Peak Points | "I Was Covered in Blood" - Terrifying Moments as a Police Officer

We’re revisiting Episode #07 with Ed Calderon, a former police officer in Mexico who dedicated his career to combating cartels and organized crime. This recap highlights Ed's extraordinary insights into survival, security, and the challenges faced on the frontlines of law enforcement in one of the world's most dangerous environments. Shawn Ryan Links: Spotify - Full Episode Apple Podcasts - Full Episode Ed Calderon Links: Website - https://www.edsmanifesto.com Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/edsmanifesto Please leave us a review on Apple & Spotify Podcasts. Vigilance Elite/Shawn Ryan Links: Website | Patreon | TikTok | Instagram | Download Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:01Speaker 00

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• 0:31Speaker 01

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• 1:00Shawn Ryan?

  How do you cope?

• 1:01Speaker 03

  So we just got in a, you know, Mexican standoff with them. And I was covered in blood, my clothing was covered in blood.

• 1:07Shawn Ryan?

  Why do you think there were no shots fired?

• 1:09Speaker 03

  We were being hunted. And the older guy said, "The body's a gift."

• 1:13Shawn Ryan?

  Kind of being recruited by the cartel.

• 1:15Speaker 03

  That's when I realized that there's no winning here, not like this. I resigned that day. She said, "There's no such thing as going back home. Either you change on your way back to home, or the home you left changes when you're gone, and you don't recognize it when you come back."

• 1:29Shawn Ryan?

  How long into your career, do your law enforcement career in Tijuana, did it take for it to become real? Where you're like, "This isn't a fucking game."

• 1:40Speaker 03

  As soon as I got out, probably the second day on the job, we were kind of spread out in Baja State. And I got to see, immediately, the no fucks given by the cartels. So I remember me and probably eight other guys moving through downtown Tijuana in full kit, driving around in some armored vehicles, and getting the order to stop from the lead car that was in front of us.

• 2:21Speaker 03

  And we parked aside, and everybody ran out of the cars and adopted defensive positions.

• 2:29Speaker 03

  And convoy probably, I'd say probably somewhere 15 vehicles just passed right next to us. All of them, a few of them armored, all of them with AK-47s. Some of them had federal police uniforms, some of them have army uniforms. We didn't know who they were. We're getting calls from the, from the 911 service they have down there from the municipal police that they were caught. They were municipal cops, but they clearly weren't municipal cops. So we just got in a, you know, Mexican standoff with them. Didn't, nobody shot around, but they just passed by us. We called for, for support from the local police and, and nobody showed up.

• 3:11Shawn Ryan?

  How many of you guys were there?

• 3:12Speaker 03

  Probably nine.

• 3:14Shawn Ryan?

  Nine?

• 3:14Speaker 03

  Nine guys.

• 3:15Shawn Ryan?

  What's that, two cars?

• 3:16Speaker 03

  That's two cars, yeah.

• 3:17Shawn Ryan?

  And they had 15 fucking vehicles?

• 3:19Speaker 03

  Yeah, so we, that's when I realized that there's no winning here, not, not like this.

• 3:25Shawn Ryan?

  Buck, man.

• 3:26Speaker 03

  There's no winning, not like this, and.

• 3:32Shawn Ryan?

  Why do you think there were no shots fired?

• 3:35Speaker 03

  They didn't feel threatened by us. They didn't have any fear. So they just passed by and they actually went to a local little restaurant there and adapted positions around it. Had dinner and then went back to their cars and left. No support came on our end, so it's one of those, that's when you realize how fucked you are and how no support and how there's just no backing there. This was before the Felipe Calderon administration.

• 4:04Speaker 03

  Slowly but surely, things changed. We started getting more support, started getting more vehicles, more people coming in. We started working directly with the military and directly with some federal operational police forces.

• 4:21Speaker 03

  Eventually getting fear put into the, the opponent, the enemy, the cartel guys. It took, it took some time. At the start of it, it was just hopeless, just hopeless.

• 4:31Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 4:32Speaker 03

  Going through the motions.

• 4:35Speaker 03

  A few of, I think it took about a year into it that a few of my friends were killed. They used to. They used to rent out hotels for us to stay in. And we had this buddy system going on. So if you wanted to go outside, you had to have one of your buddy system, right? But you would have to inform that you were going out. They didn't inform. They went to the store, thought it was easy. So they just crossed the street, went to this convenience store.

• 5:04Speaker 03

  And they got picked up by some cartel guys dressed as federal agents. They had the blue uniforms and everything. With the patches, everything, like down to every detail. And they were, you know, they were taken, zip-died and put into a van. They were found 24 hours later. One of them had his ID screwed to his forehead.

• 5:29Speaker 03

  They were being hunted.

• 5:31Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 5:32Speaker 03

  You know, that's, that's when like paranoia.

• 5:39Shawn Ryan?

  Less than a year.

• 5:41Speaker 03

  That's less than a year. And I, I came out of there in a generation of 32 people. And a lot of them are gone.

• 5:53Speaker 03

  But those were the first really close ones to me that I saw leave, just leave in a horrible way.

• 6:02Speaker 03

  They're all young, you know, like I knew, I knew, like I'd just been to a, to a party with the girl, and I met the girlfriend of one of them. And it was, it was a thing I told them, get done and don't marry, don't get girlfriends because you don't want to leave widows.

• 6:16Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 6:17Speaker 03

  Interesting, just for perspective. It's a, it's a thing to be ashamed of or to hide if your profession is a cop, or at least it was back then.

• 6:30Shawn Ryan?

  Damn.

• 6:31Speaker 03

  So because we're not the, depending on where you were, cops are, you know, despised.

• 6:37Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah. So kind of wrapping up your career, you talk about kind of being recruited by the cartel.

• 6:46Shawn Ryan?

  And I kind of wanted to go a little deeper into that. And I would imagine that you were recruited several times or had friends, you had already said that you had friends that had been recruited out of, out of the police or maybe the military and into the cartel.

• 7:02Speaker 03

  I mean, the offer was, it was an offer, you know, it was always, they were always, you would always get intermediaries approaching you like, hey, and like. This is much money, it takes you for you to work with us, you know. But it was obvious to anybody, you know, as soon as you take an offer like that, you're owned, you're theirs. If you fuck up, if you're not useful, or if somebody finds out you're working for somebody that they're not a part of, you'll either get arrested, get killed by the rival group that you're working against, or your career ends, right? So I got a lot of offers, a lot of them, never took any of them.

• 7:45Speaker 03

  A lot of my friends and a lot of the people that I used to work with did, or eventually would put into a position where there was no choice. Plata o plomo, silver or lead, Colombian term, but it's popular in Mexico. Another code for it was one finger up and one finger down. What do you want? You want plata o plomo? You know, you wanna be on the ground or you wanna stay up here in the world of the living?

• 8:12Speaker 03

  I wasn't greedy.

• 8:15Speaker 03

  There's a lot of people that went into policing in Mexico that wanted to find a million dollars and bury it in a wall or something, or just be on the payroll of somebody. I remember going to some of the meetings at the office and seeing, you know, some new hummers outside and some of the guys owned, it was kind of scratching my head at it, right?

• 8:35Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 8:36Speaker 03

  A lot of us went through a certification process called CALIA, it's an American certification process. And with that, you know, a lot of confidence exams, polygraph testing, all this type of stuff, all of us went through it. A lot of people got kicked out or fired after they went through that process, which to us, to me, you know, I passed, so I stayed on, so I figured that all the people that I passed stayed on, they were on the up and up. But people can be corrupted, like, from one day to another, right? So we were careful about everything, but I felt a bit better that everybody was going through it.

• 9:14Speaker 03

  Administration ends, somebody comes, another administration comes in, and landmark case declares everybody that was fired based on the polygraph exam or the competence exams as unconstitutional. And all of a sudden, you have six years' worth of people that were kicked out of the job, coming back into the job. Their wages being paid forward. And you had people that were suspected of seeing lower cartel participation in the office now, back at the office. So.

• 9:47Speaker 03

  So it got, it got really bad. And, you know, basically brought into the office, all the work that I was doing, ended. I got an offer to work for a single side of it, basically. They told us, hey, remember you're working here? Yeah. Well, we're gonna work against these guys over here only. And we want you to come in. Okay, let me think about it. Basically, we want us to work against one side, which means you want us to work for this side.

• 10:21Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 10:22Speaker 03

  I resigned that day. And there was just no getting out of it, squirming out of it, or going somewhere else. I didn't have any, all the people that I knew within high-level government were gone because the administration changed. All the people that I knew when the leadership in the office were moved around, and I just had no choice. So I went, went outside, got my resignation printed out, signed it, handed everything in, in the duffel bag, handed in my MP5, my gun, my badge, everything, radio. Got myself into a car, called some of my friends, my American friends. Actually, two, two of them went down there, kinda helped me out to get out of there.

• 11:03Speaker 03

  Marines, God bless the United States Marine Corps. And they helped me cross the border. And, you know, family in tow by this point, which was, that was probably the hardest part.

• 11:22Shawn Ryan?

  I know everybody out there has to be just as frustrated as I am when it comes to the BS and the rhetoric that the mainstream media continuously tries to force feed us.

• 11:35Shawn Ryan?

  And I also know how frustrating it can be to try to find some type of a reliable news source. It's getting really hard to find the truth and what's going on in the country and in the world. And so, one thing we've done here at Sean Ryan Show is we are developing our newsletter. And the first contributor to the newsletter that we have is a woman, former CIA targeter. Some of you may know her as Sarah Adams, call sign Superbad. She's made two different appearances here on the Sean Ryan Show. And some of the stuff that she has uncovered and broke on this show is just absolutely mind blowing.

• 12:16Shawn Ryan?

  And so, I've asked her if she would contribute to the newsletter and give us a weekly intelligence brief. So, it's going to be all things terrorists, how terrorists are coming up through the southern border, how they're entering the country, how they're traveling, what these different terrorist organizations throughout the world are up to. And here's the best part, the newsletter is actually free. We're not going to spam you. It's about one newsletter a week, maybe two, if we release two shows. The only other thing that's going to be in there besides the intel brief is if we have a new product or something like that. But, like I said, it's a free CIA intelligence brief. Sign up, links in the description or in the comments. We'll see you in the newsletter.

• 13:05Speaker 03

  I had choices in the US that I didn't have in Mexico.

• 13:09Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah. It sounds like China's taken a major interest in the cartels in Mexico.

• 13:17Shawn Ryan?

  And I've operated around China overseas several times. And those motherfuckers are just as ruthless, if not more, than some of the cartels. Why is China's interest in Mexico so becoming so strong?

• 13:34Speaker 03

  It's your Achilles heel as a country. It's your number two largest consumer of American products in the world. It's a very destabilized place that's getting destabilized even more. So this this whole weird thought process that Americans have that the cartels are getting their fentanyl from China, from some sort of criminal element within China. Like, let's be clear. Nothing comes out of China, nothing happens in China without Chinese state being involved or knowing about it. This is a place where Big Brother is the real thing, right? Everybody's monitored. You saw it during the COVID shutdown. You saw it with the way they're handling the Uighur population.

• 14:18Speaker 03

  So nothing coming out of China is coming out of China without them knowing so. So all that fentanyl being brought out of China into Mexico, that's getting being put into heroin or some of these fentanyl fabrication sites that are being found in Mexico now with clear instruction by Chinese laboratory specialists. That's not a private entity. That's not the triads or that's not a criminal activity. That's a state, Chinese state-sponsored activity. It's clear state to anybody that kind of looks into this.

• 14:51Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 14:53Speaker 03

  The, you know, one thing is regional destabilization. That's usually that usually happens when they want something from that country. So one thing happened politically in the within within the US and Mexico relationship. The Trump phenomenon, right? Trump came into office and said, we're gonna take a lot of our business out of Mexico. I'm gonna bring it back. That was one of the things that he that he said that was gonna happen and did happen. A lot of businesses took their took their plants and American business took their plants and companies out of Mexico. Instead of it affecting Mexico in a negative way, Chinese plants and Chinese companies replanted them immediately.

• 15:35Shawn Ryan?

  No shit.

• 15:36Speaker 03

  So. Something happened in that interval where somebody on this side figured out that's probably a mistake. And things started balancing out. Interesting thing to note, we currently have in Mexico a leftist president that is open chavista, is open Maduro supporter, but somehow there's an open and like very friendly relationship with the US when it comes to the president and Trump and the president down there. I think Trump is very much aware of the danger that Mexico was in with the Chinese influence and the foreign influence within the country. Another factor that doesn't get talked a lot about is that Mexico has probably the largest mineable deposit of lithium right on the border.

• 16:21Speaker 03

  China, through a Canadian company, actually won the rights to mine that a few years back and their mining rights got canceled. And I'm not, you know, gonna go into Alex Jones territory, right? I mean, the conspiracy part of it. Right where that mining discovery was made, that's where the Mormon massacre happened. So it's a key place and things happen there. It's a very strange kind of environment for all the influences and all the pushing and pulling that's happening in that area. Some of the people that I've talked to in the security field, some of the people that

• 17:04Speaker 03

  I've talked to in the security field, outside of the friendly neighbors of the US, like in Mexico, there's a lot of Cuban intelligence services, service operations going on all over the place, just like places like Venezuela. You can see a clear partnership and influence with China there, right? It's in their best interest to gain ownership or control over a place like Mexico, which is going, currently going through a... Through a lot of bad stuff, a lot of, a lot of crime, a lot of destabilization. There's whole swaths of Mexico that are controlled by cartels. The new generation cartel, I think, in a way, is a product of that outside influence. It's the only cartel that grew during the COVID epidemic shutdown.

• 17:47Speaker 03

  That tells me that there's some sort of outside influence from China there.

• 17:51Shawn Ryan?

  Are you seeing a lot of, um, are you seeing a lot of Chinese coming into Mexico and kind of setting up shop?

• 17:58Speaker 03

  The, the largest, uh, one of the largest, the, the cash seizures was, uh, done, uh, on a guy. Uh, Jen Lee Seagon, so Chinese Mexican national, uh, somewhere in the vicinity of a hundred million dollars cash found at his house. He was trafficking fentanyl legally, uh, and meth precursors into the country. Under some, some sort of like paperwork legality. So there's some shady stuff going on there.

• 18:24Shawn Ryan?

  How long's this shit been going on with China?

• 18:27Speaker 03

  As, as soon as, uh, as soon as the US got a taste for meth, I think that's probably the start of it.

• 18:31Shawn Ryan?

  When was that? 10 years ago?

• 18:33Speaker 03

  Probably a bit more further back than probably 15 years ago.

• 18:36Shawn Ryan?

  15 years?

• 18:37Speaker 03

  Yeah. And then there's this been, this, this has just been exponentially growing.

• 18:42Shawn Ryan?

  Is it, is it weird? How do I phrase this? Are you seeing more and more Chinese people as becoming like a, a common thing to see?

• 18:55Speaker 03

  One of the largest communities of Chinese, uh, uh, nationals is, are, are, are, are growing all along the border.

• 19:02Shawn Ryan?

  Wow.

• 19:02Speaker 03

  Right? So, I mean, I'm, again, this is, this is, I'm not, this is not something, uh, it's not something the realm of conspiracy. Like if you can, this is clearly happening, uh, out in the open in a lot of, in a lot of, in a lot of regards. And people can research this and see it, they see it for themselves. To deny that the largest cartel in Mexico has grew during the COVID epidemic because they clearly had a supply chain from China. It is to deny what's right in front of your face. To deny that, uh, more and more Narin co-made military grade stuff is popping up in print places in Mexico is also missing something that's in front of your face.

• 19:45Speaker 03

  And to deny that, so how many people die from fentanyl-related issues here in the US?

• 19:52Shawn Ryan?

  Tons.

• 19:54Speaker 03

  If you want to confront a milita- the US is a superior military force. How can you corrode that?

• 20:05Shawn Ryan?

  It makes perfect sense.

• 20:06Speaker 03

  Generation.

• 20:07Shawn Ryan?

  And the thing with China is they're fucking extremely effective.

• 20:10Speaker 03

  No way.

• 20:11Shawn Ryan?

  At whatever they do.

• 20:13Speaker 03

  They have a lifetime president.

• 20:14Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah, one, one, one being, they don't, they don't fucking play by rules either.

• 20:20Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 20:20Shawn Ryan?

  And, you know, China will come in and they'll open a whorehouse immediately to start gathering intelligence because people are gonna go to the fucking whorehouse, they're gonna fuck a Chinese hooker, the hooker's gonna milk them for information, the information gets to where it needs to go, it happens like that.

• 20:38Speaker 03

  It's the Cuban intelligence services that are operating all over Central America and specifically Venezuela, that's how they act, alright? That's, they're, they're, people are playing checkers with these guys that are playing chess. And they play the long game. That's, that's something I think the US doesn't get.

• 20:57Speaker 03

  Example, China has a lifetime president.

• 21:00Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 21:00Speaker 03

  Cuba has a lifetime regime with the Castro, with the Castros. They're playing a really long game against a, a, a, a country that has elections

• 21:15Speaker 03

  and politics change every, every, every, every, every four, eight years.

• 21:20Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 21:20Speaker 03

  And, and they see the, the, the clear line and divide. So, I mean, there's blood in the water and I think, I think they can smell that.

• 21:29Shawn Ryan?

  Everybody's taking advantage of it.

• 21:31Speaker 03

  Yeah, and I got, again, foreign eyes, I'm new here, I'm trying to earn my way into becoming an American, but I still have that outside perspective. People getting offended by, you know, the, the, the whole Chinese virus wording or, or China isn't the villain and the country, and people kind of coming into the defense of that, people within the NBA, wanting to speak up about China because the Chinese are the best, one of their best clients as far as buying some of the rights to, watching some of these NBA games, Disney. I mean, you can't say anything wrong.

• 22:14Speaker 03

  How surreal is it that you can't speak critically about China if you work for the NBA?

• 22:24Speaker 03

  I mean, that is outside of the, that's outside of the realm of what I thought being an American was.

• 22:30Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 22:31Speaker 03

  Right? So, I don't know. It's a weird time. But I think that's,

• 22:38Speaker 03

  they're clearly waging some sort of long-term war campaign against the US. And Mexico is being utilized as a, as a tool for that.

• 22:48Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah. How do you cope with all the shit that you've seen? We talked about some of the stuff you've seen. We've talked about, you know, the disposing of bodies and some of the gruesome stuff that you've seen the cartel do down there. We covered the fact that you've gone on 2,700 fucking kicks.

• 23:10Speaker 03

  There's no numbers. It's just a blur of years and blurs. I don't know. I don't know how many of those.

• 23:16Shawn Ryan?

  Well, you know, nine years.

• 23:17Speaker 03

  That whole experience.

• 23:21Speaker 03

  Humor, a big part of it, I think. One of the things I've always recognized with all the people that I meet that have, you know, people like you that have an experienced base,

• 23:32Speaker 03

  other people like that had, kind of went through their own thing. Certain commonalities that I see in people like that. Humor is one of them. Usually I can tell a lot about somebody if they don't have a sense of humor. You know, they take themselves too seriously. There's something, there's something amiss there.

• 23:49Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 23:51Speaker 03

  Humor is one of those big things that has helped me out. The kind of, it's a good mask.

• 23:57Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 23:58Speaker 03

  It's a good cloaking device, humor.

• 24:02Shawn Ryan?

  It helps get through the misery when you're in the middle of it, too.

• 24:06Speaker 03

  I listened to this, I had this, one of my closest friends when I, when I was working, his name was Aharamillo. Very infamous name. I've kind of made him famous. It's my way of keeping him alive.

• 24:22Speaker 03

  He was one of the older guys that I worked with. He was a mess. I mean, he was a dumpster fire inside of a dumpster fire of a person. But he was very loyal and was a very good guy. Gave me some of the biggest laughs in my life, usually unintentional, you know?

• 24:39Speaker 03

  He uh, he'd always kind of basically, you know, keep me laughing.

• 24:47Speaker 03

  He would push me into going into weird places and kind of getting out of my comfort zone and and just, just taking every day as if it's the last one.

• 24:57Speaker 03

  We went on some weird adventures, including one that included a donkey show, which we won't get into, but

• 25:04Speaker 03

  and we would always get shitfaced drunk every time we would come back from something.

• 25:12Speaker 03

  There was a, there's a word that I discovered or learned about up here in the US called PTSD.

• 25:21Speaker 03

  It's not a word that we know down there in Mexico. There's no, there's no concept of a veteran or, or or a support network for people that go through the experiences that I went through. A lot of the people that go through those experiences down there, so there's no talk about that. There's a, there's a sense of machismo. You just take it, you know, it's fine. You know, just don't go crazy. So you'd get a few days off, you know, you get, you get to leave and you would go get drunk and come back and you would get asked if you were okay and you would lie your ass off and say yes and just go through with it all. Go through the motions. I'm into history and I like reading about other warrior cultures and people that did,

• 26:05Speaker 03

  you know, things that they had to do. You know, PTSD has always been with us. It's always been, it's been, this is the, this, this, what you, we talked about, your experience, what I'm talking about. We're not talking about anything new. This is the history of the world. But I think there's something that happened culturally that separated us from how people used to handle some of these things, or how some people would talk about some of these things.

• 26:34Speaker 03

  From Spirit Quest, as they used to call them, or finding yourself, or going off on these pilgrimages, or whatever form they took, ceremony. You know, ceremony is simply performing an act with a symbology just to convince your subconscious mind of something. So from going to mass and eating a cracker that's supposed to be the body of Jesus, and drinking wine that's supposed to be the blood of Jesus, there's a symbology there, to getting handed a silver coin at the start of a leadership position, and getting told that you're going to get another one, because you go into it knowing it's going to end.

• 27:19Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 27:23Shawn Ryan?

  Thank you for listening to The Sean Ryan Show. If you haven't already, please take a minute, head over to iTunes, and leave The Sean Ryan Show a review. We read every review that comes through, and we really appreciate the support. Thank you. Let's get back to the show.

• 27:45Speaker 03

  I think some of those things are missing, and some of our kind of modern way of approaching some of these things, some of these things have been amputated from us. We're suffering from a phantom limb syndrome when it comes to some of these things, what happens after. Like, I grew up having parties at the cemetery during Dave's dead. And every day, I get a weird feeling every time I travel up here and I see empty cemeteries, with no people there. It's like a, they're forgotten, dead space. There's no relationship there. I don't know.

• 28:21Speaker 03

  I think that whole culture of suck it up, be a man, go through it, I get that.

• 28:34Shawn Ryan?

  It worked.

• 28:36Shawn Ryan?

  It fucking worked, you know, it works when you're in. It works when you're in it, you know, and it makes you effective.

• 28:42Speaker 03

  When you're off the bus.

• 28:44Shawn Ryan?

  When you're out, you're fucked.

• 28:45Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 28:46Shawn Ryan?

  And uh.

• 28:48Speaker 03

  Yeah, my mom used to say that whole, I'll quote that, I'll get that quote again.

• 28:54Speaker 03

  I went through a horrible, a few bad situations, but I think one of the first ones, uh.

• 29:01Speaker 03

  The war that I fought was at home. With an enemy that spoke the same language that I did. Every now and then we would share funerary homes with the enemy.

• 29:15Speaker 03

  The counter guys were burying, burying, being mourned over on that side of the street and we're having our services for our guys who are here. It was different in that way.

• 29:30Speaker 03

  They had a very horrible thing happen.

• 29:35Speaker 03

  Very traumatic. I lost a few people. And um, I was covered in blood, my clothing was covered in blood. My sneakers, my socks, feel in my toes. And blood has a tendency to kind of dry out and crust a little bit.

• 29:53Speaker 03

  I remember I wrote the reports that I had to write and talk to the people that I had to talk and I was let, you know, told to to go to the hotel and wash up and come back the second day. I got in the car and drove straight home. Like unconsciously, just drove to my parents' house. I drove probably three hours in the night, straight there. I showed up some, sometime in the early mornings. And my mom opened the door.

• 30:24Speaker 03

  I actually saw.

• 30:28Speaker 03

  Um, she didn't say anything. She sat me down, took my clothing off.

• 30:34Speaker 03

  Put it in the washer. And made me, made me some coffee. She didn't ask anything.

• 30:44Speaker 03

  The next morning, I passed out for a bit.

• 30:49Speaker 03

  And she asked me, like, what do you want to do? So I want to go home.

• 30:55Speaker 03

  She said, there's, there's no such thing as going back home, Ed.

• 31:01Speaker 03

  Uh, either you change on your way back to home.

• 31:06Speaker 03

  Or the home you left changes when you're, you're gone and you don't recognize it when you come back.

• 31:13Speaker 03

  So she told me, uh, going back home is, that train's left the station. There's no going back home.

• 31:21Speaker 03

  So you have to figure out what that looks like for you next.

• 31:27Speaker 03

  That was very

• 31:29Speaker 03

  mind altering.

• 31:31Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 31:32Speaker 03

  She was a, she, she lived through a lot herself, so.

• 31:36Speaker 03

  She was very wise.

• 31:37Shawn Ryan?

  Sounds like it.

• 31:38Speaker 03

  Um, she, uh,

• 31:43Speaker 03

  she, in her, in her own way, she told me to suck it up. Um, I stood, I stood up and, uh, I can remember smelling my clothes. They were like downy fresh, you know? Uh, she bagged me a lunch, got in the car.

• 32:00Speaker 03

  I saw the missing, missed phone calls on my cell phone. People were angry. I went back and faced the music. Told them, where'd you go? So I just needed, I just needed a moment.

• 32:13Speaker 03

  I got reprimanded for leaving.

• 32:15Shawn Ryan?

  Damn.

• 32:17Speaker 03

  But, you know, it, it was, uh, I realized that,

• 32:24Speaker 03

  there was no going back home. So that gave me focus on going straight. Uh, surviving, figuring out what that, uh, what that road would lead me. I was aimless.

• 32:37Shawn Ryan?

  It fucking changes you.

• 32:38Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 32:39Shawn Ryan?

  How long did it take for you to realize your mom was fucking right on the money?

• 32:45Speaker 03

  I'd say, um,

• 32:50Speaker 03

  Probably, probably a few, a few, a few days after she passed away.

• 32:55Speaker 03

  She, she, uh.

• 32:59Speaker 03

  She, she struggled for a long time with a, with a few issues.

• 33:05Speaker 03

  And, uh, before she went, she told me to leave that job. Leave that thankless job and. That's not, that's no longer the war you should fight. That's not your war anymore. Uh, she passed away and, uh. I did a lot of self-reflection. Again, I got two days off to mourn my mom.

• 33:26Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 33:29Speaker 03

  She got to meet my kid, which I think was, that was very soothing to my. Uh, mourning process and, uh.

• 33:40Speaker 03

  Uh, got everything kind of aligned after that. She passed away and, you know, there are a few things kind of shifted polit- politically down there and I had to leave. That kind of, she gave me that push at the end, I think. I remember thinking back to that moment and that kind of, I wrote it down. I've, I've shared that on. I've shared that openly a few times. It went down. I remember, and every time I smell that morning coffee, I remember that moment. Kind of brings me back to that.

• 34:11Speaker 03

  We're moment where there's no more innocence. You know? You're facing your mom and you're not. You're not what you were.

• 34:21Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah. I know that feeling. Sorry to hear that, but, uh, you know. Sounds like she was looking out for him, man.

• 34:30Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 34:31Shawn Ryan?

  You know, but, uh, and sounds like she still is.

• 34:37Shawn Ryan?

  After she passed.

• 34:39Speaker 03

  Uh, she's, she's always here.

• 34:40Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 34:43Speaker 03

  Uh, yeah, everything I do, she's, uh, she's always been like a big inspiration. It's one of those teachers that you don't recognize as a teacher until they're not there anymore.

• 34:55Speaker 03

  Uh, one of the things she used to do and push me to was volunteer work and um till we would go and feed some of the uh some of the people on the Tijuana Canal and heroin addicts. Uh, she gave me she gave me the eyes to see humanity even even at the lowest levels. Um, I remember she had one of the first self-defense classes I gave was through a church group that would work with some of the prostitutes in Tijuana. And that was my mom pushing me to do that. Uh, you know, all this cool shit. You think you're think you're some expert and stuff like that. Go teach them. They need it.

• 35:39Speaker 03

  She gave me eyes. Um, instead of dehumanizing people, I think that's one of probably one of the biggest things she gave me was the human factor. So I can

• 35:50Speaker 03

  I can relate to people and talk to people uh despite that they were trying to kill me only a few moments later.

• 35:57Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 35:58Speaker 03

  I could sit them down, give them a phone, have them phone, maybe a family member to tell them that are okay. Kill them a cigarette. Uh, give them a swig of tequila and talk to people. Um, that's a that's a powerful armor that she gave me with that. And it's something that I've been using to try and process that whole that whole life that I left behind. Again, the world has ended for me a few times over.

• 36:25Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 36:26Speaker 03

  So, um, part of my process to kind of there is no getting better. There is no healing. There's there's learning how to live with things and there's learning how to how to find a new normal. Um, how to find a new center or a new base. That's what I think I'm kind of looking towards.

• 36:47Shawn Ryan?

  No matter where you're watching Sean Ryan's show from, if you get anything out of this, please like, comment, subscribe, and most importantly, share this everywhere you possibly can. And if you're feeling extra generous, please leave us a review on Apple and Spotify podcasts.