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In a world buzzing with disconnection & deepening divides, "Not Like the Others" invites you to lean into curiosity. Join host Elle as she & her guests explore the messy, unusual & profound stories we carry - the ones that make us feel, perhaps, "not like the others."
Through intimate conversations, we'll share unexpected stories that explore shared humanity in mental health, identity, parenting, unorthodox relationships, healing & spirituality. Discover how embracing our differences bridges divides, reminding us that no matter your unique path, we are all far more alike than we think.
Elle (00:02.689)
Welcome everyone to our very first episode of Not Like the Others, a podcast celebrating and exploring the shared humanity and our experiences that sometimes seem unusual or profound or messy. And today I have a very special guest joining me for our inaugural episode. He is David McDaniel, also goes by Mac. He is a father of five, a fractional CTO in the Google Cloud space.
a search and rescue volunteer with Colorado 4x4 Rescue and Recovery, which is how I met him. As well as a volunteer for Stop Soldier Suicide, he is an owner of Colorado, the owner of Colorado 4x4 Adventures. And last but not least, a new and dear friend of mine. Our paths crossed after a pretty mundane day hike in Netherland, Colorado turned into a somewhat harrowing adventure for me last month. More about that in a moment, but first,
I want to thank you so much for being on my very first episode of Not Like the Others, Mack. It means the world to me that you're here, and I'm just really excited to chat with you tonight.
Mac (01:09.506)
Thank you so much for having me on. I'm very honored to be your first guest. Happy to be here.
Elle (01:13.281)
Thank you. So very quickly, I don't want to spend too much time on it, but let's go back to that day that we met. So the day before, I was leaving a very easy trailhead up in Netherlands. I went for an easy like two mile hike. And long story short, followed my satellite map out of fork in the road and very quickly realized it was the wrong way. And my Subaru Crosstrek got stuck.
on a class four jeeping trail in the backwoods that I had no familiarity with whatsoever. And it wasn't, I made it 95 % of the way down the trail until I blew my transmission, blew a tire and bent my oil pan. So my car was effectively inoperable and I had no idea how I was gonna get it out of there.
And in this weird like moment of, it was like a Hail Mary really, I posted a video on TikTok just saying like one, don't rely on your satellite map. Beware of this road, 68J, but also anybody have any tips on like how I can get my car out? Because it was sitting on this trail overnight. And so many people, like hundreds were popping in my comments saying, you need to reach out to Colorado four by four.
Rescue and Recovery. They're a volunteer organization. They're a nonprofit. These guys are amazing. And I went to bed that night. I hadn't made any calls trying to figure out how I was going to get my car off this trail. And I woke up and that was the first call I made in the morning. And you called me right back. And you were like, we can mobilize folks in about two hours. Does that work for you? Like, yes.
Mac (03:07.022)
You
Elle (03:09.395)
And so that's how we met. You offered me a ride to get up to the mountain because obviously I didn't have a car. And there was a part of me that was a little bit, I'm not gonna lie, maybe scared because I had had all these nasty comments come in overnight about how stupid I was and some maybe toxic men who were like, this is why you shouldn't do things alone as a woman. And you wouldn't have wanted me to find you on the trail. So.
That's just like a nasty underbelly of humanity we don't want to talk about today. there was certainly a moment in that experience when I was like, am I going to be an idiot for taking a ride with this man I don't know up to the backwoods with these two other men?
Mac (03:39.363)
Yeah.
Mac (03:51.822)
I mean, you're speaking the beginning of a Stephen King horror movie right there.
Elle (03:59.681)
Literally, literally, I was like, is this, it's just gonna be like one long story of like stupid decisions one after the other. So I, but I had no other choice, is the real real. And so I talked a three inch blade into my leggings and which is always in my hiking pack anyway, you know, to be fair because mountain lions, all that stuff. But anyway, and we went up and within minutes of me jumping into your Jeep,
we, I felt like we were fast friends. Like it was, I was completely disarmed. Yeah.
Mac (04:33.486)
Yeah, well this is something we do fairly regularly and it just happened to be between the three guys that were gonna go on this incident that I was the closest and you were like not really even that far out of the way so I had to go by that area anyways and instead of paying you know $75 or $100 for a
a Lyft or an Uber, makes a lot of sense to just offer a ride and if they say no that's fine too but you know I always offer.
Elle (05:07.489)
Well, I'm very appreciative of that. As a single mom who at the time was also unemployed, the entire situation couldn't have happened at a more annoying time. So to save money on that lift was really, was, you know, I was very appreciative of that. But actually the kind of greater byproduct of getting a ride with you was becoming friends with you and hearing your story. And that's why I have you on tonight because
I am just so excited to give you this platform and also dig into some of the things that I think really make you so special and rare and unusual. So, yeah. So I wanna kind of start out with the fact that as I mentioned in your introduction, you are an extremely community service driven person.
Mac (05:48.206)
Thank you.
Elle (06:04.587)
There aren't many people out there like that. And so I wanna kind of understand a little bit more of what got you involved first with Colorado 4x4 Rescue and Recovery, but also just what kind of drives you in your relationship with community service.
Mac (06:21.718)
I feel strongly that building a community and contributing to a community could make this country, this state, this city a better place. You know, the whole world could be a better place if people had a sense of community that wasn't destructive and that was very positive and giving toward others. You know, here you are.
you receiving this help when you needed it and now you're reaching out to try to build a community around your podcast. So these are great things that happen and I think it's a snowball going downhill if you can make it happen. And I just feel like it's important to have this. I've built technology communities before.
around other cloud ecosystems. So I think that building communities is a very important thing to do in this world. I wish more people did it.
Elle (07:18.783)
Yeah, I agree. And I think one of the things you just said is that piece about not being destructive, right? And I think that was what...
Honestly, when we got up onto the mountain to recover my car, that was the thing that really stood out about that day. I mean, we spent like six hours, six or seven hours up on that mountain. And it was with you and John and Bill. And there was something so profoundly inspirational and joyful about seeing the three of you, men I'd never met, but also like you all have a varying level of familiarity with each other, working as a team to do something highly technical.
that requires an insane amount of patience and an insane amount of teamwork to kind of like triangulate, okay, this is how we're gonna do it, this is the best solution, all right, this solution didn't work, we're gonna try it another way. And hearing your stories that you all were sharing that required even more of that compared to like my situation, there was just, I remember leaving that experience just thinking to myself like, wow.
Mac (08:04.43)
Okay.
Elle (08:29.473)
There are people out in the world who like not only want to do this, but will drop everything to help someone in this kind of situation. My mind was blown. was wildly inspiring.
Mac (08:45.966)
I feel like it's in today's society, it's a bit of a personality disorder. But like I said, I wish more people had this giving nature. You know, we go through several days of training before we're allowed to do recoveries. And we always work in teams.
for various reasons for our own safety. We've run across people that aren't exactly friendly to what we're doing, so we're always making sure that we have each other's backs. And then a lot of times...
some recoveries take a lot of people. I've had to send nine or 10 people on certain recoveries. We've had some rollovers that are more complex and altitude and require more people to take turns doing stuff because it's very exhausting lugging a rope up hundreds of feet when you're at 10,000 feet already. So.
Elle (09:41.801)
It's so impressive what you all do and just hearing the stories of some of the situations you've had to.
navigate and really help folks who are in really, really bad situations. Luckily, mine was not life threatening. yeah, I really commend what you all do with that organization and certainly encourage anyone who's listening and is inspired by what they do to donate if you feel compelled. But they're an incredible organization.
Mac (10:15.706)
Yeah, I appreciate it. You know, I joined because I've been off-roading for a lot of years. I had my first Jeep in 1987, I think, 1980 CJ-5, and ever since I got it, it just, you know, when you're out away from pavement, you tend to run into people that are stuck. So you start doing recoveries. And so I've been doing recoveries for a lot of years and off-roading for a lot of years with Mile High Jeep Club.
And I just, when I joined, I kind of expected to see a lot more like hardcore off-roaders. And really it's a very big mix. There's a lot of people that joined that don't have very built rigs and don't have a lot of off-road experience, but they have this community service drive. So that's what brings us all together is this service to community. Because one other thing we do in the winter times when people aren't as much
getting stuck up in the mountains when there's a blizzard on the plains. We actually get deployed and we work with all the various different county sheriffs and emergency management departments, 4-H county, pulling people off I-70 when it's snow blinding. So we find ways to help when people are in need.
Elle (11:35.649)
That is so cool. And also what a way to be like, what a way to experience Colorado and its many terrains and states of weather. Like I'm just imagining all the different kinds of situations that you run into that way. didn't even think about the like the I-7 deep lizard situations, but yeah, I remember reading about that in the news even recently.
Mac (11:49.09)
Yeah.
Elle (12:05.697)
these people just get stuck on the planes for hours, days. And that's wild. yeah, I'm, and I also really, what you said about jeeping, about off-roading really resonated too. You were so kind to invite me out to a trail opening last month with Mile High Jeep Club and
Mac (12:10.464)
or days. Yeah.
Elle (12:35.573)
So that was my first actual proper and intentional off-roading experience. And it was so serene and beautiful and I can see the draw now. I understand why people would do this for fun.
Mac (12:38.55)
You
Mac (12:51.79)
Yeah, the way I look at it is you get to see a lot of places in the state that relatively very few people get to see and experience. If you think about there's like five and a half million people in Colorado, how many of those own an off-road vehicle capable enough to do where you ended up or even worse like Redcombe?
It's a small percentage and even those that own the vehicles don't always get them off-road. So I think it's, I feel amazed that more people don't want to, don't haven't seen it. But I love taking people up there and showing them sites that you can't see from downtown or even from the foothills. When you get up on top of a 13,000 foot mountain and you can see for hundred miles any direction, it's pretty awe inspiring.
Elle (13:14.784)
Yeah.
Elle (13:44.487)
It's wildly awe-inspiring and I think two things were so clear to me after that day out opening Red Cone.
One, again, community, that kind of community in the Jeep club was so beautiful. Again, you spend hours with these people who have a shared passion and a shared interest and are so respectful of one another and so respectful of the land. I think that was another thing that really came through. Everyone was very respectful of the trail and how to be mindful, off-roaders and were so inclusive.
obviously was not a familiar face except to John, but and everyone was just so warm and welcoming and I think we need more of that in this world. Period. Full stop. Whatever it is. A shared interest that's just positive and light and joyful and adventurous.
Mac (14:44.288)
Yeah, that kind of goes back to the building communities. You know, unfortunately, we have a lot of divisive communities right now. But if we had more inclusive and shared interest communities, no matter what it is, as long as it's more positive oriented than the negative, I think more communities cannot be a bad salute, bad answer.
Elle (15:08.243)
Agreed. So listeners, this is your nudge to find something this week that you're passionate about and some kind of community around it, because I think it's just so heart-filling. know, like after that day, was like, I don't even really know most of these people and they're so kind and warm. And it just like gave me the strength to go back out into the world and deal with my real world stuff. know, on that note, when we were driving through that trail,
we talked a lot about your kids. And this is something that we have a shared bond over, even though your kids are grown, you had five of them. Mine is five years old. But there were some things that we have had in common, right? Like we've both gone through divorces, we've both kind of navigated transitions of being single parents. Our stories are very different, but I find that the challenges of raising children in a way that is not
a traditional nuclear family prevail across generations, regardless of how many kids you have, right? There's just a lot of shared kind of challenge in that. And then just being a parent in general, And when you are sharing the stories of your kids now and how they are all just exceptionally community service driven, so one's a doctor, right?
Mac (16:37.304)
Yep.
Elle (16:37.877)
Well, you know what? I'm gonna let you go through their pedigree. I love hearing you talk about your kids.
Mac (16:40.024)
Okay.
I love talking about my kids, which is sometimes a problem. So the five kids, I had a boy, boy, girl, boy, girl. No, I had boy, girl, boy, boy, girl, sorry. The reason we had the fifth was because my wife at the time really wanted the older daughter to have a sister. So we tried with number four, got another boy, and number five was a girl.
Elle (16:48.107)
Yeah.
Elle (16:57.739)
Yeah.
Mac (17:13.396)
My oldest son and his wife are both doctors now in the Denver area. They also have given me my first two grandchildren, which I'm super happy about. My oldest daughter was a Division 1 athlete, full ride scholarship, played pro basketball in Europe for a while, and then somehow got glommed on to running. And she actually was the one that introduced me to Stop Soldier Suicide.
I'll come back to that. But she just last year ran the Leadville 100, which is a 100 mile race, which I've told her to her face, she's clinically insane for doing. Yeah, and she made it 76 miles after rolling her ankle on mile five. So, yeah. I can't even, I've never.
Elle (17:55.201)
That's impressive.
Mac (18:09.088)
run more than a mile at a time in my entire life. So then my youngest daughter and her husband are both deputy sheriffs in Weld County and they will be delivering my third grandchild in September, which I'm super excited for. Thank you. And then my youngest son is a firefighter in South Adams County.
Elle (18:24.757)
Congratulations.
Mac (18:35.188)
So again, very community service oriented. They were all just gravitated toward that. I actually tried to get them into computers when they were young and none of them would follow in their father's footsteps. the only thing I really told them is find your passion, figure out a way to make money at it and you'll never feel like you're doing a job.
Elle (18:58.335)
Yeah, I mean, did you ever incorporate community service and volunteering in their childhood? Was that a big thing that you guys did?
Mac (19:07.862)
Not really, honestly. We always like to be service oriented. Like, you know, when there's a community event, we would make sure we stuck around and help cleaned up at the end. You know, we tried to instill that kind of.
make sure you're not just taking attitude, you're giving as well in their raising as much as we could, but it's not like we had a lot of opportunities to go do things service oriented as such a large family with a diverse age range of kids. I've done like Habitat for Humanity and some other volunteering as well, and they saw that I did that, but you can't do it until you're 18.
Elle (19:41.333)
Yeah.
Mac (19:53.92)
for safety reasons. So yeah, it's just a lot of them that just kind of came out in their DNA. My youngest son,
even in high school was studying for being a firefighter. He thought he might go into the military and do that, but as it went on, they had a program that would help people understand what it's like to be a firefighter. And then he joined a rescue, Arapaho Rescue Patrol, which is for miners specifically to explore search and rescue opportunities. they go off and they support fire departments and they go off and support other search and rescue organizations.
Elle (20:08.533)
Wow.
Mac (20:35.028)
So that was a good thing. And then as soon as he turned 18, he signed up as a volunteer for South Adams County. And then within a couple years transition to full time.
Elle (20:46.997)
Wow. I'm just, I know that immediately when I heard about the paths of all five of your kids, I was like, how do we crack this code? How do we, how do we crack the code of parenting so that my kid is like so service driven? I mean, and I say that jokingly, but you know, I think it also is very clear that like you said, they saw you volunteering. You also clearly have a big heart.
but you have empathy and I think raising, know, don't, I obviously, I don't know exactly what your day to day looked like raising your kids back when they were younger, but I know for me, raising my son every day, I'm always trying to like encourage his empathy, encourage his giving, encourage his kindness, like trying to help him stay soft.
if that makes sense, you know? Like I know that there's like a connotation around that word that, you know, I think in hyper-masculine culture is like, but to me, I'm like, my God, please, like just please always remember to leave this place better than you found it, you know?
Mac (22:01.582)
Yeah, I think it's more of the blend of things more than a thing. So staying soft implies that you're only soft. I think you're always gonna have a range. The older I get, I used to think that 98 % of everything was black and white.
Elle (22:13.653)
Yeah.
Mac (22:24.174)
It was a clear answer and the gray was on the very edges. Now I'm more like it's 98 % gray and there's only 2 % that's either black or white. So I think that's with personalities too.
Elle (22:35.637)
Agreed.
Mac (22:40.202)
Empathy is one thing I recognize to myself and others have recognized too and that serves me very well professionally and in community service. So I think that's something I've always tried to teach my kids is think about how they feel about something, not just how you think about it. It's always about putting yourself in their position, trying to understand what they might be going through.
Elle (22:52.203)
Yeah.
Elle (23:02.335)
Yeah.
Elle (23:08.502)
Yeah.
Mac (23:08.59)
So that is something I definitely reinforced, but also all of them are pretty much natural born leaders. know, so when there's a situation and somehow weirdly my kids and I have been in a couple of adjacent to car accident situations, we always, we run toward the car accident, you know.
Elle (23:31.617)
I've seen this, I've witnessed this firsthand. I believe you when you say you've somehow managed to be adjacent to car accidents. I think I even recognize this in you. So right after we finished my recovery, you were driving me back and there was a rolled Jeep right in front of us, like seconds before. We didn't see it happen, but we came on it before emergency services did. And I remember thinking to myself like,
Mac (23:35.139)
that.
Elle (23:59.263)
What the hell are the chances of this? And also, I think I even said to you, do you ever think that you are protected and divinely guided in this? Because there are not many people who dedicate their time, their volunteer time, to literally rescuing people from these types of situations that just roll up.
Mac (24:01.89)
That was wild.
Elle (24:29.267)
on an accident like that in the middle of the day.
Mac (24:33.676)
that was pretty wild and yeah, do feel like, you know, when you're doing the right thing, I feel like you do get a little bit more slack.
I've never really been injured doing recoveries. You know, I've split a fingernail or gotten a little cut, you know, whatever. I do that to myself on the regular anyways. So everything I've ever done that's been in the service of somebody else, I think has been, it's worked out pretty well. I've never really had any negative outcomes for any of those things I've done.
Elle (24:43.167)
Go.
Elle (25:09.065)
And it seems like the opportunities to help present themselves to you.
Mac (25:14.294)
They seem to, because I think I mentioned this later, but after dropping you off, so we stopped at that Roll Jeep, spent a few minutes, everybody was okay, here comes emergency services, I'm gonna get out of the way. I dropped you off, and heading back between your place and my home, there was another rollover. And this time, the emergency services passed me to get there before I did, so I didn't have to stop, but it's just, it was a weird day.
Elle (25:44.373)
That really was such a weird day. I'm just in awe actually of that. yeah, sometimes you can make sense of it, right? And then sometimes you're like, I don't know. And so, you know, in talking about your kids, I do want to circle back to specifically your son, your Conner.
Mac (25:59.715)
Yeah.
Mac (26:11.192)
Connor.
So he was the middle of the five. people that have three kids, they often say there's a stereotype about the middle kid being the one that gets in all the trouble. And boy, Connor lived up to that. He actually coined the term double middle child.
Elle (26:28.769)
you
Mac (26:32.842)
since he had an older brother sister and a younger brother sister. So he was the double stuff Oreo. And of all the kids, he certainly seemed to attract the more challenging situations. He struggled as a teenager a little bit and had some run-ins with the police, nothing serious, but a little shoplifting or running away.
Elle (26:39.444)
Yeah.
Mac (26:58.058)
in air quotes. So he definitely had some more challenges in his life than the rest of the kids did. After my divorce from their mom, he really struggled with his relationship with his mom, ended up coming to live with me for a while. And then he kind of went back and forth. And then eventually he decided he really wanted to go in the army.
So he was born in 1995, he was only six years old when 9-11 happened, but as he learned about it, that is the thing that motivated him. He wanted to go fight the bad guys, and he really, he didn't just wanna be nearby, he really wanted to go do it. So less than six months after graduating high school, he was at boot camp and getting ready to go.
He spent a few years of training out in Seattle at a place and then he PCS'd or did a permanent change of service location back to Colorado Springs and then deployed to Afghanistan. And this was in 2019.
Yeah, so it was exactly what he wanted to do. He was a mortar man, so he was in the Army infantry, which is pretty, it's not the standard. So I went to see him graduate his boot camp and his MLOC training and all these things. He shot mortars all the way from.
80 millimeter to 121 millimeter based in a truck and even the smaller 60 millimeters and He was raising up in rank as well He was a sergeant by the time he went to Afghanistan Staff sergeant by the time he went to Afghanistan he served with a
Mac (28:59.114)
Special Forces Group on the northeast area against the Tajikistan border.
And he loved being out there with his guys and even when they were being attacked He showed me this one picture of this village. He would go protect from the Taliban and he showed me his picture They took that had a big wall behind them and about a basketball sized hole right in the top section of the wall and he said yeah, that was a RPG that was aimed at us and you know, of course I asked if anybody was hurt
and nobody was, but then he tells me about the jokes he's telling to try to get the guys to relax a little bit and laugh a little bit, even right after they've been attacked by RPGs. I don't know that it's something I could do.
Elle (29:47.2)
Yeah.
No, it sounds like he had such a big heart even, I mean, I think that's such a powerful contrast, right? Like to be able to live through something that is traumatic, even if it's not registering as super traumatic, even if that's the norm is having to experience that kind of attack while you're out there, know, maybe quasi regularly, I would imagine, but being able to bring some levity and care about how everybody else is feeling and diffuse the tension and...
kind of bring back that feeling of community, right? Like like togetherness, yeah.
Mac (30:24.014)
Yeah, we're a group. So one other thing he told me about is he's coming back to his FOB one day, his Forward Operating Base, and he sees the Afghan nationals taking shots out toward the desert, and he doesn't know why, what they're shooting at, and as he gets closer, he sees there's a little puppy out there. And nothing against Afghans, they just have a different belief system and value system than we do.
Pets are just kind of not really a big thing for them. So he stopped them from shooting and went out and picked up this puppy that was basically would fit in two hands. It was tiny, just a couple of weeks old. And he loved dogs.
especially dogs, most animals, but especially dogs. So we basically crowdsourced $3,500 to in essence smuggle that dog out of Afghanistan and back to the U.S. Yeah.
Elle (31:26.943)
Wow.
Mac (31:28.43)
It was rough because the guy he paid to drive to the airport, which is a couple days drive from where he was, kind of disappeared for a couple days, didn't have any contact, and he kind of thought, oh, this guy took my money and just disappeared, and who knows what happened to the dog. Well, the guy's car broke down. So two days later, he had it fixed. He contacted Connor and said, hey, no, we're good. I'm dropping the dog off at the airport.
days later we went to pick her up at Chicago Airport and bring her back to Colorado.
Elle (32:04.671)
Wow, and what's her name?
Mac (32:08.064)
Lily. Yep.
Elle (32:08.885)
Lily, Lily, God, what a lucky girl. I can't even imagine the logistics of having to figure out how to smuggle a puppy out of Afghanistan.
Mac (32:19.118)
It ends up being all about money, just tipping or bribing the right people to get the right paperwork. So we have the paperwork. It was a legal process. It's just how we got the paperwork. I'm not quite so sure.
Elle (32:22.954)
Yeah.
Elle (32:35.617)
Yeah, and so Lily was there waiting for it when he got back from deployment.
Mac (32:41.27)
Yep. I have a video of their reunion and it was quite emotional for both of them and for us. It was awesome.
Elle (32:53.247)
Wow, wow. When you first told me that story when we were on that trail, and I just, I gotta say, Mac, I deeply admire your ability to talk about Connor with such love and pride and your willingness to share those stories because it felt like Connor was with us on that trail.
Mac (33:20.226)
Yeah.
Elle (33:21.249)
I felt like I feel like I know all your kids actually now. But I, I, and I realized we kind of skipped over a part. So for the listeners, it'll make a little bit more sense, obviously, why I say why I say it like that. But Connor, if you don't mind sharing, you know, his trajectory when he got back from deployment was obviously very challenging and he struggled.
Mac (33:23.95)
Thank
Mac (33:50.796)
Yeah. So, he got back from deployment and, kind of got.
connected with this one young lady who was not really good for him, but convinced him to get out of active duty. And he signed up for the Army National Guard, which was good for him. But now we're into 2020 and the pandemic and jobs are hard to find. And he's now he's not full time in the military. So he's not getting the same amount of pay. And then the summer of
2021 rolls around and the withdrawal happens and you know, I don't care who was president after occupying a country for 20 years, you're never just going to be like, yep, we're good. We're out. Nice and easy, clean departure. It's just not going to happen. So that was a messy.
Exit and that impacted him as I'm sure it impacted a lot of veterans that were there because basically The 20 years that we fought and lost people there kind of ended up being Null and void, know the people that we tried to get out of power were back in power so again, it's not a political thing it's just It wasn't gonna work long term and then
Elle (35:08.043)
Yeah.
Mac (35:15.38)
Exiting is difficult. So that hit him pretty hard and with the economy and everything going on He ended his life
Elle (35:27.041)
I'm so sorry.
Mac (35:31.598)
on September 1st. yeah, was sorry. It was very traumatic. He just wanted to be.
Elle (35:41.213)
Don't be sorry, Meg.
Mac (35:48.026)
kind of left alone and he had a girlfriend that we liked this time and I saw their relationship and got to know her a little bit and I thought, this is a great thing for Connor. This will help him get through these dark times. And he spent the last weekend of his life with her in a hotel because he was basically now homeless.
And of course he wouldn't tell us this, you know. He had asked his older sister to watch Lily for the weekend, which she did, and he spent that time with his girlfriend and then went off to the woods and wanted to be alone to end his life. his girlfriend did.
convince him to share his location, which he of course shared with me, which I of course shared with the local police department. And this is where the shoulda, coulda, woulda start. I actually beat the police department to the scene by about a minute or two and was running up toward his location on a hilltop when the...
Sheriff's pulled up and pulled me back and then Eventually, you know hours and hours and hours later He caused the end of his life Yeah,
Elle (37:25.257)
I'm so sorry, Mac.
Mac (37:26.126)
So, that's the primary reason I work with Stop Soldier Suicide so much. Over the last three years, I've raised about $30,000 for them. And I'm trying to figure out what I'm gonna do this year because I'm not fully employed and just doing a bunch of contract work. So usually I count on my employer to do matching funds. So I'm trying to figure out how to do that this year.
Elle (37:39.093)
Wow.
Mac (37:55.63)
And I think stop soldier suicide, you know, they they're an NGO so they they are not governmental and anything that
you talk to them about stays out of your military record. And they have licensed clinical social workers who work directly one-on-one with all their clients. And their clients can be active duty, can be veterans, retired, national guard, anybody that's associated with the military or have been associated with the military, any branch too. So they are like the most direct organization that I've
Elle (38:38.699)
Wow.
Mac (38:39.179)
And the strange thing was that my oldest daughter had, before Connor died, done some fundraising for Stop Soldier Suicide. So after he did die, I kind of connected with them as well and started doing a lot more fundraising for them.
Elle (39:00.935)
incredible and also what a powerful
What a powerful mission. I actually, I have been adjacent to this subject to veteran mental health through friends of mine. I have many friends who are still active duty and have served multiple tours. have many veteran friends, many of whom have struggled with their mental health and have been open about that.
As somebody who's not a veteran, I have also struggled with my own mental health and specifically suicidal ideation. And for different reasons, obviously, maybe some of the same, but, you know, obviously completely different life experiences from the perspective of I don't have the added layer of of war, of war experiences and war trauma. But I can say with certainty that when you're in that dark hole,
that you seriously consider ending your own life. It's like, it dilutes it to say you're not thinking straight, but it's so true, right? you would truly think that nobody cares and there's so much shame around that. There's so much shame. And as somebody who is on the other side of it, I can say that even when I was seeking mental health support,
And again, not with the threat of, what's going to happen to my career? What's, you what is the military going to do to me if I admit this? You know, how would, how does that reflect on my reputation? My ability to keep serving, my ability to be a part of this community that is so close to me, right? I would imagine is probably a significant part of that feeling. Without any of that, I was still just like, my God, what's going to happen to me if I admit this?
Elle (40:57.825)
and if anybody finds out.
Mac (41:01.742)
In the military, there's a huge stigma. So if you're coming back from deployment and you're like, hey, I've got some mental health issues. This is what Conor's told me in the past was basically they take your sidearm. So you have no weapon on you when you're walking around base and everybody notices that immediately. It's like, this guy doesn't have his sidearm.
that there's a problem. So there's this huge stigma associated with it.
And one thing I've been working with Jason Crow, our US representative, House of Representatives, is on some legislation to change the way that people needing mental health in the military are treated. Try to remove some of the stigma and try to basically say if somebody comes back from a combat mission, they're in essence forced to have
Elle (41:54.219)
Mm-hmm.
Mac (42:04.8)
some mental health screenings at least treatment screenings so that they can understand that it's actually going to help them and maybe they'll continue through that and get the treatment.
because the way it works now is basically like some of your friends that have been to this war and that war and this conflict and seen battle many times, it all stacks up. So you can handle, maybe you can handle one deployment, then you got a second deployment, a third deployment, and it just becomes too much. Conrad actually had a deployment in Iraq before Afghanistan, which he told me very little about, which means.
it was a rough one for sure. And I think if you treat it, kind of the layers as they come in, you'll at least reduce the depth and darkness of each layer. So that's something I'm working on. It's a longer term project. We need a kind of a functioning house and Senate before anything like that will get passed. But that's something I'm working on as well.
Elle (43:10.965)
I think that's incredible work, my friend. And I think that your way of explaining that, the way things stack, again, I don't have the experience of being a war veteran, but I do have the experience of shame stacking and compounding, right? And that feeling of, well, if I handled...
this trauma and I've been able to be okay, I should be able to handle this one, you know, like, and I think that I can imagine that perhaps active duty soldiers and veterans probably feel that to an extent that's even more heightened, you know.
Mac (43:53.368)
Yeah. I mean, he showed me some videos when he got back that I felt like I had PTSD from watching on a cell phone. And these were not easy to see videos, but I didn't see them person. So I think it, it, it just completely different. And then
Elle (44:03.445)
Yeah.
Elle (44:10.048)
Yeah.
Elle (44:14.795)
Yeah.
Mac (44:15.512)
you know, after he died, I kind of ended up for the next year kind of heading that same direction. I found myself thinking the same things he talked to me about. And then I, you know, I tried to get some mental health help and it's...
challenging at times. You you get all these people that say they're grief counselors that haven't really experienced this magnitude of grief. Not that I wish it on anybody, but I did find a group that is specifically for parents of suicide victims. And I can walk in there and everybody knows basically how I feel.
because they've experienced it. And it's a horrible group to be part of and I hate to see new people showing up, but it literally saved my life because I was not getting better until I found that group.
Elle (45:09.257)
You know, I appreciate your vulnerability and sharing that. And I think that this is something after I cleared my own depths of depression that...
It was a statistic that presented itself to me I don't know exactly the numbers but it's it's basically that the fans the loved ones of victims of suicide have Like significantly increased chance of ending their own lives as well Yeah
Mac (45:38.048)
It's 50 % increased. So I've looked it up. Yeah, it's, it shocked me that it was that high, but it is 50 % higher likelihood.
Elle (45:49.511)
And that's powerful. But I know that the only thing that got me through the moments that I truly did not want to live anymore were the people I loved. Thinking about, like, just even a shred of the impact that I thought. And what's crazy is when I've kind of come into a much better place in my life, you realize that what you thought people would feel...
Like, yeah, I bet some people would miss me or yes, I bet this would impact them a little bit. You realize just how underestimating you were in that assessment. That the ripples and the grief, how far it would reach, people don't, you just don't have the capacity to comprehend that. And you know, I, it's,
Mac (46:25.816)
Yeah.
Elle (46:43.071)
that struggle is so real and my heart is just gives you the biggest hug and Connor, do feel every time you talk about Connor, I feel like he's with us. And I would love to hear a little bit from you about that group. What specifically it taught you about navigating grief because grief is probably to me the scariest emotion. It is
Also probably to society, one of the scariest emotions because to sit with your grief for anyone, the living and the dead, which is, you know, very different, I think, grieving processes. But when you sit with it, it feels so engulfing.
Mac (47:31.156)
That's a great word for it. It is really engulfing, you know, because it tends to shade everything else that's going on in your life. You can have good things going on in your life and you're still grieving. And like, after Connor died, I felt guilty smiling or laughing for months, you know, and eventually you start to come to grips with it.
some of the most important things I've learned in this group and they are super important is that we cannot understand the pain that they were in that caused them to take this action because you and I think, well,
You know, I'm jobless right now, but I can get a new job. I'm homeless. I can find a home. You know, there is an answer to the problems we face. And for them, there is no answer because the things they are experiencing in their head are unknowable by us. We just, it's just not something we can, even me is, you know, I started thinking about how I was gonna die and.
You know, that hit me hard, but I got to that point and then things like my kids, grandkids, a lot of those things started to lift some of the darkness. But Connor and I had a couple conversations before he died where he talked about.
being suicidal. And I had thought that, you know, the first time I had talked him off the edge and the second time I thought I talked him off the edge, but apparently nothing I could say would really bring him back because I think that was the day he actually decided that he was gonna go through with it. And he wrote a note and in the group, you know,
Mac (49:35.946)
not all of us get notes. And even when we do get notes, it doesn't answer everything. It doesn't make us feel better. It only gives us some minor answers. But one thing he said was in planning his death, it actually gave him something to be constructive about. cause he military through and through had a storage area with all of his belongings in it.
in tubs, all his paperwork was sitting on top, was military neat tucked and tied, that's just the way he was. So he had the whole thing worked out and that actually gave him a sense of purpose for a short period of time. But the darkness that we can't understand is a big aspect of it and then...
I had a lot of guilt because I felt like if I continued up that hill, could I have changed the outcome of that situation? And who knows? I'll never know, but the guidance I've gotten from this group is that maybe I would have stopped it from happening that day, but if that's really his desire, he was gonna find another way another day. So.
Elle (50:47.265)
Yeah.
Elle (50:51.552)
Yeah.
Mac (50:53.366)
You know, we could have all the solutions to their problems, but the problems we're solving are not the problems that are causing them to want to end their life.
Elle (51:02.463)
The pain is so much deeper than that. Yeah.
Mac (51:05.078)
It is. That was hard to learn because as a father, as a protector, as a provider, you know, my job is to protect my kids and make sure they're okay. And that hit me the hardest. That was the thing that really got to me.
Elle (51:24.883)
I can't imagine.
Mac (51:28.214)
And nobody can until it happens. It's, yeah, it's just something that I wish nobody had to go through.
Elle (51:38.463)
Yeah, I'm sorry that you and your family have. And one thing that I think is so powerful is that you have transmuted this pain and grief of your own into purpose. And again, like,
I don't know if you know this, Mac, but that is so rare. That is a superpower.
Mac (52:11.362)
Thank you. One thing Connor wrote in his note that drives me a lot is that he didn't want to be a statistic. I mean, he is a statistic, but that's not all he wanted to be.
So my way of not having him just be a statistic is by doing the things I'm doing. It's honoring his memory. It's helping people not end up where he ended up. And that's what drives me. So it's all based off of my love for Connor.
Elle (52:42.379)
Yeah.
Elle (52:48.321)
and it's really beautiful and it comes through every time you talk about him. And I'm really proud to know you and I'm really proud of you. You're welcome. And if you wouldn't mind sharing the name of the group, the grief group, I am certain somebody somewhere will be listening to this at some point.
Mac (52:59.544)
Thank you.
Elle (53:11.263)
who could probably use that information if you wouldn't mind sharing it.
Mac (53:18.72)
So it's not like it's a Facebook group or anything. I ran across it, I don't even remember how. Let's do this, if somebody wants to send me an email and inquire about the group, I will happily share the facilitator's information with them. Without talking to her first, I don't know that I would share her phone number or anything like this.
Elle (53:37.479)
perfect. Yeah.
Elle (53:43.859)
Yeah, of course. So it's a pretty grassroots organization then it seems like.
Mac (53:49.678)
It's, yeah, it really is. It's very localized. And this one woman who also lost her son to suicide. After it happened, she decided to do something about it. She had attended some other groups and thought she could do more. And she got some facilitator training. And now she hosts this and it's the second Thursday of every month.
And it's a fantastic group of people. I count them as very good friends and sad friends that we have to be friends, but they're all good people.
Elle (54:30.507)
Wow, that's actually incredible to even hear you talk about how she pulled it together. And I think it's just, again, such a testament to community building and how you don't have to, like, if you can't find it, make it yourself. And I think so many people...
are kind of waking up to this now, especially with the state of the world. I think there is an isolation and loneliness epidemic. There's an epidemic of division and just between technology and the state of the world and kind of the division that politics is creating. I think that as humans, we are struggling.
more than ever to stay connected to our communities, much less community build. And so it feels like even more of a lift, right, to go out and find your people that way. But I've pushed myself to do it, especially in the past year after navigating my divorce and kind of starting over. And some days it's exhausting to put yourself out there and find or create community. But
man, have I been rewarded every time I have. And so to hear that this woman did the same in the depths of her own grief is really inspiring. And I think just a reminder to anyone listening that you get to create your community for whatever purpose and whatever reason that is, whether it's a shared passion for off-roading or pottery or reading or finding community in your
grief and your pain in these situations that make you feel very isolated, whatever it is, just do it. Reach your hand out, you know, and you'll find someone when you're just a little bit vulnerable enough to share it.
Mac (56:25.558)
Yeah, I mean, it kind of all comes back to community. know, whether it's a community, like you said, for getting out in the wild or sharing your grief, building communities is what helps people survive in this world today.
Elle (56:41.601)
100 % it's the only thing we've really got if we're gonna get through this time of disconnection and upheaval really. Mack, cannot thank you enough for being my first guest on this podcast, for being so open and vulnerable with your heart and for sharing your joy with me. Like am just so grateful to know you and for anyone who's listening,
please, you know, feel free to donate to Stop Soldier Suicide, if that's a cause that really resonates with you, or Colorado 4x4 Rescue and Recovery, if that's something that resonates with you. But they're both incredible organizations doing completely different things in the world, but ultimately, like you said, the common thread is community, and I couldn't have picked a better guest to be on my podcast today to talk about that, so thank you.
Mac (57:40.174)
Thank you very much. I'm really flattered and very honored to be your guest here today. It's been a real joy getting to know you. And especially since we're of somewhat different generations. There's a lot of times when people don't want to span generations in their friend group. And I think it speaks a lot about you that you were so not only willing,
to build friends, but also then come out into the woods again with us and open up Red Cown.
Elle (58:11.265)
It was a blast. It was like honestly a highlight of my summer. So thank you. And I'm looking forward to doing more of it. And hopefully one day, thank you. And hopefully one day you can come back to the podcast and we'll talk about some other stuff too. So, all right. Have a good night, Mac. Thank you.
Mac (58:20.138)
Awesome. You're always welcome.
Mac (58:26.517)
Absolutely, anytime.
Thank you so much.