Purpose Lab Resources

It is important to learn from the people around you and find support. As I started moving forward in life, everything pointed toward law enforcement for me. And something that helped me a lot was that my parents were very supportive. They would say, "Whatever you want to do, just aspire to be something, something that's good and something that's giving." My parents were both working people. They weren't in law enforcement, they weren't in politics. They were just hardworking people. And they did have an impact on me because I saw how hard they worked. And I aspired to be like them – to have that kind of integrity.

Staying open minded is important. You have to have the mindset of being able to work with all nationalities, all different beliefs. And you have to be deferential to the concerns of the people who come in. For example, working at an airport, sometimes people come to an airport for the first time in their lives and you have to be able to work with them. Keeping an open mind is a part of having good people skills. You can never guess how that's going to pay off, and who you're going to meet. And that's what I've learned. Even coming here to Sedona, there's people with different mindset and I try to work with those people. I found it works well. I learn a lot and I take away a lot each day. Which helps me to do my job better.

I never even looked at or aspired to be mayor. I just wanted to give back in my way, and try to help out. You've probably heard the saying "leave someplace better than when you found it." The more I did on the city council, the more I was able to do that. And it led to me becoming the mayor in a natural progression.

The best advice I can give to those people who are looking for their purpose, is to open their mind, and consider every path. No matter what you look at, don't go for the job. Go for the career. People need to aspire to a career. And everybody tends to focus on college. College is a wonderful opportunity. It truly, truly is. If it wasn't for colleges, we wouldn't have some amazing people in our lives, right. Like rocket scientists and doctors. But we also need plumbers. We need electricians, we need firefighters. We need police officers because they touch people in their own way. You could go to college and be a lawyer. You win the case, you sue somebody or you help somebody. But it's not the same as a firefighter. You save lives, even as a plumber or electrician. They help people who need help in an instant, in their homes. And people forget that. But that's a career and it's got a personal touch that can make you feel fulfilled. Jobs are fine, to an extent, but go for the career n...

Let me tell a quick story with this one: I remember something that my mother did, and she was not an outgoing person. She was more of an introvert, but she had a problem where she'd purchased a desk chair and it needed to be repaired. So she sent it back. And back then you didn't have Amazon, so you put the chair in the car to take it to a shop to get it fixed. And she never got the chair back, or she didn't get the chair back in a timely fashion. And she went to inquire about it and found out that that business had gone bankrupt. And they shut the doors. So she fought and she fought for the stupid desk chair. It was a nice chair. It was leather, but it was just a chair. Regardless, my mother fought tooth and nail and finally got the chair back. Aas a little kid. Maybe eight or nine. I watched her fight and get what she wanted. And I do that now. As a cop, you have to fight to get where you want. It's not easy. Not a single day is easy. The days can be fun, but they're not always ea...

I discovered my purpose years ago when I was a teenager. I was with a group of friends in the middle of a huge snowstorm and one of our neighbors was missing her child and looked all around nearby. It was really before kidnappings were a big thing. But all of my friends worked together with the police department to just walk the neighborhood to help find this child. And we were just kids, but we wanted to contribute and help any way we could. We actually found the child in a parking lot where somebody had removed a manhole cover. The child was in the manhole, covered with snow and it just happened that we'd been walking through a parking lot, and we heard him calling out for help. And the exhilaration you get when you actually save someone is remarkable. It left a remarkable impression on my life, that it's really cool to help people. That's where my life has really moved forward. And I have never regretted it at all. I get a huge excitement out of it every day.