: My tech support is my wife. She's standing over my shoulder over there. Well, I'm sure she's not as good as dirt, but she's more economically affordable than dirt is. Yes. I call him dirt. If you saw his feet without any socks on and open toed shoes, you know, why it's called dirt. It would all come together. That's right. So I think my wife's wearing open toed shoes. Well, if you're a lady, that's okay. I mean, that's That's kind of what ladies do. Not men coming into an office. Gosh. Welcome to The Aggressive Life. This is the final week of our special five-part series called Five Marks of Summer. And to celebrate the publication of a repackaged edition of my book, The Five Marks for Man, we devoted each week this month to a deep dive into one of the marks. Today, we're gonna finish up about what the fifth mark is, what's about that men are protectors. Now these marks, in case you don't know them, these are not sequential. These are not Um, in priority, there's just five things. Every man has five things and we have weak areas in these marks. Some of us are, are better in some marks than the other, but every man that you respect, every man that inspires you, all of them have these five marks. This one, men are protectors. Now you might not have heard of this guy's name, but I'm pretty confident you've seen his picture. Today's guest is Rich Miller. He is a distinguished specialist within New York Police Department's Emergency Service Unit, the city's most elite tactical and rescue division. Rich was part of the immediate response to the 9-11 attacks. And at ground zero on September 12th, Rich climbed up a pole and planted an American flag at the site. The image was captured by a crime scene photographer and it's spread, giving a shot of hope to a nation reeling. For months. Rich was part of an ongoing rescue and recovery effort at the site. And here he is years later. Years later, he's still doing his thing. He's done rescue efforts in the aftermath of the Haiti earthquake. You may have seen an image of him rescuing a seven-year-old boy trapped within rubble for eight days. That thing went worldwide. And that's just the tip of the protector iceberg. Rich, like, are you ever not in a photo that goes viral? How do you do it? Wrong place, right time, I don't know. It's like, yeah. It's impressive. Well, you've been in over 2,500 high risk search warrants and entries involving hostage rescues, violent perpetrators, emotionally disturbed individuals. And that's, I'm not even talking about myself as an emotionally disturbed individual, I'm talking about people who are violently emotionally disturbed. You've gone into burning buildings and rescued kids. It's pretty amazing. Rich is now retired. He and his wife, Teresa are involved in ongoing healing and support for first responders and even have opened up their home as a healing refuge for first responders recovering from trauma. This man oozes protector. Welcome to the aggressive life. Rich Miller. Thank you, Brian. Thank you, it's good to be here. Man, thank you for doing this. I'm always fearful that I'm gonna ask somebody like you questions you've been asked a gazillion different times. So you can just tell me, I'm so bored with that question, just stop, but I think we've got to start here where you kind of got known or where people saw you putting that flag. on the poll. 9-11. Do you mind going back there for a moment? For a lot of us as Americans, it's a distant memory. Many of us Americans who are younger really have no memory of it. It's kind of like hearing people talk about JFK being assassinated. I heard about that as a little kid, like everyone knows they were when JFK was assassinated. No, no, we don't. I don't, I don't remember where I was in 1969. I was four years old. I haven't. really no significant memory of it. So some of our younger viewers don't. We know the logistics, planes hit the towers, but from your vantage point, just going about your normal day, could you tell us like how your day unfolded, what it looked like? Maybe I'll start with, actually the day before. Yeah, please. I was doing a day tour with, I'd say six, six or seven of the guys that I lost on 9-11 that day the next day. And I... was scheduled to do it, start at 1400 hours, which is two o'clock. Hold on, hold on, hold on there. Let me just stop right there. The day before you were six or seven people and 24 hours later, they're all dead. Yes. Gosh. Wow. I was doing a course with the called Deaf Tech Training. It's where we use the distraction devices when we'd make entries in a, in, in hostage situations or, or doing search warrants, filing felony warrants. And we were going through that training course. And that week I was scheduled for other refreshers. And I would say half the class that was there were missing the next day. So I was home that morning when the first plane hit. And my former wife had awakened me when one of our daughters was going off to school. And when I got up, I turned the TV on right away and I saw the second plane hit. I knew I had to respond. I actually knew I had to respond after the first plane because I knew it would be a city-wide mobilization for my unit. My unit, the emergency service unit, is a tactical rescue unit. We do anything from high-rise rescue with emotionally disturbed people who want to hurt themselves by maybe jumping off a building or a bridge. And we'll climb up, talk to them, try to talk them out of what they want, the thinking of doing. And then the next hat or helmet we wear is a tactical helmet. We do violent felony warrants, we do barricaded perpetrators, hostage situations. So I realized I was going to be responding there with a rescue helmet. Although we did have some guys go in tactical thinking that there were terrorists inside the building when they first got there. Yeah, but it was, it was. No one knew anything that was happening. I remember being in a meeting and someone comes in and says, oh, a plane hit buildings. Okay, what does that mean? Someone else comes in, yeah, then it hit the White House. It hit the White House, of course it didn't, but it was just confusion around the whole thing. That's just me sitting in Cincinnati in a meeting and seeing TV. I can't imagine in New York City happening real time and you have a responsibility in it. That's mind blowing to me. So then what happens? Yeah. Oh yeah. Like everyone else, when the first plane hit, I just thought it was an accident. But when I saw the second plane, you knew we knew we were being attacked. So I, I got to the Bronx pretty, pretty quickly. While I was at quarters getting, getting my uniform on, I watched the first tower come down, which happened to be the south tower, which was the second tower that was hit. It was just hit at the right location for that building to come down quicker. I didn't realize that. Okay. And again, it pancaked down. We watched. So going down the West Side Highway, it was just after Chelsea, Chelsea Piers. And we watched the North Tower come down. But we just we kept driving in. We got to where we could get in. You actually couldn't get into where the train center was, but we had to take one of the side roads. off the West Side Highway into the North Cove Marina. And we set up a temporary headquarters there first. And then we just, throughout that day, looked for survivors. We knew we lost a lot of guys. Yeah, so you lost your friends because they rushed into the building and then it collapsed on them. Yeah. They died. Yes, yes. When you come up to a situation like that, was there... Any thought in your mind that it actually could collapse? So like, were you, are you going in there saying, hey, I have a 50-50 shot that I might die, or are you going in there, just, you don't think that at all. You just are going in to protect. Yeah, I mean, when the North Tower came, the South Tower came down, we knew we were going in. We were still going to be going in to the North Tower because there's no people in there. Uh, so, uh, good. So you, you already saw one of them went down. That could be happening this time. Yeah. Cause there, there was still, there was still hope that the North tower would stay up and we'd still be able to rescue people. Um, but, um, you know, the teams that were in there, you know, they were, they were still fighting, even, even though the call was to get them out, it was still guys that, that I know personally that you, I mean, you'd have to, you'd have to drag them out. because they knew there were people in there that needed help. Yeah, we always put ourselves in the shoes of somebody else, or at least I do, think about what would I have done. I would love to think that I would have rushed in that building and done anything possible to save somebody, but if I just saw one building come down, I don't know what... If I did, would I do it because it was positive peer pressure of other people around me who were going to do it, so therefore I did it? Was I gonna do it because I felt a surge of machoism? Was I gonna do it because I felt a surge of love, like Jesus steps onto a cross and takes a hit for me, so I think to myself, I'm gonna step into a building, I don't know, like for you guys in your minds, which of those three, or, Option four, five, six, are you thinking? Or you don't think anything? It's just cloud and you go in. Well, what I'm getting to know about you, Brian, and reading your book, Five Marks of a Man, I know you would have been in there. You're an adventurer too, you know? And I think a part of being the kind of work that we do, you have to have faith, right? That kind of work also requires, seeks adventure as well. Interesting. You know, it takes a lot to go up on top of a bridge, especially a George Washington bridge or the Verrazano bridge that took somebody down, who may pull you with them. Right. I think it's in our DNA when we take on that kind of job. Interesting. It's our calling. Well, from what little I know of you, you've had a pretty difficult life. You had a a difficult childhood, you've weathered a divorce, you've had multiple moves, you've been in and out of poverty, you've had a very full and in many respects, a very, very painful life. Where did you learn the protector piece? Or is that not something that was learned, that's just something you felt was stuck in you at birth? It's funny because stuck at birth could be possible. I don't really give it that much thought. But I know as a young child, my mom and dad separated when I was four. And I think they were divorced by the time I was five. And I had a little sister. And I always remember my dad saying, you're the man in the house. You've got to look after your little sister. And I was only... I could six when he would say that. And then, you know, they both remarried by the time I was like seven or eight. I think they were both remarried by then. And I had, later on had two other sisters, one from each of their marriages. And when my dad had gotten sick, he had said, he would take me for walks and just say, you know, you've got to look after all your sisters, all your sisters. You know, and that included. not only his biological daughter, but my other sister from my mother's marriage. So I think I always had that from my dad. But I would say even with in school, I didn't live in good neighborhoods at a certain time. And I remember it was around the time of the 67 riots. You remember the late 60s when the riots were going on? My friend across the street, I don't know if I can use his name, I guess, Jerry Robinson. He later grew up to be a state trooper. He wore glasses and he was getting picked on by other kids that he was actually friends with. I mean, he grew, I was kind of near the neighborhood. I'd only been there for a year in that neighborhood, on that block. But you know, they were African American and he was and they were picking on him. And I said, hey. leave him alone. And they, they did leave him alone. But then they turned on me. So I learned, I learned, you know, I learned, you know, years later, my wife and I are sitting around a table with my mom, and my mom was talking about it with other people. And I said, Mom, you remember that? And she goes, of course, Richard, I said, well, mom. Why didn't you stop it? And she goes, I wanted you to learn a lesson. Don't stick up for black people. That's the lesson. What's the lesson? I still can't figure it out. But you know, it's just, you know, nowhere to put your stick your nose into. I don't know. I hope you learned. No, right. You did the right thing. And sometimes you get, you get crap for doing the right thing. It's the way it works. Yeah, exactly. Learned your lesson. I've done it again. I've done it again. You know, but, and I, and I had, you know, I always looked, looked after the underdog. I always felt, you know, so. Today's episode is brought to you by AG1. I gave AG1 a try because I was feeling a bit sluggish, not confident I was getting all the nutrients that I felt that I needed. And I thought maybe this is an easy solution. So I drink AG1 in the morning. I love doing the morning. I do it on an empty stomach. It forces me to get 12 ounces of water into my system. I love doing something proactive and aggressive to make me feel better and at least give me peace of mind. 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So this includes a repackaged edition of the original. along with updated artwork and a new preface, and an all new tactical guide designed to be used with a group of like-minded dudes, giving you challenges, prompts, discussion questions to work the marks into your life. Take my word for it, this isn't your grandmother's fill-in-the-blank guide. It's unlike anything you may have experienced before in written form. Pre-order either book, and you'll get access to a limited edition five marks poster. Get all the details and claim your poster over at bryantome.com slash five mark. That's bryantome.com slash five marks. Now, back to the show. I had a good line earlier. You said your dad, you're five. So you said you're the man of the house now, or six. You're the man of the house now. I don't know that is a vision that is politically correct enough to paint for our young men, our young boys. You're the man of the house. I mean, we all know what that means, but I think parents are afraid to say that to young boys. But I think what's probably instilled in that is this primal understanding that we have that men are protectors. I'm not saying women can't protect. They certainly can protect and they do protect. I just remember a study I saw, I think it was by the Carnegie Institute that of the number of people who we'll just call them heroes, who are walk by heroes, meaning they're walking on a street and they see somebody getting mugged or something like that, and they step in and stop it. 90% of those people are men. It's like we're just wired to do that more so, which causes us to say things like, you're the man of the house now, which sounds incredibly sexist, but I think there's something special about that. Your thoughts? Yeah. You used that word primal, right? Yes. To me, men have always been the protectors, been the warriors, the... the hunters, you know, to feed their families, right? You know, and don't get me wrong, there's been a lot of women that can really handle themselves very well. Of course. And I've also worked with a lot of them. And I also say, you know, one of my biggest protectives is my wife, right? But you know, and I'm her protector. I will do anything for her, right? Yes. But throughout... history, you know, all the way up until the 20th century, men were the ones that went off to war. They were the troops. Yeah. Yeah, that's right. Well, I wonder today, there's not the, as many classical ways to protect. Fortunately, because we're not really in war, where it seems like we're in endless skirmishes around the globe for one reason or another. But this is not the era of World War II or something like that. People are invading our country, so we have to protect our families from invasion, which thankfully, there's not a lot of obvious ways to protect that are stereotypical, if you will. So what we're left with, it seems to me, is I'm going to trash somebody. on social media who believe something they shouldn't believe, or I'm going to shame somebody into doing XYZ. I wonder how much of it is a mutated, bastardized protection gene that we don't know what to do with that cause us just to be dickheads. You know what I mean? Yeah. Maybe that phrase dickhead bothers you. No, no, no. I'm sure you've never heard that in your life before. No, you're in my wheelhouse. No, I was thinking something else that you were speaking. I'm sorry. And I kind of, you know, been hitting the head a few times, fractured skull too with work and a couple of concussions. But, you know. If your motorcycle accidents like, you know, and you like motorcycling. Oh, that's right. Here you still are after all of that, you're still living, talking, breathing, walking. Yeah. Well, that's kind of got that's what guys are our generation. How old are you, Rich? I'm 63. I just turned 63. So you're a little older than me and you've had even a more strenuous life than I have being in the military. being in rescue operations, I've not done either one of those things, but kind of our generation was the generation that regularly were in the emergency room. I was just talking with a parent with young kids recently, I was like, you don't realize that our generation, it was a monthly occurrence that somebody was in the emergency room. And we always did. I can't. It's hard to find a parent who's ever had a child who's had a broken bone because you're not breaking anything when you're when you're sitting there using your thumbs on a screen, you know? Yeah, that's true. I was five years old with a broken leg. You know, a seesaw. So I remember. Ban that seesaw. Seesaws are awful. I hope they got it off the playground. Yeah. Do you think with how the culture is changing and how there just isn't as much classic physical things happening? Are enrollments going down in lines of work that you've historically been drawn to? Are they having a trouble having a hard time finding people to be in the rescue division and or not? Yeah, it's Recruitments down. That's for sure. I also hear with the military too, recruitment was down. Yes. I don't know the whole reason why, but I think it is that we're not raising a lot of boys to be men right now. I think a lot of children, I mean, a lot of boys are growing up. without God in their life and without the spirit of the connection to our country. Right. And without fathers. Yes. Fathers in the household. Many of them have actually not been protected. One of the things that dad does is he protects you, protects you emotionally and intellectually, all that stuff. Have you had many classic protectors in your life, Rich? Yeah, I mean, I remember my dad up until he passed, but I'd say a lot of my uncles looked after me. Two uncles that I remember who were Marines, who kind of steered me towards like, if you're not going to go to college, the military is the next best thing for you, right? And I loved playing lacrosse and I loved playing football, but I knew that the problem wasn't going to be my I had gotten in a fight in school and then I had gotten suspended just before Christmas and it was going to roll into right after Christmas coming back in January. It wouldn't be the first week back to school. My stepfather was pretty upset with me and a girl I was going out with had just broken up with me too. So December 28th of 1978, I woke up in the morning, went down to the recruiting office, walked in. It's a little after 700 hours. I always said this, if any one of those doors was open, I'd have joined any one of the branches of service. But I always wanted to go in the Marine Corps, but I went down the hall, so I think God was watching out because I think he wanted me to be a Marine. I walked down the hall and that last door on the left was open and the recruiter was standing there shaving in front of a mirror with a white t-shirt on and his dress, blue trousers. And I walked in, I said, hey, and I startled him. And I told him, I want to join. And he said, I'll be right with you. Sit right down. Oh wow. And you know, but when they put the book down in front of me of jobs in the service, I saw military police. And I said, that's something I would like to do. And the gunnery sergeant, the gunnery sergeant Alvarez, I'll never forget his name. And the recruiter was Rick Frank. So the staff sergeant Rick Frank. He said, if you want this, you've got to graduate school. My recruiter went back to school with me in January, the first week of January. sat down with my dean, the principal, and we just said, I'm gonna be a good kid. Oh, wow. Finish school. Oh, that's cool. So, yeah, I went in right after high school. Good for them. Yeah, if I could have, I was looking in the Marines as well when I was in high school, mainly because I didn't want to go to college, and I wanted to rebel against my parents' scholastic standards. You know, if it had crossed my mind to just drop out of high school and join the Marines, I probably would have done that. it hadn't crossed my mind. I thought I had to finish high school first. So probably good for me. Good for me, I stayed. That was a good thing. So now Rich, you've been to protect your life, been paid to be a protector. Now you're retired. Is there any way that you find yourself protecting right now? Yeah, yeah, I believe so. Yeah, I've been out since 2011. It was, it kind of cascaded. When I was deployed to Haiti with New York task force, T1 FEMA, I got injured. I injured my knee, which required a surgery. And I rushed myself back. I was coming up to my 23rd year. And that's when I got out in 23 years, but I was really hoping to make 25. A few months later, I went down a flight of stairs with a emotionally disturbed person. She had dropped a knife, but I rolled down the stairs with her and hurt my back. And that required a surgery. But I rushed myself back and a few months after that, we had an emotionally disturbed person on the subway. And going back to your book, Dick Tough. Yes. Dick Tough, yes. So it was June of that year, we had a emotionally disturbed person on the train tracks banging. He was a naked emotionally disturbed person, six foot four, a little over 270 pounds because the gurney was over the weight of the gurney. He was banging on a subway, you know, it was rush hour, five o'clock, all the trains are stuck in the subway. And we chased him for a bit, me and my partner, and fought with him. And eventually three other officers, so five of us and three tasers fought with him. And I ripped my shoulder and my bicep and I'm pinned like probably like Dick Tough is ended, you know, still ended the fight, but we, he wore us out and we wore him out, you know, but we finally gave up. One guy, five of you on one guy. What? One guy. Wow. What happened was he crawled under the train and this, that was stuck in the subway tunnel. And I went under there first to get him. And I went to dry taser him, which I knew if I tasered him with the cartridge tasers where the darts come out, their wires would wrap around. So I, I unsnap the, the cartridge taser and I tried to dry taser him and cuff him. but we both fell off the axle of the train onto the tracks. My partner crawled under. And then by that time we had support, but he was on PCP. So that was the last job of my career actually. And when I retired, I retired with injuries. I didn't wanna go. It was actually the department doctor when I went in to see him and for his evaluation, he handed me my file and said, submitted your file for retirement, for medical retirement. And that's what I cascaded to. I didn't really want to go. And my, uh, my, uh, when I came back and to truck three, where I was working at that time and told the guys, yeah, they were all happy for me. I don't know if it was whether to get rid of me or what, but they were happy. I wasn't. I always wanted to get tased. I always wanted to get tased. Can I get tased without pissing off a police officer? Cause I'd like to try sometime. Uh, yeah, I, you know, come to the city and I'll ask some of the guys if they, you know, they want to help out. Yeah. I want to try. I don't know that I'm that interested in it, but I would love for you to get tased. You're about the size of a taser dart. That's going to wear me out. They probably couldn't find you. You're, you're kind of small target. Is it true that you can't. pull a trigger on a tazer on somebody until you've been tased yourself? No. Well, at the time when I went through the issue, uh, it wasn't mandatory that you had to be tased to complete the course, but the instructors made it, you know, impossible not to say no. Yeah. It's empathy. Like it's easy to pull a trigger on somebody. If I haven't had it done to myself to know what I'm feeling, right? That's, that's true. That's tough. Yeah. Well, we're talking about a lot of the physical ways that men protect, but it's not just physical. It's also, we protect each other mentally, we protect each other emotionally, spiritually. Does that fit into your story at all? Oh, yeah. Going back to, you know, so when my career ended, I didn't feel like a protector because here I was with all these injuries and here I was out now, right? And it wasn't that long after I we moved from White Plains, New York up to Connecticut because her mom had gotten ill and we moved her mom in with us until she passed of cancer. And until one of my daughters from my divorce wanted to move in with us and then I had to step up for her. Also, I still help out with officers in distress or going through some issues in their life, especially after. You know, after a shooting, going through a divorce, some other family issues, maybe the loss of a partner. So you know, so I'm privy to a lot of their personal conversations and what they and how they feel about work. Yes. And not just the NYPD. My wife and I found this place and we found it. We felt it was a respite for us. It wasn't just a healing place for us, but we wanted to help others. So while doing that, I get to hear what they share in their life, and especially through work. And like I said, we just don't do it for members of the NYPD. It's pretty much from the tri-state area. We've had some come from further distance away and you hear the nightmares of what they go through every day. You know, for. my generation were prior to 9-11, it wasn't that we were, we had a lot more respect on the streets than they have today. And you see that the way society has changed towards law enforcement, it's changed towards just everyday people. I find that the young don't respect the older anymore. And it's, and I think it goes back to not having a father figure in the home or someone of authority around them all the time. Well Rich, this has been great. Thanks for opening up your mind and your life to us and your encouragement and everything else. It's been good for us to just have a view of somebody who's kind of on the other side of of comfort or normalcy that the rest of us live in. The things that you've done and experienced, pretty cool and pretty inspiring. And thank you so much for being a protector for so many people. And I think you protected us today by giving us a good mind shift. So hey friends, I don't know what it is for you today. The Bible says there's victory in the counsel of Ben. You're gonna give somebody counsel. Are you going to nurture somebody emotionally? do something, step into somebody else's world, protect somebody else's world. That's part of who God has made you to be. We'll see you next time on The Aggressive Life. Great, we got it. Great, Rich. Great, Brad, thank you. You're doing such a great, I mean, I can't get, I love your book, I'm getting all the others. One day I'd love to visit Nancat. Yeah, what do you mean one day? Why not this year? Why not September? When in September? I'll have Scott, what's October? I'll have Scott reach out. Yeah, I'll have Scott give you the details, that'd be cool. Oh, yeah, that would be. All right. You'd love it. You would be right up your alley. A lot of vets there. We find that it's a place where, gosh, more of the. Prototypical man shows up. I mean, prototypical. I don't mean, I don't mean like not the kind of guys that Hollywood portrays who are real men, but not that kind of button up thing. You got a lot more. blue collar and first responders and, um, veterans, uh, more of them per capita than probably any other place where you go to. It's pretty cool. Thanks buddy. I appreciate a lot. Thanks for joining us on this journey toward aggressive living. Find more resources, articles, past episodes and live events over at bryantome.com. Pre-orders for my new books, repackaged edition of The Five Marks of a Man and a brand new Five Marks of a Man Tactical Guide are open right now on Amazon. If you haven't yet, leave this podcast a rating and review. It really helps. Get this show in front of new listeners. And if you wanna connect, find me on Instagram, at Brian Tome. The Aggressive Life is a production of Crossroads Church, Cincinnati, Ohio.