Recent Articles and Videos 

As a former firefighter, it didn’t matter to me who called 9-1-1. My job was to show up and try to mitigate the situation.  The most verbal abuse I ever received at scene was actually from the family of a female Caucasian after the hospital called the code (CPR) we had been working for over 45 minut...

I Had to Fail

Over and over again, I had to fail. I made the same mistakes over and over and over again.

Maybe I need to start with the mistakes I made along the way.

After that first day of the fire, the peer support team had a presence at the incident base. They were hard to miss being near ...

Recovery from Post-Traumatic Stress

Lessons Learned: TIME

If an athlete tears a ligament in their knee, there is a relatively straight line of recovery. First, there is surgery to repair the damage. Then there is a rest period to allow the injury and surgical site to heal. Finally, there is physic...

On September 12, 2015, the Valley Fire exploded in Lake County, California. By the following morning, the fire had made a 12-mile run as it destroyed 2000 structures, burned four firefighters and killed five people. Two months later, at a fundraiser to help fire victims, several of my fellow firefig...

Why? 

I get asked WHY an awful lot.

“Why are you hurting yourself, day after day?”

“Why are you doing all of this crazy stuff?”

“But you’re retired! Haven’t you done enough?”

“Hasn’t your Post-Traumatic Stress Injury cost you too much already?”

My answer?

Because…

I hurt even more when I hea...