How Can I Make a Difference as a First Responder?

Bart Leger (00:00.846)
Well, Mike, it's great to have you with us today. How are you doing?

Mike Baldwin (00:04.515)
I'm doing great Bart and it's an honor for me to be with you and to speak with you and talk to your guests and I'm looking forward to it.

Bart Leger (00:14.958)
We were on a zoom call a few days ago and I enjoyed our times. Matter of fact, it was a, I said, let's hop on a short zoom call and what it ended up being 30, 40 minutes. I think we were, we were together.

Mike Baldwin (00:28.803)
Yeah, you're easy to talk to and I think we had, you know, a foundation in common and we were able to talk about some things and then the time kind of flies.

Bart Leger (00:40.526)
I know it is a time flies when you're having fun. Or as I told my wife the other day, uh, time's fun when you're having flies, if you're a frog. Um, so before we dive into the specifics, maybe of your career, um, maybe you could share a little bit about your interest outside of work. What do you enjoy doing in your free time? We'll get into, we'll get into your career in just a little while.

Mike Baldwin (00:47.427)
Ha ha.

Mike Baldwin (01:01.379)
Okay, well outside of work I do like physical fitness. I like working out a little bit. It makes me feel good like I'm doing something that I should do. Sometimes that involves bike riding. We have some nice trails where we live and so when the weather cooperates I enjoy riding bike. Another thing I like to do is

work on little projects, sometimes woodworking type deals, nothing fancy. I'm not an artist per se, but I have some tools that I receive for birthdays and Christmas gifts and I like to practice with them.

Bart Leger (01:46.445)
Alright, that's your fun time. Just hobby like, okay, cool. I've done woodworking in the past. Mostly little things, nothing really, really big, just little project, kind of the same thing using a scroll saw and a bandsaw. Just having fun.

Mike Baldwin (01:49.155)
Sure.

Mike Baldwin (02:04.483)
Yeah, I admire guys that are skilled with their tools and actually know how to use them and make beautiful pieces of furniture and stuff like that and have the patience for it. Sometimes my projects get thrown in the trash. Every once in a while, my wife will go, oh, that's kind of neat. I can use that. So we'll see.

Bart Leger (02:22.19)
Okay, yeah, I've had a few things, matter of fact, a few things still hanging around the house that I built a little while back. Our son -in -law is a carpenter, but he also does some fancy things too. He turns wood and he's made bowls and lamp stands. Pretty cool.

Mike Baldwin (02:40.067)
Now that is good, that's a different level.

Bart Leger (02:42.19)
I know, right? A little above me. Now you've had a distinguished career in law enforcement. You can tell us what initially sparked your interest in it. How'd you get started?

Mike Baldwin (02:54.243)
Well, ironically, I had no desire to be a police officer. Out of college, I wanted to be a high school teacher and a basketball coach. And that's what I did do. I taught high school at a Christian school in Arizona. I coached high school basketball thoroughly, enjoyed that. And one of the kids that was on my team when he graduated,

He called me up one day and said, hey coach, I'm testing for Phoenix PD. And I'm like, really? That's great. And when are you going to do that? And he goes, oh, this Saturday we have the test. And he told me what it was, written test, if you pass that, you do a physical fitness test. If you pass that, you go on to some other things.

And he goes, you should, you should test. He goes, you'd be a great cop. And I'm like, you kidding me? I don't think my wife would go for that, you know? And my wife got home and I told her about this conversation and she's like, oh yeah, you'd be a really good cop. And...

Some things were happening at the school. They were getting, you know, new management going in a different direction. And so I saw it as maybe an opportunity, the Lord's will to try something different. And that's how I got into police work.

Bart Leger (04:18.574)
Okay, well that's neat. Now what department were you with?

Mike Baldwin (04:23.075)
I initially got hired by the Chandler Police Department, which is on the east side, southeast side of Phoenix, Maricopa County, huge, huge County. And then I lateraled from there, cause I lived actually on the west side of Phoenix and I lateraled to an agency surprise police department on the west side of Phoenix, closer to home. And I spent 21 years with them.

Bart Leger (04:47.63)
Okay. Yeah. I spent a little bit of time there. Okay. I spent a little bit of time there. I had a little bit of time spent with some of the Maricopa County deputies back during hurricane after Hurricane Katrina here in the New Orleans area on the other side of the state. Just a few weeks after we had Hurricane Rita and we were devastated and the Maricopa County SWAT, a lot of the guys were on the SWAT team and some of the other guys came over.

two like Charles and we spent a few weeks working together and we went through, had some fun with those guys, but it was a pretty tough time. It was some good guys.

Mike Baldwin (05:30.179)
Yeah, so I've seen videos and heard stories of the aftermath of those hurricanes and it's kind of all hands on deck. You need a lot of people and there's a lot of stuff going on. And so it's good that other agencies from different parts of the country come in to help.

Bart Leger (05:48.078)
Well, we really appreciate it. We had a number of departments that came and supported us. We had chaplains from other areas that came as well. We had some mental health professionals who came. So it was definitely a good support that we had. So, yeah, yeah. So in your 20 plus years, you've had a diverse set of roles, obviously. What was the, which role was maybe the most challenging for you and why?

Mike Baldwin (06:07.267)
That's good to hear.

Mike Baldwin (06:19.107)
Two roles. One was being a field training officer. That's challenging just because you're training a new officer how to be a cop and keeping him or her safe. One thing that I found easy with that is I was a teacher by nature and so I like to train. And so some field training officers are strict and over the top and you know,

trying to add to the stresses of the job. The job has enough stresses as it is. So my job as a teacher, a coach, a training officer is to get you to succeed. Some people got it a lot quicker than others and some people, you know, you're like, how do I get through to this guy to teach him, you know, about officer safety and things that I know. But I also learned,

Vicarious responsibility. I am responsible for this person now because they'll look back at their training officer and who trained this guy. And your reputation, a lot of times in a police department is based off of who trained you. I can say that having been there 20 years, there are certain guys that were slugs as officers, didn't do a very good job. And I could tell their training officer was the same way.

And then there were some other guys who were go -getters and like pushing the envelope a little bit, like hunting the wolf, so to speak. And I could tell who their trainers were. And so I learned a lot about reputation. I found the most challenges for me personally was in investigations.

Bart Leger (07:55.822)
Right.

Mm -hmm.

Mike Baldwin (08:07.747)
I love the competition of sports. I love the competition of now being a police officer going up against the bad guy. And sometimes, say an example, like a drug case, somebody who's selling drugs. They might win round one, two, three, four, but we're playing this game for 20 years, so to speak. And I'm going to win in the end. That was my attitude. And so I was relentless in that regard. And.

carved out a reputation in investigations and on the street people knew me and I think they respected the fact that I want to give up.

Bart Leger (08:49.966)
Mm -hmm. Now, does y 'all carry a pretty good caseload?

Mike Baldwin (08:55.075)
We did. Um, and again, some guys carry this huge, massive caseload and I almost use it as a prop and a crutch. You know, the boss would come in and they were talking about, Oh, I got all these cases. And then how come Baldwin didn't have this huge caseload? Well, cause I cleared my cases. Um, you know, I tried to get rid of them to get a new case and, um,

So I didn't keep cases open indefinitely. I worked on them the best I could, pushed all the leads that I could, and then I'd close it down and move on to another one. And so yeah, it ranged. And depending on who the supervisor were, whether or not they gave you a, let you, allowed you to have a huge caseload or they'd kind of whittle that down. So.

Bart Leger (09:47.054)
Right. Now, what was the, what was the best case, the best call you can remember? Maybe one where you had the best outcome and maybe you believe you made the most difference. Can you think of one?

Mike Baldwin (10:01.987)
There's several calls that come to mind. Probably the best call per se was I was still on patrol and I was toward the end of my shift and I was getting ready to go home for the night. I was working kind of the power shift, I guess. We're gonna go home like at two in the morning and it was quiet. There was nothing going on. Then all of a sudden,

the hot tone kicked out and for the listeners, you know, the hot tone is 911 traffic, something bad's happening. A vehicle overturned, a house fire is shooting something to that level. And this happened to be a shooting that just occurred and the bad guy shot a homeowner and we're fleeing in a vehicle, unknown direction.

And so I knew there was a couple of exits out of the city and I happened to choose one. One thing that does cripple people is the lack of making a decision. So I made a decision, you know, I'm going to go this route or this route or I'm going to stay where I'm at. So I went one direction and it just so happened. Within a few minutes, I saw the suspect vehicle blow a red light.

at the edge of our city limits and I tell dispatch, hey, I'm in pursuit of the bad guys. And I didn't know this model at the time, but I worked for Lieutenant Colonel Dave Grossman and he has this model of sheep, sheep dogs and wolves. And the wolves are the bad guys. The sheep are just...

average ordinary people. They got their head down, their heads in the cell phone, you know, they don't believe that evil can happen in this world. And then there's the sheepdogs. And I was a sheepdog and now I was in hunt of the wolf, so to speak. And so I notified radio with the direction of travel, the speed. I had to catch up to the vehicle. And then at one point I'm like, I was a little scared because if I told the sergeant,

Mike Baldwin (12:26.051)
the speed over the radio, I thought he might terminate the pursuit. And so I slowed down to, I could say it speeds at 95 miles an hour, because we were above a hundred. And, but this was a perfect storm. This was, I later learned that it was a stolen vehicle operated by gang members who just shot somebody. And there was, it was late at night, very little traffic. This was the perfect storm. And so he allowed the pursuit to continue.

He did tell me later that he let it continue because he heard calmness in my voice as I was pursuing. And I believe that was my guardian angels because we were driving through the streets of Phoenix, often through construction zones, speeds, like I said, over a hundred miles an hour at times, this vehicle blacked out, turned its headlights off, ran red lights, and ultimately,

crashed as they were trying to make a hard turn to get back onto the freeway they crashed into a concrete embankment and I was with by myself most of the time with this vehicle and as they crashed I could start to see other Patrol lights coming up my direction so people were starting to catch up But I knew that this was going to be a shootout. I knew that this was going to be my moment of truth and I exited my vehicle and

I don't remember pulling my gun, but my gun was on target. I was issuing strong verbal commands and we took the suspects, there was five of them in the vehicle, took them all into custody. No shots were fired. They had three loaded handguns in the vehicle. They had drugs. So that was kind of the most exciting call. And because nowadays a lot of agencies don't pursue anymore.

just because of the danger.

Bart Leger (14:24.814)
Right.

Bart Leger (14:28.43)
Now, that was the bet. You had obviously a good outcome on that one. What was the worst call or maybe the worst case? I know you've worked violent crimes. What was maybe the worst case you can remember? Either emotionally or just most difficult case for you.

Mike Baldwin (14:39.971)
Yep.

Mike Baldwin (14:45.123)
Um...

Mike Baldwin (14:49.379)
Yeah, so that comes pretty easy to me. There's some that I forgot. They were so heinous and stuff, but this was totally different because I was called one day as a detective. My sergeant sent me down to Phoenix Children's Hospital. He said, hey, there's a kid down there that's injured and the story's not adding up as to how the child's injury and so forth.

So I got to the hospital and made my way up to the sixth floor and I could tell this was different than several calls that I had been on the doctors, the nurses, the social workers. They were all happy to see me on the detectives here. And then they tell me about this little two year old boy and his name was Adam. And I refer to him as baby Adam. And they said,

He has blunt force trauma on the back of his head and the base of a skull and he's not going to survive. And the story that the stepmom is telling us just isn't adding up. You know, she's just saying that the baby's had a seizure and so she called 911. And so I took that information and I walked into the room by myself and I am getting a little emotional just thinking about it.

Mike Baldwin (16:18.787)
where Baby Adam was and he was hooked up to all these machines. And there's one thing about dealing with children versus adults. There's a lot of bad things that happen to adults, but sometimes, you know, they're not innocent. A lot of times they are, but sometimes they're not. They've...

been selling drugs, they were in a drive -by shooting, they were part of a gang, a domestic violence situation, but children are innocent. And the two -year -old boy hooked up to all these machines knowing that he is going to die. And probably the person who hurt him is a family member. And so I interviewed.

stepmom and dad and I quickly zeroed in on stepmom and I interviewed her for the next hour and a half and she lied and you know hey I don't know what happened the baby had a seizure I called 911 you guys flew him to the hospital and I kept pressing and this is the difference

between me and some of my fellow detectives. Some detectives would interview her for five minutes and she denied it, denied it. There's no proof. There's no video camera. There's nothing. Well, when I took my oath, you know, I talked about justice for all. And so I took that oath seriously and kids are resilient.

They fall down all the time, they get hurt all the time. But the doctor's telling me, no, this is blunt force trauma at the base of the skull. And so I continue to interview her and she finally breaks. And she says that the baby was crying and refusing to eat, kept crying, she was getting frustrated. And so...

Mike Baldwin (18:24.259)
She picked the baby up and she initially said, you know, she kind of shook the baby to get his attention. And I said, no, you know, that's not true. What did you do? And to cause this injury. And so she ultimately says that she picked the baby up, raised the baby above her head and shoulders and threw him to the ground.

And I said, what happened next? And she's like, he kept crying still. And so I picked him up again and threw him down again. And this time he stopped crying. And I'm like, unbelievable. You know, I knew something like that happened, but now I had to get her to say it, get her to admit it, which I did. Ultimately she wrote it out on a piece of paper, a confession as well. And.

you know, I'm able to get justice for baby Adam because she went to prison. But. What kind of tore me up about this case more than others? You know, I was driving home from the hospital and it was late at night. My wife called me and I know we're in Arizona. It hardly rains and she goes, how's it going? And I'm like.

Oh, it's going okay. You know, it's kind of raining here on the freeway as I'm heading back to the city. She goes, it's raining where you're at. And I realized it was actually tears, you know, coming down my face because the person that this baby was supposed to trust, the person that was supposed to care for this baby is the one that actually hurt him. And so that was a tough case and a tough story. And.

Um, when I got back to the police department the next day, you know, after doing a search warrant all night, nobody talked to me. Nobody asked if I'm okay. Um, because, you know, it wasn't a glamorous case. It wasn't going to get media attention. Um, it's like almost nobody really cared about this little boy and, uh, I did. And I tried to make a difference for him. And what's kind of neat is a couple of weeks later.

Mike Baldwin (20:41.571)
I got a letter from the donor association and they talked about all the organs that baby Adam donated from his body to other people to give them life and that part is kind of a cool story that he was able in his death actually to help save other people.

Bart Leger (20:58.222)
Hmm.

Bart Leger (21:02.126)
How did that make you feel when you got that letter?

Mike Baldwin (21:04.323)
Oh, it was awesome. It was awesome because again, I felt like I was kind of all alone on this case. Nobody cared. It was closed. You know, you did your interview. The lady ultimately went to prison. The family stopped calling. And so it kind of put a bow on it and kind of wrap this up because one thing that first responders EMS.

Doctors, whomever sometimes ask, you know, am I making a difference? And I think I made a difference in, you know, for baby Adam, getting him justice. Even though he never knew me, I didn't know him. But I think it's taking those cases seriously is very important.

Bart Leger (22:02.094)
I know I still have a very close friend who spent what most people say way longer than he should have in sex crimes and violent crimes, but it was quite a few years. And every time I would go into his office, he had pictures up on his wall. They're pictures of children. And I remember the first time, and his name is Mike, by the way,

Mike Baldwin (22:31.555)
Hmm.

Bart Leger (22:31.886)
And I said, Mike, what's with all those pictures? And he'd look and tears would come down his eye. And he said, you know, this one here. He said, this was a kid that he's now a teenager. He's doing well. He's in school. You point to another one. And he was telling all the stories of these kids' lives that he made a difference in because of the job that he was doing.

He said, if I didn't do this job, he said, who knows where this kid would be. And that was his way of, if you will, processing all of the horrible stuff that he had to experience. And he would look at those. He said, I look at those pictures every day. And he said, that's what keeps me going.

Mike Baldwin (23:00.387)
That's awesome.

Mike Baldwin (23:19.843)
Yeah, it's motivation, knowing that you're doing the right thing for the right reason. And Colonel Grossman talks about the sacrifice that law enforcement makes. And it's not always to sacrifice your life, but to live a life of sacrifice.

Bart Leger (23:36.174)
Right. Now, how do you get through things like that? 20 plus year career, you've seen a lot, probably forgotten more than many people will see in an entire life. How do you get through that? How do you process all that stuff and keep going? How do you keep your sanity?

Mike Baldwin (23:59.939)
Bye.

I believe that my faith, my trust in God, my ability to have something outside of work and outlet, you know, a church family, I think that helps. I think, you know, staying busy, exercising, doing things, not medicating with alcohol.

not having my entire circle of friends being police officers where we continually talk about the same stories. I have other people that I talk to and see that, oh, they have a good life and not everybody, you know, is messed up because you start to get jaded in this profession. All you see and all you interview and all you talk to are typically, you know, the bad guy and.

bad people and you start to think that everybody is that way. And there's so many good people in this world. And a lot of people say, I couldn't do the job that you do. And they're right. They probably can't. They don't have the temperament for it. It's not for everybody. But when I decided to switch from being a teacher and a coach to being a police officer, I didn't want to just be average. I'm a competitor. I wanted to be the best. And, um,

As a Christian, I believe that I need to give my best. I need to give 100 % every single day, just because it's the right thing to do.

Bart Leger (25:43.662)
Now, could you maybe share a couple of key strategies or maybe some mindset shifts that can help our listeners deal with the struggles of their job, no matter what that is? Everyone, all the different disciplines have different struggles that they deal with. What are some things they can do or put into practice or maybe a simple mindset shift that could help them deal with it?

Mike Baldwin (26:09.059)
I don't know if I'm gonna answer this question the right way, exactly what you're looking for, but I had to kind of change my way of thinking, dealing with bad guys. Initially, when I started my career, I was very black and white. I was very letter of the law.

If you did something wrong, I'm the police officer, I'm right, and I'm gonna take you to jail and so forth. And you just kept dealing with the same people over and over. Why do these people continue to do this? And we talk about people in society nowadays that have been arrested 10 times, 15 times, 20 times. Why is that? There are some people that are just bad people.

Bart Leger (26:59.118)
Yeah, I remember having one time in the back seat, I was taking a young lady to jail and she said, oh, you probably know my grandma and my mom. I said, okay. She said, oh yeah, yeah, they've been arrested a bunch of times. And it was like, just like any other normal conversation she was having.

Mike Baldwin (27:19.555)
Yeah, and so getting back to my thinking, I had to be empathetic to a degree and actually be thankful that I wasn't the one on the other side of the line, you know, that I wasn't a drug user, that I didn't live in an abusive house, that I wasn't...

financially so poor I couldn't make ends meet and I had to, you know, commit petty thefts and crimes just to survive. And so I began to get more empathetic toward the people that I dealt with because I was thankful for the home that I grew up in, maybe versus the home that they grew up in, because this is all they knew. Guys who are gang members.

A lot of times their dad was a gang member, their uncle's a gang member. It's just expected of them to get jumped in as a gang, you know, when they're 12, 13 years old and what chance do they have? That's their life. I wasn't raised that way. I never saw drugs until I became a police officer. And then I became a drug hound. You know, I thoroughly enjoyed the competition and chasing and, um,

I am thankful for the home that I was raised in because my mom was just talking to me the other day. I called her for her birthday and my dad's in heaven and she was talking about just going through family pictures and she's like, oh yeah, I found your adoption paperwork. And...

Mike Baldwin (29:13.379)
My dad, my name wasn't always Baldwin. And I could have grown up in a different home and my circumstances could have been totally different, but I was adopted by Richard Baldwin. He gave me his name and loved me, loved my mom, taught me how to be a good man.

And ultimately, you know, I become a police officer. I carry his name and it wasn't something that I was born with, something that I was born with. It was something that I was given. And so I think that name and that reputation is very important.

Bart Leger (30:03.374)
So that change of perspective, that whole change of attitude maybe allowed you to be a little more empathetic toward others. I had a partner one time that said, he said, you know, he said, sometimes there's not a lot that separates us from that person. And he was referring to someone that got themselves in trouble. And he said, you know, he said, just something could happen. And...

He said, there but by the grace of God, go you and me. Just a little shift in saying it could put us in a, could reverse our roles. And so I think if we always remember that, that...

Mike Baldwin (30:37.091)
No, absolutely. I believe that.

Bart Leger (30:47.15)
Just, it could change our attitude, I guess, if you will.

Mike Baldwin (30:51.395)
Yeah, and so I think being a little bit more patient with people, you still have a job to do and you still have the law to uphold and I'm gonna do my job to the best of my ability. If you committed a crime, I'm gonna try to get you to confess. I'm gonna try to put a case together of evidence against you and get you convicted, that's the deal. But...

I'd also like to see you change and not do what you're doing anymore because not everybody goes to prison. Most people do not go to prison on their first criminal offense. It takes multiple criminal offenses before somebody finally gets sentenced to prison. So a night in jail, a week in jail, hopefully that's enough for most people. And sometimes it is. And then other people, they're tough learners. And so ultimately they have to go to prison.

Bart Leger (31:21.422)
Mm -hmm.

Bart Leger (31:41.71)
Right, right. Now, I may put you on the spot, but from your experience, how do you believe our listeners can make the most difference in their career? Just how can they begin? Maybe they feel like they're on that merry -go -round. Maybe they're feeling like, am I really making a difference? I mean, it's just the same old story every day. What are some things that you think that maybe might...

make that shift that they can feel like they're making a difference.

Mike Baldwin (32:13.283)
Yeah, that is a legitimate question. And I had that question a few times in my life until I answered it for myself and said, yes, I am making a difference. I'm not going to save everybody, but I'm going to. I'm there for people a lot of times on their worst day. You know, somebody broke into their house, their child was in an auto accident.

Um, you know, can you think of somebody, an ER doctor or something like that? That's the family's, you know, worst day. And there's somebody who's a trained professional. So I'm here for such a time as this. And so while I'm here, I'm going to do the best that I can for this victim, for this family. And so I think it comes back to, um, what you value. Are you there just to collect a check or are you there to.

do the best you can. And so having a purpose, having a cause, knowing what that is, what is it that gets you out of bed in the morning, it causes you to drive on. And part of that for me was my work ethic. I value that reputation that I talked about, my last name. I wanted other people to value it too, but I also value strong work ethic and outworking the competition.

I didn't want to be mediocre. I wanted to be the best officer, the best detective. And if I were a teacher and a basketball coach, I'd want to be the best at that. In my current role, working with Lieutenant Colonel Dave Grossman, I want to be the best at what I do to please my supervisor, my boss. I think that's a worthy goal. I'm not here just to collect a paycheck.

Bart Leger (34:06.318)
So, if I hear what you're saying, first of all, find your why. Why are you doing it? What got you into this? So, figure out your why. And then maybe if you haven't already done so, or maybe you've let it slip a little bit, just re -thinking and getting back toward that strong work ethic.

Mike Baldwin (34:11.139)
Absolutely.

Mike Baldwin (34:29.155)
Well, there's very few professions that actually take an oath in, um, to do their job. And I took an oath. And if you truly get back to what that is, and it's a promise, it's a vow that, you know, I'm going to uphold the constitution in the United States. I'm going to work for my victims the best that I can, the city where I'm at. Um, also for my own, um,

moral compass, I'm going to do the best that I can. I think that's pretty important. I mean, you think of the oaths that I took, one was to my wife when I got married. I took that very seriously. But if you make a mistake and you kind of fall off the horse, so to speak, look in the mirror and fix it.

Don't just keep going down that path, oh, I screwed up. I, you know, I, not living up to my oath, change today and say, hey, you know, I'm going to recommit to my profession, to my job, to doing the right thing for the right reasons. And I think that's the way to go.

Bart Leger (35:29.006)
Mm -hmm.

Bart Leger (35:40.686)
Yeah. So don't give up. Yeah. Don't give up. I remember in our episode about a burnout, and I remember I was about 15 years into my career where I literally dealt with burnout. And one of the things that got me back on track was I decided I'm going to decide to be the best at what I do.

Mike Baldwin (35:42.243)
Don't give up. Don't quit.

Mike Baldwin (36:07.843)
Good.

Bart Leger (36:08.11)
And so I figured, okay, let me pick one thing that I can learn more. I just want to be, if not, for lack of a better term, I guess, become an expert in this one thing. Yeah. Yeah. And that for me, it may not be the same for everybody, but for me, that was the key for me falling in love with my job again. That I threw myself into that and trained, learned.

Mike Baldwin (36:19.395)
Be a professional.

Bart Leger (36:38.542)
And that was, that was what got me excited again about the job. And now that I've retired, that's, that's one of the things that, uh, that I'm doing in my, in my training. That's pretty much the, uh, the, the focus of, of my training. And that all goes back to, you know, had it not been for that, that burnout. Um, so yeah, use, use what you, use what you got, become professional and just don't give up.

Mike Baldwin (37:03.395)
Yeah, it's easy to get discouraged. There's plenty of things at the police department that I did not like. The politics of the police department, I hated. Um, but again, I love being out of the office and, uh, hunting, playing the game. Um, me against the bad guy and.

Again, you know, I love the challenge. There were cases that I received and my supervisor would tell me, hey, you're getting this case. I'm like, I'm busy with other stuff. Why don't you give it to so -and -so? He's like, well, we're giving it to you because we know you'll get the job done. And that went back to challenge, you know, reputation, all those things. And I wanted to please them. And so I'd get the job done. And so.

Yeah, I think I knew what my mission was. I knew what my cause was.

Bart Leger (37:56.814)
Okay, well good. Now, as we're winding down to a close, is there a message, maybe some wise counsel that you'd leave our listeners with, especially those on the front lines?

Mike Baldwin (38:09.315)
Yes, I think about this all the time. You know, it's easy to get discouraged. It's easy to look at other people. And I think sometimes social media gives us a false sense of how things are going in certain people's lives. They typically only post the good pictures and the good stories. They don't picture and promote all the bad things that are happening in their life. But don't give up like we just talked about. People are counting on you to make a difference.

and make a difference to that one today. Focusing on making a difference to one person and by doing so you'll make a difference to a lot of people throughout the course of your career.

Bart Leger (38:51.726)
Well, thank you. Thank you for that. So how can our listeners get, learn more about your work or get in touch with you or the Grossman team?

Mike Baldwin (39:00.803)
Yeah, so I work for Lieutenant Colonel Dave Grossman at GrossmanOnTruth .com. He's a public speaker and author that travels all over the country talking about resilience and mental health. My email is mike at GrossmanOnTruth .com and I run the business for him. I sometimes travel the country with him. And so that's how you get ahold of us.

Bart Leger (39:26.062)
Awesome. Well, those will all be in the show notes. We appreciate you being with us today. So one last thing. What are you planning on doing today? Or maybe you've already done that's fun or recharges you.

Mike Baldwin (39:41.635)
I don't think I've done anything that's super fun yet this morning. The closest thing is talking to you. I enjoy that. But I also like being outside and doing some yard work. So if the weather cooperates today, I'll get outside, do some yard work, play with our dogs, and that'll be the conclusion to a good day.

Bart Leger (40:05.998)
Awesome, awesome. Well, Mike, thank you so much for being with us and sharing your valuable insights. I look forward to staying in touch.

Mike Baldwin (40:12.131)
Alright Bart, thank you so much.

Bart Leger (40:14.254)
All right, thank you.