, the last truck was getting
stalled out. You had Jamal and the Joker and the
cron keys and the NBA.

Speaker 2 (26:51):
Trophy on the final truck on.

Speaker 1 (26:53):
The final truck. Yeah, that's what people came to see.

Speaker 2 (26:55):
Oh yeah, everybody wants to see them.

Speaker 1 (26:56):
You know that, that's truly what people come to see.
That final truck was getting fairly stalled out, and then
eventually it got to where there was a significant gap,
which is something that you just try to avoid, but
it happened. There was a significant gap, and the crowd
rushed through the barriers, and all of a sudden, we
went from a parade into a fairly chaotic, frenzied crowd

(27:25):
trying their best to get a T shirt or get
anything you name the object. They were throwing it up
onto the truck, having it signed, it was getting thrown
back down, and people were frantically trying to get that
while we're moving slowly. We're moving an eighty thousand pound

(27:48):
fire truck at a half mile an hour trying to
get people out and away from those tires and that truck.
In general, I don't think anybody in that crowd had
ill intent. I just think that mob mentality kind of
took over, and their want and desire to be a

(28:08):
part of that just made it so that those crowds
just grew and grew and.

Speaker 2 (28:13):
Grew, and if they see one person getting something there,
like oh, they're signing autographs, let me just start throwing
stuff up. And these guys are doing it. Everybody's having
fun and nobody really realizes what's happening, and then it
just keeps getting worse and worse and worse, and it
just kind of comes in on you.

Speaker 1 (28:28):
Right exactly. So we are limping that truck along standing
by the side as one of the team leaders. I
took a position on the passenger side of the truck
so that I could kind of be the eyes for
the engineer who was driving the truck and making sure
that because there would be times when we had officers,

(28:50):
like literally pulling people out from underneath the truck because
somebody would fall or gosh. I vividly remember watching a
hat roll underneath one of the tires and somebody reaching
down to try to grab that hat, and it's like,
this is an eighty thousand pound vehicle. There will be

(29:11):
nothing left when you get to the other side of that.
So it was just this constant trying to keep people
away from the truck, get the truck, continuing to move
so that we can get the people on top of
the truck in a safe spot, and just making it
so that we can keep that piece right, we can
make it so that this still is a incredibly fun

(29:35):
celebration for the city. As we're moving along, the crowd
just keep growing and keep growing. Eventually we get more
officers and we kind of create this little barrier. But
even at that there was times when you were completely
crushed against the truck. Wow, because of the amount of
people that were rushing the truck.

Speaker 2 (29:54):
Okay, and so you're off the ATV then and standing
by the truck, right, yeah, okay.

Speaker 1 (29:58):
Yeah, we are now off the at and we are
walking along the side of the truck, and I was
basically standing at the front passenger door for most of
it because that way I could see down the end
of the truck and I could kind of be the
eyes of that side of the truck to make sure
that nobody was under the truck, to make sure that

(30:18):
we could safely proceed and we would be moving. But
it was so loud because there was so many people
there that communication was difficult.

Speaker 2 (30:28):
I'm sure did you guys have head pieces or ear
pieces or anything.

Speaker 1 (30:32):
We did, but it was it was that loud. You
have the noise of the Decel engine, but there's probably
close to as many people around that truck as as
are in like ball arena, but instead of surrounding like
a hockey rink or a basketball court, they're surrounding.

Speaker 2 (30:49):
A fire truck that's moving.

Speaker 1 (30:51):
That's moving, and everybody's screaming wow and again crowd mob mentality.
It was a chaotic scene. As we're going from larger
streets to smaller streets, the wheels are having to turn
further as they come out, and unbeknownst to us that
are along the sides of the truck, an eighty pounds

(31:12):
ladder truck. The front wheels when they're turned sharply in
order to get around tight city streets. They come out
two to three feet away from the frame of the truck. So,
as we've been walking alongside this truck for forty five minutes,

(31:32):
maybe an hour, seven long long blocks, I feel very
safe at the side of this truck. I know what
to expect, right, But what was not known to me
where I was standing is that I need to be
three feet away from this truck, which I was not

(31:53):
and hadn't been for a long time because of the crowds.
You couldn't be, Yeah, I couldn't be. So the tire
caught my left leg and caught my foot and again
we're going maybe a tenth.

Speaker 2 (32:06):
Of a mile an hour, but you can't get out.

Speaker 1 (32:08):
But I'm pinned. Yeah, I can't get out. Like nothing
I can do. I pulled one time and it was like, Nope,
this isn't happening. I can feel my foot starting to
be crushed as this behemoth is running over me. Another thing,
I'll just back up real quick. I've also been playing
Brazilian jiu jitsu for thirty years, and anybody who knows

(32:30):
anything about BJJ knows that it's a physical game of chess,
but you are put in extremely difficult mental situations where
you have to kind of like slow time down in
order to get out of bad things. I will honestly
tell you between all of my time playing football, playing hockey,

(32:52):
all my times in Brazilian jiu jitsu, twenty years with
I don't know, thousands and thousands of high risk operations
all came together in one or two seconds of me
being able to slow time down, see the trajectory of
the tire and know if this thing continues to roll

(33:15):
how it's rolling, and it rolls further up my leg one,
if I stay standing, it's potentially going to take out
my tib and my fib. And if it snaps that
those major arteries are there and there's a potential that
I'm going to die in the street. Also if it
gets up into my knee, that's where that femeral doesn't branch.

(33:38):
And you're talking obviously extremely bad again. As this truck
is moving, I just describe how loud it was. You
can't alert the driver that this is going on because
it is too loud. So I got low to keep
my tib and my fib from snapping, and tried to
get myself in a spot where I could get the

(34:01):
truck to roll over the lower portion of my leg
and not take my knee, and certainly not get into
my hip, because I knew if it got into my
hip that I would die on national TV. I would
die in front of a million people. I've been prepared
on this job because of what we do for potential
bad things to happen. But an eighty thousand pound fire

(34:23):
truck in front of a million people. That was not
on my bingo card.

Speaker 2 (34:27):
It's my gosh.

Speaker 1 (34:29):
Yeah. So they get the truck stopped, and when they
get the truck stopped, it's still on top of me.

Speaker 2 (34:35):
Oh my god.

Speaker 1 (34:36):
So they back the truck up a little bit. They
ended up having to stop that momentarily, and as they're
doing that, the tire is turning. Well, the tire's turning
while it's still on top of me. So it takes
a couple of seconds with the truck going back and
forth and turning. I won't get into any graphic details,

(34:56):
but I knew my leg was gone. I'm laying there
and okay, like I just lost my leg. I no
longer have a leg. Like my my life as I
know it has completely changed, and I don't want to
say at that time, I was like, it's changed for bad, right,
because that's just never how my mindset has ever been.
I understand how to lose because I've played a lot

(35:19):
of games, and I understand I was probably losing right there,
But I wasn't quitting, right, you know what I mean.
And there's a huge difference between taking a loss and quitting.
So I actually can tell you that they got the
truck off me, they pulled me out. I had different
officers come up to me, but one of them was
one of our junior swat guys, one of our junior
metro guys, and he immediately looks at me and says

(35:41):
tourniquet and like yeah, like immediately, yeah, Like get a
tourniquet on. So they ended up putting a tournique on,
and it took two tourniquits to get the bleeding to stop.
And according to the trauma surgeon, had those tourniquits not
been applied, that I would not have made it to
the hospital.

Speaker 2 (36:01):
You would have lost way too much blood out.

Speaker 1 (36:03):
Of blood out, and I would have passed sometime on
the street or on the way to the hospital.

Speaker 2 (36:09):
And then what's crazy too, is that now there's still
all these people around. This is going on. You've got
an ambulance that is not very far away but impossible
to get to because of the amount of people, and
they've got to get you to Denver Health.

Speaker 1 (36:23):
Right.

Speaker 2 (36:23):
So which is I'm like the logistics of and just
everything that's happening all at one time, and now we're
in the span of just a few minutes. What do
you do?

Speaker 1 (36:33):
Right? I give so much credit to the guys on
the ground because nobody really panicked. People just went right
into training mode. They went into Okay, turnikits on, all right,
ambulance three blocks away, twenty five to fifty thousand people
in between ambulances out, we're on ATVs, So let's try

(36:53):
to load them in an ATV. Right, So as they're
getting that done, they're getting the tourni kits off me.
I'm still completely conscious and sitting up now at this
point my leg is gone, and I remember thinking like, man, like,

(37:13):
actually this is crazy, but I actually thought, I wonder
what I'm gonna get to do? Burpies again, that's what
you thought, That's one of the things I thought.

Speaker 2 (37:23):
Okay, most people probably wouldn't have that as an initial thought.
But right, you're wired a little different.

Speaker 1 (37:27):
But I'm wired different, and I thought.

Speaker 2 (37:30):
And you got emotional thinking that right, right.

Speaker 1 (37:32):
Right, right, right, Okay, So I'm thinking, if these tourniquits
work and I live to get to the hospital, this
is absolutely not my last operation. This is not how
this story ends. And I was thinking that before they
even loaded me into the ATV. I sat up on

(37:54):
my own and took my own gun belt off. Anybody
that knows anybody in the tactical world, whether it be
military or law enforcement, the way that we have our
equipment set up on us, it's probably similar to professional athletes,
like they tie their shoes in exactly the same way
they put their shoulder pads on their elbow pads, their gloves,

(38:14):
like you have to have it your helmet, the strap,
everything has to be exactly right. So when I saw
them coming at me with scissors to cut all of
this stuff off, it was like, no, no, no, no,
I'm still conscious, I'm still awake, I'm good. And I
took this stuff off on my own and actually made

(38:35):
a point to be like, get this back in the
armory because and I'm paraphrasing because I don't know exactly
what I said, but I did say something to the
effect of this is not my last stop. Yeah right,
right right. So my mindset, with my leg gone tourniquets on,
before I was even at the hospital, was let's do this, like, Okay,

(38:56):
this is a challenge, but let's let's get through this.

Speaker 2 (38:58):
Unbelievable. So you get to Denver Health a month later,
they do have to amputate below the knee, yep. And
I know that you were then in the gym like
two days after that or something, right, yeah, before that,
but it was.

Speaker 1 (39:10):
Actually before that, so they were ordering they were ordering
bands and stuff to my room because they tried to
leg salvage at first. Even though my leg was gone,
there was parts of it that were still there, so
they were doing everything they could. My surgeon, doctor Moffrey,
is the director of Orthopedics at Denver Health. His decision
to do a leg salvage made it so that they

(39:32):
could build up enough soft tissue below my knee that
I could keep my knee. The difference between a BKA,
which is a below the knee amputation, and an AKA
and above the knee that knee is an incredibly functional joint.
They all are, but as far as your ability to
go back and do things, that is it. And I

(39:53):
was even told, generally speaking, if you went to a
different hospital or had a different surgeon, you would have
been an AK that night.

Speaker 2 (40:00):
That night, that would have taken it above the knee.

Speaker 1 (40:02):
Yep, because of how the injury an inch below my knee.
And this is a god thing for me. But I
didn't even have a meniscus tear in my knee, my patella,
my knee cap, all of every one hundred intact in
my knee, and within one inch below my knee, everything

(40:22):
was completely destroyed.

Speaker 2 (40:24):
Wow.

Speaker 1 (40:25):
Yeah, So they decided to build all of that back up.
They told me, you can go ahead with the AK
at any point. We can have you in a prosthetic
in the next six weeks, but your life is going
to be significantly changed, or you can choose to have
many many surgeries to have diminished ability to do things

(40:51):
right now. But the potential.

Speaker 2 (40:54):
Greater opportunity later.

Speaker 1 (40:56):
Yes, okay, yes, so the potential But they never even
said it was for sure. It was you're doing this
for a potential that you're going to keep your knee
again just going back to that drive. It's not because
I'm special, It's just that there was never a question
of let's take the easy way out.

Speaker 2 (41:12):
It was no, that's not you, no.

Speaker 1 (41:14):
No, it was what is going to be able to
serve my purpose best and my purpose of getting back
with the team. But again, more importantly than that, because
I have a much greater purpose in life, which is
my family. What is going to give me the best
opportunity to serve my family? Right? And I would rather
go through the pain of the next twelve to eighteen

(41:37):
months and the unknown for the potential of being a
b K versus let's just do the easy way right now.
And because of doctor Moffrey's genius, eight surgeries later, I'm
now fully functioning below the knee amputee.

Speaker 2 (41:55):
Amazing. I've watched you speak. I watched you speak at
the Lone Tree Police Awards ceremony that I am seed,
and you had these videos and pictures of the rehab
that you've done. How you were getting up and downstairs.
I mean you were literally like, okay, tricep work out here.
We go up the stairs, down the stairs, like you
just you figured out how to make everything in your

(42:16):
rehab a workout, and then you come back and you
rejoin the SWAT team less than a year later, justin
there are not a lot of people that would do that.
But it goes to show how much, like you said,
your bigger purpose is your family, and I know they
were huge for you during that whole time, but then
also your team and you're you know, the brother and

(42:36):
sisterhood that you have with what you do, and how
important it is for you to be there and help
people and save people, and it's unreal.

Speaker 1 (42:44):
Well, thank you, I appreciate that.

Speaker 2 (42:47):
How'd you do it? How'd you mentally? Or is it
just because that is how you are?

Speaker 1 (42:51):
So So here's the funny thing. I changed nothing. I
was already living my life that way.

Speaker 2 (42:58):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (42:58):
I've been prehabbing since I got into Metro, probably even
before that, But it was really once I got into
Metro that I figured out that I need to be
at the top of my game physically, mentally and spiritually
pretty much all the time.

Speaker 2 (43:15):
Time.

Speaker 1 (43:15):
Yeah, we just don't get a lot of downtime, you
know what I mean. We get called out all hours
of the night short of being on vacation. It's a
three sixty five I can remember putting one of my kiddos,
he was a little bowling ball at the time, but
he was maybe nine months old, and we were carving
jack lanterns and putting him in the pumpkin when the

(43:39):
phone rang, and twenty minutes later, we're doing a hosage rescue.
And then you come back and you're like, that just happened,
Like that insane thing that would be life altering for
like most people, but that's just what we do. Just happened,
And now I'm coming back and I'm going to finish
putting my kid in the jack of lantern. You know.

Speaker 2 (44:01):
So your life is a little different than most in general,
and your drive.

Speaker 1 (44:05):
It's not average, and I understand that, but yeah, that
drive to get back, and it wasn't just getting back
for the team that was a huge part of it,
but the amount of training that they put into us
and the amount of resources that the department and the
community puts into us to get us to a point

(44:26):
where we can be out there doing the things that
we're doing. I also felt a great sense of wanting
to get back for the community, to be part of
that team, not just for the team, certainly, not just
for myself, but also for the community. And like I said,
I didn't change anything. It's very very humbling to hear,

(44:48):
and I'm not making up how many times I've heard
it in the thousands of people saying if anybody has
the capability of doing this, it's you, which is humbling.
It's also daunting because there's a lot of people expecting
me to be able to get back. Yes, but at

(45:10):
the same time, it shows that I was doing something
correct before this happened. Absolutely, that people recognized the hard
work and the efforts and what I was doing prior
to the injury showed them, Hey, this is somebody who
can get through. This is somebody can overcome obstacles.

Speaker 2 (45:29):
Yeah. What's it like being back? You've been back since May, right.

Speaker 1 (45:33):
Yeah, like mid May. I'll tell you. Going back on
the first op, I was like, it's funny because I
was building all of this up to be like I'm
coming back, like, oh my gosh. And we have a
very robust firearms qualification, so I had to go through
all of that. Our PT test is a very difficult

(45:53):
PT test, so I had to do all of that
because one of the things that was very very important
to me is two things. One, I was not coming
back as like a token. And if in any way
I felt that I was hindering the team in any way, sure,
my pride is not going to be enough to make
it so that the potential for somebody getting hurt because

(46:16):
I can't do this. There's no way, There's no way.
So it was very important to me that I could
show the team and I could show the command that
I could pass that PT test and actually in some
of the tests I passed it faster than I had
previously when I got to yeah, yeah, gosh. And and

(46:36):
again it's just that it's that drive to make sure
that I'm coming back because I'm an asset, not coming
back as a liability.

Speaker 2 (46:43):
So you came back better than you were before.

Speaker 1 (46:45):
In some ways.

Speaker 2 (46:46):
In some ways, that's pretty freaking cool.

Speaker 1 (46:49):
Yeah, in some you know, it's one of the things
I've kind of talked about, is like, better I'm one
than two. Yeah. So yeah, I come back to that
first operation and we got done, and I'm putting my
stuff away, and I'm like, huh, Like I thought it
was going to be bigger than that. You know, It's
something that I've been doing now for almost two decades.

Speaker 2 (47:07):
There was another day in the job.

Speaker 1 (47:08):
There's another day on the job. There was never a
point at which I was like, you know, hey, I
don't have a leg you know what I mean. It
never came into my mind, which is exactly what I wanted,
because absolute, if I am on an op and I'm like,
h I don't know if I can do this, that
will be my clue that day that hey, my time

(47:29):
has passed and it's okay. You know, we have guys
that leave the unit all the time once they've kind
of realized that, hey.

Speaker 2 (47:37):
This is your head's not in it, or if you
physically can't be in it, then you are a hindrance
to the others and your your squad's too important absolutely
for the safety of people, right exactly exactly.

Speaker 1 (47:48):
So as long as I have the physical ability and
the mental ability to do this job, I'm going to
continue to do it.

Speaker 2 (47:55):
And that's awesome. But you've been doing it for so long.
You're almost at retirement age, so you would fit into
the podcast categories of retirement possibly maybe in another year,
but you're still kind of figuring that out.

Speaker 1 (48:05):
Right right, right, yep, I'm figuring out that part right now.

Speaker 2 (48:08):
Yeah, but you're doing a ton of speaking. I mean,
you're very high in demand. I can see why. I mean,
you talk to the Lone Tree police officers that were
there was a bunch of new officers that were coming in,
people that were getting awards, which was really cool, and
you're speaking to groups of thousands and kind of trying
to figure out, Okay, I know you still love your job,
but now you have this story that is unbelievable that

(48:31):
you can tell, and you could make a second career
out of speaking, but it's figuring that out or writing
a book or and we kind of talked about this
before we started going on air too, about then there's
logistics involved in that, and you're also a dad, and
you're a husband, and you've got a family that you
enjoy spending a lot of time with.

Speaker 1 (48:48):
Right exactly. And there's no question that I plan on
a second career.

Speaker 2 (48:53):
Didn't think it was going to be this.

Speaker 1 (48:55):
Yeah, I did not think it was going to be this,
But you know, again, being a very pers driven person,
probably three months into this process, it was before I
even had my leg Because of the platform of which
this happened on, it was surreal to wake up and
I'm on Fox News National, I'm on CBS National, I'm

(49:19):
on the BBC, I'm on CNN, my pictures all. But
I'm on ESPN too because this was a sports.

Speaker 2 (49:25):
Related, right, You're on every channel, so you.

Speaker 1 (49:28):
Name it, whether it's sports or not. This happened, and
that happened twice because it happened after the injury, but
then it also happened after the amputation, right, So being
on a national stage where people recognize the story and
then saw that, I've never placed blame. I've never I

(49:48):
definitely have had incredibly difficult moments, but I've never played
the woe is Me game. That's just not part of
what I do. So I've never had any of that.
It's always been, hey, go through the ups and downs
of the day. Make sure you're doing something today to
make tomorrow better, and as long as you do that consistently,

(50:10):
you will progress. And by doing that, And as people
started to kind of watch and see this story, all
of a sudden, then I'm on a leg and I'm
out there and I'm doing it and I'm starting to
get back to the unit. That's when i have people
reach out to me literally on a daily basis. And
sometimes it's bigger entities, but a lot of times it's

(50:31):
a one on one person who has seen my story,
they're following my story, and they'll just tell me that
watching me get back has completely changed their life. And
it doesn't even have to be somebody who's an amputee.
A lot of times it's not amputees. It's just people
that are. It's people that are going through difficulties in life. Right.
So this new purpose that I have of showing people

(50:55):
that you can overcome difficult situations in your life, regardless
of what it is, is truly it's my next thing,
and it's making it so that as much as I
love the job and I'm going to be staying with
the job and out there working with the team, the
more that I can be helping people to become a

(51:18):
better version of themselves, then I'm all in.

Speaker 2 (51:21):
It takes that helping people to a different level that
you probably never would have thought. I mean, swat guys
usually don't like to be in the news or have
their names known like it. I mean, it's kind of weird, right,
that's not your purpose.

Speaker 1 (51:32):
I've spent eighteen years anonymous, anonymous of doing everything I
can to be out of the news right and now
to have just the opposite happen is very surreal. But
I can tell you, if by doing this keeps one
person from those dark days, if it helps one person go,

(51:54):
you know what, I'm going to change my lifestyle. I'm
going to change the way I do things. I'm going
to change the way I think about things. I know
that that's happening because I hear from.

Speaker 2 (52:04):
All of the time, which is so cool.

Speaker 1 (52:06):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (52:06):
Do you get a hard time from your team members
though about how much you're out there or do they
you know the team so probably not.

Speaker 1 (52:14):
I'm a sergeant.

Speaker 2 (52:14):
I guess.

Speaker 1 (52:15):
I guess that helps, and I'll be honest with you.
Like Chief Thomas and Chief Kyle Mayor Johnston, they have
been amazing. That's great as long as I'm still doing
my job and capable of doing my job. They have
been incredible about letting me be out there and telling
my story and representing the Denver Police Department in a

(52:38):
positive light and helping me be at a spot where
I can again help change people's lives.

Speaker 2 (52:44):
That's awesome, all right. Two questions. Tell me about Heavy Victory.

Speaker 1 (52:47):
Heavy Victory that's a name of the company, and it's
kind of a little bit of play on words because
obviously that fire truck weighed eighty thousand pounds. Yeah, but
also when you go back and you look at the
very very successful people or things that have happened, most
of them come at a heavy price, right, Very very

(53:09):
seldomly take a battle, very very seldomly do you get
to that point of victory without some type of a
heavy toll being taken. So heavy victory truly is the
understanding that it takes a lot to get to that
point where you're standing wherever it is in your life

(53:32):
where you feel victorious. It takes a lot to get there. Yeah,
a lot of sacrifice, a lot of things. So, yeah,
heavy Victory was just something that my wife and I
came up with. There's not a better description of how
I felt as far as the magnitude of what happened,
the amount of things that I had to do to

(53:54):
get back to get to a point where I feel
like I'm at a point where I can call this
a victory.

Speaker 2 (54:00):
Yeah. And that's the name of your company and kind
of what you're encompassing for your speaking and your Instagram
and everything, Right, I love it. Yeah, Okay, last question, Justin,
and you've kind of answered this okay throughout, but it's
I ask all my guests this, when you do find
those people, you have that one on one with somebody
where they are having those low moments, what do you
tell them?

Speaker 1 (54:19):
When I get to have those more interpersonal interactions with people,
I want to hear their story and i'd really give
them an opportunity to talk. And there has been times
where it's been hours on a phone with somebody and
it's somebody from Ohio that I don't even know, but
you can just feel the need for this person to

(54:39):
be talking, and I just happen to be the person
that they're talking to. At the end of the story.
I listen to them, and I listen to them, and
I give them all the time that they need, but
I ask them, okay, what did you do today to
make tomorrow better? And I usually get one of two answers,
And especially from the people that I'm talking to people

(55:00):
that reach out to me, they're reaching out in two ways.
One to tell me that they've already kind of gotten
lifted over that hump by watching this story and now
they're back like doing things, or the other one, which
are the ones that you know are a little more
time intensive. They're down and they've basically counted themselves out.
And so when I listened to them and I ask them,

(55:20):
what did you do today to make tomorrow better? I
usually get one of two answers. I get a long
pause followed by a lot of times tears because they
know I'm gonna call them on it, and they know
if they don't give me something that's legitimate that I'm

(55:41):
gonna be like no, Like, regardless of your situation, there
is something that you can do. And you know, sometimes
I'll go through, well, can you do this? Well, yeah,
as it did you? No, can you do this? Can
you do this? Can you do this? And I'll list
off like ten things that I did that helped me
start building right and exactly exactly. And then the other

(56:03):
one I'll get is well, I'm waiting for. And I
won't let that one fly either, because I'd actually rather
have the pause and the not than that I'm just
waiting for, because you can be waiting. There's always a
reason to be stopping and waiting for right, always an excuse.

(56:23):
There's always an excuse. So you just have to put
that aside, and you have to make the decision to
consistently work and you don't have to do Day one
should not be the day you're running a marathon. No,
I talk about tasks, goals, and purposes. Purpose is like
that big encompassing thing in your life. I do have goals,
but I try to be very moderate with my goals

(56:44):
because it's very easy with goals if you don't achieve
that goal to go kind of into a spiral and
then you just kind of quit. So I actually really
really like tasks versus goals because tasks are something that
you can usually do daily. They're usually very accomplishable. And

(57:05):
when you start building task and task and task and
you start doing those things on a daily basis and
they start becoming routine, you all of a sudden look
back from two weeks and you're like, oh wow. And
then you continue to do those and six weeks later,
and six months later or a year later, by doing
some simple, five simple tasks, it's amazing the power that

(57:28):
it has to completely change your life.

Speaker 2 (57:31):
Oh yeah, absolutely, yeah, interesting you brought up a marathon.
I had a guest on a couple of weeks ago,
Nicole de Boom, who was a professional triathlete, and hers
was get to the next aid station. You can't do
the marathon all at once. Get to the next aid station,
get to the next mile, and regroup, and then you
get to the next one, and you get the next one.
So I love that, and I love the task thing
because you can write down five things and you can

(57:52):
do them today, cross them off, which I love crossing
stuff off. I can cross it off. I'm like, oh,
thank god, yes, I crossed it off. It might be
on my list again tomorrow, but I crossed it off today.

Speaker 1 (58:01):
But it gives you a sense of accomplishment absolutely, and
as soon as and so we live in the society
where you just have to have that like dopamine hit.
You have to have this like so instead of having
it be this major goal that you accomplished, start learning
how to be incredibly satisfied with these smaller tasks, having

(58:24):
those be the things that make it so that you're like, yes,
I seriously accomplished this today. And then it can go
from you alter the task to be a little bit bigger,
and a little bit bigger and a little bit bigger,
and next thing, you know, like one of the things
we talk about this in special operations all the time.
You can't eat an elephant in.

Speaker 2 (58:42):
One bite, yes, one bite at a time, So one
bite at a time.

Speaker 1 (58:46):
Eventually you'll be able to eat that elephant.

Speaker 2 (58:47):
Yeah, hey, this was awesome. Yes, thank you for the time.
Thank you, great story, and man, I just I see
good things for you coming up. You're going to kill it.

Speaker 1 (58:57):
Well, thank you. I really appreciate it.

Speaker 2 (58:59):
Yeah, all right, justin, thank you, justin. Pretty unbelievable, right.
Hope you enjoyed that special edition. If this episode resonated
with you, please share it with someone who might need
some encouragement. New episodes of Cut, Traded, Fired, Retired are
released on Tuesdays. Get social with the podcast on Twitter
and Instagram at ctfur podcast, and check out the website

(59:19):
ctfurpodcast dot com. I'm your host, Susie Wargen. To find
out more about me, visit Susiewarton dot com. Thanks again
for listening, and until next time, please be careful, be safe,
and be kind. Take care