Life of Brian
1999
What do three nines and one make? Hopefully most of you see where I'm going with this. Nineteen ninety-nine was a year of firsts. But don't be fooled. Every year is a year of firsts really. I was twenty-four years old. My cousin Mike had worked for an armored car company for many years. I would find out through him that the company he worked for was hiring. I applied and got hired. The machine shop I worked for had become very boring to me. I wanted to do something else. Sitting at a lapping machine, making diamond blades, and stacking arbors had lost its newness and was no longer intriguing. I had interests in going into law enforcement and I had applied once already. The first attempt I was denied. Didn't even make it past the background packet history check. It was highly suggested that you be one hundred percent honest about your background history. So, I figured I better put down that I took a roll of masking tape from iti at some point. The Sheriff's department had a field day with this and tried to make it sound as if I would not hesitate to steal weapons from the department should they hire me on. You know, once you steal an item like tape, surely you want to graduate up to stealing guns from the Sheriff's dept.! I would not make it past that history packet, but it would not deter me. Later in 99, I would apply again, this time I'd make it and get hired by VCSO. In the meantime, I worked nights at Armored Transport.
Armored Transport was a company based out of Ventura. Our office had eight or nine day routes and two night routes. The night routes were direct from our office in Ventura, to the main bank vaults in Los Angeles. Stopping lastly at the Armored branch in downtown L.A. Upon graduating high school, I was a mere 135 pounds. In 99, I may have expanded my weight to 140 lbs. I was definitely still a skinny lad. Not only was I skinny, but I was also very white in complexion. Add that to the fact that I was born and raised in Ventura County. So, when it came time to travel to LA in an armored truck with lots of money on board, you might imagine why I was a tad nervous about doing so. My partner was a pretty beefy guy who was from Hawaii. He looked fairly mean on the outside, but he was actually a really nice guy. Having him as a partner made my first couple of weeks easier. The main banks were the easy part. They had huge vaults that would accommodate three or four armored trucks at a time. One of us would have to get out of the truck to notify the gate guard to open up the vehicle traps. Once you notified him or her what company you worked for, they opened up the massive doors while you stood outside holding a shotgun watching the door as the truck drove in. Working just like a man trap for humans, the truck would then come to a second vault door that would not open until the first door was shut. All of this was monitored by cameras. Once you got past the second door, you drove into a vault with a dock where three or four trucks would back up and offload all deposits going to that particular bank. The bank employees were behind very thick bullet proof glass and metal walls. If by chance someone were able to get past the man trap doors with a weapon. The bank employees would have been safe and sound. The truck team members would have been screwed. I often wondered about another driver from one of the many companies inside the vaults, going nuts and just opening fire. It would not have been a good thing but hopefully there would have been enough of us sane employees who were all armed, that would have been able to stop such a scenario fairly quickly. Not only did we have our side arms, but we also carried shotguns as well. Sometimes we'd even carry a mini fourteen with us that had a twenty-round mag. My weapon of choice as far as my sidearm was a Colt .45. It was a single action handgun in which I carried with a round in the chamber and the hammer back with the safety on. While it was in my holster of my gun belt, the thumb strap would rest between the hammer and the firing pin. I was never worried about it firing while in my holster. I practiced with it at the range in this fashion and was confident carrying it this way. With one round in the chamber, I could carry a total of seven rounds. Seven rounds of hydra-shock hollow points would have been more than enough to stop a simple human being, no matter how big he or she may have been. Hydra-shock rounds were hollow points with a solid rod in the center of the hollow point. This was designed to mushroom out after hitting a target, with the solid rod then pulling the bullet even further through the body. I cannot imagine the damage they would cause and knew that I'd never want to be shot by one. We also wore bullet proof vests. Mine was a level three vest. We were instructed to wear a vest capable of stopping a round from the gun we personally carried. This way, if someone took your gun away from you, your vest would be able to protect you against your own rounds. The Armored Transport branch in downtown LA was not in a good area. The building was wedged between an apartment complex. A dark alley ran behind the building which was the only thing separating the AT building from the apartments. Any time the vault doors were raised to let your truck inside, whoever wasn't driving had to guard the door with a shotgun. I remember standing in that dark alley guarding the door and looking up into the apartment windows. You could see people with their televisions on, on multiple floors of the complex. I was sure that I would be shot there at some point. My partner, Carl, whom I told you about earlier, loved to stop at this little fast food joint a couple of blocks away from the ATLA branch. This was against company policy, but he had to stop and get a soda for the hour and a half drive back to
Ventura. If he was driving, he'd tell me to hop up front and he'd get out and buy us both a soda. One particular night, I told him I'd get out and buy him a soda. To put this in perspective, again, I was a scared skinny white boy from Ojai. I'd seen a little bit of roughness in Stockton, but this was downtown LA! Pico and Eleventh street! I ordered the sodas and was waiting for them to be filled and this homeless black man walks up and asks me for money. I immediately put my hand on my gun in my holster and asked him to back away from me! He obliged, I got the sodas, and immediately returned to the relative safety of the armored truck. Obviously, this was a tad bit of an overreaction on my part, but I wasn't taking any chances. I value breathing the air and there are crazy people out there that will kill you for the cost of a pack of cigarettes! We probably only had four or five million dollars in the truck! Carl and I laughed it off over the next few shifts and I became more relaxed. Heck, I probably had a better chance of dying in a car crash driving down to the banks then actually being shot in a robbery attempt. Especially seeing as how neither one of us wore seatbelts while traveling to and from LA. I would spend most trips sitting on top of the AC box in the cab of the truck so I could talk to Carl on the way down. The town trucks only had two seats, none of us wore seatbelts. It just didn't make sense for this occupation.
Late in the year, I'd apply again to the Sheriff's. This time they decided to hire me. The process for getting hired isn't an easy one by any means. There's a lengthy written exam. Then the extensive background packet. Thrown in there somewhere is a physical agility test. This was actually quite fun. There are multiple stations you can either pass or fail. There was the body drag, the endurance run, the wall climb, the fence climb, a push up test and sit up test. I was in very good shape. The hardest task for me was the body drag. The dummy they used weighed 165 pounds. That outweighed me by twenty-five pounds! I actually had to dig deep and pull up some anger to drag that stupid thing the required length in the required time. But I did it. Prior to the start of the pre-academy, I'd drive down to Camarillo and meet other cadets who'd be in my class, class 99-2. A few of my fellow cadets were cadets from previous academies who'd been injured and were promised a return into the next academy. The good thing about this was that they knew a lot! They knew how to march, what verbiage to use, and were able to tell us what early academy life would be like. Even before going into the pre-academy, we were able to march very efficiently. In fact, one of our tac officers in the pre-academy was so impressed with our ability to march as a class, he actually complimented us! This was not normal. As a cadet in one of the last high stress academies in the state, you were lower than dirt. You couldn't do anything correctly and we were yelled at constantly! Not from afar either. More often than not, the yelling occurred millimeters away from your face. If you couldn't handle someone else's spit hitting you in the face, you wouldn't make it a day in the academy. As a class we were able to march in unison. We'd do counter columns and right and left flanks with ease, all in unison. The head tac officer at the end of the weeklong pre-academy class told us not to quit, that we were a very good class, and that we were marching beyond what he would have taught us in the pre-academy. It was a good feeling knowing this. However, the pre-academy ended up being kindergarten compared to the full-time academy! One of the last days of the pre-academy, all of us, one at a time, were called down to staff's office to practice being class corporal. Everything had a procedure mind you. Even going to the bathroom. Well, every one of my classmates had been called to practice this but I had not. I whispered to the cadet next to me, her name was Martina. She was one of the ones who'd been injured and was returning. I told her they had not picked me, and was asking her what I should do. If anything, I didn't want to be the only one not chosen and even worse, tried to hide it from them or made it seem as though I was hiding it. She suggested I walk down the hall and knock on the staff door and explain that staff had neglected me! I was feeling very confident at this point in time and so, I did just that. I walked down, knocked three times, moved away from the center of the door, and waited. A voice from behind the door told me to come in. I entered staff's office, centered myself on their desk, and said this:
"Sir, all of my fellow cadets have been called down to this office to practice the position of being class corporal. I have yet to be called and so I feel as though I've been neglected, Sir".
For maybe a nanosecond they all paused and looked at me with a blank stare. After that, I paid a very dear price for my over confidence. The main tac officer yelled from across his desk. "TURNER!", "DROP!" This meant to get into the push- up position. I dropped like a sack of potatoes and assumed the position. Now all three tac officers were standing over me. They told me to start counting out my push-ups and that I'd better yell them out so loudly that my fellow classmates could hear me down the hall. If they couldn't hear me, I'd just continue until they could. I could do around fifty push-ups without stopping. At around forty-three I was instructed to stand up. I was told that tomorrow I would be class corporal for the entire day! This was not standard procedure. No one had to be class corporal for all eight hours! They told me that I better have my shit together and all my reports that I'd give to them in the morning better be neater than anything they'd ever seen! As I left the office and walked back down to my class, I sat back down next to Martina and told her what I had done, and what they had told me. She couldn't believe I actually told them I felt neglected. She said she was only joking when she suggested I say that. Oh well, it was too late now. The next day came around and I was sweating bullets. I turned in our class roster, was told by staff to get the class ready for morning inspection. I did so without any errors or mess ups. As I stood at the front of the class, I marched us all into the inspection classroom. This is when a miracle happened. I guess I either impressed them enough to relieve me, or they felt I had learned my lesson because immediately after forming everyone up for inspection they relieved me of my class corporal duty and sent me back into formation. Not before asking me if I still felt neglected however! They relieved me with one of the female cadets who stood in the front row. This meant I stuck out pretty well due to the height difference of the females in the front row. The tac officers began asking the girl next to me what she had done to prepare herself for this academy. This kind of stumped her and she came up with, "Sir, I've been preparing both mentally and physically for this academy, Sir". What the tac officer said next had me laughing to myself quietly. I literally had to bite my tongue as hard as I could to keep myself from laughing out loud. He said, "What have you been doing mentally to prepare yourself?" "Have you been watching Rambo movies sitting on your couch eating bon bons!" "Have you been standing in front of a mirror yelling at yourself?" I almost lost it. The poor cadet being grilled did not know how to respond and I think she ended up being class corporal for a bit following that inspection.
Being in the academy was the most fulfilling team building environment I've ever worked in up to this day. We all had each other's backs. We would do whatever we could to help one another. The full-time academy would begin the following week after the pre-academy ended. These were all new tac officers and from day one, they looked like they wanted to kill you. It was very apparent that we were not in Kansas anymore! I lasted exactly seven days in the full-time academy before I resigned on my own. I had been convinced that I shouldn't be there, and that I was going to screw up and it was best if I just got out then, before I made a huge mistake! Funny thing. When I went into staff office to turn in my stuff, the tac officers were nice as pie. You could tell they enjoyed what they were doing, and they had succeeded messing with my mind. I've heard of grown men breaking down to tears in that academy. I was never to that point, but they did convince me that I didn't belong there. And in all actuality, I'm glad I did quit. That profession is not one I would desire pursuing the way this world is today. I was able to get hired back at Armored Transport. I would start back working day shifts. This was absolutely my favorite job of all time. Day shifts on the trucks were so much fun. I got along very well with my partner, and we were both very conscious of carrying out our duties safely. I would second guess myself for years after quitting the Sheriff's. But in the end, quitting was absolutely the right thing to do.
Homes in 1999 ranged in price around $163,000.00 nationwide. New cars cost around $16,500.00. Minimum wage was at $5.15 per hour. A proposal by the fair minimum wage act would increase the minimum wage to $5.65.
Movies included: Election, Eyes Wide Shut, Stigmata and Entrapment. None of which I saw. T.V. shows of the time included The Sopranos, Law & Order, The West Wing, and the animated series Family Guy. Top songs included Cher's "Believe".
Nineteen ninety-nine brought about another move for Sarah and me. We moved back up to Ojai into single story apartments off of Grand Ave. My parents moved up to PMC. I remember visiting them up there and smelling all of the pine trees. They'd get snow every winter up there as well. I was very happy with my day job. We were making ends meet. I think Sarah was still working for our bank. I was also able to rejoin the Search and Rescue Upper Ojai team. Failing the academy was a bit of a bummer, but I would soon see that life had plenty to offer without it. I'd go on some hum dinger call outs with SAR, one including the downing of the Alaska Airlines that crashed into the ocean between Hueneme and the islands. Stay tuned.
"Despite a half century of unrelenting reform, and in part because of it, the federal government is in danger of becoming a monument to managerial mediocrity."
-Paul Light
February issue of Government Executive
