Disclaimer. We'd like to know before the start of this interview that the opinions
about to be expressed by the guest of tonight's Getting Salty Experience Podcast are that
of the guest and do not directly or necessarily reflect the views of the host
of the Getting Salty Experience Podcast. You're listening to the Getting Salty Experience Podcast.
Hello, I didn't do the believe back. Hello Joe from Rochester.
I got him the bottom there, I gotta get it from the bottom.
Hello Joe from Rochester. We'll do that ever again. Only sorry, table
to you and everything involved in the firehouse. Get your table, including really
fresh crispy haircuts. We bring that to you thanks to Gonzo, not me.
Thanks to Gonzo. Let me say, what do you want to say?
That is risty crispy? Gods if they ever asked what your best side
is, that's the right side. That's the right Did you get a free
bowl of soup with that head? Probably? But looks good on you though
you wait, it's the parking lot charge you down there in Florida for something
like that. That's got to be thirty bucks twenty five. You give me
a tip. That's what the stock. That's the tip. That's with the
tip. It's like twenty four ninety nine, only a shekel like Jewish.
You know, I gotta watch my Benjamins or my pennies. I don't have
any hair, but I gotta watch this girl. Has she been cutting my
hair for twenty five years now, she's just she's just retiring. She's retiring.
Now's gonna cut your head? In The Girl next Door? Oh right,
the girl she moose. The girls use Moose a lot. When they
do that, they don't use the use. They put it on their hands
and they got like one of these, like I would like. That's what
I remember anyway, from if you remember the moose, we used to use
moose like in the eighties, right yeah, bro, before that was gel
like s diippity do whatever you put in it on it went moose for a
while. We definitely use moose. I don't care who you are. In
the eighties, you had movie some kind of product in man, what do
you just straight up jail man? You're going with the gel? Yeah,
I've been using it for a while. It's good. It looks good,
that's clean, looks really good on you. Yeah, I appreciate that.
Okay, can we change subjects of hockey play? Because we got a guy
who's pot five fire pot hockey play basically, so to the come on,
No, we're gonna gi him a little bit of there. It's gonna be
all about this tonight. The other one. Nobody cares about hockey. Idiot.
I don't even know what commercial we have. It's all together now.
Sorry, I think we gotta make up for a commercial last week we didn't
have. Yeah, I was gonna ask you, should we run all three
tonight? Do it? Man? What have you got to do? All
right, let's get to it so we can get the rico swab swab.
Here we go. Armor to firehouse flooring was recently installed in Station number seven,
the newest of the Dacab County fire stations in Decatur, Georgia. Meeting
Deputy Chief Smith of Support Services, Vince explained that armourtuugh interlocking flooring is the
only floor that is tough enough to withstand the abuse of fire apparatus along with
fire personnel at a very busy station. Chief Smith explained the flooring in all
of our stations over the years gave us multiple problems. We need a floor
that can last as long as the walls and the roof. That's why we
chose Armour Tough. The installation team came from New Jersey and in three days
they had completed their work without any disruption to our daily operations. We were
very impressed with not only the product, but with the workmanship as well.
I highly recommend Armour Tough for your station's floor. Call Vince today for a
no obligation quote at nine oh eight nine one seven seven six nine seven.
You crazy, fantastic, It's crazy. So what were we We only usually
have one commercial today, right we supposed to but later on okay, you
just let me know what. We got a couple of new guys watching the
show live for the first time, John, I said, Johnny and John
in Guardia like them apples. I was scrolling through they I'll have to get
back to that. Well, welcome guys. But I gotta tell you,
man, in the pre show, like I was looking for Rod Serling from
what do you call it? What show? Did he used to do?
Uh? Spot show? No, he used to do this what do you
call it? Show? I just got a brain fun somebody is gonna know
in the chat what's the name his name is Rod Serling. Back in the
sixties, they used to do the show, Come on, somebody in the
chat twilight Zone. I got it. I got it before you did.
I I was in the twilight zone before we had Roofie and two black dudes
talking about hockey. I said that Mike, Mike, Mike was coaches trying
to talk about basketball, and they were like, bring back out of the
hockey, brother. I'm like, he is talking about about Hockey's talking about
eyes of man and everything. Well, you know what this guy should have
really been and a jersey should be hanging in the rafters. Somehow. It
was kind of like the that's what I was saying was going on. Man,
nobody got time for that. Nobody got Let's pring him in here.
Roough, you get it. This is your day. This is mikey man,
here's the kidd from the second I talked to him. So we both
did twenty seven years. We both gone on in nineteen ninety three. We
both retired in nineteen ninety and he place hockey and he and he's a rough
for now. I mean when he first talked to this is gonna be cool,
this is gonna be lou like that you know when back in the day
where you're in your twenty do that's just chick last night, bro, dude,
hockey bro. I think I might have to give him money gun for
you. You know something. He's over there dying in the background. He's
your guy. You coming all the way from Flint, Flint, and they
can have water now. And it's my fighter Phillips. What an entrol?
Hey? First of all, you guys say this gonzo. I think I'm
getting short change here. I pay twenty twenty bucks from my haircut every two
weeks, whether I come on maybe maybe tomorrow that'd be that'll be eight nas.
Yeah we go, yeah, get picture out before we start making fools
of ourselves. Yet here we go. I pledge allegiance to the flag of
the United States of America and to the Republic, for which it stands,
one nation under God, indivisible with liberty and justice for all. As listen,
I see my girls Susie in the chat. We haven't seen it all.
That's you missed your Susie. You and Lee all love Louis over.
We's got love spewing out all over them, all over the place. I
don't know. This guy's a little upset. I hed red Red? Where
is gone from? John? What do you think he's from? Roofy?
He's a Jersey guys, you think I don't know Detroit. Actually, well,
we'll see he turns in. Let's see if he turns in. All
right, all right, let's do. What do you want to start?
You want to start hockey? You want to talk about the fire department?
Way back, let's go start early days. You know what, Let's go
back to when there was a young Rico running around playing, playing the army
or whatever. You were playing a hockey. Where did you grow up?
What was family life Rico in the early days? Yeah, for sure,
I was born here in Flint, Michigo. Really raised here, but interesting
lifestyle. My mom was German, and uh so I grew up at the
German When I went in side the house, I was in Germany. Outside
good us. But anyways, not just that eat eat eat anything. I
freag It scarred me, to be honest with But anyways, I grew up
not far from downtown Flint. And when as a little boys, like a
lot of the viewers here today, they watched Emergency. My I'm fifty four
years old. I watched emergency. It was the first time any of us
got a chance to see what firefighters actually do. Actually, what I got
that it's a ring tone I got. But anyway, turn out man,
turn out vehicle, and the dolls too. Bro. Yeah, so those
are all my toys or fire trucks. Ship. I was pretty fanatic guy.
He honestly, I'm serious, man. So so I was way before
hockey. I didn't even get in the hockey because in high school. So
it's kind of crazy, but I've been drinking a lot, so uh you
know, and uh, in fact, I remember asked my mom for a
yellow raincoat and I had a red plastic fire helmet. And on Sundays,
man, my dad would barbecue every Sunday, and we had one of those
those nice grills. Uh, there's a lot of brick mortar and with a
chimney. Then he said he pulled that last slab off. He's there.
You go, Rico, You're gonna have it. He knew exactly what the
fuck I was getting ready to do. And I was pretending I had a
fire and I go over there and put that ship out. You know,
this hardcore man I thought I was. And so that's where I kind of
got the whole idea that I really wanted to do this type of work and
uh family in the business. You had no family, family in the business.
It was just that television show man and I uh so. But when
I got a little bit older, I was trying to decide, well,
how the hell do I prepare to do this? And I took a first
DAID and CPR course over at the Red Cross. Seemed like a novel idea,
except when I got there, I realized as the only kid in the
whole fucking class, these off people, I had to get this certification so
they can, you know, for their jobs or whatever. Hear this eighth
grader is going I want to learn And I was so scared, man,
and I was about to leave. I remember thinking my mom dropped me off
was the only reason I couldn't leave. So I had to stay in the
course that day. And when I was leaving, the one of the people,
or one of the adults in the class asked me if I was coming
back next time or they'll see me next time, and I was like,
damn. They put me under their wing guys, and they actually helped me,
and I helped them because I gave them inspiration. This kid can do
it. I can do it. And I got certified man, and then
I had these cards. Oh yay, What the fuck am I gonna do
with those? Right? I was waiting for somebody to go down, man,
stay away from the light, little buddies. I think I got into
high school and I got this rare opportunity. Our athletic trainer in the school
was looking for somebody to be the water boy. It's a better term to
call a student athletic trainer. But that's where I got my start because I
thought I was. I literally was so listen, Rico, what say something
up. I got my start dealing with patients and injuries and ship. So
that's what I was kind of trying to mold myself into what the future would
be. And uh, my sophomore year is when I got an opportunity to
work with the hockey team. And I was assigned to the hockey team,
and I knew a little bit about the sport, but as when I was
on the bench and I seen it actually happen, I said, holy ship.
Like that, I had to learn how to ice skate, and so
I learned how to skate with the team, which was crazy because we had
a really good team. Are we talking here? Is this high school years
old? Fifteen years old old? Yeah? And so fifteen years old,
I decided I wanted to join the sport and I started playing when I definitely
should not have been yet. Guys were I was getting I had so much
not on the chin, I just wiped my chin off, not my nose
and shit, and some guys hit me so hard. Man. I'm telling
you, it was crazy times back then. Somehow I done my ass,
stayed in the sport, but I found my passion. But I got to
tell you, in the meantime of that, I still kept course. I
wanted to be a firefighter. And I had this this mind blowing experience while
in high school as a student trainer. I was assigned to the baseball team
and our star pitcher collapsed and went to a full arrest. And I had
never seen anything like that in my life. And I tell young people this
when I tell the story, I said, remember them cards. I I
told you, I don't know what to do with fuck. I had to
do something with those cards. And his parents were there, the whole team
was there, and I'm doing chest compressions and so it kicked in like that,
bro, did you kicked in? It took me half a second because
I was thinking he was just hit his head. He was in seizures and
I'd never seen a seizure before. So I'm going and I'm trying to grab
smelling thoughts, which was the cure for shit like that back then. And
the coach said, Grieco, get your ass over here, and it kind
of snapped me too, And then when I got there, just started doing
the ABC's and knows he wasn't breathing, And I started doing chest compressions at
fifteen years old on this kid that I go to school with, and his
mom was helping me, and as I'm doing chest compressions, she's she's all
shook up and she's just blowing air in his belly. I can't do chest
compressions. He's puke and all. It turned into a mess. Long story
shorter. They whisked him to the hospital and I'm in. I watched him
shock him two or three times there on the Unseen and what loulu I knew
from the show emergency, I said, we did everything we could. We
started right away. They shocked him he's going to be Okay's eighteen and he
died. You guys, that day was a day that I thought I would
I wanted to walk away from this idea of helping people this way because I
failed. I felt like I failed right, Like we were there and it
wasn't fucking emergency emergency. Everybody lived. So for me, it was not
only that he was a guy I go to school with. There was a
pressure, but it was his mom and the rest of the team who gathered
around me. About four days after this happened at the school, they caught
me down the office. I was kicking rocks all the way there because I
was like, what the fuck did I do? I just don't want to
talk to anybody, leave me alone. And his mom put her arms around
me and she said thank you, and she said thank you for giving me
hope and giving all of us hope. Wow. And that's the day,
my friends, when I realized what my destiny is. Like, I tell
this story all the time to young people that we don't we can't, we
can't stop the crisis from happening in most occasions, right, But all we
do is that we're that fucking hope man. When you pick up that bar
the hope begins, or when the idea comes. I got a call and
when we get there were the most important thing in their hope field is getting
these things. And so I got an early lesson in that and helped kind
of prepare me for what the future would hold for me. So anyways,
moving into my career, Uh, I got it. I'd be a dumb
ass to not admit this. That how fanatic I was. I was fanatic
to a point that it was stupid. I used to visit the fire station
when I was a teenager, when I was thirteen years old. I'd go
down the station one, our main station, and I'd get to know the
guys. In fact, i'd come in on shift three all the time,
like as if it was my shift and shit and say the guys and uh,
one time I was coming through the basement of the station. It was
always wide open down the guy's parked in the basement station And I was coming
by this door and it was cracked open. I said, the fox's in
there. And I opened it up and it was a quartermaster's room and I
was, holy shit, this is where ill there's shit is. And I
got the man I tell my own story. Yeah, on an hour,
and then finally my dumb ass puts sh it in a bag and I fucking
throw it on my shoulder like I'm Santa Claus hickschhike on my bike up the
road and I take the ship home to pretend I'm a firefighter. Right,
I'm thirteen years old. I got the I'm buddies with all the firefighters.
My mom, I love my mom. She said, wait a minute,
Rico, but did you get this stuff from just threw it out? And
she says, oh, they threw it out the fire department man and the
fucking battalion comes to my house. And this is a battalion I knew.
I'm like under the sheets. He's like, thank you, ma'am, and
I'm thinking, oh fuck, I'm in trouble. So a few weeks go
by and I show back. I had the balls to show back up to
the firehouse and the officer said, preme here. First time at ever went
upstairs where the dorms are, because that day officers called me and said,
you disappointed us man. You can't allow you to come back. Man.
We know you're a good guy, but you you cross the line and I
was heartbroken. Oh my god, really believe this shit right? So I
still didn't lose my scope. That is what I wanted to do. I
just didn't know where if I end up in Flint or not. But as
chance would have it, I followed my quest and I started going to school,
and after high school, I didn't know what I wanted to do exactly
by knowing when to be a firefighter, so I started the journey from there.
Man, it's kind of I'm very vulnerable telling that type of story,
because let me tell you a quick story, a little of that. One
of the veteran firefighters. I may talk about it more than once. George
Woods. Those are listening, no, Georgia, cracking up right now.
They know he's going to say some silly shit. But the assistant chief was
having lunch with us. He was drinking soup, and I was a young
firefighter, and he says, hey, Chief, I know why you hired
Rico. Why is that he came fully equipped. Some of the guys knew
the Yeah, yeah, oh yeah, he's one of the first ones.
When I first got the job. He says, hey, I remember out
in front of my and when I'm in the academy, So I had to
go tell everybody in the academy so I can tell my story. You stole
that that radio and equipment. I'm like, oh fuck weeks now and I'm
like, oh, fuck this dude. And he ends up winds out being
like my best friend in the whole world. Day he passed away, he
got rest of his soul, but he's he's one of the best guys I
ever got to know in the department. So do you do? You take
a test? So yeah, we took a civil service exam. It was
like two thousand people applying for eighteen jobs. And uh, this was my
second time taking eighteen jobs. Yeah, first time I took it, I
didn't get the job. I made it as far as the oral interview,
but there was a hiring freeze that happened, so I didn't get the job.
So I had to go through the whole thing all over again. And
that's when there was twenty eighteen. And by then I had become a Flint
Township firefighter though, so I had some credentials that were working in my favor
now, so I moved volunteer. We call them on call firefighters because they're
paid when they're on the call. Yeah, so not fully volunteer, but
paid while they're working. And so that's when I when I went to Flint
Township and got my my my start and all this. It was a real
learning curve. We did things differently, Like the chauffeur was the was the
only firefighter at the station. He was the officer, the driver, the
firefighters. Everything's still do to the day, the mayor, to the call,
and then they take it right in the next All right, I'll take
around so water the water. The chive guys show up because they're they're full
timers. Then the call guys show up, and then they're the crew.
Imagine going to a huddle and go all right, who we got here?
You got to know everybody's capabilities right now based on who you got right now.
Right. So it was kind of crazy times for me, uh get
my teeth dirty. But I remember my first fire there. It was uh,
it was at a at a grocery s towards my wife and we had
the pager and the pager went off, cool in the line, what do
I do? And man, and I'm like, get get our groceries,
let me you up front, and so I drive like a fool out of
hell to go to this chimney fire who wasn't the big fire, but it
was my first, right and I'm shaking and trying to get my nerves straight
and I'm okay, But I gotta tell you, guys, my first month
as a firefighter in Flant Township, I found out what was really, uh,
some of the worst parts of our jobs. And one weekend, I
uh, we pulled a grandmother and two two small kids out of house and
we didn't pull them out in time. They had burned significantly by the time
we got to them, and so it was afterwards of recovery and I just
never forget. The one thing that stuck on my mind is when we got
inside to get to the kids, they were actually in bed still, and
they were hugging each other and they looked like little guys and all You're like,
fuck, And then I turned around and I seen the smoke detector hatch
was open and dripping down and there was no battery, and fucking stuck in
my mind, fucking stuck in my mind, like, holy shit, if
they could have just known, they could have got out of here. And
so that was And then two days later Like I said, we respond to
the emergencies, and the idea was to meet the truck there. Well,
this is a fucking fire happened. There is a car accident actually actually happened
right around the block from me on the expressway. This van jumped over all
of the road and crashed down, and then the motor smashed back on this
guy's leg and had him trapped. And as I'm coming across, there's no
truck, no nobody on sen yet, just me and I watched this van
take off and then I see this guy scream to death. Man, there's
nothing I can do. Base fall. It was fucked up. Oh my
god, rude awakening to the to the job. And I remember we didn't
have critical incident stress management then yet, you know, and so this is
ninety one actually, and I remember kind of uh saying I'm okay, I'm
okay, I'm okay, and she said get your ass to the station now.
And and then I talked to other guys. They said, man,
none of us have ever seen anything close to anything like that. Dude.
So I share those two stories because it really helps set my career up in
a sense, like anything I was gonna have to overcome. Now, if
I'm still here, it hasn't killed me, So I'm gonna be all right.
You know, it's it's not gonna be easy. But the one thing
I was able to gather is empathy for others that were going through similar situations.
They were well, they say, what doesn't kill you makes you strong?
Right man? Wow? Right before we get to the paid career,
you had a short career, uh as a singer. Right, as a
singer. I think he does video of them, Yeah, just a little
check it out? Pretty good that ship Swabby. I'm sure some guys are
cracking quite a few years of my life. Oh yeah, yeah I was.
That was like the middle nineties, right ninety Bro, Guys that are
on listening right now, young guys are going, what the fun was doing
the Rico Swab guy recently? Never mind? I mean, I mean,
if you ever hear Rico, the name Rico, I mean, if it's
Swaby doesn't pop, I don't know what the heck is going on that time,
right? I think it was the one hit. Wonder to what it
looks like? Yeah, yeah, to put did you see did you see
Rico space? When you're like, ye, it was like this I put
that on. That probably probably get copyrighted for that little thing, hopefully not
with what we have video recorders. Yea, yeah, I got Yeah,
you can use all the money you can get. I'm sure. Yeah,
probably right. You probably needs a few bucks. That guy getting Fox game,
that too. CAVALRICI remember only jacket broh Yeah, man, I face
Cavalricis and parachute pants, little as I had little abness ship, the battery,
the s bro. If you had Jordan ash Hey, listen, if
you if you're a hockey guy, what's what was uh? You remember Ronnie
du Gay in his commercial? What what pants did he have on? Cool?
Do you remember soon? Him? Phil Esposito? They all have lost
soon. That was like the seventies. Oh ship all right exactly, Brian
Webber, Thanks, that's gonna be playing for the whole show like this all
night. Wow. That was right before he went pro. If you will
played hockey, he had a ship shirt going hold on, we got we
got a couple of pictures of him and probably uh yeah, yeah, my
first turn up gear we have we have a little skin on my bones.
Then right, he's got he's got the porn mustache. The eighties poorn mustache.
Wow, wow, bro, we had must everybody had a mustache back.
It's like cologne. Yeah, man, there it goes with the fog
novel for sure. She got that's the probably pictures. Yeah, guys,
I hired in with on the sheet next to it. The uh. I
don't know if how it is where you guys are, but we all had
to buy ice cream for the crew after that ship. So it was a
running joke ice cream or a square big Hey, I'm just saying ice cream.
I'm just that's the I. Uh, you know, you didn't.
I didn't see you do this. I had to buy ice cream before it
was over. I bought many gallons and gallons around there. That's crazy.
You're doing the on cold painting and then it's not too long after you get
high. Right. Yeah. Within a year I was with the city where
I always intended to be. That's where I visited as a kid and got
my inspiration for guys like Sam Stewart and Jack Smyth, who who I had
noticed. Like I said, I used to visit, so I already had
my inspiration there. And then when I started, there was eighteen of us
and we went through the probably the first academy where we had to do pet
and all these other shit, you know, and so it was new.
We had a chief from Detroit who who left Detroit to come up there to
be our chief. He impressed we had to be runners, and I was
never a runner, man. I hated that part of this shit. Man.
But I tell you what, we bonded together because there was a new
challenge by all of us and shit like that. You know how it goes
when you're in the academy. It's good stuff, man. And most of
those guys we you know, we ended up having a great career out of
it. Some of them left earlier than others, but you know how that
goes. Yep. How was it when you first got into the firehouse?
You know? I was uh when my first group. What they did with
us is they you had to write. There was a engine, pumper and
then a squad which responded to every fire. We only had two squads in
the city. They were our air supply as well as all the equipment and
manpower. It's the role and the the UH, the engine would be also
medical emergencies as well as UH running on first runs on fires or all the
other emergencies. And then we did have a ladder truck back in the day.
It was it was at the time that I was there. It was
only manned by one person. Yeah, one guy is still that way.
In fact, they may even swing the guy over there. Now I'm not
sure swing the whole crew over if they need a ladder. So yeah,
it was really one ladder company in Flint. Only one ladder company in Flint.
What right, I mean going, well, they were going that ladder
company though it was only responding to commercial structures and high rise of course so
BA and the the energy companies. H yeah, for the squad squad Squad
company did the Lewis Squad I was going to work, Yeah, keep the
squad right right, So we had to do and they went to every fire
no matter what. So when I first started, you were signed either station
one or three because they had both squad all the trucks, or you had
to rotate maybe, but you spent one month on the on the ambulance,
one month on the squad, one month on the pumper. And so my
first month was then them boys wanted were just looking for fresh meet. I
got on that fucking box ambulance man for thirty days man, or you know,
nine ships, And I was like, because we do twenty four hours
on forty eight is off with forty eight hours off with Kelly Day. So
it's nine ships and paid fifty point four, you know. And so my
first month, man, I got dogged out in an ambulance. But it
was crazy because I was with a driver, Dave Berlinsky, and he was
assigned to it. That was his job, used to drive the ambulance at
the time, and we had first drivers on the ambulits. That was like
the worst thing he could do to a guy. Man. He was tortured
by that work all day, every day. So here I am a rookie
proby hell, I can't wait to go on the next freaking call. Man,
And he's a man, but bring the spirit down. So by the
time I got there, it was almost like, what's wrong, you know,
it's just barely just one barely wanted to talk to anybody. But it's
just because he's burned down on that type of work, you know. And
they ended up changing the system around, so it wasn't quite like that.
But so my first what kind of did the squad have? Rica? So
it was uh so you see may have seen, uh, you'll see a
picture later of our first it was basically a milk truck. It was a
panel truck and I had uh, maybe ten or twelve bottles on it to
change over and then the jaws of life are on it, the fans are
on its. Yeah, some truck tools. You know. We all basically
had the acts in our department. You were a truckie, you're engine guy,
you were everything. Man trying to get a picture of it. But
is that what looks like it's similar to that. Yeah, yeah, there's
one that's from Flint Township, actually Flint Township's squad back in the day.
So basically the way it worked is around about the eighties mid eighties, all
of a sudden, the city started taking a bit of a downturn. So
we started cutting back, as it happens, you know, and so I
had to do things a little bit more like on demand. So there'd be
days we'd have four guys on a pump and four guys on a squad and
two guys on a ladder. But those were rare days. In the winter,
like all summer, you're running three man pumps, two man squads,
or one man you know, and so it started to get worse and worse
as time started to progress. Because when I say worse, I mean worse
than the numbers on the trucks before two win two out rules came into play,
in particular, because you know, part of the story of Flint is
that we went through been through tough times because we had all of our eggs
in one basket here as a government, as a community, and that's with
General Motors. So like nineteen ninety eight General Motors, there's a UAW strike
and right after that, General Motors decides they're going to pull the world headquarters
and stakes right the hell out of Flint, and it left us just hanging.
So what happens when that happens is low tax rates. The citizens that
are left, they're not necessarily the workers, they're older. And so now
you've got vacant houses everywhere, and it becomes I mean, we already had
a problem with bacon house fires. Now it's just off the charts. And
on top of that, they couldn't afford us anymore. So then they cut
the staffing down so to bear bare bones man bare bone, so low with
all those people who are working in General motors, all the you know,
the diners and old people supply food for them, they're all going to go
out of business because they don't have that clientele anymore. Right, So where
the work went, the workers went, and that followed the mom and pop
shops too. And if you look at malls aren't a big thing anymore,
but our malls, everything around our our city started to suffer starting like two
thousand and one after and that's what kind of created some of the other debacles
we've had in Flint. That's well known. How many firehouses are in Flint.
In the peak, there were ten. I started with eight, right,
good question. I think there's five now somebody, if you're on there
right now, correct me if I'm wrong. You know that you're from Flint.
But yes, it's a it's a very small number. Now. When
I started, there was one hundred and fifty residents, fifty thousand residen one
hundred and fifty thousand residents. Now there's probably hovering around eighty eighty five thousand
residents said twenty twenty is eighty one thousand, yeah, eighty one. In
nineteen eighty it was one hundred and five stations, half half of the residents
left right Freako, How was it like you guys were going to fires back
then? Like, oh my god, yeah, like like so the problem
with having a splinter crew like that is you're all the whole city's going on
all the same fires, so nobody's getting a break. You don't matter if
you're north, then south, and the east or west. Everybody's going right,
everybody's going so the same fifteen to seventeen firefighters. At one point when
I in my career, we're fighting every fire that came along everybody all the
time. Oh yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, definitely, there's not
when I was even when we had two hundred firefighters, we pretty much knew
everyone. That's all two hundred guys knew that you stole that equipment back in
the day. The goddamn If they don't know they know now, then then
where is it you're really a firefighter? We had we had some pictures of
fires there, right, we have a couple, Yes, you have the
actually we have the good well we pull up, do you want to?
So this is an average got her uh you know. At one point another
we had a lot of fire photographers, uh follow us around because we were
catching fires all the time, and this one just happened to be rock and
we actually had a crew inside during this part when that firefights going on,
and as uh, the guy that was found himself uh in some near danger
was Corey Palmer and him and another guy. They got themselves out of their
thank goodness, but they got Harry's as you can see by that smoke condition
there, that's not looking good. Yeah, sure, velvet, this is
gonna taste like ship. Yeah. That's I was driving at the time.
And that's the type of building. It's like a one yeah, yeah,
that was That's a typical house in Flint, a single story. Uh.
Sometimes we have some two stories in the older sections of the community, but
most of them are single story. Wouldn't wouldn't frame don't have a whole lot
of brick buildings here like that house structures. Yeah, this Uh so this
is a piece of what's an average. We had to change our tactics and
I'm sure we'll share if we get time to share one of the pictures of
the guy, the battalion chief who created a policy on our behalf. When
we started losing all our manpower, we started to have to fight fires differently
because guys were getting hurt. Man, and then when they're hurt, then
we're running on real thin. You know, it's getting worse and worse and
worse. And and so we decided that we had to do something about these
arson fires because in the past it was just like any other structured fire.
If it's one room and contents or whatever, the ship's burning on the first
floor, we're going in that fucker and we're putting it out. But it
started to be where we had to wait for two and two outs, so
that delays the actual fire fight itself in a lot of ways. And so
we started to recognize that this was a habitual vacant house or abandoned house,
and we could termined off the front that no one was trapped, and we'd
let it burn to the ground. And so what we would do is we'd
set up a two and a half with the water curtain in between the houses
and the and the adjoining structures or whatever else is around it, so we
could contain it to just that one building. And by the time we were
done, when we started getting good at it, there's there's nothing left but
a foundation, and it's like urban renewal. But we don't like to call
it that, of course, but we you know say but I will say
this, it's it was hard at times. We're sitting on the fucking bumper
watching the house burn to the ground. Everybody said what the right, bad
PR, bad PR, But we had to do what was best for our
group. Everybody go home, man, Yeah, yeah, especially on some
some bullshit vacers. I mean we had arsonist running all throughout our community at
one point, especially in the same house, like five times already. Yeah,
yeah, exactly was one that was this one. This is my my
first Devil's night. Uh. The firefighter partment. His officer, he was
a a newer sergeant, Rob Mada, and I used to call him the
machuman Rob Mada. He was just macho man. He was his Hispanic and
he had a beautiful smile. He always looked like talking about suave man,
he actually was suavey. They always had the ladies on his man. You
know, he's that guy. He's just so such a cool guy. And
sorry, I'll bring some of the music back I got. Yeah, I'm
sorry, robbed and I on that structure. Man, it's the first time
that I was actually next to one of those burning the hell down like that.
And I'm behind him and and and I am just fucking cooking, man,
I mean cooking like I want to. I want to get out of
there, but he's standing here, and he's in front of me, and
he's in front of me. Man, it's sucking hot. We man says
it. I'm back. Did you say he was the officer? Yeah,
he was my officer. The pipe you should have to pipe. So our
sergeants on our squads in particular, and a lot of our sergeants if their
second on the second truck in yeah, they may have a pipe and the
end of their hands. Really. Yeah, it's one thing about our department.
And I could probably say that we're jack of all trades. We do
every every job that there is, and it's sad that it has to be
that way, but we've adapted. So that's our style. So when we
see others do it a different way, we're almost like, what are they
doing the same thing? We know what you're doing, but why are you
doing it that way? On the show, a lot like yeah, Dan,
why we show up with like fifty guys for for one bill? We
kill it with man, but we can't get another guy in the room,
eat it out. We beat it out with another guy. For me,
I'm in they're poking a whole one ak and somebody anybody, how is it?
Uh? What is Devil's Night? Like? Yeah, so Devil's Night.
For those of you that don't understand the phenomenon, it was really originated
back in the mid eighties in Detroit. Detroit was going through their own spell
like we're a baby Detroit, Mini Detroit. How do you want to put
it? Basically, whatever happens to that big city is a reflection what happens
here all the way back to the Detroit riots from sixty seven. We had
riots here in Flint shortly thereafter, so we kind of follow them in trends
like that for whatever reason. But anyways, when the what they would do
is it would it'd be Originally, from what I understand, it was gang
members that were jumping into their gangs by setting arsen showing that they're brave to
set an arson fire, and so then it's just started getting out of control
and the whole city's on fire and Detroit well up in Flint we said whoa,
whoa, whoa, whoa. So the following year, like eighty six
or seven. It became a phenomenon here and by the time I got a
job in ninety two ninety three, it was a big deal. And like
that particular fire that you showed, I was on a squad truck that night.
The squad was going to every fire. Well, you can only go
to so many fires in one night. There was actually two hundred calls for
the fires that night, whether it be a car fire, grass fire,
or certainly structure fires. Well over sixty structure fires that night. So I
was on a squad that in twelve hours, we were eleven separate fires and
we're doing everything from squad work to I mean, it was crazy. I
remember when I overtime. It come in that night and I said, hey,
Cap, I said, you might if I ride the squad so I
can see some action to night. He said, yeah, go ahead,
ree. The guy comes in about twenty minutes early, the call goes out
for the first structure fire, and I didn't see the firehouse for like seven
hours. When we were completely out of air, completely out of everything,
we had to go back can I was with some old guys, Ah,
no, we can't go to no more. And I was like, oh,
but and by the time it was over, I was so grateful those
old guys skin got it a break, because I said, what in the
fuck did I do? We were crazy ructure fires. To go to structure
fires, we had to pass them because we weren't you know, that wasn't
our assignment. So it was crazy as hell in the beginning of Devil's Night.
And slowly but surely the department started to say, we we just can't
do this on our own, and we decided to have task forces on Devil's
Night, so we brought an on call or volunteer fire departments from throughout the
county and they actually worked alongside of us. So they come to our firehouse
and so if there's a fire in this station's territory, that whole crew had
a whole working crew of firefighters to go to that. I'm probably happy to
do that. Oh hell yeah, man, you talk about going hang out
in the turnout room, Yes, coming off of that gear and trying to
share a store. But they got some great experience from us. Sometimes we
didn't like the atmosphere because it's almost like a festive atmosphere, and really it's
like, what the fuck, you know, because tomorrow morning. We're gonna
be right back at it after you guys are gone kind of thing, you
know, because you use the last about three day span where you're just constantly
fighting fire. It only actually stopped right when people used to stop walking the
streets right the community. Yeah, yeah, right, for sure. That's
between the abandonment of the city and the lack of the people actually walking and
taking care of their neighborhood. I mean, you go down some streets and
flint right now, you don't know where the sidewalk is because it's so over
grown, So people have to walk in the streets, you know. And
this is all a byproduct of like I said, general motors putting a flint,
putting General motors in their only baskets. So we didn't diversify our industry,
which means you know, you know what that means. I don't have
to explain. Maybe I do because you come from a big conglomerate, but
in a small city like this, it defines a city like ours, and
so fucking also define what happens they leave. What I wanted to ask you
how was when you got there? What was the makeup of the fight upontment?
Was it? Is? It mostly white? Is it mostly black?
You know? How was that? Oh? Yeah, yeah, that's by
the time I got there was pretty diverse. Like. So, one thing
that happened in my career is I actually became a historian of the fire department.
And I could date back to nineteen sixty one when Joe Davis became Flint's
first black firefighter, and it was another twelve or thirteen years before a group
of black firefighters came in. So he's he went through the whole sixties and
through all that strife that was going through sixties somewhat alone. Wow in that
sense. Yeah, And so the first black firefighters came along in seventy three
as a group. It started to change the complexity complexions for lack of a
better term, of the department. But so we had it. I would
say it was around fifty to fifty give or take, you know, as
far as racist were concerned. And we also had LATINX you know, Mexican,
Hispanic. Also we had women. So our first women came on the
job in nineteen eighty five and the chief at the time was a different chief
that came from Detroit, and it was his mission to to bring women on
the department. So when they came aboard, you know, they were certainly
met with what a lot of women met in early years of firefighting. You
know, they were they kind of banded together and always have stuck together.
Though I don't know if you have known of any groups of women that hired
in early on. Oh yeah, And they kept that way the entire career.
And I don't blame them, and I sometimes admired that. Sometimes I
didn't, of course, but most times I admired that because I wish that
I could have the same type of bond with with a group of people that
I hired in like that. But so I got into the union early on,
right, I've gotten a flip. Firefighters Local three fifty two National Association
of Firefighters, proud union member. My dad was a union member of the
UAW. He worked for the shop. That's how we got up. Our
family got up to Flint, Michigan, and so I had I had big
dreams of Brander because I remembered when I was a kid, I went to
this big event called the Firefighters field Day Festival or Firefighters Festival, excuse me,
Firefighters Festival. And when I was a kid, with all the fire
trucks in town were there and they had water ball going on one of those
types of events, and I remember sitting on the fire truck and pulling that
damn American le France bell, right, that's name. I want to do
this. So when I got on the job, we had a little bit.
It was a bit of a softball tournament. There was a few activities,
and I said, you know what, I think we can do this
even better, bring it back to old school. So I put together with
a committee of people. Was certainly wasn't me by myself. That's back when
young people would say what do you need, and you'd have old people like
everybody, what do you need? And you'd have a committee of people and
we'd all disseminate duties and then all get done. It wasn't just solely on
one person's back, right, And so we create recreated the firefighters Stiel Day
Festival. And that's what really launched my opportunity to become vice president of our
union because they said, oh, this guy, you went that far became
a vice president of the union. Yeah. So when I say vice president
of community relations as basically the second vice president, and my job was creating
opportunities for our department to be seen in the positive public light, defend them
if things weren't so positive, and certainly create opportunities for our firefighters to have
activities within the community and you know, give us something worthwhile to live for
and be a part of. Show God show some of those pictures of the
pr pictures there, right, Okay, yeah, So now one of the
people that intrigued me when I was a young firefighter. I was in the
fire Junior Fire Department program in my school in Flint, and these firefighters will
come out and you guys, you could probably believe it is now that you
know how fanatic I was. But he had to take a test and basically
each week you brought home this little diagram to go over hazards in your house
with your parents and then take a little test over what they talked about.
So each week I aced the test, had everything, and I get promoted.
So I got promoted all the way to fire marshal, right, which
didn't surprise many people that watched me actually do it, talking about it ten
years old as a fire marshal this little group. So when I got into
the department, I had an opportunity to teach fire safety, and I was
nervous as hell. Man, I didn't have kids or anything. I didn't
know what the sight of kids. And this firefighter actually taught me fire safety
in that class, pulled me in his office and he gave me some tips
and he said, this is going to be the most important part of your
career. Yeah, man, how to do this? And so it actually
became a niche anybody that knows me personally, he knows that I didn't just
teach fire safety. I taught fire safety. Is my the biggest probably part
of my career is being able to connect with our community and kids and adults
everybody. But it all came because because of uh, you know, those
guys inspired me. And I gotta I gotta tell you guys this because it's
important for those that are listening right now, young firefighters in particular. You
know, I'm gonna leave some some things, uh, some words of wisdom
in the past or at the end rather excuse me, but I think now
that we're talking about fire prevention. So I was a young firefighter and I
was, uh, you know, as you young firefighters do, you're ready
for the next one. Man, you can't wait to prove how how tough
you are and how you can do this job, and me as a skinny
fucker, you know, that's all I was worried about. One of these
guys I could actually do it, improve in it. And so one night
I said to a senior guy, said, man, I hope we catch
a hot one tonight. Man, I'm ready. He said what I said,
Man, I'm ready. I hope we catch a hot one to night.
I'm ready. And he said, what did you just say? And
I told him again, and I'm like, what the fuck is I start?
You know? He said, So let me get this right, Rico.
You're hoping and wishing for someone to have the worst night of they're fucking
time, so you can prove to us how tough you are. Said you're
not fucking tough. And I was like, damn. So between that and
the opportunity to teach fire safety and the fact that I seen that that smoke
contector hanging with the those streets, packers said, this has got to be
part of my career. This is more important than me responding to the emergencies.
And so that's why the way I looked at it. We used to
say that old time. I hope we go to work tonight. But you
don't realize what people lose. I mean, if they don't lose a life,
they don't lose a loved one, they lose all their personal belongings.
Probably it's from the fire, the smoke damage. We're not talking about couches.
We're talking about grandmall these pictures, you know, irre right. And
I figured it out not long after that when I would leave fires, you
guys, I still didn't feel good. It's not like I felt better about
putting the fire out, especially at not I mean, had occupied Bacon,
I could give a fuck less, but occupied I always felt like, damn,
that sucks. Man. It never felt right, no matter if the
loss of life or not. It's how it goes. But we'll get back
to what you said, right. You can't stop like you can't change any
of that stuff, you know, I mean, you hope to change it,
but it's going to happen. And you do the best you can do
at those things. Sometimes it's good. Sometimes it's not so good, you
know for sure. That's what I tell the young guys. Go to work,
Timeland. How about we hope if we do get cold to work.
We just do a good job and go home, all right, you know,
right, Hey, that's probably a better way, young guys. I
hope we do a good job tonight if we get called. Yeah, yeah,
you don't have to wish on the fire. It's gonna happen either way,
right, yeah, right right, yep. So two thousand and one,
you're promoted to apparatus operator, which it supposed to be like your chauffeur
calls first drivers. But we got a little promotion. So that's how they
gave us a promotion. Mccallins, the apparatus operator. But yeah, that's
kind of young in a firefighter's career. To be honest with you, I
had about ten years on and because everything had changed so quickly, it put
people like myself out of the the back seat into the front seat. I
really wanted to be a driver my whole career, to be honest with you,
I used to watch the guys going on the street. I ended up
buying my own fire truck that she'll see here a little bit. Wow,
I got my own fucking fire truck. You talk about it. Yeah,
he's probably look like this guy is a geek firefighter. We've i bought that
from the City of Flint. Man, Uh, well, I don't own
it anymore, but uh I when I was a kid that used to work
in my neighborhood, they had a different number on It was Areial fifteen at
the time, and so I used to see it go by, and I
knew the sound of the American of Francis when they come down. Don't you
know those distinct So yeah, i'd always know if you and my friends at
the back of the time, he said, well, are you crazy?
Man? There was no fire truck coming, and then there one of them
will go by. So when I got a chance to buy this, I
actually bought it from auction from the city for one thousand dollars. You guys,
wow, I couldn't believe I owned it. And so when I said,
what am I going to do with this truck? And so that fire
station you see it leaned up against there, this old station too. It
had been a decommissioned station and a private owner owned it. He was a
police officer. And I'm I'm looking for this guy, and I didn't know
he was looking for me. I was looking for him because I needed a
place to park your truck. He's looking for me because he needs someone to
help put those storms up on that window, right me. And I said,
how about storage in the station for the winner? And he said,
all right, so quick story about that particular fire truck. When it was
first commissioned, it was commissioned in that old firehouse right there. Wow,
it's a nineteen sixty eight America of France, and so that's where it actually
got its birth with the City of Flint, back when we had yellow yellow
rigs, of course, and so it was so cool to back it in
that old firehouse. Man. You know, it's kind of creepy too because
it's it's an old firehouse. But that building wec's it still sits there.
He sold it to a family member and they're sitting. I know, we
talked. He had talked about putting a restaurant in it. But ultimately when
I walked in that building, you guys, and I seen the wooden ceiling
in that building, all the woodworking from the nineteen twenty six structure that is
or twenty seven, no twenty six, anyways, all woodworking. I holy
sh I could feel history in the building. And so I said, hey,
what do you think about if I started a museum here, and he
liked the idea. So I launched a Flint Firefighters Historical Society in two thousand
and three, two thousand and four something like that, with being that I
had that truck, and I really went hard for it. I got a
nonprofit Organization's just that's the firehouse right there. Amazing. So the thing of
it was, though, is I had way more interest than time, and
I had way more interest than other people had interest. So I had to
actually squash the whole plan. Man. I had to come to terms with
that I wasn't gonna be able to do it, and and I ended up
squashing the whole thing. And it was sad in the one sense. But
I got so involved with hockey that I was like, I can't do everything
in this world, man, And my son started playing hockey, so I
started switching gears and shit like that. That's an amazing building, bro,
what you do to end up doing with the rig? So I sold at
you guys, And I say it like that because I didn't want to sell
it, because there it is. Yeah, I did not want to sell
that truck because it had so much sentimental value, not only to me,
but so many retirees that when I see them and i'd had the truck,
they'd be just giving me a hug and wanting to sit in a rig and
ship because I used to take it to uh to us oh shows and for
lack of a better term, I can't think of what they call it all
of a sudden, but for for fire trucks, right musters, thank you,
I used to take to them. We have a big muster here north
of us, and so so I bring it up there, and of course
having a flint rig up there was special within itself because they know it like
I had. A guy. I said, man, I need to really
do some work on it, and they said, man, them bumps and
bruises means it actually did some work in Flint. Fuck yeah. Yeah.
So I left it and and so when I sold it, I didn't.
I was like, man, I'm gonna put it on eBay and hopefully some
fuck in Ohio buys it and I never have to see it here about it
again. And so it sold and I started looking the guy up and he's
from Clio, and I said, ah, ship. Clia is just the
community north of me here, I said, ship. So when we got
together, and I talked to him. He's a firefighter and for a Clio
Fire department and nicest guy. Him and his wife came in and we talked
and I told him the value of this truck was way more than any bottom
money. That's him right there. Wow, he with the money that uh
uh that that that's the day I sold it to him too. He said,
I'll take good care of it. I promised you, Rico, and
he continues. His wife sends me pictures all the time with his kids on
it, like my kids used to sit on it and ship like that.
I used to take it to parades and just do fun stuff. My kids
were getting older so their friends ride with me on parades and it was just
fun to have. And I also take the schools when I was teaching fire
safety and you passed it. You're passing it on right, it could have
been. Yeah, for sure. I felt good about where it's at.
I really do look at the flashlight and then you're on the top of it.
Yeah. Yeah, I had a lot of original stuff. Of course,
being a quartermaster didn't hurt. But anyways, yeah for sure allegedly allegedly
could have yeah nothing writing anyways, Uh yeah, So my role in the
in with the union though that it's really what took me to a whole different
level in my career. Like I didn't really foresee it, but I knew
that what was important to me was that nobody realized what us firefighters did other
than put fires out, so they've seen this a crisis only. And I
knew about fill the boot, and I could go down to all the lists
of pleasor of things that we do outside of our job to help our community.
And so I began to make it my point to when I got the
role with the union, to put us in front of our local news media.
And we have three stations here locally, which is not that typical for
our city, our size, and our area, so we basically have their
attention and almost anything we were doing. And I just started saying, hey,
we're doing this, and I'd be there. Hi, I'm Rico filling
flying firefighters. I'm like, I'm not sure if you've talked that, you
know, And you know, He's like, dude, that's all I did.
You know, I'm sure people and this is going, oh this fuck,
you're here, But anyway, Yeah, so I started off that way.
It wasn't something I actually planned. I had a communications class in high
school and that's really my only experience with it. But I had this passion
for what we do, and then it just started to sing through. And
what I did seems probably egotistical, but I would I would videotape every interview,
and not to say, oh, look at me on TV, but
to actually study my mannerisms, how is and how news worked. I study
news so that when it is my turn, I wouldn't feel so nervous and
anxious. I would select my words. I actually read books about it.
And then I became friends with the local Beat reporters and we go to lunch,
and so when I interviewed with them, they were like interview with my
friends. So it wasn't so so yeah, that's my first dude, you
know, it's the nineties. Hey listen, I'm I'm I showed up late
for the fucking interview. So I show up and the uh, the journalists
that I'm working with, she she knows I'm nervous as hell because I asked
for something to drink before I sat down. So they're like, whoa,
Okay, this guy needs to So anyway, she starts interviewing me. She
knows I'm nervous, so instead of just let me like I'm doing now telling
you stories, She's like, so at the firefighters field day, you're gonna
have softball and you're gonna do this, and now you say exactly, exactly
exactly. Well, I got back from vacation after this aired. I didn't
see it live, and on an answer machine, that's all I go.
It was one of the battalions on it. Hey, exactly what do you
know exactly about it? Saying all these exactly what the fuck's wrong with him?
So I'm nervous. I pop the tape in, I watch it.
I said the word exactly nineteen times in twelve minutes, exactly exactly. The
other of this day, I won't say exactly. He's been analyzing our skills
the whole time. Bro, It's like, these two fucking guys. We
haven't read a book ever. I got to tell you, guys, you
know, I had an incredible career speaking to all those folks and and really
haven't making the most of my career. But whether it be going to the
scenes or whatever, but one of the things that was a byproduct of being
out in front, like that and kind of before you know what, I
started getting to this ground swell of you know, hey, I got to
get a song all the time it's I'm representing our department, but in the
same token, it's me being in front. And so slowly but surely I
started getting put up on a pedal, so I wasn't really looking for,
asking for and the problem with that becomes mby and people want to knock you
off the pedalstal. So that's the reality of it. So at times I
suffered through my career with people not you know, not understanding me. You
know, understand where I was coming from, thinking it was all about my
ego, which you have to have some ego in order to step up in
front of people. But it was never about that, and it was hard
to explain to some. But I didn't have a bad career because of that.
It's just one of those challenges, like you say, you had to
put in listen. Once you do that, when you're you know, listen,
people are going to agree with you. Even what we're doing. People
agree with us. People didn't, you know, we go to shows,
people disagree, you know, like, yeah, listen, you have you
could do whatever you want. You know what I mean, doesn't change what
we're doing, doesn't change what you did. You know, how you felt,
what your drive was, and you know that's why your life you know
what I mean? Yeah, sure you said that, right, Absolutely,
that's it. Yeah, but before you guys go off, can we can
we talk about this? Where's coops? Coops has got to be in there
now? Uh so, Yeah. For one of my roles and the fire
department was to uh uh we produced a calendar as a fundraiser, as a
beefcake calendar, clearly and uh these are these are our specimens at the time.
I think this is ninety three or four five, I can't remember,
but I can remember had uh, you know, fire for we had to
get the hole all the guys in the on the calendar that were in this
calendar we had everybody had to get new helmets. Their fucking heads swallow up
so big their helmets were split. Was that one guy got the held over
his junk watching right now, cologna geewe. You're watching this man and why
held it over your drunk? He's watching the night. One of the guys
I love just make it look like it's his hands. It's always the pike
X to the guys are holding right. I never really looked at it that
now I'm even how they hold it. It's like so like fake. You
know that's not fake. You gotta live us down now. So the one
on the left has got a really unique story to it. So somewhere put
these things on. You got to be a part of it, right,
you can't. So we decided that year we were gonna make authentic pictures.
So we're going to burned out structures and ship like that. And so we're
at a burned out house there and it's actually pretty god damn cold out and
I'm not a big guy. As you can tell. I'm not pretty fond
of my chest, you know. And so I was trying to make sure
I got a good shot there from you know, right right. And so
I go up the ladder and photographer he's actually from New York. He says,
hey, man, he said, I see your boxers. Come on
down here and take those downs. So I come down the ladder and I
hike them down and I go back up the ladder. Well, I forgot
to put my suspenders up. It's really what happened, man. So I'm
taking a picture. I'm looking off serious and the guys are fucking They're just
on the I'm like, look at my face? What you guys laughing about?
And so then I come down and they're like, hey man, there's
a cold back there. And I looked, that's all the ship. I
said, you can't shoot them, And so he's like, man, a
crap. Great girls are gonna love that ship. Go back up there with
the shoulder with with them up on my shoulders. And I look at the
proofs. Later my wife said, no, you gotta go with the ones
you're asking. You want to sell. You want to sell beef cake stuff
a little, the whole beef is. I'm confused about it. Said you
were looking for authentic pictures. I don't know. Doesn't happen all around the
country, Coop. I know that's how they roll on Flint. They put
little little to showing you know what I mean, little tucks listens. It
takes ball to send us that picture. For us, you gotta be laughing
at yourself. You're gonna laugh. You got some more, give me,
give me something you won't be able to recall. Ship you love every minute.
Hold on. We got a couple of group shots to yes, yes,
we all have no shirt on. No, that was the first one.
All right, we'll go back a little bit while you're doing the pr
thing. So with the with your high school. So this is uh,
this is one of our Each year during fire Prevention Week, we decided to
take it to another level and we wanted to make sure we introduce are what
we do for a living to kids that really haven't even We can go into
their classroom tell them what it's like, but we want to give them a
lived experience. So these kids that are in the turnout gear are actually high
school students and we're on do it and we put them through a day on
the job and it's one of our It's just such a cool thing to watch
these young people really get an idea what we do pulling holes off. And
then you know, we're obviously hoping that these young people following our footsteps.
So I was going to ask you we go, do you find that once
you start like the ball rolling a little bit, like you start getting like
the tradition with the kids following in the footsteps, is that happening over there
like in the fdm ony that happens a lot. Well, it doesn't happen
as much as it should, and I tell you probably one of the biggest
reasons why it is unfortunately, So it's a the kids here are products of
their environment in a lot of ways. So that what I mean by that,
To give me example, I'll go out to in my career, have
gone out to schools not just in the city Flint, but throughout our entire
county. And when I'm out in the county, it's it's a dual thing.
Obviously, it's to talk about my career, my role and what we
do and try to introduce people to it. But it's also to be quite
honest with you, to give a reflection of a positive black person that they
can look up to and say, oh, no, you know Flints,
right, yeah, yeah, Flint's such this spot that they only see on
the news and the negativity and all this that I want to make sure that
I put Flint's best foot forward when I went out there. But in those
processes, I'll ask students, you know, you know what my goals were,
I'd like to know what yours are, do you have any And categorically,
when I'm in the suburbs, ninety percent of those students could tell me
something. Categorically in the Flint schools, ten percent could tell me something and
it was really a travesty to me. And so when you what you're seeing
is a level of hopelessness. So they don't when they look out and I
say, they're a product of their environment. When they look out and they
see vacant structures, they look out and see decaying city and school Sime,
yeah, all this stuff, that's all they understan stand and know. It's
only a few of them get plucked into the situation where they say, hey,
this is your opportunity, this is a way out. And so we
keep trying to provide those opportunities through the program like that. But you know,
the reality is is that we we get a handful that following our footsteps,
but it should be much more and it's something that you know, we
need to continue to work on. Obviously, let's go back to that picture.
Two things that I want to point out. Look at the guy in
the right. Look at the side of that fucking guy. What is it?
Looks like a violin case? What is that? And the other thing
is who let that white guy creep into the picture? Got love? Mike
Crocker and he's still on the department thirty some years. The big guy there's
fire Marshal's in the Marshalls then realized he's like, oh, ship, I
must be the wrong picture here. What the fuck, hey man, we
gotta do you ever have any of those guys that that you know for sure
got you know, any of those kids that came through that program that got
on on the job. Not to my knowledge, not in recent years.
I think there may have been one or two, and but to my knowledge,
no, it's just so tough, right because you don't have them any
guys on the job. So it's right, you know, so we don't
have a lot of what the place is like after you and now I have
as nepotism, we don't have virtually any of that we have. We had
some back when I hired in. There was a couple of guys whose dads
are in the apartment through the next class or two after. But now that's
all changed, and I think a lot of it has to do with how
our pay has been stripped down to bare minimum or benefits or so nobody wants
this is a job now, it's not a career. It's a fucking job
and not a career. So young families, young men aren't gonna leave their
good paying job to take a pay cut, to wait five to seven years
to get full pay, you know. And so as a result of that,
you're getting huge turnover, you know, getting folks that you know,
our our kids aren't being said, hey, you come follow me at Flint
Fire Department. And the ones that do, they only stay there for a
cup of coffee and they say, oh, I can do better than nice.
Right, So we hear that up there, Rico, that you guys
were making six dollars ninety five cents an hour, And yes, yes I
was. I was making six ninety So what was really crazy up until and
when I made it to the station, I was, I got a boost
to eight ninety an hour. And that's ninety just in ninety three, right
after the academy. Just a few years ago, they were making just under
ten dollars an hour in the Flint Fire Department. Since I've retired, like
twenty nineteen twenty. Oh my god, if you're on this call someone please,
I mean on this uh podwas before I do it? Yeah, because
it is, Uh, it was shocking to me seven eighty seven an hour
when he started in two thousand seven McDonald. They're making fifteen dollars an hour
forgett's sake, right, right, So so it gives you a good idea
what the issues are with front fire departments. Hard to keep a long periods
of time, and those that stay get completely burned out by the end of
their career. There's a few of us that stay because we love what we
do and where we do it, and that's why we're there. But it's
fifty two I'm sorry to mean interrupted a quote to what I'm looking at right
here. As of February twelve, twenty twenty four, the average annual pay
for a firefighter in Flint is fifty two thousand dollars fifty eighty nine a year.
I will say this cost of living in the Flint region is lower than
other areas of the country, so that's to be relative. Still, it's
not a work wage. So we hear that. We hear that not so
much on the show. I mean, we do a little bit. But
when we go out to shows like the fire expos like you were saying,
Mustard, you know whatever, you know, guys come up to us from
Saint Louis. You know places like you would think have you know, guys
are making more money. Yeah, you know, similar to what you know,
fifty fifty thousand dollars. You know how you have two three kids?
Right? You know, I don't care where you're living. Got that.
I don't care where you're living. Hey, guys, And I'm not rubbing
this any wrong way to the guys that are working right now. But I
have a I have a retirement job. I'm making forty five thousand dollars before,
and I have way less responsibility. So and you're not running into burning
buildings. Fuck, No, I got dumpter fires, different dumps. No,
that's all that. He's breaking up fights. Yeah, we're going to
get there. We're almost there. We'll get it too. The hot Let's
get to the quartermaster first, that's the quartermaster. Yeah. So that that
opportunity actually saved my career for another five years because at the time, our
department took another severe cut, and those drivers, they are driving the trucks
the scene instead of setting up and helping the other the first truck on.
Now they're suiting up and going in And I'm like, man, I've been
doing this too long. I'm almost fifty at the time, or I was
about forty five, but I wasn't feeling it anymore. I didn't I didn't
trust the structure of the department so to speak, you know, on another
number of levels. But so the opportunity kind of presented itself. This quarter
master was there, wanted to make a change, and I was surprised.
It blew me out of my and I was in the fire prevention provisionally and
it opened up as a forty hour job, which I was like, oh,
you know that I had to get used to going the grocery store after
work, which is there ain't nobody Yeah, so uh anyways, I uh,
I got in the fire Quartermaster and I really found uh foundel an ish.
I didn't think I would because I've down the basement. I was like
a troll under the station right at first, and I told Chief I did
not want to be no troll down there. So don't be mad if I
show up the fire scenes and ship and just support. I'm not going to
go tak up and go on. Because Quartermaster when his first form was formed
for a guy that had congestive heart failure and gave him opportunity we had enough
manpower. Then the assistant chief was doing that work at the time, so
that's how the job started. Then the next person had asthma and she held
it for like nineteen years, and the next person, he didn't have the
best health at the time, took the opportunity. For me, I was
healthy and I was chief. I'm not here because I'm not healthy, man,
I just hear because I want to extend my and plus I got to
pay raise as a lieutenant's pay, like the last rung that I could make.
And so for those five years though, I really took took what I
did serious, Like I knew I was there to serve the firefighters and it
was the first time I was kind of in that role. But I took
it to heart, like you know, I want to I'm I know what
it's like to be them and have wants and needs and want the best equipment
even though we can't afford it. I'm going to do my best, you
know. And and yeah, I turned into the jerk once in a while
too, because quartermasters tend to do that act like it's their shit. But
when you see people wasting, you go with the fight. I did that.
I was for my last year. Guys, yeah I want yeah you
ain't getting those yeah yeah, but was it? Was it the place that
you went in and stole a lot of equipment? Yeah, that's what I
wanted to tell you, is a full circle of circle. Been there once
in a while and just kind of shake my head and look around at that
ship because some of it's the same ship that was there. Then I'm serious,
aunts and ships still in there for eighty three. But it was a
full circle moment for it was kind of really ironic. I was the quartermaster
the way I started my spot there. Yeah, like you say allegedly to
great quarterback, Yeah, he's one of the guys that when he first started
in, So I took this role on responsibility like when guys first come in.
Now I'm going to play uncle Rico to you. I'm going to put
you aside because I'm giving you a fit test on your mask. But whatever
I got just you and me and I get a chance to tell him what
it's really all about. You know, don't if you're sensitive with el somebody
screaming at you or cussing at you, you're gonna have to understand that you
got to adapt that because next time it may be a fucking ceiling calming down.
He's fucking calling you, screaming at you because saying, well, you're
screaming at me, and then all of a sudden, the ship's on your
head. Right, Understand those kinds of things and just kind of keep your
mouth shut, keep your nose down, do your job, proved by actions,
those kind of things. And he was one of those guys that I
know. Now he's at another department. He's one of those what I consider
a casually a department because he's a good firefighter, a good man, good
family man. Now and now he's not there to help keep that fire department
going in the right direction. Yeah, yeah, it was very bad over
the last several years. I can't tell those stories because I left at a
very critical time, at probably the best time I could have. It was
going downhill quick. It's better now, it's better now. They have a
chief there who who was a chief before. I mean, and him used
to battle. When I was a vice president. Some of the guys didn't
like me because I'd battle the mayor and I was a black guy battling a
black mayor, and they would wonder about me. But I was battling for
our guys, you know, residency rules and ship like that. This chief
he didn't like me because he said some disparaging comments once and they all came
out and it was all it was. It got crazy put that way.
He's come back and now that it's he's come back and there's none of those
old hats. There's novandadas. He's got a different outlook. He's older.
He's letting his guys run and gals run the fire department the way it should
be ran. And they're getting new equipment and they're working with our funds and
things. They have brand new trucks the whole city. So, yeah,
it doesn't look like it did one night I left. It looks better than
when I left. But a couple of years after I left, it was
whoa they can tell you Godzo. There was a picture of Rico was talking
about the pre where the chief had his arms or the guy had his arms
around the two people there. That was that one. That's it's old station
three. It's the old crew there, older crew, should I say.
And a young rookie, uh Jason, he's he's now he's a veteran and
he's like you can't even he can't even believe he's a veteran. There the
rest of us are Albert and that picture of retired yeah a driver. You're
not talking about this one, are you? No? No, No,
that's uh, that's your that's your Red Corse Award. Yeah. The other
couple of group shots that I have is this one. Oh, there we
go, there's uh this after a work instructure fire. One of my favorite
crews of all time I worked with and uh catching poles. You know,
it was kind of hard to find fire pictures of fires and ship we don't
you know, we don't typically stand around and poles like this for fires man.
We just it started to become the era where you catch a you know,
a camera phone unseen and the guy in the center there with this holding
a pipe pole down. I think that's what it is. His name is
Andy Graves, and he's a Battalian chief. I think he may have gotten
higher than I can't remember, but regardless, he's the author of the let
it Burn policy that helped not just our department, but it also started being
viewed by other departments in our size group better ways to combat these fires and
and not get our firefighters hurt. So yeah, he's that guy. Okay,
did you find the one gun? Because the only other group shot I
have was this one. So that's one of the last clues I worked with
after I got promoted and and God rest his soul. Ricky Hill is in
that picture. He's the guy who was arm around around a couple guys,
and in fact, every picture I found with this guy he has his arm
around somebody else was yeah, and uh he died unfortunately last year suddenly at
a fire skin suffered a cardiac episode of some level. And the guy right
next to him, that would be to his left, our right, Brad
Ortwine, who's probably on this call and get a little emotional. He was
actually a person who started giving rescue breasts and started. He was the first
found him, opened the door and Ricky fell out, and uh he had
to catch him. And uh. It's very very troubling time for us,
even me being retired. I mean it hit me hard and being on the
outside for the first time looking in on a situation like that and not being
able to, you know, give comfort the way I felt like I always
had in the past was really tough on me because I was part of critical
incidence stress management teams for a majority of my career as well. Yes,
it was a year ago. Get back to the Yeah. Yeah, one
year anniversary of losing it, Ricky was yesterday. Yeah, rest in peace,
brother. Let's talk about the hockey creative, I rooie, all right,
let's talk about it. Al'm ready alight shows over so you guys can,
yeah, everybody, So I tell you how I got into hockey.
You told I told you. Actually I became a student trainer. Well,
I followed my love in the sport as a as a referee. And when
I yeah, when I had the referee first though, I hadn't learned how
to stop yet, you guys, so it was fucking I was falling down
more than the players. Man back in eighty six is when I first saw
ball whistles and you can there is again. But it was, Uh,
it was a couple of things that I took note of early on. I
was a unicorn in the sport. There was no other people called, no
black people play sport in our area. And the guys that I played hockey
with in high school, when they come to the rink, they talk differently,
right, They used the N word and they'd used terms like I was
talking to some silly ship that they never would at school. That's what I
was up. Yeah, serious, why why is that? I don't understand
it. It was the callulture of hockey is what it was, right,
I know, like hockey roofy Yeah yeah. So at the time too is
yeah it was eighty six, so it was it different. But the second
month in as a referee, uh uh, I had a coach call me
over because I do a call and his assistant called me the inbomb and and
he told me he's going to kick my ass in the parking lot. And
I was like beside myself, like what the hell did I get myself into?
And I was I was quitting hockey that day. It was my last
day of hockey because I've seen him hurt enough. And uh, my senior
partners told me, he said, Rico, he said, don't don't,
don't do it. Man, he knew I was thown my ship in the
back or the last time. He says, you're going to run across racist
peep in your life, and it's how you deal with those racists and the
outcome that you want, that's how you're going to live. He said,
if you leave right now, he's doing exactly what he set out to do,
and that's chased you out of here. So thirty seven seasons later,
I'm still now. Damn Yeah. So I've had some incredible, incredible experiences.
But one of the things I noted all those years I was referring the
entire time I was on the department, it was playing the entire time I
was a department is my is my you know, get out my anxieties and
all the other things that it provided for me. I could. I could
release there, and I was in a different environment. I wasn't necessarily with
my firefighting friends. I was with this whole different group of folks. But
one thing I noticed as a referee in particular, not as a player so
much, but is that the kids were all the same. You know,
they look the same, they come from the same backgrounds. They're all cookie
cutter white kids from the suburbs. And I decided I was going to launch
a program to introduce kids from our city to our sport that looked like me,
came from backgrounds like I'm in and other kids along our city. So
we started to Flint Inter City Youth Hockey Program and we have kids between ages
seven and twelve that get an opportunity at it absolutely free. What I never
realized is that this was actually my second passion in life that came on the
hills of wanting to be a firefighter. So through that program we started to
get some some ground some groundwork, and and the one thing that we had
to struggle with is getting kids. There's such a disconnect between our sport and
our community. Even though we have we've had semi pro teams now we have
an Ontario Hockey League team here. They don't play the sport whatsoever, and
so why is that week of what? I really believe that they can't see
themselves in the sport, right, So if they don't have anybody to icon,
to look up to, to say, oh I know that player,
someone that plays it, there's no connections. So even when I come in,
I'm like the pied piper, right, like, what's he got He's
got a punk? Oh my gosh. I never think it's like I got
gold. It really is. Do you ever do you think too that possibly
could be Like listen, if they get a basketball, ten of them go
down to the school yard and play, but to play hockey. You gotta
get time on the ice, you got to get skates, you gotta get
a pop. It's definitely it's definitely expense, I would think initially more right
for a kid. So what we're looking at. So what I've had to
do is defind hockey differently, like from this more organic form on our feet.
First time I ever played hockey was floor hockey in school at gym and
gym, right. And so if we can take them and put them on
their feet at the same court that they played basketball with a stick in their
hand now and in a puck or a hockey ball, and now they get
comfortable. Now we can say, hey, you know what, I bet
you look good on skates. And then you teach them on the skate at
first like shit, and then you taught them this skill that nobody can ever
take from them, like riding a bike. Right. So no matter if
they stay in the sport or not, they got a recreation in the in
the winter in Michigan, we're one of the biggest recreations is ice skating,
right. So I started that program for that. Initially I thought, oh,
I'm going to get more hockey players, but then I realized that's not
going to happen in Flint, Michigan. I'm going to give them an experience.
A handful may stay with the sport because they have the structure, the
parent structure. Right, They've got to be driven around. Think about you
got to be driven to the games, right. Figure five siblings. One
of them is not playing hockey. It's not going to work, right,
It's just not going to work. And then again the representation, so they
don't see themselves. That's fun. But we have over the last nine years
straight, we have sixteen kids that have gone on to play organized hockey.
I have one in college, one it's about to attend college. So we're
being okay with our numbers. I'm so proud of it. Back in twenty
nineteen, this is how I got into a whole different realm of the world.
Dude, this is a This is incredible. So I was trying to
figure out how can I get attention to our story. And I don't mean
just running a media story that we have this program. I wanted to get
the tention of the black people in our community, and one way to do
that is through history. So I decided that I would Willie O'Ree as credit
as being the first black hockey player in the national high tea when he suited
up for the Boston Bruins in nineteen fifty eight. Everyone fifty eight in Boston,
only black guy in all of hockey, right, professional hockey. And
he has incredible stories. I won't go into his stories, but I wanted
to see if Willio Ree would come to Flint. We're on the heels of
the water crisis, which we may not get to tonight, but on the
heels of the water crisis, and wow, I wonder what I wonder what
the ice would look like. It was harder than normal, I put it
that any ways, So so I invited Willio Read to Flint. He was
interested come to Flint because it was Flint. That's what I'm talking about.
There was like a silver lining to the fact that this had happened to our
community. It took others were taking notice of us. He comes to Flint,
he witnesses our program. He's the ambassador for National Hockey League's Hockey Is
for Everyone program. So there's programs like ours. There's a big one in
New York. Ice Hockey and Harlem is a big program in New York.
New Jersey has one New Jersey ice hockey. They're very similar in the way
the structure of what they're trying to promote and give two kids that don't typically
play our sport, and so it comes to flat I can't believe it.
Before he leaves, he claims with my wife, there's an award that is
named after me. I want you to nominate him. And she's like,
well what, So she looks it up the next day on the computer.
Oh my gosh, this does sound like Rico and she's like, I got
get to get somebody to nominate him. And then she realizes that the nomination
is closed in three hours, Like, who the hell am I going to
get to write something? So she goes on a whim. She doesn't consider
herself a writer, and she writes this nomination, I get nominated, become
a finalist. When I became a finalist, I along with two other people
in our country that do something very similar. Creating opportunities through the sport of
hockey to better our communities is what the award is about. We became finalists,
and the way that you became the winner is to fan voting. So
they did a little piece and then the fan voting went through the Internet,
of course, and I pushed send once on that and it blew up.
And I'm going to tell you, guys, it wasn't just the hockey community.
It was my firefighting community and to my community at large. Because all
the things that I was able to present in the best of life on behalf
of our department and myself, that paid off dividends. So quick side note.
When I had won the award, one of the I was fortunate enough
to win the award, I was invited to Las Vegas, everybody to the
NHL Awards. So I'm there with ten thousand people in the audience, the
top players in the NHL, and my little lame ass from Flint, Michigan
who was a student trainer, and I'm like, what did How the hell
did I get here? You guys? So I'm there. Yeah, it's
a dream. It was nuts. It was nuts, you guys. And
I'm nervous the whole night. In fact, at one point in the night,
Keenan Thompson was the MC of the night and they do a little skit
and they say we need ten thousand Hamburgers for his you know that skin of
the show they used to do back in the day and like ten thousand hamburgers.
He says, yeah, there's ten thousand people. And I said,
holy shit, man, people. I told my wife, I said,
I don't even want to win. And she says, recall, I said,
I know there's people going to be disappointed. I mean, there was
watch parties in Flint. There was all the guys at the firehouse were watching,
all people all across our country, millions of people watching the show itself.
And I'm sitting here and it's the last award of the night. You're
watching this show. Everyone look up Rico Phillips NHL Awards and you'll get a
chance to watch this unfold. And so we waited all night. And after
I seen so this story that they ran. They ran a different story for
each of us and tell our story, and the story I gave him like
three or four different angles, and then one they pulled up the water tower.
I said, oh shit, because I'm really nervous about portraying our community
in a proper light. We're not a bunch of poor people from Flint,
and uh, you know, we're resilient here, and I get nervous that
people don't look us that way, and so I don't want to portray that.
So anyways, there it comes. I'm shit and it turned out to
be this incredibly cool story. So then I'm like, oh shit, I
might have won this. I had to take a piss so bad, you
guys, I can't get up commercial cane and I'm like a ship and uh,
I started chewing gum and then I was like, my wife, just
relax, I said, okay, okay, And then the moment truth come,
which is what you'll see, and my name was called and I had
an auto body experience and I went up there, you guys, and I
got to tell you this so make you want to watch it, right,
So as I as, I hug my wife and and she says, you
got this recoess, thank you, and uh I I shake the other guy's
hand from Detroit and who was also a finalist, and the other lady was
a finalist from Baltimore. And then that's when I realized, holy shit,
I gotta go up here now. Right the reality was sinking and quick because
this guy on this remote camera was right here, like, gotta look cool
now, I got look cool, like you've been here before. So I'm
walking and I won't look at the front roll, because front row there's gotta
be some I ended up going if you're hockey David was on the front courn.
Oh my god, did not see him because I didn't look at him
right. So I turned the corner. And earlier in that day they kind
of gave us a little run through how it would work. And but when
that night came, all the award winners are going up this main staircase to
get the award. Well, the staircase that I was supposed to go on
that they told us about was way over there. I'm thinking that they must
have sucked that up. I'm going up this big staircase. You're left like
I'm somebody you got going up the case and step Man says, oh no,
this ain't gonna just be easy like that. Rico drag my toe and
I bout bid it. Man, I was going down god man motion.
Then I get up there and I'm like, oh my gosh, can you
guys believe I just almost bit I caught myself, Thank God, I caught
myself. Everybody in the world's going, oh ship, the camera, the
camera. I knew everybody's seeing the ship. And I get up there,
and I tell the presenters. Willie Orie is one of the presenters. I
said, can you guys believe I must just bid it? And they were
laughing. Then I'm like, oh, ship Live TV. I don't want
to get the playoff. I gotta turn around. I got these words I
gotta say. So when I turn around, you guys. When of the
presenter says, Rico, this is yours, and she's handing me the award
and hold that for me, and I went right into like I've done this
before. Look at my hands. I'm like this, I'd like to thank
first of all, thanks, and I'm just and then and then uh,
then I go on. I decide I'm gonna add lift my fucking now,
and I'm gonna add pull pull with your remarks. And the only way I
had an inkling I might want is because they said my remarks were too long.
I'm like, if I didn't win, why do they care? So
that's the only the idea that I had coming into this. I may have
won, And so my remarks so often I'm reading them. Then I thought
to myself, we call ourselves flint stones here in Flint for obvious reasons.
Right, So I decide I acknowledge my friends and family and my hometown of
Flint, Michigan and abroad. Uh. And then I said something like out
of way flint Stones. But it came up flip flap, like get through
it, and my wife and I looked over there at her, and she
was crying. I was going to lose it. I know I would have
started crying. I was holding off right. And then just as I was
finishing my last statement, you won't see this, and likely in any of
the views that you see, but there's a black hockey player by name of
p K Sue Band who's now an analyst. He's bigger than life hockey player,
and he's in the stand. And keep in mind Alex Trebek was there
that year. I mean this, this place was loaded with who's who,
Who's who. Then I was careful not to look down, and as I'm
finished out my statement, my eyes drifted down and there was p K and
he's looking up at me. And the way I knew is he smiled and
did one of these, and I said, I got starstruck and I did
it. I said, thank you very much. I did half a black
power sign. It was going on tomorrow morning when I get my call feet
five thirty in the morning, I'm watching that thing. I go off stage.
You guys in the I'm walking and then I realized, holy shit,
I don't even know where I'm going. There's nobody with me, and I
look over the band and they're like do we play? Looking at me?
And then all of a sudden, he who the hell's calling me up around
because Catherine tappened. She's fucking awards. She's like, you want the award
trophy? Man, Yeah, I'll take it. And but it was a
day that changed my life, not for just that moment. When I got
back to Flint and I seen billboards electrying to billboards where congratulations Reco, five
of them throughout our town, in our downtown, there was something about that.
I realized I had something bigger for Rico, something different for Reco.
Not necessarily bigger, but different. Like all those years of wanting to be
a firefighter. I tell this story about wearing that badge, that fire marshal
badge when I was a kid. How am I going to take my badge
off and just be Rico like I was firefighter Phillips in our community And it
was a big deal to me and lots of other people, and I was
like, I can't go work at Walmart because I'll get fired for being a
people greeter. People fucking forget what they're shopping for by time I'm done talking,
right, So that's not going to work. But after winning the award,
I decided to retire. A lot of a lot of influences happened.
The department ha changed quite a bit. Leadership was in my opinion, not
the best at the time, and so it kind of drove me to a
point where I had to find something different, and I took I'm going to
take the high road out and not tell dirty stories about our department because it
doesn't matter now. I choose to be better, not bitter. But I
will say that I kind of left on the side on a side not side
door, almost just by what I talked about. What I believe is when
you get put in pedal stales, I mean the governor she to Flanning,
gives me a proclamation at the fire station. All of a sudden, the
Detroit Red Wings and come to the fire station. It was like overload of
Rico fucking Phillips, right, and it was getting under people's skin, and
and it just I fell unwelcome anymore, and so it was time to step
out. And thank goodness it all happened the way it did because it gave
me a chance to slow down and reflect. I started doing some really cool
stuff and hockey all of a sudden, and Detroit Red Wings had me down
there you go for a ceremonial puck drop. That same day, on my
way to do that puck drop, which I'm a I'm a referee, you
know me fucking puck drops had done. That was the most my first time,
and I dropped it about the same that's the bad part. But anyways,
Uh, on my way to the locker room or excuse me, to
the to do the ceremony puck drop, Uh, the guy said, Hey,
the coach wants you to come in and say a few words to the
players and read out to starting lineup. I mean, life changing for me.
I mean this was my opening statement was I'm just a kid from Flinn.
I'm not sure how exactly all I got here, but and anyways,
long story shorter, what it Then the pandemic hit and I think that's and
something occurred during that pandemic that happened to a lot of people do my type
of work that I do now George Floyd was murdered, and so it created
this call to action, and me personally, I'm not a Black Lives Matter
movement type action because I the way I looked at it at the time is
that it was pretty noisy. But I wanted to do something that sustainable.
I wanted to make sure that whatever I did was sustainable, not just raise
hell and let everybody know I was raising hell about it because everyone knew it
was unjust, or most majority of people knew it was unjust. How do
we change our environment around us? Is the way I internalize it. So
I reached out to Willie o Ree to see how he's doing, because we're
during the pandemic, and I told him I was struggling and with what was
going on in the world. And he said, Rego, I'm gonna tell
you something right now. He said, people are listening to you in hockey
right now and they want to know what you have to say, so you'd
better keep on speaking. And the hair stood up on the back of my
neck. I didn't know what it meant. I hung up, and the
next day I sent a letter off to the Ontario Hockey League commissioner and he
said, ironically, we're looking for someone. I wasn't looking for a job.
I was just looking to support whoever's doing that work because I had a
team here in Flint, and I want to do something bigger than just what
I could just local. I wanted to get bigger with my attempt, and
there was nobody who does this work in major junior hockey. So after six
phone calls that summer is twenty twenty, we created. The commissioner says,
well, what should we call you? After we created a position for me?
I said, I don't know. He said, well, I like
this director of cultural diversity and Inclusion. What do you think? And I
said, sounds good to me. And so I started working for the Ontario
Hockey League, which is one of the most prominent major junior hockey leagues sixteen
to twenty year old players in the whole world. The majority of draft picks
in the NHL each year comes through the OHL. So I got a great
track record and my role as diversity inclusion director is interesting. Some folks on
here probably be kind of like, how the hell, because even my hockey
buddies are like you're the church police now, because I'm like all of us,
I'm woody as hell. I try to be and try to have fun.
And I know for a fact, over my career I've said things and
I've heard things that are totally today's standards so to speak appropriate. Right.
I'm not going to say I apologize, because that's how we hope. But
I've had because of that experience, it helped me do the work that I'm
doing now. Have to take my own reflection of life and like realize,
hey, it doesn't make me a bad person. I'm not a at fault.
I'm gonna make mistakes just like everyone else, and just trying to get
help hockey players do that and help diversify the sport because, as you likely
know, it's not as diverse as it could be. And I think that
goes beyond players. That's the support staff, like the trainers and equipment managers
and the coaching staff and those folks. That's where we're missing the boat.
Our sport could be much stronger. I guess that's what I'm saying. I
know we're supposed to be talking about firefighting, but entertained, no, I
wouldn't be where I'm at without my firefighting career, I mean as far as
what I do. Now. Give you an example by that, I mean
in nineteen ninety five, when I was in the Union ninety six, the
females in our fire department didn't have policies that help protect their rights. Right,
So there was no separate dorms, no separate washrooms or bathrooms we call
them here in until I've been in Canada a bit, call them washrooms.
But anyways, we didn't have a separate facilities. We didn't have a pregnancy
policy, which was really something that was important. So I was on one
of the first negotiating teams to help bring that to light. And through that
process I got a chance to didn't know what the term meant at the time,
but just have empathy for others and recognize that that moment in time,
as well as many others, helped me prepare me for today and understanding my
role today for others. Right, isn't that really key for anything in life?
Right? Yeah? For sure? Takes you outside yourself. How tough
is it? We were talking, you know, we talked a couple of
times before, you know, the last few weeks, and we were talking
I think to this morning, and I was saying that, and we were
saying, like the way you grew up right, you handled stuff right?
I handled stuff right. So you know I was Italian and mostly you know
Irish thing right. It was just that's how it was. You had to
handle your business. You didn't want it to go outside of that. Yeah,
you know again we talk about that on the show. That might be
like an old school thought, you know what I mean. I think it's
a combination of you don't want to run out the first chance you get because
somebody called you a name or whatever. It is, right, but how
do you balance? How do they balance that? Now? Is it so
easy? No? What I try to exemplify is first thing is I don't
just say here's how, here's a book, read it. I go and
do presentations all the time with them. And what I try to do is
get them. One of the things I do is a cultural experiment or exercise,
cause experiment, cultural exercise with uh. And I reintroduced myself after they've
already gotten to know me a bit from a cultural stadmad like I told you
what my parents are like something I didn't tell you about my grandparents. I
don't believe that my grandfather on my father's side is direct descendant of slavery automobile
Alabama. I can trace it right to when they were imported into this country.
Uh. And then my grandfather on my mother's side is a World War
II veteran from the Nazi regime, fought on the front lines of Russian and
Poland. So if you think my family team Tree would have ever fucking collide
so genetically to be diverse in the way, I think is no damn way
that can't be right. But with that said, what I try to do
is allow each player in this case, we're tking about players to be proud
of who they are as a person, because I think sometimes what happens now
with the way the world's turn changing, I'm going to be frank because I'm
in a sport full of white people that white people almost feel almost a fist,
like I can't be myself. When before you could be yourself, but
then it was like it was in the essence, as if you were keeping
someone else down. That isn't necessarily way it is. So now the things
are changing, sometimes people find themselves on a defense about who they are and
who they can be, and so I'm giving that back to players. But
the idea behind it is so that they have respect first of all for their
self and their culture, but more importantly for everyone else around them, whether
it be in the team or their opponents. All have a different walk of
life, so is I'm starting to try to create ways so that it's easier
for them not to have it. In the forefront, I'm not going to
say it to begin with, so I don't have to worry about the scrutiny
of how I came up and on this other stuff. So in the fire
service, it's different. We're all grown men and women. And the most
important thing I can tell you anybody is if someone has crossed the line with
you, it doesn't mean it's time to go off and and fucking snap on
them unless it's something that's deep. See obviously, that's that's human nature.
It certainly isn't time to necessarily go run off and tell somebody what happened.
It's time for them to understand what empathy is and understand how you feel,
right and then through that process you'll probably feel how they feel because you'll understand
that you said some dumb shit before too right, and so it's a way
to connect better now and the past is just blow it off, right.
I was my first several years of life, I was Oreo, half read
zebra that my name wasn't Rico. When I got in the department. It
was some of the same thing. My black firefighter friends thought I was white.
My white firefire friends that was black. And so for me being mixed,
I was like, dance the line and I had to stop all that,
say, Rico, do what you enjoy doing, soul yep. I
was the black guy that played hockey and they loved it and they know it
and embraced it. The black guy that snowmobiles. You sure he's black.
Across the barriers, man, I love going across the other line and see
what happens. Man, I guess, but it's it's uh, it's it's
part of who I am. I think. Like I said, my mom
had always taught me that you judge, you know, the whole Judge book
by a cover thing. But she's always told me, you know, people's
characters get revealed, and that's the one you really need to worry about your
character. I got to tell my kids the same thing. Brocas the half
Spanish Asian half one. So yeah, yeah, tell them the same thing
all the time. And I try to express everybody, be proud of who
you are. There's no reason you shouldn't be, but just be be accepting
of other's difference from you. And that's that's where we all can kind of
like so before before we get too deep. And it's like I teach empathy
now, like I talk about it, but what we do in many cases
empathy is back here in the back of our head. We understand what it
means for ourselves in other people's shoes, but most of us only think about
empathy when we need it. We don't think about when we have to give
it. And so that when we start reversing that we're always your feelings a
first all the time. It's very hard to somebody else feelings first and say,
wait a minute, wait a minute, what am I saying to doing
right now that's making this How is this person feeling for what I'm doing right
now? You know? And some of it comes from blind spots. I
was raised, like probably everybody in this call, in an era where we
use homophobic slurs like there were nothing recognized. Now I recognize I'm different.
I had to learn that in this job. I said, some stupid ship
just since I've been on this job. So it doesn't escape. We still
do that, you know, Oh my god. U My brother was the
biggest offender of that old time. What do you yay? What do you?
What do you? What do you? But it winds up his son
is funny. Now all of a sudden, you know, God forbid you
slip and say, what's about with you? What are you? Girls?
You're like what? Wait? You were the worst? Were the world first,
one out of everything? One? Right? Right? Oh, here's
what for me? I give you this? So so I am skinny fucker.
I was always chastised for being skinny. But I cracked on a guy
too. For I remember this guy. He's letting hi better than I say.
He walked by one morning and home, we're about to roll call,
about to change, and I said, hey, everybody stop you hear that
screaming? Like what I said, I can't hear screaming, Listen, listen.
And I got everybody close, and all of a sudden, I lay
my ear next to my mass belt. I said, it's fucking belt,
it's screaming. To let him loose lost it because I'm a skinny fucker,
right. But so my point is I probably wouldn't say that joke anymore because
I'm sensitive bub being skinny. Right, Listen, when you get your balls
broken enough, Like, what are you gonna say to me that somebody has
said to me a million times? I was just gonna say that. I
mean, it really is very similar to the firehouse. I mean, I
played hockey my whole life. Any team that you've played on, if you
played with those guys all the time, it's very similar. Can you imagine
what the NHL guys, you know, all those guys the OHL, they
were with each other all the time, right, And what it's the same
as the fire department. You go outside the doors or you go play another
team. Right, Your team's the best, right, if that guy's fighting,
you're fighting, right, it didn't matter everybody's fighting. We're I mean,
you see it all the time, there's five guys fighting five guys because
that's your fighting. My guys were fighting, right, And there's the same
thing in the fire department. Our firehouse is the best, and you're gonna
have pride and you're going to try and beat the people in and do whatever
you have to do, and that's it. So I kind of always felt
there was a similarity, you know there in any group that you're in.
I guess the military, you know all that stuff. Just like my career.
I had to give up fighting. I fucking hurt myself throwing the my
shoulder, I didn't hit the guy hardy, and oh oh, all right,
we got to get back to firefighter. I think we got to get
to the old school. Is there anything else that you had before we get
to the old school? Else you want to make my face hurt? Face
hurts? Brother, my face? Is it that time? Can I get
it? Ready? It's that time? You got it? You got it?
All right, It's time for there we go the oloyay. I think
the biggest tip that I can take is that each day that you show up
to work, bring passion with you, even on those days you don't want
to you don't have that passion, learn that passion. And if you have
that passion, you got to share with others so they follow on your footsteps.
Because all of us have firefighters that never like me, grew up and
want to be a firefighter, and so they need to figure out what it's
about from where our passion lives. You know, it isn't it isn't just
looking cool in the uniform. It takes much more of that, as you
all know, so share your passion. And you know, one of the
firefighting things that I can say is that I think I said earlier, like
keep your mouth shut. Your actions speaks so much louder than your words.
And when your time comes to speak, speak up and be an advocate and
ally for yourself and and for others around you. You know, it's really
important because we're losing out the team in this, in this whole firefighting thing,
and it's become a bunch of individuals. And I'm hoping that those of
you that are listening to think to yourself, you know, I'm going to
be the one that helps pull our team together and makes it so whether it's
just your crew or you know, however many folks you can pull together,
pull them together. It's what makes your career your career. It's not a
job. It's a career, especially this special career that we've we were so
lucky to have. And for the old guys, there's you know, like
me, like trying to figure out what's next. Like you know, it's
hard is hired to make that decision. Like all the things, all the
variables that comes into play when you're trying to decide what to do next,
just realize one thing. If you can look at Rico. No, you
might not win a WILLI o'real ward, but there is something for you out
there. This is my second calling. Find your second calling. At fifty
years old, I was able to totally redefine myself as far as what my
importance would be. Nope, I'm not saving lives, I'm not preventing fires,
but I'm hopefully saving a bit of humanity. And and you know,
I'm taking my experiences that I've got as a firefighter with me wherever I go.
In fact, I was looking through my looking through my stuff today and
I couldn't find a flint fire hat. So I will put a flint fire
scully on. I can't believe model, but I will or them all the
time. So I got that right, You got it. I like a
little bit I wear the time. Yeah, awesome. You know what the
gods you can put you all going to say? When Louis called me like
a smitten little a thirteen year old said, this guy from Flint, Bro.
You know what we go. He was right, Man, you will
want to better guess we've ever had on your Thank you man, that means
a lot to me. I was nervous. I was nervous because I heard
some of the other guys and I don't have some of the fantastic stories about
fires. But my career was a fantastic career and I take nothing back from
it. Everybody's career is unique and everybody's got something to offer. Like you
said, man, just listen, and I mean the lines too. I
mean you did a lot of oh yeah, yeah. Don't get me wrong,
man, I was. I was in the in the midst of the
ship, especially in those nineties and early two thousands, and I had my
fair share of trauma. After that initial trauma, like I said, it
kind of set me up for what I was about to see. And I
got to be honest with me at the end, I was like, uh
so, as a quartermaster, you know, I was going to calls the
first couple of years and even some of the older guys, man, what
are you doing here, quartermaster? You're messing up the job. I'm man.
So I started taking pictures of the guys so I could be a part
of it. Then about the last year, I started showing up and I
feel so bad had for the residents that I could tell my walls were we're
breaking down. You know those barriers that we put up so we can go
do our jobs, those are breaking down our starting. Oh man, it's
just feeling bad for people. The rest of the night, I said,
I gotta stop going to fire calls. And my last one, my last
call. We've done some boat training you guys, and a bunch of guys
are scared to drive a boat. Never been in a boat. We're on
the lake and I got him doing training even though in the quartermaster. And
we get a call for a boat call. Right as I'm about to leave
five o'clock. I said, ship, I gotta go. I've been doing
this all day. Get over there. I get there early. They flipped
the damn door over and there's two people tied together floating in the liver.
This man, I'm almost out of here, and I gotta get out of
here. Every time I get out, exactly, give them one more for
the road. Can't give them one more? What do you want? Which
one do you want? You know you know which one. Come on,
nobody cares abound time. I want to make sure well. Thanks for coming
on, brother, It is my pleasure. Thanks for having me. It
really means a lot to me. Thank you all the time. You get
all those guys in Flint, Michigan to subscribe and like, brother, you've
done well. You really got proud of it. Thank you on the on
the award everything. Thank you very much. I always like Willie's hat too.
He's got a good hat. Yeah yeah, I was trying it for
door out and yeah I got a narrow had yeah around. Let let's get
Can we play his music one more time? Guns? His video was awesome,
Bro, I can't believe it was great. We'll do it again.
And don't forget those other two commercials. Oh forgot? Go ahead, sa
here was something back in the days. Guys, play those two commercials really
quick. We have responsibilities here, you know, human games. All right,
we'll rocket and then dig up a health and safety tip. Oh shit.
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Beautiful, get the health of safety, because I got one. There we
go. The First Responder Center for Excellence is a not for profit organization dedicated
to protecting their lives and livelihoods of first responders. Their education and research initiatives
aim to bring greater awareness and understanding the challenges to the health, safety,
and well being of firefighters, EMS, personnel, and other first responders too.
They are an affiliate of the National Fallen Firefighter Foundation. Do me.
I'm telling Tony, I'll read yourself. I'm telling Tony to subscribe on the
side over here. So all right, listen, this is a very personal
When I say it all the time, you roof, you say it all
the time. But there's another guy that Rob Brown saved by getting doing the
full mock up the WTC Advanced Medical Uh did you know that? What's his
name? We grew up with him Rob. He's in the fourteenth Division.
M Robbie McBride just got picked up. He needed a stent. He thought
everything was good. Rob sent before us cardio skin and turns out he needs
a stent. So what I'm saying to you guys is, if you retire
it, don't go. Twenty twenty five twenty seven, thirty years of doing
this job that's very difficult, and then not live long enough to enjoy your
retirement. Get the tests, leave it, you know, eat sensible,
exercise, and go get yourself checked out, because early detection is the key,
and if you pick it up, you can get it fixed and you
can live another thirty forty years and you could be like we go and bang
guys in the boards in his early sixties. You know what I mean,
that's what we looked. I don't know what I did to the chat.
I don't know what I did. What do you do? You could you
minimized it, but I'll just piggyback that. Every six months I go and
get checked man, you do every six months? Man? All right,
excellent, all right? So who do we got on Thursday night? RUFFI
potamus? I don't know. I had two. I got the guy from
Baltimore, but he can't do I don't think he's gonna Thursday. Oh maybe
I'll call a guy from Chicago. I got two hot charges from Chicago.
I'm like a couple of Jagos. All right, well we'll let you know
anyway, all right, guys, rico, great time. Thank you for
being such a good sport. Thank you. Oh yeah, I appreciate it
and I will see you guys. I wanted to just put up uh Rico's
Inner City Club for you guys. If you want to see it for the
check a description to we'll put a description is Flint for you guys that are
just listening. Flint Inner City Youth Hockey dot org. For you guys who
are just listening, get over to our Facebook. We're definitely on Facebook under
Flint Inner City Youth Hockey on Facebook too. Excellent and you can see pictures
of us actually doing what we do each week. Awesome, and remember nobody
cares about hockey. All right, guys, and all right everybody. Rico,
thanks again, brother, everybody. All right, Dude, I didn't
see the top floor, baby, Go right