Daniel Lawrence and Kim Welsh

[00:03] DANIEL LAWRENCE: Hi, I'm Dan Lawrence. I'm 67. Thursday, May 19, 2022 in our kitchen in Richmond, Virginia. And I don't know my conversation partner at all. We're meeting for the first time now. Let me scroll down and. What's embarrassing? I didn't get your name.

[00:32] KIM WALSH: I'm Kim.

[00:33] DANIEL LAWRENCE: Kim.

[00:34] KIM WALSH: Yep.

[00:35] DANIEL LAWRENCE: Thank you. Okay. And you are just a normal 61 year old woman who has recently become concerned about things going on in our country. I come from a working class family. My grandfather retired from the assembly line. I've lived in Miami, Arizona, Florida. My husband was president of the motorcycle club in Arizona. So I've seen the good and the bad in my life.

[01:05] KIM WALSH: Yeah. Introduce yourself and then read Daniel's back. Okay. So do I need to be on camera? Because I can't see his bio, remember?

[01:21] DANIEL LAWRENCE: Yeah.

[01:22] KIM WALSH: So if you just want to bring up the chat.

[01:24] DANIEL LAWRENCE: And then after that you should be.

[01:26] KIM WALSH: Able to exit out.

[01:28] DANIEL LAWRENCE: So you pull up that message box.

[01:30] KIM WALSH: Yep, I got it. Let me know when to start talking, Ben.

[01:37] DANIEL LAWRENCE: Yep. Yeah, you can start now.

[01:40] KIM WALSH: My name is Kim Walsh. I am 61 years old, soon to be 62. Today is May 19, 2022. I live in Midland, Michigan. My partner's name is Daniel Lawrence in Virginia and his bio is. He is a recently retired family physician. His spouse is still teaching. He has two grown sons, one daughter in law, a granddaughter, soon turning one. We live in Richmond, Virginia, in an older neighborhood adjacent to a quarter corridor with low income one bedroom apartments. He grew up in a farming town of 2000. He was the first to go to college. Got a full tuition scholarship. Served five years on the local medical school admissions committee advocating for dark horse candidates with a passion for primary care. And he has worked with groups providing prison medical care and home visits. And he loves to garden. Hi, Daniel. I'll get the ball rolling. I'm not shy.

[03:00] DANIEL LAWRENCE: Where is Midland?

[03:01] KIM WALSH: Midland is the middle of the mitten. You know, I'm right here. I'm right in the middle of the mitten where there's a lot of snow in the wintertime.

[03:13] DANIEL LAWRENCE: Yeah.

[03:13] KIM WALSH: I was born in lower Michigan, in Swartz Creek, the Flint area.

[03:19] DANIEL LAWRENCE: Okay.

[03:19] KIM WALSH: When I graduated high school, I moved to Arizona, to Tucson. I lived there for quite a few years. And then I was playing fast. Pitched softball on a city league. I missed the pitch and I tore my knee up so I'd have knee surgery. And I came home, went back to Arizona after all that. Lived there for 25 years. From there I moved to like, Orlando, Florida. Lived there for twelve years. And now I'm back in Michigan. So had a couple kids along the way, things like that. Like I said in my bio, when I was in Arizona, my husband was in a motorcycle club, kind of, I guess, if you want to call it a club. But it was, there were some pretty not good people. Right. So like I said, I've seen the good side and the bad side. I've become very concerned about our country lately and the things that are going on with it. And I seen the interview that somebody did on Fox News, and I thought, what a great way to get the other somebody else's side of the story. Right. Because I know how I feel and I'm worried, right. I'm worried about the way things are going and the things that I hear all the time. So I thought, what a better way than to get the other side of it, than to try this. Then Naomi texted me the other day and I was like, yay. So I'm really excited to hear, you know, about you and what you've done and how you feel about things. I got questions all written down, kinds of stuff. I'm looking forward to this. So. But that's me in a nutshell.

[05:17] DANIEL LAWRENCE: And I think we've both seen divisive times, but I think it's more shrill than it ever used to be, maybe.

[05:24] KIM WALSH: What do you, what do you mean by shrew?

[05:27] DANIEL LAWRENCE: People are way on the left, way on the right. And don't listen to each other.

[05:31] KIM WALSH: Yes. Yes. I agree with you 100%. Yep. Everybody's got their opinion and they don't want to hear anybody else's. And that's where I'm at. I want to hear somebody else's side, you know, not saying that I'm going to try to change your mind or you're not going to try to change my mind, but maybe it'll make me understand things, like a lot of the gender identity stuff that's going on right now. I have a eleven year old grand autistic grandson that he's in school, you know, and I hear all this stuff about the schools, so it scares me, you know, and some people are very strong in their beliefs about that stuff. And my daughter is gay. She is married to a woman, right? This, she's raising my grandson as her own, but it's really her daughter's child. So I have no problem with who you want to be. But the part about shoving it down my throat and, you know, pushing it on these kids, that's the part I don't understand.

[06:44] DANIEL LAWRENCE: And I know here in Richmond at Planned Parenthood as a teen you can start hormone blockers or hormone changers. All you have to tell them is that, yes, I've had psychological evaluation. You don't have to prove it. And I think it's unjust and unfair for these kids to not, you know, really assess it. Is it a fad or is it real?

[07:08] KIM WALSH: Right. At 13, I didn't know who I wanted to be. I don't think anybody knows who they want to be at 13. So, um, that, that's. That's part that, that bothers me. Um, it bothers me a lot. And I'm. It's pretty cool that you're a doctor, too, because I don't know what kind of a doctor you were, but you know the medical side of it, right?

[07:31] DANIEL LAWRENCE: Family physician. Yeah.

[07:33] KIM WALSH: So, yeah. You understand? And it. It just really bothers me. So I asked my little grandson every day, what did they talk to you about in school today? And the other day, you know what he told me? I said, devin, do you know what the pledge of allegiance is? And he said it to me. I was so happy. You know, I was just really thrilled.

[07:53] DANIEL LAWRENCE: Because we grew up doing that. You know, you stood and had your hand over your heart.

[07:58] KIM WALSH: Yes. Yes. Where you have two sons?

[08:04] DANIEL LAWRENCE: You said two sons? Yeah. One's in Richmond and one's up in New Jersey. The one in Richmond's a paralegal. The one in New Jersey is a device marketer. They mine anonymous data and sell them to advertisers and put those custom ad feeds on your smartphones.

[08:26] KIM WALSH: So we know as far as it's anonymous, which brings.

[08:32] DANIEL LAWRENCE: They're very different.

[08:33] KIM WALSH: Which brings up a question that I had since you know about that stuff. Have you seen the movie 2000 mules?

[08:42] DANIEL LAWRENCE: No. Did you like it?

[08:46] KIM WALSH: You know, I am very conservative, right. I'm not far far right. But I believe if we ever want a free and fair election again, that we have to fix our voting system. If you haven't watched it, I would suggest you see it 2000 meals. Yes. It's, um, you know, it's a Trump Biden thing, which I don't care either way, right. I want to know that people are not cheating in our elections. And to me, yes, it's a once. It's a documentary, and it's one sided, kind of. But it's also not because they're pulling people's phones, the gps, the data that your son does, they're pulling that, and they're finding them at drop boxes. They're finding them at 501 c, three operations. So it's a good documentary. And if we ever, ever want a free and fair election again, I think everybody should be required to watch that movie.

[10:02] DANIEL LAWRENCE: And it's scary how our new technology can be abused and misused.

[10:06] KIM WALSH: Yes, sir. Yes. Let me talking about. I'm taking. I'm overrunning the conversation. I apologize. I have an older daughter. Well, I had. My daughter was 35. My first call. I'm gonna try to say this without crying. My first call of 2022 was that my daughter was killed. She got ran over in Arizona. She got bad fentanyl that's been coming across our borders, and she passed out in the road, and somebody ran her over and killed her. To this day, I don't know who did it. The detective has worked very hard, and they used the gps, right, to find out whose phones were in that area, right down to 20 seconds. And they brought the people in, and they claimed that, yes, they were there, but all they seen in the road was a tire. And he basically told me that if they didn't admit to hitting her, that, you know, there was nothing he could do. So they know who did it, but they can't prove it. And they found him by gps. They tracked him by gps. So it's just kind of the year I've been having.

[11:39] DANIEL LAWRENCE: It's like that old song, all's quiet, unless 23rd. Nobody saw.

[11:45] KIM WALSH: Yes. Yes. So, you know, it's just. It's been a crazy year. It's been a really crazy year.

[11:56] DANIEL LAWRENCE: Did you see dope sick?

[11:59] KIM WALSH: No, I have not.

[12:01] DANIEL LAWRENCE: It's worth saying. I grew up when the drug companies were pushing their opiates and they were trying to educate us all about the pain is your fifth vital sign, and your pain's on a scale of zero to ten, and no one should suffer pain. And they basically sucked us into being too liberal with opiates. So I think the medical community and the pharmaceutical industry share a big part of the blame for our current epidemic.

[12:29] KIM WALSH: They do. Daniel, let me tell you something. I am still, to this day on Suboxone because I got sucked into that opioid crisis. I was taking 300 milligrams of morphine a day, plus 120, ten milligram Vicodin for ten years. So to this day, I've been off of it for. I think I'm going on three years now, but I still take the suboxone because I still get dope sick.

[13:07] DANIEL LAWRENCE: Yeah. Yeah.

[13:08] KIM WALSH: It's a shame. It's a shame what they did to this country. And all I had to do was walk into the doctor and tell them oh, you know, I had knee surgery. So I started off legitimately. I had a knee replacement. And for two years, that's all they did was write me prescriptions. And so for 20 years, that's what I did. I get it, but I will watch it.

[13:34] DANIEL LAWRENCE: And then as the medical community became aware of the monsters we created, everyone started, you know, drug contracts and urine tests and monitoring. And the minute someone flunked, you dump them. So, you know, they've got to withdraw from their opiate. They're going to withdraw on the street.

[13:52] KIM WALSH: Yes, sir.

[13:53] DANIEL LAWRENCE: So physicians and health care providers created this whole addiction. I mean, we contributed a big amount to it, sadly.

[14:02] KIM WALSH: There's a song by a guy, he's kind of a rap artist. His name is McLemore, and he says, my song is my drug dealer was a doctor. And I'm telling you that song hits home, because I was part of it. I was part of it.

[14:23] DANIEL LAWRENCE: And family medicine, the detail reps would come in and they try to schmooze around. You know, it used to be with the doctors ladies and skimpy attire, but, you know, it was more and more the front desk as the doctors tried their best to avoid them. And I was taught that they are excellent for finding out what's wrong with the competitor's product, but you should never trust them about their product. But anyway, in my just chatting at home, you know, debriefing at the end of the day, I would tell the boys, you know, the drug dealers visit us today and jokingly, and not realizing. So to this day, they know that I think of pharmaceutical reps as drug dealers. And there were some wonderful reps, but, you know, it's a sleazy industry.

[15:12] KIM WALSH: It is. And even with this vaccine, they're making millions and millions and millions and billions of dollars off of it. So, yeah, I know, it's, it starts at the top, right? Where do you, and how do you fix it? Can you fix it? Can we fix it? I don't know. I don't know.

[15:35] DANIEL LAWRENCE: Well, you know, change goes both ways. Pendulum swing India has a whole virus vaccine that they're marketing to the third world, which would be a wonderful vaccine for America this fall. Because these mutations, you know, we're gonna run into more and more resistance if we stick with the mRNA and you know, the mRNA have so far been my savior. I've had some exposure situations, but I don't think, you know, it costs money to make the vaccines, but I think we over protect their investment. They're doing well and I think we should be investing in some newer vaccines, which they both claim they're doing. But the tragedy is, you know, we've got the vaccines, even though a lot of people refuse them. But just across our shores, Haiti and Dominican Republic, we don't have enough vaccines. And so it's not a worldwide equity at all.

[16:34] KIM WALSH: You know, I got vaccinated. It was under protest because I'm one of those anti vaxxers. Um, I had to take it for work. I had to take it because I traveled around the country, going to all of our new locations, training them on our computer systems. Well, if I got exposed at a location, I couldn't come home unless I was vaccinated. Now I'm seeing all the documents and things that Pfizer's put out, you know, and. And the chatter on Twitter and the chatter on, you know, oh, God, people are dying and stuff like that. So, you know, it kind of freaks me out a little bit. I mean, I don't know, you know, but I believe, like, with the masks, if you want to wear a mask outside, go right ahead.

[17:28] DANIEL LAWRENCE: That's for the place you needed the least.

[17:31] KIM WALSH: You were born in United. In the United States. It's. You have the right. You were born with that right to do what you want to do, but you can't tell me what I have to do. Right? That's. That's my stance on it.

[17:45] DANIEL LAWRENCE: My sister's an anti vaxxer, and her husband's mom. No, her husband's dad died of COVID you know, early on, before we weren't savvy with our treatments.

[17:56] KIM WALSH: Yes.

[17:57] DANIEL LAWRENCE: And she still hasn't been immunized, and, you know, it's her call.

[18:01] KIM WALSH: Yes.

[18:02] DANIEL LAWRENCE: But she has ethical reasons to distrust the vaccines.

[18:06] KIM WALSH: Yes. That I won't get my grandson vaccinated. I just. I just won't. There's just not enough research on it, I don't think. Now, you're a doctor, so you probably understand that stuff way better than I do, but I don't want something to happen to him later in life because, you know, like I said, the chatter on Twitter and the chatter on Facebook is. It attaches to your DNA. Well, do I want his kids coming out with another leg or something? No. You know, but that's. That's the good thing about being in the United States and being an american is you have that choice, and.

[18:49] DANIEL LAWRENCE: And we have access to it, correct?

[18:51] KIM WALSH: Correct. If you want it, you can get it. Right? I get. I get it.

[18:57] DANIEL LAWRENCE: So I was a kid that didn't get the polio vaccine, because RGP, there was some anecdote about monkey virus strain or something in the manufacturer and so associated with some sort of cancer. So I come to medical school, I had to get my vaccines.

[19:16] KIM WALSH: Oh, my gosh. Really? Wow. They made you do it that late in life?

[19:22] DANIEL LAWRENCE: Oh, yeah, yeah.

[19:23] KIM WALSH: Wow. Wow. How long did you go to medical school?

[19:29] DANIEL LAWRENCE: It was four years and then three years of residency. Yeah.

[19:32] KIM WALSH: Wow. I never went to college, and I went right to the biker lifestyle.

[19:38] DANIEL LAWRENCE: Well, and, you know, everyone should go to college, huh? Not everyone should go to college.

[19:44] KIM WALSH: No, I wouldn't have probably made it, you know what I mean? But I've made a decent living all my life. I always worked. You know, I've always worked. I just chose the party lifestyle, right. That's what I was doing.

[20:00] DANIEL LAWRENCE: My brother had a motorcycle, and it's certainly a freedom, an exhilarating feeling.

[20:05] KIM WALSH: I love on a bike. There's nothing else like sitting on the back of a motorcycle. Going through the mountains in Arizona in the summertime. It's a little warm, but, you know, it's okay.

[20:21] DANIEL LAWRENCE: It's Tucson. Where did you live?

[20:24] KIM WALSH: Um, I. And that's where my daughter was actually killed. Um, are you familiar with Tucson?

[20:31] DANIEL LAWRENCE: I went to college there, and I grew up in Gilbert and Phoenix.

[20:34] KIM WALSH: Oh, wow.

[20:36] DANIEL LAWRENCE: I'm a desert rat.

[20:38] KIM WALSH: Yeah. I'm from the north. Northeast side. North side. Um, Prince Romero area. Yeah. Yeah.

[20:48] DANIEL LAWRENCE: I love Tucson.

[20:50] KIM WALSH: It's beautiful. It's beautiful. From what I understand, it's really bad right now. Like, really bad with the heroin and the fentanyl, and there's some pretty bad stuff out there, so I have no intentions of going back. That's where my daughter was. She was a homeless person. She had schizophrenia, so she was homeless. And whoever killed her took away any chance that I ever have of having. Seeing my child again. You know, they took that away from me. But there will be judgment one day. It won't be here on this earth, but there will be judgment. So I'm okay with it. I know you're on your video call, but have you seen my earrings and my necklace? Nikki. Nicole, stop. I am so sorry.

[21:48] DANIEL LAWRENCE: I don't feel so bad about my cat now.

[21:50] KIM WALSH: Yeah, no, I thought I heard your cat. I thought you had. Your. Had a grandchild.

[21:56] DANIEL LAWRENCE: No, they're in New Jersey.

[21:58] KIM WALSH: My. My alexa is right next to where I have my phone sitting. Oh, that's all right. I'd love her. That was the thing. When my oldest daughter had my grandson, the one that was killed, she. My youngest was only 18, so I was 50, and my daughter couldn't keep the boy. She was schizophrenic, you know what I mean? So her and I agreed that I will take. I'll be the financial part of it. You and your partner will be mom and dad. And now that's where I'm at. I live with my kids. My kids. We all still live together because of the child, you know, and kind of thank God, because we split the rent. We split everything. Right. And stuff is really hard to afford these days.

[22:55] DANIEL LAWRENCE: Absolutely.

[22:56] KIM WALSH: So, yeah, we're one big happy family.

[23:01] DANIEL LAWRENCE: There's no families used to be like that. And now they're all, you know, isolated nuclear families here and there.

[23:08] KIM WALSH: Yeah. And they're all across the country. I was one of them. I. From the minute I graduated high school, I left and went to Arizona. And then when my grandma got sick, my grandma got MRSA, and I moved to Florida, and she got better, and she lived till she was 98 years old. She gave me her car at 92. She said, I don't think I can drive anymore. She hit somebody's mailbox or something. I was like, who is? Because I wouldn't ride in a car with her. And no, 92 years old, still driving. My mom lives with us. She's 85. So, yeah, we're just one big happy family.

[23:53] DANIEL LAWRENCE: But grandparents died when the boys were young, and so they didn't really have that presence as much. But there was an elderly couple in town that had no children that Meg taught, you know, Henrico county, the county. I don't know what you call it. County parks and rec. Tourist. German. German for tourist. And they just fell in love with her, and they wound up being our Richmond grandparents.

[24:23] KIM WALSH: Yeah, that's cool. I was. I was one of our locations in Virginia. I converted it, um, smooth, smooth lumber. And. Yeah, I want to say Virginia. I know I was in Virginia, but I can't remember the name of the city.

[24:42] DANIEL LAWRENCE: Smoot lumber.

[24:44] KIM WALSH: Yeah. And that was. And I went to Washington. I was so excited. You're close to Washington, right?

[24:52] DANIEL LAWRENCE: 2 hours. Two miserable hours. That's a horrible commute.

[24:56] KIM WALSH: Yeah, I'm. Gosh darn it, why can't I remember where that was at? But it was. I mean, we were close to Washington that we could drive there, right? I think you just went across and we would fly into Reagan. And every time we flew in, I'm like, oh, there's the Washington monument. You know, I just think it's really cool to see that. I want to take my grandson one of these days, but there was a lot of homeless camps and things down there when I was there. And no garbage pickup.

[25:30] DANIEL LAWRENCE: We lived there as a resident. And so we had a fifties row house behind the train tracks, Alexandria. And they promised the metro station would open up in six months. It opened up six months after we left, three years later, but that kept the rent low. But it was a great place when you don't have money because there's so much that was free. All the Smithsonian things. Yeah.

[25:57] KIM WALSH: Yes. I. We went. The day we went, it was like 90 degrees. I mean, it was so hot. And we went and we went to the thing between Lincoln Memorial and the Capitol. The gazing pond or whatever. I don't know what it's called. Called, but action pool or something. Yeah, yeah. I was like, it don't look like that on tv. It was all green and stinky. That's not what it looks like on television. So, um, let me look at some of my questions. Oh, I know one thing I have on here, um, the baby food shortage.

[26:43] DANIEL LAWRENCE: Yeah.

[26:44] KIM WALSH: Concerned about food shortages, because, you know, Biden told us in March that we were going to have food shortages. So I've been stashing food.

[26:52] DANIEL LAWRENCE: Yeah. And it's interesting, there have been people, I think, on both political parties trying to empower the FDA to do more enforcement, because basically we're down to about four manufacturers in this country. And the big one, similac, had the contamination in the factory. Well, the FDA should have the power to go in there and make sure that, you know, baby food is not being made in contaminated facilities. So that's part of it. Part of it's the supply chain. And apparently there's a plant in Ireland that similac has been shipping by jet, everything they can manufacture. So my brother, my son up there found something online, and he got like four big things of similac because the six month old requires neutral, which stinks. But anyway, he got it for toddlers, so it won't work for the six month old. I think he's trying to sell it back on the Internet.

[28:01] KIM WALSH: I feel bad for these parents. I mean, I couldn't imagine wondering how you're going to feed your baby when it was. I believe that it was all preventable. You know, he had to have known.

[28:16] DANIEL LAWRENCE: And if you're on WIC, that program for low income pregnant and nursing women, it's even harder, you know, because WIc only allows certain formulas.

[28:27] KIM WALSH: Right, right. But I just think that, you know, when it comes out on the front page of the news, is that really the time for the White House to react. You know, I don't understand. I don't understand. It's like we're a third world country anymore. This is the United States, right. We should have food on our shelves. Toilet paper. Look at what happened in Covid. You couldn't even get toilet paper. I don't get it. How is this stuff happening? That's. That's my, like, I just sit and watch the news and just can't believe what's happening.

[29:12] DANIEL LAWRENCE: Well, I feel like we've been spoiled, and it's kind of given us a taste of what happens to the poor and to the rest of the world. You know how they used to talk about Russia had nothing on the shelves or I. Cuba.

[29:24] KIM WALSH: Right, right.

[29:26] DANIEL LAWRENCE: And, you know, you live in Michigan. It's just a wonderful fruit, fruit farming belt. And, you know, so it's not like we're not making food here in America.

[29:36] KIM WALSH: Yeah, we have really good, like, homegrown vegetables. We have the best sweet corn ever. But, you know, we still have to go to the grocery store. You know what I mean?

[29:49] DANIEL LAWRENCE: Industry. In college, I would work the summers cutting grain. And so we would cut wheat fields around Phoenix, and it was shipped by train to Los Angeles because it was bought on the futures market and shipped to Japan. Meanwhile, feed lots around Phoenix were buying wheat from Montana, shipping it down by train to Phoenix for the feed line. So there's a lot of voodoo. Economics has always been.

[30:19] KIM WALSH: See, that's. That's the part I don't get. That's the part I don't understand, right? Like, we can grow it here. We've got gas under our feet. Why are we trying to buy oil from other countries? What is the purpose of what. Why, why am I paying $4, $5 a gallon for gas? Because we can't drill here. It makes no sense to me. It boggles my mind. I don't understand what the, like, what do you. What's the end game here? Everybody gets an electric vehicle and poor.

[30:59] DANIEL LAWRENCE: Folks suffer the most. Well, you know, electric vehicles, you still have to have power plants to make electricity.

[31:04] KIM WALSH: Yes, sir. And I don't have $60,000 to go buy an electric vehicle. Nevda. Right. And that's where I think our politicians are just out of touch with us. And that was one of the reasons I wanted to do this, is because I, when they said you were a doctor, I was like, oh, good. He's going to be, you know, somebody that's educated and, you know what I mean? You probably have more money than me, right? I live paycheck to paycheck, but we're still all in the same boat. So we got to come together. We got to, you know, this back and forth in burning cities and things like that. We've got to stop that. We have to reunite and make things happen.

[31:54] DANIEL LAWRENCE: I'm involved. Sponsoring an afghan family that was shipped over from Kabul, and they were the persecuted Dari minority. So the Taliban are taking over their farms and these sharia courts that they've held for generations, but they think this country is just amazing.

[32:12] KIM WALSH: Oh, I'm sure.

[32:14] DANIEL LAWRENCE: And I'm smiling and I'm saying it's not perfect, but you're right. It's amazing. But it makes me appreciate, as dysfunctional as we are, some people are just grateful. Yeah.

[32:26] KIM WALSH: Yes. Yes. And more Americans should be grateful, too. And I think things would be a lot different.

[32:32] DANIEL LAWRENCE: I really, both you and I, we've got more blue collar background.

[32:37] KIM WALSH: Yes.

[32:38] DANIEL LAWRENCE: When you grow up that way, you appreciate things. We stayed in the city even though schools are crummy and our boys thanked us. But so many of our neighbors moved to the suburbs, and you're just in a neighborhood where everyone's like you and know what life is like for the other people.

[32:59] KIM WALSH: Cookie cutter. Yeah. Yeah. Well, like I said, I mean, I. I don't remember a whole lot of the eighties because I was partying, you know? So I've come out of it, and I'm trying to do better, and I'm raising my grandson, and it's hurting me right now. It's hurting me. Do I buy gas to get back and forth to work, or do I stop at McDonald's and get him his chicken nuggets? You know, it's. It's sad that it's come to that here. That shouldn't happen in this country, I don't think, because.

[33:40] DANIEL LAWRENCE: But it is.

[33:41] KIM WALSH: I should be able to get gas and get him chicken nuggets, right? I don't know. I don't know. I'm just one little person. I don't know if I can change anything, so. But I. That's why I wanted to do this, because, you know, I value your opinion, and I really am happy that I spoke with you today. I feel better.

[34:09] DANIEL LAWRENCE: Well, my folks were both hard working. Mom had bad rheumatoid arthritis, crippling and deforming. And we kids didn't really realize how bad it was. We just treated her like a normal mom. And my dad took some business school classes but never went to college. He was a farmer and then surveyed cotton for the government and wound up a government office worker.

[34:31] KIM WALSH: Wow.

[34:32] DANIEL LAWRENCE: They both kind of said, make the world a better place, then you find it.

[34:40] KIM WALSH: Yes, sir. And that's what I want to do, is I want to make it. I want to leave a better place, as I'm sure you do for your grandchildren. I want this world to be a better place.

[34:54] DANIEL LAWRENCE: Our little part. Yeah.

[34:57] KIM WALSH: Yeah. You got one. That's going to be one.

[34:59] DANIEL LAWRENCE: You said six months. I'm going to be two. Yeah.

[35:02] KIM WALSH: Do you get to see them very often?

[35:05] DANIEL LAWRENCE: We try our best. We were just up there last weekend, and it was wonderful. We got the six month or to crawl by holding the cell phone just out of his reach.

[35:19] KIM WALSH: Oh, my gosh. Well, I know we only have a few minutes left, but I'll tell you my other tragic story. When you said about the cell phone and the babies, my grandson was two. I had a. My daughter, that is in the gay marriage, did get pregnant. She messed around and got pregnant. And I come home from work one day, and she had to be to work at 05:00 it was like two minutes down the road. So me and her wife jumped in the car, told my oldest daughter, the one that just got killed, we'll be right back. I'm gonna run Nikki to work. I'll be home in two minutes. I get home, where's the baby? I don't know. I wasn't watching him. Well, he went out the back door because the kids left the back door open. They also left the ladder in the pool. And he climbed the ladder, dropped his phone in the pool, and he drowned his diaper, weighted him down. So, you know, I've had some pretty tragic stuff. So the phone made me think of that. And, you know, that's the other thing with this grandson. That kid is addicted to that phone I have. Take it away from him. I told him, Saturday, no technology. Saturday. You're going to go outside and play on your trampoline. Because, you know, they. I don't know what, but he is constantly, he walks around looking at his phone. It's like, dude, let it go. There's things.

[36:56] DANIEL LAWRENCE: We would just go out and play till we got called home for supper. Oh, people don't do that anymore.

[37:01] KIM WALSH: I don't let him go outside until the streetlights come home. If he goes outside, I'm right there beside him. I'm too scared somebody's going to snatch him up.

[37:09] DANIEL LAWRENCE: Yeah.

[37:10] KIM WALSH: Isn't that sad that that's the world we live in today. Isn't that sad? You know, your age and my age. We were. My mom and I were talking about it the other day. I said when I was a kid, I was never home. I'd get on my bike and I'd ride to the neighbors and I'd be gone all day.

[37:27] DANIEL LAWRENCE: I bicycle 3 miles to school. Well, I wouldn't let a grandkid do that.

[37:32] KIM WALSH: Oh, no, no. I. You know, I watch him get on the bus because I'm afraid he's going to get grabbed from the front porch to the bus. It's. And that's terrible that we live like that, you know, but I don't know what, like I said, I'm just one little person. What can I do to fix it, you know? I don't know.

[37:54] DANIEL LAWRENCE: Nothing my mom always said was, take it a day at a time.

[37:57] KIM WALSH: Yes, sir. Yes. Her, that's. That's the AA and the Na and all that. One day at a time. I wake up every morning and thank God that I'm breathing, you know? I really do. So I really appreciate talking to you. I know I kind of like took over the conversation and just kept yuckity, yuck, yuck, yuck.

[38:24] DANIEL LAWRENCE: But I'm enjoying getting acquainted with you. I mean, you have a lot of curveballs thrown at you. I have.

[38:31] KIM WALSH: I had a lot of good things in my life, though, you know, I do. I don't think I would change a thing. God put me on this path and he put me on this path for a reason. There's gotta be some reason that I've had all these losses, right? I don't know what it is. I don't understand it. But God has a plan, you know, with God possible.

[38:56] DANIEL LAWRENCE: What was your most favorite motorcycle? Motorcycle run in Arizona.

[39:01] KIM WALSH: Back in the very beginning of the eighties, before I ever had kids. We had a run up on Mount Lemon.

[39:08] DANIEL LAWRENCE: Oh, I love Mount Lemon.

[39:10] KIM WALSH: There was like 10,000 people there and everybody. It was at the old prison camp where they put the Japanese. There was. Yeah, the internment kept. There were stairs like it. They had a stadium. And probably about 5000 people got up and shot the moon. And it made it to.

[39:34] DANIEL LAWRENCE: Wow.

[39:36] KIM WALSH: You can find it online. There's a moon shot. There's so many people with butts in their faces. It's hilarious. But yeah, that was my favorite when I was younger. You know, I liked riding motorcycles. My mom hated it, but I liked it.

[39:54] DANIEL LAWRENCE: Do you miss good mexican food? You probably have pretty good mexican food in Michigan.

[39:58] KIM WALSH: Oh, God, I can't even tell you how bad I miss mexican food. There's no nothing like it. Here. Even though they say it's authentic, it's not.

[40:10] DANIEL LAWRENCE: Yeah. We're gradually getting a bigger immigrant community here, so we're starting to get some good latino food. But I came to Richmond and it was all bland.

[40:20] KIM WALSH: There's no spices, no nothing. No nothing. So a lot of the immigrants, though, that are coming are not from Mexico. They're from, you know. Yeah, that's another thing. We don't have another hour, but I can go on forever about the immigration.

[40:37] DANIEL LAWRENCE: Well, the border has been mismanaged by both parties. Yeah.

[40:40] KIM WALSH: Yeah. I think everybody should have a chance to come to America, but do it right, you know, don't come across just, you know, and that, that national guardsman drowned. You didn't hear about it in the news one day? No biggie. You know, that's not right. It's not right. So.

[41:04] DANIEL LAWRENCE: Well, listen, I've really enjoyed this. I've enjoyed talking the best for you and all your family.

[41:10] KIM WALSH: Thank you. Thank you, Daniel. Thank you. Ben