This is an iHeart podcast. Guaranteed human. Liberty has never been just a word to we Americans. It has guided every one of our endeavors for the past 250 years, and now it takes form in a new way. The 2026 Semi-Quincentennial Coin and Metal Program from the United States Mint.
It celebrates the founding ideals that have long shaped our coinage. Available one year only, this historic collection features new coin designs, limited edition releases, and reissues. Shop new official coins at usmint.gov forward slash semi-q. That's usmint.gov/slash S-E-M-I-Q. I turned off news altogether.
I hate to say it, but I don't trust much of anything. It's the rage bait. It feels like it's trying to divide people. If we got clear facts, maybe we can calm down a little. NBC News brings you clear reporting.
Let's meet at the facts. Let's move forward from there. and BC News reporting for America. This July 4th, come celebrate at America's Block Party, hosted by America 250. America's Block Party is a camp miss 4th of July concert happening at the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum.
Experience music performances by major artists, patriotic tributes, and the kickoff to Giving Forth, helping to make July 4th the largest day of giving in American history. It's more than just fireworks. Join this landmark celebration and get your America's Block Party tickets now for $17.76 at America250.org slash LA. This is Tony A.O. from The Real Report with Tony A.O.
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We cruised around LA in the Hyundai Ionic 5 and dove into the fascinating life of actress and inventor Hedi Lamar. Want the full story? Take a listen. She starts dating Howard Hughes. And in fact, she helps him design a faster plane.
So she finds the fastest bird and the fastest fish and sketches out a drawing of what the two would look like as a plane. And that becomes the plane that we know today. And he calls her a genius. Check out our new episode, Spotlighting Groundbreaking Innovators like Hedi Lamar and Billie Jean King. Presented by the Hyundai Ionic 5.
Goodbye. And we return to our American stories up next to Listener's Story out of Colorado, where we're heard on the Great Station 630 KO in Denver. We've heard from Richard Munez before. He's a former cop, soldier, and lover of American history. Today he shares with us the story of a dangerous incident that shaped his career in law enforcement, one he still grapples with today.
Take it away, Rich. I was a civilian police officer long before I ever went into the military.
So when I was assigned to the Ansbach military community, it was a little bit of a letdown. It was a very quiet place to work.
Now I'd work Fort Riley, Kansas, which could rock and roll. I definitely worked the civilian streets of Antonito, Colorado, and Alamosa, Colorado, which could definitely rock and roll. But Osbach was pretty quiet. Until that one night. A message came across the radio saying we have a soldier with a knife at the Shipton Concern.
This is where they house the air defense companies. The guys that did the Patriots and the Vulcans and stuff like that.
So we went out there. Pause first one to roll up to the gate and the gate guard was Should we say He was out there. He was... He was scared. And he's gesturing with his finger, pointing away.
He says, He's over there, he's over there, he's over there in that parking lot, over there.
So I waved, went through. I saw something I had never expected to see. Here's a soldier. He stripped to the waist. He's got a knife in one hand, his bl his arms are bloody.
and he has just demolished a Ford F one fifty pick up with his bare hands and that knife. The tires are flat, the windows are broken out, and the thing looks like it's gone through a major hailstorm.
Well, I stepped out, had my hand on the butt of my gun. I said, hey, look, put the knife down, let's make nice. And he told me go ahead and shoot him. And my first instinct was, okay, that's not going to work.
so I automatically removed my hand from my gun. Not that it has done me much good. In 1st Armored Division we were not allowed to carry a magazine in our weapon, much less have a bullet in it. And anyone that knows anything about the Colt 1911 knows that it takes a little while to load one of these guys. You gotta get the magazine out, gotta put it in, you gotta pull back on the slide, then you're ready to rock and roll.
We're talking anywhere from three to five seconds. You could be very dead by that time.
So I'm trying to talk him down.
Now, this is getting some attention. Everybody's coming out of the barracks, you know, to see what's going on. They're yelling at him and stuff like that. And to be honest with you, some of them were egging him on. I'm trying to talk this guy down.
And none of us working. I asked him what had happened and he said he gave me this story about how his wife had left him and that she'd taken the kids and said that he was never going to see her or them again. Later on I found out this was probably the tip of the iceberg. What had happened was this soldier had got what we call a bad EER. Elicit Evaluation Report.
And this is something that's given to non commissioned officers, you know, sergeant and better. What this does, it says basically in a nutshell if you're worth keeping around.
Well, rather than go through channels trying to repeal this EER, what he had done was he'd gone after the E7 who had given it to him.
Well the E7 ran for his room, locked the door behind him, since it was a metal door and he couldn't knock it down, he went out and took it on the guy's pickup. And that's where we came into the story.
So I'm still trying to talk him down. And I'm slowly trying to inch my way towards him a little bit. And I don't know how long the standoff happened. I mean, it felt like it was hours. It was probably just about maybe four or five minutes, but all this time he's.
Yelling at us and saying, You know, just shoot me. You know, I'm living in hell here. You know, just shoot me, let me die. I had no intentions of killing this man, absolutely none. And I'm racing through my brain trying to figure out a way I can find it to diffuse the situation.
I mean, there had to be a way, and I'm not finding it. Finally, I got my chance. Apparently he decided he wasn't going to get out of this. He put the knife to his chest, Looked at the sky and said, Forgive me, Jesus and started to drop on him. I sacked him like I was a football player sacking a quarterback.
I hit him as hard as I could.
Well, I knocked the knife out of his hands later found out I broke his hand doing it. But now I'm trying to keep this guy from continuing to hurt him. I got him under control, but he's trying to pound his head into the concrete. I mean, he's completely out of control.
So I'm trying a couple different things. I'm trying to keep him from hurting himself. I put my hand under his head.
So when he tried to pound, he'd be hitting my hand and give him some cushioning. But also, I'm trying to keep him from. doing that. And finally after another eternity of sitting on this guy And he was just screaming for us to kill him and stuff like that. The NT showed up.
Okay. We've got the guy under control, gun in custody. I go to the PMO to try to write the report on this. I was so shook I did not know what to do. I pulled out the forms, I sat down at the desk, I got my pen.
and I couldn't even write my name on it. After about two or three tries of this, I went in and I uh When I talked to the Pulaze liaison officer, Why knew she smoked? I I was a non-smoker. and I bumped two smokes from her. And I went upstairs and went to bed.
Only I couldn't go to sleep.
So I got up and I read a little bit. Nah, it didn't work. Finally, somewhere around 10 o'clock in the morning, and I figured if I was going to the gym and I'd work off some of this nervous energy, maybe I could go to sleep. Still couldn't sleep. And so I got up, got dressed, grabbed my camera, and went downtown to take pictures of Ansbach.
And eventually I'll wind up at Main Post. That's where the Provost Marshal's Office was. And I talked to the gate guards a little bit, then I went went on in, and I was walking around taking pictures, when out of the provost marshal's office comes the Colonel and Sergeant First Class Carter. And she informs me that they are putting me, Patton and Deeson for medals for the way we handle this thing. And I thought that was pretty cool.
And uh I went and had a hamburger when I couldn't eat it. And I felt like I knew I had to sleep, but I just couldn't do it. I mean, it was, it was gone. And I think it was sheer exhaustion that finally caused me to collapse. And I managed to go to sleep.
And I dreamt about it all night long. And I got up the next morning. And I kept thinking about it. And I dream about it more. And then finally one day I started having little flashbacks on the incident.
By this time I had gotten out of the military and I was a civilian police officer once again, And we had an incident, and all of a sudden, right smack in the middle of it, I had this. And I realized at that point I needed a lot of help. But the problem was, I didn't know what to do about it. And here's the funny part about it too. I found I was beginning to block people out of my life.
I was going with this beautiful woman by the name of Julie, who eventually became my wife. And Jewel, she's a counselor. She works with abused children and abused wives and she can pretty much look at somebody and read their mail for you. And she knew something was going on with me that I wasn't talking about, and I had to talk about it. But I wasn't doing it.
I pushing everybody away. and it's a big symptom of what we call post-traumatic stress disorder. I refuse to acknowledge I had it.
So one day I was at her house and she lived in a home built in 1877 and used a wood stove to heat the house during the wintertime.
Some outside chopping wood for her when she came out. And we sat and we talked. And she says, something's going on with you. You need to talk to somebody about this. I said, well, aren't you a counselor?
She said, yes, I am.
Well, can't I talk to you about it? She says, No, you can't.
Well, why not? I'm in a relationship with you. And that meant I had to go someplace else. And I want to get help. I had a full-blown crisis going on that one.
I mean, I couldn't concentrate, I couldn't do anything. And it was the grace of God. I managed to pull my life back together and start doing this. and involved a lot of work. I talked to a counselor at San Luis Value Mental Help by name of Joseph.
I thank God in heaven for Joseph. Joseph, from I understand, had been a SIL team medic. He may not have walked exactly a mile in my boots, but by God he knew what colour they were. And he knew how a soldier and a pol sense police officer thinks. And he helped guide me through it.
and showed that I did the very best I could do with it. I didn't have things like mace, I didn't have tasers. The only weapons I had was a gun with no bullets in it and a nightstick, which I did not intend to use 'cause I wanted to de-escalate the situation instead of make it worse. And slowly With his help, I got past it. And if you're suffering from any kind of post-traumatic stress disorder, my advice to you is get help.
Yeah. The way you recognize post-traumatic disorder, just look at my situation, constantly thinking about the event. Dreaming about it is a good one. Having problems sleeping because of it. Loss of appetite.
Loss of abilities to function. I mean, I'd gone from a hard-charging soldier to someone who was actually afraid of their own shadow at times. I mean, to go on duty. caused me some really severe stress. This is the kind of stuff you need to look at.
And the thing is, it's not only soldiers or police officers or first responders that get this. It's anybody. It could be a housewife in an abusive situation. It could be a child in an abusive situation. You could be in an accident.
say a car accident or a or a train accident or an aircraft accident. If you find yourself doing this, get some help by all means. Contact your local mental health. Contact your minister. Get some help on this.
Now a lot of people won't do this for one simple reason. There is a stigma associated with mental health issues. My own people, when I sit there and said, I'm going to go into counseling, they sit there and say, don't you dare do it because you will never get a decent job again. They will label you as crazy, and that'll be the end of it. And I tell myself, I got news for you, I'm already there.
Get it behind you. Deal with it. It'll never ever really go away, but you will learn to live with it. And with God's help, and the help of those around you, you'll become a fully functional human being again. And a terrific job in the production and editing by Aron Monty Montgomery.
And a special thanks to Richard Munes. We love our listeners' stories. Richard Munez, sharing the story of a dangerous incident that shaped his career in law enforcement and the aftermath here on Our American Stories. Liberty has never been just a word to we Americans. It has guided every one of our endeavors for the past 250 years.
And now it takes form in a new way. The 2026 Semi-Quincentennial Coin and Metal Program from the United States Mint. It celebrates the founding ideals that have long shaped our coinage. Available one year only, this historic collection features new coin designs, limited edition releases, and reissues. Shop new official coins at usmint.gov forward slash semi-q.
That's usmint.gov/slash S-E-M-I-Q. This July 4th, come celebrate at America's Block Party, hosted by America 250. America's Block Party is a can't miss Fourth of July concert happening at the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum. Experience music performances by major artists, patriotic tributes, and the kickoff to Giving Forth, helping to make July 4th the largest day of. Giving in American history.
It's more than just fireworks. Join this landmark celebration and get your America's Block Party Tickets Now for $17.76 at America250.org/slash LA. Hi, it's Karen in Georgia from My Favorite Murder. We cruised around LA in the Hyundai Ionic 5 and dove into the fascinating life of actress and inventor Hedi Lamar. Want the full story?
Take a listen. She starts dating Howard Hughes. And in fact, she helps him design a faster plane.
So she finds the fastest bird and the fastest fish and sketches out a drawing of what the two would look like as a plane. And that becomes the plane that we know today. And he calls her a genius. Check out our new episode, Spotlighting Groundbreaking Innovators like Hedie Lamar and Billie Jean King. Presented by the Hyundai Ionic 5.
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