What I did while she was gone.

In the summer of 2010 Kates took off for beautiful West Yellowstone where her family owns and operates Hadley's Motel and Woodside Bakery. While she was gone I continued working at Lagoon as a Sergeant and Supervisor in the Parks Loss Prevention Department. I am in charge of our Security Officers, Access Control Officers, and EMT's. I've been there for seven years now. I've seen and dealt with all kinds of situations and worked one on one with Farmington Police Department. I also worked with Command Protection Services as an armed guard where I worked all over Utah. I have worked everything from construction sites, parties, sporting events, the Dew Tour after party, and undercover and uniformed store security (including stores in Las Vegas), to body guarding, divorce classes, private investigating and vehicle repossessions. The time and experience led me to Weber State Universities Police Academy. I started in April of 2010 and continued while Kates was gone until July 21. I suffered and injury 12 days from graduation and was unable to graduate. I found out the bad news on her sister Jenny's Wedding day. Thankfully she was home to help me through that. I was allowed back in November several months later after the injury healed and graduated January 12th, 2011. My best friend and Utah Highway Patrolman Eric Ellsworth was there to present me with my certificates! Kates by then had been home a few months and helped me through them, needless to say it was frustrating for me to be unable to go back for that time I was injured. I will post pictures of graduation later!!

Training for our new officers at Lagoon

At home with my vest on. I was headed to a night shoot for firearms training.

In the police car at Weber State doing traffic stops.

SWAT training at the Swanson Tactical Center with the Davis County SWAT team!! This was a blast. I was the only person that day from my team who did not get shot!! Kates was happy about that!

Chilling in my office at Lagoon after a call.

Every year Karl Malone brings his kids to Lagoon and spends hundreds of dollars for them and for random guests. He is so generous and paid 100 dollars for people he didn't even know to play a game until they won. I was chosen to be assigned to him for the day and accompanied him and his personal bodyguard throughout the day. The man to the right of Karl is a close friend of his, and happened to be Muhammed Ali's Business Manager. This was by far one of my most memorable days at Lagoon

Sitting at the desk in my office enjoying a day the park was closed.

Pretending to work hard!! And yes, I am tough as nails :)

Listening intently to the instructor at the police academy.

This is what I wore when I worked undercover arresting shoplifters. I wore black jeans with holes and combat boots. Nobody ever suspected a thing. Good times!!

This is my Command uniform that I wore to our uniformed contracts. I had six different uniforms but this one was my favorite.

Tactical Ground fighting. I was the bad guy in this scenario. I am fighting with Cadet Shawn McKinnon. He is now hired with Tooele PD. This is what caused the injury to get worse. I fought him after I got hurt fighting Cadet Carver.

Me and McKinnon

Me and McKinnon again. Captain Rickards is in the back. He is the Director of the Academy.

Me just before I went up against Carver.

Sitting in class. We had class all day for 8 hours then went to firearms that night for another 4 hours.

This is Cadet Carver. The strongest one in class. I was paired with him. I was the officer and he was the suspect. We started out in a hold of his choice on the ground. The instructor dropped a training gun beside us saying that during the arrest my gun came loose. I was to fight for my life and control of the weapon and suspect. We were allowed to call for back up but in my scenario back up was two minutes out. I called again and was told by dispatch (the instructor) that back up was delayed by an old lady in the cross walk and was another 30 seconds out. I fought Carver for three minutes until the instructor called "End Scenario." I was successful in retaining the gun and was able to hold him and gunpoint the last few seconds. I tore the muscles and such off my collar bone and tore a muscle in my neck. It was extremely painful but went on to go up against McKinnon. I spent the next few months in lots of pain. Even now it still hurts on occasion.

During our lunch break. more than half the class is not pictured here. Pay no attention to my Facebook, I promise I payed attention.. Kinda haha