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Law Enforcement Talk: True Crime and Trauma Stories
PTSD, US Army Delta Force, Black Hawk Down Movie
00:38:02
PTSD, US Army Delta Force, Black Hawk Down Movie, Special Episode. For retired U.S. Army Command Sgt. Major Tom Satterly, the battlefield was never truly left behind. With 25 years of service, 20 of them in the elite "Delta Force". Satterly became a living legend in the world of Special Operations. He was on the ground during the infamous "Battle of Mogadishu", the same firefight portrayed in the movie "Black Hawk Down". But it wasn’t the bullets or the RPGs that almost ended him, it was the silence that followed.
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- [00:00]
Tom Satterley
Foreign.
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John J. Wiley
Welcome to the Law Enforcement Talk Radio Show. In the Law Enforcement Talk Radio show, we are joined by special guests talking about their experiences, their realities of investigating crimes, plus those who have experienced horrendous trauma. Police, first responders, military and victims of crime share their stories. Hi, I'm, I'm John J. Wiley. In addition to being a broadcaster, I'm also a retired police sergeant. Be sure to check out our website, letradio.com and also like us on Facebook, search for the Law Enforcement Talk Radio show. Calling us from St. Louis, Missouri area, we have Tom Satterley on the phone. Tom is a retired US army sergeant major and he may not know his name, but you're going to know his story tomorrow. Thanks so much for being a guest on the show. Very much appreciate it.
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Tom Satterley
Jay, thank you for having me on. It's my pleasure.
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John J. Wiley
First of all, I got to say this and Tom is an army sergeant major, retired. We're going to talk about a lot of his combat experience. We'll talk about what he went through when he came home and we're going to talk about what and where he's at now today and what he does to get there. And the reason being is twofold. Number one, law enforcement. A lot of our law enforcement officers are military veterans and quite a few of them are combat veterans. And also policing the United States deals with combat veterans are having in distress more often than any other branch of the government, including the va. That's usually your first line of defense. So I'm really thrilled to have this conversation and I'm glad you are taking time to talk. I know you're pretty advanced to where you're at today, but it took you a while to get to where you're at today, didn't it?
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Tom Satterley
Yeah, I'm still working on it. It took me, I'm looking at about eight years of work.
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John J. Wiley
That's where we put it.
- [01:57]
Tom Satterley
Work, work. Retired 10 years ago and I probably didn't get to work for two years. And it's, it's been a struggle and a slow start of probably three or four years and then a good four years of putting my, my effort into my own well being and finally getting myself together. But it's, it's an ongoing process.
- [02:17]
John J. Wiley
I like the way you said that. And from my own experience, without going into a lot of detail, when I left police work, it was sudden. It was a life and death situation. I was injured, my career was over and I was in a pretty dark space. And back then the only help that was available Outside of clinicians was combat veterans and sex assault survivors. And the combat veterans primarily at that time, Vietnam combat veterans helped save my life and helped me get to where I'm at today. They were a huge, invaluable resource.
- [02:52]
Tom Satterley
Yeah, anytime that you can share with a tribe, and that's what we all suffer with, that loss of tribes, some of us instantaneously were ripped out of it for whatever reason. And you've lost your family, your tribe, that thing that kept you feeling like you were contributing, that you had worth. And when that goes away, and even with just retirement and it's not just military, it's not just law enforcement or first responders, it's everybody that dedicates their time into their job and they. They give up something at home to dedicate that time at work to be good at it. And then when they're done, that work goes away. You're just a number. You're just somebody that kept work going. And that. That family that you thought you had will go away. And that family that you've been ignoring all those years for your job is there forever. And if we don't get to work on that relationship, that's when that struggles. And what we're finding out, people have so much trouble with is loss of tribe and their family relationships.
- [03:47]
John J. Wiley
And you and your wife, Jen, I gotta get her on the show in the future. You guys have taken it to another level. You have a foundation, all secure foundation. Tell us about that.
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Tom Satterley
Yeah, we started that when my wife, her and I were working together doing realistic military training, preparing special operations soldiers to go to war. We were the last stop that they would see. And she loved it. She was just doing the filming and fully embedded with Navy SEALs and Green Berets and Rangers and loving it. And she got to see the side that spouses don't ever get to see. But she also saw the side of, hey, they're not coming home after they deploy. Some of them don't come back. You know, they come home in a. In a. In a coffin. And she was not built for that. And so after about two and a half years, she. She decided, hey, we need to start a foundation. We need to start helping these people when it's all said. And everyone that's talked to her along the way in those two and a half, three years laid out their soul to her, you know, started telling us, here's what we're having troubles with. And of course, I was having issues as well. So, you know, she pulled me out of that world and said, let's start this foundation to help their families. Because, you know, everyone sends a veteran shot, you know, hunting or to Disneyland or thank you for your service. But those spouses at home that have struggled the entire time with them are now sitting there like, what about me? What about the help I need? And when that veteran just goes home and he's, he's either gotten help or he's gone on a hunting trip or to Disney, he's like, honey, I'm home. She's like, yeah, hey, baby. But we still have all these problems.
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John J. Wiley
Yeah. And I've been holding down the whole time you're gone.
- [05:17]
Tom Satterley
Right, Right. So we wanted to help the whole family. We wanted to help the entire family understand what those signs and symptoms look like, understand what a good, healthy relationship is and how to get there so they can help each other instead of just one at home struggling by themselves and the other wondering what's going on.
- [05:33]
John J. Wiley
I like the way you put that about. I don't want to come across like I am mocking or belittling the efforts people make to make our returning veterans feel like they are appreciated saving Disney World, sending hunting trips, all that stuff. But I'll be honest with you, Tom. I'm very awkward when it comes to saying, hey, thanks for your service, because that just never seems right. And I never know what to say. So a lot of times I know I'm not like, unlike a lot of people, I don't say anything at all. And that's the worst thing I could do.
- [06:03]
Tom Satterley
You know, we have trouble on both sides with that. And it's not trouble, it's just the misunderstanding of there are veterans out there that think that they're owed something. They act like they're owed something. Where's my discount? Where's my in line, this or that? I grab those veterans and I tell them every time you volunteered every step of the way. This is an all volunteer army. If you're in special operations, you had to volunteer three separate times to get where you're at and you can leave at any time. So when somebody, a veteran, comes out and acts like they're deserving of something or they, or they have trouble with, and then on the other side they have trouble with. I hate, I thank you for your service. I go, why don't you just say thank you? Just say thank you and move on. If somebody thanks you for your service, why get mad about it? Just thank them and move on. If they don't thank you for your service, guess what? Did you thank them for doing Their job. You know, everyone has a job on this planet and service members have volunteered for that job. The fact that people say, yeah, but it's a job where you could lose your life, this and that still volunteered for that job at any time, I don't mind thank you for your service, and I don't mind if I don't hear it. I've learned to just say thank you or not worry about it because the job is a job and I'm moving on to my next career.
- [07:08]
John J. Wiley
Well, Tom, you're helping me with this conversation because my career in policing, we saw a lot of trauma. I stopped doing things like comparing a while ago. I had guests on the show that helped me with that. They were combat veterans, they were police officers or firefighters, have been through horrible things. And they said the first thing you got to do to get better is you have to stop comparing your situation to someone else's. What they went through was bad enough. What you went through is bad enough. And let's just start there.
- [07:39]
Tom Satterley
I like to remove judgment and replace it with curiosity. Get to know each other. Stop judging people or lining sizing people up, if you will. You know, people do it all the time. It's just kind of how we're built. Once you learn to not size people up or worry about judgment, it's easier to step into conversations because I was worried about judgment on me. You know, am I good enough? I never felt good enough. So I would not enter into these conversations with people because I. I felt like the outside person. And I've had to just deal with that and get rid of it and have those feelings of I'm just like everyone else. It's okay. I can talk to people and if somebody has a problem with it, that's their business. That's their problem.
- [08:19]
John J. Wiley
We are talking with Tom Satterley. He is retired sergeant major, United States Army Delta Force. His foundation's All Secure Foundation. Go online to all secure foundation.org for more information and we will talk about that when we return. Don't go anywhere.
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Tom Satterley
We'll be right back.
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John J. Wiley
I'm going to let you in a little secret that's been a game changer for me with social media. You can get details@let pops.com it's a redirect. L e t p o p s.com it's called chatbots. There are meta partners, Facebook, Instagram, Telegram, WhatsApp and soon to be TikTok. You can turn those people that visit and engage with your content and social media into consumers. And then sometimes Customers and you can market to them, get details. Best of buying a starter for free. Let pops.com that's l e t p o p s.com again it's l e t p o p S com return a conversation with Tom Satterley. Tom is retired sergeant major, United States Army Delta Force. He is also him and his wife Jen have a great foundation for special operations warriors called All Secure Foundation. They're online at All Secure Foundation. What are some of the things that you all do with All Secure Foundation?
- [09:46]
Tom Satterley
Wow. We just got back from Fort Bragg doing resiliency training. We went to speak to probably over 1500 cadre and students and leaders. We started where the Green Berets go and do their first initial training where they first come into special operations. We Talked to the E9s and above and then we talked to all the cadre and instructors and then in the end we talked to all the students about post traumatic stress and military life and what to expect along the way and how to continue on with your relationships at home and how not to struggle in the end. You know, we're starting to talk to younger soldiers so they've heard about ptsd, they've heard about the traumas of war before it's dumped on them and then they have to deal with it down the road. So we're trying to keep them better educated along the way. But we also do veteran couples. We work with the spouses along the way and we told four day retreats in nice locations to where we, you know, they're retreats but they're retreat workshops to where we give them the tools, we talk about family life, distresses, PTSD and different things and give them the tools and let them practice it on that four day retreat workshop in a nice environment where they get to have fun and date each other and flirt and learn about their relationship again and learn how to argue and fight fairly so so they can grow a relationship. You know, we started to find out that 90% of veterans have asked us they want help with their relationships. And then along with that, obviously the addiction and the pts. But it all stems down to relationships in our lives and so we work on that with them along the way.
- [11:16]
John J. Wiley
That's so important because if you don't, you wind up being lost. I can't speak for everybody. All I can tell you is this, that I went through a period of time where the one thing I wanted the most was to have a happy, healthy relationship at home. But I started isolating and self medicating and all Those things that went along with it and actually destroyed my own marriage.
- [11:37]
Tom Satterley
Oh, yes. It's. I'm on my fourth wife right now. I know I go to these rooms, like, who's. Who's been married once, Hands all go up. Who's been married twice? Most hands go up. Who's been married third time, you know, half the room. And it's almost a joke, some communities, that you're not a special operator unless you're on your third or fourth wife. And that's a bad joke because I would like to tell A lot of the veterans come. The service members coming in, don't get married. I tell anybody, don't get married until you've grown up. You know, a lot of us get married young. A lot of us in the service industry get married young, it seems. And we work so hard at our jobs that we grow apart from our spouses. And we've connected that with professional athletes, you know, CEOs of organizations, people that just dedicate time at their job, they give up their relationships at home to include with their children, right?
- [12:27]
John J. Wiley
Oh, you're so right, yo.
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Tom Satterley
And it's hard to connect with children. Then we wonder why our children don't talk to us. You know, my son's 21, won't even respond to me. You know, won't respond to my text, but once a month, maybe, hey, dad, you know, or even less. But that's the environment I created over the years of life that I dedicated to my. My craft. So we try to help people keep those connections along the way. We tell the young soldiers, you know, this is how you keep your connections at home as you're growing, keep your spouse included. It's not like we're trying to protect my spouse. I don't share things with her. It's keep them included so they know what's going on because they want to. They want to be part of your life.
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John J. Wiley
And by the way, go toAll Secure Foundation.org and I'm sure, just like every other nonprofit out there, fundraising is always an issue. So can people make donations right on your website?
- [13:14]
Tom Satterley
They can. And I'd like everybody to know that we have a donor that covers our admin fees, everything administrative. So 100% of every penny everybody donates to us goes directly back to help service members and their families.
- [13:27]
John J. Wiley
So check it out. All Secure Foundation.org I want to talk shift gears a little bit. When you first went into the military, about how long ago was that?
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Tom Satterley
Oh, you're gonna make me do math. That was in 1986. It was about 35 years ago maybe.
- [13:42]
John J. Wiley
And is it safe to say that things are different? There's a different mindset now. I don't remember during that time, at least in policing, they didn't do it. We didn't talk about pts, we didn't talk about resiliency, we didn't talk about critical incidents, we didn't talk about any of that stuff.
- [13:57]
Tom Satterley
No, we just rubbed dirt on it, kept going. We didn't talk about anything. You know, you look back to all the other generations and we say nobody talked about anything. And it's still difficult to talk about anything. It's still a stigma and it's still, people think, a sign of weakness, when actually it's a sign of strength to realize that you need help with something and you go get that help and get better. I tell everybody, you go to the, you go to the range and you shoot your weapon. Why? To get better. You practice dqb. You practice your crap. Why? To get better. You go to the gym and work out. Why? To get bigger. And you run to get better. But we don't work on our relationships and we don't work on our quotes. Mental health, you know, we don't work on our mental strength, if you want to call it that. We kind of give up on it. And I, and I asked, I asked these soldiers all the time, thousand at a time. I get them into rooms and I give them, I give them three numbers right now. I give them 5669 or 64,600 or 4.4 million. And I ask them what those numbers are for and they know what I do. Said like, well, combat, death, suicide, death ago, which is which. And they always say 5000, 669. Those are the suicides. And this is between 9, 11 and 2019. We've had 5669 combat related deaths between Al Qaeda, ISIS, you name it, whoever we're going after. We've had 64,600 suicides by our own hand. I said, who do you think is the greatest threat to the US service member? It is ourselves and our inability to deal with our emotions. And it is everywhere out there for people who have to deal with the violence of this world. And I'm just trying to let them know that those numbers are real and we're killing ourselves worse than any bad guy could ever kill us.
- [15:36]
John J. Wiley
That's, that's a huge amount of casualties. And before that, that suicide. There's a world of hurt and suffering not just for that that veteran, not just for that law enforcement officer, because it's a huge problem in our family as well, but their families, their. Their spouses, their children. There's a lot of suffering that precedes.
- [15:56]
Tom Satterley
That, and that's the 4.4 million. Those are just VA answered calls, just the veterans who asked for help. We know there's 21 million people out there, at least, veterans only, that are suffering, that have not asked for help. And that's why during COVID this year, we offered it up to first responders because suicides went from 22 a day to 28 a day. And we know that service. First responders going through all this well are dealing with the stress and the pressure of overtime, extra hours, the riots, everything that's gone on with 2020. And we've offered that to first responders as well to help out, you know, for free. So we open up our doors to let more of our brothers and to get them to help that we know that they won't ask for unless we kind of throw in their face and we take all the excuses away. Here you go. It's free. It's a phone call. Nobody will know. You don't have to pay for it. And they've been calling by the thousands, and I love it. They keep calling back and they. And they, you know, they call their heart. I hear the hardest pipe hitters. I don't need that. I don't need counseling. At 40 minutes later, they're crying their eyes out, and they're so happy that they finally got to feel something.
- [17:02]
John J. Wiley
The good part is you have feelings. The bad part is you have feelings. You're gonna get both. And it's better than being totally numb. We're talking with Tom Satterley. Tom has got an incredible story which we'll delve into when we return from a commercial break in just a few moments. I'll give you a little hint. The movie Black Hawk down, the Battle of Mogadishu, he was there. We're going to talk a little bit about that. Without going into great details. We're going to talk about life when he returned back home and what he's done to get where he's at. Be sure to check him out online. Allsecgearfoundation.org we'll take a short break. We'll be right back. You know, we used to have an app, and it was very popular app, and then guess what? We couldn't hold a candle through our Facebook presence. How many people have the mobile Facebook app already installed? On their phone, how many people use it on their computer? Make sure you follow us, make sure you like us on our Facebook page. Just search for law enforcement, talk radio show and podcast and be sure to send us a comment to one of the posts. Best of all as 100% free return conversation with Tom Satterley Tom is retired US Army Sergeant Major Delta Force. He is one of the founders of the All Secure foundation go online all secure foundation.org he and his wife Jen run that they do a lot of great things. Earlier in the conversation I told people you would know Tom. You may not recognize his name if you've watched movies at all. In particular the movie Black Hawk down, which came out, I believe in 1999, 2001 the movie, and I've seen it a couple times. It's about the battle of Mogadishu back in 1993. You were there. And before we go into the conversation about it, I want to tell people, I'm not a combat veteran. I'm not a military veteran. I don't know what that's like, but that movie floored me and I sat there and had to force myself to breathe a few times when certain scenes. But my biggest problem with the movie is at the end it's like, okay, we're all okay now. We can relax. And I know that's not true.
- [19:16]
Tom Satterley
I wish it were. I. Many, many years I've wished it were true. And it's not. That's. That's about the time that the pain starts. I tucked it away for about 18 more years before retirement. After that, you know, through different deployments, you have to keep doing your job, you know, you have to keep showing the people around you that in my mind anyway, you're okay, you know, and I got my fingers in the air doing the air quotes. I'm okay and I'm doing my job. And so I used a lot of hate and anger and I lost empathy and compassion for everyone and everything. And all I did was my job. I just dedicated my, my life to being better so Somalia would not happen again, you know, And I remember training extra hard, shooting longer hours, running longer miles, just trying to be better so that day would never happen again. And of course it, you know, they happen over and over again. Nothing ever happened that extent. But more combat, more lost lives, more helicopter shot down. And it just keeps coming home. Ride back home. And I remember standing in a, in a mission in Iraq and a helicopter got shot down one night. I was in charge of 60 people on the ground a Helicopter got shut down right on infill. And I was thinking, I'm the guy calling in Black Hawk down now. And I can't believe I'm doing this again and again and again. And I tell people, you're lucky enough, first responders, you know, police officers, military. You're lucky enough to have a job that you get to go do, and if you don't die, you get to do it again tomorrow. That's how lucky we are. When I think of that, it weighs down on me heavily. I mean, Somalia was a heavy blanket on me for 20 some odd years before I finally dealt with it.
- [21:04]
John J. Wiley
I don't know how it couldn't be. And I realize that I don't know about the military, as I said earlier, but with it, Hollywood and what they put out about policing, it's so far from the truth that it's not even remotely close. And I take that with a grain of salt when I watch these things. And I think some of the scenes were probably far worse than they perturbated and some were not as bad. But all in all, that whole thing was horrible.
- [21:30]
Tom Satterley
It was. And people ask me, was the movie, did it do well? You know, I learned more about that battle in the movie. And still it's a movie. I don't know if it's true or not. And like you said, and whenever I watch movies, I've lost the reality of it. I used to think reality shows were real. You know, my wife's into filming and things and she's like, no, reality shows are not real. They do takes over and over again. I'm like, well, what's real then? And I watched. I watched Black Hawk down once. I watched it with my friends back when it came out, whatever year that was. They had a private screening for us. And I haven't been able to watch it all the way through or even a large chunk of it since. It's. It's too real for me. Whether those scenes actually happened or not, it just takes me right back. And I also had to walk out of Saving Private Ryan.
- [22:13]
John J. Wiley
Oh my God, are you kidding me?
- [22:14]
Tom Satterley
That was. That was crazy. The rounds cracking by just gave me the chill. I got chills now thinking about it. I had to walk out of that. And that was when I was suppressing all of my emotions. You know, I still had to walk out of those scenes. But what happens is the fact that you've lost control. You know, law enforcement officers, they go and they live in their battlefield every day. And I hate when I hear law Enforcement officers talk to me on the phone. Well, my job wasn't like yours, or I don't do this. I tell them, listen, you live in your battle zone every day of your life. I got to fly home. When I flew home, I was home. You don't get the chance to be home. You might go on a vacation once a year, and now you might not be a cop somewhere in some other town, but when you're back home, people know you. You know, I don't know if you sit with your back in the corner for a reason, not just because you have ptsd, but because somebody might walk into a bar that you're at or a restaurant, you're out with your family and know you and not like what you did to them. And so that's stressful. And plus, the fact that you might have to take a life, the fact that you have to practice to take a life, all of that weighs on you. So I don't like it when people call and say, hey, I didn't do what you did. But I don't care about the story. I care about this half of it. How do you feel now? You feel like, now, let's talk about that. Because everybody can get feeling better the same way.
- [23:31]
John J. Wiley
You brought up a great point when you talked about watching the movie Black Hawk down and you talked about Saving Private Ryan. Both of those I found very tough to do, especially the opening of Saving Private Ryan, another one that I felt. And I'll be honest with you, I cry. Not constantly, not uncontrollably, but every time I watch Band of Brothers. Part of that does it to me, too. I don't. I don't know why, but one of the things I can't do, Tom, is the. The body cam videos, the dash cam videos of police involved in shootings and fights. I can't watch them because what's happened to me is I start getting the elevated adrenaline dump and the shaking fingers, and I'm ready to rock and roll. And you know what? The first thing happens to me is I get angry and I start lashing out at people. I don't want to do that. I don't want to be that guy.
- [24:21]
Tom Satterley
Anger's number one. I do the same thing, and my wife gets mad at me. I watch those dash cam videos every now, and I see them pop up, and I'll start to watch it, and I'll get aggressive immediately. I want to teach a lesson. I want to save somebody. And I'm mad instantly, and I'm angry, and I want to go take it out on somebody. I want to make it right somehow. And that is what most of the people I talk to talk about. I'm so angry, and I have these outbursts. And it's either at my children or my spouse. It's never at work with our friends because we, you know, I don't know why. I'll figure that out one day. Maybe it's the respect thing or the fear thing, but the judgment thing. But when we're at home, we're comfortable. And I hear it every day, you know, I scream my kids for stupid things. I just get upset about stupid things. I'm like, stop watching the news so much. Stop watching violent things. I stopped watching violent movies a while ago. And it made a huge difference. Your brain remembers. It's a biological response. It gets triggered. The shaking, the adrenaline, it happens and you can't stop it. And so you have to change your pattern of what you watch and do. And then you'll notice that you start.
- [25:25]
John J. Wiley
Changing, I think, for the better. Psychologists may not like the term. Psychiatrist may not control. Avoidance is a term that I hear people say that's a negative thing. Look, I'll be honest. There's a lot of things I avoid. I just don't do anymore because I know my limitations. And like I said before, I don't want to be that guy. That guy. My biggest fear was being left alone afterwards, that no one would love me. And I'm pushing those people away, right? And I don't want to be that guy. That's nothing. Our veterans, our military, our law enforcement, our firefighters, our EMTs, our corrections officers, all those people, dispatchers. They don't deserve that life.
- [26:04]
Tom Satterley
They don't. And they're the people. Those people that you just named are the people that take care of other people in this world who don't appreciate it and are thankless about it. And they don't care. And we won't even take care of ourselves. We got veterans that go around the world. We got military people go around the world to help other nations, to help them. It's not that we go over there to kill people. We go over there to help the underdog, the person who needs help, who's being bullied or picked on by a criminal or an insane individual who just wants to, you know, you know, rule people that way. Same with law enforcement. You deal with the life, and people don't appreciate what you do. And it's thankless. And we don't take care of ourselves. And yes, something comes up and we tell everybody. Like in an airplane crash? Well, yeah. What's the first thing you do? You put your oxy mask on first. Because you can't help other people if you pass out. You can't help other people when you're in need of help. So you have to take care of yourselves. And we won't do that.
- [26:59]
John J. Wiley
I say this all the time. The best athletes in the world. Let's take Tom Brady as an example. He doesn't do it by himself. He has coaches, he has nutritionists, he has sports psychologists. He has teammates. He has people that help train him. If those guys can do that. I say guys. I mean men and women. If they can rely on someone else to help them get better, whatever their craft is, US Police, US Military can do the same. We're going to take a short break. We'll be right back. I know we've all got lots of apps on our phone, but there's one you should check out the Medium app, medium.com and be sure to follow the law enforcement talk radio show and podcast where you find great articles, blog posts from me on Medium. That's the law enforcement talk radio show and podcast on the Medium app. Or you can go directly to medium.com return conversation with Tom Satterley. Tom is a retired United States Army Sergeant Major, member of Delta Force, and for those who don't know, been in a lot of scrapes. One of the ones that we all know about is the Battle of Mogadishu, made famous in the movie Black Hawk Down. We talked about that a little bit earlier. I appreciate you spending some time talking about that. I'm sure it wasn't easy to discuss, but there came a point where you came home and all the battles were over and you must have realized that something was not going right in your life or wasn't where you wanted to be. How did that happen?
- [28:30]
Tom Satterley
That was a slow process. You know, I think it was a slow process of more of the same, without control. So, you know, you party and you're living the warrior life you're in and you're doing your job. You're doing pt. You got your mates around you checking on you, making sure. Not checking on you, but pushing you, making sure you're doing, you know, the things you're supposed to be doing. Then you retire. And I did well for a couple of years when I moved to Amman, Jordan, and I was teaching the Jordanian army how to be Special Forces. You know, again, air quotes. And I literally spent two years living in a man Jordan, and I would be home every four months. I'd come home for two weeks and visit my wife and son at the time. And then I go right back for another four months. And I was making great money. To me, I'm providing and I'm with another group of, of special forces guys that I hired. And so I'm living that life still. I'm still contributing and I'm still living, but I'm partying hard. And then when that stops and the PT stops, the physical training stops and you start eating less healthily like you should have been and you know, eating out of gas stations. When you're doing contract work or even when you're working, your health starts to drop, then your mental capacity starts to drop, and then everything starts to weigh on top of you. And I two and a half years after retirement and that's about a magic number for people that, that magic year to two year mark where people start losing it is where they haven't made a plan, they haven't really done what they've wanted to do. They've just been kind of making it get by. And you know, with that I'm retired mentality and I realized one day I don't have a tribe, I'm, I don't, my wife's divorcing me, my son doesn't know me. And you know, I just one day in Ohio got to the point where I just wanted to kill myself. I was nothing but a burden. You know, I kept telling myself, I'm in the way. It's embarrassing for people. You know, I've done my job on this earth. It's probably time to check out and get out of somebody's way. And that happened in the course of about a three minute drive from when we were working to the parking garage where I almost shot myself. And it was just one of those, you feel worthless, you feel sad. The alcohol certainly doesn't help. And that's what most people's problems turn to is the alcohol. And I. And you know, even this year during COVID when people are stuck at home with nothing to do, you start drinking at 5, probably was what saved a lot of people before, you know, you get home at 5 or 6 or 7, you start having some drinks, they might save you. But when you are working from home and nowhere to go and no one to see, and by the way, you can't see anybody, people have started drinking more. And that depressant has caused people to take their own lives. Abuse, physical abuse, verbal abuse has gone up. And I hear all these Stories where nobody's taking care of themselves. Nobody's taking care of themselves. And when I hit rock bottom, I didn't want to hear about it, you know, being tough guys like we are. I picked up a jackhammer and tried to go deeper. And it took me realizing that I was going to lose everything. It took someone reaching out, which ended up being. My wife stopped me from killing myself with a text because she knew something was wrong that day. She wasn't with me at the time. She had just left the car. But she noticed something and she started texting me over and over again. And that got me to stop what I was doing. And then later she got me to realize, hey, you're at the bottom here, you need some help, and here are these tools where you get better. And she stuck with me and we started using those tools and I started seeing the change. But that rock bottom comes when you have that loss of tribe, you feel so lonely. And then that shame. Shame is a big one. And when you have shame, you lose. You lose hope. So I try to sell hope to people every day. You don't have to sell it. It's there, right. I just try to sell it to him because, you know, you can't give it to anybody. They need to earn it. And you just got to show people that hope is always there because when you lose that, everything else, everything else follows. And I was in that dark place.
- [32:17]
John J. Wiley
One of the worst times for me. Tom, I don't know if you can relate to this at all now because even now in a pop up, it's Sunday afternoon, there's nothing going on, nothing to look forward to, and I don't have any. Do any distractions and my mind starts thinking back to old stuff.
- [32:34]
Tom Satterley
Yeah.
- [32:34]
John J. Wiley
And that's the one that catches up.
- [32:37]
Tom Satterley
That, that. Yeah. That's the toughest for me when you start reliving in those quiet moments and you start reliving those old. Those old stories that. That's when I've learned to get out of the rearview mirror. I've learned to. I'm learning to, you know, look through the windshield of my car that I'm driving and look forward in life and look at my next mission and not look back. I live in the memory of the so many friends that I've lost because I know they wouldn't want me living miserably. So I live in their honor and I try to live happily and I try to think of them in the best ways and I try not to relive those horrible moments because it's nothing but a pressure on me.
- [33:16]
John J. Wiley
You said earlier, about two and a half years after retiring, I remember being a rookie police in the academy and they said back then, this is 1980. Said the average life expectancy of a Baltimore city police was 52. And they usually died within two years of retiring. And most of them drank themselves to death and. Or back then they didn't talk about what other things they did. And I've seen that with military men. I grew up most of my life in Norfolk, Virginia. And I remember being a taxicab driver when I was 18 at the airport, picked up a woman, her husband showed up to pick her, pick her up. He was a retired Air Force officer. And we got there, he died by suicide. She'd asked me to bring the luggage in. I found him and I thinking, what could possess someone to get to this point? He supposedly had everything, everything in the world. And now I look back and go, he had three or four days by himself. It was a Sunday evening, he's drinking. All the things caught up to him. And you said that three minute drive, you go from being okay to let's end it.
- [34:19]
Tom Satterley
Yeah, it doesn't take much. And that's what I've told people over and over again. Check on your strong friends. Because we always think it's the ones that say I need help, or the obvious ones. The obvious ones, you can give them help because you can see it. It's the ones that you think are strong that I tell people, please reach out and talk to your strong friends. Just call them and check on them, text them and check on them. Because the strong ones are the ones that hide it the best from the rest of us. But we all feel the same way. I can, I can tell you we all feel that way about something and that it's okay. There's rock stars, there's movie stars that are filthy rich, that kill themselves.
- [34:52]
John J. Wiley
Yeah.
- [34:53]
Tom Satterley
They have everything. So it's not what you have, it's the work you put into feeling better about yourself. It's forgiving yourself or loving yourself, taking the time put in that effort.
- [35:04]
John J. Wiley
Obviously you've done a lot of that work and still continue to do it. And it would be impossible to, to share all that in one radio show. But is it safe to say that you have to really be aware, self aware of what your red flags are?
- [35:22]
Tom Satterley
Yes. Self awareness is number one. Self awareness is absolutely number one for everybody. And I'd say start with that. Start with the self awareness of when you get angry. Stop. Why am I Getting angry, okay, what am I going to do now with this anger? Does this anger need to be projected at my family? Does this anger even need to exist? Is the anger related to what's happening? Self awareness can fix everything because you can make those honest assessments of what's going on and how you're behaving and how others are behaving as well. So I continually self assess and I feel like we have a no fail mission here. You know, we can't let anybody commit suicide. I'm like, it's not a no fail mission. We're going to fail all the time. We're going to fail. We're going to get back up and keep going. We're never going to quit. But when we fail, we're going to get up, knock the dirt off and keep walking until we fall across that finish line. I tell everybody, expect failure. That's what makes you strong.
- [36:09]
John J. Wiley
The options are when the failure comes, if you quit, what are you going to do? You've got to, you've got to keep pushing on. And I'm going to go back to the movie. There was an element of that where they picked themselves up and they pushed through and fought to get back to the base. And I know that the work for you followed after that. All secure foundation.org where can people get more information about what you do and how can they help?
- [36:34]
Tom Satterley
Absolutely. They can find it on our Website, all secure foundation.org we have programs on there, we have courses on there. We have gear you can buy. We have videos on there that you can listen to about talking about the same thing over and over again. We have therapy that we offer to people. You know, it's free to veterans, it's free to first responders. Right now just, just reach out on our website. We're on Facebook, All Secure foundation or my name, Tom Satterley. We're on Instagram, All Secure Foundation. We're on Twitter even though I'm not very good at Twitter, but we're there. All secure vets, but any platform, reach out to us and we will get back with you right away and find out how we can help you. We promise you that.
- [37:13]
John J. Wiley
Tom, I'd love to have you back on the show again. Make sure you tell your wife, Jen, I want to have her on first and then, then maybe have both of you on together in the future. Thanks so much for being a guest on the show. Very much appreciated.
- [37:25]
Tom Satterley
Thank you, Jay. It was my pleasure.
- [37:27]
John J. Wiley
I'd like to thank our guests for coming on the law enforcement talk radio show the Law Enforcement Talk Radio show is a nationally syndicated weekly radio show broadcast on numerous AM&FM radio stations across the country. We're always adding more affiliate stations. If you enjoyed the podcast version of the show, which is always free, please do me a favor and tell a friend or two or three. I'll be back in just a few days with another episode of Law Enforcement Talk Radio show and Podcast. Until then, this is John J. Wiley. See ya.