16.

Fish out of Water

Outside of the military, my situation would be feast or famine. While processing out of the navy on a medical retirement, I received an offer to train the 1996 Summer Olympics security teams in Atlanta. Fifteen hundred dollars a week seemed like huge money to me then—especially compared to military pay. I left the navy and took the job. Also, I trained the Federal Bureau of Prisons Special Operations and Response Teams and others. It involved a lot of travel. Charging five hundred dollars a day, I thought I’d get rich.

In the tactical game, I was paid well for each assignment, but the assignments came and went. Between assignments, I struggled financially.

Hoping for more stability, I became a police officer just north of Miami Beach in Hallandale Beach, Florida, a place known for its greyhound racetrack and Canadian tourists. After more than half a year of training, I became a police officer, just like the ones who treated me well as a kid.

While patrolling, I wore Revo sunglasses, made with NASA technology by the same Italian eyewear company, Luxottica, that owns Ray-Ban and Oakley. The Revos had the clearest lenses and the best polarized protection, and they stayed on comfortably. Because I was a rookie, a recruit training officer (RTO) rode in the patrol car with me. One day, I spotted a stolen Cadillac driving in front of us. I called it in. Another patrol car joined me, and we turned on our flashing lights. The stolen Cadillac pulled over. Just as it stopped, the passenger, a black kid in his late teens, bailed out and took off running. We stopped behind the stolen vehicle. My RTO jumped out of the passenger seat of our patrol car, ran to the stolen Cadillac, and apprehended the driver, an obese kid. After I opened my door on the driver’s side, my feet hit the ground running.

I chased the runner for what seemed like forever. Over shrubs and fences. Underneath bushes. My ASP telescoping tactical baton fell out somewhere during the chase. The radio mike clipped to my lapel fell off and dragged behind me. I didn’t lose my sunglasses, though. We ran through people’s yards and ended up all the way in the next town, South Hollywood. Suddenly, I lost visual and audible contact with the runner. A man watering the grass in his front yard pointed to the back of his house. I snuck up behind the house, but the runner spotted me and took off again. Finally, as he ran across the middle of the street, I tackled him on the asphalt. A motorcycle police officer stopped and helped me. It felt good to catch the guy.

“That’s the longest foot chase I’ve ever heard of,” the policeman said.

If the runner hadn’t been holding his pants up the whole time he was running, he could’ve outrun me. When I stood him up with the handcuffs on, his pants fell down. I took out a flexicuff, pulled his pants up, and zip-tied his belt loop to his handcuffs to keep his pants on.

My RTO arrived with our patrol car.

The kid turned and looked at my name tag. “You ain’t going to beat me, Officer Wasdin?”

“Of course not. Why do you ask that?”

“I just thought that’s what you cops did. Beat us. That’s why I was running.”

“Man, you got the wrong idea of cops.”

When I started to put him in the car, another officer actually pushed the kid into the vehicle.

“Hey, take your hands off my prisoner,” I said. “And don’t touch him again.”

Later, I’d catch flak from some of the guys who’d been around a while. “You should’ve been rougher on the kid. Show him you don’t run from cops. There’s a way to put cuffs on somebody, then there’s a way to put cuffs on somebody.”

I understood their point, but I didn’t adhere to it. That wasn’t my type of police work. It turned out that the fat kid had stolen the car. The runner was a mule, paid probably twenty or thirty dollars a day, to deliver crack, then carry the buyer’s money back to the dealer. He had three or four pieces of the off-white colored rock on him. The dealers used kids under the age of eighteen, so they couldn’t be prosecuted as adults.

I put the fat driver in the back of my vehicle with the runner and drove away.

“Why didn’t you get your fat ass out and start running?” the runner said.

“Nigger, please. You got caught by a white man,” the fat kid argued. “What you talking ’bout?”

“This wasn’t no ordinary white man. Every time I turned around, he was still coming.”

I smiled.

At the Hallandale Beach Police Department, I processed the two suspects. Then I took them to the Broward County Sheriff’s Department to drop them off at the jail. I noticed the runner’s hands and knees were sliced up from my tackling him on the asphalt. He was going to need a couple of stitches. Since it’s the arresting officer’s job to take him to the hospital, that’s what I did.

After checking him in at the hospital, we had a forty-five-minute wait. Having missed lunch, I cuffed the kid to a railing and went to the McDonald’s in the hospital. I returned and ate my Quarter Pounder Value Meal.

The kid looked at my food.

“Are you hungry?” I asked.

“Uh, not too bad.”

“When’s the last time you ate something?”

“I had some soup last night.”

Oh, crap. I went back to McDonald’s and bought him a Quarter Pounder. When I returned, I asked, “If I’m nice enough to buy you a hamburger, am I going to have to chase your tail down if I take that handcuff off and let you eat like a human being?”

“No, sir, Officer Wasdin. I promise you. I ain’t running again. I promise.”

“Just so you know, I’m tired of running. So if you run again, I may just shoot you.”

We chuckled.

I took off the handcuffs, and he thanked me. He gulped down his Quarter Pounder. Then I went back and got him some more food.

Finished eating, we sat in the emergency room. “You ain’t like most po-lice, is you?” he said.

“More police are like me than you think.”

“I would’ve never thought a police officer would buy me something to eat.”

“You know what? If you went up to most police officers and asked them for food, they’d probably give it to you. They probably wouldn’t give you money, but they’d at least give you a pack of crackers or something.”

“Thank you.”

He was very polite. Wouldn’t stop thanking me. He seemed like a good kid. Just in with the wrong crowd. I felt good to be able to help him in that way, but I felt bad at how destitute his situation was.

Later, when I saw him on the street, whatever he was doing, he made it a point to stop and wave at me. Occasionally, he came over and talked.

For a couple of weeks after the big foot chase, my body paid for it. My neck and lower back were killing me. A police officer from North Miami Beach had been recommending over and over that I visit a chiropractor, but I blew her off. Now I was desperate. I remembered Ambassador Negroponte’s chiropractor.

Finally I went. The chiropractor evaluated me. “Compensatory to your gunshot wound, you’ve got an external foot rotation affecting your right hip. From your pelvis it worked its way up to your neck. This is why you aren’t sleeping well and experience constant pain.”

After three adjustments, I slept all the way through the night for the first time in years, nearly pain free. Just by visiting the chiropractor twice a month. Wow! After all the neurologists, orthopedic surgeons, and other doctors, a chiropractor gave me back my quality of life.

At that point, I thought chiropractors were like massage therapists or something like that. I had no idea that they studied to become doctors. There really is something to this chiropractor thing.

As a police officer, I didn’t find a kid with the marks of beatings like the ones I’d received on a weekly basis as a child. If I had, there would’ve been no questions asked. That child would’ve been turned over to the authorities, and the father would go straight to jail.

Financially, as a single father, I realized I couldn’t make it as a police officer. Forty-two thousand dollars a year went far in Jesup, Georgia, but not in Hallandale Beach, Florida.

*   *   *

The world’s leading manufacturer of body armor for military and law enforcement, Point Blank Body Armor, part of Point Blank Body Armor–PACA (Protective Apparel Corporation of America), offered me a job in Tennessee. Seventy-five thousand dollars a year would go far—especially in Tennessee. So I left law enforcement and took the job. Living in a small town, I felt rich. Blake fit in well at his new school, and life went smoothly.

As part of promoting the body armor, Point Blank assigned me to teach SWAT to Kane Kosugi, a Japanese American martial arts actor, for a popular Japanese TV series called Muscle Ranking (Kinniku Banzuke). Kane wore a Special Mission and Response Team (SMART) vest that I had designed. He was a hard worker who learned fast.

With Point Blank I had to travel internationally all the time: Abu Dhabi, Dubai, Paris, and wherever there was a huge military or police contract. Blake stayed with friends while I was gone. When Point Blank Body Armor–PACA changed hands, I didn’t like the new management.

I moved back to Jesup so Blake and I could be closer to my daughter, Rachel. I had worked out a plan to train the United Arab Emirates police SWAT teams via a Switzerland contact. My friend Tom McMillan had secured a range for me in Folkston, Georgia, to facilitate the training. It was going to be great. I had never earned five thousand dollars a week before. I was looking forward to finally having my years of military training pay off big-time. On September 11, 2001, we were putting the final stages of the plan into effect when the twin towers of the World Trade Center were hit by terrorists. That changed everything, putting the training on hold. Looking for a temporary solution until the matter could be resolved, Brother Ron recommended a job to me. “You’d be good at it. GMC car salesman.”

I had to do something, so I took it in order to put food on the table. To my surprise, I made more money selling cars than I had made doing anything else up to that point. The customers loved me. Blake settled into high school.

I even dated. One date turned out to be a stalker. It wasn’t funny. She would call me and say, “It usually takes you twenty minutes to get from work to home. Today it took you thirty-five minutes. What happened?”

“Are you serious?”

My cousin Sandy joked with me one night. “She’s outside standing in your azaleas, looking in your window.”

I laughed it off.

Sandy laughed, too.

After I hung up, I thought, Maybe I’d better go check. The stalker wasn’t in my azaleas, but she sat in her car a block away watching my house. I just couldn’t pick the right woman. It was frustrating.

On one occasion, I went on a date with an attractive woman. Feeling the vibes, I was ready for sex—it had been a while. While eating dinner at a restaurant, I asked, “What do you like to do? Have you read any good books lately?”

“I haven’t read anything since high school when I had to read.”

“What do you do for a hobby?”

“I listen to my police scanner and watch rasslin’.”

I kept a straight face. “Really.”

“Yeah. Listening to the scanner keeps me tied into the community. So I know who’s getting in trouble and where all the excitement is. If there’s going to be a big arrest or fire, I go and watch.”

Holy crap. “And your other hobby is what?”

“Rasslin’. I like Stone Cold Steve Austin.”

If she could’ve kept her mouth shut, she would’ve been great. After dinner, I took her home. Didn’t even kiss her good night.

She was upset.

I am not going out on any more dates. There are no girls in Wayne County I really want to date.

On a Saturday afternoon, January 19, 2002, I was headed home in my truck with two chicken boxes from Sybil’s Family Restaurant. People drive from a hundred miles to eat Sybil’s chicken. Blake and I had plans to eat chicken and watch O Brother, Where Art Thou?, which I had already rented. My cousin Edward called me up: “Deidre and I are going out tonight. She’s got a friend, and we want you to come out with us.” Classical ambush.

“No.”

Two minutes later, Deidre called. “Howard, please. I’ve never asked you for anything. Debbie just got out of a really bad marriage, and she’s going out with us, but she doesn’t want to feel like the third wheel. Just show up for company. You’re a fun-loving guy. I’ll never ever ask you to do anything else again. I promise. Just do this for me.”

Total guilt trip. I was irritated, but I dropped off the chicken boxes. “Blake, I’m going on a date.”

“Really? I thought you weren’t going to date.”

“Yeah, me, too.”

Edward and Deidre took me to Debbie’s apartment. Deidre told Debbie, “This is the guy I was telling you about who needs a date.”

Deidre had set up Debbie and me.

All four of us rode in one vehicle. I acted like, Hey, I am Howard Wasdin. You need to humble yourself before me. Show proper respect.

She threw my attitude back at me. Hey, I don’t care who you are.

Wow. That’s different—and she actually speaks in complete sentences using words with more than two syllables. Where the hell did she come from?

The two of us ended up having a great dinner, laughing a lot and enjoying our conversation and company. We even showed our appreciation to Edward by using words he could understand.

I remember the first time my hand touched hers. We were watching a Sports Illustrated bloopers video with Deidra and Edward. The spark of energy from that touch rushed through both of us. We continued our visit for a few minutes, and then I drove Debbie back to her apartment.

When we arrived at her home, we continued our conversation inside. Our talking led to laughter, the laughter led to a connection, that connection led to kissing, and the kissing rocked my world. The chemistry was unlike any I had ever felt. I lost track of time, but I knew that if I was going to be a gentleman, I’d better leave. We were both blindsided. Neither of us was looking for a relationship. Neither of us wanted a relationship, but our guardian angels had put the two of us in the right place at the right time.

We walked to the door to say good night. Leaving took all of my self-control. “I had a great time tonight,” I said.

“Me, too.”

“Why don’t you give me a call tomorrow?” I asked. Now, I had been raised in Screven, Georgia, by strict parents who would accept nothing less than gentlemanly behavior from me. It wasn’t that I was no longer a gentleman. It’s just that I was Howard Wasdin. I didn’t have to pick up a phone and call a woman. They called me. This girl had been raised to be a lady, though.

“I don’t know how you were raised, but my mama raised me not to call boys. If you want to talk to me, you are going to have to call me.” She closed the door.

Wow. It hit me. Girls who call boys today just don’t get it—they’re missing being chased and the thrill of it.

On the drive home reality set in. The speed limit was 55 miles per hour, but I doubt I exceeded 45. I was embarrassed and disappointed in myself. Even though I was raised to be a gentleman, I had become arrogant. She was absolutely right. What is wrong with me? I knew better than to say, “Hey, I’m Howard Wasdin, give me a call.” I respected her even more.

Sunday, I waited all day. I started to call her several times, but I didn’t call. Yeah, she’ll call me.

She never did.

Monday morning, I called her. We went to lunch. When the weekend came, we dated. Every weekend after that, we dated. Until we got married. Although I’d sworn I’d never tie the knot again, Brother Ron married Debbie and me on January 17, 2003. Even today, when we see him in public, he notices how happy we are together and makes the comment, “When I married you two, I used good glue.”

*   *   *

Car sales wasn’t fulfilling—even though the good people of Wayne County bought from me, showing their love and appreciation. They knew me from growing up in their community and were thankful for my military service. I had thought about becoming a chiropractor. I tried working at a chemical plant. My old CIA friend Condor told me about a job at a security firm in Brazil. I probably would’ve ended up in the security field forever. Like other Team guys who leave the navy. Do security work until I’m too old or too dead.

In October 2004, Debbie and I talked with my Veterans Affairs representative. They would pay for my college expenses to become a chiropractor. Debbie and I visited the university, but on the way back, I came up with all kinds of reasons I shouldn’t do it. “I won’t be able to work full-time and go to school full-time. We’ll have to tighten our budget. It’s going to take a long time. I’ll have to live near school until I graduate. A lot of driving back and forth…”

Debbie threw the BS flag. “You can go the rest of your life being miserable—never feeling fulfilled, never finding a job you really like again—or you can just do this. The sooner you get started, the sooner you’ll be done, and you’ll be happy with your occupation again. If you don’t, you’ll look back after four years and say, ‘If I’d gone to school, I’d be finished by now.’” I married the right woman.

In January 2005, at Life University in Marietta, Georgia, I started school to become a chiropractor. Although I enjoyed my studies, a small percentage of my classmates were hippie crackpots who opposed medical doctors, needles, and medication. Even one of my professors told us, “I will not give CPR or mouth-to-mouth to someone who is dying.” He would try to give the dying person a chiropractic adjustment and that was it. A husband and wife who were both chiropractors had met and married while in school. Three years after they graduated, the wife died from an ear infection because they refused to receive medical treatment for her—simple antibiotics would’ve saved her life. Their attitude was that chiropractors had the only pure discipline to cure people. Their mantra was Innate will provide. They reminded me of the witch doctor who unsuccessfully tried to cure the boy I helped in Somalia. Most of my other classmates and professors didn’t think this way, nor do chiropractors as a whole. It’s the small percentage of crackpots who give all chiropractors a bad name.

During my last year at school, my father had an abdominal aortic aneurysm. His abdominal aorta was blowing up like a balloon.