411: Tim Pearce—Accuracy Under Fire

Summary

Podcast Summary: The Way I Heard It with Mike Rowe
Episode: 411: Tim Pearce—Accuracy Under Fire
Release Date: October 29, 2024

Host: Mike Rowe and Chuck Klausmeier
Guest: Tim Pierce, former LAPD officer and inventor of AU Fire

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Introduction

In episode 411 of The Way I Heard It with Mike Rowe, hosts Mike Rowe and Chuck Klausmeier delve into the compelling and transformative journey of Tim Pierce, a former Los Angeles Police Department (LAPD) officer whose life took a profound turn following a tragic incident. This episode, aptly titled "Accuracy Under Fire," explores Tim's experiences on the force, the devastating event that reshaped his life, and his innovative response to the challenges faced by law enforcement today.

Tim Pierce's Background and LAPD Career

Tim Pierce begins by recounting his unexpected entry into the LAPD. “I didn’t imagine I would become a cop,” Tim reflects (08:48). Coming from a construction background with the Department of Water and Power, Tim's transition to policing was driven by his innate desire to help others, as evidenced by his self-appointed role as a lifeguard during his time in Hawaii. “I would just take the kids away from him, just swim his kid away because he wouldn't listen to me,” Tim shares (11:17), highlighting his proactive nature even before officially joining the force.

Upon entering the LAPD in 1996, Tim was placed in some of the most challenging divisions, including Skid Row and the highly gang-infiltrated Southeast Division. “I got this front row seat and I really thought it was interesting,” he notes (17:04). His tenure coincided with a tumultuous period for the LAPD, marked by the aftermath of the Rodney King incident and escalating gang violence.

Meeting Christina and Their Partnership

During his early years on the force, Tim met Christina Rapati, a fellow recruit with a formidable reputation. Initially apprehensive about their partnership, Tim recalls, “I get back in the car, she starts cracking jokes and I'm like, oh my God, this girl's kind of cool, right?” (19:35). Their collaborative efforts in the Crash Units made them a well-known team within the department, earning both respect and recognition from their peers and adversaries alike.

The Tragic Incident: Christina's Shooting

The episode takes a harrowing turn as Tim recounts the night of June 3, 2006, when Christina was fatally wounded during a routine patrol. Responding to an officer down emergency call, Christina was ambushed by an armed suspect. Despite her exceptional skills and quick reflexes, she was shot multiple times, resulting in paralysis from the T2 vertebrae onward. “[At the hospital], I have to stand here and take it,” Tim describes the scene (50:31). Christina's survival was attributed to the immediate medical response and her physical resilience, but the incident left her with life-altering injuries.

Recovery and the Birth of AU Fire

In the aftermath of Christina's paralysis, Tim faced immense personal and professional challenges. Coping with the trauma led him to retire from the LAPD after twelve years. During his recovery at home, Tim stumbled upon an idea while experimenting with TENS units—devices that use electrical stimulation for muscle therapy. “[I put it on] on my bicep,” Tim explains (63:49), inadvertently activating the device and discovering its potential to incapacitate muscles remotely.

This realization spurred Tim to invent AU Fire (Accuracy Under Fire), a revolutionary gunshot wound simulator designed to enhance police training. “It's a device that you can operate remotely... Sending a 66-volt electrical jolt into the musculature,” Tim details the functionality of AU Fire (01:12). The device effectively mimics the physical effects of being shot, allowing officers to experience and train for scenarios where they must operate with impaired mobility.

AU Fire Device Description and Demonstration

AU Fire consists of sleeves equipped with electrodes that can be remotely controlled to deliver precise electrical stimuli, immobilizing specific limbs. During the podcast, a live demonstration showcases the device's capabilities:

• Chuck Klausmeier dons the AU Fire sleeve and experiences timed electrical shocks, rendering his arm unusable. “[As Tim controls it], can you do anything with that arm? Not really,” Chuck responds (71:35).
• Further applications include simulating shots to the forearms and crotch, demonstrating how officers would need to adapt and continue their duties under severe physical constraints.

This realistic simulation bridges a critical gap in current police training, which often relies on less effective methods like simulated ammunition or rubber bullets. “We have to get out and get face-to-face with people... There's a huge gap in reality-based training,” Tim emphasizes (35:05).

Impact on Police Training and Future Prospects

Tim passionately discusses the transformative potential of AU Fire in preparing officers for high-stress, life-threatening situations. “This just changes the game and it is what they're going to face when they get shot,” he asserts (69:42). The device not only enhances situational awareness but also builds the neural pathways necessary for officers to remain effective despite injuries.

Adopted by several elite units, including the US Marshals and international teams such as the Swiss SWAT and Netherlands Anti-Terrorism teams, AU Fire is gaining recognition for its innovative approach to training. Tim shares, “The US Marshals picked it up... They are excited to use it,” highlighting the device's growing acceptance and the backing of influential figures like Gavin de Becker (75:05).

Personal Life After the Tragedy

Tim's personal life underwent significant changes following Christina's shooting. Their marriage eventually ended in divorce as Christina struggled with her injuries and associated mental health challenges. Despite the separation, Tim recounts how both he and Christina managed to maintain a respectful and supportive relationship for the sake of their children. “Now that she's helping other people, she will always have problems, right?” Tim reflects on Christina's ongoing resilience and dedication (80:42).

Their co-parenting arrangement emphasizes healing and mutual respect, showcasing Tim's ability to navigate profound personal loss while channeling his experiences into meaningful innovation.

Conclusion

Episode 411 of The Way I Heard It with Mike Rowe offers an intimate and inspiring look into Tim Pierce's life—a narrative of dedication, tragedy, and ingenuity. From his challenging days in the LAPD to the creation of a groundbreaking training device, Tim's story underscores the resilience of the human spirit and the relentless pursuit of improvement in the face of adversity. AU Fire stands as a testament to how personal pain can drive significant advancements that benefit others, potentially saving countless lives by better preparing our law enforcement officers for the brutal realities of their duty.

Notable Quotes:

• Tim Pierce (08:48): “It’s like glass, it’s like black glass, just sharp lava. And there’s no way to get out of the water there.”
• Mike Rowe (21:04): “If you have mastered a skill in Hawaii, in the trades, you have more work than you can ever finish.”
• Tim Pierce (35:05): “There's a big gap in police training right now, and AU Fire comes into play.”
• Tim Pierce (69:42): “Going to save lives as absolutely needed.”

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Transcript Reference

For context, the above quotes are referenced with approximate timestamps corresponding to the provided transcript. These timestamps help locate the exact moments within the episode where these statements occur.

Transcript

[Mike Rowe]

Well, hello, friends. It's us again. Mike Rowe and Chuck Klausmeier. And this is the way I heard it. Specifically, this one is the way Tim Pierce heard it. He's our guest, a former cop who. I mean, of all the beats in all the world, wow, South Central, right after Rodney King up to his neck with the blood and the Crips. And man, does he have some stories to tell.

[Chuck Klausmeier]

He does, and he spills a lot of them. And one that's just incredibly tragic.

[Mike Rowe]

Yeah. Full disclosure, I didn't invite him on to hear many of the stories that we heard, but I was so grateful to hear them. I invited him on because I think Tim has invented. Well, I know he's invented a product that's going to save a lot of lives.

[Tim Pierce]

Yeah.

[Mike Rowe]

I don't know how many, but maybe an awful lot. Our friend Gavin de Becker is very bullish on this invention, which you were kind enough to field test here on the podcast.

[Chuck Klausmeier]

I got the feeling that you were really delighted by that as you got to control the buttons on it. And do you want to tell people what this device is?

[Mike Rowe]

It's a device that you can operate remotely. It is essentially, think of it like a garment of sorts. It's a sleeve that you can put on either arm. And the sleeve has electrodes. Think of them as electrodes in there. When you hit the right button and turn the right dial, it sends an electrical jolt about 66 volts into the musculature of the person wearing said device. This will cause things like your bicep and your forearm to contract uncontrollably, thereby immobilizing your arm. Yes. Why would you want to do this? Because when you're shot in the course of duty.

[Chuck Klausmeier]

You said duty.

[Mike Rowe]

I did say duty. And full disclosure, we also almost called this episode On Duty Booty, because Tim met his wife and they became partners. They were partners, then they became husband and wife. And then wouldn't it be strange if.

[Chuck Klausmeier]

It were the other way around?

[Mike Rowe]

Hey, you know what, honey, I love you so much. I want you to ride with me through Watts. Oh, my God, this story. You know what? I'm not gonna tell you. I don't wanna give it away. I want you to hear it as I heard it. But I want you to know that as I'm talking to this guy, I'm thinking what I really need to get to is this remarkable life saving device that simulates the effects of being shot without being shot that I'm wearing through.

[Chuck Klausmeier]

The entire episode, waiting to be shocked.

[Mike Rowe]

Slash shot. Now it takes us a while to get there because like so many other plans, mine was ill conceived in that the unexpected value of listening to a guy like Tim for the better part of 90 minutes is that you get some insight into being a cop that I'd never heard before. And I know a lot of cops, I'm friendly with cops. But this guy is special. How he came to the force, his journey through the skilled trades, his journey as a self appointed lifeguard, right? The fact that he winds up as a mad scientist entrepreneurial inventor with the wife that accompanied him on this unscriptable journey, it's just something you need to hear. In his own words. And thankfully, Tim Pierce is not at a loss for them. We call the episode Accuracy Under Fire because that's the name of his company. You're going to want to check it out online. Surely there's a URL we can mention now as well as.

[Chuck Klausmeier]

Sure, it's au fire.com the videos are unbelievable.

[Mike Rowe]

Yeah, you're going to want to see this thing in use. But first I think you're going to want to hear from the man who invented it, learn about the tragedy from which this triumph was hatched, and enjoy Truly a good cop. This is the way I heard it right after this. For the last eight years now, I've been encouraging business owners to post a job for [e-mail] row and I'm pleased to report that many of you have not only taken my advice, you've gone on to find a quality candidate in just 24 hours. I know this because I've heard from many of you who have done that very thing. I also know it's true because I've used ZipRecruiter myself on more than one occasion, and each time I've seen it work exactly as advertised. And finally, I know for a fact that their service works, because honestly, who in their right mind would advertise for eight years on the same show if their product or service didn't work? So at this point, really the only thing I can do is remind you that ZipRecruiter really does work. And the best way to prove that is not to tell you to trust me or to trust endless testimonials from endless happy customers. It's to post a job for [e-mail] roe and then just watch what happens. Don't cost nothing, as my Uncle Frank used to say. And four out of five employers who post on ZipRecruiter.com row will get a quality candidate within the first day. See why ZipRecruiter is the hiring site employers prefer. Most try them for free at this exclusive web address. Ready? Ziprecruiter.com ro ziprecruiter.com sl row ziprecruiter. Smartest way to hire. The smartest way to hire. All right, here we go. First things first. Thank you for the amazing gift, Tim.

[Tim Pierce]

You're welcome.

[Mike Rowe]

This is some of the best scotch there is, and I'm not going to enjoy it right this second, but my pledge to you is it will be gone the next time we meet.

[Tim Pierce]

I you're going to enjoy that. I certainly did when I was introduced to it. Like I said, you could drink that for breakfast every day.

[Mike Rowe]

See, there's that fine line. Okay. It's like once your scotch and your whiskey becomes the way to start the day, you might be having an interesting day.

[Tim Pierce]

Yeah.

[Mike Rowe]

I say this as a guy who's had many interesting days. I introduced you properly in the preamble and fawned all over you, but I didn't know you were going to rig chuck up in the device. Can you explain what my producer's wearing there?

[Tim Pierce]

That is AU Fire, which is short for accuracy under fire. And it's a gunshot wound simulator that I created. And it actually was created out of a tragedy at lapd, which we'll talk about. But interesting enough, there's really not that many products out there that simulate getting hit by gunfire.

[Mike Rowe]

Why?

[Tim Pierce]

You just can't shoot at somebody in training. It's kind of left up to officers to, you know, they're kind of out there with a hope and a prayer that when it happens that they're gonna pull through, they're gonna be able to pull their inner Rambo out and fight back accurately and effectively when they've been shot and they're under attack.

[Mike Rowe]

Yeah. There's so much simulation, though. I mean, there's simulated ammunition, there's rubber bullets, there's all sorts of other things. You know. But before we dive all the way into it, let me just tell you that from my perspective, you're here because I got a front row seat to a lot of this stuff. In the dirty jobs days, you know, the 100th job, we went to Fort Bragg and went through all their training exercises, and I did similar things with similar branches, and I've always been interested in this. And then, you know, Gavin came on this podcast. Gavin de Becker. Listeners will know him as the guy that started one of the premier personal service protection organizations in the country. And so when I heard about what you had done, I immediately called Gavin and Gavin was like, oh, we're in touch and we're going to place an order. So that's what got my attention. If you've got him super interested in this, then I think it's something that the country probably needs to know about. A lot of people are doing a lot of really important work in your space, but I ain't seen nothing like this.

[Tim Pierce]

Yeah, it does not exist. I mean, it's brand new. I mean, it's many years. Overnight success and 15 years, basically. Right. I've been working on it for a very long time. I was surprised when I got into the police academy in 1996. I was a construction worker before that with Department of Water and Power. I was a helper, basically a laborer. And then I get into the police academy in 96 and I remember, hold.

[Mike Rowe]

On, how's that happen again? I mean, like one day you just had it with the construction game or. Was policing always a thing in the back of your mind?

[Tim Pierce]

No, it was actually never a thing. It's never a thing I imagined I would do. I don't know, I just wasn't that type of guy. I didn't think it was actually. Took a year off from Water and power and I went and moved over to Hawaii and was doing construction there on Oahu. Every day after work I would body surf at this beach called Sandy Beach. World class body surfing beach. Really dangerous and a lot of fun. And I would hit it five days a week for a year. And several of those days I was out there, I made a couple little, I don't know, like micro rescues where I'm just watching somebody and if they were getting, you know, a lot of tourists. When you come out of Waikiki beach and you head down the coast, Sandy beach is like one of the first ones that looks accessible. And so they pull in the parking lot and they go jump in the water with their rental boogie boards. They're out there in the mix. And so if you're not paying attention, you can get sucked down into the. The lava field down there. Right. They call it gas chambers. So I would swim out and tell people, hey, you better move up the beach, you know, and sometimes I would look down, the lifeguards are reading their paper or whatever. And I think sometimes they don't care if the tourists get, you know, smashed. So teachable moment, you know, that's how.

[Mike Rowe]

You thin the herd.

[Tim Pierce]

And there's a lady out there swimming. She was out There forever. So I'm like, God, she has to be tired. So I swam out to her. I'm like, are you okay? Yeah, yeah, yeah, I'm fine. And I remembered back to learning swimming as a kid. And I remember the lifeguard saying, some people's egos will override and they drown that way because they won't admit they need help. And so I caught a couple more waves. I'm like, she has to be exhausted. So I swam out there. Hey. I started talking to her, where you from? And she just like locked onto me and I started swimming backwards up the beach to a safer spot. And she just was glued to me. And then finally, and I'm watching the set waves and everything, and finally I timed it and I'm like, hey, you probably touch right here. And her eyes just blew like this and she just panicked and went straight for the beach. She was out there panicking but not showing it. And so I had a bunch of little things like that one guy was out there from Montana with his like 8 year old son. And they were on their boogie boards upside down and they were getting sucked into, down towards the lava field. So I went out and I ended up just taking the kid away from him. Just swam his kid away because he wouldn't listen to me and pulled the kid to a safe spot and got him in.

[Mike Rowe]

Describe the lava fields and what happens if you get sucked into one.

[Tim Pierce]

It's like glass, it's like black glass, just sharp lava. And there's no way to get out of the water there, right? So the current will take it and then it becomes cliffs. So it's just very dangerous. And I just saw it happening. And the dad wasn't listening to me. I had kind of warned him two times, and then finally I just said, I went out and I grabbed the kid's board and I go, hey, what's your name? Where are you from? Blah, blah, blah. Swam him away. And then the dad realized, oh, and he started following. So one day I'm sitting on the beach, I'm like, why do I care?

[Mike Rowe]

Yeah, what are you doing? I mean, it's such an interesting. I mean, it's not unheard of, of course, to want to help someone in distress. But you, like, you're looking for problems that aren't self evident.

[Tim Pierce]

Exactly. And I was looking up and down the beach and nobody else seemed to really be caring. And so what's different about me? And I thought, okay, maybe I need to be like an EMT or a medic or something like that. Because I was in construction, I was labor side of it, unskilled. I needed a career. I think I was 23, 24 at the time. So I started looking into trade schools there in Hawaii. And it was two, three year waits. I decided I would go back to LA and try to get some training.

[Mike Rowe]

And come back because sidebar. If you have mastered a skill in Hawaii, in the trades, you have more work than you can ever finish, ever do. You're in demand. You can basically set your own schedule from what I've seen.

[Tim Pierce]

What a great place to work, huh?

[Mike Rowe]

Beautiful. It's not bad.

[Tim Pierce]

We would be on these mansions up on the hillside. Surf shorts, work boots and tool bags. Drop your bags at lunch, jump in the water, get some food, go back to work. It was outstanding. Loved it.

[Mike Rowe]

So this is interesting. By way of backstory, you're a body surfer and I assume you surf too, but. But your story is body surfing and you're a self appointed lifeguard because you look around and the lifeguard's reading his newspaper or taking a nap and you see people who aren't even in distress, but something in the reptilian part of your brain says, I don't know, I think they're in trouble. And then you take it upon yourself to swim out and separate a boy from his dad, knowing that the dad will follow and they all live happily ever after.

[Tim Pierce]

Actually, that one, I sent the dad in to teach him a lesson. He was about 20 yards behind and I was like, okay, go in there. Right there, right there. Knowing he was just going to get hammered. He needed to know teachable moments. Exactly. But I got back to LA and then I was sitting in traffic and I was looking at this motor cop and I was like, okay, his job is indoors, it's outdoors, it's mental, it's physical. I had some martial arts background, so I was a little bit scrappy. I'm like, I could probably do that part. And I knew I didn't need a college degree to be a cop. And I knew I could make a livable, you know, wage at that. And I was tired of the construction side of it. I wasn't a way I wanted to go and I thought maybe I should try that. But I'm actually not, I don't know, I guess the cop type, where rules, yeah, they're suggestions. Usually I'm kind of cowboyish, I guess, and attention to detail was never my thing. But ultimately I end up getting into LAPD and 1996. I got into the Academy in March of 96. And I show up there, and when we have Black Line Monday, 4:00 in the morning, everybody lines up and there was a female recruit who was sent out. They had like a two week lead class with the females. And so this woman was sent out there to get us all in order and get us up into the building. And she looked miserable. I remember standing there, looking at her, going, who is this grumpy chick who she thinks she is? And the next thought was not, I'm going to marry that girl. But I did.

[Mike Rowe]

Wow. No, that's a. Yeah, there's a lot of distance between those two points. Tell me about her.

[Tim Pierce]

So her name was Christina Rapati. We had a big class. 120 something people. LAPD was recruiting real heavily back then. And she was in a different squad, so I didn't really know her, but I knew she had a great reputation.

[Mike Rowe]

For context, this is pre Rodney King.

[Tim Pierce]

Yeah. No, right after.

[Mike Rowe]

Right after. Well, you buried that lead too, then, didn't you? You went and joined the LAPD at a time when the LAPD was probably not the wish fulfillment or the aspiration of a lot of people.

[Tim Pierce]

You know, it's interesting is people were telling me back then when I would tell them that, hey, I want to be a cop, they're like, man, you don't want to do that. This place has changed. The job is ruined. It's terrible, terrible conditions. And I really thought about it. And then I realized, I said, you know what? The people who had a career leading up to Rodney King and. And we're still in it, their norm was flipped upside down. I'm gonna come in and this is gonna be my norm, how it is. So I might have a different perspective of the job. And I'm so glad I made that decision, because had I listened to them, I would have missed out on an amazing career. And the amazing people I met, you know, it just sent me on this trajectory that is incredible. And I'm proud of.

[Mike Rowe]

Well, I say a lot because we've had more than a few cops on this show. And I kind of maybe now somewhat glibly say, I can't remember a tougher time to be a cop than right now, but maybe then. What's your take on all of it?

[Tim Pierce]

It was a tough time to be a cop. No doubt. Like, when I got to Southeast Division, we were running about 80 to 90 murders a year in basically five square miles.

[Mike Rowe]

So we're talking. This is South Central.

[Tim Pierce]

Yeah, yeah. Lapd, Southeast Division. Let me back up. When you get out of the academy. You go to your first division where you get trained with a training officer out in the field every day that I went to Central Division, which is downtown LA. 30 jobs. Yeah. When I was working water and power, I was doing some really dirty jobs. And I remember telling my partner there, watch, LAPD is going to put me somewhere dirty. And they think that this is, they're going to show me, you know, where did I end up? Skid row, Skid row. Walking a foot beat. Basically the graveyard shift. And that was interesting. You'd be on 6th and San Julian, there'd be 300 people in the intersection. It was like a casting call for thriller. Just zombies everywhere. And because you're in uniform, you're standing there and they would just come around you and split like the Red Sea. And you just had this front row view of what, you know, just what this was. It's all mental illness, it's all drug addiction, it's homeless and it was thick back then. But I got this front row seat and I really thought it was interesting. So I do probation there and then I wheel out and go to Southwest Division, which is like the Crenshaw district, just west of usc, over to Crenshaw Mall, out to La Cienega, Vernon, up to the 10 Freeway. Right. And that is like a middle class area, but highly infiltrated with gangs. So it's interesting. You'll end up in a house chasing a guy, a gangster. Mom works for the dmv, sister works for Water and Power. Great jobs and everything. But brother is a full on hardcore Crip or Blood or whatever.

[Mike Rowe]

Back then it was the Crips and the Bloods. Those were basically the split bill.

[Tim Pierce]

Yep. So worked there. And that's where I met back up with Christina. We actually got partnered in patrol at that time. This is our first year on the job as new officers on our own. And I remember she had already a great reputation. And when this watch commander read off our names being assigned together in roll call, I remember thinking, oh no, not this one.

[Mike Rowe]

This one. I remember her.

[Tim Pierce]

Yeah, she's cranky. Well, cranky. And she's gonna make me look horrible. Right. She's so much better. Right, right. So I'm nervous and we get in the car and usually there's a little discussion. This is where I keep my backup, this is what I have, blah, blah, blah. In case something happens, there's this little thing you do and we pull out of the station and immediately we see this car full of gangsters and we go after it and we Pull them over and it gets heated quick.

[Mike Rowe]

How do you know they're gangsters at this point?

[Tim Pierce]

You know, I don't know. I don't remember what that situation was, but they were, they turned out to be. Pulled them over for some violation. It got really heated. I kind of lost my cool. And I'm thinking already, right off the bat, I already screwed up and she's gonna judge me. I get back in the car, she starts cracking jokes and I'm like, oh my God, this girl's kind of cool, right? And it turns out we end up being on the exact same page with law enforcement. And we realized quickly that gangsters were like the cancer of the city. They're ruining it for everybody, right? And we really wanted to get into the crash units and so we were just working hard and they actually were starting to talk to us, recognizing that, that we were doing good work out there.

[Mike Rowe]

Why were they called crash units?

[Tim Pierce]

It was Community Resources Against Street Hoodlums.

[Mike Rowe]

I knew it had to be an acronym because there's no way you're just going to, you know, and we'll call them Crash units.

[Tim Pierce]

Yeah, cool name.

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[Tim Pierce]

So working patrol, she was my patrol partner for I want to say almost two years. And then we had a third partner on the car and Phil Cuesta was murdered by 18th Street. Phil Cuesta was one of the crash officers and responded to that. One of the craziest scenes I've ever been on. Nicest guy. I remember I would pass him in the locker room, and I remember always looking at him. I'm a new officer, so he's a crash guy. So, you know, you don't say anything. You don't talk to him, really. And I was like, I gotta meet him. I gotta say hi to him. He seems like such a nice guy. The next week, he was dead. And then eventually, when they opened up his spot in the unit, they pulled Christina and I into the crash unit, and we started working the Rolling 30s Harlem Crips, which was from Martin Luther King up to Jefferson, sometimes up to Adams. Turns Bloods up there, and from basically USC all the way across to Crenshaw. Right? That whole big area. 40 years plus of entrenchment, and we went at it hard. With those guys, you're not coming out there with a big stick like, you're the boss. They'll eat you up. There's a game to play. You have to feign respect and all that kind of stuff. But we got them with a lot of felonies. They put hits out on us, Christina.

[Mike Rowe]

Especially, And then hits that are widely recognized among one gang. Both gangs, like, do you guys pose an existential threat to the whole ecosystem, or do you get, you know, can you be friendly with the Bloods but not the Crips? As a cop, it just doesn't work that way.

[Tim Pierce]

No, no. You have relationships with these guys. There's some there. It's always going to be locking horns no matter what. There's no changing that. There's some that will play the. The respect game. And there's a lot of them that they're real characters, you know, and there's a lot of really smart ones. You develop these relationships with them, and they understand the game. So their job is to try to get away. Our job is to try to catch them. Right? Sometimes they win, sometimes we win. As soon as you pat them down, you can sit there and have a conversation with them regularly. That's our job. Get to know them, know who they are, know what their MO Is, if they're on probation, parole, know their tattoos, know the who they hang with, what cars they drive, who their baby mamas are, who their mamas are. Right? And you're like a reservoir of intelligence. Because when they go do a crime in another city and there's some kind of clue ringing back there, we're the ones that are gonna identify him. Oh, we know him. We know that tattoo. We know that car. We know those guys, you know, so that's your job. It turned out to be a lot of fun and it turned out to be a perfect job for me. I really enjoyed it and I got good at it, which is strange because I hate conflict.

[Mike Rowe]

Yeah.

[Tim Pierce]

I'll do anything to avoid conflict. I've been that way my whole life.

[Chuck Klausmeier]

Well, maybe that's a good thing for a cop.

[Tim Pierce]

Yeah.

[Mike Rowe]

But to be drawn to it at the same time, that's the thing that's interesting. And speaking of interesting, you've used that word three times now, at least once to describe the transition, I would imagine, from going from paradise to where you're body surfing into skid row. Right. I mean, you're standing there as the crowd sort of parts around you because you're in uniform. And you describe that whole moment as an interesting moment. Most people would go with any number of other descriptors. Right. All day long. So it's always interesting. Why are you attracted to this cranky woman? That's interesting, you know. Oh, that's kind of interesting. It really is kind of interesting too, why you would go out to rescue somebody who doesn't appear to be in trouble. So I'm just taking a mental inventory of the things that you. You'll do anything to avoid conflict, but you go out of your way to join the one police force in the country with the biggest black eye at a time in history when it was probably the blackest. Dude, that's interesting, but please, go ahead.

[Tim Pierce]

You know, I remember my thought process when I got on the job. I was scared. I remember one of my early traffic stops. These were four gangsters in a van. This was when I was on probation. We're on the. I think it was this fourth street bridge going across the LA River. We had stopped them there. We're under street lights like two in the morning, and we got him at gunpoint. And I remember seeing my badge shaking on my besh, on my chest. Right. And I. And I'm like, calm down. Like, get it together. But it was just rattling on my chest, you know, hard.

[Mike Rowe]

Your heart has to be beating to make your badge rattle.

[Tim Pierce]

It's something that you get acclimated. Most people say, I could never do that job and I would have been that guy. But you get acclimated to it and then you get confidence doing it and you have to have officers show you how. Right. We'll talk about that. But so you graduate. But I remember thinking, put me in the hardest possible place first and then everything else is going to be easy, right? That was. So I signed up for all the hard divisions. Watts, southwest, southeast and 77th, Newton.

[Mike Rowe]

And interesting, interesting that you would do that.

[Tim Pierce]

Just wanted to get. And I ended up realizing I didn't want to deal with normal people, normal people, problems. When you snatched a gangster with a pistol, some kind of felony, you walked him into the station, your peers were like, hey, nice job. Your supervisor was like, nice job. The neighbors, the good neighbors are like, nice job. You know, that's what's going on. They just can't say it. So there's like no downside to it other than the drama you got to put up with to get to that arrest.

[Mike Rowe]

And it's worth pointing out that they can't say it because these people in the area you've described are literally trapped in their homes.

[Tim Pierce]

100%. If you're not from the neighborhood, you're not tested and proven, you stay in the house. We arrested a kid for murder. He was 16. He was a Project Crip. PJ Crip. I was out there with the homicide detectives. And so anyways, I grabbed this kid and he's in cuffs. I sit him in the backseat of the car and I'm sitting back there waiting for the detectives to do their thing with grandma in the house, interviewing her. And I go, hey, man, I'm talking to him just like this. I go, hey man, let me ask you a question. If I was some Hispanic kid, even black kid, and I moved into this neighborhood and I didn't want anything to do with the gangs, like, mom's moved me here, I don't have any choices, but I don't want anything to do with the gang. What's my life gonna be like? He goes, he looks at me, he goes, you better stay in the house. Just like that 16 year old kid. And it just like confirmed what I already knew, but I wanted to hear it from him. You see that all the time. Because look, if you call the police and they find out, your kids are gonna get just hammered going to school, they're gonna get hammered at school, to and from. These guys will show up at your house when you move in, show you a pistol, say, anything happens around on this block, you come to me first, like, this is my block. That kind of stuff we've seen where somebody's moved in, pulled the U haul up and 30, 40 people descend on U haul, strip it clean and take off into the wind. And the neighbors will be like, just welcome them to the neighborhood.

[Mike Rowe]

Yeah.

[Tim Pierce]

So if you're an outsider, you better stay in the house.

[Mike Rowe]

I mean, look, I think a lot of people listening to this are probably asking. The thing I'm asking myself now, which is, at what point does society just really go, okay, wait, take the gloves off. You described it as a cancer. Where's the scalpel? Why aren't we removing the tumor? What would it take? What has to happen, if anything, in your estimation, to get. To get to that mindset?

[Tim Pierce]

I think it's widely accepted that you have to get to them young. There has to be something else to do. Education, young. Sports, young. A lot of these guys are being brought up in these houses that are just. The parents are horrible. They don't have a choice, and they're angry or neglected, and the gang brings them in, gives them something to do, gives them purpose. Everybody needs purpose. It doesn't have to be good. Bad purpose is purpose, and I think that's part of it too, so. And actually, what I've loved about the job is there's so much food for thought. That's what I loved about working in the inner city, is just. You're looking around. This is so complicated. There's no one solution. But good education young and things to do young and sports to do young is a great start.

[Mike Rowe]

I get that that's what has to happen to stop the cycle. But what do you do in real time when it's too late? Like, anybody who's seen the Wire, anybody who's watched homicide, like, you get a sense that there's a point where you can do all sorts of preventative measures to keep the fire from conflagrating. And then there's a point where the building is fully involved and you just gotta knock the flames down. And that seems to be where you spent most of your life, is knocking the flames down.

[Tim Pierce]

Yeah. And unfortunately, I don't think that's gonna get any better anytime soon. Actually, it's where au fire comes into play, because a couple things have happened. Police training to save money, keep people on the streets has turned into PowerPoint training. Right.

[Mike Rowe]

Theory.

[Tim Pierce]

All the shooting days, all the tactics days, all that stuff's pretty much gone. Very little people assume that we get a lot of training as police officers, and we don't, in my experience at lapd, but I hear it all over the place. Place. And then we. We have things like Yuval Day happen where. Because as an officer in training, you're. You're practicing overriding your Self preservation instinct for when that day comes. Right. Power points do not do that. So Uvalde happens and they're faced with rifle fire in a small confined area and they're like, oh, we, we didn't sign up for this. Or they don't have that practice of overriding and sacrificing yourself for the greater good. And then we have George Floyd happen and the riots. And so we have officers leaving the business like this. We have violence going like this. We have an economy that's going to be going like this. So we're going to have less officers and much more violence. And that's not going to turn around for 20 years in my opinion. Like I said, you have to be taught how to be a proactive officer. You have to have other officers who've been doing it, who've muscled through it and then they show you and they give you the confidence and you're practicing it and then you become good at it. And then you can go out and tackle the hard problems, the hard people who are causing problems for everybody else. Not every cop wants to do that. I mean, we're all paid the same. You sit at a desk or you go out and you tackle super hard problems. You're getting the same paycheck.

[Mike Rowe]

I didn't realize that.

[Tim Pierce]

Yeah. There's no advantage to it. None. Because you're just opening up coffers of drama for yourself and complaints. It's gotten so tricky to be a proactive police officer. Proactive meaning I'm pulling you over for some minor traffic violation. I'm talking to you now, I'm digging and I'm finding out if you're on probation or parole. If you're on parole and you have search and seizure conditions on your parole. Now I'm checking, I'm checking your car, I'm looking for the pistol. Right. So I took an infraction and I found a felony in it.

[Mike Rowe]

Right.

[Tim Pierce]

There's a thousand different ways to do that, but you have to be getting out and getting face to face with people and there is nothing about the business that encourages you to do that now.

[Mike Rowe]

Right.

[Tim Pierce]

So the proactive policing has been on a decline for a very long time. And then George Floyd and all that just sent it over to Cliff. Now if the governor, the mayor and the chief came out today, in my opinion, and said, guys, we made a mistake, the era of gotcha is over. We need you to take the city back. We need you to just crush the crime.

[Mike Rowe]

Yeah.

[Tim Pierce]

There are no officers that are going to trust that that's going to have to be tested. The officers get in some really sticky, hairy situations that could possibly embarrass the department, and they don't get their heads taken off. We're not getting sacrificed for public opinion. Right. Nobody trusts it anymore. So they're not being proactive. So the people who knew how to.

[Mike Rowe]

Because no one has their back or they don't feel like anyone truly has their back.

[Tim Pierce]

Exactly. So the guys who are teaching people how to be proactive are leaving or have left, and it's not being encouraged. So let's say they say that. Which we know they're not. The era of gotcha is over. It would take several years for them to become confident and start doing it, but there's no one going to be left to teach them how to do it.

[Mike Rowe]

I'm sorry to inject with a metaphor, but it's just screaming in my head, man. I'm thinking of the lifeguard who's reading his magazine and not really paying attention to the job at hand. And then I'm thinking of the body surfer who is proactively policing a situation and just swimming out on his own. That's the difference. I mean, the quality that brought you to the force is the exact character that we ought to be magnifying and building up. But not only are we not doing that, we're affirmatively discouraging it, or so it seems.

[Tim Pierce]

Yeah.

[Mike Rowe]

I don't want to put words in your mind.

[Tim Pierce]

Right. And you hear this all over the country, run around training people and other agencies. It's pretty much the same complaint across the board, which is scary. I believe we're heading into really rough times and we're going to have less officers and a lot. I mean, the ambushes on police have gone up, I believe, like, 100%.

[Mike Rowe]

It's almost incredible.

[Tim Pierce]

Yeah.

[Mike Rowe]

It strains credulity to think that there is an open season that's essentially been called, you guys are in season.

[Tim Pierce]

There's no consequences for all the things that lead up to that, all the crimes that are leading up to that. So it's just getting more and more ripe for attacks on police officers.

[Mike Rowe]

So this wasn't the exact environment when you met your future wife, but if you could kind of just go back a bit and just tell me what were the circumstances by which you fell in love?

[Tim Pierce]

So we were well known as a partner team and well known in the gang units and everything. And we had this great social network in the department and just such good people and great friends. And everybody started claiming like, they'd be like, we know. You guys are a thing. You guys are on duty. Booty, huh? I'd look at him like, are you crazy? She won't even let me sit down to eat. Like, we're eating on the hood of the car. Taco Bell. Let's go, let's go, let's go. So there's zero time. I mean, this girl's driving the car, driving the night. So she was the brains of the car, I was the muscle, I guess. But we would just start doing everything together. We would start running before work, and she had moved down to the South Bay. We'd just make any excuse to be around each other. So it was working out before work, them working. And then she wanted to learn how to surf, so I taught her how to surf. And now that became, you know, we go surfing together. And then one day we were at the Baker de Vegas race and the big party at the end, some cocktails and stuff. And then, you know, the magnets started happening. It started attracting, and there it goes. And we were like the last two to figure out we liked each other. It was one of those. Yeah, it's like musical chairs.

[Mike Rowe]

Just me and you, kiddo.

[Tim Pierce]

Exactly.

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[Tim Pierce]

She was a phenomenal officer, widely known top 5% of the department. Easily, if not more smaller than that. Super smart, super driven. Not trying to be a tough guy or anything like that, just smart. And she played the game really well with the gangsters. Like, she got tremendous respect from them because she did not back down from problems, from tough problems. So at some point you have to divulge that you're dating.

[Mike Rowe]

Yeah.

[Tim Pierce]

So we pull my lieutenant, Art Miller, outside and we go, hey, lt, we gotta tell you something. What's up? I go, we've started dating. And he looks at me and he goes, hmm, wow, Tim, you really do like a challenge, don't you?

[Mike Rowe]

There's a lot of stomping and a lot of frisking going on over here. So when do you get married?

[Tim Pierce]

Got married in 2003. Had a little girl, Jordan. So I'm working down in Watts at this point in the gang unit there. She's back up in Southwest Division, working like a crime suppression unit. We actually ran a race that morning down at El Segundo or Dockweiler Beach. So race they do every year for fallen officers and fundraiser. So my gang unit put a team together. She jumped on our team. I've got a picture of us standing there with a couple of the guys in my gang unit. My daughter, 16 months old, in my arms. It's 10 o'clock in the morning. Just finished our run, our race. We go home, we give my daughter Jordan to my mom. Christina goes off the Southwest Division, I go off Southeast Division. We're working. Our schedules are crazy, changing all the time. So 10 o'clock that night, June 3, 2006. 10 o'clock that night, I'm in Jordan Downs housing project. That was my responsibility, the Grape Street Crips. We hear a help call come out up in Southwest Division. So my partner Sky Stevens and I start racing up there down Century Boulevard, jump on the 110 freeway. We're in the emergency lane heading towards the Coliseum and get off at Coliseum. And we're just responding to a help call.

[Mike Rowe]

You don't know the nature of.

[Tim Pierce]

Yeah, it's an officer down help call. Yeah, that's why we're coming from southeast to Southwest. So we're racing up there. I've completely forgotten that Christina's working. So we get on the freeway and Scotty goes, hey, Christina working. I go, oh, yeah, she is. We switched over to Southwest frequency and it's on Leighton and La Salle, right in the middle of rolling 30 side. So I go, well, it's her hood. She's probably in this, like, not thinking. She's one hit. And we're getting off at Coliseum. My phone rings in my pocket and I look at it and her sergeant, who's a friend of ours, Robin Brown. And I remember turning to Scott, I go, here it goes. What's up, sergeant? He goes, hey, Tim, where you at? I go, I'm getting off the Coliseum right now. He goes, it's Christina. I go, yeah, I know. I figured out. I'll be right there. Scotty's driving like a wild man, just getting us there. I remember yelling at him, scotty, calm down. You crash. We don't get there. Like, just cool it. Let's go. We get there, and a bunch of other officers have gotten there ahead of us to back up, to lead up to that. What she was doing is she's coming down Denker towards Martin Luther King Boulevard. On the corner of Martin Luther King and Denker is on one side is a police station. On the other side is a little mini mart. This guy goes into the little mini mart, hoodie, bandana, gun, holds everybody up. He's about 50 years old. He holds everybody up, takes their money. The victims run across the intersection to the front desk. Hey, we just got robbed. Blah, blah, blah, blah. Mail. Black just took off northbound on Denker. The desk officer's picking up the radio, getting ready to put this out. Well, at that same time, Christina's coming down. Denker sees a guy who sees her, black and white, and he kind of ducks behind a car like he's gonna dump something. It catches her and her partner Joe's attention. They're like, hey, let's grab him. So she's passenger. They pull up. She hops out. Hey, come here. Boom. The guy runs. Guys run all the time because they think we know what they did last week.

[Mike Rowe]

Right, right, right.

[Tim Pierce]

Or whatever. They got some run Rock or some weed in their pocket. When you're a gang officer, you really don't care about that stuff. You're looking for bigger things, but they don't know that. So he's gone. He's running. She's chasing him. It was actually her third foot pursuit of the night. Earlier, she had caught two rolling 30 gang members in different foot pursuits, and they dumped whatever they had and someone took it. So she didn't have anything to rest him on. She caught him but didn't have her rest, so she let him go.

[Mike Rowe]

Is it your obligation, by the way, to pursue in a moment like that?

[Tim Pierce]

No, absolutely not.

[Chuck Klausmeier]

And Roland 30 is a thing of a gang.

[Tim Pierce]

Yeah. Rolling 30 Harlem Crips. So she's chasing him and looking at his hands. The hands are what kill you. No gun in his hands as he's running. He cuts across the lawn, runs up to. There's a fourplex, four steps, big porch. And he Tries to get into someone's house. Now, these guys will run in anybody's house. And then it gets super complicated, right? And so she catches him at the door, grabs him by the shoulder, is going to rip him down to the ground, cuff him, figure out why he's running. If she's got nothing, we're going to. She's going to let him go. But she technically could use force there. But she doesn't want to get a complaint for using force and not having an arrest. So she's got to weigh her options, right? She's got to know what she has before she even tries to use any force. Even though leaving legally, she can. In policy she can. But she's still going to get a complaint. So you have to play that game. She went light. That's what gets you killed. So she grabs him by the shoulders, going to rip him to the ground, cuff him, figure out why he's running. He spins and stuffs a pistol up under her armpit, shoots her above the vest. That bullet goes through, breaks through his ribs, breaks that artery, hits her into T2 vertebrae and cuts her spinal cord. She drops. Her partner, who's a couple steps behind, stops on the grass as he hears the gunshot and sees her drop. And the guy stands over and shoots her three more times, trying to execute her. And since Joe is on the grass shooting at him while he's trying to shoot her, he misses her. He ends up getting her twice in the arm instead of getting her in the head or chest or whatever. Joe's round hits the guy in the shoulder, spins him around. The second round goes through the guy's back, goes through his aorta. He ends up dropping dead next to Christina. Luckily, Christina was like a CrossFit monster leading up to this. Right.

[Mike Rowe]

He would run that morning, right?

[Tim Pierce]

Yeah. A thousand times better athlete than I ever was. She would push herself so hard. This actually kept her alive. But what else kept her alive is we were lucky. We had a couple SWAT officers working crime suppression in the neighborhood, which is rare. They're always doing SWAT stuff. And they had just been trained as medics. They had just graduated from their medic class, I think, two days earlier. And boom, they were there, right on her and got her bag, doing CPR on her. Joe had his finger up inside the wound, trying to stop the artery bleed up in her armpit. I get there right when the paramedics get there, they had just went up the steps and put their boxes down. They're doing their initial assessment, and the homeboy, the suspect is out on the lawn, dead. And they pulled him out there to make room for her and the paramedics. And I hop over him. There's a big, thick, syrupy purple arterial blood coming out from under her back. Down four steps and out on the walkway. A big puddle on the walkway. I actually slipped in as I went up the steps. And I remember grabbing the paramedics by the shoulders and pulling them apart and looking at her and Mary. They looked at me, and everybody was like, that's her husband. I looked at her, and she was sheet white, no blue in her eyes, completely dilated, locked and fixed. Now, at this point, 10 years on as a gang cop, basically, you've seen hundreds of people, people in various stages are shot dead or dying. I took one look at her, and I was like, there's no way she's making this. So we get her on the board, get her in the rescue ambulance, ra take off for a California hospital. Scotty and I jump in our car. We're breaking traffic for the ambulance. We lose it. We catch up with them at the hospital. And what's crazy is, the doctor, the surgeon was just at end of his shift and was already walking out the. He told me later he was walking out the doors out to his car, and the doors opened and he heard the broadcast that an officer was hit. Just barely heard it as he was getting into his car, turned around, came back in. Next thing you know, we're all in the trauma room. I'm in the trauma room with her, and I'm wedged in this little corner, and the thing on the wall is going. No pulse detected. They had IVs in both sides of her neck, both arms, both arteries and both femoral arteries. And it was chaos. As they were saying, hey, all her veins are shut down. She won't take on any blood. And I remember standing there cutting all her stuff off. They don't know I'm her husband. And I want to say that that's my wife, but I remember in the academy, they told you, when you get on this job, there are going to be times your opinion does not matter at all. You're given a job to do, and you're to keep your mouth shut and do your job. And I remember standing there going, like, I want to tell them, that's my wife, but I don't want their attention to be diverted for a millisecond. I just got to stand here and take it.

[Mike Rowe]

You don't want them worried about you.

[Tim Pierce]

Yeah.

[Mike Rowe]

In this moment, no.

[Tim Pierce]

So they all sudden One vein opens up and boom, there goes five bags into her. Boom, boom, boom. They get blood in her, run her over to ct, run her. And they come out and they tell me, all right, Tim, she's paralyzed and she probably will have use of her arms. And I remember thinking, okay, we got that. And I remember this surfer who's paralyzed, Jesse Billauer, I remember seeing him in a surf movie. I'm like, I gotta find that guy, right? She goes to surgery. I remember coming out and there would be like 300 officers in the lobby and everybody turned and faced me and it was like dead silent. And I had to update them on what was going on. It's like the starting gun went off right there with that shooting. And my life has been on a dead sprint ever since. And so she comes out of it paralyzed from nipple, lying down in a manual wheelchair. And there was so much love and attention and, well, wishing that came our way. It was incredible. Young mom, 16 year old daughter shot and paralyzed by a criminal. Big story. And the news was on me every day, in and out of the hospital, trying to get me to make a statement. We don't talk to the news, right? And I talked to Christina. I go, hey, just like obligatory, I, I said, hey, news keeps trying to talk to me. Do you need me to say anything? She goes, yeah, maybe somebody will see it that can help me walk again. And I'm thinking, oh. I go, christina, if I do that, you know, this is going to change everything. We're going to be on Front Street. Every gangster in the country, you know, in the city is going to know who are. She goes, I know, but I want to walk again. And I'm sizing it up and I'm thinking, she's so damn strong. She's so headstrong, she's so physically strong. She's young. If there's anything out there, experimental or whatever, she is the perfect candidate. And we're probably the most prepared, I guess our heads are always on a swivel, we're almost always armed. If anybody's got to be in this situation, we're probably two good people to be in it. So the department puts together a press release for me, a press conference in the lobby of the hospital. I go down there, I don't even know what I said. There's all these cameras everywhere. I just spoke from the heart. And then we had Chief Bratton at the time, and he apparently had started making connections with Extreme Home Makeover. You got to look at this family. There were a bunch of Fundraisers that were held for us. I mean, the help that came our way was unbelievable. It was incredible. And people would come up and just say the most beautiful things to her, give her hugs and kisses, things that every officer should be able to hear for the appreciation for what they do, the sacrifice they make. And that went on forever, still happens to her. So makeover starts talking to us. They tell us, hey, you're one of five families being considered. And I'm like, okay. We were living in a two story house. Everything was downstairs, Bedrooms upstairs, bathrooms upstairs. So I was hiking her, like piggyback style up and down the steps. And I knew we had to create a master bedroom in the garage and then eventually find a house. So they start looking at us. And then we ended up up buying a house over in Redondo beach. Ben Colarasi owned it. Did a handshake deal and it was like a little 900 square foot house, thousand square foot house on a huge lot. Looked like the backyard looked like a haunted pet cemetery was just all laid over. Some cat lady had lived there and she had passed away. And, yeah, perfect. Yeah. I said, I was like, okay, if they're going to build a house for us. And I told him, I said, hey, do you mind if I find another place? And they're like, look, you're not picked. It's on you. If we don't pick you, there's five other families. I go, okay, I know, I gotta rebuild anyways. So I gambled, bought that place.

[Mike Rowe]

Wow.

[Tim Pierce]

We moved into it. You had to live in it. And then the show happens. And that show, I thought the ABC had like this magic crew that came around and just built houses for people. They had it all dialed. That's not it at all. They go in and go, who's your best contractor in the south bay? Turned out to be cornerstone construction. Vic and Linda Braden to the wonder. So Vic and Linda are not allowed to tell the other construction workers what it's for. They meet up at this church and they bring in all the people they've worked with over the last 30 years. And they say, guys, you got to trust me, this is for a good cause. But we're going to build a house in a week just like that. And he has so much respect that they did it. And all the materials is donated from all these contractors. They come swoop us up, send us to Cabo because we're surfers. Jordan, my daughter. And we ended up having a week down there, had a great time, and I thought, okay, this is A Hollywood production.

[Mike Rowe]

How far are we from the event at this point? Six months. So six months later, you're in a new place, pet cemetery out back. Extreme home makeover shows up. Then they send you to Cabo just to get you out of their hair. I mean, you know what's up, but you don't know to what extent?

[Tim Pierce]

No. And I had this construction background, right?

[Mike Rowe]

Yeah.

[Tim Pierce]

Dad was a MacGyver type guy. Just did projects with him and then ended up in construction. So I'm thinking, you know what? They're gonna slam this thing together. It's gonna look great on tv, but it's gonna be a disaster. I'll be fixing this thing for five, 10 years. But, hey, it'll be better than what we have.

[Mike Rowe]

Yeah, right?

[Tim Pierce]

I could not have been more wrong. When we got back and they did the move the bus, and it was like, it felt like a thousand officers out there. The entire neighborhood, everybody came together for that. I mean, it is exactly what you see on tv. It's way more, actually. And I walked in there, I remember looking around going, holy smokes. This is absolute quality soapstone. Counters tight. Everything was just quality. Beautiful, Beautiful craftsman home. 3200 square feet, one level wide, big, everything. It was just amazing. And that became like, party central.

[Mike Rowe]

They built you a party pet. That's great.

[Tim Pierce]

Christina and I were like on a mission to recreate our life the way we had it before. She was hurt just differently. We were into dirt bike riding, fishing, surfing, anything adventure. We were doing races, triathlons, stuff like that. So we quickly fashioned a surfboard with some handles and a thing to tie her feet together. Got some people got her out there, swam her out. We're pushing her in the waves. You know, she's body boarding a surfboard instead of standing up. We rigged up a little one man fishing.

[Mike Rowe]

Tim, I'm sorry, man, I gotta jump in. I'm just trying to imagine being on a surfboard board. She doesn't have the use of her legs.

[Chuck Klausmeier]

And this is six months after the event.

[Tim Pierce]

Yeah, yeah. That whole.

[Mike Rowe]

Interesting. Very, very interesting, Very interesting.

[Tim Pierce]

Yeah. We would put somebody at shore and somebody kind of halfway. And then I'd have my fins on. I'd hold on to the front of the board and swim out backwards, pull her out, line up the waves and time it. Shove her in as fast as I could. And then every once in a while, she'd catch one and she'd ride it. And she had the biggest smile on her face when she ride. It was a lot of work. It Was a lot of work to get that smile. Everybody was down to help her in any possible way. We modified a little one man fishing pontoon. Put electric motor on backward and a bucket so that she could fish on the lake by herself. We got her a dune buggy with hand controls because we were all dirt bike riders and so she could do that with us. Of course she flipped it a couple times.

[Mike Rowe]

Sure.

[Tim Pierce]

She went end over end on one and flipped sideways and I ran over. We all grabbed it and flipped it over and I go, you okay? She goes, I can't feel anything anyways. Yeah. She's incredible, man. She's toughest woman I've ever known by far. Oh, we had a little boy two years after she was paralyzed. What? Yeah. So he's now 2. At this point, I can't think of.

[Mike Rowe]

A single appropriate question to ask.

[Tim Pierce]

Right? Yeah, yeah, he'll take your mind.

[Mike Rowe]

I don't want to pry. And yet when we're done, I'm going to ask you some questions. But. Okay, congratulations. So what's his name?

[Tim Pierce]

Lucas. You know, 6ft tall, 210 pounds, water polo stud.

[Mike Rowe]

Oh my God.

[Tim Pierce]

Yeah. He's amazing.

[Mike Rowe]

Stories. Okay, look, in the interest of time, knowing that we could talk for six hours, but can't take me to the moment where you say enough of whatever it is we're doing. You just described it. You went on a sprint beginning with that gunshot.

[Tim Pierce]

Yeah.

[Mike Rowe]

So when did you, I mean, did you slow down or did you just change course? What happened to get you on this entrepreneurial path to create the device that poor Chuck has now been wearing for the last hour and five minutes after.

[Tim Pierce]

That race, I kind of stopped all the events, said, look, it's time to stay home. Movie nights, Friday nights, whatever. I'm tired of giving the kids to my mom. And she kept. She started going downhill because I took all these distractions away. At the five year point, kids were three and six and she checks into Betty Ford for alcohol and pain meds. Think, okay, 90 days. 6:30, 90 days, our life's just going to take another turn. No big deal. That turns into a two year thing not to come home. She learns a year into it that she's got a brain injury due to blood loss. Undiagnosed. And she gets diagnosed with borderline personality disorder. And when she checked into Betty Ford, she went. All that emotion, everything had been chasing her, just ran her over. And she became like a very different person. Suicidal self injury, really, really scary stuff. And that took us down this two year path of all these facilities, several states, I'm taking care of the kids. And about that two year mark, I started. I got out of gangs, went into gang detectives, then eventually homicide, cold case, gang related, because her stuff was just going sideways more and more and more. And that led to two years into the facilities. It led to us getting divorced. There was some real safety concerns with the kids that were legit. And I thought I was going to have a heart attack. I've been riding such a stress ball for so long, and I thought, God, she can't take care of the kids. There's no real good options in our family. My sister is kind of the only option if I go. And so I filed for divorce so I could get custody, so I could dictate if I died, was I still a cop? Right. If I died, the kids go to my sister because she's the best option in both sides of our family.

[Mike Rowe]

Yeah.

[Tim Pierce]

And Christina had started saying she didn't want to come home to the makeover house, that just being home caused her too much ptsd. And I was like, this is falling apart. And my. My neighbor, who I didn't even know really one day, goes, tim, she's never coming home. And it was like one of those times where you actually hear somebody. And I started realizing, like, she's right. So it led to divorce. So that ended up being a really, really hard time. And then I started having, like, I started looking like a crackhead at work. I couldn't breathe. I started twitching. My friends were really worried about me, you know, I couldn't focus. And I had 10,000 cops that knew who I was. So it was like I had to be this good soldier 24, 7. And so finally Karina Lee, my union president, came, and she's like, you ever thought about retiring? And I was like, no, but I need some time off. And she goes, let me just walk you through the process. And they took care of us. Took really good care of us. They retired Christina, full pension. They retired me with a pension. They gave me a paycheck. And when I was home taking care of the kids, I had this idea before Christina went away, we were using TENS units on her legs to fight off muscle atrophy.

[Mike Rowe]

TENS units?

[Tim Pierce]

Yeah. So electrical muscle stimulation. So when you go to a chiropractor and they put sticky electrodes on you, contracts your muscles, right? Little electrical current contracts your muscles. So she did that in a ton of her physical therapy, and someone gave her one unit to come take home. And so before I put it on her, I Put it on me on my bicep. And I was playing with the dials. I didn't read the instructions, but I. Playing with the dials, right? And all of a sudden, it kicks on, like, full blast. And it completely locked my bicep down and then let me go. And I remembered back to the academy. Our SWAT guys going, you guys have got to train with your. Offhand. You might be in a pursuit car crash. At the end of the pursuit, crush your gun hand, and the gun fights on. You've got to know how to manipulate that weapon with one hand, do everything with it, right? And I remember him saying, we'll handcuff our hand behind our back. LAPD swat. I thought, I don't know anything. Construction worker in the academy looking at the SWAT guy going, that's archaic.

[Mike Rowe]

That's state of the art. Yeah, we're gonna handcuff your okay.

[Tim Pierce]

I figured LAPD would have something more sophisticated than that, but what do I know? So fast forward now. We're at, like, 12 years I've on the job. I light myself up with this TENS unit. I call Jen Grasso, who's our first female LAPD SWAT member, who's a friend of mine. I call her. I go, hey, Jen, how do you guys simulate that you've been hit? She goes, oh, we got this ball. We tape in our hand, or we got a glove. We tape shut, thinking Nothing's changed since 96, and nothing existed before that. So if I could make this remote control, then I could wire an officer up, send him into a scenario. When he gets shot at, now I can hit him. I can completely incapacitate his limb. And now he's forced under duress to solve the problem and finish the fight and survive.

[Mike Rowe]

So he's not controlling it. You're controlling it with a remote.

[Tim Pierce]

So he doesn't know when it's coming, where it's coming, if it's coming. But I tell you what, you put it on, I bet you've been thinking about it, right?

[Chuck Klausmeier]

And maybe a little bit.

[Tim Pierce]

And what's crazy is it's only 66 volts. It's the exact same thing as what you buy on a TENS unit over Amazon. So what I was doing is I was putting sticky electrodes all over guys, and I took a climbing harness, and I. I cut it up, and I sewed a camelback on the back, and I had an engineer make it remote control for me, an electrical engineer. And we had a 3D printed box. And now I could basically, like, a control you like A puppet? Yeah, yeah, I could make you do the Macarena, right? And so that proved the concept. And then a real wealthy guy guy, Steve Robinson out of Beverly Hills, who had taken on some ride alongs, he comes down, he goes, hey, I got these seals at my house. Come show your thing. So I go over there, I light them up. They loved it. They're like, you got to put this into a garment.

[Mike Rowe]

Those guys don't love anything. They're not, they're just not impressed by.

[Tim Pierce]

And large they were by this. One of them says, you know why I like this thing? There's nothing that can control me except this damn thing.

[Mike Rowe]

And again, just to understand its application, it's not taking place in a vacuum. You've got guys in a real world simulation. There's all sorts of stuff going on around them. And this is just one added way to take the, what you call the verisimilitude up a notch.

[Tim Pierce]

I don't know that word. It's a fancy word.

[Mike Rowe]

The appearance of that, which is real and convincing.

[Tim Pierce]

Imagine the four of us going in on an active shooter, right? As of today, it is pretty much all adult pretend, okay? They have simunitions, which is a fantastic product. It's a paint, bullets, and we can shoot at each other, but it doesn't stop you. It zings you for a second. But we're all competitive. We're like, oh, I could take that, right? I've done it where I, you know, I'm competitive. I'm going to go, I'm going to win this thing. And so it's great for, hey, you got zinged, but it doesn't incapacitate you and force you to solve the problem. Now there's a big gap in police training, right? We train officers in weapons manipulation tactics, communication, everything leading up to the shooting. And then we teach them tac med. Put a tourniquet on, okay? If you're putting a tourniquet on, you've been shot. So where was the gunfight that you had to have won while you're shot? There is no training in that. From the chief down to the guy on the street. There's nothing but hope and a prayer and a fantasy for that moment. Because how do you train it, right? It's like this overlooked gap because there's just been no way to do it. And people are starting to go like, oh, yeah, you're right. And with all this active shooters coming up, what I say is with these past active shooters are going to get smarter watching the ones in Nevada I mean, the future active shooters are getting smarter. The citizens are getting smarter because they hear gunshots. They're locking the doors, they're buttoning the hatches. Now these officers are going to end up in these long hallways, these long funnels of death. It's gonna be like a little mini beaches of Normandy. And none of them know how to fight from injured. It's all a fantasy. They hope that they're going to be able to do it, but they've never been through that, Right. There is one product out there called stress vest, which is a static shock belt. And I'm actually going to partner with them. So that's like I have a laser. I hit your receiver, you get a bite. Ouch. Ouch, Right? But it does not incapacitate. But we're going to combine our products so we have both that and full incapacitation and no projectiles.

[Mike Rowe]

So this, with just 66 volts, will simulate the impact of a bullet.

[Tim Pierce]

Absolutely. So we do it like a ambush class. I say, all right, hey, you're sitting. Get a suv. This is your patrol car. You've backed in somewhere. You just finished a radio, and you're gonna touch up your report, right? You're gonna get ambushed. The very first round that you hear is gonna rip through that arm. It's gonna crush that humerus bone, it's gonna tear open that artery, and you have a massive artery bleed. And you cannot get to your tourniquet until you win this fight. And this guy's not going away. There's only two kinds of shooters. They kind of shoot at you and run, and they kind of shoot at you and stay in it to kill you. And that's what we're training for. For. And that's gonna be on the rise. I think if I had been successful with this even five years ago or leading up to that, it would have been too early. But this is coming. Less cops, more violence.

[Mike Rowe]

Okay, let's see it in action.

[Tim Pierce]

So you're wearing number six.

[Chuck Klausmeier]

Number six.

[Mike Rowe]

Number six.

[Tim Pierce]

So, like, I could pick. We could have six of us going in on a search warrant, right? Nobody knows one through six. So what I'm doing is I'm dialing over to his number. I could dial whatever number of guy I want to select, right? And I run the. The intensity up. I'm gonna put him at three. Four is the highest. And you're looking. So you're the instructor. So you're looking at his back because he's going in a building, walking up to a car. You're standing in the background going, I'm gonna get him when the shooting starts.

[Mike Rowe]

Yeah.

[Tim Pierce]

So shooting starts and you're looking at, say, his right. That's his right arm, right?

[Chuck Klausmeier]

Yeah, that is my right arm.

[Tim Pierce]

Can you do anything with that arm?

[Chuck Klausmeier]

Not really.

[Tim Pierce]

Could you grab a gun?

[Chuck Klausmeier]

Not with this hand.

[Tim Pierce]

No. No. Could you? Yeah. So that's gone, right? Yeah. As long as I hold that button down, he's locked up.

[Chuck Klausmeier]

Yeah, that's a lot better.

[Tim Pierce]

There you go.

[Mike Rowe]

Now, is it analogous to a collar on a dog?

[Tim Pierce]

So that's static shock.

[Mike Rowe]

Ah, yeah.

[Tim Pierce]

It's not contracting any of their muscles. It's just biting them.

[Mike Rowe]

Right, right.

[Tim Pierce]

It's like, ouch, ouch. That's distracting. Right? That's all it's doing. This is taking the limb out. Now if I hit them in inner forearm. Do you want that?

[Chuck Klausmeier]

I don't know.

[Mike Rowe]

I do. Yeah.

[Tim Pierce]

So inner forearm, put your arm up. I call that gang signs. That hurts.

[Chuck Klausmeier]

Yeah. That was not good. The bicep wasn't as bad, but that's.

[Mike Rowe]

A. Oh, well, that's a denser muscle, right?

[Tim Pierce]

Yeah.

[Mike Rowe]

Like your forearm and your calf are about as dense as.

[Tim Pierce]

And then hit that bottom button.

[Mike Rowe]

Oh, the bottom button here?

[Tim Pierce]

Yeah, yeah. And hold.

[Mike Rowe]

Is this the one we've got on his. On his scrotum? Is it?

[Tim Pierce]

Yes. Hold your arm up. I call that one Spider Man.

[Mike Rowe]

Oh, man.

[Tim Pierce]

Because what it's doing is contracting his outer muscles and opening his hand like. Like that.

[Mike Rowe]

Yeah, yeah.

[Tim Pierce]

Now you want to have fun, Spider Man. Do these two at the same time. Chicken wing. That's the chicken wing. Wow.

[Mike Rowe]

Okay, thank you. But look, this very. I've been a lab rat most of my life. You know, my company's called Lab Rat Productions. It's good to see him enduring it. So wait, wait. You can put it on either arm, obviously. Legs.

[Tim Pierce]

Yeah, legs in the future. Abs in the future.

[Mike Rowe]

Yeah.

[Tim Pierce]

I had to get it started. Yeah. Abs suck.

[Mike Rowe]

Oh, yeah.

[Tim Pierce]

But I can bend you over like this.

[Chuck Klausmeier]

I'll bet.

[Tim Pierce]

So imagine trying to shoot off hand with your support hand while you're bent over and you're trying to move to cover and return rounds. But that's what it's going to be like.

[Mike Rowe]

I can see why Gavin is into this.

[Tim Pierce]

Yeah, 100%.

[Mike Rowe]

Because you're training professionals, right. You don't just come in on your first day. And here you've got people who have gone through all kinds of protocols, and this is sort of next level stuff. Pros know what to do in tough situations, but nobody knows what to do after you've been shot. Because it's nothing but theory.

[Tim Pierce]

Yeah, exactly. It was that way in 96, that way in 2011 when I patented this. 2011-12.

[Mike Rowe]

Sorry, are you. It was an honest mistake. Are you sorry, I had a weird twitch in my thumb. It just happened to be over the red button. Hey, how are the bookings coming for November?

[Tim Pierce]

Really good. Super good.

[Mike Rowe]

Scale of one to ten. You hesitated.

[Chuck Klausmeier]

Oh, man.

[Mike Rowe]

Tell me about the business. I don't want to ask you anything you don't want to divulge, but how does it work as an entrepreneur? How is this? Are you going to be like really rich?

[Tim Pierce]

I could use a break.

[Mike Rowe]

Yeah. I'm thinking maybe it's time for a break for Tim.

[Tim Pierce]

Oh my God. You have no idea. Yeah. So we're running around introducing it. People don't know what they don't know on face value. They don't understand it or they go, oh, that's interesting. But they think, oh, that's a torture device.

[Mike Rowe]

Right.

[Tim Pierce]

But then when they see it in action, they realize, oh, okay. And then when they feel it, they're like, oh, now I get it.

[Mike Rowe]

Yeah.

[Tim Pierce]

Right. This completely changes the game and it is what they're going to face when they get shot. And you want to have have them figure that out in a safe environment, not on the street. That's nuts. And that's what we're left with. So it's just introducing it to academies, to agencies. We ended up getting. The US Marshals picked it up. They have a five day reality based training that they're doing all over the country and they're going to be running this. We have Swiss SWAT team and Netherlands anti terrorism team.

[Mike Rowe]

The Netherlands, Yeah.

[Tim Pierce]

Yeah. I was introduced to them and they loved it. They brought in 20 anti terrorism teams for a three day training over there in an hour outside of Amsterdam. And then they come away with that, looking at the best practices of each team and they put this in as a reality based piece to their training. So they loved it. So we have several agencies here in the United States starting. And it's new, right?

[Mike Rowe]

Yeah.

[Tim Pierce]

I mean I spent really 10 years working on that and finally got commercialized. The wealthy guy that I mentioned, he helped me get it to a commercial prototype. Amazing amounts of money to get this done.

[Mike Rowe]

Do I want to ask? Do you want to say? I'm just interested in getting a thing from script to screen. I mean, that's just the prototype. Now you got to scale it.

[Tim Pierce]

Yeah. What I've learned is a lot of People have ideas. Very few people can turn an idea into a prototype. Even fewer can make that prototype into a commercial product. And then can you get that commercial product into the market and then from there, can you get it to make enough money to build a business on and then overlaying all that, can you run the business of it?

[Mike Rowe]

And one more thing. Can you protect yourself from competitors while all of this is happening, both foreign and domestic?

[Tim Pierce]

Yeah, I've had very, very, very wealthy people backing me. And that's been a way of holding that off.

[Mike Rowe]

Good, good. Is there any doubt in your mind that this is going to save countless lives?

[Tim Pierce]

Absolutely. Going to save lives as absolutely needed. Here's a good story. I'm at a trade show, I show him off my prototype and a Kansas City cop comes up to me. He goes, that's a really good idea. He goes, I was at a training in the Midwest and the instructor was an out of the box thinker guy and he says, hey, whoever wants to volunteer, I'm going to come up while you're shooting, I'm going to hit you in the back of the leg with the taser. He goes, There was a St. Louis cop there. And the guy says, I'll do it. Gets hit in the back of the leg with the taser, stays on his target, hits it. Three years later, he's on patrol in downtown St. Louis. And this is third party story. He's on patrol, comes around a corner, three bank robbers come running out like a movie. He gets into instant shooting, gets hit in the leg right at the onset, stays on his target, takes the guy down. He ends up calling that instructor back and said, hey, remember when you did that to me three years ago? Yeah, yeah, yeah. He goes, this just happened to me. I got hit right the onset of the shooting. He goes, the crazy thing was I was shot in the leg and it was a non issue because I knew I could stay on my sights and stay on my target and hit my target. That's what this is gonna do for people. Yeah, you have to have that neural pathway ahead of time. Right on the asphalt while you're bleeding out in a gutter and the guys across the street shooting at you from behind a parked car and not going away is not the time to figure out if you can do this or not.

[Mike Rowe]

It's difference between being startled and shocked. Yeah, normal to be, you know, startled. Right. But to be able to function and to turn right around and save your life and the people around you.

[Tim Pierce]

I'm so glad that Gavin saw The value in that. They gave us an order right away. They're excited to use it. I can't wait to see them using it.

[Chuck Klausmeier]

Well, you know, when I first heard about it from Jim, I texted Gavin and I said, hey, have you.

[Tim Pierce]

Are you familiar with this?

[Chuck Klausmeier]

And he wasn't at the time, so I kind of think that this made it happen.

[Mike Rowe]

No. Well, you texted this morning from the plane. He's into it, man.

[Tim Pierce]

It's kind of crazy. You can have a great idea, but it's kind of like the cure for cancer. If it's on your shelf in your garage and no one knows it exists, has no value.

[Chuck Klausmeier]

Right?

[Tim Pierce]

Nobody knows this exists. Forever grateful that you're allowing me to talk about it.

[Mike Rowe]

Look, we talked to a guy a year and a half ago who's become a friend of the podcast guy named Arthur Lee who invented a thing called LifeVac. I think it will eventually take its place with the smoke alarm. I mean, honestly. And maybe even a fire extinguisher, because if somebody's choking, you can take this thing and you can clear their airways.

[Chuck Klausmeier]

You can do it to yourself.

[Mike Rowe]

You can do it to yourself. You can do it to a baby. He invented it in his garage. I look around, I saw it on Dirty Jobs and really every other show that I worked on. There's a real fine line between a mad scientist and. Well, between Edison and Tesla. Right? It could go either way. And who knows what the contemporaries will do and who knows how history will remember you? But, like, in our little world, it's easy to see greatness in an idea, and it's easy to see majesty in a story. And, dude, your story, it's almost a trope to talk about triumph from tragedy. And I'm sure you've heard about it and thought about it, and obviously, you're not at the end of the journey, but since you've shared so much, what is the state of things today with you and Christina? Are you.

[Tim Pierce]

So there was a long period where I had to kind of keep. Keep distance because I didn't want to get triangulated with the kids. So everything subsurfaced. Kids have always talked about her as, she's a hero. None of this is her fault. I still love her. We're good friends now. It was a period where I couldn't be around her because we were in a horrible divorce, and I had told the kids, you know, like, you know, it's just better that we, you know, your mom and I aren't friends at the time. We just don't talk we. Everything was text and emails because they go circular thing, right? And then when they got old enough, when my son got old enough and big enough and I didn't have to be concerned about him anymore, didn't need the monitor. This was probably at this point almost four years ago now. I went over at one of his water polo tournaments and I just sat down next to her and started talking to her like nothing ever happened. And we've never spoken a word about what's behind us. And now we co parent with the kids, we have dinners together. She cracks me up still. Birthday dinners and things like that. This is the best I've ever seen her. Now that she's helping other people, she will always have problems, right? She has a brain injury in her frontal cortex and her eyes amygdala and she has this swirling issue with the personality disorder and she has massive health problems always. She is the toughest woman on earth and she still has a great sense of humor and she's doing a great job with the kids. My daughter moved in with her. My son bounces back. There's never been any rules where they can go only when. But we had this amazing woman, Marici Sousa, who was our monitor. She was started as our nanny and she was a very strong, very principled woman and she stuck with our family all the way through and through. Was best friend to Christina, but just watched out for the kids, made sure that, you know, there were no issues. She's my godsend. I knew my kids were not going to have a problem because I just didn't want Christina to get exhausted from this life she's living.

[Mike Rowe]

Look, I would never expect or ask anybody to share as much as what you've shared. Thank you. I mean, it's so personal, it's so gut wrenching, but it is a part of this story. And as we close, I just want to go back to something you said two minutes ago. After all that acrimony, all that separation, all those hard feelings, you sat down next to your ex wife and just chatted her up like nothing had ever happened.

[Tim Pierce]

It's the only way.

[Mike Rowe]

I'm just leaving the listeners with that as a public service for men everywhere who whatever it is they're dealing with. The fact that that might be an option is, in a word, interesting.

[Chuck Klausmeier]

If you want to see something else interesting, go to aufire.com and take a look at some of the videos that are on there because it's pretty impressive.

[Mike Rowe]

And if you want to see something even more interesting, direct your attention toward Chuck right now.

[Tim Pierce]

Chicken wing as we say goodbye.

[Mike Rowe]

I'm gonna go with the chicken wing here with just a little bit of the oh there. And what happens if you hit them all at once?

[Tim Pierce]

Oh, that probably the chicken wing override everything.

[Mike Rowe]

Charlie, are you wearing a diaper strap in, brother? Hey, thank you for making the time. Thanks for sharing so much and congratulations. You're going to save a bunch of lives and I'm glad we had a chance to talk about it.

[Tim Pierce]

I certainly appreciate it.

[Mike Rowe]

Tim Pierce, everyone. When you leave a review, only 5 stars will do. Not just 1 or just 2 or just 3. We were hoping.

[Tim Pierce]

4 more.

[Mike Rowe]

As in 1 more than a 4 please. 1, 1 and 4. Just a quick review with 5 stars too from you. 5 stars will do.

[Chuck Klausmeier]

The Way I Heard it is brought to you by Progressive Insurance. You chose to hit play on this podcast today. Smart Choice. Make another smart choice with Auto Quote Explorer to compare rates from multiple car insurance companies all at once. Try [e-mail] Progressive Casualty Insurance Company and affiliates not available in all states or situations. Prices vary based on how you buy.

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