CBS Sacramento's Charlie Lapastora takes us up the mountains to Sonora, where Douglas Satterfield wants to bring the joys of taking his kids to ice cream trucks to the community he grew up in, to give back to first responders.
"I know the struggle," Doug said. "And first responders, they deserve the best, man. They put it all out there and they don't deserve to lose it in the end."
"I didn't know I had PTSD," Doug said. "I had no idea. I was living life. I was still enjoying the job, enjoying the calls, and our family was doing what I thought was great. I mean, we were surviving and no arguments or anything, but there's just an underlying tension, and you just live at such a high level in life in this career. You're always in a fight. You're never in flight and that's 24-7. So, it's exhausting, but I just didn't know what was going on with me."
"I just keep adding things to my backpack and then things started happening, things that were totally out of my character," Doug said. "So, there was a time that I was involved with law enforcement, officers, and something that I would never have done in the past and now I'm finding myself engaged with law enforcement, of possibly being arrested, but I didn't recognize at that time that I was having a mental break because I was totally out of control."
"I was going to lose everything," Doug said. "And if I knew I was going to lose everything, I knew what the next step was going to be and that scared me. And so, I sought help, and thank God I did."
"He came to me with this, he's like, 'I'm going to buy an ice cream truck'," Lori Satterfield, Doug's wife, said. "And I was like, 'Okay, all right,' but it just kept morphing and kept morphing and kept morphing and getting better and better and better. I just couldn't, I can't sit back and just not be a part of it. I mean, it's so exciting, but it's absolutely, this is his vision. This is his dream and I am just along for the ride and here to support as much as I can."
"I'm done with tragedies and now I'm looking to just fulfill the smiles," Doug said.
"We just deserve to live," Doug said. "It's just so heartbreaking and so that's just my panic. So this is another thing with this is that, man, when I came out of the retreat, I was in such a panic because I felt like I needed to get to all the guys and gals that I had the golden ticket. I figured it out and I couldn't get to everybody quick enough. I was calling everybody on the department. I was calling the chief and everybody. And I was even telling the chief, 'You need to go to this program. You're, you're messed up.' They just weren't hearing it. And so with this, it provides so much opportunity to talk to other first responders and to give them my experience and how well it's worked for me."
"In that profession, nobody comes out unscathed," Doug said. "It's the ego. It's the pride. It's that people just don't want to be vulnerable enough to find that healing. and so there's a stigma to it. There's a stigma to asking for help. And the issues are, man, you're trying to do your best. The public gets the best of you, but your family ends up getting the worst of you and that's where we end up failing and we just don't recognize it. And so I'm just asking for my brothers and sisters to stay aware because you're worth it. And thank God for WCPR. Thank God I had the courage to ask for help."
"After he's put in so much work and has changed so much, that I look back on those days now and realize how hard it really was," Lori Satterfield said. "But now our communication is so fantastic. We sit on the porch. We have our porch therapy. We sit on the porch at night and listen to the crickets and the frogs and just talk about our day. And a lot of times we talk about our past and the things that our family has gone through. And man, we're just stronger for it. It's been amazing."
A transformation started with getting help. Then, it moved into learning the art of "patience" in transforming his truck to make sure it's ready to go.
Satterfield is looking to uplift first responders to help fight their fires with ice cream.
The Satterfields are now just waiting on the county for their permit and they will also do private events, already getting requests for reservations. Once they are in operation, you can track their routes on their website.
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