Ep 100: Mastering Reunification Part 2
Episode 100
Published Jan 6, 2025
Last updated Feb 18, 2026
Duration: 33:31
Episode Summary
For the 100th episode of our podcast, we continue the conversation with the I Love U Guys Foundation and the importance of ongoing collaboration between schools and public safety agencies to ensure effective responses to emergencies.
Episode Notes
In today’s podcast we continue the discussion with John-Michael Keyes, Stacy Avila, and Kevin Burd from the I Love U Guys Foundation about the Standard Reunification Method (SRM) and its complementary nature to the School Safety and Violent Event Incident Management (SSAVEIM) courses.
Reunification is a complex process that requires thorough planning and practice along with crucial communication between schools and public safety agencies. The episode highlights two main training programs:
1. REx (Reunification Exercise): A two-day program that includes:
- Day 1: Covering Standard Response Protocol and Standard Reunification Method
- Day 2: Practical exercises with participants role-playing as students, parents, and reunification team members
2. SSAVEIM (School Safety and Violent Event Incident Management): Focuses on:
- Active shooter response for public safety personnel
- Helping educators understand the public safety response
- Facilitating discussions between school staff and first responders
View this episode on YouTube at https://youtu.be/DbVzDC1Sgbc
Podcast Links:
Ep 62: A Teenager's Perspective on Active Shooter Events
https://youtube.com/live/_fGScoFWaCE
REx Training Link
https://iloveuguys.org/Reunification-Exercise.html
SSAVEIM Assessment
https://www.c3pathways.com/ssaveim
SSAVEIM ATP
Transcript
Karla Torres:Welcome back, I'm Karla Torres, your producer, and we are gonna pick up right where we left off last week. Here's part two of today's topic.
John-Michael Keyes:
I'm seeing a growing trend with security directors focused on how do we get messaging back into the classroom during the lockdown. And that's an encouraging trend to see is investment and practice and talking back to the classroom if something goes down.
Bill Godfrey:
It's funny that you segued there and brought that up because it's exactly one of the things that was on my mind. It comes up on a fairly regular basis, is how do we let everybody know when we've shifted gears? And from a public safety perspective, obviously the campus is in lockdown, it's in a crime scene. Movement on the campus is not gonna be at will. It's gonna be very controlled and very, very limited.
But I think from a public safety perspective and a response perspective, there is value in getting that voice that's familiar, whether that's the principal or the assistant principal or whoever is normally making the announcements on the PA system, getting them back in front of a PA microphone when you've got the last patient transported and being able to say, "Here's an update. Campus remains in lockdown. The threat has been neutralized, the injured have been transported. "Law enforcement is gonna begin moving through the campus to ensure that there are no other threats. "Stay where you are." Thoughts?
John-Michael Keyes:
The three greatest challenges in a crisis: communication, communication, communication. And especially with kids and teachers. Those are two audiences that have wild imaginations and rarely do they imagine things smaller. And so the more communication we can get into the classroom sooner, again, long term, this is the first step of the recovery process. And that can reduce long-term trauma simply by introducing communication while they're still in lockdown.
Bill Godfrey:
Yeah.
Kevin Burd:
Discussions that we're having in our trainings all revolve around this and it's come up even more. Don't want to go down this rabbit hole right now, like cell phone bans in schools. But how do we communicate that message? When's the right time to do it? Threat is neutralized, 90% of the time they're over in 10 minutes. We are absolutely moving that school safety needle. Less active shooter events are occurring in schools. Open space is going up, right? All the data is there to support these conversations in the room.
But we've gotta communicate into the room. But whether it's been in a SSAVEIM, an SRP-SRM, or a REx, the same conversations always come up. A teacher is going to ask, or an educator administrator is going to ask, "Who's gonna let the classrooms know it's okay?" That's why we're here today. I can't go in and tell you what your plan's gonna be that day. You should be taking this. We have failed you if we don't leave you with some homework today. You need to go back and you need to have this discussion. How do you communicate? Don't reinvent the wheel.
Drive through reunification's another discussion. I feel like I've became very proficient in drive through reunifications because I don't want to reinvent the wheel. You already have a plan to drop off your students or pick up your students, the parents, at the school. So let's use some of that if the situation, if the incident allows it.
Do you go by PA? Do you have an email? Do you have a text message? How do we get that communication? When's the right time to do it. Have that plan in place and don't wing it, right, that day. Talk about it. When's the right time to do it?
And this is one of the other slides that we bring up. And always, discussions go both ways. This is one of those where you, the instructor's gotta control the room a little bit. Do you allow your students to text their parents at some point? Now we have a little stake in that game.
Stacy Avila:
Yeah.
John-Michael Keyes:
Got a dog in that fight.
Stacy Avila:
Yeah.
Kevin Burd:
But recently with some of the cell phone initiatives and bans that are going in at school, I always wondered, are we losing a potential tool that we might be able to use? I remember one incident, right as I was retiring and trying to track a student and the simple fact that the parent had the Life 360 app on their phone, we were able to figure out where that student ran off to that day. So there's some benefits to having that. But communication, going back to communication.
Bill Godfrey:
And I would, because I agree with you Kevin, I don't wanna go down the cell phone ban rabbit hole.
Kevin Burd:
Right.
Bill Godfrey:
But I'm sitting across the table here from a guy that, like myself, has a very, very strong technology background. John-Michael, I know you, you're done a lot of development software programming. You're very, very well versed in technology as am I. It doesn't matter what they do with cell phones, they are not gonna shut down messaging. They'll have laptops. They're gonna have their watches. They're gonna have, the genie is out of this. Just get over it and let's move on. And sort out, you know, behavior.
You're trying to address a behavioral issue by taking away a thing. And you know, I can be quite a distance away from my phone and still have full controls on my watch. So it doesn't matter if I put my phone in a cubby hole over there and it's a locker outside, I can communicate with it. And oh, by the way, I have an app on my desktop, on my laptop computer that will allow me to receive and text message that it's just, we're never gonna get there. But I think, I do think that we need a plan.
And Kevin, I wanna follow up on something you said 'cause we talked about the decline of active shooter events in schools. One of the interesting things, 'cause that's accurate, absolutely accurate, absolutely true, though you wouldn't necessarily know that listening to the news. But here's where this thing gets a little bit squirrely. And that is the definition of what is or isn't an active shooter event. Here's the reality. It's starting to matter less and less from a response perspective, not from a research perspective, from a response perspective. It's starting to matter less and less what, whether it was or wasn't an active shooter. The real issue is how do we react?
So for example, there's a violent encounter between a student and a teacher. We've seen a number of these where students have attacked teachers and that triggers a lockdown event. And it's a real event. And as you said, "Everybody's gonna think bigger, "not smaller." Not an active shooter event. It was an assault, perhaps a violent one. There may have been one or more serious injuries, not to minimize it at all, but everybody's sitting in the classroom. It's a, you said you have a school that's got 4,500 kids. You got 4,500 kids on lockdown. And it's a real lockdown 'cause it's a real violent event, but it wasn't an active shooter. But everybody's scared to death. And what's the level of reunification that needs to occur after that?
Likewise, you have gang violence in schools. You have just the typical bullying that escalates, knives, knife attacks. You may have an, we've seen a number of these, arguments between students that get settled with a gun, doesn't meet the definition of an active shooter event from a research perspective, but it sure as hell triggered a lockdown and it triggered a full scale law enforcement response that might've well been an active shooter event. From your perspective on the foundation, does that flavor any of your thinking as you're moving forward on how you may need to adjust the training or adjust the messaging?
John-Michael Keyes:
So we introduced the hold action in 2017?
Kevin Burd:
Fifteen.
John-Michael Keyes:
2015.
Stacy Avila:
2015 and then it became-
John-Michael Keyes:
And then it became part of the protocol in 2017. And it was to really address that differential between a lockdown and let's just keep kids out of the hall. That's part of the answer to the question. But the other part is that yeah, some of the stuff happens. Yes, it's traumatic. Yes, we just went into lockdown. Why?
If what we've been training is that the lockdown is because there's an act of violence event going on inside the building. And so we don't use the term active shooter. We talk about active assailants because it may not be just simply a shooter. And so I'm not sure if I'm getting an answer to your question Bill, but?
Bill Godfrey:
Well, I think you did kind of touch on it there a little bit is, you know, if you have a violent event, it's very likely going to trigger a lockdown. At least it should. But once enough information is present to then shift gears and say, "We are changing from a lockdown to a hold." You know, "There has been an event, it is under control, but we are in a hold status," and communicating that.
I think part of the challenge is, I'm not entirely sure that it would occur to public safety, to police, fire, and EMS, early on, 10, 15 minutes in, we've got this under control. There's work to be done here and we're gonna have a presence and I don't want the kids in the hall, but go do your messaging to switch gear. I don't think we're at that awareness level yet.
John-Michael Keyes:
We are just starting that and we've developed training materials specifically geared towards dispatch and dispatch supervision. Let that commander or sergeant perhaps get a gentle nudge from a dispatcher that, hey, this action exists and is an option.
Stacy Avila:
And I think it's also why it's so important to have the diverse audiences that we have so that if we have our first responders in the room learning about SRP, learning about reunification, then their response can fit and align more with what the school's expecting.
Kevin Burd:
Yeah, Kevin, you and I have both done a number of SSAVEIMs together and independently and it's always fascinating to me. So our SSAVEIM curriculum calls for three exercises, but it seems to be the exception, not the rule, that we actually get to the third exercise because by a time it rolls around to do the third exercise, there's so many questions, usually coming from the educators, but some from public safety as well, so many questions that we end up spending that third exercise time, having that discussion and facilitating these very questions. And some of those questions are, they're specific about their particular situation, but they're also very pointed questions about, well how does this work 'cause these things seem to be in conflict.
Stacy Avila:
And one of the things I've liked is that we are giving a forum for those conversations that have probably needed to happen for years. And then we can find ourselves maybe just kind of stepping back a little bit and allowing people to talk that have needed to talk.
Kevin Burd:
Yeah and if they're able to come up with some of those solutions by having those group discussions, have 'em.
Stacy Avila:
Yeah.
Bill Godfrey:
Right.
Kevin Burd:
And let's be honest, it starts pushing 3, 3:30 in the afternoon-
Bill Godfrey:
Yeah, the educator's looking for the door.
Kevin Burd:
Yeah, most are checked out at that point.
Stacy Avila:
And cops never wanna stay.
Kevin Burd:
What's the best benefit for the day? Let's air this out because you have others in the room that may have experienced this before. You may have the 35 student principal there along with the 4,500 student principal where somewhere in the middle there, they can communicate to one, "Hey, this is what we do on our end when we have this, when we have an incident occur, this is how we communicate to our teachers or educators in the room. We have this secret squirrel, email system, notification system," whatever it might be." But open up those conversations, give 'em some homework and go back and say, "Hey, continue this conversation. Don't let it end here."
Stacy Avila:
It's powerful to watch the mindset change from what it was early in the morning in the room about, "Wow, we're not gonna do that." You know, "We didn't have nothing to do with reunification," and then by the end of the day, "Oh, I see that we do." And so that we can actually be help not a hindrance. And then the understanding of why from both perspectives, so important.
Kevin Burd:
And I, those questions are valuable. And this is actually something that's recently happened, which for whatever reason wasn't happening for a while. School goes into lockdown, but students are outside. Where do they go to? And you think, okay, we've been having this conversation for 20 years. I'm not saying this negatively. You don't know what you don't know, but we get asked that question a lot. Okay, we just went into lockdown. We think we heard the loud repetitive bangs inside lockdown. We don't go back in the school, we evacuate. Or the self evacuation discussion inside, which leads into the accountability.
Having everybody around the table running through the functional exercise allows the opportunity for those questions to come up and for us to say, start in your gym class. Run a drill when students are outside, identify a few places, talk to law enforcement. What's the difference between cover and concealment? Going behind a bunch of shrubs hides you, but it won't stop something from going through that, brick baseball dugout. Have those conversations start there because that's now going to lead into your planning and yeah.
John-Michael Keyes:
Yeah.
Bill Godfrey:
Yeah, it is amazing that the, one of the, my favorite things to see happen, and I've seen this a number of times in our SSAVEIM class where educators will start asking questions on a driven topic and the public safety people in the room, to your point, the instructors can kind of just step back. Their local public safety people go, "Oh no, we would approach this way."
I remember one very vividly, the educator, the superintendent announced how law enforcement would arrive and by what means they would arrive and what the process was for them to check in and find this out and find that out. And I'm looking, and all the cops are looking at each other like, what is that?
Stacy Avila:
That's not what's gonna happen.
Bill Godfrey:
And then, you know, one of the, and ironically it wasn't the chief in the room it wasn't the lieutenant, it wasn't the sergeant, it was a patrol cop that went, "Yes sir. I don't mean to disagree or be disagreeable, but yeah, that's not what we're doing."
Stacy Avila:
Right.
Bill Godfrey:
"You've got these entrances, we're gonna do this, we're gonna do this, we're gonna do." And it just facilitates this conversation between the local people. And one of the most amazing ones that I saw, they actually recognized that they had some significant gaps. The educators had made some assumptions about what public safety would and wouldn't do. Public safety had made assumptions about what the school would and wouldn't be doing. And they were both off base and they said, "Ooh, we have some work to do here." And in the room, they designated people in the room to be part of a working group that agreed to start meeting the next day. And I was like, "Oh my God, this is."
John-Michael Keyes:
That's mission accomplished.
Bill Godfrey:
Mission accomplished. Right there.
Stacy Avila:
And it's like we'd said earlier, we wanna leave them better than we found them.
Bill Godfrey:
Yeah.
Stacy Avila:
And when you do those things, you've left them better.
Kevin Burd:
Yeah and again, it's just amazing the amount of discussions that that come up but it leads into these follow on conversations. You know, one I ran into last week, talk to me how you do your lockdown drills. "Well, time sensitive, right? We just kind of check the doors, look through the window and go to the right next door." I'm like, "You're not opening up the door and, you know, reinforcing, Hey, you did a great job in here," But if you think violent event, we don't know what that teacher is going to do. And when you open up the door for the first time after a lockdown and you have that, this is what's gonna happen, right? It's gonna be the brand new patrol officer that just got off FTO is gonna be the first one through a door and you got a teacher with a chair on the other side of the door 'cause they're prepared to defend their, even saving-
Bill Godfrey:
That doesn't end well.
Kevin Burd:
But having the opportunity to have those discussions. And that's what I just absolutely love about, one of the things that I love about the SSAVEIM class. It allows all those questions to come up because now for the first time, our teachers, our educators get a chance to see what that first responder response looks like. And some first responders have no idea actually how far the training has gone for the teachers.
Yes, lockdown is a common term, but there's a lot of individual tactics type training out there. Whether it's run hide fight, avoid deny defend, ALICE programs, right? You all need to know what training has been going on so when that officer opens that door for the first time, or an administrator opens that door, or your school safety director opens that locked classroom door, they have an expectation of what might be on the other side. I learned a long time ago, I'm gonna announce my presence before I go through the door
Stacy Avila:
Well before you enter the classroom.
Kevin Burd:
Because I got met by those doors, golf clubs, an art teacher with a pair of, or a box cutter in their hand. I'm like, okay, I'm smarter than this. This is detective so-and-so I'm coming in the room now and be a uniformed officer. All those conversations come up, which is-
Stacy Avila:
And that's also why we really talk about the importance of training together ahead of time and doing as you drill. So we're gonna open the door every time on our drills and have the conversation. A, you get great conversation, but B you're also, hey, this is what happens every time. So I know when that door opens, it's because administration or law enforcement physically opening the door and they're gonna come talk to us.
Bill Godfrey:
Yeah, you know, it's interesting. I'm gonna, this is a little bit of a tangent, but it's in my mind absolutely connected. Several months ago, I had an opportunity, there was a young man from local high school that wanted to come interview me about violence in high schools. And I, we did his interview and then I turned the tables on him and said, "Okay, it's my turn. "I want to interview you as a student who attends." And, you know, and it was a fascinating conversation. It was a fascinating conversation.
In fact, Karla, can we make sure that we put down in the notes, the link to that one. To hear this perspective from a 16-year-old about what they've been taught and more to the point, what they haven't been taught. He said in his particular school, they do the lockdown, locks lights outta sight, they hide. He goes, "Now what?" And I said, "Well, what did they tell you to do?" And he goes, "If the door opens and somebody comes through, you throw a book at 'em." And he said, I said, "Well, how'd that make you feel?" And he goes, "Really?"
Stacy Avila:
Yeah.
Bill Godfrey:
What are we gonna do when we're run out of books? Throw our laptops at the bad guy.
John-Michael Keyes:
Yeah.
Bill Godfrey:
And that led to this conversation about some things that they can do a little bit differently, you know, but it dawned on me in listening to his perspective as a high school student and as a high school student that's actually done a fair amount of research on gun violence, that we may have prepared public safety, we may have prepared the school. I think we've missed the mark on having a program for the kids.
John-Michael Keyes:
Yeah.
Bill Godfrey:
What are your thoughts on that? Put you on the spot there, John-Michael.
John-Michael Keyes:
Thanks, Bill. We talk about it a little different sometimes. We talk about the specific actions without simulating an event. But part of our conversation is that we actually only have a fraction of time in a given school year to have that conversation. And if we can start the conversations early, in kindergarten, then we'd like to say they're rock stars by the time they're in third grade.
But we've had some of these conversations with our kids forever and ever. It sounds a little terrifying, but when you catch on fire Bill, what do you do? You stop, drop, and roll. Okay, wait a minute. What's this catching on fire part? Okay?
Bill Godfrey:
Yeah, well I thought you were gonna go for duck and cover, so I'm glad it was a fire joke.
Stacy Avila:
No, but think it's, it is. Fire safety in schools is taught from the very beginning. We've had clear conversations with children about what to do if they literally burst into flames but we're afraid to talk about this stuff. But the kids have a desire to, we, as adults, need to get over ourselves and "Oh, that feels uncomfortable," right? And start having the conversations with kids.
Bill Godfrey:
And I'll tell you this, if, for those of you listening that hadn't had an opportunity to listen to the perspective of a 16-year-old, you really need to go do it. We're a, we can't traumatize the children. Are you kidding me? You should hear their perspective. They're like, "What is the plan adults?"
Stacy Avila:
Right.
Bill Godfrey:
We don't, do you remember when Abby said to us, you know, we were asking some questions, some pointed questions about what the kids would and wouldn't do. And she gave an interesting answer. And I go, "Well, wait a minute, why is that just you? Because you're on, you know, you're my daughter and you live with me doing this all the time." And she goes, "No, all my friends see it this way too." And I said, "Well, why?" And they said, she said to us, "Because we don't trust the adults to solve the problem."
John-Michael Keyes:
Yeah.
Kevin Burd:
And I'll throw this out there sometimes too. If you're in the middle of an incident and a student looks up to you and asks, "What do we do? "What's the plan?" And you don't know.
Bill Godfrey:
Ooh!
Stacy Avila:
Yeah.
Kevin Burd:
We failed.
Stacy Avila:
Yeah.
Kevin Burd:
We failed.
Bill Godfrey:
But I think if the student has to ask that question to your point about starting this early and just we're not normalizing violence. We're normalizing the response.
Stacy Avila:
And more than that-
Bill Godfrey:
We're preparing them.
Stacy Avila:
Also some critical thinking skills.
Bill Godfrey:
Yes.
Stacy Avila:
Right, about, and this is, it translate the things we learn in school help us throughout all of our life, right, and in our everyday life. And that's what I want for all of our students to learn, as well.
John-Michael Keyes:
I moved to Bailey, Colorado when the kids were in third grade. And I'd grown up west of Denver in Nederland, Colorado, in the mountains and Bailey's in the mountains. And it was about three weeks into the school year. And I've got third graders and we need to talk about lions and tigers and bears 'cause we live in the mountains and with mountain lions, you get big and we got big and tigers live in India and when we go to India, we'll talk more about tigers. But bears, with bears, we get small and we do that at Deer Creek Elementary School in Bailey, Colorado, they've got mountain lions on the playground four or five times a year, okay? And it was fascinating because Emily looked up at me and said, "Oh dad, they taught us this already at school."
Stacy Avila:
Yeah.
John-Michael Keyes:
What to do with mountain lions and bears? And so yes, we can have conversations, even with third graders.
Bill Godfrey:
I agree. Abby was quite young when I started. You know, the, everybody's heard the old adage run hide and fight but from a very young age, I really taught her, you run or fight.
Stacy Avila:
Yeah.
Bill Godfrey:
Hiding is not a real option. And you have permission to run, you know, you have permission to leave, you have permission to get out. We talked about all of the ways that can get out, which, you know, in some cases deals with the exits and fire safety and, you know, crawling through windows and that kind of stuff.
But it is amazing that if you don't have those conversations ahead of time, you literally can have a normally intelligent high schooler who's almost an adult who doesn't know that it's okay to run away. Doesn't know it's okay to crawl out through a window to get out. They need permission and I think that's an issue we need to look at.
John-Michael Keyes:
Yeah.
Stacy Avila:
We talk about it,
John-Michael Keyes:
Right, we do.
Kevin Burd:
And a couple things we talk about is even an early age, we can talk about tactics or intel driven. What you do is based on what you know and your environment ultimately dictates your tactics. Where are we? What's happening around us? And the SRP was really designed as that all hazards institutional response. We can talk about a medical emergency in the hallway all the way up to the active violent event. We talk about the power of a locked door.
And I'm going some here with this. We talk about the Sandy Hook Commission. Number one recommendation, classroom doors should be able to lock from the inside. We've add in with gross motor skills. We know what happens to the mind and body under stress. But we also still need to prepare to evade, defend, run, hide, fight, avoid, deny, defend, all those individual tactics. But in the planning process, we need to have this discussion. What works for your community? What do you feel comfortable with talking to your students about?
Because they need to know what the options are 'cause it also ultimately leads into the accountability piece. If you are gonna self evacuate, where are you going, cover concealment, who are you gonna call to? All of it ties together when law enforcement responds, we need to know if it's an area, and I've come across this and it's been some 120 really good evaluations and two that probably never want me or some of our instructors back in their state again because they just teach everybody to evacuate.
Stacy Avila:
Yeah.
Kevin Burd:
Just go, evacuate, evacuate, evacuate. Well, where's the threat? We need to expand on that conversation. There's not a one cookie cutter response for any of this. So teach the value of the power of the locked door. We've only found three incidents where an active shooter has breached a locked classroom door or I'm sorry-
Stacy Avila:
But that we've lost someone-
Kevin Burd:
Has entered, that we've lost somebody on the other side of a locked classroom door. It wasn't by the door itself, it was through the windows and Parkland, nobody entered the classroom. So we talk about that 'cause I really believe, we really believe that we should be sharing this data and intel and it should help steer the, where the training should go towards. And you need to have an understanding of what both sides are going to be doing. What are you teaching your students? What are you teaching your staff members? Give those educators the opportunity to see what it looks like from the first responder response. Yes, there are contact teams that are coming in. There are rescue task force programs, whatever they look like locally. There is all this stuff that's been planned out. But we all need to know and be on the same page before the incident happens. Have these conversations ahead of time.
Bill Godfrey:
I think there's also incredible value in not being afraid to have what, on the surface, seems like a difficult conversation. And I'll give you a perfect example. The Covenant school shooting. That principal, who tragically lost her life, believed in preparing and didn't pull any punches. And the training with the teachers and the students included critical thinking on which side of the buildings they should egress and evacuate to based on the nature of the threat, the cover that was available, that specific campus design, the construction of the building. They'd had those conversations. And it saved lives. It saved lives.
It's just like teaching kids first aid. This is how you control bleeding. These are the things that you can do. And I've literally had some adults say, "You can't teach kids that. "It's too traumatic." Well, I vehemently disagree. I don't think teaching people things is traumatic. But the funny reality, we, not funny, ironic reality. We equipped law enforcement officers with tourniquets across the country. And in large part it had to do with response to shootings and, in many ways, to active shooter events for them to be able to rescue. And while there have been some saves, there have been far more lives saved by those officers using tourniquets in car accidents-
Stacy Avila:
Absolutely.
Bill Godfrey:
In traumatic events, in machinery incidents.
Kevin Burd:
Yeah.
Bill Godfrey:
In situations where people were injured and hurt that had nothing to do with violence.
Stacy Avila:
Right.
Bill Godfrey:
But they knew the skills and those skills are transferable.
Stacy Avila:
And I was just gonna say that. The events are gonna happen regardless. To me, it would be far more traumatic to have the event occur and not know what to do versus, "Hey, I have a plan, I know what to do." Right, so the event's gonna happen anyway. Let's establish a basic understanding for everyone.
Bill Godfrey:
Exactly.
Stacy Avila:
Yeah.
Bill Godfrey:
Exactly.
John-Michael Keyes:
Well, and that's actually an interesting notion from a community perspective and I'll give you an example. After Casey graduated from college, he did a year with AmeriCorps. And the program he was working on was called EMS Academy. And he was recruiting kids from the inner city, from the community. The program then paid those kids to learn how to become an EMT and we would start to get EMTs that reflected the nature of the community, the diversity of the community.
But in talking to one of these kids, it was out visiting Casey and she looked at me and she said, "You know, I thought my career was McDonald's. This gave me a whole different perspective. When I'm done with this EMT program, I'm gonna work a year, but I'm gonna get into a nursing program." And it was a pivotal change by giving her some of that training. Not just in the ability to respond, but the outcome of some life choices. And so it's training that may make a pivotal difference in the future vector path of a kid.
Bill Godfrey:
I couldn't agree with you more. I got my start in this career at age 13 by becoming an explorer, now it was a law enforcement explorer post, but it was with a police department that was a public safety department. So their officers were cross-trained to do police, fire, and EMS. And at age 13, I learned some pretty advanced medical stuff. I got my CPR rating. I learned how to do bleeding control, do airway management, do all of those things. And at age 15, I was doing ride-alongs with police officers every waking moment that I could get somebody to let me in the car and had the opportunity to gain some amazing experiences, life experiences, things like that, opened my eyes to what was possible. Ultimately led me to falling in love with this career and wanting to do it as a lifelong career.
But for somebody to suggest to me who actually walked this walk and lived it, learning about this stuff at 13 and seeing some pretty horrible things. You know, you go into a ride along program, you're gonna see some horrible things if you see enough of it. And to suggest that kids can't handle that. It's too traumatic. Sorry, no.
Stacy Avila:
No. We're not preparing them for real life.
Bill Godfrey:
Yeah, yeah, I think we can do better. How about you?
John-Michael Keyes:
We are doing better.
Bill Godfrey:
Absolutely. There's always opportunities for improvement. Thank you all for being here again and talking about this exciting opportunity. So REx and SSAVEIM, we'll make sure that we put some links to the various programs down in the show notes for people.
Thank you to Karla Torres, our producer, for keeping us on time and squared away. And until next time, stay safe.