Resilience and Recovery from Catastrophe with Justin Dodge

Jon Becker: The topic of resilience for First Responders has fortunately become a more common discussion. As the rate of suicides addiction and burnout rise, discussions of grit and internal fortitude against adversity have become a more frequent topic for articles, speeches and conference courses.

My guest today knows a great deal about this topic. Justin Dodge is a 28-year veteran of the Denver Police Department, with 19 of those years spent on SWAT as an operator, assistant team leader and team leader.

In June 2023, Justin suffered a catastrophic injury during the Denver Nuggets Championship Parade. His left leg was pinned under an 80,000 lb fire truck which ultimately resulted in his leg being amputated below the knee.

Despite this life-changing injury, Justin has made a full comeback and returned to full operational status on SWAT. He also created a new business venture called “Heavy Victory LLC” which provides wellness and resiliency training to government and commercial entities. I hope you enjoy my conversation with Justin Dodge.

My name is Jon Becker.

For the past four decades, I've dedicated my life to protecting tactical operators. During this time, I've worked with many of the world's top law enforcement and military units. As a result, I've had the privilege of working with the amazing leaders who take teams into the world's most dangerous situations.

The goal of this podcast is to share their stories in hopes of making us all better leaders, better thinkers, and better people.

Welcome to The Debrief!

Jon Becker: Justin thanks for being here with me man.

Justin Dodge: Absolutely, it's my pleasure.

Jon Becker: Why don't we start with the beginning of your career like walk me through your career at Denver SWAT. I know you've been on for a long long time but just give me kind of the nutshell summary.

Justin Dodge: Let me give me a real quick even before the career started. So my grandfather, a World War II vet, law enforcement officer ended up being a chief of police for the City of Racine law enforcement.

Jon Becker: Racine Wisconsin?

Justin Dodge: Racine Wisconsin yep. Father Vietnam vet goes into law enforcement, becomes a US Marshal. Works for the Marshall service for 27 years after doing 5 years with the Racine Police Department with my grandfather.

Jon Becker: Oh my God.

Justin Dodge: Yeah, he ends up being one of the chief deputies for the witness protection program as they were really developing that program.

Jon Becker: Interesting.

Justin Dodge: So me coming on my path is set right, I choose to be a teacher and follow the role of my mom. I am a student teaching at my mom's school, and I actually get assigned to a class with special needs kids. And in that class we do tons of field trips, we're out on the playground all the time. I'm a college kid. I've had a huge drive. My entire life I've had a massive drive. I've just never had a purpose to kind of put to that drive.

And the summer that I was with these kiddos when we would be going out and doing things, I started to get this huge sense of responsibility as a guardian. And it was when I was with them that I was realizing as much as I love the educational side of it, what I'm really feeling is the need to protect, the need to be that guardianship and save people, help people and it started to really fulfill the purpose of my life. And the drive and the purpose all of a sudden started meshing. And I realized you know what education's probably not where I want to go, so I had to sit down with my dad and explain, “It's going to be another year of college but I really want to follow in grandpa’s and your footsteps”. He was very very cool with it, obviously loved it.

So I started with the Denver Police Department in ‘97 after my grandfather and my father saw continuous law enforcement, up to this date were at right around 80 years.

Jon Becker: Wow.

Justin Dodge: Yeah. So starting with the Denver Police Department, I came on. I was a Minnesota kid who, had a bachelor's degree, but I wasn't in the military. I was not a cadet. I had no-- nothing other than the fact that I was sitting keeping an academy seat warm to affiliate myself with the Denver Police Department. And it was early in the academy, that we have a scenario house in the academy that one day I saw a bunch of monsters, big giant dudes, and they're wearing all-black, and I'm like “Who are those guys?”

Coming from Minneapolis and St. Paul late teams and you knew like LAPD, SWAT but that was about as much as I understood about tactical units at the time. And I had no idea that Denver had a full-time tac unit. It just wasn't even something that I really understood that that even was a thing.

A couple of days into the academy, I'm seeing these guys and again, that huge drive that I have and that purpose put together, I was like, “All right, if being a police officer helps me save lives and helps me protect, I want to be the best at anything that I can do then being in Metro, being in our SWAT unit is going to be even that much better.”

So I was actually told by a number of people because I have no affiliation, “You have no chance of ever getting to Metro. You're a Minnesota kid, don't even think about it”. It was like okay challenge accepted.

Coming up through the ranks of DPD knowing what the Metro guys were looking for I had been playing Judo already and started my BJJ career in Denver. So I've been doing that for over 30 years. A lot of the guys in the unit were big- time Jiu-Jitsu players so like really investing in the Jiu-Jitsu side, the running, obviously taking every course that I could that had to do with anything tactical. And then just trying to prove myself as a good teammate, and a good patrol officer to like make a name for myself to somehow maybe eventually cross that border to get to the unit.

Jon Becker: Interesting.

Justin Dodge: Yeah, and in 2003 we had what’s called a ‘Temp Program’. So you go over there and you're assigned to the unit for three months. They do an eval on you. You kind of are doing an eval on the unit to see if this is something that you want. Immediately I knew., this is where I want to be, no questions asked.

Came back and they had a testing process, went through the testing process and didn't make it. I was like “Man”. I watched my academy partner and car partner as a patrolman go to the team, and it crushed me. I was like, “What did I do wrong?” Not that he wasn't the best choice and he's still in the unit now and is an absolute complete stud, and I rely on him on so many things. He's still at the operator level. Now I got to watch him kind of go through these baby steps and I'm still a patrolman.

So the next testing phase comes around, and I put in everything. I'm there, things are looking good, and don't make it again. And I'm like “Man like what am I doing wrong? Like am I ever going to get this dream to get to the unit?”

It was kind of at that point where I was like a make or break in my career where I could have decided to just be pissed that I didn't make it. Instead what I decided to do is become an FTO because I'm going back to my teaching days of going to college to become an educator. I thought, “Well if I'm not going to make it to the unit let me do something else”.

I went to our FTO testing process, and became an FTO. Most of our FTO, 15, 20 sometimes even 30 recruits. I’m in the middle of recruit number two when I get the call that, “Hey, there's an opening in the unit. You've been selected. Welcome to Metro.”

Jon Becker: Interesting.

Justin Dodge: Yeah.

Jon Becker: So that was based on the second selection?

Justin Dodge: That was actually based on a third selection that was done after I had become a TO where I was like “You know what I'm loving the TO part. I'm never giving up on this dream of Metro, but I have to do other things than just hope and wish. I need to advance my career some way.” And so by going and doing the FTO thing and proving myself as a valuable part of the department. I don't know if it was that or if the timing was right, but I'll never forget getting the phone call.

Jon Becker: I mean as teaching is humbling too right?

Justin Dodge: Absolutely.

Jon Becker: You don't realize how not good you are at things until you have to teach people how to do them.

Justin Dodge: Well it's funny the second recruit that I had on day one we're driving. We're  in the car for  three minutes. There is a park that we go to to kind of get our minds right right out of the district station, a beautiful park in the middle of Denver. I'm kind of giving him my background, and he explains that he was part of the first wave pushing into Baghdad as a combat Marine.

Jon Becker: Okay.

Justin Dodge: I was okay like, “What am I going to teach you?” I've been on the job for a while. Obviously the law enforcement mill is a little bit differently suited but at the same time this guy's an extensive Combat Marine, squared away dude. Instead of me being your FTO, let's go do this together. I'm going to learn from you, you're going to learn from me. Let's see how good of a product we can make with both of us.

Jon Becker: That's interesting.

Justin Dodge: Yeah.

Jon Becker: So then Metro calls you, you get the nod. What year is that?

Justin Dodge: The end of 2005. December of 2005 I made it to the unit.

Jon Becker: Got it.

Justin Dodge: Yep.

Jon Becker: So kind of walk me through like the time at Metro, what is it? Is it everything you hoped it would be when you get there?

Justin Dodge: To a degree yes. I mean, for us at at the unit anywhere you go patrol officers or command or whatever is like “All right Metros on scene, we're good.” And that was that was kind of a cool thing to know like I'm part of a team that everybody is relying on, and everybody knows, we're a very professional unit, we're going to show up, our life-saving mission is going to is going to do its thing, and we're going to peacefully end this situation regardless of what it is.

Jon Becker: Yeah.

Justin Dodge: Anything, you're going to go through ups and downs. You're going to go through personality disagreements. All that kind of stuff. I've never been one that took this is the way we do it, this is the way we've always done it as an answer. So a lot of things when we got there it was probably about 18 months into it where I was like why are we not wearing rifle plates when we're going against rifle threats. Why is half of our team going on entries with pistols, and the other half are going with rifles when we know we're going against a known rifle threat.

Jon Becker: Interesting.

Justin Dodge: Yeah. Why are we doing this? Why are we doing that? There were a lot of people because I was 18 months in that were befuddled and like really tried to be like no we're not listening to an 18 month guy. So I struggled at the beginning of being in the unit where I was trying my best to be a good teammate to be a good follower but at the same time I want to progress. I want ours to be as good as we can possibly be.

So it was probably four years into the unit that I had the ability to take our corporal test which basically would make me an ATL, and I was the youngest Corporal at the unit. So I made Corporal.

I really wanted to be there to not make changes because I thought they were better but make changes that the team thought were better and try to get out of that mindset of we've done it like this since the ‘60s, this is how we're going to progress, this is how we're going to do it.

Jon Becker: Yeah, that's a static mindset. Things aren't going to change. The way we do it we do it this way every way as opposed to having a kind of a growth mindset, and how we could be better.

Justin Dodge: Yeah and if anybody could explain to me why we did this, and it would make sense to me as to why we're going to do certain things how we're going to proceed yep absolutely. If if the only answer that you can give me is “that's the way we did it or you're junior” you shouldn't be asking that question we're not a team man.

Anybody going through this door has just as likelihood of having something bad happen to him. Yes your junior guys need to understand their place but at the same time everybody gets a buy-in.

Jon Becker: Yeah for sure. I think there is a certain amount of humility that you every throughout the organization. There has to be that humility or you're going to end up on an island.

Justin Dodge: Right.

Jon Becker: So walk me through. So in the years you're in the team you start off obviously as an operator, How do you rotate through? What do you make Corporal? What's next?

Justin Dodge: Make Corporal. I was a Corporal for about three years and for our unit because we're a full-time team we've done a horrible job of like succession planning in our unit because once you test for supervisor you have to leave the unit.

Jon Becker: So the minute you are promoted to Sergeant, you're leaving.

Justin Dodge: You're gone, your promotion ceremony day is also your bye to Metro day so what would end up happening is guys would never leave.

Jon Becker: Yeah that's what happens to every full-time team in the country.

Justin Dodge: Absolutely.

Jon Becker: Because they're like hey you can have the best job in the department, or you can be the boot Sergeant on a graveyard in the worst part of the city.

Justin Dodge: And that's exactly what happened. I also knew again going back to that drive and that purpose and everything, we went through phases where they would take 40 sergeants on a promotional list. And then we went through this phase where we knew that if you weren't in the top five of the 120 people that are testing, you're probably not going to get promoted. Then I started kind of looking at some dates of when sergeants in Metro were going to retire and knowing that if I'm not one or two of that 120, I’m not getting promoted in time to go back to Metro.

Jon Becker: Got it. So you were conspiring to get back to Metro even as you were promoting to a sergeant.

Justin Dodge: Absolutely, and I also knew if you're going to make this jump you better go all in you better go all in because if again you're not one or two, you're not going back to Metro or if you do it's going to be years and years down the line.

I took that drive and I studied and I studied and I studied, and I ended up Landing number one on the promotions list. Even at that we were so delayed because we were just not promoting anybody that I sat almost a year as number one on the promotions list to the point where I was actually like are we going to for the first time ever are we going to kill a Sergeants list.

Jon Becker: Yeah you’re going to expire on a list.

Justin Dodge: Am I going to expire on a list that I'm number one? One day I got the call yep you're getting promoted you're leaving the team but as all of this was happening the dates were lining up. So there is a pretty good possibility of me going back to the unit fairly soon.

There was no other Sergeant in the department that had any Metro experience so even though I'd only been on Sergeant for a very short period of time, I'd been with the unit for seven almost eight years. It was just in my mind probably going to be me that would be able to get the nod to go back to the unit.

Jon Becker: Got it. How long were you in patrol before you able to get back?

Justin Dodge: It was about five months of which a month was spent in a Leadership School, a month was spent on vacation. So yeah probably about 3 months on the street. I went back to the patrol district that I was in as a patrolman. Basically I went back to my home turf. I was there for a short period of time. And then whether it was good planning, people believing in me, God's grace, I'm not sure or all of the above.

Jon Becker: Definitely was some good planning.

Justin Dodge: Yeah.

Jon Becker: It's very clear that you had that kind of dialed in from the beginning, and it worked.

Justin Dodge: And it worked and yeah by early summer I was back in the unit as a sergeant. We call them Sergeants but it's for most people we're team leaders.

Jon Becker: So talk about the team like how big is the team? So full-time unit, full-time SWAT.

Justin Dodge: Yep full-time unit full-time SWAT. We have 22. We call them “techs”. It's what people would call an operator. Two of them are corporals and then we have six sergeants and then in addition to that we have two lieutenants and we have five to seven canines that are attached to the unit and our canine handlers are also certified in all the things that we do too. So they're primarily an apprehension dog handler but they're still assigned m4s.

Jon Becker: They go through SWAT schools.

Justin Dodge: They go through all our rifle calls, all our shoot houses. If they don't have a dog we are going to use them in other SWAT applications.

Jon Becker: Yeah they don't have a dog, they're going to be in the stack and off. So you said six sergeants and two corporals, how is the team with 22? How's the team split up? That's really supervisor heavy…?

Justin Dodge: It is, and it's been like that for a long time. When this started as SSU the Special Services Unit, we're one of the oldest full-time tactical units in the nation.

Jon Becker: When was it established?

Justin Dodge: In the early ‘60s.

Jon Becker: Oh my God.

Justin Dodge: So they've been around for a long time. Yhey didn't switch to Metro SWAT and like really truly be a full Tactical Unit, but SSU was doing all of the Tactical operations since like the 60s.

Jon Becker: So was the original mission kind of counter insurgency stuff?

Justin Dodge: It was a lot of guys coming back from like the Vietnam War and those kinds of things, and Denver had a streak of bombings.

Jon Becker: Yeah, so literally the counter Insurgency stuff.

Justin Dodge: Right, so all of those kinds of things obviously they had they were involved with some of the some of the mass protests and stuff in the' 60s, and all those kinds of things. But they were they were the Inception of Metro. And again there's old pictures of guys with revolvers and rifles when a rifle within a police officer's hands wasn't a thing.

Jon Becker: M1's in a 38.

Justin Dodge: Yeah like literally that that's what it was, and some of the coolest pictures we have are some old school memorabilia from SSU, and all that kind of stuff up there. At the time, SSU had upwards of 60 guys. So even though we've gotten significantly busier now, we've whittled the number of people we have significantly just through budgets and it's just how the department goes and the department.

Every mayor that I've ever been a part of every chief that I've ever been a part of while I've been at the unit they are incredibly supportive of Metro, and part of that I think is it's our culture of we're going in to be professional, and we're going in for one purpose and one purpose only which is saving lives. That's it. So they know that they can rely on us. But even at the same time when we get budget hits, and we have a loss of a 100 or so officers, Metro is going to take a hit so we have less officers or less techs than we did 25 years ago.

Jon Becker: How big is the department?

Justin Dodge: We're authorized right around 1,600, and I think we're sitting right around high 14s, 1500.

Jon Becker: And honestly that's not bad. Modern environment authorized for 1600, I was expecting 1200/1300.

Justin Dodge: We’re not bad. Actually my wife is one of the division Chiefs with the department so when she listens to this and I don't know the exact act number she's going to be like “You should know what our actual number is”. But yeah we're sitting right around right around that high 15.

Jon Becker: Your wife outranks you?

Justin Dodge: By like six ranks. Yeah.

Jon Becker: That makes for a very awkward dinner conversation. Then you're outranked at home and at work.

Justin Dodge: Yeah but it's just it's just something I've been used to. But it is kind of nice with her being as high as she is in the executive command that although I'm just a team leader, I've been kind of taught and raised how to look at things ‘cause she's been executive command for 12 years. She was a lieutenant before that.

So most of my career in Metro has been with her as a command officer. So I've always looked at things not just from the TL/supervisor rank but really from the commander and from the executive rank too, which I think has really helped me to kind of see big picture when we're doing whether it's operations, or testing processes or anything to be able to not just see it at like 10,000 feet but be able to see it at like 30,000 feet.

Jon Becker: Yeah, it's interesting because it's literally the exact opposite career path right. She's promoting quickly moving through executive ranks. You're getting into Metro and like “Yeah, I'm good. I'm good. I'll be a TL.

Justin Dodge: Yep.

Jon Becker: I'm really good. I'll just be here till I'm done, thanks.

Justin Dodge: And I'm happy. I want to go. I want to be operational. That's what I want to do.

Jon Becker: Yeah, it's one of the interesting dynamics that you see especially with full-time teams and it's all over the world it's not just it's not just a us thing it's a Canadian thing it's all over Europe is the units that are full-time and they select for a guy like you, those guys don't want to leave once they get there right I mean LAPD LA Sheriff the upside to that is you get guys on on D-platoon that have 2500 Ops.

Justin Dodge: Absolutely. With our tempo we have, we have most of our team at any given point running well over 2,000 operations.

Jon Becker: That's crazy.

Justin Dodge: Multiple hostage rescues. Denver unfortunately or the Denver metropolitan area where we have way too many active shooters but most of our guys have been involved in a handful of active shooters, or mass casualty events.

Jon Becker: Crazy.

Justin Dodge: Which is terrible for the community, but at the same time as far as the department goes, and the experience that these guys have to be able to go there be calm, and try to help minimize a situation is phenomenal for a team.

Jon Becker: Part of what makes elite units elite units is that corporate experience, it's the guys that have 2,000 Ops. And you get 10 guys with 2,000 Ops you get 20,000 operations. There are a lot of paradigms in play there, and a lot of experience that just some of the mistakes that you might make otherwise you don't. Things are not as novel. When you have that many guys somebody has seen this before.

Justin Dodge: Right.

Jon Becker: Has experienced and so there are less situations that the team goes into we like “Oh man what do we do now”.

Justin Dodge: When most of our guys that are like 10 years plus there's not something that is so outside of the norm that they would be like “I don't know how to solve this problem”.

Jon Becker: Yeah, so all right so you are living the dream. You have a wife that is several steps above making plenty of money to allow you to continue to be a TL on the team. You're in the perfect job and you're working a parade.

Justin Dodge: Yes.

Jon Becker: Which is about as easy a day as you can possibly have.

Justin Dodge: To a degree. Let me back up four days before the parade. The Nuggets win the championship. And on that night it's a Monday night we bring in mutual aid from all over the state especially the metropolitan area. And we know we're going to have probably a quarter of a million people downtown. With some of the Broncos events and the ABS, we've had crowd control issues probably would consider turned into riots.

Jon Becker: Yeah, you guys have had some pretty good sports riots.

Justin Dodge: Right, when we have cars upside down and on fire.

Jon Becker: That's probably the line. I would probably say car on fire I think is the line. I think it's past the line but we'll give you full credit for a riot if you have a car.

Justin Dodge: Yes. So knowing that we're going to have this we have officers all over the place obviously we there to be more like a QRF in case anything would would happen we have all of our armor with us all of our guys are in kits kind of ready to go we're not there to be primary crowd control but we are there.

It's unfortunate that we have the Kansas Cities and the Las Vegas and the Boston bombings like we can name all of these different events. There's a reason that large stand up tactical teams.

Jon Becker: No they need them and especially at an event of that size. Like the likelihood of a real problem kicking off if you don't have a QRF you got a real problem.

Justin Dodge: It's happening right. So we are at the end of the event we are we are whittling down, and we've only had three shootings. So we're thinking hey we have gotten out of this pretty pretty well three shootings in, dwindling down and in the parking lot in front of us a gunfight erupts and 33 rounds are fired. And it took us a second to kind of pin down where the shooting was coming from. And half of our guys actually saw the shooter and chased after the shooter. The shooter ends up putting himself down by accidentally trying to stuff the gun in his pants, and shoots himself. Our guys take him into custody.

Jon Becker: Well that's fantastic.

Justin Dodge: 33 rounds are exchanged in a crowded parking lot. We end up having “Yep we got a party down. Yep we got another party down”.

And as this is evolving as a TL, I'm working with Patrol sergeants I'm working with our Denver Health paramedics and we're trying to like stabilize this scene. And as we're trying to evaluate the Carnage that's in this parking lot we end up having eight people down in the parking lot that happened right in front of us.

Jon Becker: Holy shit.

Justin Dodge: So between plugging holes, and throwing tourniquets, and trying to coordinate to get ambulances in and all those kinds of things, we ended our night with kind of an ominous feel for what should have been a very celebratory night. At least on the law enforcement side, we're like we just had 11 people shot eight…

Jon Becker: Feels kind of harbinger of doomy, doesn't it?

Justin Dodge: Yeah. Absolutely. So when Thursday comes around, there was this just kind of feeling in the air at least I think for the police department this is going to be the largest crowd that's ever happened in the City and County of Denver. They're expecting over a million people for this event. We just had a mass casualty event during the celebration where we only had a quarter of that. We're going to have this parade, we're going to do this but we can kind of just feel it in the air.

So they obviously have officers assigned all over the place. They assigned Metro to do two different roles. We had eight of us that were assigned to two four-man teams. We were going to be side by side inside the parade. I was going to be a TL or I was a TL with three of those guys, and then we had a team commander with another three. And it was our job for the eight of us to be inside the parade route. If anything happens anywhere in the route, we're going into it and we're going to try to eliminate it. We're in kit. We have rifles with us.

Jon Becker: Immediate in the parade QRF.

Justin Dodge: Immediate in the parade QRF, and then we have obviously Bearcats and the rest of the team positioned in other areas that could either respond outside of the immediate area, or somewhere else in the parade should they need to.

Jon Becker: I mean, that's an interesting challenge too because once you've embedded the team in the parade they also can't get out of the parade. So you have a problem outside of the area now you've got to have part of the team out and part of the team in.

Justin Dodge: Exactly. We obviously have very good relationships with some of the other teams in the area. So we had other teams that were working the parade with us, we had other teams that were on standby making sure that the Metro area would be safe and taken care of. So due diligence on the tactical side to make sure all that stuff was handled.

Jon Becker: Got it. So you guys are embedded in the parade, parade's moving along. What happens?

Justin Dodge: So the final truck has the Joker, Jamal Murray, the NBA trophy and the owners of the cronies all on the last truck. So really the final truck has what everybody is there to see.

Jon Becker: This is Santa and the Christmas parade.

Justin Dodge: Absolutely. 100%. So as trucks are going by crowds are like, “Oh cool. Sweet. Okay.” And they're figuring out that it's the last truck that they're actually there to see. So part of what you do in a parade is you try to make it so that the first truck and the last truck are moving at the same speed at the same time, almost like they're tied by a chain or a rope, so that we can get everybody through and we're not having any interruptions.

Jon Becker: Yeah, you don't want it to stall at any time.

Justin Dodge: We don't want it to stall.

Jon Becker: Or snap.

Justin Dodge: Or snap certainly. And it was very apparent fairly quickly into the parade that we weren't going to be able to accomplish this. The barricades basically got disregarded by the fans.

Jon Becker: How many people actually showed up for the parade?

Justin Dodge: They did estimate that the crowds were right around a million.

Jon Becker: Holy shit. How many cops do you guys have?

Justin Dodge: 1,600.

Jon Becker: Oh yeah no but like with Mutual Aid and everything.

Justin Dodge: Mutual Aid  and  everything I'm not even going to guess at the number. I have no idea how many officers.

Jon Becker: I'll say it's 2,000. It's still a million to 2000, that’s a pretty unfair ratio.

Justin Dodge: Right. It was crazy when you're in the parade route you would get to certain areas and you'd look down side streets and the side streets to the full next block were packed solid with people.

Jon Becker: Oh my God.

Justin Dodge: This is a massive parade route at any one point you could visibly see in front of you.

Jon Becker: My God.

Justin Dodge: We are completely surrounded on all sides.

Jon Becker: You’re screwed.

Justin Dodge: Because we're downtown above us everywhere you look there is just massive amounts of people. The crowd was definitely celebratory. But as the last truck is coming through and they're starting to break through the barricade the crowd switches from celebratory to I would say more mob mentality. What would happen is a t-shirt would get thrown up to one of the players. It would get signed real quick, and it would get thrown on the ground and then there was this massive carnage.

Jon Becker: Scrum.

Justin Dodge: Scrum to get to get this one signed t-shirt. So what they did is they sent us as a QRF to go back and basically, it was our job to rescue this truck from thousands and thousands of people. At the time we had eight of us and eventually, we got a few more officers. I think at our max point we may have had 20 total officers. When I do my presentation and I do it with a PowerPoint, I have a slide that I put up and I actually play “Where's Waldo”, and in the slide the crowd is so huge that you cannot find unless you're looking for it an 80,000 lb fire truck because the crowds are so big.

Jon Becker: Jesus.

Justin Dodge: Yeah. There's times when you're smashed against the truck. You're just walking alongside the truck and you don't even have to worry about balance because you're smashed so hard against the truck that you couldn't push away if you wanted to.

Jon Becker: Oh my God.

Justin Dodge: Constantly pulling people out from underneath the tires as they're falling.

Jon Becker: What a nightmare.

Justin Dodge: And just trying to get like get this truck and get the people that are on top of this truck and everybody around it just let's end this, get them safely to here and let's continue on with the celebration.

Jon Becker: Jesus.

Justin Dodge: A little bit unbeknownst to us as the officers on the ground, the fire departments knowing that as they're turning from bigger streets onto smaller streets that that's where our stick points are going to going to be because what we don't know is that the frame of that truck should be like kind of a safe zone for us right. But if you're standing at the front of the truck and you don't know that the truck is turning those tires on that 80 lb beast come out 3 feet away from the frame.

Jon Becker: Oh my God.

Justin Dodge: So as we're standing against the frame of the truck that we've been with the entire time all of the sudden what happened to me is I'm at the front of the truck, the TL, I'm trying to be the the the eyes and the ears for the engineer on the other side of the truck to make sure like our side is clear and we can proceed. And as that's happening, he turns the truck. I don't realize the tires coming out 3 feet away from the frame and it catches my foot.

Jon Becker: And picturing like you're walking next to it, and the tire angles out and now are youin front of the tire?

Justin Dodge: I'm in front of the tire.

Jon Becker: So it just turns out and grabs you.

Justin Dodge: Turns out and hooks my heel.

Jon Becker: Oh my God.

Justin Dodge: I go to step and I realized I'm caught, and the crowd the sirens are going the crowd is just massive around us you can't hear anything. I'm starting to go down as this is happening and it was just complete utter chaos around. So it took a second as I'm going down for officers to even realize. I'm pinned. I'm caught underneath this truck. I'm not getting my leg back. So as this is happening they're desperately trying to get the truck stopped even to the point, you can watch it on videos. You have grown police officers that are experienced guys, wonderful people that are actually trying to push an 80,000lb truck to try to get it back.

Jon Becker: Yeah, it's what do you do?

Justin Dodge: What do you do? You're seeing your teammate, you're seeing this guy get sucked underneath a truck and watching parts of him starting to disappear, and I'm losing everything. I stayed completely conscious. I don't know if it's good the 30 years of BJJ and 20 years of being in Metro that I was just completely calm. I was like, “Yep my legs caught.”

Jon Becker: My leg is crushed. But it is what it is.

Justin Dodge: But I could feel like every bone as the bones were getting crushed and as the bones were getting removed from the tendons I could feel that. I could feel the tightening tightening-tightening followed by the pop of my foot getting ripped off my leg.

Jon Becker: Oh my God.

Justin Dodge: And it was right around that moment that I knew if I stay standing or if I stay like more in an upright position if it snaps my tib and fib, and it like spirals like the way I've seen injuries happen before if it takes out those arteries even though they're below my knee at this point.

Jon Becker: Yeah that's going to bleed a lot.

Justin Dodge: That's going to bleed a lot. There's 50,000 people around me, I can’t get an ambulance to me. I've got to do something. So I actually get myself in a position to get as low as I can and try to move myself while this thing is ripping my leg off to see if I can not have my tib and fib snap, and not have it go over my knee because I know if it gets into my knee then were up where the femoral has not branched yet. And I also know if it goes over and tracks over my quad and into my hip that they won't even transport me. I will die on national TV in front of 50,000 people with a crowd of a million, and I'm going to die.

Jon Becker: Jesus.

Justin Dodge: So doing everything that I could to kind of mitigate this they get the truck stopped and it stops right at my knee. They back the truck up they don't get it all the way off my leg they go forward again they're moving the wheels as they're doing this and it's grinding and taking even more of my leg as it's going.

Jon Becker: Not to be too graphic about it but of course we will be foot leg it's literally rolling up your leg.

Justin Dodge: Correct.

Jon Becker: I pictured it going across your ankle. It is literally like just almost like it's like pulling your leg away from you.

Justin Dodge: Right, because as the tire is turning where I am it's tracking up. If I didn't move, I believe it was tracking to fully just go--

Jon Becker: Crush.

Justin Dodge: Go right over my body.

Jon Becker: Oh my God.

Justin Dodge: Yeah.

Jon Becker: They get it stopped. It's sitting on your leg.

Justin Dodge: Yep.

Jon Becker: You're staying conscious.

Justin Dodge: Somehow conscious.

Jon Becker: Pretty sure, I'd have been unconscious.

Justin Dodge: I'm actually pissed at this point and I'm not pissed at any person. I'm certainly not pissed at the engineer. I just lost my leg and I'm laying there going man like get this truck off of me for one but I'm also thinking this is not my last stop like get these tourniquets on me and get me to the hospital. Right now, I believe that at least my knee maybe or maybe not intact but I'm not done. I have kids. I have a wife. This is not my last show. There is no way that this is how this is going to end not just as a family man, not just as a dad but also not as an operator. I'm not done.

Jon Becker: God what an amazing thing to think at that moment. So how long does it take him to get the fir truck off you?

Justin Dodge: So it was several seconds, maybe 5 seconds. It seemed like an eternity because it's grinding.

Jon Becker: ‘Cause it's an 80,000 lb fire truck on your leg.

Justin Dodge: On my leg grinding my leg into the ground so they pull me out. And one of my junior guys I mean brand new to the team, brand new to the team but stud comes up and I remember, I'll never forget this he looks at me and he goes “tourniquet “and I'm look at him, “Yeah-yeah let's do a tourniquet.”

Jon Becker: Yeah, good idea.

Justin Dodge: Yeah, so throw a tourniquet on. First tourniquet doesn't stop bleeding completely so they throw a second tourniquet on. My surgeon who ended up being the head orthopedic surgeon for all of Denver Health trauma said that those tourniquet kept me alive until I got to the hospital but tourniquet  are on they kind of pull me out from under the truck and now here they are coming at me with scissors and I'm conscious.

Jon Becker: You're about to get naked in front of a million people.

Justin Dodge: Right but more importantly and this is for anybody that has done anything especially tech guys don't cut my stuff off, like I'm conscious.

Jon Becker: Yeah you're not going to ruin my new boots.

Justin Dodge: Yeah, I don't want my belt cut off I don't want my kit cut off I know how to get everything I can put this thing on in the dark I can op don't cut. So my leg is gone the tourniquets are on and I'm now pissed and I don't want people cutting my stuff off. So I actually take my belt off hand it to one of my guys take the rifle off hand it to one of my guys, and I take my kit off. So, I take my cry kit and I hand it to another TL and made a remark something to the effect of “Put this in the armory because this is not my last stop”. That's what I was already thinking.

Jon Becker: God.

Justin Dodge: So my rehab process was going with the truck still on top of me. I was already like “All right if I'm alive I'm back. I'm coming back.

Jon Becker: Crazy.

Justin Dodge: Yep.

Jon Becker: So what ends up being the damage to the leg?

Justin Dodge: So I was degloved. There's actually parts of my kneecap where the soft tissue was gone so I was degloved from the knee down.

Jon Becker: So literally all the skin was torn off.

Justin Dodge: All the skin vast vast majority of the soft tissue gone. There was a little part of my calf that was still basically there. The leg didn't come completely off.

Jon Becker: It just came loose.

Justin Dodge: It just came loose.

Jon Becker: Like a saggy sock.

Justin Dodge: That's exactly yeah. So it was like a saggy sock. So they could like collect all of this but everything from about 4 inches below the knee was completely destroyed except for my tib and fib actually staying in place.

Jon Becker: Well you caught your tib, fib that you wanted.

Justin Dodge: Right.

Jon Becker: Should have asked for the foot instead.

Justin Dodge: Exactly, I should, I was hoping for more. So they get me to the hospital and they get an OR set up. By this time my wife actually wasn't working that day. She had a bad sinus infection. This happened right outside of police headquarters.

Jon Becker: God.

Justin Dodge: So I had four or 500 officers in headquarters that are doing their thing watching a Metro guy ‘cause they're at an elevated position. They just know it's a Metro guy, it's the only guys who are wearing green get sucked underneath this fire truck.

She was a commander at the time, one of my wife's techs called her and says, “Hey, a Metro guy just got sucked under the fire truck”. He knew it was me, but he didn't want to say like “Hey, it's Justin that's underneath this fire truck”.

So she actually text me because she does this all the time. She like text me. I'll be in the middle of a of a barricade and because we're usually coming between or between command and all that. So a lot of times she'll text me in the middle of whatever we're doing, and she's waiting for the three bubbles to come up right to see like can you get to your phone. If you can get to your phone, I know it's not you. So while she's doing this the screen goes black and it's my lieutenant who worked for her previously is calling her. And as soon as she saw that name pop up God she was like…

Jon Becker: It's him.

Justin Dodge: “It's him. It's Justin.” Is he alive? So she actually gets to the hospital because she knew that it was me within seconds of me being freed from the truck. She gets to the hospital in time for Dr. Moferey to come in, kind of walk us through, “Hey, we're going to do what we can do but I don't know what this is going to look like in four to 6 hours”.

So I wake up from the surgery. I knew what my leg looked like I could feel every injury. Wake up from the surgery and they had put together what looked like or kind of looked like a leg and foot. I was so freaking mad you couldn't believe it. I was pissed because I'm a very athletic guy, BJJ player forever, love to do like CrossFit realm workouts. I have an extremely addictive personality. Family full of different types of addiction problems.

Jon Becker: And yours is exercise.

Justin Dodge: Mine is exercise. And I understand that exercise is my addiction.

Jon Becker: It's a good addiction.

Justin Dodge: And as long as I can keep it within a healthy realm, and it's not interfering with family stuff and all that kinds of things, this is my addiction.

Jon Becker: No, it feeds your job right?

Justin Dodge: Absolutely. My addiction also helps with my purpose of being a healthier dad and a better operator, all those types of things.

So waking up with a foot that I know is completely unusable like I will never use this foot again I was pissed. But the genius of my surgeon is he was trying for leg salvage but he also knew if he doesn't build up that soft tissue below my knee, I'm going to be an above the knee amputee. And he even told me, “If you want to go the easy route, we can go back in we'll do an above the knee amputation. If you would have gone to any other hospital with any other trauma team you would have been-- even our other level one hospitals just ‘cause Denver Health is the safety net hospital for the region, you would have been an above the knee when you woke up just so that.”

So it was his genius that realized this is going to be a long road. We're going to try a salvation, probably not going to work but at a minimum if we can build up enough soft tissue. Maybe we can save the knee. And I just didn't understand it at the point at that time.

God thing for me. I'm a very spiritual guy with all of the injuries that I suffered, I didn't even have a level one sprain of my meniscus, no ligament damage, no tendon damage.

Jon Becker: That's crazy.

Justin Dodge: Nothing.

Jon Becker: So your knees are pristine.

Justin Dodge: My knee is 100% pristine. My calf, my quad, my hamstring everything is completely usable and intact.

Jon Becker: So he did you a real solid by building you a temporary solution.

Justin Dodge: Yep. And that's exactly what he did. 3 weeks into it we are scheduled for an appointment. He's going to take a look. We're having a surgery on Friday 3 weeks later, this will be my fourth surgery now and we're going to take a look at the foot and we're going to kind of go from here. And as soon as he undoes the bandages he says, “Well Friday is going to be an amputation”.

Jon Becker: Oh God.

Justin Dodge: And it was one of the weirdest things. I just broke down in tears, broke down in tears but at the same time I was so happy because I knew my foot will never work again. By now, I've had 3 weeks to like research. If this stays a below the knee there's plenty of dudes-- and because I work for Denver and I work for a large department we do a lot of things with guys on the mill side. So I had 20 guys contact me from different mill yeah--

Jon Becker: Units.

Justin Dodge: Units, we'll put it as units that all had been below the knee amputees that got back to full operational duty.

Jon Becker: Nick Lavery, right. You can look at Nick Lavery.

Justin Dodge: It's like Nick actually called me.

Jon Becker: Did he?

Justin Dodge: Yes.

Jon Becker: Really that's fantastic.

Justin Dodge: Nick has been huge, somebody I've definitely leaned on and he was actually an above the knee. So for him to be above the knee.

Jon Becker: And get back to the unit that he is.

Justin Dodge: Yeah. Incredible. So I had this overwhelming Joy yet at the same time to have a doctor tell you “We're cutting your leg off on Friday”.

Jon Becker: That's a hard pill to swallow.

Justin Dodge: Yeah it was just boom. I just immediately bursted into tears. So they have the surgery and even at then at that point they weren't sure, they were like “We're anticipating a below the knee but when you wake up, you won't know whether you're an above the knee or below”.

Jon Becker: So you're signing a consent that says they're going to do whatever they think is right but either way you're losing some or most of your leg.

Justin Dodge: You're losing 30% of your leg, 40% of your leg or you're going to lose 80% of your leg. We're just not sure. You'll know here in about eight hours.

Jon Becker: Nice.

Justin Dodge: So I woke up and I was below the knee and it was like okay we can work with this but because I was degloved right at the knee, there was so much damage, and so much injury that I had to heal from that I knew I had a very-very long road ahead of me. We're going to have more surgeries, there was going to be tons and tons of rehab. And there was going to be just this extended long time frame where I was going to be in a limbo.

I wasn't capable of being in a prosthetic. A lot of amputees depending on where where it is and how it happens, you can be in a prosthetic in like six weeks as soon. As that incision line heels, you're up you're fitted and you're you're off and going. But because they did the below the knee and they were working on that soft tissue I had to have all of that soft tissue healed.

Jon Becker: Yeah.

Justin Dodge: It wasn't until a couple of months ago that there was still tire tread marks in the soft tissue below my knee that were still healing.

Jon Becker: Jesus.

Justin Dodge: It was the last part of my intact leg that wasn't skin graft that had that part not healed on its own it was covering my tib and they would have gone in. So it wasn't until a couple of months ago even though I've been on a leg for almost 8 months that it was a little bit more like solidified that you're going to keep the knee.

Jon Becker: Jesus.

Justin Dodge: So I've been going through this up and down how many more surgeries, and is this going to be what it looks like long term above the knee or below the knee.

Jon Becker: How many surgeries have you had now?

Justin Dodge: I've had eight.

Jon Becker: And are you done?

Justin Dodge: I'm hoping so but I still have a couple of significant open wounds those are healing. As long as those heal and everything goes the way you're supposed to, I should be done with surgeries. But you never know as an amputee if they're going to have to go in and fix something, if the bone could start actually growing.

So lots and lots of guys have told me just “Be prepared this is a lifelong journey”. This sometimes. Especially after I've done you've run multiple Ops you've worked out like a maniac and then you come home at the end of the day and you take your leg off and you're sitting in a shower chair because I took my last standup shower on June 14th of 2023. I'll never stand up in the shower again. So those small but at the same time…

Jon Becker: Significant.

Justin Dodge: Significant, you're like okay. So yeah I'm hoping the surgery parts are done.

My profiltist Zack Harvey has been incredible to be able to put me in an incredible leg and actually work around those wounds, so that I'm back up and running with the unit. I was back.

So January 10th, I got fitted for my leg and my goal between the last surgery and actually in between every surgery, I would be in a wheelchair, and they would be taking me to gyms or when I was in the hospital bed there would be bans or weights or different things like that. There was just one, I was feeding that addiction but I also knew like I really got into what am I doing today that's going to make tomorrow better.

Some days it was people packing me up in my wheelchair, getting me to a gym, unpacking me into machines, putting wound backs and tubes and everything that I'm still hooked up to next to the machine, and then letting me move from this to this to this. Again, feeding that addiction but also very much keeping me in shape, keeping my mental kind of fortitude there to be like “All right I did something today that's going to make me better tomorrow”. It was that constant battle of how much ice can I pack my leg in because packing my leg in ice, one takes away the swelling but two makes it so I don't have to use narcs. So it was like all right, I'm going to use either no narcs or less narcs because I'm going to pack my ice.

So on days when I couldn't be active or at the gym or those kinds of things especially at the beginning parts of the surgery, I would figure out ways to like make tomorrow better.

We decided to not ADA  the house because I thought this isn't me. I'm not permanently handicapped.

Jon Becker: I love everything about that statement.

Justin Dodge: Yeah.

Jon Becker: I love everything about that like we're not going to ADA the house because I'm not going to be disabled.

Justin Dodge: Yes, am I permanently handicapped? Yes. Am I going to think like that? No. So I made the decision we're not going to ADA of the house. The first time we have a master bed on the second floor. The first night I get back from the hospital I had to butt scoot because it was safer to butt scoot than to use crutches.

Jon Becker: Sure. Yeah crutches,. and stairs are not a great combination.

Justin Dodge: Not a great combo I actually had two very-very bad Falls one because of the lim guard being designed the way it was the only thing that made it so I wasn't and above the knee that night because I was stubborn, and using crutches instead of a walker like they told me to use. And after that I've never been on crutches again. It's always been with a walker but those were kind of like those stubborn things of “I got this”. My mom uses a walker. I don't use a walker.

Jon Becker: Yeah, no I mean we we the alpha male personality is well the good thing because you got a firetruck parked on your leg and you're like I'm coming back from this but it's also like fuck you, I don't have to use a walker. I can use crunches if I want to.

Justin Dodge: Exactly. But then what I did is I started figuring out the walker will support my weight, and it'll also allow me to do dips.

Jon Becker: I would go every time I go, I'll use your walker but I'm gonna have huge triceps when I'm done.

Justin Dodge: So every time I would go I would like that was another thing. There were long periods of time where I had to use a urinal because I can't get up and go to the bathroom. To stay hydrated like I need to, it's almost impossible for me to go back and forth.

So like the day that I finally had the strength to be able to get up and go use the bathroom and then come back, I was like “Cool tomorrow I'm gonna do that but I'm gonna do five dips when I come back and then the next day I'm gonna do 10 dips”. But it would start progressing like that.

This is how I would start building my body again and start building my mind to make it so that I could get through this arduous long process of letting this leg heal. Yet trying to make it so that at some point, someday, this human that was and that I had made myself into will eventually get back to a point where I can be back in the team, back on the unit.

Jon Becker: So you just never surrendered.

Justin Dodge: Never. Now doesn't mean I didn't have bad days. So back to the butt scooting. It took me 15 minutes to go up like 13 stairs, not 13 flights of stairs.

Jon Becker: 13 actual stairs.

Justin Dodge: 13 actual stairs. And by the time I got up to the top I was exhausted. I was also anemic because I had such blood loss from all the different surgeries, and from the injury at the beginning that I was having to rebuild all of my red blood cells, and get all of that stuff back. So I get to the top of the stairs. I'll get emotional talking about this but my family especially my two daughters are standing above me and I am hysterical. I am in absolute tears at this point because I'm like I went from SWAT, TL, BJJ, black belt all of this kind of stuff to it just took me 15 minutes on my backside to get up 13 stairs.

Jon Becker: God.

Justin Dodge: What is going on? But then I pity cried for about a half an hour, and then I was like what, I'm getting into that bed and I'm doing it on my own and I scooted. Anybody knows anything about BJJ. I started shrimping. That's how we move on the ground playing BJJ. I was like “Oh wait a second I can shrimp.”

Jon Becker: I know how to do this.

Justin Dodge: “I can do this.” So now I was like “all right we're going to turn this into a game how far can I shrimp? How can I do these things?” And then the next day, it was like all right 14:45 and the next day it's 14:30 and the next day. And then all of a sudden within a couple of weeks, it was how many times can I go up and down the stairs today.

Jon Becker: It's so interesting because I talked to so many guys that have had traumatic injuries whether it's an amputation or femoral shatters, and it's interesting how many of the guys that recover and resume their lives that's how it happens.

One of the guys that I interviewed a couple years ago Jordan Robinson who was shot in the thigh, and if you look at the X-ray of his thigh it looks like a piece of modern art. They thought that they might have to amputate Jordan's leg. Jordan is three weeks in and decides he's going to go for a walk on his walker and walks like a mile on his walker and has to have his wife come pick him up because the police find him a mile from his house. And like “Oh are you lost?” Like “No, I'm just going for a walk”. “Yeah dude you're not going for a walk. We're going to call your wife.” I mean there is a certain amount of just encouraging ability that has to be there I think for you to have that fight.

Justin Dodge: Absolutely. This was crazy but I had to get fitted for it and I have one now, my own personal wheelchair. It was really cool because I was going to have my own like fitted like sports wheelchair but to actually be on the phone talking with this person while there's another guy at my house measuring me to put me in a wheelchair was like this is real like this is for the rest of my life. This is this is a reality.

But then when the wheelchair got here it made it, so that I could go outside and I could do it by myself and all of the time I would just be gone and kind of what you're talking about my wife would be like “Where are you right now?” And I'd be like “I'm like six houses down”. Because we live on a circle. So what I would do is I would go out and I would just like how many times can I go around on this circle, and then I would go on the other side to make sure one arm wasn't getting worked more than the other one and I'd go back.

Jon Becker: You don't have you don't have asymmetric biceps.

Justin Dodge: Right.

Jon Becker: Got to make sure that you look good right.

Justin Dodge: Exactly. There'd be neighbors out there and my story this was weird. I woke up two different times one from the initial one and one from the amputation to be on Fox News, CNN, ESPN because it was a news story the BBC like not only was it a traumatic event, but it was the largest event that was happening in the nation that day.

Jon Becker: Oh God.

Justin Dodge: The other thing is we had two people shot simultaneously not associated with me but at the parade so you had an officer get his leg ripped off, and two people shot at the parade it was a national news story. So immediately anywhere I would go people would be like “Wait a second”. I've spent my entire life trying to be as clandestine as possible. “Not a SWAT guy. No, I'm not a police officer.” Not that I'm not proud of my job.

Jon Becker: You want to be able to go out and watch a movie and not have people mess with you.

Justin Dodge: Now that's not the case anymore.

Jon Becker: Oh yeah no now you're, “Hey Justin”, “Yeah like who the hell are you?” “I saw you on the news.”

Justin Dodge: Exactly.

Jon Becker: Especially in the process of rehabilitating that has got to be just a big struggle.

Justin Dodge: It is and especially the time period in between getting between I don't have the leg and I'm still not I'm not there yet and then getting the leg but I'm still out in the public. I'm doing all of these things. I've never felt so vulnerable in my adult life.

Jon Becker: Probably because you've never been so vulnerable in your adult life.

Justin Dodge: Exactly. It's called what it is.

Jon Becker: Yeah.

Justin Dodge: That's exactly what it was.So January I try not to make goals either. I think goals are one of the worst things people can do because if you don't make that goal it turns into a massive setback.

Jon Becker: Yeah.

Justin Dodge: So for me personally instead what I do is I do daily tasks and I do daily tasks that help fulfill my purpose so instead of goals and if you are a goal person and they work for you perfect. I've just found that goals don't work for me. Daily tasks - Purpose driven those two together is what is what helps me.

So what I had done is I knew when January 10th came I did set a goal, and it actually bit me because I was supposed to get my leg like around Thanksgiving, didn't happen. Christmas didn't happen.

So this goal setting really was biting me because I was now 8 weeks past but my leg just wasn't at a point where I could be safely in a prosthetic.

Jon Becker: So your goal was to be on the prosthetic…

Justin Dodge: By Thanksgiving.

Jon Becker: So basically how long would that have been?

Justin Dodge: It was like six more weeks.

Jon Becker: No but like how long from incident to…

Justin Dodge: It was five months.

Jon Becker: Five months yeah sure so to go from that seems a perfectly normal healthy amount of time to recover from your leg being ripped off by a fire truck.

Justin Dodge: Exactly.

Jon Becker: That's not ambitious at all.

Justin Dodge: I got this. So eventually January 10th comes and I thought to myself I wanted to walk out of the rehab center with no crutches. But let me backup a little bit because right around November I get contacted by this crazy dude on the phone South African accent I end up finding out even through the phone more energy than any person I've ever worked with or talked to in my life.

I get off the phone with him and I was like I have no idea what he said. I have no idea but I think I need to be at a certain location at a certain time because potentially we're going to be doing something together. And it ends up I started doing a little a research and his name is Steve Hess and he was the performance coach for the Denver Nuggets for almost 20 years.

Jon Becker: Oh m God.

Justin Dodge: He was offering his services as a performance coach to me indefinitely. One of the guys that was on top of the truck called him and said, “I just watched this dude get his leg ripped off. He sat there stoic, pissed but I can't believe like what this guy just went through, and how he behaved as he's losing his leg. You need to work with this guy.”

So eventually I went with Steve and not only did we start a performance program but we actually started a documentary. He was the host of a docu series that was filming my entire recovery.

Jon Becker: Oh wow.

Justin Dodge: Yeah. So it's kind of cool that my entire recovery all the way up into getting back to the unit was all documented.

Jon Becker: That's super cool.

Justin Dodge: By PBS so Steve as a performance coach looked at everything. I've had strength and conditioning coaches before. I've had physical trainers. I've had all sorts of gamuts between playing college football and and and Semi-Pro hockey all those kinds of things. It was next level though with Steve and like a True-true performance coach.

I get in the parallel bars, I take like four steps and I'm like “Let go of the bars dude like let go the bars. Trust this.” I don't know if I fall flat on my face. I don't even care but I'm letting go of these freaking bars and I'm going to see what this light can do and I'm going.

I let go of the parallel bars and I walk to the end of the parallel bars without touching them. Turn around, walk back, do this a couple of times.

Zach makes adjustments on my leg because like I'm tilting out or my leg is turned a certain way. It's just weird getting a prosthetic.

Jon Becker: Yeah it's interesting because you don't think, “Oh I just put it on but you think about how complicated a leg is that has got to be a process”.

Justin Dodge: Oh it's crazy and there's constantly tweaks being made on it. I'm at Hanger Clinic which is only a few minutes it's blocks away from my unit so after an OP I'll be like “I think I need to tweak on my leg and I'll just go have Zach watch me walk a couple of times” and “Oh yeah let's turn this in 1/16th of an inch”. And all a sudden I'm like “Oh yeah that feels so much better”.

It's just a crazy thing. So day one I step out of the parallel bars and I'm looking at Zach and there's an obstacle course at the front of this Hanger Clinic, and he's looking at me. I'm looking at him. My family is like “Ah like oh my”.

Jon Becker: He's gonna fall down again. Crutches all over again.

Justin Dodge: What is he doing? Zach goes, you want to go in that obstacle course, don't you? I go, “Yeah, I absolutely do”. I go and I truck up and down a set of stairs. I go up and down ramps. I'm walking over River Rock over logs and he goes, “You're where we probably see people at about like the 6 to 8 week mark” and I'm like now at like the 6 to 8 minute mark.”

Jon Becker: Of course you are.

Justin Dodge: I was like “I'm going to work so hard to get here that I don't want to be at the the 6 to 8 week mark. I want to be at the 6-8 minute mark because I have my drive and my purpose for getting back to my family, getting back to the unit getting back to. I can either sit and hope and wait or I can take advantage of this time and develop myself in every way possible. That's what my thought process was.

So there's a really cool video of me walking out of the hospital and sort of a little bit of a hitch in my giddy up. If I was wearing pants, I don't know that you would know that I didn't have a leg and that was 10 or 15 minutes into actually walking on this leg. Then after that it was Katie bar the door like let's get after this thing.

So I was working with Steve and doing all the performance things. The problem with being brand new on a prosthetic is one I still have legit open wounds and two you're going to develop blisters you're going to get pressure ulcers, you're going like these are all things that this is part of the prosthetic world.

Jon Becker: Yeah I'm thinking like just just walking in new shoes you get blisters, a new leg has got to be.

Justin Dodge: Well you walk in new shoes and get blisters you just put a different pair of shoes on you let that blister heal you do this on a prosthetic and you don't let it heal, you're going back and you're having more surgeries that's the difference.

Jon Becker: Maybe losing the knee.

Justin Dodge: Yeah and oh guess what idiot because you decided you wanted to push this thing. So there was this very-very controlled progress of getting me back but then every once in a while there' be a setback like I'd be in the shower examining the leg which is one of the big things is like why you're sitting in that chair is you need to be looking at the leg, making sure everything's good and all of a sudden there'd be a blister.

And it'd be like “Oh my gosh like I've worked so hard the last couple of weeks and now I have a blister. I'm off the leg for two or three days which in the long scheme and like now looking back at it wasn't a big deal but at the time like these are setbacks that were crushing to me. You'd be like “All right I can let this heal and I can be back doing what I want to be doing in a couple of days or I can be an idiot and it's going to be a couple of weeks or worse”.

I started to really learn how to temper myself in things and I also learned how to kind of turn those reward feelings in my brain and how to change that. So instead of it always having to be I exercised, I went to kiddos football or lacrosse practice, I helped clean up the dishes and I was running Ops, those were my rewards. Now it was again like I stayed off the leg.

Jon Becker: Yeah I didn't act like an idiot today.

Justin Dodge: I didn't act like an idiot today. I did a really good upper body lift. I went in the wheelchair and I was able to go grocery shopping in the wheelchair. So you just start learning how to redo this, so you can feel as normal as possible yet still being on the road to recovery doing it intelligently.

So eventually as that whole process is going on, it's now well past January 10th and I'm kind of working towards thinking, “I would like to be back to the unit by June 13th”. If not because I decide after that fiasco with the goal setting of the leg I was like this is something that I would like to have happen--

Jon Becker: What day is the incident?

Justin Dodge: So the incident happened on the 15th of June.

Jon Becker: So we're going to be back to operational status in a year.

Justin Dodge: Well what I wanted to do is, the 15th it happened so the 14th would actually be--

Jon Becker: So it's 365 days, God.

Justin Dodge: I wanted the 13th.

Jon Becker: 364, less than a year.

Justin Dodge: I wanted less than a year.

Jon Becker: Yeah, you get your leg cut off be back to full duty status on a tactical team in 364 days that's totally unreasonable.

Justin Dodge: Exactly. So again and because of what happened I decided, this is not a goal but I would if I could get to that point that would be fantastic. And working with Steve and now I'm back to where I'm with the team.

There were days where I was in shorts and a t-shirt but I had a kit and I had a rifle in my hand and I was starting to do CQB, and I've been doing it for a long time. I also teach a lot of our CQB and stuff.

The day that I put a kit on and had a rifle back in my hand (and we were actually just running sims that day) it was so overwhelmingly joy. I went and did multiple runs and at no point did I even realize that I didn't have a leg.

Jon Becker: Post injury, when's the first time you are back with the team doing anything?

Justin Dodge: It was probably by about mid February, so within about 4 weeks of getting the leg on.

Jon Becker: You're back on the range.

Justin Dodge: I'm back on the range. I'm back moving with the guys, doing those things and gradually building up to where I could do longer runs. And getting back to the unit also was great because I wanted to be there when we were doing operational planning and briefing and debriefing. I wasn't going out.

Jon Becker: So the department was receptive to you because a lot of departments go “Oh well until you can clear a medical, we're not going to let you back in”, your department sounds like they're pretty receptive.

Justin Dodge: They were really receptive. There was the governor of Colorado actually sat on my couch one day to be like “Hey, we support you and this is phenomenal what you've done and we can't wait to eventually see you back”.

Jon Becker: The thing it's so important right like because not only do you lose the leg but like the minute you're out of the unit like you've lost part of your tribe.

Justin Dodge: Absolutely. My main tribe is my family sure but your family's not always your full support system what I mean?

Jon Becker: You get a different thing from work than you do from your family.

Justin Dodge: You absolutely do which is something that I think is so important and we can discuss this some other time. It's very very important for guys to have an exit strategy when they're leaving the job because if they don't the guys that I've seen leave the job with an exit strategy thrive.

Jon Becker: Yes.

Justin Dodge: The guys that I see leave the job and the next day they're calling to find out how an OP went it's like…

Jon Becker: I think that like all the years, I've done this the guy you I've been through now this I'm in my fifth generation of SWAT cops that I've worked with right because of overlaps and everything else. The guys that can retire and be happy (even if they stay in the industry and they're doing other stuff or they're doing training) are the guys that build a tribe outside of work before they leave work.

Justin Dodge: Yes.

Jon Becker: But you look at suicide rate among cops, you look at the suicide rate among special operators especially, and it's you're taking alpha males who are tightly bonded to a small group of people, and then all of a sudden one day you're not that anymore. And your tribe is gone.

Justin Dodge: Exactly.

Jon Becker: You can see where that would be kind of a gutting experience.

Justin Dodge: It absolutely is. For me, what was happening is I was separated from My Tribe for a little bit. I had to work really really hard in order to try to get back to that tribe. But talking about purposes like I developed that purpose very early in life of like I want to protect people. I want to be that guardian. Once I had kids it was--

Jon Becker: Oh yeah it was 10x.

Justin Dodge: I have other purposes but my absolute purpose is my family period. Saving lives is awesome. Family will take all the time.

All of a sudden as this was going and because it was a large story people started following my recovery.

I would have people reaching out to me after news stories or as I started to have a little bit of a platform on social media, and they be like “Hey, I'm going through this issue and I'm watching you do this.” All of the sudden as I'm continuing my healing and trying to get back to where I'm going I have this whole group of people that are watching me, and basically like “We want to see you succeed too”.

Jon Becker: Yeah everybody's rooting for you.

Justin Dodge: Right. I'm helping these people. There's never been a single person that has reached out to me that I haven't had an extensive phone call or text messaging with love that. I've sat in many person house and helped them kind of get through different processes, not all of them amputees.

So all of a sudden as I'm going through this whole process, I developed this third purpose which is helping people but in a different way than law enforcement helping people. It's helping people overcome whatever it is.

None of us are going to get out of this life unscathed.

Jon Becker: Yeah you're not getting out alive.

Justin Dodge: Exactly. I was kind of teaching people the prehab that I had done previously to getting hurt. Even if they've already been injured, or they've had a diagnosis or they have family members or anything like that, I started kind of explaining to them like all right you're in this situation, what are you doing today again that's going to make tomorrow better. And walking them through the different steps of how to get their mental, spiritual, physical foundations back.

I have what I call the five Fs which is something that I follow which is for me: it's faith, family, fitness because I'm addicted to fitness, finance and then fun. And all five of those things somewhere need to be…

Jon Becker: In balance.

Justin Dodge: In balance. They need to be taken care of. You need to be doing something with all of those. They all have bigger ramification amongst the five. But between your foundation and your Fs like what are you doing to make sure that you're constantly improving and you're constantly making gains towards a better healthier life, lifestyle what are you doing for your family all of those types of things.

So all of a sudden now I'm almost like picking up momentum as I'm doing this because I'm getting healthier. Now I have two legs, so I'm using the assault bike. I'm now having faster times on my assault bike with the one leg being a prosthetic, and the other leg than I did when I was in really good shape working out prior to being injured.

So these things are happening. I'm back running with the team, not quite operationally yet but all of this is just happening and it's working.

Next thing, even through the different times where I'm off the leg all those kinds of things I'm in the doctor's office one day and it's kind of early in May and I have a great relationship with my doc and she says, “Do you want to go on an OP? Is there anything that's preventing you from being on an operation right now?” I’m like, “No, I absolutely could go do an OP right now”. She goes “Okay I think you should go do an OP”.

Jon Becker: So she signed you off.

Justin Dodge: So she signs me off. I was released to being fully I can do anything that the unit is doing but what they did is they first signed it that it has to be no more than 30 hours a week because they really wanted to be able to protect.

Jon Becker: They put you on full duty status on light duty.

Justin Dodge: On light duty. Right.

Jon Becker: You can go balls to the wall but only for 30 hours.

Justin Dodge: But only for 30 hours.

Jon Becker: That is about as good as it gets.

Justin Dodge: Then come back in a couple of weeks and if we want to increase it. So all of a sudden it's May 15th, I’m sitting in a room with a uniform and I've passed our PT test. I've passed our rifle qual because it was very important to me. I am not coming back as a token.

Jon Becker: Yeah.

Justin Dodge: If I'm not coming back as an asset, if I'm not coming back as a relevant viable member of this unit then as much as I want to come back then that's a pride thing and that's a me thing.

Jon Becker: Yeah. Don't make me a pity case. Earn your way back to the unit.

Justin Dodge: Absolutely. It's very important for me that the department but in particular the guys in the unit, could watch me do things.

I even had very close conversations with some of the guys that I'm a little bit closer with to be like, “If you truly don't think that I can't run CQB whether it be deliberate dynamic, if there's anything that I can't do I would like you to point that out because I'll either gracefully bow out or I'll make sure that I'm working on that so that I can do that”. I'm a supervisor. Some of these guys are some of my senior guys but they're at the operational level. They're operators, so I was actually going to--

Jon Becker: You don't have to be on the same level for somebody to speak truth to you.

Justin Dodge: Right. I told that to my lieutenant. I told it to my peer sergeants and I also told it to some of the techs that “Hey, if I can't do this you let me know because I will gracefully bow out.”

May 15th I’m sitting and the first OP I did we were doing a surrounding call out warrant. We go in, clear the house at the end and I get done and I remember looking at my lieutenant and being like “Man, I remember being more cool than this”. It wasn't because it wasn't cool and it wasn't fun and I didn't love it. But I had built up so much anticipation of like “Can I do this? Can I get back?” And I got done with the operation and I was like “Huh okay”.

Jon Becker: “This isn't as hard as I thought.”

Justin Dodge: Yeah like there was no point that I was like “Ugh, am I gonna be able to do this?”

Jon Becker: I imagine as you're building this up there is in your mind (and I'm gonna guess it's probably the PFQ), there is probably something that you're like this is going to be a make or break for me like I'm either going to pass the PT test or I'm done.

Justin Dodge: Yes. Denver we have a PT test, and we have our own PT test that we have taken bits and pieces from things but one of the ones that we have is the NTOA, it's the 400 meter carry with the gas mask on. That was my nemesis before I lost my leg. I could always do it in a very respectable time but I hated it. If you've ever heard of like Blood Flow Restriction Training occlusion occlusion training that exercise with a gas mask on.

Jon Becker: Oh yeah it's oxygen flow inclusion.

Justin Dodge: It's Face Blood Flow Restriction Training. It's lung BFR, it sucks. I hate it.

Jon Becker: And you're in Denver.

Justin Dodge: And I'm in Denver.

Jon Becker: Which you might have adapted to that but there's not as much oxygen there's not as much oxygen.

Justin Dodge: There’s not as much oxygen. Exactly.

Jon Becker: I live by the ocean. We have air.

Justin Dodge: Yeah you guys actually have O2.

Jon Becker: We can see our air.

Justin Dodge: You have O2. Exactly. I actually told Steve we had we had we had gone through all of the testing phases and I was passing all of them but that was the one that I hadn't tried yet. I told Steve I go, “Before I actually do this I want to go and I want to try this”.

PBS was actually there for the day that I did it as kind of a protest. That was the one where I was like “Man I'm at a jog and jogging on this especially as it's new hurts. I'm carrying weights. I have a 20b kit on. I'm in a gas mask. This is going to be 3 minutes and 5 seconds or hopefully less of telltale will I come back to this unit.

Jon Becker: I don't remember it's a farmer carrier, what's the weight?

Justin Dodge: So it's 25 lbs in each hand, a 20b vest, gas mask.

Jon Becker: And you're running a sub 12 minute mile.

Justin Dodge: Right around there. Yes.

Jon Becker: On a prosthetic leg.

Justin Dodge: On a prosthetic leg that I've had for four months.

Jon Becker: What could go wrong?

Justin Dodge: Right.  Why are you doing this at this point?

Jon Becker: Because I can.

Justin Dodge: Because I can. That's exactly right it's because I can so yeah I went and I passed it. There's parts of the documentary that I'm really really happy that there was people there. I had to really put myself out.

Jon Becker: Yeah that's hard.

Justin Dodge: To have people filming me in very--

Jon Becker: Kind of your darkest hour.

Justin Dodge: Yeah my darkest hours but also some of my shining moments too. So there's a picture that was taken by the film crew of me just I still have the vest on, the gas mask is off my hair is messed up, I'm sweaty but I am just in tears because I just passed the one test that I was like I don't know if I'm gonna get this or not. I was truly in my head thinking, I will die before I quit on this 400 meters but I don't know if I'm going to get this in time or not. I don't know. On the first time I tried, I made it within the time it was. It was close but it was within the time.

Jon Becker: Yeah whatever. One second before the limit is still the limit.

Justin Dodge: A P is a P we always talk about that-- a pass is a pass. So fast forward to the actual PT test, I ran it almost 20 seconds faster than I had done previously about four weeks before because now it's for real like this, this is the test. I was only a few seconds off of where I was when I had both legs.

Jon Becker: That is amazing.

Justin Dodge: And my assault time, my bike time was the fastest Four mile I'd ever done when I did it on the test that day.

Jon Becker: It's just such an inspirational story because it would have been very easy at any point there to go “This is a good time to retire”. Medical retirement, tax free and done your service.

Justin Dodge: I'm only 11 months from actual retirement.

Jon Becker: Yeah, so it's really easy just to tap out at that point.

Justin Dodge: Absolutely. One of the things and I'm certainly not tooting my horn ‘cause I don't like doing that but I had no less than a thousand people actually a thousand people tell me, “If anybody can do this it's Justin” which was daunting because I have a lot of people rooting for me, but I have a lot of people also expecting this dude could do this.

It was humbling in the fact that it showed that I was living my life that way before I got injured. I get emotional even thinking about it. That's what I want to now show people is today is your day to start. Today is your day to make it so that the rest of your life even with challenges, with difficulties, with getting older with parents, with kids, with injuries, with jobs, all of it is irrelevant to the fact that you can decide to take your life and make it better and that's what I want to get out. Now between getting back to the unit full-time, no restrictions.

About a month ago we called out in the middle of the night to call out on a hostage rescue to rescue six people from a gunman and to be actually back there as a Senior Team Leader being part of the leadership role in that OP, and those kinds of things it's like all right I'm back. Now I'm back I'm with the unit but I'm also kind of helping to develop this new purpose of helping people to be heroes in their own stories.

Jon Becker: Let's talk about the business for a minute. At what point do you decide like “Oh I can teach this?”

Justin Dodge: I think it was when I started really figuring out that there were a number of people that were watching this. It was even before PBS had contacted me about the documentary that people were really like interested in this platform. They were interested in watching this story come back. But it wasn't just they were watching me come back. They were wanting to see how I was making this comeback.

I thought well I can help people walk through steps in their life in order to get to a point where they're doing the same thing that I’m doing-. I'm the most average guy on the planet short of I understand my purpose and I have a drive that's going to get me to that purpose.

Jon Becker: I'm going to be honest, I've known a lot of people. Your definition of average is definitely skewed.

Justin Dodge: It might be.

Jon Becker: Yeah it's definitely skewed. I mean you might view it that way but like there are a lot of people that would have just laid down and dived into the fire engine not climbed out and resumed operational status on a full-time SWAT team.

Justin Dodge: Well I appreciate that.

Jon Becker: It is difficult I think as the alpha male it's very easy to just continue to move forward but like when was the accident?

Justin Dodge: June 13th.

Jon Becker: We’re sitting here 15 months later and you've returned to operational status.

Justin Dodge: Correct.

Jon Becker: On a full-time SWAT team.

Justin Dodge: Correct.

Jon Becker: I think you might want to just stop and take a victory lap.

Justin Dodge: Thank you. I have to do one when we do the 400 meter.

Jon Becker: Yes that is definitely like what was previously a torture run is now a victory lap where you can smite your fire engine. Are we talking to the fire department yet? I’m gonna guess that first conversation was pretty fucking awkward with the fire department.

Justin Dodge: So one thing that I've been very careful of is regardless of what happened that day it's not my job to decide what went right went wrong. I've never placed blame on anybody if other people want to debrief that and figure all that out. But doing that like how many times do you think I've asked why me?

Jon Becker: I don't know if it was me probably every day about a thousand times a day.

Justin Dodge: Okay not one time since Jan or since June 15th have I said, why me because it's irrelevant.

Jon Becker: Yeah it is. I mean in the end, it's you.

Justin Dodge: There's been days where I've been like this is real, and I'll look at my leg at the end of the night and still have wounds, and I have no leg and the scar tissue and it's something you couldn't dream of in a movie. I'll be like, “This is truly my reality”. Then I look at my leg and I'm like “Yeah but I get to put that thing on in like 8 hours and go back out and do amazingly cool things not even work wise but just living my life I get to do things.”

So it was only a few days into the accident that the engineer that was driving the truck asked if he could come to the hospital.

Jon Becker: Oh my God.

Justin Dodge: His name's Pete. Pete and I have become close friends.

Jon Becker: Oh God.

Justin Dodge: It was not Pete's fault that day.

Jon Becker: No but I mean God that's got to hurt. I can't even imagine.

Justin Dodge: Yeah. I would rather let Pete share that part of the story of exactly what was said but Pete and I have become close. Pete was I believe seven shifts away from retiring.

Jon Becker: Oof.

Justin Dodge: He had had two mirror swipes in 20 years driving that truck.

Jon Becker: Yeah.

Justin Dodge: These are things like you write like in a Hollywood script.

Jon Becker: This is not an intentional thing, right?

Justin Dodge: Of course not.

Jon Becker: This is a horrible accent but like I cannot imagine from his perspective like the trauma he experiences post of like I would imagine from his perspective destroying an alpha male SWAT operator family man.

Justin Dodge: Right. He asked for forgiveness for this and I told him, “Pete, there's nothing to forgive you for. Don't ever ask that from me again because you asking for forgiveness in some way shows that you were at fault for this.”

I'm getting emotional talking about it “But there's nothing to forgive you for. We were both in an incident that went horribly wrong but you didn't try to run me over. It just happened to happen that this happened.”

So to have him ask for forgiveness and me tell him there's nothing to forgive you for and for us to now have have a relationship-- there was a premiere of “Kaboom” which is the show, the docu series and it was very very important to me that Pete was there when they did the big premiere party just to show him like “Hey man, can we stay in touch?”

The last thing that I wanted ‘cause I'm not a victim. I've never been a victim. I never will be a victim, but I wanted to make sure that he also was not going to be a victim of this and that we were going to walk through this together.

Jon Becker: That is an exceptionally mature position to take.

Justin Dodge: Thank you.

Jon Becker: To recognize the downstream consequences to him and try to avoid him I think is pretty amazing.

Justin Dodge: Thank you. Thank you. It was very important to me that he got to retire, got to retire with his head up got to live with watching his kids his kids are both firefighters and enjoying life because I'm thriving you need to thrive too.

Jon Becker: I’m going to assume though that anytime that the Denver SWAT team is anywhere near a fire truck there will be a “Hey, I'm here”.

Justin Dodge: Yeah.

Jon Becker: Like that's going to happen, I'm assuming.

Justin Dodge: I have a picture on my Instagram. I was driving to get gas. I wasn't working at the time but I'm in my work truck driving and one of the gas pumps we're at, is where we have the garage for the fire department and the police department. And as I'm driving I'm looking and I'm like “That's Ladder 15.”

Jon Becker: Oh no.

Justin Dodge: I'm driving by the truck. So I stopped put it in park, and I'm like it's me and this truck. I'm good. I'm back operational. I went up and I took a couple of pictures with that truck and I posted it to be like that truck just happened to be something that was there that day.

Jon Becker: I still would kick that truck.

Justin Dodge: Yeah. I kind of like stood by the tire and I'm like, “Okay like whatever dude”. You could either like sit there and be like “Damn you truck” or all of this kind of stuff or you could look at it and go.

Jon Becker: In the end you can lay down and be angry, or you can get up and fight.

Justin Dodge: Yeah.

Jon Becker: And you chose to get up and fight.

Justin Dodge: Absolutely.

Jon Becker: So for people that are wanting to engage with you, and wanting to see what you're doing and what you're teaching, what's the best way for them to do that?

Justin Dodge: So I have a website it's heavyvictory.com. You can get me at Heavy Victory on Instagram or Justin Dodge at LinkedIn, so lots of different ways to get in touch.

I'm out doing resiliency and wellness speaking inspirational talks. I'm doing it with government agencies, a lot of businesses, different organizations and just going out there and helping people get through things whether it's, “Hey, we need to boost some inspiration with some things that have happened with a business.” I've been doing those all the way to like legit resiliency post different incidents with people. This is like my new world. We kind of talked about guys getting out. As I'm kind of working into that retirement, this is what I want for the future is to be able to get out and share with people that regardless of what you have going on in your situation you can get through things.

Jon Becker: Love it man. Thank you so much for sitting down. It's a great story. I got to say glad to see you back at operational status.

Justin Dodge: Thank you. I love it.

Jon Becker: Congratulations.

Justin Dodge: Thanks.