Episode 11 - Lauren Hansen - My Colorado sister

Episode 11 – Lauren Hansen
In this not-so-quick “quick talk,” I chat with my sister, Lauren Hansen—born just one year after me—for a candid conversation about our shared childhood, including a incident involving Lauren. We also catch up on where life has taken us and how our bond has evolved over the years. It’s a mix of nostalgia, laughter, and real talk between siblings.

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:02):
Hey guys, welcome to the Intrepid Goals and Podcast, Episode eleven.
It's late night Intrepid, and I get to interview my sister.
She drove all the way from Denver for this wonderful podcast.
It's the only reason she's here. She's not doing anything else.
She just drove in for the podcast and is leaving
right after this. That is the only reason she's here now.

(00:24):
So you know, near and dear to my heart is
my sister. We've you know, we grew up a year apart,
and you know that's it. So now further ado, here's
Lauren Hanson.

Speaker 2 (00:38):
Hi everyone.

Speaker 3 (00:39):
Yes, I did not drive here just to do this podcast,
but I'm excited to do it anyway. I drove here
for a really cool reason, one being to see the
family and another to do some work events.

Speaker 2 (00:52):
Stuff which we can talk about later.

Speaker 3 (00:54):
But yeah, I'm really excited to be here with you
all in the beautiful Intrepid.

Speaker 1 (01:00):
Yeah, we're in the way. Lifting room is where I
do the podcast. We kind of sit up and hang
out and talk more free, felt flowing. A lot of
people said to just do this, so they liked the
Nick Justiniano podcast. So we're going to go with my sister,
another person that I hold near and dear to the heart.
So what did you do this week?

Speaker 2 (01:22):
So this week I was.

Speaker 1 (01:24):
Well, what brought what brought you out here?

Speaker 2 (01:26):
Them? Yeah, so well what brought me out here was
my car, Thank you, little one. But no, this week I.

Speaker 3 (01:35):
Came out to New York for a a fellowship for
formally incarcerated higher ed in prison leaders by Rockwood Leadership Institute.
And it's a fellowship for people who have been incarcerated
who work in the hire ed in prison field and

(01:56):
they're doing great work.

Speaker 2 (01:57):
There's twenty four of us. I'm one of twenty four.

Speaker 3 (02:00):
Were amazing leaders in my fields, which is kind of awesome.
And so I came out here to do a week
of coming together and learning about leadership and myself. And
one of the guys said during our thing was like
when we started this, because it was the last week
of it.

Speaker 2 (02:18):
When we started this a year ago.

Speaker 3 (02:20):
This program and this fellowship, he didn't realize that like
what kind of project we would be working on. But
then the last week he realized we weren't working on
a project.

Speaker 2 (02:34):
The project was us.

Speaker 3 (02:36):
And so it really transferred my life over the last
year and I was sad to see it go, but
really happy to be in my home state to finish
it out.

Speaker 1 (02:44):
Awesome. The uh you know things I always try to
tell people like and think about, like whatever happened in
your life and going forward, you always have to, like
you wake up tomorrow today, you have to try to
get better. Yeah, and not only like try to get better,
but also like your body wants to be better, more

(03:05):
healthy every day you wake up. So whether you're you know,
putting the right things in your body or you know
your body wants to be healthier, you want to be better,
you want to get better. Those those things all are
kind of coincide. So like a year of doing leadership
making yourself better not only not only raises your foundation

(03:25):
and your you know, work, and everybody else around you
and in the field, those other you know, twenty three
people you're with probably learned a lot about you and
from you. So you you know, as you as you
improve yourself, you improve the others around you too, kind
of like you know, raising tide rises all boats or
whatever you want to call it. All right, we're gonna

(03:46):
get into it. We're gonna get into some stuff. We're
gonna start with your childhood. I don't know nothing about that,
so who knows. So we're just gonna go, We're gonna
got a life story, and we're we work through it
and we'll talk about it more and more.

Speaker 2 (04:04):
So disclaimer, I don't really talk about this stuff anymore.

Speaker 3 (04:07):
So you're really lucky because I haven't done it since
twenty twenty when we did it the last time.

Speaker 1 (04:11):
Yeah, so we'll started, you know, what was your childhood like? Yeah,
because like you know, people know me from the gym, right,
The people that are going to listen to this podcast,
they know me, but they don't know my family per se.
They might have met you before. Some of them know
your story, they've heard us talk before. But I think,

(04:32):
you know, yeah, kind of relaying that starting you know,
how you grew up, how we grew up, and we'll
kind of work through it from there.

Speaker 2 (04:42):
I think our childhood was like pretty crazy in a
lot of ways.

Speaker 3 (04:46):
We lost a lot of folks that we really loved,
like our aunt, I mean our aunt I'm sorry, our
uncle uncle Frank, and we lost Grandma young and so
we learned what like lost was when we were really
long and.

Speaker 2 (04:59):
Young, and that's trauma.

Speaker 3 (05:00):
You know, so we we deal with a lot of trauma,
a lot of trauma, and starting with like the loss
of like people we really cared about and some other stuff.

Speaker 2 (05:11):
And then we kind of like didn't know how to
cope with that.

Speaker 3 (05:15):
And so like as like somebody who's like thirty nine
looking back at like the child that I was, I
can think about it like that. But I think we
also had like a good childhood, Like it had a
lot of trauma, but had a lot of great you
know where we used to go up in the woods
and stuff like.

Speaker 2 (05:30):
That and learning skills.

Speaker 1 (05:32):
So I think, like what Lauren's kind of saying is
like we had I mean, it was brutal when we
were kids. Like it's like Uncle Mike died, our you know,
grandfather Al died, or I think it started out with
our grandmother Helen died, then like my uncle Mike died,
then my grandfather Al, like then uncle Frank died, and

(05:56):
then uh you know, uh Amakani died, and then Nana
died and was in the Marine Corps. I believe, And
I think, thank you, Yeah, we were. We were you know,
from this age of like eight years old to like
eighteen nineteen twenty. It was fucking brutal of how many
people we lost, Granma Helen, our grandma Marilyn on the

(06:20):
hands inside and all off too, like we lost you know, everybody.
And I think when you it always you get to
these wakes and you get to these things in childhood
and you see people like coping by drinking alcohol or
doing not the best things to cope with the trauma

(06:40):
that they're having, like their loss of their you know,
mom and dads and and you know, uh, you know,
brothers and sisters and stuff like that. So we witnessed
a lot of trauma, but the coping mechanisms weren't like
the best, and I think that goes along with the
times that you know, there was no like no one
went therapy, no one did any of that, no one

(07:01):
talked to anybody. That just didn't happen. So the best
thing to do was like everyone gets together for the
weeks and everyone says we're going to meet together tomorrow
the next day or two weeks from now, or we're
going to continue on these things, and it just think
it never happens, and you just start going into your
own coping mechanism, whatever that may be.

Speaker 3 (07:21):
What we were taught was the best coping mechanism, whether
happy or sad, or celebrating or morning, it was alcohol.
And that's kind of what we learned. We both did that, Yeah,
and that translated. I mean just thinking like even younger
than the first time we had that, Like we didn't

(07:41):
really even go to the funerals like a bully and
it kid, they died before we were before I was
six and before you were seven.

Speaker 2 (07:47):
And so like just like all of that, Like I
remember being at the parties.

Speaker 3 (07:52):
To celebrate their lives with something that's not the greatest
to celebrate with or cope with, but.

Speaker 2 (07:58):
That was what we knew.

Speaker 3 (07:59):
That was what our parents, that's what they did, and
that's just how it was. It wasn't like good or
bad at that time.

Speaker 1 (08:05):
But that's just I think looking back at it, I'm like, oh,
it was pretty bad looking, but it.

Speaker 2 (08:11):
Wasn't intentionally bad. Like it wasn't like.

Speaker 1 (08:13):
There was no malicious Yeah, there was no malicious tent.
But like, I mean, everything circled around alcohol when we
grew up as kids, I think that was more you
know moon party. Yeah, that's what I'm saying, Uncle Frank.
You know moon parties. And ship like that was all
kinds of craziness hiking like hiking, like, wh who hikes

(08:35):
with quarters light? What the hell is going on? But
we did, like and it wasn't like we had any
like someone's carrying a fucking igloo cooler, Like what the fuck?

Speaker 3 (08:47):
Two people were carrying a cooler hiking up to the water.

Speaker 1 (08:51):
Yeah, I mean, like that's not easy to do, but
they did that because that's that was our coping mechanism
and the way they had fun and all this and
I hate to like say all that, but like that's
it's just the truth.

Speaker 2 (09:04):
That is how it is, and that's how it was.
Maybe it's not that today, but that's how it was.

Speaker 1 (09:09):
Yeah, And then that.

Speaker 2 (09:10):
Led like further right, Like so it didn't just lead
to like us seeing.

Speaker 3 (09:13):
That in our childhood and our high school years led
to us being in the Marines.

Speaker 1 (09:17):
Well, I mean, like high school, we were kind of
known as the House. We had a lot of parties
and we drank a ton of alcohol because you know,
it was easier to have it at the house, and
our mom didn't really care. She was also say like

(09:38):
m I A, but she worked at the local bar,
so she wasn't always home, and we were free.

Speaker 2 (09:45):
For you to do what we wanted as long as
we were sixteen left.

Speaker 1 (09:49):
Left to let it rip. And we let it.

Speaker 2 (09:51):
Rip, and so did everybody else at our house. Y'all
know who you are.

Speaker 1 (09:56):
You had fun too, So everybody and we all had
fun and.

Speaker 2 (10:02):
It was that's what it was. It wasn't anything bad.

Speaker 3 (10:05):
It was all fun at that age, like in high
school and college. In Marine Corps, it was just fun.
And we were known as the party house, like even
in even for the Marines. Like people from the Marines
would drive up with Brian, oh yeah and.

Speaker 2 (10:23):
Come up to our house.

Speaker 1 (10:24):
So when I worked, when I was in the Marine Corps,
we would have like a ninety six hours leave. It
was called so ninety six hours you can go a
certain distance away from North Carolina. And he'd be like, oh,
we're going to Jersey. And we lived in Jersey at
the time, which was we moved from New York to Heartston,
New Jersey. It's not that far, but so we moved

(10:45):
and I brought every book. We had like two cars
with like eight marines and it would just all come
up and have a great time. Uh my roommates, my
you know, other buddies that wanted to go for a
rude Everybody was like, let go, I just looking at
pictures the other day.

Speaker 3 (11:03):
I was like, holy shit, vice that was my graduation
or my going away party, but vice versa. I used
to bring people down to the rink core Base and
we would do the same thing.

Speaker 1 (11:11):
Yeah, yeah, there was days.

Speaker 2 (11:13):
Road tripping is not new to me.

Speaker 1 (11:15):
Yeah, we were, you know, all over the place. We
would drive. Me and my roommate Adam Man, we drove
the one time we went from we went from North
Carolina to New York. We drove to his house in Michigan.
Then we went either back to North Carolina to check
in off leave and we happened to be on a
ninety six And when we drove back up to New York.

(11:37):
The part it was we were insane. Yeah, but when
you have a GTO and you're fucking twenty something years old.
My buddy Adam had a GTO and we were ripping
that thing. We made really good time all over the place.
Now we didn't get pulled over, but I got pulled
had a BMW and she got pulled over a lot.
I did, Yeah, I did.

Speaker 2 (12:01):
Those parties.

Speaker 1 (12:02):
Yeah, those fun parties. Right, So that was like high
school into the Marine Corps time frame, right, drinking, having
a great time. That led to so maybe poor decisions,
so Waurren, So I joined the Marine Corps two thousand
and three right out of high school. Warren, I think

(12:27):
she followed my footsteps, like a year what year later?
So I joined two thousand and three right out of
high school. I was in boot camp right around when JD.
Vansl was and we might have been in the same platoon.

Speaker 2 (12:39):
I hope not, because maybe.

Speaker 1 (12:43):
Not sure whatever, I'm just messing so right around that time,
right two thousand and three, at June or July, Like
I think I was in boot camp for July fourth
and I I turned nineteen July seventh and brook Camp. Uh.
So Lauren joined in two thousand and.

Speaker 3 (13:04):
Five, right, Yeah, I went to college for a year
and that really didn't work out because like got my
I financially pulled, partied a lot, and I was having
a ton of fun, but I wasn't doing.

Speaker 2 (13:23):
The right thing. And I think I got into a car accident.

Speaker 3 (13:26):
I got rearinded, not my fault, and I decided to
not go back to school anymore after that, because having
in Manhattan was terrible. I wanted to be an FBI agent,
so I went to John Jay College of Criminal Justice
in New York City and yeah, so I think the

(13:48):
next best thing for me was like, well, how do
I pay for college if I can't use financially because
we just didn't have enough money to do that at
the time.

Speaker 2 (13:56):
And then I talked.

Speaker 3 (13:58):
To Ryan's recruiter a couple of times, so like went
and talked to them. Actually, I went down to North
Carolina and I had a really good time drinking with
people and having fun connection.

Speaker 1 (14:08):
Oh my god, Yeah, that was That was what I
just thought about that we were doing. Were you with
me at that time? Where was that?

Speaker 2 (14:14):
Ron?

Speaker 1 (14:15):
And yeah, I know Ron came down. So me and
Ron were real good friends and we were fucking They
had these tank trails and we used to like take
our four wheeling vehicles, not even four wheeling vehicles like anything,
jeep cheep Cherokees. We'd all drive. So I had a
Jeep Grand Cherokee and we were ripping it on tank trails.

(14:36):
This is like highly not okay, We're like, yeah.

Speaker 2 (14:41):
Jumping on the back of somebody's bike.

Speaker 3 (14:43):
Without a helmet on, no glow belt, and then just
like going and then Ryan Ryan lost shoes.

Speaker 1 (14:50):
Yeah, well we got it's all, it's all crazy. Well
I don't I don't lose my ship.

Speaker 2 (14:54):
Ever never he was pretty mad at me.

Speaker 1 (14:57):
Yeah, so like you know, that was like the funniest thing.
So like she comes down with our buddy Ron and
literally had the best time of her life. And then
I was like, I'm going to join the Marine Corps.
I was like, wait what.

Speaker 3 (15:10):
And then like this the day I went back home,
I signed up and then its lo and behold, Ron
was going to the Coast Guard and he got out
of the Coast Guard and went into the Marines, and
we went to boot camp on the same day and
then graduated up and said we were not in the
same platoon. He was in my brother platoon, and I
would see him sometimes. He got me in trouble in

(15:31):
boot camp.

Speaker 1 (15:32):
I swear he.

Speaker 2 (15:33):
Made me laugh.

Speaker 3 (15:35):
I missed that guy sometimes. I hope he's doing well.
I haven't seen him in a long time. But that
was kind of like my extent, Like I got hurt
when I.

Speaker 2 (15:44):
Was in boot camp.

Speaker 1 (15:45):
I kind of what happened. I broke my hip how
did you break your hip?

Speaker 2 (15:48):
Oh my god, I was just telling somebody this story.
It was really funny.

Speaker 3 (15:53):
I don't know how I broke my hip other than
we assumed it's because of the weight that was on
my body. I with like ninety three pounds when I
went to Boo camp up and then the packs just
waded way more than me. So I carried them for
a long time. And then I did the crucibowl with well,
I did a pf T with a broken hip, a
physical fitness test, so I ran, like what is the

(16:14):
physical fitness that's like a three point like a five K?

Speaker 2 (16:18):
I ran like a five K.

Speaker 3 (16:20):
And then I did sit ups and then like the
hang because the women don't do push ups or pull ups,
they do the hang. Oh it's like a hang from apart.

Speaker 1 (16:29):
Yeah, what what is it? No one else I don't
know explain it. So Lauren's talking about the flex arm hang.
So flex arm hang in the Marine Corps women are
when we were in we're doing the flex arm hang.
It is uh, it's tested as long as you can
hold it until you I think break ninety degrees and

(16:51):
I think the top score like a minute roughly. So
like all the girls kind of like hold it for
a minute and a hundred points. Uh. And then sit ups.
If you are doing sit ups in the Marine Corps
and you do not get one hundred sit ups, somebody
fucking hate you.

Speaker 3 (17:05):
So so you do one hundred sit ups in under
two minutes or something like.

Speaker 1 (17:10):
That, whatever it is, you get one hundred sit ups.
So men in the Marine Corps have to do pull ups.
If you get one hundred points is twenty pull ups.
Someone counts out loud, so that's hard to do. The
most I think I ever got was seventeen. When I
was in I weighed like one hundred and ninety one
hundred and seventy pounds, and I still I couldn't do twenty,

(17:30):
but I always got the hundred. And then the run.
I know the men score has probably changed for the women.
I don't remember. It was twenty eight. You had to
run under twenty eight minutes and that's five kys.

Speaker 3 (17:43):
Well that mile that five k I ran twenty four
or forty eight, and I will never forget that because
I would be fastest I ever ran.

Speaker 1 (17:51):
Like talk to make somebody about that. My fastest time
was in the Marine Corps twenty three minute five k
and my goal is to break that this year.

Speaker 2 (18:01):
Hope. Okay, well, I mean break your hip. Maybe you can.

Speaker 1 (18:05):
No, I'm not trying to break my hip.

Speaker 2 (18:06):
No, please, don't know. But that's how I did that
because I was in so much.

Speaker 3 (18:11):
Pain that I was like, if I don't finish this,
like I don't know what's going on.

Speaker 2 (18:14):
I can't. It's my knee up. So I was running
with my leg swinging out to the side.

Speaker 3 (18:19):
It was really ridiculous. I wish I could like have
a video of that, but I ran in twenty.

Speaker 2 (18:24):
Four four heat. So I feel really proud of myself.

Speaker 1 (18:26):
That's fast. People, you know, train their whole lives and
can't get that. So we're pretty fit, the Hansens.

Speaker 2 (18:33):
You know, maybe maybe we were forty years ago.

Speaker 3 (18:38):
And then yeah, So I did the Crucible, which is
like they're like the final marine cortes.

Speaker 1 (18:44):
Like sent me two hours of no sleep or minimal sleep,
minimal food, and you have the complete tasks as a unit,
whether it's like a platoon size or or like fire
team fire teams like four people.

Speaker 2 (19:00):
And it's uh, it's like the test to become a marine.

Speaker 1 (19:03):
So some of you, if you pass the crucible. You've
become the United States Marine. You're at the end of
the crucible. You're handed your ego globe an anchor is
one of the most emotional days as a marine, probably
the most emotional day.

Speaker 2 (19:17):
I didn't get there, but I did finish the crucible.

Speaker 3 (19:19):
I did not finish the hump back to the or
like people would call it, like the ruck they called
the hump back to the unit because.

Speaker 2 (19:28):
My series commander wouldn't let me finish. I was. I
think it's like a ten k back to the unit.

Speaker 1 (19:34):
Yeah, like that ten ten miles or something like that.

Speaker 2 (19:38):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (19:38):
I don't even know what happened, because all I remember
is that like people kept taking like my stuff for
me because I kept falling back. So they were taking
my pack, they were taking my like everything, and like
to the point where like I couldn't even hold a
canteen more than my M sixteen.

Speaker 2 (19:52):
But you can never give up your rifle. Your rifle
is your life.

Speaker 3 (19:56):
And so I had like empty water bottles for canteens,
and I've fallen so far back I couldn't even see
anybody in My serious commander came and found me, and
then she made me.

Speaker 2 (20:06):
Sit down and She's like, what's going on? I was like,
I don't know.

Speaker 3 (20:10):
And then she tried to take my weapon and I
fought her about it, and so she literally.

Speaker 2 (20:14):
Ripped that thing out of my hand, and I was like,
this is my rifle. You know, if you're a marine,
you know what I'm talking about. Sorry, I was like, off, sorry, y'all, jeez,
put your arms up. So I finished the crucible.

Speaker 1 (20:39):
Sorry, drink some water.

Speaker 2 (20:41):
I drink some water. So what happens when your brother
makes you do this when you're sick?

Speaker 1 (20:47):
Im sick? So uh, she finishes the crucible, right, Uh?
But I didn't get to walk the rest of the
miles for the final thing. With the end, they sorry,
At the end, they give you your ego globe an
anchor signifying that you are You've passed the test, and

(21:10):
you are the United States. We're in though. They don't
treat you like that for a little while, give you
a couple of days.

Speaker 3 (21:16):
I did get mine. I did get my ega, it's
just not the way that it revealed.

Speaker 1 (21:21):
I still have mine. It's like twenty years old. It's
actually in the box somewhere somewhere.

Speaker 2 (21:28):
So I graduated boot camp. I graduated with a broken hip.

Speaker 3 (21:32):
On crutches, and so hold the long story of my
military career which ended and then it came back and
I don't want to go into all the crazy details,
but it really starts again with.

Speaker 1 (21:44):
Yeah, we're gonna talk. We're talking more so uh talk
about alcohol. Me and Uh. We've stayed at a hotel
right where so they have like a family day and
then they have graduation in the Marine Corps. So the
whole family was there, uncles, ants, everybody. We found this

(22:05):
hole in the wall fucking hotel that everybody was staying,
and then we went to a bar. The bar had
like sheet metal walls. I don't even understand what was
going I was like, they must like fucking beat people
to death in this place and then spray the walls
down at night and call it a day. I woke

(22:26):
up down the road in a uh like waffle house
might have been like, I don't even know it was
like a waffle house. I wake up and there's a
cop sitting across from me, and I'm a marine at
the time. I'm arguing with this guy like a motherfucker,
Like he's like, why are you sleeping? I'm like, because
I'm fucking tired.

Speaker 2 (22:48):
I did not know that.

Speaker 1 (22:49):
It was like a hilarious story. I was fucking wasted,
passed out on the on the floor or on the
floor like in the thing, trying to order food and
they're like, well, why do you Why are you here?
I'm like, because a fucking I'm trying to eat so
I sober up. I got to go to graduation tomorrow.
So they're like, where do you Where are staying? I'm
like the hotel right there, and the guy's like, no,
you're not. I'm like one hundred percent, I'm saying there.

(23:10):
My mom's fucking right there. So that made me call
my mom like she's wasted. I'm like, I'm in trouble,
get me up. The cops goes because I was. I
was mouthing off the whole time. The cops fucking yelling
at me, like gets me out of the car, and
he's like, don't say a word. I'm gonna rescue. My

(23:33):
Mom's like, don't say anything, Ryan Matthew, don't say anything.
I'm like, I'm like, fuck this guy. I was. I'd
never forget that guy's face. It's so funny.

Speaker 2 (23:50):
I mean, we're the guy.

Speaker 1 (23:51):
I mean, I was I was out of my mind.

Speaker 3 (23:55):
If you were the guy that my brother and my
mother were talking to, I apologize.

Speaker 1 (24:00):
Yeah. It was so funny, like, yeah, everybody was there
all the funny. So Lauren graduated, right, she came home
for ten days, more celebration, more partying, more fun right,
So then she tried to go back. She was in
back to Paras Island for just heal up, and then

(24:25):
she ended up starting the process to get out.

Speaker 2 (24:27):
No, I did combat training twice and then I got out.

Speaker 1 (24:30):
I thought you were still in.

Speaker 2 (24:31):
No, I was in.

Speaker 1 (24:35):
Yeah, I know, but you island longer than Oh.

Speaker 2 (24:39):
Yeah. I went back to Paris Island for like a
couple of months after.

Speaker 1 (24:43):
To heal up. Yeah, I know, I went there. I
brought you there. So she So she was healing up
in Paras Island, ended up getting fixed enough to go
to MCT, which is Marine combat training. You go there.
That is Camp Geiger in North Carolina. She went there

(25:04):
and then did you get hurt again? There? So she
got hurt. So there was recycling you try to get
you through it. And then she took a medical separation
because it wasn't working. It wasn't healing. Took the time
off to go home and get healed up. Did you
go back to school at that time?

Speaker 2 (25:25):
No, I became a bartender.

Speaker 1 (25:27):
Where did your bartend?

Speaker 3 (25:28):
Airport Pub in Sussex County, New Jersey.

Speaker 1 (25:32):
So we did move to Our mom moved to Hartist
in New Jersey. My mom and her husband own gas
stations and automotive shops for their whole lives. So they
opened up a gas stations like Shell Station in Sussex County.
When I got in the Rencorp pump gas there, Lauren

(25:52):
kind of became a bartender at one of the local
watering holes. It was a fun time when I came
home from those thanks. Yeah, you know, as a marine
coming home, it's always fun to go to the local
watering holes.

Speaker 2 (26:06):
And it's hard to remember that time. Yeah, yeah, No,
I really like I have a lot up. I drink
a lot.

Speaker 1 (26:13):
Yeah, I mean weeled it. Yeah. And this is you know,
this is our story. This is what we're going to
talk about. So, so life's going nowhere being a bartender
of the airport pub. If you go there, you'll understand
where your life's going nowhere. So you decided to.

Speaker 3 (26:29):
Well, I decided to try to go into the NYPD
or go back into the Marines, and whichever worked out
first was going to happen. And then I signed up
for the Marines, and I got my letter saying I
could go do the NYPD on the same day.

Speaker 2 (26:43):
So that was kind of ironic.

Speaker 3 (26:44):
So I chose the Marines obviously better choice. And so
then I was accepted back in. I was combat photography.
I was going back to fleet eventually eventually, but before
I could go back there, they had me on recruiting
duty to figure out where I was.

Speaker 2 (27:00):
Going to get stationed.

Speaker 1 (27:02):
So so sometimes they don't have places for you, and
as orders are getting cut or made, and you know,
needs of the Marine Corps being met, they'll have you
on recruiting duty, whether it's you're waiting for a school
to pick up or something like that coming out of
boot camp. So Laura was kind of in this holding pattern.
Uh So she went to the recruiting office, got signed

(27:22):
back up, they put her onto recruiting duty. She was
working with Middletown.

Speaker 2 (27:27):
Middletown, Yeah, Middletown.

Speaker 1 (27:30):
She was in Middletown as a recruiter, helping the recruiting
office do and probably like you know, hey, call these
ten fucking names they haven't answered us and doing that
kind of shit.

Speaker 3 (27:40):
Yeah, I was doing a lot more than that. I
was doing a lot of recruiting duty because I was
a female.

Speaker 1 (27:44):
Yeah that too.

Speaker 3 (27:45):
So there's two females in the entire unit, me and
this other one what is her? I can't remember her name.
I know her the name, I could see her face,
but were the only two. So at the time, they
used us a lot for recruiting events, which is kind.

Speaker 1 (27:59):
For it wasn't broad marble, was it?

Speaker 2 (28:03):
And no, I think it was.

Speaker 3 (28:04):
I can't remember last I know her first name is Catherine.
I think I can't remember last ning and I probably
wouldn't say it.

Speaker 2 (28:10):
I'm here anyway, but.

Speaker 3 (28:13):
She Yeah, so we're the only two females, and they
used this a lot for like different recruiting events, like
going to like fairs and concerts.

Speaker 1 (28:20):
A lot of concerts. Yeah, the Marines are always set
up with their red pull up bar. Yeah, how many
people could do some pull ups?

Speaker 3 (28:27):
You know, things like that, Yeah, and intimidating, you know
those men walking past me like I could do what
you can and I'm five foot so could you imagine?

Speaker 1 (28:37):
So I was like, actually, actually I just I have
Lauren's uniforms at my house. Uh and Lane, if you
guys know Lane, Lane was like pretty much fit into her.

Speaker 2 (28:49):
Uniforms years old. It's sad, but the type of was.

Speaker 1 (28:55):
I'll show you the picture if you don't believe it.

Speaker 2 (28:56):
So, uh, just look on his social media and check.

Speaker 1 (29:00):
Did something open so mourn? You got real close to leaving,
Maybe they had what they have a going away party
for you?

Speaker 2 (29:11):
Yeah, I was going away. We had a going away party.

Speaker 3 (29:14):
My flight was on July twenty fifth, so of course
we had a going away party on July twenty fourth.

Speaker 2 (29:19):
Another sergeant there.

Speaker 3 (29:20):
He was going to San Diego and I was going
to North Carolina, And so we just celebrated, had a
good time.

Speaker 1 (29:28):
Where were Where? Where were you celebrating?

Speaker 2 (29:30):
It was a bar called Poor Bobbies.

Speaker 1 (29:34):
Might still be there.

Speaker 2 (29:35):
I don't know. It's in middle Town, New York.

Speaker 3 (29:38):
I mean, I hope that it's still there. But they
had some consequences after that, and so I didn't have
a lot to drink. I had like a couple of beers.
I think I had two beers and a shot from
what I can remember, and was the sober driver that
night for all the Marines that were with us, and

(30:00):
all the there's like we have people from the Army,
the Navy, the coast Guard.

Speaker 1 (30:04):
Yeah, because when you have a recruiting office, it's like
this door is the Marines, this door is the Navy,
this door is Air Force, Army. It just to kind
of the government gets it all. And that's where you go.
It's like a recruiting station in Middletown. If you guys
are from this area, you go up there, you'll see
what we're talking about.

Speaker 2 (30:22):
Yeah, I think it's in the same and then.

Speaker 3 (30:26):
The bar is not far from there. I can't remember
exactly even how to get there, which probably is because
I black it out. But yeah, so we went there.
We drove the government vehicle.

Speaker 2 (30:37):
Take in trouble now.

Speaker 3 (30:39):
So we drove the government vehicle over there with like
a boatload of people in the car.

Speaker 2 (30:43):
I drove to poor bobbies.

Speaker 3 (30:46):
We had a great time and then started that was
supposed to like maybe drive home or somebody was supposed
to drive home other than me, but that didn't happen.
The guy, the other guy celebrating, I have like pictures
I had, I don't know where they are now, careless,
but of him, like throwing up and like everybody celebrating.

(31:07):
I love to take photos, so I was taking photos
of everybody. I got like this new little digital camera
that was like so innovative. I was so excited about it.
And I took a bunch of pictures that night because
I was really pumped. And then at the end of
the night, it was probably like eleven o'clock, we left
and I started driving everybody home, drove a couple of people,

(31:29):
drove that sergeant home to his house, helped him get inside,
then drove the government vehicle back to the office, got
my car, and started to drive home to my mom's
house in New Jersey.

Speaker 1 (31:41):
At this time, i'm I was already I think it
was out. The out of the Morine.

Speaker 2 (31:44):
Corps got out like a week before that.

Speaker 1 (31:46):
I was out of the Marine Corps. Yeah, I must have. No,
I must have been out earlier than that. Something. I
was out. I was out of the Marine Corps. I
was working security overnight at General Dynamics. So I was
not at this party or anything like that. I was
just working, living my best life, working as a security guard. Yah.

(32:09):
I might do that again at a hospital, you never know.
Wild times.

Speaker 2 (32:13):
Yeah, So.

Speaker 3 (32:16):
I was driving and I had crossed over the border
from New York into New Jersey, and I don't remember
anything really after that. I do remember a couple of things,
and like I said in the beginning, I don't usually
talk about this stuff anymore, but I will do it
for my brother's podcast.

Speaker 2 (32:33):
He's very lucky.

Speaker 3 (32:35):
Not because I don't think it's important to your I
don't talk about it because I talk about my work,
which we'll talk about.

Speaker 2 (32:40):
Towards the end. But I drove, and I don't really
remember much.

Speaker 3 (32:47):
I just remember trying to get out of my car
and I couldn't get out the door in the front.

Speaker 2 (32:52):
My whole car was crushed. My face was bleeding. I
couldn't get out the front door.

Speaker 3 (32:56):
I couldn't get out the passenger side, so I climbed
in the back, and I remember like ripping down my
military uniforms that were all nice and pressed because I
was gonna go check into my unit in the morning.
And then I was like, oh fuck, I just got
blood all over my uniform.

Speaker 2 (33:11):
What am I gonna do?

Speaker 3 (33:13):
I was like the thought that came to my head,
and I couldn't get out the back door, and I
started to panic, so I held the door open, and
I just kicked it, kicked it, kicked it, and finally it.

Speaker 2 (33:23):
Swung open, thank god.

Speaker 3 (33:26):
And then I got out of the car and I
found like a beach towel or something, and I put
it on my.

Speaker 2 (33:29):
Face and I was like, I must have hit a deer.
What's happening?

Speaker 3 (33:37):
And then I looked towards the front of my car
and there was this yellow motorcycle lay in there. There
wasn't a person on that yellow motorcycle. It's just the motorcycle.

Speaker 2 (33:47):
And then I guess there was people there, and someone
put me.

Speaker 3 (33:51):
On a lawn chair and told me to sit down.

Speaker 2 (33:57):
I think I was like smoking a cigarette. I don't
remember remember like what was happening. I did hit my
head pretty good, and I was like obviously drinking. I
went to the hospital.

Speaker 3 (34:10):
And Ryan tells his whole other story of how I
was at the hospital that I don't actually like hearing
it because I don't remember it.

Speaker 1 (34:18):
Oh. So I got a call. I'm at ah my job.
Uh it's always hard, right, it's always hard to say
uh uh to talk about Uh. So I get a

(34:38):
call and you're kind of helpless because you can't leave
your job. Uh. I was working security, so I had
to call all these people, and the biggest thing was
to get I just wanted to get to my sister,
and I couldn't. I was like, Wayne, I was like pacing, I.

(35:00):
I gotta get up there, you know, Like it's not
only my sister, but she's a marine, you know. So
I'm like, fuck, I gotta go. And I get up
there and Kevin uh he meets me in the finally
get up there. From I was in the East Hanover,
it's like fucking an hour. I was probably doing like
fucking one hundred and ten miles an hour in my

(35:20):
Ford Ranger pickup truck. Probably didn't go that fast. I
was trying to go that fast. So I get up
to Newton Hospital and Lawn's in there. But I get
i uh met, and I just knew she was in
an accident. I didn't really know anything else. I was
just trying to get to her. So I get up there.
Kevin meets me in the parking lot and says, Ryan,

(35:43):
I think she killed somebody. I don't think he's gonna
He's gonna make it. And at that moment, I was like, oh,
like talk about trauma, you know, you. We you know,
we do things in life and you try to lead
by an example. And I don't know if I did that.

(36:06):
I don't know if I was a good enough brother.

Speaker 2 (36:08):
You know, well that's not true, you were a good
enough brother.

Speaker 1 (36:12):
But those are things that are going through my head,
my life. So, you know, go see my sister in
the hospital bed. She's out of it, like I don't
know if it was a concussion or her you know,
being in the situation she was in and just kind

(36:33):
of blacking it out like she said.

Speaker 2 (36:35):
And I still don't know what happened.

Speaker 1 (36:37):
I don't think anybody would. It is what it is,
you know.

Speaker 3 (36:43):
I really don't remember what happened. I don't even remember
being in the hospital. I don't even remember seeing you there.

Speaker 1 (36:48):
Yeah, she's there in the hospital, almost laughing like no
care in the world though, she's probably drinking and drunk,
and you know, I'm trying to eat it and hold
it in.

Speaker 2 (37:06):
And I didn't nobody had told me, No.

Speaker 1 (37:08):
One told her anything like she I think she might
even still thought she hit a deer like that kind
of thing. And there's.

Speaker 3 (37:16):
Yeah, well I knew I knew something happened to someone.
I kept asking them what happened to you.

Speaker 1 (37:22):
She's like, what happened? What happened?

Speaker 3 (37:23):
And I don't ambulance people told me he was okay,
so I thought he was okay.

Speaker 1 (37:31):
So what was this? So we're in the hospital, you know,
they're taking her blood and and everything else because of
what happened. You know, State troopers are there. They didn't
make the arrest at that time. So we leave where
I leave and I'm waiting for me. Yeah, I left.

(37:56):
I'm waiting for There's a staff sergeant and a captain
that came to the house from the Marine Corps and
I fucking ruined their lives.

Speaker 2 (38:10):
I don't even remember that.

Speaker 1 (38:12):
Well, I don't even think you were home yet.

Speaker 3 (38:13):
I was, no, I I think so the staff sargant.

Speaker 1 (38:19):
I was like, how the fuck did How is the
private taking fucking people home? Like what the fuck are
you people doing? Huh?

Speaker 2 (38:27):
Yeah?

Speaker 1 (38:28):
Yeah, Like how do you let this happen? Like, as
a marine, we're supposed to look at it after each other,
and you let this fucking happen. I fucking lost it
on this guy. I don't even remember his name, and
I'm like, how, how, how, how does this happen? How
do you do this, you know. I I always you know,
looked after my marines as much as I could. Uh,

(38:51):
my marine's a little bit dumb stuff too. I did
dumb stuff, but we always try to like look out
for them. So that was like my biggest fucking thing.
I was like, how the did you let this happen?
This is a failure of your fucking leadership for this happened.
And then you know, I made it like it's also
a failure in my leadership, right, Like as a brother,
I think about it like a lot of that as well.

(39:16):
The captain, he's a officer who knows whatever. He's there
to fucking do legal paperwork because they don't want to
be in trouble.

Speaker 2 (39:26):
Well, and they didn't get in trouble.

Speaker 1 (39:28):
Yeah, but.

Speaker 3 (39:31):
That was the captain was who told me that the
guy his name was Tom, that.

Speaker 1 (39:35):
He passed away, Tom Klosserhoff. Yeah, so I actually met Tom.
He was He used to work at a bar in Sparta,
New Jersey called Crows. It's still there. Uh, there's a
plaque of him on the wall. Ah. I knew him. Ah,
I definitely tipped him. I drank beers with him, so

(39:59):
did my buddy John and other people, especially when I
was in the Marine Corps and me too used.

Speaker 2 (40:05):
To come to my bar.

Speaker 1 (40:07):
He was a good guy.

Speaker 2 (40:09):
He was a nice guy. He was to twelve.

Speaker 3 (40:11):
I never went to cruise, but he was kind. I
remember being really nice, and his friends were nice.

Speaker 2 (40:19):
Everybody was. So that was hard when I found that
out who it was and who he was. I saw
his face.

Speaker 3 (40:24):
I don't know who he was when they told me
his name. A couple not too long later, I saw
his face.

Speaker 1 (40:32):
So that happened the biggest incident of her life. My life,
everyone's life, everyone's life. Right, that's where we're at. Lauren
was taken to jail. Yeah, a couple of days later, a.

Speaker 3 (40:51):
Couple of weeks later, two weeks later, August second. So
accident happened at like one ten in the morning on
July twenty fifth, two thousand and eight, and then August second,
two thousand and eight. I wake up in like a
tank top in basketball shorts, to cops knocking on the
door and my little sister letting them in because she

(41:13):
didn't know better.

Speaker 2 (41:14):
My parents were at work, and I think I was
maybe were not not well.

Speaker 3 (41:19):
You didn't let them in, Holina let them in I
think or Shannon, our stepsister, and they like were in
my bedroom and I was like, can I put more
clothes on please? And they said no. And then I
was like, can I call my mom? You were not
there because you were working in the morning. They came
back early, and I couldn't leave the kids alone. There

(41:41):
were babies, like my sister was what I was twenty two,
so my sister was twelve, and then the other one was.

Speaker 2 (41:48):
Like thirteen or fourteen something like that, and.

Speaker 3 (41:51):
I couldn't leave them alone or I didn't want to,
and my mom worked a mile away, so she came
flying home. They called my lawyer because they in that
two weeks my parents knew I had to.

Speaker 2 (42:02):
Get a warrior. So we got that settled and I
was arrested. And it was like.

Speaker 3 (42:10):
The craziest experience of my life because I never had
gotten in trouble before. I've done stupid stuff, but I'd
never been in the back of a cop car. I
had never gotten in trouble at all. So I walk
into the jail and I get fingerprinted and looked at badly,
and they take my military ID and they take my
ID and they copy it, and that's in my record forever.

Speaker 2 (42:33):
I'll follow you wherever you go. And then they put
you in a jail cell.

Speaker 3 (42:38):
And I was freezing because I said, I was in
a tank top and basketball storks like that.

Speaker 2 (42:42):
Was it and flip flops. And then they processed me.

Speaker 3 (42:47):
Well, my mom said she was going to bail me out,
and then they told me, you can't get bailed out
from the jail. I mean from the precinct. You have
to go to the.

Speaker 2 (42:57):
Jail to get bailed out. So that was fun.

Speaker 3 (43:00):
So I got processed from there the police department to
how they process you. I got processed into the Sessex
County jail. I spent like two and a half hours
in that jail cell. And at that time I was
like more than enough than anybody ever has to do.
Like I learned my lesson the moment that I realized
that man died, and I learned it again in that
two and a half hours. So I got pulled out

(43:24):
of the how you left the prison or I left
the jail. My mom got me bailed out. But that
was like at the time, I kept saying, that was
the worst two and a half hours in my life.
I don't know how I'm gonna do ten years, because
that's what I was facing.

Speaker 1 (43:38):
The minimum made Jersey at the time, it's five years.

Speaker 2 (43:45):
No, it's ten years.

Speaker 3 (43:46):
Or the minimum is three years for a vehicular howmicite charged,
which is what I got charged with in the second degree,
is a three year minimum mandatory minimum. So when I
got bailed out, I was home for fourteen months.

Speaker 2 (44:02):
And then I revoked my bail.

Speaker 1 (44:04):
We revoked the bail. It was more of a talk
between like the family and be like, listen, a minimum
it's three years, You're just wasting time. Yeah, so go
to the jail. We can see you. It's we're literally
fifteen minutes away. We could see you more often. There.
Go start racking that time. That's where you're going to

(44:26):
have to go. It's going to happen like we're not.
There's no joke. This is like real life. So that's
where we're at.

Speaker 3 (44:34):
The month our sister started high school, I started my
prison career. And so yeah, September twenty fourth, two thousand
and nine, which is also my suber date, I went
to the jail, and I want to say that to
be like really clear. We talked about cop and mean
mechanisms in the beginning on, Like, how you cope that
fourteen months? That first six months, I didn't drink, but

(44:57):
I did start drinking after six months, and whether my
family knew that or not, I was doing it, and
I was doing it a lot, and I was worse
than I had ever been in my life drinking.

Speaker 2 (45:06):
I didn't know how to handle it.

Speaker 3 (45:08):
I was going through court to tell me that I
killed somebody, an innocent man, and I didn't mean to.
It doesn't matter who wasn't here anymore. And then no,
like seeing his family in court.

Speaker 2 (45:20):
I didn't know how to cope with that.

Speaker 3 (45:22):
I was twenty three at the time, or twenty four,
twenty three, twenty three, and twenty four, those one for
fourteen months. My birthday's August six, so I got rested
four days before my twenty third birthday.

Speaker 2 (45:36):
But I don't know how to deal with that, Like
no one tells.

Speaker 3 (45:39):
You how to deal with that, Like I know people
who do that today because of the work I do.

Speaker 2 (45:45):
I don't know how to tell them how to deal
with that or how to cope with that what they've done.

Speaker 1 (45:49):
But you don't live with it. I don't think you've
ever really you know, you hurt some money, or you
kill somebody, whether it's I think that's a big thing too,
like wartime like PTSD and all this stuff, like these
guys are killing people and that's like devastating, like it
it's so much trauma.

Speaker 3 (46:10):
Read on killing. I don't know who wrote it, but
that book on killing talks about the trauma of killing
your same species, whether it be bear on bear bear bear,
moose on moose, or a person on human on human.
Like killing someone changes your brain chemistry because you're not

(46:31):
supposed to kill your own species.

Speaker 1 (46:33):
And I think that's like, you know, there's a lot
of trauma, like in general, I'm currently a part time
police officer, but the trauma of the military stuff to
now dealing with trauma of seeing like death and things
like that. It also puts a different perspective on life.

(46:53):
Certain things don't matter as much when you have uh,
when you see that, I don't think, Yeah.

Speaker 3 (47:02):
Changes changes you And for me, it changes me really
really bad at first, like I was not good and
who could be, Like the therapist didn't know how to
therapize me.

Speaker 1 (47:11):
Well, like even so when I went I went to
get Lawren's gatherings out of the she had a uh
Doon Dodge Neon, Silver Dodge Neon. I will never forget
that car. I had to go to the State Trooper
barracks talk to them. They walked me to the car.
I was with you, but I don't think you. I

(47:34):
don't think you left the car. I think you stayed
in my truck or something like that.

Speaker 3 (47:38):
I was in the Captain's car at that time, but yeah,
I think so.

Speaker 1 (47:43):
Yeah. We we went and got whatever out of the car.
But the car was blood spry spattered. It was like
it was like pink, the pink ness it was all
over the car, the uh you know, the just you
kind of see the wreckage of what happened. And it's

(48:03):
something that will never ever leave my mind. Ever, I
don't think it ever will leave. I will tell the
story to Lane, hopefully maybe he'll listen to this when
he's older, not tomorrow.

Speaker 3 (48:18):
I tell I tell like my friends kids. My friend
has a twenty year old kid who she a little wild.
We like her, we love her, but she a little wild.
Told her my story her to tell her boyfriend and God,
you're not with that man anymore, but to share, like, hey,
it could happen to you. I was twenty two. I
had no idea that drive and drunk whatever lead.

Speaker 2 (48:40):
To what it did.

Speaker 1 (48:41):
We like when we grew up that that was the norm.
It was McDonald's cup, beer in the McDonald's cup growing up,
you know, beer in this thing.

Speaker 2 (48:48):
And then so wine and your Stanley cup.

Speaker 1 (48:51):
Yeah, yeah, we didn't have Stanley cup. We had McDonald's.

Speaker 3 (48:55):
No, I'm just warning the people that might have wine
and their Stanley cup right now.

Speaker 1 (48:58):
I mean, there's the signature of the beast, right A
lot of people do that. Tell you? Leander law is
if you have a child in the car and you
get pulled over for DWI, you're getting a felony for
every kid that is under the age of eighteen in
the car. So if you happen to be drinking and
if I pull you over, I'm probably going to arrest

(49:21):
you for it.

Speaker 3 (49:22):
And I hope he wrote the book at you because
you deserve it, and then you deserve rehab, not prison.

Speaker 2 (49:28):
Prison is not for a person.

Speaker 1 (49:30):
So what so you all of that incident happened, We
talked about it, we got it out. What were the
positive things of your jail sentence, in your jail time
or your prison time?

Speaker 2 (49:43):
So I got like a five year prison sentence three
years parle.

Speaker 3 (49:47):
But the blessing and going well, I'll say the blessing
and going to prison was that like two days after
I went to prison, they asked me if I had
a gd or high school diploma and I said, yeah,
I got high school to Oma and they said, can
you get it.

Speaker 2 (50:02):
Here like tomorrow? And I said, can I call my mom?

Speaker 3 (50:05):
And my mother, who is crazy but a me angel,
she went and got my She went to my high school.
She told them what was going on, and she said,
I need her transcripts right now, and they got them
and they got them over to the prison that next day.

Speaker 2 (50:23):
I don't know what she was doing.

Speaker 3 (50:24):
She was probably working, and she went all the way
to the school was forty five minutes from her house
and got me those transcripts, and so I was able
to take the placement test with the program at the
time was called Clinton College Bound Program inside the prison
and started taking some college classes. And this woman who
is my dear friend.

Speaker 2 (50:44):
Today she actually calls me her daughter. Her name is Sheila.

Speaker 3 (50:47):
Myman signed me up for classes sixteen something years ago,
in ten fifteen years ago, so twenty ten, I got
signed up.

Speaker 1 (50:56):
I opened the gym ten.

Speaker 2 (50:58):
Yeah, so I started college in two to be over
to the gym and to help with the different world.
And I.

Speaker 3 (51:07):
Started classes and it changed my perspective. I love to read.
I did six months in jail or something like more
than that, maybe, and I read.

Speaker 2 (51:17):
All the time.

Speaker 3 (51:18):
My sister and my dad would buy books and I
would give them back to them and we'd just do
this book exchange. I read hundreds of books, whatever I
can get my hands on. But it's expensive habit when
you're getting books from Barnes and Noble because it's the only
place you can get them from.

Speaker 2 (51:31):
And Amazon really didn't exist then.

Speaker 1 (51:33):
I mean maybe I don't even know today is.

Speaker 3 (51:36):
Now so and you can only get them from the publisher.
And so I'd get all these books and they had
to be paperback.

Speaker 2 (51:43):
And then.

Speaker 3 (51:45):
When I went to prison, I recognized that, like the
phone calls cost twenty five dollars and the books cost
twenty five dollars each, and I was getting a lot
of that. So I started college so that I could read.
I didn't start college so I can get a degree.
But it's funny because I in the military, so I
can have money to go to college.

Speaker 2 (52:02):
I lost that maybe I'll get it back one day,
probably not.

Speaker 3 (52:05):
But I went to prison, which is like another institution,
and I started to get college and changed my whole life.
Like I learned how to do a percentage in college
in prison. Doctor Hemlow taught me. And he knows that
I love him and I respect him. Today I know
how to do a percentage because of that man. Not

(52:26):
that I wasn't taught when I was younger. I just
didn't understand math or what it was about. But this
guy took his time to teach us for people who
were incarcerated, and like we're the lowest of the low
at that point, right, Like that's how I felt. And
then this man was like these men, these women, these
people that I've never met, who were never incarcerated, were
investing their time in US. So in twenty twelve, that

(52:51):
ENJSTEP program in New Jersey, Consortium of something I can't remember,
but NJSTEP you can look that up, was started and
it was part of Rutgers University. And so then we
got like more college classes and they were coming from
Ardon Valley Community College, Drew University, Rutgers University, Princeton was
coming in to tutor US Princeton University, and like I

(53:16):
started to realize like, oh, this is like amazing, like
this is what we need, so.

Speaker 2 (53:22):
What the world needs.

Speaker 3 (53:23):
And the women around me, who like some women didn't
even know how to read when they went into prison,
they were just like all of a sudden learning learning
all this stuff, and they were reading and we were
having debates, and we had these classes. They were called
inside out classes, so we had drew university students coming
in to learn with us, and it was an incredible
experience and it brought me outside of that prison, Like

(53:47):
I was no longer locked up when I was in
that college classroom within those walls, and it really changed
my life. So when I got out of prison, I
was like even luckier and actually let me go back.

Speaker 2 (54:01):
When I was in prison.

Speaker 3 (54:02):
I used to also do this thing called Project Pride,
where they would take two people who were incarcerated in
the women's facility and in the men's facility, so there
were be four of us, and they would take us
to like schools and colleges, churches, and we would go
tell our ten minute story of what we did and
how we got to where we are and we'd be

(54:22):
in our khakis, like our prison khakis. That's what they
used to wear then. I think they were orange now
I'm not sure.

Speaker 2 (54:28):
But we would go out and we'd be able to
go get real food and go into community.

Speaker 3 (54:33):
We didn't have to wear handcuffs, and we would tell
our a story. So I told my story at this
place called The Hub in New Brunswick, New Jersey, and
I met these two incredible people. I met a lot
of incredible people, but I remember to Terrell Blunt and
Brian Snyder, these two men who had been through the
program that I wanted to go into but I didn't

(54:54):
really think it existed.

Speaker 2 (54:55):
And they told me like, no, no, no, it exists.
You can come to Rutgers after prison. I was like,
shut up the heck up, Like that's never going to happen,
Like how could that happen. I was like, yeah, it's
not going to be me, Like that's so crazy.

Speaker 3 (55:08):
And Terrell now runs I'm actually wearing the shirt right now,
a formerly incarcerated college graduate network and he's a good
friend of mine. But I met him sixteen years ago
when I was in prison, and he told me I
could go to Rutgers and I believed him, and I
did the.

Speaker 2 (55:23):
Best I could at a four point zero.

Speaker 3 (55:25):
Getting out of prison did not continue a four point
zero when I got out of prison, but I went
to Rutgords University, where I was a dropout from John Jay.

Speaker 2 (55:35):
College of Criminal Justice.

Speaker 3 (55:37):
And now I was going to one of the most
prestigious schools I think outside of the Ivy League Scarlet Knights,
Ghostcarlet Knights. But I got my degree from Rutgords University
and took me a long time. I had some tragedy
while I was there, but I did all that. I
went to college for three years sober, and now I

(56:03):
work in the prison education field because I remember being
that person that was in that seat, and I get
to be the person. I get to be the shield
of my men now and sign people up around the
country for college.

Speaker 2 (56:17):
So I have somewhere around a thousand.

Speaker 3 (56:20):
Students that are in the program that I currently direct,
and maybe we'll transition into something new soon. I think
my time there might be done and move forward into
another career that's in the higher education and prison field.

Speaker 2 (56:36):
But all that to say, my life was pretty shitty.

Speaker 3 (56:41):
And educating education started to make me blossom like I
hated myself, hated like the most negative self talk. Like,
anybody on here can put whatever negative comment.

Speaker 2 (56:53):
They want because you're not going to hurt me. I've
said it worse about.

Speaker 1 (56:58):
I'm like, could you just tell me what is wrong
with the fucking gym so I could fix it. You're
not going to fucking hurt my feelings. It doesn't matter.
It's okay. Just tell me. I don't give a shit negative.
You're not going to hurt my feelings. I'll figure it out.
It's okay. I got fixed skin, whatever, I've lived with
crazier life and whatever you got.

Speaker 2 (57:15):
You can't say anything. I haven't said worse about myself.

Speaker 1 (57:19):
Whatever. It's fine, So you know.

Speaker 3 (57:21):
I mean now I help people so they don't have
to hate themselves for as long as I did, you know,
and like try to get people out of the system,
because as you heard before, I said, people don't go
to shouldn't go to prison, They should go to rehab,
or they should go to something to train them to
how to be like good citizens.

Speaker 1 (57:37):
I guess well, even so, I was also a corrections officer.
I did. I did three years in my federal work
release programs called being a corrections officer. You get locked
up for a couple of hours, they pay you a
little bit more than the inmates, and then they let
you go home.

Speaker 2 (57:54):
Incarcerated people humanizing language.

Speaker 1 (57:57):
Sir, Yeah, I don't know what you're talking about.

Speaker 3 (58:00):
Y'all should know humanizing languages. Sorry, I'm gonna say it.
Humanizing language is not calling people by the name of inmate, prisoner,
or et cetera, but using incarcerated people or people who live.

Speaker 2 (58:15):
In a prison.

Speaker 3 (58:15):
You'll hear me say that, like I used to live
in a prison, formally incarcerated.

Speaker 1 (58:20):
I was released from a prison daily and I had
to go back to get paid.

Speaker 3 (58:25):
So we won't call you a corrections officer because that
is not a humanizing language.

Speaker 2 (58:30):
You were a person who was on work release from
a prison.

Speaker 1 (58:35):
Where I was going with that, but.

Speaker 2 (58:38):
This is what happens when you're.

Speaker 1 (58:40):
But even that, like, uh, you know, so so being
a correct officer whatever you want to call me, Uh,
you know, when I was there, you're there. The punishment
is you being there. There's not more punishment need to
be made. I think when I was in the brig
so it was a big lesson learned right As a

(59:06):
corrections officer in the Marine Corps. It was like, these
guys did something wrong outside of here. They are here.
Their punishment is being here. We are not supposed to
make their life miserable. Here is what it is. These
people will leave the facility they are in and they
will be your neighbor. You have to treat them with
respect like fair, firman, and partial. It is what it is.

(59:29):
This is these are the laws, These are the rules.
This is what you gotta do.

Speaker 3 (59:33):
And the funny thing is that you say that, is
that that's true because most people will get out.

Speaker 2 (59:38):
Of prison and they will be your neighbors and they
will be the people that.

Speaker 3 (59:41):
Are maybe educating your children or you never know, doing
the things like like I have friends that are professors,
cooking your food whatever, you know, all kinds of stuff,
you know, being an engineer for your house, an architect
or a landscape designer.

Speaker 2 (59:57):
We can do anything. Now there's your lawyers, know what
I mean, Like we got this now. Yeah, like times
have changed.

Speaker 1 (01:00:04):
But I think I think that's like a huge thing,
like like you got to treat people right and they'll
be able to talk to them and things like that
and make make make things make sense.

Speaker 3 (01:00:13):
And so like a prison is meant to do that,
although the American society changed it to be punishment. But
when we invest in people, they don't go back.

Speaker 1 (01:00:22):
That's the goal, right, they don't want to.

Speaker 2 (01:00:24):
To go back.

Speaker 1 (01:00:25):
We don't want you to go back. I whytt you
stay here? Well, not here, go back to fucking Colorado, Polae,
you miss me?

Speaker 2 (01:00:32):
Shut your mouth, all right?

Speaker 1 (01:00:34):
So you did say I don't know if you heard that. Guys,
she did say there was some other trauma, if you
want to get into that a little bit, my other trauma.
So you she she is not going to say it,
I'll say it. So she used to talk the Pride thing.
She met her husband's brother.

Speaker 2 (01:00:56):
Oh yeah, yeah, so I don't. I don't actually ever
talk about this. It is kind of funny.

Speaker 1 (01:01:01):
Yeah, so bring.

Speaker 2 (01:01:04):
Yeah, don't talk about it.

Speaker 3 (01:01:06):
So when I did Project Pride, I met my brother,
my husband, my brother. He is my brother, Pierce, you're
my brother. I met Pierce Reid, who so a lot
of people know me as Lauren Reid.

Speaker 2 (01:01:22):
And Pierce was incarcerated for whatever he was incarcerated for.
I'm not going to talk about it because it doesn't matter.

Speaker 3 (01:01:30):
But and so is his brother, he was incarcerated, but
they were identical twins, and I think I said.

Speaker 2 (01:01:35):
Like, here's your hot but I don't think I could
ever date you. I don't know what I said, but
like that's how I felt like.

Speaker 3 (01:01:40):
He was a gorgeous man, and so is his brother,
and they were both incredible humans, just like this good
heart raised by like two amazing people who messed up
a couple of times in their life and went to prison.
And Pierce got nine year prison sense and Jacob was
his brother, who had a seven year prison sense and

(01:02:00):
he was in the halfway house.

Speaker 2 (01:02:01):
And Peerce said, I think you and my brother would
get along. And we started writing. And the first letter
that was like two years before I got out, maybe
or maybe less.

Speaker 1 (01:02:10):
I don't remember.

Speaker 2 (01:02:12):
I can't remember tying.

Speaker 3 (01:02:13):
Very well sometimes, but the first letter I got from
Jacob it said that that I would be his wife
one day, and all like, who is this crazy person
in a prison?

Speaker 2 (01:02:24):
What is that? Well that kind of happened, you know,
and so.

Speaker 3 (01:02:32):
Uh we started writing back and forth with like multiple
letters a week, going back and forth while I was incarcerated,
and I really adored him.

Speaker 2 (01:02:40):
He was just so kind and nice. And then he would.

Speaker 3 (01:02:43):
Play music on this like Princeton radio station for us,
and he was just like an incredible like he was
a Christian man.

Speaker 2 (01:02:53):
He was very good person.

Speaker 3 (01:02:56):
And then I stopped hearing from him, and it was
like November and I was getting out in December, and
I was like, what the heck is going on? And
we had plans to meet and all this stuff. And
then I went on a Project Pride session and Pearce
didon't really talked to me, and I'm like, what is
going on, bro, Like what's happening? And during that he

(01:03:19):
told me his brother was diagnosed with esophageal cancer while
incarcerated in a halfway house and was sent back to prison.
And so that's why we lost contact. Well, it was
pretty bad. I didn't know a lot of details at
that time. But when I got out of prison, I
reconnected with Pierce's girlfriend.

Speaker 2 (01:03:41):
Her name is Tara, now Tara Reid, his wife. They
have beautiful children.

Speaker 3 (01:03:49):
But I connected with Tara and we talked a little bit,
and then she got me connected to Jacob when he
got out.

Speaker 2 (01:03:58):
Very quickly we fell in love again. You know somebody
pretty well when you write letters with them.

Speaker 3 (01:04:04):
I have a forever stamp tattoo to my arm to
represent that kind of love.

Speaker 2 (01:04:10):
And he.

Speaker 3 (01:04:15):
And I like started dating very quickly. We got engaged
in July July twelfth of twenty thirteen, so I was
only out for a little bit like seven months or
eight months.

Speaker 2 (01:04:26):
And then.

Speaker 3 (01:04:29):
We got married on December twenty seventh, twenty fourteen. And
then we lost Jacob to that terrible cancer on January twentieth,
twenty fifteen.

Speaker 2 (01:04:44):
And so there's a lot of details in there that
we're talking about.

Speaker 1 (01:04:49):
Like you guys get the gist of it, yea. So
they had this. So this is why I wanted to
bring this up because I asked people it's a wonderful question.
But I will ask in a second. But you know,
I've met Jacob like once or twice. I always seemed
like a great guy. Other than you know, he was
way down in Jersey. I was married at the time,

(01:05:10):
living you know, my own life and doing my own thing.
More was found in South Jersey, so we met a
handful of times. It was brutal Man's brutal story. So
for you, my question, what does love mean to you?

Speaker 3 (01:05:31):
Oh, love is unconditional and a dumb't end That's how
I feel about it, especially from that. I mean, I've
had like tumultuous love situations after that, But Jacob told
me what real love was about. It didn't matter what
you looked like, if you had a feeding tool hole
in your stomach, like, it didn't matter. Towards the end,

(01:05:52):
it didn't matter that I had to like walk him
to the bathroom and help him in there. He was
a six foot person who made like two pounds. I'm
five foot. It didn't matter that he couldn't breathe. Towards
the end, I held his hand to take.

Speaker 2 (01:06:07):
His last breath. That's love, like you be there. You're
there unconditionally.

Speaker 3 (01:06:13):
And I was asked this question before I started, Like
I was questioning.

Speaker 2 (01:06:18):
Should I be with this guy like his cancer, like
should I do it? And this guy that worked for
mom and I can't remember his name right now, it's
like escaping me.

Speaker 3 (01:06:26):
He was a mechanic and he lost a person too,
and I can't believe I can't remember his name.

Speaker 2 (01:06:31):
But he asked me, He's like, would you be sad
if he died?

Speaker 3 (01:06:36):
Would you be devastated if he died regardless of you
guys being together now, Like if you, guys, if you
never talked to him again, how would you feel when
he passes? I was like, it would be the worst
thing in the world. And He's like, then go live
with him. And so love is living, love is unconditional,
love never ends.

Speaker 2 (01:06:53):
Because I probably loved Jacob today as much as I
loved him to.

Speaker 3 (01:06:57):
Day that I found that answer right, I was living
and unconditional.

Speaker 1 (01:07:04):
Hm, I love that. Uh So we're a little over
an hour. Uh it's okay. Uh So I'll ask this question.
What was the memory that you have me you're teaching

(01:07:26):
you something or something it's so bad.

Speaker 2 (01:07:32):
So I think it goes back to when all.

Speaker 3 (01:07:33):
Was on like Bill and you started burstcer whatever fitness
out of the gym or out.

Speaker 2 (01:07:39):
Of the garage.

Speaker 1 (01:07:40):
Yeah, I started. I started a gym years ago because
I wanted right. It was like because that's like norweg
Viking Norwegian.

Speaker 2 (01:07:51):
Like it's like cops go on that, there's cops and guys,
what the.

Speaker 1 (01:07:57):
Hell there's something going on. Berserker is like the the
guys like uh you know Norwegian lore. They would throw
their like wolve skins over and fucking take drugs and
get crazy and I'm fucking nuts.

Speaker 3 (01:08:13):
So yeah, so yes he was because he taught me
about this thing called CrossFit and I was like, yeah, sure,
I'll try it.

Speaker 2 (01:08:20):
And I'm like, holy.

Speaker 1 (01:08:22):
Shit, like what is this stuff?

Speaker 3 (01:08:25):
It was intent and I was like, you're out of
your You're out of your mind, like why would anybody
want to do this?

Speaker 2 (01:08:32):
Why would anybody want to do this?

Speaker 3 (01:08:34):
Why would we want to lift like concrete things? And
like no, like nobody wants to do that. And I
don't know if you have maybe got this. But I
don't like working out as much as my brother does.

Speaker 2 (01:08:45):
I'm not a fan. I do it sometimes because I
have to. I do have my weightlifting schooes with me.
I plan to do some weightlifting stuff, but I don't
like working out as much as he does.

Speaker 3 (01:08:56):
But he made me and I remember doing like I
remember you teach me like CrossFit then and I was.

Speaker 2 (01:09:02):
Like, what a wad? What the heck is a wad?

Speaker 3 (01:09:05):
Anyway, so we did? I think you made me run
up and down the hill of the driveway. I was like,
this is terrible because who wants to run?

Speaker 2 (01:09:12):
Not any marine I know. And then I remember like
doing that, like how excited you were about CrossFit?

Speaker 3 (01:09:22):
And then I remember hearing that you opened your first gym, and.

Speaker 2 (01:09:25):
I was like, I can't wait to go see it.

Speaker 3 (01:09:28):
So, of course, now that I'm free, I'm going to
say this my second day of freedom, I broke every
role in the book. When I was on parole and
I left the parole office after checking in, and my sister,
my fellow the accomplice over there, she brought me across
the state lines so I could come get first Chinese
food at the Green Lake.

Speaker 2 (01:09:49):
See what is it called sing Loom? Yeah, let me.

Speaker 1 (01:09:53):
Tell you well, sing Loom.

Speaker 2 (01:09:58):
Thank you for your friend.

Speaker 1 (01:09:59):
You are the best.

Speaker 2 (01:10:00):
I thought about them for five years in prison.

Speaker 3 (01:10:02):
So I came home and I got them, and then
we came to my brother's gym, which was like this massive.

Speaker 2 (01:10:07):
Warehouse that was like I was like, what is happening
when I walked in. I remember walking into his gym
being like, oh, like.

Speaker 4 (01:10:15):
This is way bigger than the crash, and being like oh,
there was like a lot of people here and they're
like all looking at me, because like, of course, when
you come out of prison, it's a weird thing that
everybody knows what you just did.

Speaker 3 (01:10:26):
I was home for like less than forty eight I
was home for like less than twenty four hours and
I was already breaking off. I came and I remember
seeing the gym and like I could picture it right now,
like as it's right in front of me.

Speaker 1 (01:10:38):
Wow, that was it. I think it was our second location.

Speaker 2 (01:10:42):
It was your second location actually yep. And that big
warehouse I think I did. I met Patty. I think
I met Palie too, maybe.

Speaker 1 (01:10:55):
Maybe was probably well she probably.

Speaker 2 (01:11:00):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (01:11:01):
And then I met I saw Katie unfortunately never really no,
did I see it.

Speaker 2 (01:11:08):
Yeah, I didn't like her. I'll just put that out there.

Speaker 1 (01:11:11):
Sorry.

Speaker 2 (01:11:12):
Katie was not a fan, thank god. And then I
met like a bunch of people.

Speaker 3 (01:11:18):
I believe I met Nikki, who I really liked, or
very soon after that, I met Nikki, and then I
just I met like a lot of folks that probably
went there, and I just felt very like scared to
be in that place.

Speaker 2 (01:11:33):
But I just loved how you were.

Speaker 3 (01:11:35):
Like this is my home, this is where I and
then look like I'm looking around us right now in
this like weight lifting room.

Speaker 2 (01:11:43):
It's pretty incredible.

Speaker 1 (01:11:46):
I think that's it.

Speaker 2 (01:11:48):
That's it.

Speaker 1 (01:11:48):
Oh.

Speaker 2 (01:11:49):
Also just to say I was able to bring someone
who I've talked about Ryan to for a long time
and he has his own gym in his little basement.
Now that he has is like a beautiful house for himself.

Speaker 3 (01:12:02):
But he did thirty years in prison, thirty one years
in prison, and he works for me as a professor.
He got his degree while he was inside, and I
had the privilege to bring him here the other day.
So I hire people who are currently incarcerated to teach
for my program and pay them a living wage. So

(01:12:24):
what we pay people on the outside, they have paypall
during incarcerated, and Colorado is amazing and lets us do that.

Speaker 2 (01:12:29):
But he was my first professor who was incarcerated.

Speaker 3 (01:12:33):
I hired him thirteen days after I got hired myself,
and he got clemency on January thirty first of last year.
He was free because of the work that he did
while he was inside for education, and I got to

(01:12:53):
bring him here.

Speaker 2 (01:12:55):
His name is David.

Speaker 3 (01:12:56):
I won't say his last name, but I got to
bring him here to see the gym, and he was
very impressed.

Speaker 2 (01:13:01):
And he's like this outshiges my little gym in my basement.
But I've talked about you since he was inside.

Speaker 3 (01:13:07):
When he was telling me he worked out and I
talk about CrossFit with all my people in like the
Freemont Prison, and there's another prison. Why am I remembering it?
Just there's like a few prisons that in Lineman Correctional.

Speaker 2 (01:13:20):
Facility out in Colorado.

Speaker 3 (01:13:21):
I talk about your gym and they do crossment inside,
and so I'm always sharing like the work that you
guys do over here, so that they're inspired to do
that when they get out too.

Speaker 1 (01:13:31):
Well, thank you, because I mean these gyms all over
the country have changed people's lives countless, lives countless and
making people better, and that's what it's all about. Like
you know, we started talking about leadership, right, like you
always should get better, you should be better. I think
Warren is a shining example of her life went a

(01:13:53):
fucking way. It went away. Now they went she went away, right,
But her life went away, that went down a path
that is not the fucking best path, to say the least, right,
So she spent every day reading, learning, trying to improve
herself and her circumstance that she's in. And she's currently

(01:14:15):
still doing the same thing. So not only what you're
seeing in the gym, like what we try to do
in here is every day get better and better and better.
You better work out harder, put more weight on the bar,
do things, you know, go home. I just was out
of leadership thing myself, right, But the girl was talking
about nurshing, like what do you nourish your body with?

(01:14:38):
Not only your body but your mind? Right? Like what
are you taking in? What news are you watching? What
are you hearing? You know? What? What music do you
listen to? What's nourishing your soul? You know? So I
think that that is kind of the you know, if
I had a theme for my podcast, it's like love

(01:14:59):
and then I had to really dig into people's like
how you have improved your life over time? And I
don't know a better story. I don't know a better thing,
and say, like you have done it. You have you

(01:15:20):
were good and you went way down and now you're
way back up, leading from the front like a marine
wood in a field that needs it. You know, Guys
are coming back from PTSD incidents and things like that
and drinking and doing the things that you did. They're
you know, causing these issues and you're going to see

(01:15:40):
that all over the place and happen more and more.

Speaker 3 (01:15:43):
Right, And I have military prisons that I have a
correspondence program and have a lot of military.

Speaker 1 (01:15:49):
Guys that I was like, that's how you do it, right.
Those are you know, Levenworth is one of them. But
those are the things that we see in here, right,
And you want to get you know, I want to
start at the VA and get people help and we
want to move on from there. But you know, you've
got to get better every day, and I think you're

(01:16:12):
leading from the front on that.

Speaker 2 (01:16:13):
So thank you.

Speaker 3 (01:16:14):
Can I say one last thing, I think if you
leave a podcast, I hope that you guys heard us
talk about that negative self talk. My brother has it,
I have it. You have to break it, and like
how do you break it? How do you stop thinking
negative about yourself? And like how do you stop saying
that worst thing? And then like maybe you could be

(01:16:35):
hurt by somebody when you stop doing that. But I've
worked really hard over this last year in this leadership
program to take compliments and to stop doing the negative
self talk and to let people like to receive the compliments.

Speaker 2 (01:16:50):
I'm getting to like the good things that people.

Speaker 3 (01:16:52):
Are seeing in me, and so my wish for anybody
listening to this is that you can do that too.

Speaker 2 (01:16:58):
You can overcome those negative of thoughts and that you
can receive all the good in this world.

Speaker 1 (01:17:06):
Yeah. I'm the same way. I don't take album as well,
like I'm like, but you did awesome, Like you know, I.

Speaker 2 (01:17:14):
Didn't say I received that, thank you.

Speaker 1 (01:17:17):
Yeah, thank you very much. I've been way way better
at that because I suck with that. It's also like
but negative self talk of like trying to fix that
as well, Right, you just said I suck at.

Speaker 2 (01:17:32):
It is something I'm working on.

Speaker 1 (01:17:33):
Yeah, I'm working on me. I'm so gentle.

Speaker 2 (01:17:38):
I'm a gentle Golden Beer.

Speaker 1 (01:17:41):
I'm trying to work on it. So if you listen
this far, thank you, guys. I think that's going to
be it. All right, thank you, Thank you. Lauren. You
can follow her stuff.

Speaker 3 (01:17:55):
On where oh, you can follow me on Instagram at
Milo's underscore Mamma underscore Hello Hello, because that's where like
I put my life on there.

Speaker 1 (01:18:10):
Yeah, and then if you follow Jim do all that
in Trepid Golden This is Intrepid Golden Podcast. We're at
the end of this our greatest one of the greatest
men in our life sing to the Marine Corps him,
We're gonna have it at the end. That's our uncle Mel.
We just got to throw a hands in there and
emotional about that too.

Speaker 2 (01:18:31):
Oh seven eighths, well.

Speaker 1 (01:18:33):
We're in it at seven eighths seventy eight minutes. All right.
Thank you guys for listening this far, like, share, follow,
get it out there. Thank you, have a good one. Bye.

Speaker 2 (01:18:43):
Hey,