This is an iHeart podcast. Guaranteed human. Spending time outdoors, then let's talk about skin cancer. Non-melanoma skin cancers, or NMSCs, including basal cell carcinoma and cutaneous squamous cell carcinoma, are the most common cancers in the U.S. and can become harder to treat if left undetected.
That's why sun protection and timely detection matter. Our sponsor, Regeneron, is raising awareness about advanced NMSCs. Learn more and take the pledge to see a dermatologist annually at let's get real about skincancer.com. Saturday, August 22nd in Tampa. Witness an MMA Legends final fight.
Chris Cyborg, one of the greatest in history. She's an absolute pioneer in the sport. Defends her PFL world title. One last time. Unforgettable and got you marginal.
To an unforgettable career. Saturday, August 22nd, live from Benchmark International Arena. For tickets, visit pfl.info/slash tampa. Whether it's help with hormone therapy, weight management, or sexual health, every woman should have access to affordable prescription medication and personalized care that understands the whole woman. Join me, Dr.
Doug Lucas, Clinical Lead of Hormone Optimization and Longevity at LifeMD. along with other leading experts on the podcast. Here's something good on women's health and longevity. To learn more, go to lifeemd.com slash iHeart. This is how eBay Live usually goes.
You tune into a stream just to browse. Then something rare pops up for a total steal, like a vintage handbag or a rookie baseball card. The bids start flying, and browsing quickly turns into, I have to have this. And guess what? You win.
And it's a rush because everyone else wanted it too, but you got it. On eBay Live, you don't just watch the action, you're in it. Download the eBay app to watch live and shop live. eBay Live, things people love. Um This is our American Stories, and we tell stories about everything here on this show, and our favorites.
Well, they come from you, the listeners, and up next, a story from a listener named Richard Munez. Today he shares with us the story of an unforgettable night. that changed his life when he was working in law enforcement. Take it away, Richard. I need to tell you, I'm probably the last person in the world that was cut out ever to be a cop.
Uh I took my degree in astrophysics. And right there, that means you're not this rough, tough individual. You're very much intellectual.
However, Let me tell you how astrophysicists got their jobs. They didn't go to the Help Wanted sections, they went to the OBITs. The year I graduated, no one wanted to lay down and die.
So, you know, right there I have a problem. Further Uncle Sam sent me, uh, started sent me the letter saying, hey, you know, I was nice enough to give you student loans and stuff like that.
Now it would be nice enough if you started paying it back.
So I had to find a job. Uh Now, I started looking around. Fortunately, I've taken a lot of classes in psychology and sociology and stuff like that. and I was always somewhat interested in police work. Uh So I went down to our local police department and they were hiring upon an application i tested for the position And And they did a background check and all that stuff, and I figured, yeah, it'll be a cold day in you know where before they ever call me.
Well, guess what? About three months later, they called me. He said, hey, are you interested in coming aboard? And I said, yeah, you know, I needed a job. What can I say?
So I went aboard.
Well I wound up, you know, looking as a police officer and I began to realize that maybe this isn't what I wanted. And then I got injured in the line of duty, and I mean, it just really seriously, you know, threw me into a tailspin. Wound up leaving that department. For another department, Then Chef Toby Madrid approached me and said, Hey, I need a deputy. Would you be interested in coming aboard?
And I said, Yeah, I'd be interested.
So I joined the Canes County Sheriff's Office. And I remember It was the 27th of December, it's a day I'll never forget. It was cold. You know, after all, a couple days after Christmas in the San Luis Valley, hey, it should be cold. It was a quiet night up to that point, but it was a Saturday night, and Saturday nights have a way of going south on you really, really quick.
Well, there's a town in Kness County called Ant Needle, Colorado.
Well what happened on a Saturday night the kids would drag Maine. What that means you know they're just cruising Maine. You know they're in a car they just go up Main Street, get to the city limits, turn it, make a U-turn, come back into town, you know, just repeat the cycle. You know, after all, we didn't have cable TV down there yet, stuff like that, so you had to do something.
Well, we get word of a wreck just north of Antonito. What have been happening here is the city police have been t you know after the kids, you know stop doing U-turns in town. You know, it's not safe.
Well, all they did was rather than rather than have the cops hassle them, they just went up. a little bit out into the county and then there's a crossroads there. they would make their U-turn there.
Well, that's where the wreck was. It was right outside a little nightclub called the Rainbow Nightclub. I was within a mile of it, And swipe. I go down there. Yeah.
And as I'm coming up on it, all of a sudden I realize that This car has not been hit. has been ran over by a semi. I get out, you know, I got my got my posit my cruiser position there and Of course everybody in the bar is coming out. And it wants to see what the heck's going on. I mean It's you know, it's a little bit like sharks, you know, c uh Showing up, you know, whenever there's a bit of blood in the water, they got to see what's going on.
Well, I get out there, and the first thing I see is that the literally the front end of the car is crumpled down like a tin can. And I run up there. And I can see the passenger, he's in bad shape. I mean, he's torn up pretty good. He's unconscious, and you know, he's barely able to breathe and stuff like that.
I can't see the driver. I mean, the car literally crumpled down around him. There's two girls in the back seat. They look like they're okay. The only person I saw that right away that I knew was a guy by the name of Pat Rice.
Funny part about it was Pat had been an inmate in our jail a couple weeks before. The Red Cross has just recently come down and recertified us on first aid and CPR. And Pat was a trustee. And he saw this and he thought to himself, hey, this looks pretty cool, stuff like that. And he asked, hey, you know, can I take this?
I might need it someday. And I told him, I said, I'll tell you what, I will pay for your class and your test. Provided if I ever need you, you're there for me.
Okay, that's cool.
Well, guess what? I collected that night. And he and I went over there and we started getting the girls out of the car. I had to crawl into the car. We got the first girl out, okay, but the other girl, she was kind of pinned in the car a little bit by the seat.
I had to get in there and push the seat off of her. and she had to crawl over me to get out.
Now we've got the driver and the passenger. I'm very reluctant to move the passenger because I can see that he is seriously injured and I'm very much afraid that if I move him I'm gonna do more damage than good and I'm trying to find the driver.
So I'm reaching through the wreckage and I found him. And astonishingly, he's still alive, but he's he's unconscious also.
So we're there, and I'm just going from one, from the passenger to the driver, passenger to the driver. I'm checking, make sure they say I have a poll, stuff like that. I'm waiting for the ambulance to show up. I just checked the passenger. I go back to the driver, checked him, go back to the passenger, nothing.
And about the 10 seconds between the time I checked him to go back to the driver to check him, his heart had stopped. And that's when I yelled at Pat. I said, he's in full arrest. Let's get him out of here and start doing CPR.
So we started doing CPR on it. You wanna find out what kind of shape you're in? Do CPR on a fellow human being. I mean, it is a demanding task. And uh Once you start, you don't stop.
That's all there is to it.
So here's Dozens of people standing around watching this. Me and another guy are fighting to keep somebody alive. And the EMT has finally showed up. I remember one of the MTs jumped out and yelled, who's worse? And I pointed down and said, he is.
And Pat was exhausted. He'd been sitting there doing CPR along with me. I'll join this. EMT joins me and we started doing CPR. I took over the breathing part of it.
Well, if he did the compression, the guy threw up in my mouth, and that did it. I mean, I had nothing left. I walked away, I mean, I kind of stumbled away and I started throwing up. When Pat saw me throwing up, he started throwing up. I remember somebody starts laughing and say, what's the matter, Rice?
Can't you take it? And Pat hauled off and popped the guy in the face. And the guy comes, oh, I want a press charge like that. And I just basically looked at him and says, get the hell out of here.
Well, we want to have had to take the car apart to get the driver out. Passenger died at the scene. I mean, there was nothing we could do for him. Got him out. Got him flight for life to Denver, where he wanted to die in.
The two girls made it through just fine. After we got more help out there. They sent Pat and I To get cleaned up, and when we got to the sheriff's office, I saw what we looked like. We were covered from head to toe with other people's blood. And the funny part about it was, we were actually starving to death.
We were hungry beyond a measure, so I made us a couple sandwiches and stuff like that. We washed our hands, we sat there, and we ate while covering somebody else's blood. And I remember A few days before that, I had a discussion with my parents. They thought I had a pretty cake job. They completely neglected the fact that that's a police officer.
There was a very little chance every time I left home that wasn't that I'd never be coming back.
Well I decided to show him just what kind of a cake job I had. I had the dispatcher take a picture of me. Here I am, covered head to toe with somebody else with blood, and I had him take a picture of me. And I was staying with my folks at the time. When I got home, I left that picture.
on the dining room table so next time they told me that I had a cake job all you had to do was look at that. A couple weeks later. I was working a basketball game, provided security for it. And um I just walked out to check the Parking lot, and I walk back in, and all of a sudden, there's this little cheerleader standing in front of me. She's in uniform.
And she sticks out her hand and she introduces herself. And she says, I want to thank you for trying to save my brother's life. I remember I stammered something. And for a long time it haunted me. I didn't have an answer for her.
You know, what, why? What was the point of her brother passing away? What happened here? Did any good come out of it?
Well There is some good. It took me a long time to realize them. And I'm a man of prayer and I'm a man of faith. And I used to pray to God, what was the point of all this? You know, was it wasted?
And then in the course of writing my first novel, I'm relating the incident. What I've done is I've taken the incident, I've put it in, I made it happen to somebody else, basically. But in the middle of all this, he's talking to his pastor about it. And the answer came. Were you the same person you were when this was over?
And I had to admit I wasn't. I mean that evening I was seriously thinking about hanging up law enforcement forever. I mean, like I said, I took my degree in astrophysics. I'm an intellectual. Last thing I ever thought myself was uh asked was a tough guy out there, you know, to Fighting.
wrestle around with the bad guys and stuff like that. I enjoyed the detective work, but I didn't enjoy that, you know, that part of it.
Well Guess what? That night changed me.
Well in this case it transformed me for the good. It made me realize, at least on some level, I was out there trying to make a difference. Richard Munez's story, The Wreck. Here on Our American Stories. Spending time outdoors, then let's talk about skin cancer.
Non-melanoma skin cancers, or NMSCs, including basal cell carcinoma and cutaneous squamous cell carcinoma, are the most common cancers in the U.S. and can become harder to treat if left undetected. That's why sun protection and timely detection matter. Our sponsor, Regeneron, is raising awareness about advanced NMSCs. Learn more and take the pledge to see a dermatologist annually at Let's Get RealaboutskinCancer.com.
Saturday, August 22nd in Tampa. Witness an MMA Legends final fight. Chris Cyborg, one of the greatest in history. She's an absolute pioneer in the sport. Defends her PFL world title?
One last time. Unforgettable end. An unforgettable career. And the skill! Saturday, August 22nd, live from Benchmark International Arena.
For tickets, visit pfl.info/slash tampa. Yeah. Wasn't that delicious?
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Plus the Big Three All-Star Game, the biggest names in the game, all on one court one more time. Two games of the most physical, competitive, and non-stop three-on-three action. The game played the way you love. Watch live Saturday on CBS at 1 p.m. Eastern, 10 a.m.
Pacific, and catch replays Monday on BET. Presented by iHeart. Yeah.
