Story time:

A few years ago, I was working at a veteran non-profit. Week before Christmas, so it was really slow. A young man shows up, wants to speak to our social worker, but she is already out. I put him in our cafe/waiting area and check to see if anyone else can help. https://twitter.com/HoustonChron/status/1281311861443563528

He is bit fidgety, young 20s. He is drawing on paper and throws it away when I come in. I tell him we have no social workers today, he asks if he can talk to me.

Why not? I have two ears. So, I sit down.

He tells me he is not a veteran, but he wants to help out. He talks about how growing up he was abused.

Then he leans forward and stares at me intensely and says:

"I know how to cure PTSD."

My red flag starts to rise. I have worked on ambulances and in ERs and immediately I shifted my weight in my seat.

"Oh, what did you discover," I asked.

"You have to make yourself dead inside. And I want to teach that to veterans."

Now the red flag is waving in storm.

I pretend to look at my phone and make an excuse that my wife texted me. I immediately start texting other people in the building. *keep an eye on me. Do not come in here. Potential issue*

One of our veteran court workers wanders in, having not gotten the text.

I'm able to quickly bring him up to speed (former Marine) and he catches on what is happening.

The young man says, "let me go to my car and get some stuff to show you"

Hell. No.

We keep him talking.

He says, "you have to make your soul dark and the only way to fight demons is to kill them."

"What demons?"

"The ones that hurt others" he says. He tells us that he grew up in Israel (he looked Mediterranean) and how he hears the six million Holocaust victims each night.

I pretend that I see a coworker I need to talk to, leave the young man with the Marine and quickly pop out to ask someone to call the police. (The cafe is windowed, with two exits, so the Marine was good)

What I didn't know was that 4 other coworkers (all veterans) were stacked up around the corner, ready to rush in. God bless veterans, airtight?

Police are notified and I head back in. The young man is showing the other guy tattoos of Holocaust numbers on his arms.

He talks about how we need to kill the bad people to cure our PTSD.

And here is the part I really wanted to tell you all:

The @houstonpolice were a bit delayed and apologized to my boss over phone, because:

They wanted a properly trained officer to respond and he was late.

They immediately knew what were dealing with and they knew they had to send the right person for this job. Yeah, it took a little bit longer, but they wanted to do it right.

The police officer shows up. The young man gets angry at me and starts crying. We talk it though. Another cop shows up, but doesn't come in.

We keep talking. Finally, the officer says "you and I both know that we need to go talk to a professional about this"

The young man nods, the officer quietly escorts him to the patrol car.

We all breathe a sigh of relief.

Another cop walks in. Report time.

When I mention the drawing, we decide to fish it out of the garbage. (Foreshadowing!)

It's a hand drawn diagram of our building.

He pointed out sniper points and a list of weapons. There were tick marks of number of people in the building. Hebrew writing (which I can't read) and the words Unit 269.

We google it and its an Israeli commando unit, thought to carry out assassinations and similar work.

The young man is taken to a psychiatric hospital. After Christmas, two plain clothes officers show back up and want to interview me. They are Intel Unit with HPD. Turns out one of them was in my battalion, though we didn't remember each other.

They were investigating to see if he was becoming self-radicalized. They asked what shoes he was wearing, did he make any hand gestures, they went through a list of words and asked if he said them.

The whole time, they kept coming back to "he is going to get the help he needs" and I could tell they meant it.

It was an intense situation. Could have been worse. Fortunately, we had the properly trained people respond and it worked out.

Invest in mental health training for first responders. Don't make it a side gig, but emphasize it as just as important as firearms training and investigation techniques.

Lives and livelihood can be saved.