Episode Transcript
[00:00:02] Speaker A: I'm Alex Stone, former military service member and law enforcement officer, now CEO of Echelon Protected Services, one of the fastest growing private security firms on the west coast. And this is ride along, where our guest and I witness firsthand the issues affecting our community.
I believe our proven method of enacting meaningful change through compassion and understanding is the best way to make our streets a safer place and truly achieve security through community.
Hey, Alex Stone, welcome back to the ride along. We're here in Portland, Oregon, in studio with one of my best friends, one of my great teammates, Michael Bach. Michael Bach, say hi to the folks. Give us a little bit of a rundown of who you are.
[00:00:57] Speaker B: Part of me really wants to start this by just looking at you and saying, good evening.
Well, I'm Michael Bach. We've known each other for several years now, and, yeah, I hope this meeting will be different than our first, because the first time we met, I got my car towed, so.
[00:01:15] Speaker A: Yeah, and we got shot at it.
[00:01:18] Speaker B: Almost a long story.
Yeah.
[00:01:22] Speaker A: Good. So your background, you've been a reserve deputy.
[00:01:26] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:01:27] Speaker A: You've been an EMT for years.
[00:01:30] Speaker B: Well, I've been an EMT for.
Was it 15 years? I.
You would put me on spotlight? I don't know, it's probably close to 15 years, maybe more.
[00:01:39] Speaker A: So, emergency medical technician?
[00:01:40] Speaker B: That's right, I'm an EMT. Basic.
[00:01:42] Speaker A: And you worked in, you worked in the ER before, right?
[00:01:45] Speaker B: Yeah, I worked in Emmanuel.
[00:01:47] Speaker A: So the Emanuel is a. What level hospital is that? You know, those.
[00:01:51] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:01:52] Speaker A: So level four trauma center, is it?
[00:01:54] Speaker B: No, it's actually a level one trauma center.
[00:01:55] Speaker A: Level one and trauma center. Okay, so that's the highest.
[00:01:57] Speaker B: Right, right.
[00:01:59] Speaker A: So if you get shot, you wanna go there.
[00:02:01] Speaker B: Correct.
[00:02:01] Speaker A: And you worked in the ER at that location?
[00:02:03] Speaker B: That's correct, yeah. Yeah. The whole story is a little bit long and convoluted, but I could probably sum it up pretty quickly.
I originally left high school and was going to Bible college. And at Bible college you required to do a student ministry, which just meant that you had to be involved somewhere and sort of practicing the trade of loving people, which is really hard.
But anyway, so, yeah, you do need a lot of practice at it.
While there, I got connected with a good friend of a man who became a really good friend of mine who was a police officer. And so I pitched the idea of actually doing the explorer program to the student ministries program. And I said, look, man, wow, ministry is everywhere. Who needs ministry? Well, how about the people who just get arrested? How about the people who are on the front lines. How about cops? How about.
[00:02:58] Speaker A: So for the folks out there, an explorer program is usually for people underage. It's young, under the age of 21.
[00:03:04] Speaker B: Under the age of 21. It's like 16 to 21 years old. They're cadets.
So you're learning about fireworks. Yeah, it's a learning sort of program.
Before it was adapted, it was originally, I think, started by the Boy Scouts, if I'm not mistaken.
[00:03:18] Speaker A: That sounds right, yeah.
[00:03:20] Speaker B: And then, and so I rode there for a few years until I graduated from there. When you turn 21, you're no longer eligible.
[00:03:26] Speaker A: That's when you become a reserve. You'd go into.
[00:03:29] Speaker B: In theory, though, I believe it took me a couple of years before I was accepted. I went to the Clackamas county sheriff's officer program.
[00:03:36] Speaker A: Most people aren't looking to hire 21.
[00:03:37] Speaker B: Year olds, and I wouldn't hire me when I was 21 either.
[00:03:42] Speaker A: I would have hired me either.
[00:03:43] Speaker B: Yeah. Yeah. You just need more. More maturity and more time. But. So from there, I went to the sheriff's office as a reserve deputy. I worked my tail off, enjoyed the lion's share of it, but then realized that it was not, as it originally seemed to make law enforcement never really is. Yeah.
[00:04:06] Speaker A: When you get in the belly of the beast, you're like, oh, yeah, it's.
[00:04:09] Speaker B: It's different. Right. It's different. You, you really want, you go out there empowered to do good. You want to do good, you want to save the world, you want to be in front of people and you want to help them, and you want to, you know, always do the right thing. And it seems as though you're not empowered, like I would want to be, to be able to always do the right thing. In fact, the right thing is often something you can't do. But long story short, it's tough.
[00:04:30] Speaker A: And that in that kind of environment, and we know we support law enforcement when they do their jobs legally, ethically, and morally.
[00:04:37] Speaker B: Some of my best friends are cops. Yeah. Yeah.
[00:04:39] Speaker A: And that being said, cops don't always do the right thing. Right. So. But the purpose of law enforcement is to make arrests, to detain people, to do investigations, to make arrests and get bad people in jail.
[00:04:50] Speaker B: That's right.
[00:04:51] Speaker A: That's what the criminal justice system exists to protect us. Right. And so in order to do that, you have to violate people's rights legally. You have to stop them, you have to investigate them. And so, you know, if you're, if you're talking to somebody and you're in your mind, in your heart, you're like, man, I'd really love to get this person into a detox program in a shelter. But then, at the same time, a gun drops out of their belt onto the ground, all that goes away. Cause you kind of have that duty to arrest.
[00:05:19] Speaker B: Yeah. I always felt like it was an adversarial relationship. Like, it was always hostile.
[00:05:25] Speaker A: Like, you never escalatory by nature, almost.
[00:05:28] Speaker B: Yeah. And, I mean, the person on the other side of you was always like, okay, you're the enemy. You're gonna do bad things to me. And there's always walls and barriers up, and it really took a long time to get through those. But the reality of it is, is that I realized that I could not be as effective in that circumstance and in that environment as I wanted to be.
And I had a lot of people at that time encouraging me to do something different. And so I got a job working security at a hospital, and I was at Emanuel Hospital, I was working security there. And at the time, I had stepped away from the law enforcement idea, and I was looking at everything, and I was like, you know, maybe I should go into medicine, because medicine really loves serving people, helping people.
So, during the time of work in security, I got to see some amazing things in the ER, particularly at Emanuel. I went to school, got my EMT, which is a tough challenge. It's a six month program, which doesn't sound that long. Long. But it's pretty hard. The volume of information that a newbie is exposed to, to upon the point of graduation is. It's a significant curve, and you don't really realize it until you're exposed to how difficult. Oh, hey, what does a respiratory assessment look like? What is a medical or. Oh, okay. You have a diabetic emergency. Oh, my goodness. How about trauma? Like, it's a. It's not. It's not as straightforward as I think it's led out to be. It's. You know, even though it's a low entry in terms of medicine, it's. It's still pretty complicated. People are not simple.
And so, from there, after about a year and a half of work in security, I told the ER manager, I said, look, you told me to go become an EMT. I'm an EMT. I want to work in the ER. I want to do patient care. And so for the next six and a half, seven years or so, I worked in the emergency department at Emanuel Hospital. And as you mentioned, Emanuel has a level one trauma. Excuse me. It's a level one trauma center.
[00:07:25] Speaker A: So there's a lot of trauma.
[00:07:27] Speaker B: It's a one stop shopping center.
[00:07:29] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:07:30] Speaker B: Right. So in terms of the severity, there's no place that you would send a manual to, to become stabilized. You would. You would send them out for other reasons once they have become stabilized. But the significantly injured go to two hospitals in the Portland metro area. It's Emanuel and Ohsu, the university up on the hill.
[00:07:52] Speaker A: When I was in law enforcement, I worked about an hour and 15 minutes from Portland, and we had an incident where a lady ate half her arm. She was in psychosis.
[00:08:03] Speaker B: Sure.
[00:08:04] Speaker A: Crab walking, speaking with a british accent.
[00:08:06] Speaker B: Wow.
[00:08:07] Speaker A: Very exorcist esque.
[00:08:09] Speaker B: Bleeding, I'm sure.
[00:08:10] Speaker A: Bleeding profusely. Very low heart rate, obviously. Right. Still combative, though. And. Yeah, we sent her to Emanuel.
[00:08:19] Speaker B: Oh, man. Yeah.
[00:08:20] Speaker A: You know, the great ones go to Emanuel. We had multiple gunshot wound victims. Always life lighted to Emanuel.
[00:08:26] Speaker B: Yeah. Well, it's a wonderful place, encapsulated by the intensity of horror.
You know, with every step of the way you go, you always look for the opportunity to do the most good.
[00:08:49] Speaker A: You do.
[00:08:50] Speaker B: Everybody should.
I'm just. Michael.
The most good is sometimes when you're in an environment where you're literally surrounded by the most suffering imaginable. And I remember particularly walking into the ER and being a part of the death of an infant and being a part of those. That sort of last moments of life.
[00:09:19] Speaker A: And most people in the emergency services field, the one thing that affects them the most is when they are present for the death of an infant. This is almost universal.
[00:09:33] Speaker B: It's horrifying.
[00:09:34] Speaker A: Very bad.
[00:09:34] Speaker B: It's the kind of thing that becomes scarring, and I will never forget it. And, you know, I took away some principles from that moment because I was listening to the father grieve.
And it's one thing to hear that your sister broke her leg, or your mom got injured in some way, or your dad had COVID or something. And then it's another thing to actually be front row seat to the most awful day in a human's life. And it just broke my heart. And there are so many stories like that where I can remember people grieving and such and processing that you have to step back and say, I came up with a little saying, and it was something that kind of stuck with me, and it was, don't eat that.
And the idea was that if you're going to the world's most significant smorgasbord, all you can eat buffet and you take your plate and you fill it up seven times, you're gonna get sick. And you're gonna feel awful. And there are some things that you come to in life that you just can't digest to the heart. Otherwise you're no longer effective. And so anyway, long story short is you learn how to separate yourself a little bit when the time is appropriate and when. And so at this point, like, that was a hard moment. Anyway, long story short, I left the.
[00:10:59] Speaker A: Hospital for interject forces. You know, this is put. Was put doing something to me. And so I'm just gonna share a little bit too. Is that all right? Okay. So all the trauma I experienced as a child growing up.
[00:11:15] Speaker B: Right, whatever.
[00:11:17] Speaker A: All that. And then everything I experienced in law enforcement, the worst even in the military. Right. The worst thing, the thing that still haunts me in my dreams today is an experience that I had when I was in Africa.
I was on the border of Somalia and Ethiopia.
And I was there with a very small team. There were three, me and two other westerners. And then we had an interpreter and some other guys with us.
And we had. We woke up pretty early, like zero, 430, right? Jocko hour. And we're getting ready.
[00:11:59] Speaker B: Is that early? That's when I woke up this morning.
[00:12:01] Speaker A: Yeah, that's when I have lunch. Yeah, that trip.
[00:12:04] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:12:05] Speaker A: So we're doing our work, we're getting prepped to leave, and we're on foot at this point. We're actually. Our food is traveling with us. It's like goats. Right, right. Because we're, like, pretty out there.
And a lady walks up to us and the guy running security, you know, walked her in because I guess he met her on the perimeter, kind of walked her into our camp and she sat there. And it was a mother with a. I mean, a barely baby, just barely born baby. I mean, weeks old.
And the mom just collapses to her knees and she's begging with every tear she can produce for us to take her baby to America.
This is a war torn area. Soldiers are coming in, purposely HIV infected soldiers, raping villagers to produce HIV infected babies for ethnic cleansing. These types of things. Right? And this she's.
[00:13:07] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:13:08] Speaker A: And I looked at my interpreter, Casa Hoon, and I was like, mindano, like, what's going on? What is she saying? Right? And Kassehun's like. She's saying that if you don't take her baby that within a week or two the baby will be dead because they have nothing to eat.
[00:13:25] Speaker B: So that reminds me of so many times in life.
We'll cover this later. But an EMT school, if you were the first on the scene to a school bus crash, and all of them are injured.
Where do you start? So the word triage is actually french, and it means to sort. You're just putting one more important than the other based on injury level. And people freeze at that moment. And the moment is the. The theory or the explanation, shall we say. The rule of thumb is you just start where you stand.
And in all of this, meaning all that we're submerged in and all that we're around in.
Six in Morrison. Five in Morrison. Actually, years ago.
This is right about the time when I had just gotten out of the sheriff's office. I went to the second floor window of the old Myron Frank building, and I heard gunfire. This is. I had taken a security job while I was working at the sheriff's office. It was a transitional thing between that and the hospital.
I went down to the street and a man died in my arms.
And I did not know a thing about helping medicine. People triage, blood pressure, knew nothing.
And I also took away a big learning lesson from that event, which was, I can only do what I can. I have two hands.
In an incident that we have talked about previously, I was the first on scene to a woman who was stabbed in the throat.
[00:15:12] Speaker A: That's right. You were on duty for echelon, right?
[00:15:14] Speaker B: Yeah, I was.
The injuries were overwhelming. Yeah. It's bad.
[00:15:19] Speaker A: The video's pretty rough.
[00:15:20] Speaker B: It's tough. It's a tough one to watch.
And you. You.
I can't be two people. I can just be Michael.
[00:15:31] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:15:32] Speaker B: And I am only able to do so much.
I've got.
And so at some times, you know, the ship sails and I don't get to choice. No, I don't get to pick.
[00:15:48] Speaker A: You're just a passenger on this boat.
[00:15:50] Speaker B: And much like the.
The mother, like, you don't get to pick. Right. And I'm just here walking around next to people who are just walking around.
[00:16:01] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:16:02] Speaker B: And everybody's just trying to get to supper alive.
Everybody's just trying to make it to the alarm clock. Right. The next day. And between here and there, between here and there, we have to be focused on doing the most good that we can because this stuff stings. And it's. It's. It's permanent. And it.
I think the right term is. Is. It leaves a mark.
[00:16:30] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:16:31] Speaker B: To say the least, it leaves a mark. When you.
[00:16:33] Speaker A: When you work in trauma, you. You experience that. It rubs itself in you.
[00:16:41] Speaker B: It become. Yes. And here's. Here's the thing, too.
[00:16:43] Speaker A: Like, I'm in it.
[00:16:45] Speaker B: It's almost like, you, if you're wired to do work in this environment, then you can and you can thrive. But you have to know the limitations. You have to know when you can't eat that. Right? When does. When does what am I consuming? Both in this physical moment, emotionally and spiritually overwhelm me. Right?
And there have been countless events where I've been like, I gotta step out. I can't continue this. And then there's others where it's. We just fight through. And the reality of it is everybody standing next to you is depending on you to be able to do the best you can. And like, I also teach a trauma course, you know, to help others, you know, be more equipped to face medical trauma out in here, in the wonderful streets of Portland. And, you know, I tell them, I said, you know, sometimes you just can't. You can't fix it. And it's not your responsibility to bury that load. But it's tough. It's a tough environment. It really, really is.
[00:17:51] Speaker A: At the end of the day, entropy, the second law of thermodynamics, right?
It wins.
Discipline does equal freedom, but at the end of it, even freedom itself fades because of that second law of thermodynamics. And at the end of the day, you don't have to own the failure of entropy.
It's a reality that we all live in. But owning it, owning those failures, you can learn from them, but you can't own them. Right? That's what I always tell myself.
[00:18:24] Speaker B: Yeah, I'm trying to follow you, what you're saying here about entropy, but I think if you're saying if you own, everything dies. Yeah. You can't.
I do the best I can to accept responsibility for the things that I can control.
[00:18:36] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:18:36] Speaker B: Right. And I'm even responsible for some of the things that I can't control.
But I do the best I can to impact the outcome.
And as long as we're here, we're just going to keep trying to steer the ship back downstream.
[00:18:53] Speaker A: That's right.
[00:18:53] Speaker B: Yeah. Keep away from the rocks. And it's a hard job to do. It's a hard job to do.
[00:18:58] Speaker A: So going so in your career, somehow you ended up with echelon.
[00:19:05] Speaker B: So.
[00:19:07] Speaker A: But right now, you're currently, you're the director of our investigative services, so you're running the PI's.
[00:19:12] Speaker B: That's right.
[00:19:14] Speaker A: Doing a damn fine job, by the way. And you're also our director of training at the shared position. You're kind of doing that de escalatory medical training.
[00:19:24] Speaker B: Right, right.
[00:19:25] Speaker A: And so kind of explain your philosophy behind what you think that we're trying to do as a company, and what's your role in that?
[00:19:38] Speaker B: Yeah, I know that the company's motto is security through community. And the old community policing model was, I think, attempting to do it in some regard.
I think my role here is to make certain that the new people understand how to go about this, because this is not the way it's always been done. No, it's definitely not the way it's always been done. The way it's always been done was I dress like a cop. I go try and act tough.
[00:20:12] Speaker A: That's right.
[00:20:13] Speaker B: And I try and scare people. And if I. If that doesn't work, then I have to get physical. Yeah.
[00:20:17] Speaker A: We call it the scarecrow model or the. The pretending to be law enforcement model.
[00:20:22] Speaker B: Right. And it.
[00:20:23] Speaker A: It is a legacy model.
[00:20:24] Speaker B: It's a bad idea in a lot of ways.
[00:20:27] Speaker A: It's escalatory.
[00:20:28] Speaker B: It's hostile.
[00:20:31] Speaker A: In the end, if you get someone on the street level criminal organization, someone who's just dispossessed of self and identity and possessions and has nothing, if you anger that person, they're going to want to build back their worth, and the best way to do that is to retaliate against the building.
[00:20:48] Speaker B: Right. Step away. And, yeah, they'll come back a week.
[00:20:51] Speaker A: Later and break a $20,000 window. Right. So being the asshole on the street never helps anybody.
[00:20:59] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:20:59] Speaker A: Whether you're law enforcement, you're an EMT, a firefighter, a politician, a security guard, property manager, that model will always come back and bite you in the butt.
[00:21:09] Speaker B: I remember something that was said at the sheriff's office academy, and that was, we never lose.
And I always thought that was the dumbest thing I'd ever heard.
[00:21:17] Speaker A: I've heard this a million times.
[00:21:17] Speaker B: Yeah, you. We never lose. And it's like, okay, then you win at all costs.
[00:21:23] Speaker A: Zero. Zero sum.
[00:21:24] Speaker B: Right. And so if that's the case, then you're willing to sacrifice everything just to make certain that you win. And so what's ingrained in people right now is, let's say I'm working security and I see a shoplifter come through. Well, now you're. I'm taking it personally. Now I can't lose. And now the shoplifter is going to get extra. It's going to get extra justice because I can't lose. Right.
[00:21:48] Speaker A: That's right.
[00:21:48] Speaker B: Because now I take it personally. And when he walks out with a bag of. It's horrible. Right. And the same thing is true. With a lot in law enforcement now, it's, I can't lose. When actually the best plan forward is often for you to lose. Like, hey, man, I'm cool losing here. I'm cool looking like an idiot. I'm totally cool looking like a, you know, a big dummy. I've already lost my hair. What do you want me to do? I'm already overweight. What do you want me to do? I can't look any dumber than I already do. So I'm cool with that.
I just want this to be a victory. Like, with, the victory for me is not in me forcing a win. The victory for me is the situation to be a win. Right. And the, the best way forward is through relationships.
[00:22:36] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:22:37] Speaker B: And it's through being peacemakers. It's not, it's not being peace, like enforcers. Right. Because we're not forcing anything. We're gonna create it.
[00:22:47] Speaker A: Like, we don't have the legal right to do that.
[00:22:48] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:22:49] Speaker A: And it doesn't work.
[00:22:50] Speaker B: It doesn't work. No. So to circle back to your question, I think the model, but I would say this.
[00:22:56] Speaker A: I'm beginning to.
[00:22:57] Speaker B: Up to you, because you can.
[00:23:00] Speaker A: I think that part of being successful is that the majority of the criminal elements on the street right now, they don't steal from our buildings or they don't break into cars on our property because they know that's our property and we have a genuine relationship with those people. And they're like, we're not going to steal from your property because we, you're my friend.
[00:23:26] Speaker B: We like you.
[00:23:27] Speaker A: And they literally will go and do their criminal activity somewhere else because they know, hey, man, this is my livelihoods on the line here. Like, this is my building, you know?
[00:23:39] Speaker B: Yeah. I've met, I can't tell you how many people, excuse me, who have shown up to me.
We spike up a conversation and they explain to me that they're doing some criminal act to survive. And, and they say, you know, I'm sorry, man. I said, look, I. I understand. It's not what's best, though. I understand that you're not motivated to harm other people, that you're trying to make ends meet and that kind of thing. But maybe we can figure out a way where you're not risking jail time or some other thing that keeps you basically in this imprisoned situation.
[00:24:13] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:24:15] Speaker B: But, you know, at the end of the day, if I can establish a relationship, I happened so much. I can give you more examples than I can think of. I was surrounded by seven guys one night, and you know. Okay. I'm a big dude. Okay. Neat. That's not going to help you against seven people. Seven is overwhelming. And I had a lady come out of a tent and she came up and she's like, no, no, no, no. This is a good dude. And she literally helped me deescalate the whole situation. She's like, this is my buddy here. You guys got it wrong. And it was because I had established relationships with them. And then a couple of more people showed up and it was like, oh, wait, you're not trying to be tough. I'm a no man. And it's okay to lose. Right?
[00:25:06] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:25:07] Speaker B: And, well, I would say it's more.
[00:25:09] Speaker A: Important to build a relationship.
[00:25:10] Speaker B: Right.
[00:25:11] Speaker A: Rather than thinking of win loss.
[00:25:14] Speaker B: Right.
[00:25:14] Speaker A: Thinking of it as building relationships. Right. Because relationships is how you win.
Whether no matter what type of business you're in, whether you're de escalating or doing decomposition, it's almost best to stop.
[00:25:29] Speaker B: Thinking it in terms of win and losing. Right. It's almost in best in terms like, my kids. Okay? My kids. I love my children. Love them to death. I jump in front of a train for any one of them.
[00:25:38] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:25:39] Speaker B: But I tell my wife all the time, we're playing long ball.
I'm not trying to play in the next 15 minutes. I'm after the next 15 years.
[00:25:47] Speaker A: This is a long process.
[00:25:48] Speaker B: Right. This is a long term process, and I want them to know.
[00:25:53] Speaker A: And you're not trying to make your career.
Right.
[00:25:57] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:25:57] Speaker A: It's not some arrest that you're.
[00:25:59] Speaker B: No, no. Yeah. Ups and downs, lefts and rights, goods and bads. When it's all said and done, I want you to be able to look in the rear view mirror and know that I love you.
[00:26:08] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:26:09] Speaker B: And it's okay.
[00:26:10] Speaker A: Are you telling me that you love me right now?
[00:26:12] Speaker B: I do love you, man.
[00:26:13] Speaker A: I love you, too, bro.
[00:26:14] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:26:15] Speaker A: So you also do jiu jitsu?
[00:26:17] Speaker B: I love jujitsu.
[00:26:18] Speaker A: I think that that's part of your overall strategy. Right. It's so. It's that being able to work through that puzzle.
[00:26:24] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:26:24] Speaker A: On the streets. Because jiu jitsu is really a problem solving. It's like. It's like human chess, right?
[00:26:30] Speaker B: Yeah, it's worse than that. I play chess, too.
[00:26:32] Speaker A: I love Juan. You had Juan Adams a couple weeks ago.
[00:26:36] Speaker B: It was pretty ugly. Yeah. He from. He's pretty solid UFC guy. Yeah.
[00:26:39] Speaker A: He came in, trained with us.
[00:26:40] Speaker B: And I think. I think the best way to describe. I love to. I love to play chess. So I'm glad you, you know, bring the analogy between those two. But imagine if you're playing chess and you and your opponent can move all of the pieces all of the time, regardless of what you're doing. And that's a little bit of what jiu jitsu is like. And I think.
I think for me, because the. The tenant of jujitsu is the gentle art, and that it is controlled, that it is so much more elegant and so much more efficient and so much more in line with who I am as a person than another art, like boxing or kickboxing or something. But the reality of it is, is that it's wildly effective and very useful, and a lot of it plays right into exactly what we're talking about here. What's the approach here? Well, the approach here is to act like a bulldozer.
Guess what? If you do that, you're gonna get hurt. It's a bad plan, but, yeah. I have totally fallen in love with jiu jitsu. As a pastime and as mental health strategy for long term. It's very helpful.
[00:27:55] Speaker A: Good for trauma care, actually.
[00:27:56] Speaker B: Yeah, it actually is.
[00:27:57] Speaker A: It really is.
[00:27:57] Speaker B: Yeah. Yeah. You get a dozen guys.
[00:28:00] Speaker A: I mean, you're always constantly learning. It's like you're playing chess all the time.
[00:28:03] Speaker B: It certainly is. Yeah. And I. There's one thing pretty great about going from an environment here to an environment where you have a bunch of friends. You're being extremely physical. Right. And almost to the point of saying, hey, I've got you right to the very end, where you're about ready to break a limb, and then your buddy says, top tap, we're done. And then you bump knuckles and do it again, and it's.
It's a great, great, great thing. I'm really happy about it. I'm so glad I've got that in my life. Yeah, yeah.
Anyway, yeah, go ahead.
[00:28:35] Speaker A: No, man, I'm just glad you're in studio today. I want people to understand that, you know, you're in studio here today, but you're on the streets, like, every day. This is something you're doing every day in the past. Let's just say since you've been with echelon the past year or two, how many people have you personally narcaned?
[00:28:53] Speaker B: I can't give you that number. I don't know.
[00:28:56] Speaker A: More than ten?
[00:28:57] Speaker B: Oh, yeah.
[00:28:57] Speaker A: More than 20?
[00:28:58] Speaker B: Oh, yeah. More than 30, probably.
[00:29:01] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:29:02] Speaker B: I don't know. When you get up into those numbers, you gotta stop and think. But it's.
[00:29:06] Speaker A: It's a lot.
[00:29:07] Speaker B: Way over. Like, way. I don't count anymore.
[00:29:10] Speaker A: How many times have you done chest compressions?
Around the same?
[00:29:15] Speaker B: No, not as much. That's more infrequent. So. So typically what happens with an overdose is you get somebody who stops breathing and their heart remains pumping. Right. So really what, in a situation like that, they need is rescue breaths, which is a part of CPR.
But thank God for CPR barriers and.
[00:29:32] Speaker A: Face masks, because they're lacking that oxygen.
[00:29:35] Speaker B: They are lacking the oxygen. Right. And so the problem isn't that they are having a cardiac issue per se, it's that they're having a respiratory problem. Right. And so if you. The reason why the heart starts to fail is because there's no oxygen. And so in theory, if you were able to feed the blood enough oxygen, they could remain in a state of that.
[00:29:57] Speaker A: Comatose, almost.
[00:29:58] Speaker B: Correct. For a long period of time.
That's not ideal, obviously, but in terms of life, I mean, that's essentially what's happening. So if you can restore breathing, that's the missing component, it does impact the cardiac side. I'm not going to act like it doesn't, but there's a time where we.
[00:30:17] Speaker A: Had a gentleman, not on the street, he was driving. He stopped at a stop sign.
[00:30:21] Speaker B: Hmm.
[00:30:21] Speaker A: Right. You were on patrol, and you realized the gentleman was going through cardiac arrest. You pulled him out of his vehicle.
[00:30:28] Speaker B: Which time was that? I'm sorry. Okay. Okay. I'm sorry. Yeah, I do remember that. Right.
[00:30:35] Speaker A: Well, you know, you've done this so much in your life, right, stuff, it just happens.
[00:30:41] Speaker B: And you're standing there and.
And in that.
[00:30:45] Speaker A: Let's go back to that. And you're standing there.
[00:30:48] Speaker B: Right.
[00:30:48] Speaker A: And so this is kind of the reason why I brought this up, because most people view, and I think, unfortunately, because just the industry itself, security work as not really doing anything, observe and report, but with what we're doing and what we're trying to achieve. When you're trained at a certain level and you're operating at a higher level. Right. And obviously you're getting paid for that. Right. You can actually save lives. And as a guard, right. When you're patrolling, you have the ability to actually change someone's life, to save a life, to change their destiny. Right. But it requires that training and that level of excellence, that level of operating at a higher level.
[00:31:30] Speaker B: I think. I think it starts even before that. It starts with your heart. And if you're the kind of person who is going to be eating a sandwich and stepping over another human who's not breathing, which happens too often, and I see it happening all the time. Right.
It breaks my heart, because that's my neighbor, that's my friend, and I can't tell you how many times I've had people come up to me and. Okay, so when Narcan is given, often it. And it creates a hostile relationship. It's not a medical thing. This is just a social thing. You took my high. I'm mad about it.
[00:32:15] Speaker A: And that cost money and time.
[00:32:16] Speaker B: Yeah. And the other person's usually not too excited about seeing your face after you just undid it.
[00:32:21] Speaker A: Oh, yeah.
[00:32:22] Speaker B: Yeah.
And so I've had many occasions where it takes a couple of days, and they come back, and I gave one guy an apple, and he started eating it, and he said, you know, he said, I never did say thank you.
And he said, but I'm homeless. And I'm like, okay, wait a minute here, bro.
That doesn't mean you're worthless.
Your self image and your personal view of your own value isn't lining up with what's accurate. The whole but I'm homeless thing. A home doesn't give you value. You're a human being worthy of dignity and respect.
And your ability to make an income or lack thereof, is not determining whether or not you're somebody that I will stop and talk to or step over while I'm eating a vegemite sandwich.
The reality is that every human being is worthy of dignity, of love and respect. And the more equipped you are to be able to do.
Do some damage in the world, right. Some good to get out there and really impact the world, the more trained you're going to be. Right. And the explanation and the little poster and the saying is, you don't rise to your. The occasion. You sink to your level of training. And it's like, well, if that's the case, if I sink to my level of training, how much good do I want to do?
[00:34:00] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:34:01] Speaker B: How much good do I want to do? But there's also a problem. There is that so many people misunderstand what good is. They don't understand it. They come up with a bad idea. They don't understand what love is, and they misunderstand love. People say all the time, if you get that wrong, if you get this wrong, you will get it all wrong. So what is the definition of love? And people will sit around and think, and they'll go, well, it's that feeling you get when you know that she's the one. Okay, buddy. Well, then you're gonna go ask her to marry you. Yes, I am. Okay, great.
Then three weeks later, you find out that this isn't going the way that you thought. So what is love? How about a firefighter running into a burning building to save people he's never met?
Yeah, absolutely.
Love is the devotion to the well being of others without regard to the cost or their response.
I love you enough to be devoted to your well being, and it doesn't matter how much it costs me. And I don't care if you're angry about it, but you, your well being is what's important.
And a lot of people don't understand that because they think that love is a reciprocal, reciprocational, or a relationship like, two way thing. It's not. It's this direction. And it's great to feel, and it's great to feel excited. But I love my wife. There's nobody I love more than her. But there are times where we're not having a great day and that she and I don't get get to see eye to eye.
So it's not a feeling. It's a deliberate set of actions, mindset, and behavior to be constantly focused. So even when I'm upset with my dear wife, who is the most precious human being to me in the entire world, who I would do anything for, I still have to recognize that it's her well being that I'm devoted to, which means that it costs time, money, energy. Relationship is about building. Like, people don't know how much you care, you know, that whole thing, whatever.
But if you are the kind of person who is stepping over others while they're in crisis, then you're definitely not showing that you love them.
The funny example is that there was a pastor who was giving a sermon, and he was a visiting pastor at a church. And at the time, this is the kind of church, this is from the south, where everybody walked in with suits on and dresses, and it was a big thing, and a more. More than filthy human being came in and sat in the front row, but on the ground, just sort of, I'm gonna sit wherever I'm gonna sit.
And the pastor in a suit walked up next to him and sat on the ground with him and just sat there.
And so instead of saying, you're not dressed right, you're not seated in the right spot, you smell funny, he said, in front of everybody, I'm just gonna sit on the floor. I don't even know you. And that doesn't mean that I have to talk to you right away. I'm just your companion, and I'm gonna be here, right next to you. And so if we're going to change the environment that we're in, we genuinely have to be the kind of people who are looking for the heart of others.
And how do I win influence? And it's through serving them and loving them. And it's the kind of love that I'm talking about. And it isn't free, and it is hard, and it isn't easy, and it does take practice.
[00:37:39] Speaker A: And. Well, I think you hit the nail on the head in that true service means that you're going to meet people where they are.
You're not going to force them up on your level. You're not going to make them climb up to the top of the mountain to meet the spiritual guru monk who's going to teach them everything. You're going to come down the mountain.
[00:37:59] Speaker B: Let me sell you something.
[00:38:00] Speaker A: Yeah, right. You're gonna go down the mountain. You're gonna meet them in the valley. You're gonna meet them at that. Like this church you talked about. Yeah, the front of a church or something. You're gonna go out into the street and meet them where they are, where they need service. And this is the entire ethos of what we do at Echelon, and this is what we teach people today. You're going to change someone's life for the better.
You get the opportunity to transform someone's life by serving them, and you can make this community better at the same time.
And so we're about to go on patrol.
Right. We're about to follow you onto the streets.
[00:38:40] Speaker B: Who knows what's gonna happen? Portland, it's just another day.
[00:38:43] Speaker A: We're gonna be taking calls.
[00:38:44] Speaker B: Mm hmm.
[00:38:45] Speaker A: Explain the patrol. Explain what we're, you know, where we are, where we're at today, what we're gonna do.
[00:38:49] Speaker B: Yes. We're in downtown Portland. There'll be a bunch of places that we check on a regular basis. And I know we already got a.
[00:38:55] Speaker A: Guy that's asking for us.
[00:38:56] Speaker B: Right. Yeah. And in the process of doing what we're gonna do, we'll see what we see and see what life, what person, you know, we can help.
It feels overwhelming at times. Right? Like, you know, how do I. How do you. How does this.
And it all comes down to being directionally correct. And if you were to say, say right now, point towards Seattle, like, wait, could you do it? I mean, I could do it. I could point in the general direction.
[00:39:33] Speaker A: Of it, actually, right there. But.
[00:39:35] Speaker B: But, but could you get there on foot? Yeah. If you started today.
[00:39:40] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:39:40] Speaker B: How long would it take me? I'll take a week, maybe two weeks.
[00:39:43] Speaker A: I'll say two weeks if I stopped. And.
[00:39:46] Speaker B: Right. And what would you come across? We're going there. Rivers and construction zones and cars. And it'd be hunger and you'd have to take breaks.
[00:39:52] Speaker A: Raccoons and.
[00:39:53] Speaker B: Yeah. And so the point being is that if you have a destination in mind.
[00:39:57] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:39:58] Speaker B: And you're always taking steps towards that, then whether that. Seattle or freedom from drugs and alcohol, whether or not it's finally getting to see your son because you've earned the trust from the mother again, whether it's finally becoming employable again, whatever those long term goals are, if you look at life like that and remain directionally correct on that path, there's absolutely nothing that is going to stop that from happening except you quitting. And it's just. It's just time. It's going to take time, but relationships take time, and some of the damage takes time to rebuild. But if you're not be. If you're not going to be the first to extend the olive branch, to heal some of those relationships or reach out to somebody else and say, hey, what is it that you need, and how can I help you in that?
We're not gonna get there because the boats got to not only be pointed in that direction, there's got to be movement.
[00:40:55] Speaker A: Well, I think that we should go hit the street.
[00:40:57] Speaker B: I'm in.
[00:40:58] Speaker A: Right. All right, Michael Bach, this is the ride along Portland. We're gonna go hit the streets.
[00:41:03] Speaker B: I really like these coasters.
[00:41:04] Speaker A: Thank you. We got those. I got those with my beautiful bride at the home of Andrew Jackson, Tennessee.
[00:41:12] Speaker B: Yeah. Well, they're great.
[00:41:14] Speaker A: Yeah, I thought they were. Pool.
[00:41:15] Speaker B: Pretty cool.
[00:41:15] Speaker A: All right, brother, let's hit the street.
