The American Military Brit

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This is the American military Britt,

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shedding light on the realities of military life. Now, here's your host, US Air Force Staff Sergeant Christopher Clark. Hello, and welcome to the American military Brit podcast. This is a podcast where we talk to different military members to figure out the full story about the military, not just the rumors, but the actual story from those who were there and took part in military service. Hello, everyone. Welcome to the American military podcast. So today we've got a special guest. I'm always interested with guests like this, because I've only had one of the guests where I just didn't even know the person like I only, like I've only just met this person to me, we've got on the podcast today. So she is an Army veteran. So we'll just kind of get into talking about his story and whatnot. So to me, do you want to just introduce yourself and tell the audience who you are and whatnot. Well, hello, and thank you for having me. I'm very excited to be here. I am. My name is Tamiya Tao, and I am a US Army veteran, I am proud patriot, proud of my service and continue to serve to this day, I basically came through because I'm from Las Vegas, since 1980, and I went to high school here, then I came through UNLV. here while I was at UNLV. I studied criminal justice. And I do have a degree in criminal justice, a bachelor's, I went through the ROTC program here, which was Army ROTC at the time, which was amazing training and a great foundation for my life. Because a lot of what I do right now has to do with what I learned during my time in service with the military. And my time here at the ROTC program. I also was blessed to be a part of the UNLV Upward Bound program, which is now considered a trio program, they have multiple other programs within it. But the upper bound program was designed to help ensure that people who didn't necessarily have the opportunity to come to college would definitely come to college. So from high school, which was I went to Chaparral, they had us come on weekends, and we would have extra classes extra training, to just make sure that we were going to be you know, good citizens basically unable to make it into UNLV, in higher education, etc. And tell me it was an amazing program. I'm a proud graduate of it. I worked back with them while I was at UNLV. I reached back to to be a peer counselor and to be a mentor to some of the students that were coming up through it. And it's also what I do now through, you know, the veterans Alumni Club, which is I'm the vice president of our local veterans alumni club here at UNLV. And we are UNLV graduates who also have veteran, you know, experience we were in the military.

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Now I just want to talk about ROTC because we've actually never had somebody on here who's came from the officer program, I don't believe so at least usually I'm just talking to enlisted people and their basic training. You know, we do basic training, we do tech school, all that different stuff. So yeah, I'm just curious, like, because you went to ROTC here in UNLV. Right? So how is that that whole thing? How does that whole thing work? Well, it was very interesting, actually, when I, when I was in high school, we used to tease the J ROTC so that was a junior Reserve Officer Training Corps, we would tease them because they came to school on their uniforms. And we were like, Oh, look at that mother uniform. And I had this thing about uniforms, which is hilarious, because it went on for to be, you know, 25 years and uniform between military and between policing itself. But yeah, I was gonna be in a uniform, you know, everybody should know who you are. And you stick out and bla bla, you know, when I came on campus, so it was part of our regimen, we had to be in uniform two days a week, we had they supplied us with the you know, with the dress, the dress uniform, and also the, you know, the battle dress uniform, so that we could wear, you know, on different days if we needed to most of the time we were in dress uniform, though, because, of course, it was a symbol of letting people on campus see the military know that, you know, the military does exist, you know, amongst you, you know, because if I think the percentage of people who end up joining the military, isn't it like 1% of the population? It would be a little more than you would think so but think about it, though, you know, because we have a voluntary army, you know, we have a voluntary service. So, so you're it's a low percentage. Most people just choose life, their life, you know, having having nothing to do with putting a uniform and being in service to the community, you know, or to the country. So in ROTC, we came in, we had three times a week we had, let's say, two to three times a week. Yeah, Tuesday and Thursday. So we had military training. So we had actual class

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acids that we had to take, you had a whole, like, for the four years to graduate, you had MSC classes, which was the abbreviation you know, and it would be leadership and, you know, trying to think of some of the other classes that we had, leadership was definitely big, which I tell you what I was sharing with you, when we were offline, I looked back at the training that I got in ROTC, and, you know, in my basic, and I know that it had a lot to do with what I've done today, because I've gone on to do a whole lot of things, but I flashed back and I see Captain Lambert, you know, Colonel Wintermute, yelling at me, you know, yelling at us, you know, saying things to us to impact us, you know, make us move forward and do better, that kind of thing. And they stuck with me to this day, you know, they, one of the things he said because, you know, I went on for police service, you know, so with that, you know, you you pull from your experience, not I mean, yeah, they train you to everybody trains you for their organization. But you also go back to your foundation, and my foundation was ROTC, you know, my foundation was getting up at 430 in the morning and doing PT, you know,

Unknown Speaker 6:09
you know, my foundation was Yes, sir. No, sir. You know, yes, ma'am. No, ma'am. You know, which, if you think about it, you know, even when I went to police service, I was always very respectful to my suspects, even when someone would be cussing me out, call me outside by

Unknown Speaker 6:25
telling me everything but a child of God. And I still be like, Sir, I need you to be still sir. I did. So. So a lot of that was instilled in me that respect for the other, you know, for the other person, you know, calling people, you know, calling people in their name, not out of their name, you know, those kinds of things. And that came from ROTC. You know, we had to learn respect, we had to learn, drill a ceremony, you know, we had to learn everything, you know, we literally learned it, but we learned it in ROTC, you learned it while still getting your, your education, you learn it while still, you know, working whatever job you weren't, you know, you learned it, why still, you know, I'm saying so. So it wasn't just like some of our friends, you say, whether it's a blessing, you know, or curse, when someone is active duty, they have really no distractions, you know, because they're all about the military, like, from the, you know, Top of the morning to the end of the evening, you know, every single day of the week. Whereas for ROTC people in the reservists, you know, they are all about whatever their life is going on with that, in their heart, the passion for their military service, and who they are as a military member, yet they have regular life, you know, and then, you know, what they call them citizen soldiers, you know, weekend warrior citizen soldiers, you know, and in a way it? I don't know, it's, I don't want to say, Hey, I take offense, because we go through the same training, you know, we really do they put us through boot camp, you know, like everybody else does, you know, we just might not be doing the Monday through Friday, you know, stuck set on a base type of situation. But we're in the real world, you know, and when stuff calls, like National Guard and Reservists are called up, you know, when the pandemic was happening, that's who was out there at your your centers, you know, they were called up, you know, and they're, you know, doing the swan, I don't know if they were doing swabs, but they were, you know, organizing that and doing that. So we can't forget our citizen soldiers. We can't forget our weekend warriors, we can't forget because they're there for us, you know, and and our service members, the supplement the service members, because they can't be everywhere, you know, could you imagine trying to pull people off the base and say, we need you to come out here and, you know, help help us keep order or whatever, you know, it just doesn't happen. And when I was going through ROTC, when you're going through, you don't have a specialty, you're just learning everything, you know, you lose in general, General, military science, you know, leadership, those kinds of things. And I was really blessed during my time, because I know you're gonna ask for places we were sent or deployed or things like that. And we used to have annual trainings where we'd have to go during the summer, and we'd be sent off for six weeks to various different places, I was blessed to be able to go to Schofield Barracks, Hawaii, for one of my trainings, because you got the opportunity to bid for where you want to go. And it would be based on like, everything is in the military, you know,

Unknown Speaker 9:17
how how your your leadership, you know, how your chain of command saw you, and you'd put in for oh, I want to go here, I want to go there, you know, and they would be like, oh, yeah, yeah, definitely send them or they'd be like, Oh, no, no, no, this one. Yeah, send them here.

Unknown Speaker 9:31
So I got really blessed I got said, because you can tell I have that personality. You know, I really do care about people. And I really am. I'm a strong leader, you know, so it just was natural for them to let me get my first pick which was Hawaii. Right? Everybody was like how did you get away cuz I already put away you know, everything that I got away, and I ended up working with a transportation unit for my initial training, to be out there as a leader to be out there as a lieutenant and

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I was very blessed. But I tell you what, I was 19 years old. Nobody was calling me ma'am.

Unknown Speaker 10:10
It was yeah, it was kind of weird. But what was amazing about being being stationed with the transportation unit was I was driving every truck, you can imagine I drove every military vehicle, you could imagine, I got, you know, I got my, what do you call it driver's license, the United the military has driver's license, I showed all the vehicles you get, I still have it, I have like, 15 different vehicles that I'm certified to drive, you know, or at least I was certified to drive at that time, I'm sure you have to re you know, re up and everything. But to me, you know, I'm a 19 year old girl, driving big trucks, you know, I

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had a couple of really cool pictures of me, you know, climbing out of a truck. And it's like this little body and this giant truck, you know, that I tell you what, it was part of what instilled in me that I can do whatever, you know, I can do anything. Tell me tell me what you need me to do? Show me how to do it. And I can do it. Because that is what the military showed me. You know, and I walk with that now, even you know, I'm a certified coach, you know, and when I'm coaching people, I'm like, Listen, you got to make up your mind, you know, because I can't do it for you, you have to decide to do it. And when you decide you can do it, then you do it, you know. So that's a lot of, of what I learned from my ROTC from my military time, you know, because like I said, I'm a 19 year old girl, you know, because, you know, you go on with this mindset. And in fact, some of my friends used to teach me that, like, girl, you always had the designer purses and the nice clothes, and then listen to this, and I can write, I could, I could imagine you putting on a uniform and wearing the same outfit every day, you know, this kind of thing, and being limited to a rucksack and you know, this kind of stuff, you know. But like I said, it really had a lot to do with making me who I am today. You know, I travel so much now, we were sharing about that, you know, I was in Curacao doing some police training in Curacao this last week. And a tropical storm hit this hit the island, I had three days worth of, of clothing and stuff with me. But the thing is, now I'm prior military, I have like seven days worth of closing and my carry on, you know, so I really had enough to survive the extension that was an unexpected extension. But what we learned in the military is that you have to expect the unexpected, you know, you have to prepare for all contingencies, you know, and so, you know, in my mind go into an island in the middle of the Caribbean, I didn't think tropical storm I didn't think possible cyclone or hurricane, I didn't think that, you know, I was like I'm three days in in and out training fleece, I'm out, you know, and I ended up extending it. But now I look back and reflect on it. It's like, that's totally my military training. You know, why I was able to hat really adjust and adapt.

Unknown Speaker 12:47
Overcome so quickly. It's because of what I learned from my military service. Let's talk about

Unknown Speaker 12:55
you know, you separate from the reserves, you do eight years, and then you carry on your, your police service. So just kind of talk about how, like, did you think of staying in the reserves longer? Or were you just like, I'm just gonna do my eight years and then I'm just gonna go, well, eight years was more than I needed to do actually.

Unknown Speaker 13:16
Yeah, so I yeah, I did my eight years. And then I just focused more on policing, you know, we're coming in and being part of Metro. Not that I wasn't during that. But yeah, I just turned my focus to doing the local police versus being the MP in the reserve. Okay. And then at any point, did you think about going back in were you like, Oh, I'm gonna go back in or? That's funny. I did. I did consider at one point, it was brief, it was real quick.

Unknown Speaker 13:44
Because I really did, and still do love the feeling of the base. I just call it the feeling of the base, you know, of being being on Basinger, but in uniform, of course, getting them salutes because I was an officer, you know, I mean, the respect that is built in, in the military, because when you're in civilian life, it's not the same. You know, I work for a police department, that's quasi military, which means, you know, it fashions itself behind the military with chain of command and things such as that. But when it comes to being like the military and in, you know, how people are supposed to respond to you and things such as that in the ranks, that it wasn't like that in the in the police department. Okay. And then like, another thing as well, I wanted to ask was with your civilian police service, right, do you feel like your military service helped you with your civilian service? Like, do you feel like it made you better at that job? Or? Most definitely, yes, most definitely. When I was in one of the jobs that I had in between graduating actually, I had it before graduating and then before I came up, got on the police department was I was working as a store detective. And what a store detective is, is it's the plainclothes person, not the guys

Unknown Speaker 15:00
Sitting at the door with a uniform where you know, that's where security is. So keep your eye on me. And while I go do bad things, right? I was the one who would literally walk right next to you, you know. And as you can see, I'm a female, nobody's thinking this females watching them, you know, there's females paying attention, you know, and I just, you know, go around the store and look for my bad guys. And I caught I always caught the bad guys, because I always looked, I didn't look at the race. I didn't look at the gender I looked at the actions, I looked at what they were doing, when they came in the store. What did they do? You know, normal people come in the store, and they have a shopping mode. There's ways that you shop, right? And then you have people who are criminals, they come in the store, and they have a shopping mode, too. But it's more of where's the security guard? Where's the people on the cashier? Are they paying attention? You know, Do I see any people stacking shelves, you know, that kind of stuff, they're looking for someone who might see them do their deed, you know, do whatever they're planning on doing. So I would boom, catch them, right? When they came in the door, pick them up, they never looked at me or notice me, you know, because I'm one of those people who you wouldn't think, you know, this is back in in like, 8080s, you know, in the late 80s. Now, one thing, and then there's a female that's gonna come get you, you know, for doing something wrong. And sure enough, so I would have a rest all the time. And I did these great reports, which I learned how to do in the military, right, you know, learn how to write these great police reports, right. And I would give them to the my police officer that would come to get my bad guy, my suspect. And one in particular, his name was Clark, Paris. Love you, Clark. Make sure you listen to this replay. And he came in and he kept saying, Did you ever think about getting joining the police department? And the thing was, even though I had a criminal justice degree, I didn't think about joining the police department. I wanted to join a federal agency, I wanted to be DEA, you know, I wanted to be like, fed, you know, so when he said that I just kind of looked down my nose at him. And I was like, oh, no, you know, and he was like, Well, you know, you do really good report, you make some really good arrests here. You know, I think you should think about it. And I was like, Yeah, okay, thanks. You know, so two or three times he said it, you know, good reports, I'm making felony arrests, you know, this kind of stuff. And then he came in, he said, or no, he came with a packet, because this is back in the day. Okay. He came with this 20 Page packet to apply for the police department. And just kind of looked and I was like, Okay, you're really persistent, right.

Unknown Speaker 17:20
But the first thing I saw on the top of it was $29,000. Now, this was 1988 $29,000. A year, a year ago, okay. At the beginning, right at the beginning, as a rookie, while you're in training, because it increased as you finish, you know, steps, you know.

Unknown Speaker 17:46
And I said, let me take a look right. Needless to say, I filled out the packet because, of course, I'm retired now, you know, so that's I went through fill out the packet, part of part of the bringing you on the department was, you know, of course they did your background, you know, you got points for being in the military, you know, you got points for

Unknown Speaker 18:06
I'm trying to remember, degree, you know, so

Unknown Speaker 18:10
at the end of all the things you got points for, I was like in the top 10. You know, what I applied, you know, and needless to say, I have a great passion for policing. You know, the reason why I wanted to go federal was because I had mentioned to you offline that I was a corporate brat. So my dad used to move us every two to three years. And I just was used to that. So I said, Oh, if I go fed, and they move me, you know, every two, three years, that'll be great. Right? So making that decision to stay with a local police department man, I'm planning on staying in Vegas, you know, so it was a huge decision for me to make that decision to stay in Vegas. But I had really grown to love Vegas, I still love Vegas, you know, I still work with the police department. Even before I came here today. I told you I had to go by the police department for a ceremony before I came here. You know, so I'm still great supporter and like I said, I do agree with you. My, my training in the military helped me with my training on the police department. command presence was one of the things that was top of the list, you had to be able to, you know, because I keep you guys don't see me, you know, but I'm five foot four, you know, I'm a five foot four female, you know, but I stepped out of that car and opened my mouth and people were doing what I said to do, and that's called command presence. And that's something that I learned from the military.

Unknown Speaker 19:25
I want to get into what I thought at least was a very important segment because it tell you why like,

Unknown Speaker 19:33
I've had definitely several downers in my life, that's for sure. I remember I've had

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there's been I want to say two times in which like suicide crossed my mind. I don't want to say like, I create I create a plan or anything like that, but it was in college. I was really down on like money and stuff. So of course money was an issue, but luckily you

Unknown Speaker 20:00
No, I had the strength to just ask my friends, can I just borrow some money from you? And that's what I did. And I paid them back. And then the second time was a deployment, a deployment to Qatar, which was, that was a rough one. And I know on my, on my previous podcast episodes, I talked about this deployment. And that was a Yeah, that was a tough time. But luckily, I found some activities that made me feel better. And obviously, I started serving at The Chapel. So you know, that helped. And then obviously, I went to England, and I was having some tough times as well. So then I started talking to a chaplain, which really, really helped. So a lot of people you know, who haven't served and whatnot, they probably don't know that suicide is a massive issue in, in the military. So obviously, with yourself being a chaplain, just kind of like talk about that and just talk about like, how you know, what things you see and whatnot, and just kind of like, how you how you came into being into that Chaplain service? Yes. So yeah, I'm an ordained minister. Those of you who are listening to this that are military members, you of course know what a chaplain is, and who a chaplain is. Not necessarily everyone who's listening in will know. So a chaplain is a spiritual caregiver for whatever community they serve. You know, I serve both the police and veterans because it is my background, and I have experience and understand what folks are going through. And I I love being a chaplain and why chose being a chaplain was because I had my dark days, you know, I had my dark days to, you know, I never considered taking my own life, because I feel that that's so precious that God gave that to me, I need to work through this, you know, to figure this out, but I've had some dark, sad days where I was really disappointed. You know, I was like, why, you know, this world supposed to be happier or better or whatever, you know, and it disappoints us, it discouraged us that you know, it, it makes us dark. And when we're dark, and we're low, a lot of times, like I was sharing with you offline before and I know it's done in the military, and it's done in the police department. Somebody says, you know, hey, you know, such as a you know, this is Oh, hey, dude, let's go by let's go get a beer. Let's go to the bar. Let's go have a beer, you know. And that's like, the worst thing to do. Because Alcohol is a depressant, you know, you're already depressed, you know. So that let's go to the bar have a beer is, is because as I was sharing with you, we weren't taught, you know, we weren't taught how to care for one another. You know, we heard about our battle buddies. You know, how, you know, you got to keep track of your buddy, you know, makes check on your buddy. You know, this kind of thing. And the check on your buddy was just going Hey, dude, you're okay. Yeah, yeah. Okay, good, you know, and you we ourselves, even with looking good? Okay, hey, looking good. But he said he was good. So I'm gonna leave that because I don't know how to deal with it. You know, this, I think is a tragedy within our community, you know, the veteran in both the police community? Because we are we are, honestly, how would you say it, we are saviors, you know, we have the hero complex, you know, we have the, you know, I'm changing the world, you know, what I do makes a difference, you know, this kind of thing. So when reality starts to seep in, that it that people don't love you as much as you thought, and this is kind of on the police side, because right now, uh, police, our police officers are going through a lot of, you know, negative, you know, stuff, you know, and then some of them are military members, too, you know, when you're in the military, you appreciate it. And then when you separate, you know, you might not necessarily be so appreciated, you're gonna military, that's okay, get a job, you know,

Unknown Speaker 23:36
that, you know, little lack of appreciation. So when that happens, when you have such a heart of service, you know, that, Oh, I just, you know, I want to do and, you know, that's why I joined the military, you know, and I, you know, went up the ranks and did all the stuff I was supposed to do blah, blah, you know, and now I'm not being appreciated, or maybe even in the midst, you're not being appreciated, you know, because oftentimes, we get,

Unknown Speaker 23:57
I tell them, we get 365 Okay, so are 360. So 360 is you dealing with issues from your, from your family. So, for those of you who are listening, I'm doing a symbol of people alongside you. Okay. So you deal with issues from your family and from your peers. Okay. And we know, it could be anything ribbing, you know, just people think it's good fun, you know, but in the end, it really hurts your feelings, you know, and you're dealing with that. And they don't know that because you just laugh it off. Or you know, yeah, you guys are funny, you know, whatever, but it hurts your feelings, you know, so now that's pounding up compiling, right? And a lot of what all of us are dealing with specially oh my gosh, especially with what just happened in the last two months with all of these mass shootings are unexpected, you know, so it's messing with your mind, you know, especially, you know, military members, you know, the people that you know, like, like us like I've been in in bear you know, bear in mind it was simulated combat, but I remember being awakened by what was supposed to be mortars, you know, and being told I had to get up and I

Unknown Speaker 25:00
had to run in it. You know, and I know some of you know, other people have actually experienced that, you know, so you have your Fourth of July this got people jumping up crazy with this all this stuff, you know, then you have these mass shootings that are that are happening for no reason. And it's this calm, pound trauma that is that is that that the TV's bringing to us that the news is bringing to us that you can't unsee that's bringing back those memories, you know, of just those dark days, you know.

Unknown Speaker 25:28
And it just makes me crazy. Yet it's making my folks crazy, too. Because people know, I'm a chaplain, I serve the community here, the veteran community. And I have gotten more than one phone call about this. I've gotten many Texas, about how this is really messing with them. You know, can I make some suggestions? What should they do? You know, these kinds of things. I'm always there for them to talk to me, you know, I can be text you know, I can be

Unknown Speaker 25:58
what is it on the Facebook where you call people like, you know, you can do that. You know, for those whether you're listening on Chaplain dowel, make sure you spell it right, Chaplain because if you spell it wrong,

Unknown Speaker 26:09
you won't get me, you know, but yeah, I'm on Facebook. And and I'm available to to do counselors and talk through this. But what normally happens is, people don't seek help, because we're helpers. So we're the helper. So why would we seek help? You know, but it's so important mental health is so important. To me, it's my current passion right now, you know, that homeless, realizing, as I described to you, I had a lot of dark days, you know, those dark days kind of took me out. But I had to focus on the positive, I had to focus on the good, I had to focus on the fact that you made a perfect example here, that a lot of times we want to go for a permanent solution to a temporary problem.

Unknown Speaker 26:57
When you said the thing about the money, and what did you do you borrowed you know, we so this is the thing, we, we, when you're so dark, and you're so down,

Unknown Speaker 27:05
you think there's no way out, there's nothing that you can do. And you don't want to pick up the phone. You know, you don't want to, you know, whether it's the stigma of what might happen within your unit, if you say it or the stigma of how your friends might feel if you say that, you know, yes, I want to take my life and I have made a plan for it. You know, I'm going to the desert, you know, I mean, this, this is so important to me. And I encourage your listeners, don't let it happen again. And the reason I'm saying this is when you look at your buddy you know your buddies doing something that is not normal. You know, you got your buddy calling you up and saying hey, I want to I want to get you my boots. You know, you remember the boots that you liked from hiking that we used to go hiking, I just want to get you my boots and you're like, do I usually get my boots? I just want to give them to you, you know, I don't want let you know, I appreciate you this kind of thing. Okay, that's closing, that's that's closing, you know who that person is, is basically telling you, I'm just getting stuff right before I do something, you know, I'm saying? So that would be the time Okay, yeah. Okay, I got the boots and you gave me your skis or whatever, you know, whatever. Something, something, you know, is important to them. And it's something that links you to and they want to give it to you. That's close to their closing mean, unless they're planning their final act, you know? So that's when you Hey, listen, man, are you okay? And don't be afraid to ask this question. Are you going to kill yourself? Are you thinking about killing yourself? Or you don't use say it kill yourself? Okay. Because people don't know if I say it did not put it in their mind. No, you don't know you don't. Because if it was already in their mind, it's there. And if it wasn't Ukraine, you know, you know, blue blood and yeah, I can still talk. You know, I'm saying where you can talk to him about you know, yeah, you tell them, tell them good stuff in their life. Think about the good stuff in their life. Make them focus on the good things in their life, because that's what brings people back. That's what brings people back. You know, I had a friend that told me she was on her way. She had a gun in her mouth. She was taking her life. She was crying out. She was crying. She's crying out the guy. She's crying. She's like, I'm worthless. This this, this and this. She was ready for her last act, right? She had that gun in her mouth. She had closed her her sliding glass door of her house. Everything right? All of a sudden wish she had the gun in her mouth. She's gonna pull the trigger. Her dog jumped on her. And she was like, I left that dog in the house. How is this dog out here? She handled doggie door nothing right? The dog jumped on her butt. The jog bought her back. That dog loves you. You know that dog loves you and see how you're doing. You know, I'm saying so so so we need to bring them back.

Unknown Speaker 29:36
Yeah, absolutely. Well, yeah, I think that's a good way to end the podcast. So just want to thank you to me for coming on and sharing your story because I think

Unknown Speaker 29:47
a lot of people out there will definitely find a lot of value in what you just said, particularly with that last part. So So yeah, I just just want to say thank you for coming on. Thank you for having me on. Like I said, I

Unknown Speaker 30:00
Want to see another person in their lives by their own hands so

Unknown Speaker 30:05
reach out Chaplin bow on Facebook reach out thank you

Transcribed by https://otter.ai