Muhammad Ali said it best: “service to others is the rent you pay for your room here on earth.”

Simple words but deep in meaning to Shari and I. To us, service embodies one’s passion through action to create a positive impact on someone else’s life. We have been blessed to have the opportunity to touch the lives of many over the years. Our involvement in moving the Payson Rodeo Grounds, building the first artificial turf multipurpose field in Arizona, and initiating the “Concert Under the Stars” series led us to receive the “Outstanding Citizen’s Award” and “Citizen of the Year” from the town of Payson, Arizona.  We were also named “Volunteer of the Year” for the State of Arizona.

 Our combined seventy-five years in banking, experiencing robbery after robbery, anthrax scares, being shot at, increased our awareness of the vital role of emergency responders in protecting us. We witnessed first-hand the work of dedicated police officers, FBI agents, fire personnel, and hazmat teams going into harm’s way. In 2013, I made a promise to FBI agent Douglas Samuels: “I do not know how I will repay all of you for what you do for us, but I will figure it out!” I became painfully aware of the pain and anguish that were tearing some of them apart from the inside after being involved in terrible critical incidents.

In 2013, I began to realize my promise. Shari and I learned about a program called post-critical incident seminars (PCIS) in South Carolina. We traveled there and also to North Carolina to attend these seminars. There we heard about Dr. Kathy Thomas, a psychiatrist from Oklahoma with unique expertise in mental trauma to emergency responders. After meeting Dr. Thomas, we established our first nonprofit organization, Oklahoma Law Enforcement Assistance Program (OKLEAP). In 2014, we expanded the scope of psychological assistance to traumatized emergency responders by creating an Emergency Responders Assistance Program (ERAP). We conducted our first PCIS in 2015, and since then conducted 13 seminars, serving 306 emergency responders and significant others from all over the nation. In 2018, we expanded ERAP from Oklahoma to Arizona, changing the organization’s name to National ERAP. We updated the format of our seminars and renamed them Emergency Responders Critical Incident Seminars (ERCIS).

I was once told that “The healing cannot begin until all that are involved in a critical incident had a chance to heal together.” Our dream to assist those who protect us came true by creating a nonprofit in which citizens and emergency responders work together to provide mental support by peers and mental health workers to traumatized emergency responders.