A chat with Jared Zsombor Season 4 Episode 8

In this long-awaited return episode, Scott and Dan Jones sit down with Jared Zsombor—a long-time colleague and a uniquely experienced professional in death investigations. With a career that began in high school and spanned international war zones and transplant recovery, Jared’s story is anything but ordinary. Together, they reflect on shared experiences from their time as homicide detectives and dive deep into the world of forensic death investigation, the emotional toll of international work, and the human side of handling loss with dignity.
Together, we explore:
The emotional and psychological toll of working with death
The invisible trauma of being the one who sees, reports, and translates death to the living
The difference between the work of Medical Examiners vs. Coroners in Canada
Why some scenes haunt us—and others, surprisingly, don't
How shared grief and unexpected connections (like a family tissue donation story) can bring healing
The importance of community and humor in high-trauma professions
What happens when you finally step away from the work—and why that can be the hardest part

If you've ever worked in high-intensity, frontline, or trauma-exposed professions—or love someone who has—this conversation will hit home. It’s about what we carry, what we bury, and what finally rises when the noise stops.

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:01):
Welcome to another episode of Just Us on Justice and
other things. I am Scott Jones, your co host here
with my baby brother Dan Jones, and it seems like
we haven't fucking done this.

Speaker 2 (00:09):
For about a year.

Speaker 3 (00:10):
I was actually getting messages from people going when's the
next podcast coming out. I actually had several people ask.

Speaker 1 (00:15):
Well, dear faithful, fifteen or twenty people who remember listening
to this thing, welcome back, and it's finally we didn't
get skunked by a guest today. We actually had a
guest show up early, which also never happens.

Speaker 2 (00:27):
So I really appreciate jareds every other guest. If you're listening,
yeah wow, they're not.

Speaker 1 (00:33):
The previous guests aren't hooking in and then listening to us.
They've already spent an hour or two with us and
got tired of our bullshit. So we are lucky enough
to have Jared Zombor with us today. Very interesting story.
Of course, we didn't really prepare, but Jared kind of
put some stuff down on paper. We get to know
him when Danny and I were homicide detectives and Jared

(00:54):
was investigative for the Medical Examiner's Office. So I'm sure
that kind of really cool symbiotic relationship will come, but
let's start wherever you want to. And I know when
your email there, you kind of talked about why you
were first interested in doing death investigations and maybe take
it from there.

Speaker 4 (01:10):
Yeah. So when I was I mean, if I go
back to when I was a really little kid, all
I wanted to do was be a cop. And then
I so I went to university, I got a degree.
I just wanted to do some sort of degree that
I was interested in, so I studied anthropology in the
background of that, though I was also interested in death investigation.
I grew up, you know, watching Quincy Emmy, that cheesy

(01:32):
seventies medical examiner show, and so I got my foot
in the door at the Emmy's office. In grade twelve,
I did a work experience program there and that was
the first time the Emmy's office had ever had something
like that before, and they were gracious enough to kind
of hire me part time. So I've been involved with
the Emmy's office since I was in grade twelve, which

(01:53):
was which was pretty cool. The police side of it,
I ended up I couldn't have laser surgery out of
my eyes. They told me I had a condition called
a care takonis, which just means I had a bulging
in one of my corneas and I was just excluded
me from every corrective procedure they had. So that was
kind of the end of that. But yeah, I graduated

(02:15):
from university. I kind of had my foot in the
door at the Emmy's office, which was which definitely helped,
and I applied online to go work with the un
in Kosovo and I got that job. So I did
two trips to Kosovo where we were exhuoming mass graves
and identified doing autopsies and identifying victims of the war

(02:36):
and trying to return those those bodies to their families.
And when I when I got back from from Kosovo,
there was not a full time job at the Emmy's
office available, so I started working for At the time,
I mean it's it's suburt of Health Services. Now at
the time it was Capital Health fell into the transplant program.

(02:59):
It was called comp Grants of Tissue Center, and so
we would go speak to families of folks who were
about to die or did die and they wanted to
donate tissues for transplant. So we would go through that
screening process with them. We would go to the war,
we'd recover that tissue that includes skin, bone, cartilage, heart valves,

(03:22):
ocular tissue like corneas and sclera, and then we preserve that.
It was kind of like working in a mad mad lad.
It was cool. There's liquid nitrogen freezers and that's where
that tissue would be stored and until it could be transplanted,
sometimes up to ten years later. Really yeah, yeah, So
I did that for the better part of I think
it was about seven years, and yeah, that was that

(03:47):
was a very kind of fulfilling job because you got
to see some good that came out of that, out
of that work. And yeah, and then a position to
open up at the Medical Examiner's office, a full time job.
And it had been like, he's twenty two years or
something before one of those jobs opened up. So I
definitely was in the right place at the right time.
And yeah, so I got that job, and Ted, another

(04:10):
would investigator, started two weeks after I did. Our careers
have been almost parallel this whole time.

Speaker 1 (04:16):
So I'm going to take you back to the Coast
of Old because that's super interesting. How old were you
when you first went there?

Speaker 4 (04:20):
Twenty five?

Speaker 1 (04:21):
So what were you at all prepared? Because I always
had a UN mission in my head that would be
something I'd like to do. But I wasn't built to
be away that long. Like I just I knew I
couldn't do that. So how was that for, like we're
going to talk about mental health and all that, How
was that for your nervous system to go be away
and then basically be exhuming bodies all the time?

Speaker 4 (04:42):
You know what it was? I wonder if I would
would do that today, if that same opportunity to go,
But I don't think I would. I think at twenty
five I was very naive to the world, but it
also sounded like something very cool. And when I applied,
I didn't hear anything like for months and I was
just like, okay, I was probably a million people to
the UN. But I got a call from the Netherlands

(05:04):
one day their HR department asked if I was still interested,
and I was in Kosovo less than three weeks later.
Like they they work very fast. I feel pretty lucky
in that when I got there, the language for that
mission was English, so of course we had people from
you know, thirty some different countries working, but everybody spoke English,

(05:26):
and there were a lot of Canadians there, and so
we kind of kind of, you know, jelled together as
a group, and that was I don't know, that felt
very homey, like it was nice to be able to
to hook up with with the other Canadians there. We
kind of worked just as a group for that whole time.
And then the second time I went back, it was
very similar. I wasn't yeah, I definitely wasn't ready for

(05:49):
the volume of cases. I think that year we processed
just under two thousand bodies. There's a lot, like I've
never seen a volume like that in all my career.
I'd like, IM not going to again. But I wonder,
like I sometimes I wonder if that Navy Day is
kind of what saved me. I didn't dwell on it
too much. I just you kind of just jump in

(06:11):
the UN. There was everybody joked that the UN was
just an acronym for unorganized, and it's true, like you
kind of just whatever happens happens, and you gotta work
through it and just get the work done. But it
was a very supportive group too, And I don't know,
I think that the novelty of just working with people

(06:32):
from all over the world too, that helped.

Speaker 3 (06:34):
Yeah, there also, and this is just I can't you
said two thousand bodies that made me go, what the shit?
But it also there has to have been some kind
of a cathartic nature of it that you're returning these
bodies to their loved ones in some capacity or another.
And I think like the good that comes out of
doing that work has gotta kind of I think overwhelms

(06:57):
or outweigh some of the bad. I think that's same
thing for homicide and stuffing that eventually it stacks enough
that no matter how much good you're doing, there's an
impact on you.

Speaker 2 (07:05):
And that's kind of just a thought.

Speaker 4 (07:07):
Yeah I do. There are some things that really stick
out in my head about that about that time I
spent there, and one of them is they would have
what were called they called them clothing shows for lack
of a better term. But if if there were a
cluster of bodies that were found in one spot, they
would take those bodies out, they would take off all

(07:28):
the clothing and the jewelry and whatever, get it cleaned up,
and then they would all be on display for families
to come and look at. Because quite often we didn't
have X rays to compare to, and DNA was not
really a thing. I mean it was a thing at
that time, but not necessarily. They hadn't started using it
in that mission at the time. So these clothing shows,
which here would be just be a tentative idea. Sometimes

(07:50):
that's what we use to positively a d people. And
it was Yeah, those were difficult to see, you know.
I tried to not go to those after experienced one
or two because they were very difficult to watch. We've
had I remember there was a mom that jumped into
a grave that we were exooming and she knew her
boys were in there, and I mean, what do you do? Yeah, right,

(08:12):
well everybody just kind of steps back, and you know,
you have to let that grief happen. But yeah, those
are those are two kind of the biggest things that
stick out in my mind. And yeah, I just I
don't know how. It's a good question. I don't know
how I process that when I was twenty five, because
I'm not sure i'd do the same thing if I
went back there now, Like I think that would probably
bother me a lot more, Like I was just fifty
at fifty than I did when I was twenty five.

Speaker 3 (08:34):
Well, I think that And the other potential for that
is is your cup was empty, right, Your trauma cup
was probably relatively empty at the time. And I think
sometimes that that's one of the things that you know,
I struggle when I hear and this I don't I'm
trying to say this in a not in negative way.
I struggle when I hear the overuse of the term

(08:56):
post traumatic stress disorder when someone said, yeah, I had
an at who I helped her through, you know, as
palliative care, and now I have post traumatic stress. I'm
not saying that doesn't impact you. And there's not trauma there,
and there's I'm not minimizing that, but for me, post
traumatic stress disorder, based on you know, the DSM and
stuff like that, is a stacking of trauma, right. And

(09:17):
and I think when your cup's empty, I think we
could all admit that we thought we were invincible at
certain times and there's nothing like we're not gonna worry
about this stuff like oh, I can't believe these people
that they go off on medical leave or whatever, stress leave,
because when we started, all of us that was kind
of somewhat considered as a weakness potentially, and we were

(09:37):
supposed to deal with it, just deal with it, you know,
put your big boy pants on, deal with it. So
I think when we all had our empty cups, we
kind of went into these things and all of a sudden,
in retrospect, you're like, what the fuck right, Like, I
don't know what your thoughts on that are.

Speaker 4 (09:54):
Yeah, No, that's I've never heard that explain that way,
But that's a very good I feel like that's very
accurate because at the time that was just something that's, oh,
this is really cool. No one else is doing this,
you know, And and as stupid as it sounds now,
I will I was guilty of this too, and at
certain parts of my career you kind of, like you said,
you wear that as a badge of honor, like nothing's

(10:16):
nothing bothers me. Look at the ship that I listened to,
you know, see every day, and you know, I've got
this you know, coat of armor around me and nothing.
But you know, little did I know that that wasn't
going to be the case.

Speaker 5 (10:28):
Fast forward, Yeah.

Speaker 4 (10:32):
And you know, the I was just looking through a
photo album because I actually took photos of how long
ago it was. I didn't have of cameras actually taking
film photographs and coast when I was going through that
album recently, and yeah, just the volume of bodies that
were going through that mortuary that was set up. It

(10:52):
was they had refrigerated reefers outside that were just stacked
with bodies that were all ide'd and brought in. It was. Yeah,
it was quite something.

Speaker 3 (11:02):
When you say that, I just now I have a question,
and I don't mean to pick at any scabs, but
when COVID happened and you started seeing those refrigerated things
popping up in North America, did that at all bother you?
Or did you link those two at all?

Speaker 4 (11:16):
I did link those two, but that didn't really bother me.
It was I think probably because it was for a
different purpose. And I'm not trying to minimize anybody's pain
from losing someone in COVID, but that was that was
very different. And I also left the Emmy's office kind
of around the time that COVID happened, too, Like I
haven't been there since that time. So what I did

(11:39):
see was just on the news, and it was I
don't really watch the news all that much anymore, so yeah,
that's fair.

Speaker 1 (11:45):
Yeah, So before we get into your emmy career, what
was the fascination with death? Like why have you kind
of always been around death or investigated death, or even
when you're doing the tissue stuff, obviously there's death looming.
That's why the tissues are going to be donated. Like
where do you think that comes from?

Speaker 4 (12:04):
I honestly, this this is gonna sound really silly, but
I really did think it came from those like cheesy
seventies crime shows. And the funny thing is, when I
was a kid, when I saw Bloed, I'd pass out
like yeah, and so here we are, but yeah, Quincy
and Columbo. I just I just loved those old shows
and it was just something about it that seemed very

(12:25):
comfortable to me. And I'm still you know, it sounds weird,
but I'm just very comfortable around death as long as
it you know, I've got a bit of an arms
length from when I can. Yeah, the hospital, working in
the transplant program, that was a much more clinical, controlled setting.

(12:46):
But again I had been doing autop season. I'd you know,
the volume of cases you see is in anywhere near
what I had experienced before, So it was easier to
process and kind of control your emotions at the end
of the day. It was a very scientific clinical environment too,
Like you know, we'd go to the r we do
our stuff, and then all that tissue got brought got
brought brought back to a lab and the only time

(13:09):
that that you you kind of circle around and kind
of connect the dots that those came from came from humans.
One big one for us is they would have recognition
services every year. So every donor family was invited to
these services, and they would have doctors and they'd usually
have a couple of recipients come and just say their
piece and just say thank you for the you know,

(13:29):
the gift you give. Those were very Those were good
for staff to go to to. I really really enjoyed
those quite emotional evenings, but yeah, quite necessary to you.

Speaker 3 (13:39):
We actually have a tissue donation story in our family
where you probably think you know the story better than
I do. Someone will let you tell it, or do
you want me to just give her a little bit.
So our our grandmother on our mom's side passed away
really young, and then through whatever happened at the hospital,

(14:00):
the person saw some last name and started talking and
basically turned out that our family met a person who
had our grandmother's eye tissue.

Speaker 1 (14:10):
Yeah, the person was the one and only time I've
had surgery the anesesiologist had my grandmother's eyes or had
our grandmother's eyes. Like when I first heard that, I
was bawling my face off. So she was forty nine
when she died suddenly of an aneurysm. So we were
like eight and five years old, So very traumatic because
we were very close. And then yeah, fast forward, I
don't know, thirty forty years or whatever it was, and yeah,

(14:34):
the person who's putting me under has my grandma's eyes
looking after me.

Speaker 4 (14:37):
Amazing.

Speaker 2 (14:37):
Yeah, and that's a beautiful thing.

Speaker 4 (14:39):
So that's not easy.

Speaker 2 (14:40):
That's I can understand.

Speaker 3 (14:41):
When you have a clinical clinical environment and there's happiness
that comes out of it, it changes it a little bit, right, And.

Speaker 4 (14:49):
I don't think people realized, you know, a tissue donor,
you can have over one hundred recipients just from one
tissue door well depending on how many you know fibular
strets they make or how so. So yeah, it was a
very very cool place to work.

Speaker 1 (15:03):
Yeah, so then let's go to being a medical examiner
or maybe just for the vast majority of people, probably
don't know what that is or what they do. Uh,
and then we can kind of talk about how that
is butted up against policing and how we got to
know each either.

Speaker 3 (15:18):
Just make one comment so just for people listening out there,
and it's not the same, but there's the term that
most people know is coroner. So if you're watching TV
shows that the corner comes out. Medical examiner seems to
only be in a couple of province in Knada. I
think Alberta and BC maybe or Alberta and Saskatchewan. I
can't remember. There's I think it's.

Speaker 4 (15:35):
Nova Scotia has Yeah, Nova Scotia has an EME system
as well. I think BC and Saskatchewan are both corners.
I know Manitoba has an EME system. Essentially, at the
end of the day, the same work gets done. It's
just a matter of who's designating what like to be
a corner. You'd own a hardware store and be a corner.
I mean they're they're just ordering their ordering. I'm not

(15:57):
when I say just I'm not minimizing the role, but
there are ordering autopsies to be done. They kind of
oversee that process, take all the information from all the
experts together, and they kind of spit out the exact
same thing that a medical examiner system does. But yeah,
here in Alberta we have a medical examiner system. To
be a medical examiner, you have to be a forensic pathologist.

(16:21):
I was not a medical examiner, although we were always
referred to as emmy's. I know, police would always say
the emmys here, and I eventually just stopped directing people.
If you want to call me doctor, go ahead. I
certainly don't get paid like a doctor. But and the
medical examiners themselves never left the office. Right there, they're
out the office, they're doing the exams. They're certifying those
deaths and determining what the cause and the manner of

(16:42):
death is. The investigators are the ones that we anytime
there was a death, we would we would go and
we would meet you guys. You guys were always the
first ones there. And essentially, you know, you could sum
up our role in a number of ways, but I like,
as far as the police are concerned, our my role
was to tell you whether or not that was something

(17:03):
you needed to be concerned about. I would take photographs,
I would, you know, speak to families if need be,
and then I would put together like a two or
three page summary of a report for the medical examiner
to review the next day, and then based on that
they would decide whether or not they were going to
do an autopsy or what's called an external exam, which

(17:24):
is just like it sounds, because we you know, you
don't have to do a full autopsy in every case
to determine why they died, and so external exams can
also involve just you know, doing an alcohol or drug screen.
Sometimes they would do a partial autopsy. Let's say they
only wanted to look at the heart, so they could
still you know, they could do that. But but yeah,

(17:46):
that was my job. And then we would pretty much
most phone calls that came through to the emmy's office
would get filtered through to the investigators. We dealt with
families directly, police that were calling reporting deaths, doctors that
were calling and reporting deaths, families that they're just looking
for fall up. Those would all get filtered through to
the investigators. So there's a lot of a lot of

(18:06):
phone phone work. We're on the phone a lot, and
we're you know, it goes without saying we're on call
to one four hours a day because people don't necessarily
die during business hours, which is inconvenience. Yeah, that's right,
inconvenient at times. Yeah.

Speaker 3 (18:19):
So I was just thinking, I'm thinking about trauma in
my head, and I'm like, the medical examiner is the doctor,
but they also have the benefit of that clinical setting.
Right when the medical investigators you come out and you're
at the scene, you see what homicide sees. You see

(18:43):
all the the stuff that we all should never have
seen in our lives. Right, So I just find that
an interesting thing, and that the medical examiners the doctors
don't go out to any scenes because it'd be kind
of I don't know, I guess it just would be
cost prohibitive, I guess, I don't.

Speaker 1 (18:59):
Know, and probably redundant because you kind of have You
end up probably have the ability to read a scene
better than the emmy doctor is going to be because
they don't have the experience at it. They're going to
be more in that clinical dissection space. And then I
think as police officers, not everybody's good at necessarily a
sudden death investigation, but those who want to be, and
I think we both wanted to be and then eventually

(19:21):
went to homicide. You also get pretty good at not
only seeing what is there, but then you start to
read the scene and see what's not there. So they're
just a different way of looking at things, I would.

Speaker 4 (19:31):
Think, And to go back to your point, Dan, the
medical examiners, because I worked, I've worked both those sides.
I've been in the Morgue. I've been in the Morgue.
I did do autopsies early on in my career. That's
kind of how I got to go to Kosovo with
that skill set and have been an investigator. I would
you could not do both emotionally, if you're going to

(19:51):
be doing an autopsy on someone, I would not have
wanted to have been sitting in their living room with
their family looking at photographs of them. Right, there's definitely
a divide there, and that the doctor's same thing. I
feel like they would Doctors probably would not do well
emotionally being, you know, doing both of those things. Sometimes

(20:12):
they would come out to sudden desk with us more
so because they were bored and just want to get
out of the office. But for the most part, long term, yeah,
I think there's a reason why there's a definitely a
divide there, because yeah, I could I could not do both,
and I think the Morgue staff it's almost I've heard
people describe it as like a for lack of a

(20:32):
better term, it just kind of like a factory line,
and it's very sterile and very you know, and there's
a reason for that, right you don't need to know
what that person's favorite food was, or you know, hear
nice stories about it is nice to hear, but I
would I wouldn't want to know all that if I'm
doing autopsies all day, I just I just wouldn't.

Speaker 1 (20:50):
Which is an interesting point because I never really thought
of that before. As a patrol cop, you would just
go to the scene and then you're likely not at
the autopsy unless it's there's some reason.

Speaker 2 (20:59):
But for the most part, you're not going up.

Speaker 1 (21:00):
But the homicide detectives likely were at the scene, likely
had contact with a family member, and potentially could be
adopt us not all the time, because you can toss
that out. But I don't know what you think autopsies.
I didn't like them. I went to lots of them.
I don't want to go to them anymore. But they
didn't actually stick with me and they didn't bother me.
How about you, No autopsy.

Speaker 3 (21:21):
Like, of all the stuff I've processed in in my
time and with the MDR and my therapist, autopsies aren't
one of the things that bothered me. But what you're
saying is very interesting and it just put a link
in my head, is being in an autopsy and then
some of the families that I that I was connected to.
That's and I didn't even think about being an autopsy

(21:44):
but because and I'm not going to go into details
of not going to traumase many, but but I had
one homicide of children and it was the only time
I ever had to do and uh where they had
to come and view the bodies and do it death
not like a deathification. And I didn't even know how
hard that hit me until I was doing an e

(22:04):
MDR session and all of a sudden that came back,
like I didn't even remember doing it right. So it's
kind of interesting because it's not the autopsy itself that
has ever bothered me. It's what you're saying. It's the
knowledge of the families that you now spend time with
because you but you were in that space because you
kind of had to be, or you felt you needed
to be. But yeah, I could. I could go to
another autopsy today and have it wouldn't bother me. I

(22:26):
don't want to go to another autopsy ever, but I could.

Speaker 1 (22:30):
Yeah, I'd be the same. I could if I had to,
but I don't want to because I think there's it's
such a clinical nature, like it literally is a hospital
setting with like the overhead lights and the big stale
steel table and people on ob quats and all that.

Speaker 2 (22:43):
So that's not what stuck with me.

Speaker 1 (22:45):
So getting back to your career, because you kind of
just compressed I don't know what twenty some years in
about four minutes.

Speaker 2 (22:54):
And that was a great episode. Thanks so much, everybody,
see you next time.

Speaker 1 (22:59):
So how did you like a day to day basis,
that's what you're dealing with. So you're dealing with a
tremendous amount of trauma, sadness, something stuff is really really gross,
like the smell sites and smells, and again not to
trauma's line, but there's some horrific scenes that we probably
were at together. How did you kind of keep yourself
level in the early stages and then I guess we

(23:19):
can progress to where things started to tip out of balance.

Speaker 4 (23:23):
Yeah, like when I first started there was. There was
like a core group. There was six of us and
a couple of retired and there were a couple more
faces in there. And we were a very very tight
net group, very tight like we were friends, and we
hung out outside of work. Didn't talk about work, which
was nice. I think that probably helped. But I also

(23:46):
tell people too, the you know, some of the funniest
stuff that ever happened to me happened at the m's office,
Like it was just I. For the bulk majority of
my career, I very much looked forward to going to work.
I knew there would be something very interesting there. Every
day was different, much like I'm sure you guys would
attest to with with policing. Even a boring day at

(24:09):
the medical examre's office was still an interesting day and
I and I sometimes wonder if I was able to
process it, process all that trauma, because I wasn't really
thinking about it, you know I alluded to back when
I was twenty five and coastf I just didn't think
about it. I'm like, this is a this is a
cool job. Nothing can nothing can break me. I've seen

(24:31):
it all like just whatever, bring it on. And yeah,
I mean I certainly know now that that doesn't work.
But I mean this sounds cliche, but I think just
surrounding myself with good friends and good family outside of
work definitely definitely helps. I mean I had a dog
for the majority of that time too, and yeah, my

(24:52):
dog probably heard more about my job than than some
of my family or friends. But but yeah, there was
this unconscious maybe processing, if you want to call it that,
of that trauma. I just didn't think about it very much,
and I feel like that probably got me through.

Speaker 3 (25:10):
Yeah, yeah, I think those I think the word trauma.

Speaker 2 (25:13):
Now.

Speaker 3 (25:15):
We never talked about this before, right, We never no
one talked about this in our careers. And it's interesting
because you kind of were when you're in it.

Speaker 2 (25:24):
You just don't think about it.

Speaker 3 (25:25):
And that was kind of when I had my I
had a I've had two separate, I would say psychological breaks.

Speaker 2 (25:33):
In my life.

Speaker 3 (25:34):
One was when I was in a homicide and it
was there was a results of a specific homicide and
I all of a sudden start in my brain, I
was the only homicide detective that could be like I
have to be at every time, like I just work
became bad and not good for family.

Speaker 2 (25:47):
Then The second one.

Speaker 3 (25:48):
I've talked about it a bit on this podcast before
is when I left it because I thought I'm fine
as soon as I leave it, I'm gonna be great.
As soon as I left it, I was fucked part
of my language. Like it was the worst freaking eight
months of mental health for me. And I'm still working
on it and sometimes it still pops up. But when
I left it, I'm no longer in it, and there
was no longer that kind of well, that's who I am,

(26:10):
that's my protection, and it's all of a sudden i
left it. I was just like I was a mess.
And I'm doing significantly better now thanks to my brother
and my wife and my kids and therapy and my
dog and having the ability to be open about it,
because I think one of the things the biggest failings
in mental health, and I'm going to go specifically to
men's mental health even more so, is our inability to

(26:32):
have people to talk to about our mental health with.
And I know lots of people that sit at home,
sit alone, and struggle with their mental health, and I
think it's important that we have these conversations openly because
someone might be listening to going actually I'm not alone,
which I think is a huge thing to talk about.

Speaker 2 (26:49):
A couple points to that one.

Speaker 1 (26:50):
I think you're right, the social connection that you had
Jared in that space, because whether you're talking about work
or not, you know you're not by yourself, and you're
kind of doing this as a cohort or a gro
that's moving through and you're like, well, everybody's seeing the
same thing. We still joke and laugh after and maybe
there's some days they're like, oh, this that was a
rough one today, and you can kind of dissipate it
that way. But that's such a huge because we're biological

(27:12):
creatures and the physiology kicks in with that social connection,
and then that's a really good point for you, Dan,
and I think we see this all the time. Is
speaking for police in particular in a really busy area.
Let's say you're working homicide or you're in forensics or whatever,
major collisions, high trauma areas and you think, well, I

(27:32):
just need to leave here, go to a quiet area
and then I'll be good, And oftentimes you're not because
now that pressure has been kind of released, your nervous
system does a recalibration and you've been operating at a
nine point two out of ten the whole time.

Speaker 2 (27:46):
Well, now you're going to drop below that.

Speaker 1 (27:47):
Baseline to a nine minus nine point two out of ten,
so your system can calibrate. And it feels fucking awful
and it's not expected and not anticipated, and you're like, well,
not there anymore, so why And then you start to
have that lack of self compassion, critical self talk and
all that, and you're just shitting in yourself. So the
important part about that is working on all of that
before you get into that, not just well I'm just

(28:09):
gonna remove myself from this frying pan and I should
be fine. Oftentimes what I've seen were.

Speaker 2 (28:14):
Not just once quick comment.

Speaker 3 (28:16):
It's the instead of asking what's wrong with me, it's
about asking what happened to me to get And I
think those words are very meaningful when you're do in
that self talk.

Speaker 1 (28:24):
Yeah, so going back to you've kind of alluded to
having a bit of a well not a bit of
like a PTSD response or whatever eventually with what you
were doing. How did that come to be or where
did that? Did it kind of come out of nowhere
or was it a slow burn or how what did
that look?

Speaker 2 (28:40):
Like for you.

Speaker 4 (28:42):
Well, I mean I looking back after because I same
thing I did EMDR with with my psychologists. I mean,
looking back, I feel like it's easy to kind of
distill those experiences once you're out of it, right, And
so looking back now, I think it was probably a
slow burn. And you know the I at the time,

(29:07):
I did have an issue with one particular scene I
had gone to. It was a double homeside, his little
girl and her sister toddler, And when I was there,
I know there was there was some weird I remember
going and just like in patrol, where there's squads and
you know, you know, this ident has similar squads too,

(29:28):
and so we get to know who's in each of
those squads. And I remember showing up and oh, you
don't normally work with her, and you don't normally work
with him. And I found out that the staff slogeant
had put out a call to everybody was home, just saying,
if there's any members on who don't have kids, can
you come in and work this? So that was new.
That was new for me. I had never seen that before.
But again, don't think about it. We go in and

(29:52):
do our thing, and you know, I'm not going to
get into details about what happened to those little girls,
but weighed on me, and this was like the better
part of a year, and I think, you know, amongst
other things, was you know, we go, we go to
a lot of infant deaths and they're all awful, Like
there's just horrible death to go to. There's just the families,

(30:13):
you know, a mess mum. You know, I've sat with
mums before. It wouldn't give me the baby for hours,
like what do you do? But they're just awful, awful deaths.
But there's always an opportunity to carry that baby the
way like a baby should be carried or a child
should be carried, you do that in front of the family.
But we couldn't. We couldn't do that at this and
I didn't realize how much that was really gonna fucking

(30:36):
eat away at me, and it really did. And so
for almost the better part of a year, I noticed,
you know, I wasn't sleeping as well. I was having nightmares.
I'd see injuries that were similar to ones that we
saw at that scene, and I didn't want to be
in the morning. I just fucking leave and go find
a quiet space in the office and just sit. I

(30:58):
feel like I was starting to get really ornery. I was,
you know, my my family. I've got two sisters here
in the city, all their all their kids. We every
Sunday we have family dinner at my folks place. And
I was starting to not want to go to those
and you know, I I was. I was getting short
with people and short with my dog. It just didn't

(31:19):
feel good, Like I'm not a I'm not an angry person,
and so that didn't that didn't feel good, and so
it got got to a point where I'm like, I
don't know what to do other than just go to
my family doctor. And my family doctor, Eddieg's retired now.
He was my doctor since I was a kid, and
so he's known me my whole life. And every time

(31:40):
I go to see him, it doesn't matter what I
was going to see him for. He wouldn't let me
leave without being like, so how are things, Like how
are you doing? Like upstairs? Like everything okay? Like you're good.
Because he knew like kind of the weight of the
work that I did, and so I knew that he
would be a good outlet for me, and so I
made an appointment with him one day, and I didn't

(32:00):
even know what I was going to say to him.
I just knew I didn't feel right. And the second
I got in his office and he walked in and
was like, and you know, he he's like, okay, Like
I got a plan for you. He got me into
a psychologist within a day, psychiatrist. A few days later.
I ended up reaching out to another member who recommended

(32:21):
you know EPs has their recommended for providers. Yeah, and
she said this one psychologist was really good. So I
ended up getting connected with them, and that's who I
stayed with for the better part of that that year
for therapy. So yeah, it was really my family doctor
was the first place I went to this day. My

(32:45):
my mom and dad, my folks still don't really know
why I left, and I not because I I don't
trust that they'd be able to process that. I just
feel like that those are very heavy terms for a
seventy nine and a seventy eight year old, right, PATSD
and you know, major depressive disorder, and I think they'd

(33:08):
feel bad that they weren't, But really they were helping
right unknowingly, they were helping me through that. My sisters
knew about it. My couple of close friends knew about it,
and then I got to the point where, you know,
I'm just happy to talk to to anybody about it
as long as it means someone else might be able
to recognize some of those signs and get themselves some help.
But yeah, that was that was a big step, is

(33:31):
just phoning my family doctor. And so I had a
combination of things. I know, the first psychologist I saw,
she was kind of an intake psychologist in the community,
and she was like WHOA, Like, yeah, you definitely need
someone who's you know, who specializes in this type of thing.
And that's who I ended up getting hooked up with.

(33:54):
Through Nicole's recommendation. I did. They did prescribe meds. I
remember this. Chiniacs prescribe meds for me. Two of them.
One was trazodone, which just to help me sleep at night,
because right you got to get your sleep under control.
If you can't sleep, man, your life is just an
absolute mess. So that was kind of to help nightmares
and just help me sleep. The other one they prescribed

(34:15):
was zoloft. I never did take that. And the only
reason I'm saying that is because it's not that I'm
anti medication at all, Like people need that to balance
out chemicals. They just need they need meds. I'm I'm
one that really likes to have some control and to
be to be able to make sense of what's going
on with me. So at the time I'm off work

(34:37):
seeing two different psychologists, I got these meds. I'm getting
some time away with myself to so many changes, and
I want to be if I get better, I want
to be able to know why. So I just want
to take it easy with and just add kind of
one thing at a time, which I later found out
was like my psycholoist said, that's actually quite normal people.
You know, people do have some you know, some reservations

(34:59):
about jumping in do a whole bunch of things. So so, yeah,
I did take dres adone for for a period of
time and that didn't last too long. But yeah, the
e MDR really really helped, and yeah, we we touched
on a lot of things. And I know my my
psychologists at the times. She said, it's almost she said,
you're a different case because yeah, there's this one incident

(35:21):
that you went to that was awful, But she said
the back like in the background, you've got twenty years
of like daily exposure to picking up body parts or
dead bodies or what or so so like you can't. Yeah,
she said, it's a it's some of it somewhat of
a different case than if somebody just walked in and
you know, they had seen a motor vehicle accident or

(35:43):
something and they're dealing with processing processing that. But yeah,
I was very lucky to have that that psychologist. She was,
she was fantastic.

Speaker 3 (35:52):
Well, that's how it was always ascribed to me, was
you put you have a cup and you keep filling
it up, like we talked about that earlier. We talked
your empty cup, and then you fill it up and
you fill it up, and you're not thinking you need
to get rid of any of that stuff because it's
not really bugging you until that last one comes on
and it starts to causing things to fall out of
your cup because it's dispersing it now, right, And all

(36:14):
of a sudden, that visual to me help because it's like, okay,
so it's not it's not me, it's what all these
things that I haven't processed because I thought I was
fine because I wasn't getting that this regulation because there
was still room in that cup. But whatever that one
thing that happens, whether it's one thing or two things,
when that fills your cup up so much that the
stuff starts to overflow, you have no control over where

(36:36):
it's overflowing, and it's spilling onto your rest of your life.

Speaker 2 (36:39):
And it's right.

Speaker 3 (36:40):
It's the same thing as I was. I was on
a conference and I wish I remembered the name of
psychologist I presented with on this conference, and she said
to me, there's no such thing, she said to the panel,
There's no such thing as compassion fatigue.

Speaker 2 (36:50):
Compassion fatigue is.

Speaker 3 (36:52):
Post traumatic stress that your cup is so full you
can no longer be compassionate with other people because you
haven't been compassionate with yourself. And until you're compassionate self
and you address those things, you can't do that with
other people. And I thought, for me anyway, because I'm
a visual thinker, that was a huge thing for me.
And then also the you can still be compassionate even
tho if you have PTSD, you just have to make
sure you're you've got room in your come And I

(37:14):
just like that kind of analogy.

Speaker 1 (37:16):
Yeah, I wish I could give credit because I don't
remember where I heard it, but it was like putting
a scale. And we always talk about the big t traumas,
whether like in policing officer involve shooting or really sudden
death of children, all that kind of a big tea,
but it's those little grains of sand that stack up
every day over the course of five, ten, fifteen, twenty
years that's actually what puts us out a balance. So

(37:39):
how do we daily making sure we kind of deal
with those small things so that we don't get overwhelmed.
So when you were in therapy, did you then, like
for me, I did so. Emdr just sort already knows
eye movement desensitization reprocessing and it's like a bilateral stimulation
of either eye movements or tap or for me it

(38:01):
was paddles like they put had things in my hand,
almost like gaming paddles, and they buzzed back and forth,
and then we talked about stuff because I initially started,
I'm like, well, I can't talk about all the things
that I've seen, Like fuck.

Speaker 2 (38:13):
We'll be here forever and it's that's going to just
feel awful.

Speaker 1 (38:15):
And the psychologists like, holy shit, no, we fucking we're
not doing that, Okay, good. So all we did is
we started chronologically kind of whatever I could remember in
the past, and then moved our way to more present time.
And it almost for me, it felt like and this
is over the course of probably two years, and very
intensive at the start, like two hours of a session
once a week for a couple three months, and then

(38:38):
down to one hour a week for a few months
and blah blah blah and kind of tapered off that way.

Speaker 2 (38:43):
Was that for you as well?

Speaker 1 (38:44):
Like did you start out something dated Coosovo or early
days and then move your way through or did you start.

Speaker 2 (38:49):
With the one that brought you to that space?

Speaker 4 (38:52):
No, we did start with the one that brought me
brought me there. But during the course of that and
EMDR was one of those things I still like, I
can kind of explain it to people, but I still
don't really get how it works. But I'm okay with that, right,
I've just like accepted that this this works and I
don't need to dissect it. But we did start with
that one incident that I went to, and over the

(39:14):
course of therapy, Yeah, all of that other stuff kind
of kind of bled in. She she didn't want to
do exposure therapy with me. I know, we had that
conversation because and her main concern was like, you know,
I'm single, I'm not married, I don't have kids and
my dog at home, and she she's like, I don't
want to send you home where there's nobody after going

(39:35):
through a really awful exposure therapy session. So emd R
is a much more gentle way of you know, processing
those same things. But it doesn't you know, the end
result is you're not totally amped up at the end
of that session. I found it was very fatigued at
the end of it. Right, there's brains doing a lot
of thought, a lot of a lot of stuff in there.

(39:57):
But yeah, we we just started with that one case
and then all of the other stuff just kind of
fell into place over time. But we I should also
say this, I just remember this as we were talking.
We it was my avoidance of things that office got
to the point where I would if I was driving

(40:18):
to the West End. I lived in a neighborhood called Allendale,
which is like a two minute drive from the Emmy's office,
and just go down like Fox Drive and you're already
on the White Mud. If I was going to the
West End. I avoided even driving by the Emmy's office,
and like that would tack on another fifteen minutes or
twenty minutes to my ride. And so I remember going
through that with my with my therapist too, and she's like, yeah,

(40:41):
this is a problem, like these are all these are
real problems. But again I just at the time, I
just that's what you gotta do to survive and make
it to another day. And yeah, I.

Speaker 3 (40:53):
Still like identify parts of the city with scenes, like
I'll still be driving by something and I'll til trigger
and I don't mean a trigger in a bad way,
but I'll just remember, like this is where so and
so was killed, or this is where so and so
was killed, or this is where so and so, Like
the whole city is if you don't deal with it,
when we've done what we've done, if you don't deal

(41:15):
with it, the whole city can become a trigger and
you can't avoid the whole city, right.

Speaker 1 (41:19):
Yeah, And I've found the same but it started to
again dissipate over the course of the year, so it's
not quite as prevalent. I would actually have to pay
attention to Oh at one oh five and jasper this
homicide happened there. It's not automatic that if on a
sunny age and that came up on time. Terry and I,
my wife and I are going to the four Street
Market or whatever. There's food and all that, and I'm like, oh,

(41:41):
this is where person X got killed right here, and
she's like, fucking, that's what you're thinking of. Like, it's
a beautiful day, it's twenty degrees, We're gonna go have
sandwiches in the sunshine, and you're talking about a murder.
I'm like, well, but he did. He got shot right
right here. And then you're like, yeah, that's not normal.
So eventually I don't like that homicide particularly bothered me,
but the scene was just stuck.

Speaker 2 (41:59):
In my brain.

Speaker 3 (42:00):
Yeah, yeah, no, I agree with it, and I don't
get bothered by it. And I'm kind of with you
as well. It's it's not as instant as it was,
but I still it still hits me.

Speaker 2 (42:08):
In the brain.

Speaker 3 (42:09):
I'm still like, yeah, this is It's like it's like
static in the back that I know I was here
for something not good.

Speaker 2 (42:14):
Yeah.

Speaker 4 (42:16):
It's interesting you say that, because there's not a day
that goes by where I drive through the city where
I don't think, and thank god, it doesn't affect me
to the point where it's like triggering. But it's just
that's that was a part of my life is driving
around this on the way here, right, I drove by
past the house, like you, I've been in so many
homes and then, of course they're not all homicides. You

(42:37):
just go to every death that happens. There's not a
neighborhood in this city that I don't drive through and
I'm like, oh, yeah, I remember, and and yeah again
I don't. Those aren't like horrible memories for me, thankfully. Yeah,
it's just, yeah, that's just a byproduct of having worked
there for so long. I can't go anywhere in the

(42:57):
city without thinking about that.

Speaker 2 (42:59):
Yeah, moved to a different city entirely.

Speaker 1 (43:02):
So did all of that happen with deciding to go
to therapy while you were still with the Emmy's office. Yes, okay,
So then what did that look like as you kind
of trailed off and then ultimately decided to leave that vocation.

Speaker 4 (43:15):
So when we got to a point in my therapy
where my psychologist said, you know, asked, is this something
you know? Is this is this something that you want
to go back to right, and I kind of had
to make a decision at that point. I she didn't
make that decision for me, but I think she was

(43:35):
leaning quite heavily into like, maybe this, you know, maybe
this is it. Go find something else else to do.
That was not as hard as I thought it was
going to because that was my whole identity, was that job, right,
So I thought letting go of that would be a
lot harder than it was. But I think just having

(43:56):
you know, I was not on a spot where I
felt better. I'm like I did realized that I could
feel this good. You know, maybe looking back, this was
not such a healthy place for me to be as
as long as I was. So yeah, we just got
to a point and had that discussion over the course
of a couple of sessions, and I just decided that
this was all, you know, close the book on the
Medical Examiner chapter and go do something else. I didn't

(44:20):
know what that was going to be at the time,
but I was in a spot for you know, fortunately,
I was in a spot financially that I could just
take a little bit of time and figure out what
I wanted to do. Yeah, So, you know, even and
I also thought that I would miss the right because

(44:40):
at the Emmy's office and you know, homeside too, you
get to you get to see everything that's not in
the news. Right, Yeah, there's a news story, but there's
so much more to those stories. And it was just,
you know, such a tremendous like adventure and privilege to
be a part of a part of these you know,
a lot of them are very horrible stories. Horrible things
have happened to people, but you know too, you know,

(45:04):
to be a part of that was something that was
really unique and coveted, and I thought I would miss that,
but I don't. I don't need to. I don't need
to hear about every death that happens in the scene.
I don't even need to hear about any of them.
And it doesn't bother me at all anymore. Yeah, So
so I'm glad that that was an easy, easy transition
for me.

Speaker 1 (45:22):
Yeah, how is looking after yourself received in the medical
Examiner's office? Like my understanding is there's not a lot
of programming or attention paid to that, But I might
be totally out launched there.

Speaker 4 (45:38):
There was I remember this this one chief who shall
remain unnamed. She she said, and at the time, it
didn't make sense to me, but now it makes complete sense.
She said, Nobody, whether you're a medical examiner or an
investigator or an autopsy tech, nobody should be in this
line of work for more than twenty years. And at

(45:59):
the time, I'm like this bullshit. I'm gonna work here
until I retire. But yeah, pretty close. And so you know,
to go to your question, Scott, it's there. There were
not a lot of people that were leaving for the
same reasons I did. There was a couple before me

(46:24):
and then I left, and I know that some have
left since for the same reason. So I don't know
if one of them, who's a good friend of mine,
left for similar reason. He just said, Look, I think
that when you left, that was like a kind of
a wake up call for some of us because you know,
we again, we just thought we're going to be there
until we're retired, and nobody talks about it. I don't

(46:47):
know what it's like today there, but I know, you know,
at the time five years ago, nobody really talked about it.
They'd acknowledge that you have problems, and they were aware
that you were off work for certain things. But I
still think that it's something that kind of gets swept
under the right. The EAP that's with the government. I
never went through them. A colleague of mine did and

(47:10):
it was just an absolute disaster for her. And I'm
not shitting on EAPs. There's a reason why they're there,
but I don't think that they're equipped to deal with
these types of problems. So I didn't even go that route.
I just but but there are resources there if you
need them. But I kind of feel like you kind
of have to ht demote yourself and that's what I
did and it worked out. Yeah.

Speaker 2 (47:32):
Well, it's just like finding a therapist.

Speaker 1 (47:33):
You gotta find just going, oh, I'm going to therapy,
but the person who's doing there is the therapist is
terrible to job. While it's not going to fucking help, right,
it's making sure you find the right one. And I
know you went to the intake person eventually to the
one that worked, and the one I went to I
really liked. You went to that same person you didn't
like them at all. So it's kind of just finding
what works for you.

Speaker 2 (47:51):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (47:51):
No, And it's interesting that you say that, because that's
one thing I will give Policing kind of across the
board credit, but they haven't a police service credit for sure.

Speaker 4 (48:00):
As well is.

Speaker 3 (48:02):
There has been a significant shift in the understanding and
supporting mental health throughout since we started, right.

Speaker 2 (48:14):
It is it perfect?

Speaker 3 (48:15):
No, But we have our preferred provider list, we have
all that kind of access to it, and there's a
lot less stigma around people going off, which I think
is a good thing. I think a lot of these
places do really good with the acute, but they don't
do great.

Speaker 2 (48:31):
With the longest.

Speaker 3 (48:33):
Yeah, you say it all the time. I was gonna
I was actually gonna say the same time I was
gonna say. You say all the time. I was gonna say,
they don't do the long term. And Scotty says it
all the time. And you know, in his role now
there's some of that kind of look more to the
pre and to the post and a kind of a
long term method. But there is When we first started,
like your your therapist had either was either Captain Morgan

(48:58):
or Gibson. He was a good one, Johnny and Jack
they were teams together. That was your that was your therapist.
And thankfully that's not the way things are anymore. That's
not true. It's not as prevalent as it used to.

Speaker 1 (49:12):
Be, and even when we were in homicide. So that's
like whatever, two thousand and nine ish. So however, long
fifteen sixten years ago, not a fucking chance any of
us would have went to a therapist, Like even me
talking what I talk about now on the Wilen sergies
that none of that was in my brain when I
was on homicide. I was like, no, I'm a fucking
homicide detective. Of course I'm dealing with dead bodies. What
am I supposed that's what are you supposed to do?

(49:33):
And interestingly, eventually when I go to therapy, really nothing
in homicide stuck to me. There really wasn't anything that
I had to process because there's such a clinical nature
right for the moment for me anyway, and that's not
for anybody else necessarily. But you kind of had you
were so task oriented, and yes you had the odd
follow which was just a well they're all atrocious for somebody,

(49:53):
but they didn't.

Speaker 2 (49:54):
They just didn't land in my nervous system.

Speaker 1 (49:57):
Patrol sergeant time, because you go to every single sudden
death while you're entreed, monitor, monitor to make sure that
it's not suspicious.

Speaker 2 (50:03):
So some of those kind of stuck.

Speaker 1 (50:04):
And then even subs going to homicide, it wasn't that,
it was kind of pre homicide. Were the things that
I had to process most.

Speaker 4 (50:12):
Yeah, two things. One to go back to what you
said down about, you know, Captain Morgan, and I was,
I was quite fortunate because I know that that can
be a huge component in how people people cope. And
this is not I'm not judging at all. I was.
I feel like I was very fortunate in that I

(50:32):
never liked that lack of control, like even growing up
right now, you get dump, let's go get drunk, whatever
kind of thing. I never liked that. And so and
my psychologist I remember, she's like, thank God, like we
don't have to deal with that, because that was not
a part of my you know, illness if you want
to call it that. And so I didn't have to
cope with that, which I think I'm very fortunate in that,

(50:56):
because I think that would add an extra layer of
complexity dealing with some issues already. Second thing I wanted
to say is the EPs. I remember being invited. This
was again, this was a this is another toddler death
that I went to. I remember at the end of it.
Body's been taken away, and the patrol sergeant said, we're

(51:18):
going we do a debrief now. It was like the
first caller out of the gates, we just go to
debrief if you want to join us. Income I'd never
been invited to that before. I didn't know that you
guys did those. I was like, sure, I would be
very interested in joining. And I remember right from like
there was an inspector there. I remember there was a

(51:38):
white shoot. There was a staff sergeant, sergeant and that
whole squad and everybody was given an opportunity to go
around the around the room and talk about and if
you didn't want to talk, that was fine too, just
talk about what happened that morning and how are you
feeling about it? And then everybody if they wanted to
go home, they could have the rest of the day off.
So that was really really cool it. You know, I've

(52:01):
had nothing but respect for EPs, but that really I
didn't know you guys did that, and that was really
that was really impressive. I'm just glad to be a
part of that. And I also learned something in that too.
You know, you there was there was one constable. I remember,
he didn't like sudden deaths, and so he was outside
right at the end of the driveway. But you know,

(52:21):
he said in this debrief and he's like, I fuck,
I had to do like nine notifications. People kept showing
up not knowing what's going on, right, and so that
was very hard on him. And then you know, he
just said, there was another constable who said, you know,
I just don't just reminds me of a suicide. I
don't like suicides had nothing to do with that case,
but that all was stuck in my stuck in my head,

(52:43):
and when I saw those I'd see those constables later,
I'd try to remember that and try to make it
a little easier for them at deaths, which was, Yeah,
that was that was a really good experience to be
to be a part of that. So I'm glad you
guys look after each other like that.

Speaker 1 (52:58):
Going to transition now, so you ultimately decided to leave
that career, which I think you can probably look back
and go, yeah, that's right, cal and not necessarily what
organization you're working for, but what are you doing now?
That is kind of adjacent, but probably not really.

Speaker 4 (53:15):
Yeah, So I am with a street outreach team here
in Edmonton. I'm with an organization that I had a
very good relationship with at the Emmy's office. There was certainly,
sadly no shortage of deaths that happened and within the
homeless community over the years that I was involved with,

(53:37):
I always spent a little more time, I feel like,
on those files trying to trying to figure out not
that we didn't spend time on every file, but I
don't know. I always had a bit of a soft
spot for somebody who's you know, died alone somewhere out
in the bush. And so I got to know that staff,
those staff members over the years because I'd be walking
in with photographs all the time, like you know who

(53:59):
this is, that kind of thing, and so this this
was an easy place for me to apply to and
then luckily they hired me and I've been there ever since.
So so yeah, I'm still getting my steps in every day.
But we try to connect with folks who are experiencing
homelessness that are away from downtown. So we're trying to

(54:19):
you know, the han day from Henday to Henday, in
the green spaces and bush. We just go try to
find folks and get them connected to ID and income
and hopefully off to a housing program. So that's what
I'm doing now, and it's beautiful. I work Monday to Friday,
you know, bankers hours. I'm not on call anymore. I
don't work weekends. It's taken about five years, but I'm

(54:40):
still not used to getting stat days off because for
twenty years it has been nothing right, It's just another day.
So yeah, and again I'm fortunate to be in a
spot where I can have this job that's kind of
good for my soul and the people I work with
are really good and definitely no shortage of trauma out there,

(55:01):
but it's it's different, and I think I've also got
a built in mechanism that, you know, the work doesn't
bother me. There's some very sad, awful stories out there,
but I've just learned to be able to leave it.
We leave it at work. Somebody wants my help, I'm
happy to help, and if they don't, I don't lose
any sleep over that. And I think there's enough people
out there that do need it.

Speaker 1 (55:21):
So yeah, that's a really good point though, the not
on call, because you don't really understand how insidious it
is on your brain until you're being on call and
then not on call anymore. And I was on call
for a long time through negotiators, homicide, blah blah blah.
And I've even now six eight months ago, started taking
the phone and I leave it outside my room, and

(55:42):
it made a huge difference to my sleep just doing that,
because I still had it next to me. Unknowingly, my
dog brain was still attached that phone, going it's gonna ring,
We're gonna go to work, We're gonna go self murder,
We're gonna go to work, and I'm like, no, fuck,
we're not going to work anymore. So taking it out
made a big difference for me.

Speaker 3 (55:57):
Yeah, no, And that not being on call piece has
been huge for me as well. And you were on
call significantly more than me because you did negotiators and
stuff like that. But I did the other side of
that where I had informants and sources and you had
to answer the phone to those folks anytime of the day.
I even remember early on, I was told like, don't
use your home phone number to call back, and because

(56:18):
we used to have pagers and they didn't have cell phones.
That's how long ago I was actively doing this and
my phone would my page would go off, and I'm
like three in the morning.

Speaker 2 (56:26):
I'm like crap.

Speaker 3 (56:27):
So I would get in my car, drive to the
payphone at the seven to eleven, which doesn't even exist anymore,
and calling in the source from the payphone, and my
wife would be like, what are you doing at three
in the morning, Like I had to go call She's
like that just idiotic behavior, And it was this is
I mean, I probably shouldn't tell this story, but I was.
We were talking about it yesterday with my neighbor, just

(56:49):
talking about my wife was talking about just the stuff.
She's like, the stuff I had to put up with
with every single police wife has to put up with.

Speaker 2 (56:56):
And she's like yeah.

Speaker 3 (56:58):
He would even go and I'd be like, well, why
are you going to work early? Like you come I'm like, well,
if you want to come with me, I got to
go pay a source. So I would bring my wife
and daughter on the drive and then I would park
and then I would take a secubitous route walk around
to go pay the form of the money and then
come back. I literally took my kids to pay sources,
Like what is wrong with me? And you're right when

(57:18):
you're not? They don't have all that stuff anymore. It's
real nice.

Speaker 1 (57:22):
We don't have the time to deal with what's wrong
with you. Like the fucking podcast would be five thousand
hours long.

Speaker 4 (57:29):
I took my mom to a death at a on
Mother's Day one day. Well, the story was I took
her up for breakfast and it was they had had
you guys, hadn't decided there was a homicide yet, but
it was definitely suspicious and they couldn't get a hold
of the investigator who was on call, and so they
have they had my number there, you know, it was

(57:50):
just my personal number. So I got a call from
from dispatch saying we can't get a hold of so
and so. Are you able to come to this death.
I'm like, well, I got my mom here, where is it?
And it wasn't that far so I'm like, okay. So
I remember I pulled up and one of the patrol
cossballs are like, my mom's in the car is a
very seedy part of the city. I'm like, would you

(58:10):
mind just keeping an eye? And she was she was lovely.
She's like absolutely, I would talk to her. But yeah,
we've Yeah, my mom who's been to a death at
a some day I was on Mother's Day. Yeah, happy
Mother's Day, and.

Speaker 3 (58:23):
We're laughing, but it's crazy.

Speaker 4 (58:25):
Yeah, and you mentioned pages when I first I mean
at the hospital we had pages, but even the first
few years at the y's office we had pages too,
That's how long ago that was. I loved I loved
my pager, even omber than number. Nobody could leave a
twenty minute long voicemail. You just have a number and
I'll call you back when.

Speaker 5 (58:42):
I'm getting ready, And ours were messages. Had people working,
they would take message. They were okay, but it would
like so it would be you call it up and
then all said night. You'd be like, oh, good night,
the girls take good night, daddy and all that.

Speaker 4 (58:54):
Kind of stuff.

Speaker 3 (58:55):
Okay, so yeah it was, but yeah, it was still
was not a twenty minute message.

Speaker 4 (58:59):
Yeah, h ours were just miracle. You had a phone
number and that's what you called back, and it was
perfect for playing pranks. I remember I always used to
page ten in the middle of the night and page
him to a sex chat line or something and he
doesn't know, right, he's just got to phone this number back.
And yeah, but going to the days where you could do.

Speaker 1 (59:13):
That before we wrap it up because we just talked
about it before going live. Here, let's talk about your tattoos.
So you have I don't know what the term is
for that, so skulls.

Speaker 4 (59:24):
I've got some sugar skulls. Yeah, on my lower arm.
This is, uh, this is just a bowl. I'm a Taurus,
and it's kind of got a bit of a Mexican
theme because I just I love going down to Mexico.
I do love Corvid's. I love magpies and crows, so
I've got that on my left arm. And then just
another skull because I've got a thing with skulls. Again,

(59:46):
I'm just holding some roses, kind of a Mexican theme.
And then this is This is my boy Quincy, who
I had to let go last year, named after the Emmy.
And then this one. I get made fun of a lot,
but I really of Christmas. I got these Christmas ornaments on.

Speaker 1 (01:00:04):
And the reason this all came up is because I
have a skull and flowers on one arm, and Danny's
got magpies on one of his arms. And we've never
seen anybody else who had magpie tattoos.

Speaker 3 (01:00:13):
And I love magpies and magpies like I had an
incident with magpies where I had to go speak at
something really really, what's the word.

Speaker 2 (01:00:22):
I'm looking for?

Speaker 3 (01:00:22):
Controversial? And thirty magpies showed up in my yard, like
I never had thirty magpies in my yard before. And
I asked an elder what that magpies meant, and he said,
magpies come to you when you're supposed to speak the truth.
And then since then, I've had a magpie a brooding,
a pair of magpies that live in my tree in
my front yard and I feed them all the time
and they come and visit and they I had to

(01:00:45):
their their little one kind of last summer, one of
their babies got stuck in my gradge overnight coming up
your gradually had a beat beep, and I'm like, whatever,
pick it up, put it up in the tree, and
they just and they're not.

Speaker 2 (01:00:54):
Yelling at you.

Speaker 3 (01:00:55):
They're saying thank you.

Speaker 4 (01:00:56):
They're so smart.

Speaker 3 (01:00:57):
Yeah they are, and I just I love I love
all corvids, but magpies are my favorite.

Speaker 4 (01:01:02):
Well, these are all tattoos that I could cover up
when I was working. I mean not that I'm ashamed
of tattoos, but you know, sometimes it's you just want
to put on a long sleeve shirt. And I remember,
I'll always remember this one little old lady she saw
my skulls. This was when I was an investigator and
I was leaving, and she's like, I know, I know
you have a bunch of skulls on your arm, but

(01:01:22):
could I have a hug? Like it was hilarious, right,
because like people with skull tattoos obviously are capable of
providing hugs, you know. Yeah, so I it's kind of
a kind of a fun little story about that.

Speaker 2 (01:01:33):
But yeah, cover awesome.

Speaker 1 (01:01:36):
Anything else you want to discuss before we wrap up,
anything else we think we missed or.

Speaker 4 (01:01:42):
I don't think so, it was good seeing you guys.
You know what I miss? People always ask me if
I missed that job, And of course there's some some
parts of it that I do. I don't miss the
shitty things we just talked about, But if you had
asked me, like, one of my top three favorite parts
of that job, it was the daily and it was
almost daily, would be weird if it wasn't interactions with EPs,

(01:02:02):
and I just loved some of my best, you know
times at that job. We're going and giving presentations with
squads and new members, and everybody was for the most part,
always really excited to learn new things. And you know,
I know, you guys try to get as many new
recruits out to sudden deaths as you could. And yeah,
I really really enjoyed that part of the job and

(01:02:23):
I missed that, Yeah, but I certainly don't miss the
sleepless nights.

Speaker 1 (01:02:26):
Yeah, sleepless nights are on call just before we wrap
up here. As always, this is just Jared, Scott and
Dan's opinions, not the opinions of anywhere we've worked in
the past and currently are in the future. So just
our amusings and then Danny can call it all.

Speaker 2 (01:02:42):
Right, I will.

Speaker 3 (01:02:43):
Yeah, I just acknowledge again we're recording us on three
D six Territory, the home of the Creed, then the Lakota, Sue,
the Mayte Inuit people have walked across these lands for
as long as these lands have been here, and I
just I'll just end it with, you know, the concept
of magpies and the birds. And one of the things

(01:03:04):
that I love about indigenous communities and the experiences that
I've been able and fortunate to have is that connection
with wildlife and the trees and the earth and the land.
And I think sometimes we in the Western world take
those things for granted, and we you know, we think
magpies are irritating. Actually, in fact, we took magpies jobs
away from them. They were symbiotic with bison, buffalo picking

(01:03:28):
off bugs off their back, and so the magpies have
had to the magpies have had to change the way
they do things because of us. And sometimes I think
we need to change the way things we do because
of us too.

Speaker 2 (01:03:40):
So with that love, you