Mike Boehrer and Philip Sikora

[00:00] MIKE BOHRER: Conversation id is DDV 002413. I'm 53 years old. Today's date is April 24 of 2023. I am in Sheridan, Wyoming. I am here with my one small step partner, Phil.

[00:24] PHILIP SIKORA: My name is Phil. I'm 69 years old. Today is April 24, 2023. I'm in Darien, Georgia, which is coastal, and I'm here with my one step partner, Mike.

[00:43] MIKE BOHRER: I'm a christian father of three adult daughters, one of which is developmentally disabled. I've been married to the same woman for 34 years. Sorry, Mike. I. Sorry. To make that clear, you're actually reading Philip's bio to Philip. Okay, sorry about that. All good. I'll begin. All right, Phil's bio. I'm nearing a milestone birthday in September. How did it go so fast? I have two daughters, 38 and 35, scattered around the US. My work life started in a family business, selling catholic religious articles, then teaching in inner city classes at the second grade level and three year olds in a daycare center. Then I traded working with carbon based life forms for silicon based ones, doing network and computer security, one of which I needed my t's sci for. Originally, I thought I was retired until I realized I just had a new boss and didn't get paid for it. But that's okay here in coastal Georgia.

[01:52] PHILIP SIKORA: Okay, Mike, smile. I am a christian father of three adult daughters, one of which is developmentally disabled. I have been married to the same woman for 34 years. I was raised and worked in California my entire life and moved to Wyoming four years ago. I am an Eagle scout and have a bachelor's degree in management. I am retired from a career in law enforcement. I volunteer with a few different organizations within my community. I enjoy the outdoors and activities such as hiking, camping, and golf. Awesome.

[02:30] MIKE BOHRER: So I'm going to put the first question in the chat. And Mike, I'll have you read that question to Phil and then just take turns as you see, Phil when I put a question in, the more questions you guys ask, just the better it'll go. So why did you want to participate in one, in a one small step conversation?

[02:57] PHILIP SIKORA: I saw that question in the background material. I think it's in June, so I don't know if I really remember what it was. Just, I don't know. Why not reach out across a boundary, other part of the country? I didn't see a downside. How about you? Why did you want to participate in one small step conversation?

[03:19] MIKE BOHRER: I heard an interview on the radio with one small step. I don't know if it was a founder or person worked there. And it really piqued my curiosity because during my career I spent a lot of time in a lot of different homes with a lot of different people. And while there might be differences there with the people, I often thought if people would focus on the similarities and things they have in common rather than pick the one or two things that they're opposed to or different with the world, be a better place. And when I heard this program, I thought, that's pretty cool. And they listed off the cities that they were going to be doing it in. And I live literally in the middle of nowhere, the least populated state in the country, and I wondered if I would be able to be involved. So that's how I got involved.

[04:07] PHILIP SIKORA: Oh, that's great. I, you know, I have a very disparate group of friends because I concentrate on what we have in common with whatever that person is. So I get what you're saying. It's a good thing. I like that.

[04:27] MIKE BOHRER: How would you describe your upbringing and how has it informed your attitude and styles toward parenting?

[04:37] PHILIP SIKORA: Yeah, so I'll jump right into personal stuff here. This is good. So my birth mother was twelve when she was raped by her 28 year old half brother. So I was adopted. And back in the, they tried matching up nationalities a little bit. So my dad's Polish Slovak, although I'm not. Well, anyway, I guess that part didn't work. But my mother's from the Philippines, so I remember growing up in my neighborhood, working people, blue collar, and in the fifties, inclusiveness was really not the word of the day. So, you know, I knew it was a little different to have a mother that was asian. How did that affect my parenting? I don't know. Just having my daughters be a little more open and don't jump into some. Sometimes I'll hear them using some peer talk, you know, like back in the nineties, they would say, oh boy, that's so gay. I'm like, all right, well, not that I'm pretty purposely trying to be politically correct, but, you know, you're kind of going down a different path there. So how about yourself? I would have you respond to this question.

[05:57] MIKE BOHRER: Well, if you asked me this when I was a teenager, I would have told you I thought I grew up in a pretty normal home or a young teenager. For the last two years, I've been doing a whole bunch of work with a group called adult child of dysfunctional families and alcoholics. Come to find out my family was about as dysfunctional as you could get. My mom had three kids with a previous husband, which I didn't know about until I was probably twelve years old. And I was doing the math of theirs. My parents 16th anniversary and I've got a 25 year old brother. My dad was a very brutal and my dad was not a good person to the point where when I was about 13 years old, my mom left the house and left. She just kind of abandoned us and what was left. And, you know, I kind of raised myself and thought I did a good job. And as I started getting into my adulthood, I started having my own issues and problems within life that I couldn't figure out. And through some, some good fortunes, I able to identify that and do a bunch of work on that. It's a, it's an ongoing work process for me. How did that affect my upbringing or attitude towards parenting? Unfortunately, we, we a mimic some of what we do. So there were times when I was very hard on my three daughters and, you know, if they got a b on a paper or something like that, I was more focused on, well, why didn't you get an a and not, you know, what did you learn from this? What was your experience? And we've talked, my daughters are in a good place. They're very, they're very well adjusted adults these days and, you know, they're doing their own work. But, you know, I didn't know any better at the time. I did the best I could at the time. Just as my daughters are learning that they're doing with their kids now, they're doing the best they can with what they got. But their dad and pop is doing a lot of work on trying to fix generational trauma.

[08:05] PHILIP SIKORA: Yeah, no, that's good stuff. I, when I met my birth mother almost 31 years ago, all my younger siblings, half siblings, didn't know anything about this. So just the kind of person she was. She got on the phone, she called each one. She said, you don't know it, you have a brother, but he's going to call and come over here. So, you know, life changes in all different ways sometimes. Right.

[08:37] MIKE BOHRER: Phil, could you briefly describe in your own words your personal political values?

[08:49] PHILIP SIKORA: I can try that. I haven't thought about that. I'm sort of, I like what's fair for everybody. You know what I mean? Like one size fits all. You know, here in our, I'm in an Hoa community and I'm on our architectural review board. So you make decisions about building and things like that. And in the past, there's been like favoritism and, you know, this new group. We don't like that. Right. It doesn't matter if we're friends or nothing, to be equal for everybody. So I tend to think that's probably a good example on a larger scale, politically, I would rather see the best effect for the most people, even if I'm not necessarily in that group. How about yourself? How would you describe your political venue?

[09:46] MIKE BOHRER: I would describe myself as a conservative person, but it's, you know, just that one word to me means one thing, and to somebody else, that might mean another. I believe in limited government. I, too, live in an hoa, and I kind of was laughing in my head when you were talking about your design review. I chose to live in an hOa. Some people don't like it, but I believe in limited government. I believe in helping my neighbor. If there's an issue or whatever, I'll do that. My personal experience in my career in life has been, other than sending an army over to overseas to destroy an enemy, usually my experience has been, when the government gets involved in stuff, it gets messed up. I see good people with good intentions doing the greater good, I think. I was a registered Republican. I started with Ronald Reagan and love the guy and was a registered Republican for, I don't know, probably up until the second George Bush. And I'm like, I'm done. And I've kind of been a libertarian independent, sometimes Republican in there, because I personally, you know, not to upset anybody, but I think both the two major parties are kind of clowns with a. Their hands in the cookie jar.

[11:10] PHILIP SIKORA: Yeah, you know, we get a trickle down effect. I get that.

[11:15] MIKE BOHRER: Phil, what are your earliest memories of politics?

[11:25] PHILIP SIKORA: Being seven and watching JFK being inaugurated. So that's more as an observer after that. So, in college, or it was really after college, I was with a group, and we were multi, multiracial, and, you know, at times we heard of Ku Klux Klan meetings that were going to be held, so we tried to see if maybe we could get that stop that's on the more adult side of things. A long time ago. How about yourself?

[12:13] MIKE BOHRER: Um, I remember as a young kid, I remember, um. I think it was Ford that took over for Nixon. But the biggest recollection I had, my family was building a house out in the middle of nowhere when Carter was the president and the iranian hostage crisis was going on. And I remember as a little kid with a construction pencil writing on the framing of the walls, the date and whatever the announcer was seeing on the radio. We didn't have a tv. I pretty much grew up without a tv, I had kerosene lights in the house and kerosene heater. And so most of my news or information came across via radio. Uh, and the walls weren't finished with sheet rock and stuff, so I would write on the inside of the. The walls as to what was going on. Kind of like, I figured a time capsule, someday somebody opened that up, and. But the earliest, like, clear thing I remember is the iranian hostage crisis with Carter.

[13:13] PHILIP SIKORA: Yeah. I just want to go back to something you said before, starting with Reagan. A little factoid, but my, you know, we were kind of defense contractor, so I actually started with Reagan, Star wars when I was doing that kind of work. So that t's is top secret. That's what that stands for.

[13:34] MIKE BOHRER: Gotcha. Phil, who has been the most influential person in your life? What did they teach you?

[13:53] PHILIP SIKORA: If these were included in the handle, I should have reviewed these. These are. I don't know. Sometimes I think a lot about how it is I've decided something, or a lot of the times it goes back to my mother. Just some of the things that, you know, how she reacted to life. She knew she was dying in her last year life, and she just didn't really care to talk about it. She said, play golf. She was an amateur champion in the Philippines, so that she shot. She shot on 90 when she was 89. And then I think. Yeah, right. And I think that last year, not being able to play, that, it was hard. So what else? You know, there's more like, sort of religious readings person in particular that, you know, I've been involved with the last ten years or so. So you take your input from them wherever you can get it, right. This conversation, you know, anything. How about yourself? Who is the most influential person?

[15:15] MIKE BOHRER: I would say it depends on what period. You know, when I was a teenager, I had a coach in high school that was always very fair to me. I got in trouble when I got kicked out of high school for a while, and he always stood by me. He said, you're a kid that made a mistake. You're not a bad kid. And I, at that point in my life, thought I was a bad person. I was just. I was a bad guy, and I was just going to be a bad guy, and that was that. But he saw something in me that. And I stay in contact with him to this day. He was the closest thing I had to a normal, functional, adult role model in my life. And then as I got older of late, I'd have to say I didn't realize the time but my wife, as I grew up into an adult, and we got married very young, and I brought this childhood of origin trauma in and all the crap that goes with that. And my wife has put up with some of my moodiness, some of my, you know, ups and downs in life. All. She's just been a rock. And it wasn't until last year I went through a program in Ohio that I realized that lady is, you know, if I could pay her back tenfold for the rest of my life, I probably wouldn't be able to do that. But I was. I'm also lucky. I say my mother in law, if I were to pick a most christ like person I know of that turns the other cheek everybody. My mother in law is just. She's just a saintly woman. And the irony is, her mom, grandma Lottie, is the stereotypical. She's deceased now, but the stereotypical terrible Christian, that's a, you know, she's a good. A good christian lady, but talk smack about people and plays favorites. No, you think she's a good christian woman, but in reality, she's, you know, she's doing the best she can, but she's not, so.

[17:21] PHILIP SIKORA: Yeah, I get that. So. Too long a story for today, but my mom was somewhat involved riffily, but it was through her something she had in a miracle. And so her mom was very religious, went to church every day, and yet she was bigoted. So I'm like, hmm. You know, so that's, you know, as a child, you're trying to make sense of an apparent contradiction. So. Yeah, I get that. I get that.

[17:48] MIKE BOHRER: A question for Mike. I see that you're retired from a career in law enforcement. What was a high of your career and what was a low, and just give some context to that career. I would say I can't think of, like, a pinnacle high as far as, like, there wasn't a big pinnacle high, but there were a lot of little moments. Like, later on, I was. I got into supervision and management, and I was, as a manager for the last eight or nine years, I sat at a desk most of the time, and that is a low. That's the low. That's a terrible job. I would say 98% of the officers and civilians that work for the agency did a great job, but there were always, like, a handful of the same people that kept making stupid decisions, causing problems, and they made the organization look bad. They create a tremendous amount of work. You know, if it was my world and I was God, I would just fire him and be done with it and move on. But it's not that easy in that environment. But the highs were like, well, like, little stuff. Like, one of my officers stopped a car in a park at, like, 07:00 in the morning in a community park. And they were. They were kind of shady people in there. And they. There were some stolen credit cards. And along with the credit cards that were taken in the police report in a different city was a bassoon, if you're familiar with that musical instrument. A bassoon. It's a. It's a woodwind. Anyway, this lady was one of the, like, world's foremost bassoonist, and this instrument was upwards of $60 to $80,000, depending if you asked, that these. These, you know, drug addicts stole. They don't know what to do with. And, um, I sat down and talked to that. The. The gal that stole the stuff as a human being, as I talked to you, was just like, hey, listen, this thing's not worth anything to you, to this lady. It's her livelihood. And I was able to establish a rapport where I got this lady to tell us where it is. We went and got it, and this lady was, like, the number one bassoonist, California. And she was ecstatic that we got this very old, very, you know, cool instrument back for her. And it was just through, you know, listening to this. This criminal. You know, if you asked me 20 years ago, I would have called her a critter or had a, what I would consider a cute name for it. But, you know, as I do my own journey and my own healing and trauma stuff, I recognize now that that girl that was the thief and doing all the drugs and whatever else, she's got her own story and her own trauma. And so it's not judgmental, but there's just a bunch of cases like that that over time, there's not. Unfortunately, it's not a. It's not a career job that you walk away from, like, a contractor where you're like, look at the house I built, or a school teacher where you're like, hey, I got these kids that think and process, and you're just. You're just dealing with the trauma of society day after day after day. And. And if you can break the cycle somewhere or help somebody, it's. You have to hold on to those little pieces of it. And there's, you know, I would say the highlight, probably retiring, walking away, physically walking away from the job.

[21:08] PHILIP SIKORA: And was it hard to do that day after day and not get sucked in either? It sounded like you know what I mean? You maintain like a distance there so you could be effective as opposed to, I don't know, getting, you know, it's like emergency room doctors, but they episode counts, maybe, or they could see the same thing every day, but it sounded like you didn't approach it that way. Was that hard to do to keep that separation?

[21:33] MIKE BOHRER: I'll go back the very first day in the police academy when the instructor there asked us what the biggest stress in our career is going to be. And people are, they're all young, wet behind the ear green kids, and they're all making up scenarios about robberies or bad guys. And the guy said, no, it's going to be the administration. The biggest stress in your law enforcement career during your entire career is going to be dealing with administration. And I would have laughed at that as a 21 year old kid. My biggest headache, and unfortunately, it's like part of the sickness is how you focus on that as you start getting involved in that internal department drama where, you know, the politics within the agency and that becomes what you like, focus or feed on the cursory stuff of the burglaries. And that, that's just the day to day thing. But then it becomes the different personalities and the drama within an organization. Hopefully it's a healthy one, but sometimes they're not. But I reflected on my youth. I reflected on what I went through as a kid. I reflected on my household and always did the kind of the golden rule. How would you like to be treated?

[22:49] PHILIP SIKORA: Interesting.

[22:50] MIKE BOHRER: And, Phil, I saw in your bio you wrote that you thought you were retired until you realized you had a new boss and didn't get paid for it. What? I have a guess of what you meant, but what did you mean by that?

[23:06] PHILIP SIKORA: Yeah, and that would be my better three quarters. That's what I meant. In fact, we're going to be moving and we had an inspection done on this place. The guy came back with a 140 page report. And I'm like, oh, my God, I'm never going to retire. I'm always going to be working. That part I'm not so happy about.

[23:30] MIKE BOHRER: How. And I'll let either of you take a first stab at this question. You're both retired. How has retirement been? How do you feel your time? What brings joy and what has been bringing you stress, if any? Mike, we'll actually start with you. I volunteer. I volunteer on the search and rescue here in Sheridan county. And that's, you know, non paid. It's all volunteer. There's a lot of people involved in that, that know a lot about the mountain and snow and whatnot. But the organization was hurting a little bit from, like, administrative management side, and that kind of, like, just poured into my last career, and I immediately recognized that I could lend a hand here. So I've jumped in and been trying to help update their policies and procedures, get their equipment done, secure some funding, make sure training stuff's documented all the. All the futures and forecasting stuff way down the road that could cause them a problem. So I've been trying to do that and go out and search and rescue calls, finding people, that's kind of fun. I drive birds around like an Uber driver, but for raptors. There's a place called the Teton Raptor center by Jackson hole that when, like, owls or eagles or birds get hurt or found, you know, they box them up and basically call and say, hey, come pick this bird up, and I'll drive it five or 6 hours one way and drop it off and come back home. It's a very quiet ride because you're not supposed to have music or anything on, but I love birds and I love watching them, and if I can help, I volunteered a little bit with the. I just started going to church here in town recently. I volunteer a little bit with that, but one of the things I really try to do is my wife works, and she works a lot. She's an accountant. So I try to take everything off of her plate I can, whether it's running errands. I'm not nearly as good a cook as she is. She's phenomenal. But if I can put together a simple dinner or get her lunch or clean stuff or anything that I can take off of her plate. We don't have gender designated duties in the house. You know, it's not like she has to clean the house because she's the woman or, you know, whatever else. I just try to do as much as I can do. I'm a little broken physically. I've had a number of surgeries in my career. I had my neck fused a couple years ago, and I've got some ruptured disc in my lower back. So I'm in pretty. Pretty much in a good spot right now. But I've had days where I'm walking around the house using a walker because just trying to get down the hallway is painful. And my wife puts up with me with that. So I do the best I can with what I can do, and I just. I think I've done it twice now. I just signed up to do Doordash, and I was doing some door dashing for two days. And the similarities between police work kind of funny. You get a call, you pick up your food, and then you have to find where you're going. Except I don't have to listen to people yell or anything else. They're happy because I show up with their McDonald's food and deliver it to them.

[26:54] PHILIP SIKORA: Sounds good. Yeah, I have the. I just injured my lower back again. So I had my first hernia to just go five this 137 years ago. And then the Jacksonville, Florida sheriff's office offered a free motorcycle safety course last weekend. And so I went to that and just, I think the way I've been pushing the motorcycle while sitting on it, I've injured my back. So I've been walking around the house on crutches. So I feel your pain there with the walk. And I'm trying to get an appointment for someone to say what's going on there.

[27:31] MIKE BOHRER: Right.

[27:31] PHILIP SIKORA: So, but, so retirement for me, I'll just jump right in there is. I think I'm just a matureaholic. I don't really. When I was working, I mean, that was work. And then come home and do chores, and now I just do chores. But I'm on these two committees. I'll just plug the one.

[27:52] MIKE BOHRER: One.

[27:52] PHILIP SIKORA: It's the historical preservation committee. Here in the hOa. We have. You won't know what Tabby is, but before there was Portland cement, different areas figured out how to make concrete substitutes. So anyway, we have the first rum distillery in Georgia. It's right here. And I've been a big history guy, but for three years we've been here. I found out so much stuff about this and just recently found the missing slave graveyard with people there. So anyway, is I make my own chores, I think, even if I don't have them. So I'm trying to figure out how to relax a little bit. I haven't gotten there yet, and now with this new move coming up, I can see that's going to be a little intense. So I was following, carrying in the school for a little bit for people that needed to be needed, reading or math, but I chose mathematic. Not sure I believe that program was so effective. Slacked off on that a little bit. Yeah. I'll never retire.

[29:05] MIKE BOHRER: Can you say a little? Go on, Mike.

[29:08] PHILIP SIKORA: Sorry.

[29:10] MIKE BOHRER: I was gonna say I feel the same way. I don't. I don't do idle well. Hmm. Yeah.

[29:16] PHILIP SIKORA: Yeah. I think that's not good. But I don't know. I haven't figured it out yet. Um. Oh, surgery. So we just got over a double hernia surgery, so now I'm like, wait a minute, I better not have, like, another herniated disc or it herniated again. And I have to do, you know, we're trying to pack, and if I have to lay down for six, you know, lay off chores for six weeks, that's going to impact our schedule. And I want to just back on your bio. Where, where in California were you?

[29:48] MIKE BOHRER: In the East Bay, right next to across the bay from San Francisco, there's Contra Costa county, which is just north of Oakland. And I worked for the county for about 16 years, and then I worked for the city in the east Bay, just over the hill from Oakland.

[30:08] PHILIP SIKORA: My aunt lived for a really long time in the Tenderloin district in San Francisco, and then I guess my oldest daughter was in the mission district for a while before that was Brooklyn Jonathan, and now she's in Joshua Creek.

[30:32] MIKE BOHRER: What does fatherhood look like in retirement?

[30:39] PHILIP SIKORA: I was with my first life, 31 years, and I've been married again now, ten years. And, you know, at first it seemed like my daughters were encouraging. They kind of pushed me off lately. So we don't know exactly what you're doing. Like I said, I know my one daughter is in there. She graduated with the Rhode Island School of Design, photography major and some self published books and Joshua Tree. The other one went to school at the art institute, another budding artist. And after a while, dad, I'm not going to make any money at that. I'm like, maybe I kind of have to do it. You know, you're going to feel happy about everything. And she wound up following me in a way, and got her masters in comp sci, so she's in the greater Boston area, not too sure. Anything else about that? Fatherhood doesn't look like much for me in the town.

[31:40] MIKE BOHRER: What about you, Mike? Well, I've got one daughter. My oldest is in Huntsville, Alabama. She's got three grandkids there. And I think in the last six years, she has moved, like 14 times. I think she'll be in Huntsville for a while, so we'll see.

[32:05] PHILIP SIKORA: In the military.

[32:07] MIKE BOHRER: What's that?

[32:09] PHILIP SIKORA: She's in the military?

[32:12] MIKE BOHRER: She was. She went to. She originally went to West Point and then got out, and she worked for Boeing, Lockheed, and she's been a googler for the last couple of years, and they love her there, and so she's a googler and doing Google stuff. I have another daughter up in Alaska, and incidentally, both those daughters are married to air force guys. One's retired. One's still in. So traveling to see them is a. It's a chore, but it's also something that I try and do as much as possible, but limited by, you know, airline ticket prices. And then I have my youngest daughter that lives with us. She's. She'll be 29 Wednesday. She was a year and a half old and got form of encephalitis, and they think it was a. She was one of the first recipients of the chicken pox vaccine back in 1994, and they think she was a bad reaction to the chickenpox vaccine that left her brain damaged. So there's that.

[33:27] PHILIP SIKORA: What does that mean for her on a day to day basis?

[33:33] MIKE BOHRER: Her current diagnosis is cerebral palsy. She's got left side paralysis, and her cognitive, like, reading level is probably about second grade and social interaction. In some areas, she's kind of like a teenager. Some areas, she's like an adult. Like, you could take her to a restaurant and she'd ask for color crayons and a margarita. Yeah. She wasn't supposed to live. She was at children's Hospital in Oakland for three weeks, and they said she would not live through this, but she's proved them all wrong. And actually, on May 1, May 1, at her request, she's going to be moving into a, like, a group living environment because she wants to live on her own. And there are a whole bunch of milestone markers. She had to do self care and stuff, and she's worked hard to make that happen. So, you know, as a dad, I'm a little nervous because, you know, she's a. She's a kind of trying to grab the word. She's a little naive with some of the evil and darkness in the world, and she could be a victim very easily. So I just have to have faith. But, yeah, as far as the dad part, for the most part, they do their own stuff. Every once in a while, I'll get a random phone call from one of my daughters, and it's usually something about like, hey, how do you fix this leaky thing? Or do you know anything about, you know, home title? Should it be tenants in entirety, joint tenants in common, or just some random thing? But usually it's me calling them, asking them questions. Hey, how do I get this email file to work in Apple and not Excel? And so that's about it.

[35:25] PHILIP SIKORA: Yeah.

[35:26] MIKE BOHRER: I had.

[35:27] PHILIP SIKORA: I know three different friends that have CP kids, and then I also had a friend that taught a CP class, and I went and taught the kids like, a self concept song and everything. But, you know, one of the things I observed with the friends is a lot of times there's a lot more going on, you know, than just being expressed based on things. So that was interesting.

[35:58] MIKE BOHRER: Phil, what's been a particularly transformative event in your country that you've experienced, and what do you remember about it?

[36:15] PHILIP SIKORA: I don't know. I remember the riots in 67, but I don't know how that wasn't really transformative for me. You know, maybe, maybe coming of age when things in the late sixties started happening, kind of for me, any possibility sometimes to step back and think about a situation I've assumed or, you know, observe it from, from outside a little bit. That's all I got. How about you? What's, what's been a transformative event for you? What do you remember feeling about that?

[37:07] MIKE BOHRER: I got three that jump out. The first one was the Rodney King police meeting. And I think that was like, the first time that, I don't know, the general public across the country got to see bad. They got to see law enforcement in a bad light. I mean, there's, I think prior to that, you have generalized media. You know, like something would go on in Georgia. It was pretty much staying in Georgia, you didn't have coast to coast coverage. My recollection, but the Rodney King thing really brought a bunch of stuff to light. And living in California, you know, he had riots and stuff like that. And that was like, in the first couple months of my career in law enforcement, which brought a bunch of mandates into law enforcement. And shortly followed by that was OJ Simpson. That, that, that brought a lot of transformation to how domestic violence and that kind of stuff was handled. So that there was that, I would say the 911 terrorist attack was a bit transformative. I think that was the first time that most people realized that they're vulnerable. And, you know, not to get into politics or whatever, but the amount of civil liberties and rights that Congress and the people were just willing to just immediately sign over under the guise of safety, you know, we'll be safer if we just pass this law and do this, the Patriot act and all kinds of other stuff, you know? And then I think we're going through some stuff in the last couple of years that it comes out with, like, and again, if this gets sensitive, we can stop. But just, I was just watching a doctor from Johns Hopkins talk about the misinformation from the government early on with COVID the functionality of the vaccines and boosters and natural immunity. And then all the way back to all the stuff that Congress is doing and not doing and the use of government bureaus, whether it's the IR's, DOJ, FBI getting involved in politics, when I don't care who or what party's involved, they should not be, they should be a bull. I get a little emotional because in my opinion, it should be a bulwark of, you know, the Statue of Liberty or the ideals. I've always told my people that work with me, that the constitution or the ideals that we have are infallible. But people make mistakes. If you put your trust in people, they're going to fail. If you have put your trust in good ideals, those. They won't fail. The ideals are good. And I've just watched our country right now, just whether you're asking for, who do you trust? The media, the government, the police. Back in the Bay area right now, there's an agency in the county where I worked in, where they just let 15 officers go, administrative leave, and there's maybe another 15 more, and that's like a third of their department. And these idiots were texting each other racial stuff, commenting about shooting the mayor. Now, I'm not making excuses, but I think they're really frustrated with their, their job, the city, the mayor. But number one, you don't, you don't talk that way. Number two, especially in this day and age, you don't put that down in text writing. You just can't do that. And as a former law enforcement guy, I want to cry because whatever little shred of professionalism or humanity that that profession has left, these clowns are destroying it. So maybe the guy on the fence on the next traffic stop that doesn't know if these are good cops or bad cops, he's just going to have to make the assumption they're bad cops. And it makes it, it makes the world a bad place. And just watching where we are right now, I don't know, who do you believe? Who do you trust? You know, you can't.

[41:19] PHILIP SIKORA: There's something missing to be sure. Right? Not sure what the solution there is. More religion, more awareness, civics, you know, I don't have any answers there. But you're right, it is a little disheartening to be sure.

[41:42] MIKE BOHRER: Phil, how did Covid affect your life? And how did you and your family adapt?

[41:49] PHILIP SIKORA: So, you know, probably everybody. Well, a lot of people followed probably the similar thing where in the beginning we were super cautious. I remember the advice to bring your groceries in, leave them in the garage for three days before you could spray the boxes with alcohol. In my life, germ called. So we did all that and everything, and then, you know, time went on. I did. Did eventually get Covid. Was that last year? The year before? I think it was last year. And, you know, it started one morning, kind of like a swift road or something. By the end of the day, I felt like I had the flu. By the next afternoon, I was working on my front stage. All right, that wasn't so bad. So, you know, I did all the vaccines and everything. I don't know if that helped, made a difference, made it worse. I'll tell you, the. Some of the vaccines affected me more than getting Covid did. So that was kind of an interesting thing. How about you? How did it affect your life?

[42:47] MIKE BOHRER: Uh, well, I was, uh.

[42:50] PHILIP SIKORA: So you were.

[42:52] MIKE BOHRER: I'm sorry. I was starting to talk. Yeah, I was. I was scorned by and ridiculed. My wife and I, we were scorned by and ridiculed by a lot of family and friends. I live in Wyoming, and Wyoming is the least vaccinated state there is. It's the reddest state, and we're the least vaccinated. When this thing started, we locked down just like everybody else. And it went from two week lockdown to about six week lockdown. And a bunch of people around here, there are a lot of hardworking people. They're like, we got to go back to work. I mean, you know, I'm going to die financially and be destitute whether I have this thing or not. And I'd rather die working than die sitting at home. And one thing led to another. Pretty soon, within two months, pretty much everything in our city of 18,000 was back to pretty much functional, open and going. And the weird effect. The weird effect of that is that summer of COVID the summer of 20, everybody that we knew that was locked down on all the coast, everybody came here. We had visitors in our house every single weekend, all summer. Our bars are open, the restaurants were open, and everybody came here and spent all summer coming here because it was a break, a respite from the lockdown. We didn't get anything until January. Like, a year later, we got the delta varia, and it started like a tickle in my throat. My wife got a tickle. My daughter got a tickle. I didn't even get a fever. My wife had a slight fever. I was tired. It just made me physically tired, off and on for a couple days. A side note, I have a very good friend of mine that is a UCSF trained physician, and he is one of the physicians that, in doing his research and study had said, hey, there's more to meet the story here. And he got completely blackballed and was not able to put out any kind of information because his information, there's a whole group of medical professionals that had some contrary information to what was coming out of the main speaking points. And this guy I know, he's brilliant, and he's like, hey, listen, take care. I'm a big guy. I've lost, I don't know, 25 pounds in the last six weeks or so, working hard on it. But as far as risk factors go, that's the only risk factor I had is being a big guy. But I didn't have any of the other comorbidities and still not vaccinated. My wife's not vaccinated. We have traveled the country, been around people, and I have yet to ever get it again. There's no, after having it, we started getting blood because at the time, their treatments, they were taking the antibodies or whatever from people that had had it to help people in the hospital. But they've got new treatments now. But as more time goes around, we've had a few family and friends that have been like, hey, sorry we didn't treat you very well for, you know, you doing you. And I'm like, you know, if you want to wear, you know, a funny hat and do your thing, I do your thing. Just, that's kind of how we were with COVID And it was scary at time, at the beginning, because all the information coming out, it was very scary. Like, are we doing the right thing? And I'm like, I think so.

[46:14] PHILIP SIKORA: So, yeah, yeah.

[46:20] MIKE BOHRER: Anyway, that's, that was it. We don't know. We didn't have anybody in our family pass away. I had a former co worker of mine whose dad got it and passed away, but he was a diabetic, a heart patient, and about 100 pounds overweight. And that's the only, like, person in my circle I know that passed away. And I don't deny that it's a, I'm not a Covid denier. I don't think that it's not something. I think it is something. It's an illness. And if you're, if you don't take care of yourself for 30 years and you get, you get sick, it could kill you.

[46:55] PHILIP SIKORA: So, yeah, my uncle got it. He got it from his older brother. Nothing happened. The older brother didn't really. I guess he just transmitted it. And my uncle wound up dying. But, you know, he was 88 and still riding his motorcycle with his older brother. So I said, okay, you see, that's my role model right there.

[47:23] MIKE BOHRER: Phil, what, what makes you worry about the country's future? What, if anything, make you optimistic?

[47:30] PHILIP SIKORA: I am seriously disturbed about the parties not being able to reach across the aisle and do something. I remember Mitt Romney saying once, like, you know, each side has what they think they want or what makes sense and everything, but when it came right down to it, you realized at some point, all right, we got to get something done here. And, I mean, that makes me crazy, you know? You know, whatever party I want to belong to, you know, I don't see a difference there. Optimistic. I feel like it's got to get a little more worse before it gets better. That's nothing. Yeah, I'm not optimistic. How about yourself? What do you worry about with this?

[48:15] MIKE BOHRER: I'm not optimistic. I'll start with the optimism. If I had optimism, and when I do have spurts of it, it's usually when I encounter a young person. Like, just the other day, I was moving a dresser into this place my daughter's moving into. And the guy that showed up to help was like, I don't know, 18 or 19 years old. He was able to look you in the eye. He was articulate. There was like a fire in there, and there was some knowledge there. I don't know if he was a rocket scientist or a ditch digger, but I, there was just something there that this person has it. He'll be okay. And I'm fortunate enough where I live, there's, I encounter a lot of that. And though some of those young people give me hope that there's, there's some people out there that are on the ball, I'm really concerned with the, and I don't know if this is a catchphrase or politically charged thing, but I'm going to call it the government media complex, where I used to think back in the day, maybe Walter Cronkite or somebody, you had actual journalists that would dig into stuff. And I say, here's what's going on. And I don't think you can get that right now from anybody because everybody's people are ignoring what they don't want to pay attention to and then reporting on stuff that's nonsensical. I mean, our country is spending themselves into debt. Every, every baby that's born is being born with, like $100,000 in debt attached to it. Just, we're spending more than our gdp right now. And it's a, we can't do it. I mean, there's going to come a time where, like in Greece, where they have to have austerity measures and cut back and cut back on programs because you can't afford it. And all these people are so used to it that it's going to get violent. It always does. And it just scares the heck out of me. And we're, I just saw something other day in Baltimore. 27 school districts, 27 schools tested, not a single student there past the reading or math competency, not 27 classes, but 27 schools in Baltimore. And I'm like, how are these kids supposed to, like, critically think and discern what's being told to them? And our politics clowns are in Washington, DC, are arguing over, you know, drag shows or something. And I'm sorry if any, that's like, not supposed to be touched on, but they're arguing over nonsensical stuff that's really only affects like a handful of people and all this other, I mean, we're pouring money into Ukraine and if we have soldiers there or not, I mean, you know, I don't, I don't agree with Putin or disagree or whatever else, but I know if I was Putin and there was a foreign country that was providing a bunch of aid to somebody I'm fighting, well, you know, friend of my enemy is my enemy. And, you know, I don't know if we really want to, like, go poke that tiger. It's maybe I don't have all the information on all the intel to know what's going on. I recognize that. But just, I don't know. It's a, it's a concerning time.

[51:29] PHILIP SIKORA: Yeah.

[51:30] MIKE BOHRER: And I'm sure my grandparents said the same thing, so. And for our last question, just take a moment, each of you think about what you'll be most likely to remember about the conversation today, about your partner, the conversation and just one small step in general.

[51:55] PHILIP SIKORA: No, I felt like you had a lot of very thoughtful things to say. You know, you had viewpoints and I need sense. I can't say particularly disagree with anything heavily.

[52:17] MIKE BOHRER: I would say the same thing. I don't know. I feel empathetic with you trying to move and do that. I've been there and done that and you've got a few more years on me and some back issues, and I don't envy you.

[52:35] PHILIP SIKORA: Moving, moving to Honduras.

[52:38] MIKE BOHRER: Oh, wow.

[52:39] PHILIP SIKORA: Yeah. It adds another level of complication, trust me.

[52:43] MIKE BOHRER: Yes. Why, why Honduras? I have to ask.

[52:49] PHILIP SIKORA: Because it's there now. So my wife introduced me to snorkeling in Jamaica ten years ago. You know, there the reef is decimated from hurricanes and overfishing. So we started looking for better snorkeling, and it led me there, and it was. It's, you know, you can walk right off the beach and just walk into. There's the reef. We're actually getting a place on deep water where the reef comes in. You know, we're in a bight, you know, like an inlet, and the reef comes into it. I'm like, okay, this is.

[53:20] MIKE BOHRER: This is a good thing.

[53:22] PHILIP SIKORA: I have to brush up on my four years high school. Spanish.

[53:26] MIKE BOHRER: Caribbean side or pacific side?

[53:32] PHILIP SIKORA: I went off the coast, so I think that can only be the gulf. The gulf, right.

[53:39] MIKE BOHRER: Yeah.