From Helper to Hostage

Imagine that you are a combat medic with the 82nd Airborne Division deployed to Iraq for the last year, with most of that time spent in two of the hottest spots you could possibly be in: Baghdad and Fallujah. You survive your deployment, come back to America, get out of the military and get married a short while later. You enroll in a paramedic program to transition those military skills to the civilian sector, and you take a job as manager of a music store in a local mall to support your family until you can complete the program and find work as a paramedic. Imagine you are working at the mall one day and suddenly hear what you are absolutely certain is automatic weapons fire, and, in the blink of an eye, you are being held hostage by a 20-year-old amped up on methamphetamine, who shot six people moments earlier. Now imagine that you are not imagining anything - that all of the above is true and happening to you.

That is exactly what happened to Joe Hudson, one of my paramedic students at Tacoma Community College, when he was taken hostage in a recent shooting at the Tacoma Mall. Heres a g'uy just trying to get his life back to normal after fighting in a war for the last year, and in what must be something like having an out-of-body experience, he made the transition from being a helper to a hostage. To get a feel for what that must be like, I asked Joe a few questions for this month's BTB.

Mike: What did you think when you first heard the gunfire?
Joe: My first thought was, "There is no way that those are gunshots," and then I thought it had to be a confrontation between two people who resorted to using guns, because I knew I was hearing two different types of gunfire. I pulled my employer and a customer behind the counter by the cash register, and we lay down on the floor. Mentally, I was trying to deal with the fact that what I'd heard were not firecrackers. This all happened in about 10 seconds.

Mike: Given your military background and the fact that there was a single shooter, at any point did you consider trying to either disarm him or take him down?
Joe: I was thinking about that possibility. I tried to look for his weaknesses and started running scenarios through my head. The first half-hour was rough, because I already knew the guy had shot an unknown number of civilians and had fired an entire magazine from each of his two weapons inside my store. So I knew he wasn't afraid of using his weapons to fire upon people. That's a scary combination.

But, for whatever reason, after that I felt it could end peacefully. Plus, he always had his finger on the trigger as he sat across from us with one of his weapons pointed in our direction. I definitely would have taken him down if I'd felt threatened, but I knew if I made a move, I'd have to kill him. The way he had his weapons positioned on his body prevented me from trying to take them away from him. As I was thinking about a take-down, I was praying that he wouldn't fire and have a stray round hit one of the other two hostages. If I would have had to kill the guy and one of the other people had gotten hurt, that's a lot on my conscience, and I would have always wondered if it could have ended another way.

I also knew there were snipers in place, SWAT was outside, and he was talking to a negotiator on the phone. I wanted to give them a chance to do what they were trained to do before I took matters into my own hands.

Later, I found out that my wife, family and the other two hostages were praying that I would just keep my cool.

Mike: Now that it's all said and done, what are your thoughts on the irony of surviving a year of wartime deployment only to come home and almost get blown away working at the mall?
Joe: Actually, I believe that God has a plan for all of us, and of all the people the guy could have taken hostage, I'm glad it wasn't someone else. I'm not saying I'm glad I was a hostage, but I have been mentally and physically trained to handle situations like that. I know there are employees from other stores who are seeking professional help because they had never heard gunshots before and never felt the "fight-or-flight" response before. Except for the media coverage and constant phone calls from the press at all hours of the day and night, I'm doing fine.

The day after this happened, my wife and I celebrated her birthday, my beagle had puppies, and I was trying to study for the quiz coming up the next day in the paramedic class. Life doesn't stop for anybody or anything.

In closing, I want to thank Joe for being willing to share his experience and his insights. He is truly a fine young man whom I believe will be a great paramedic, and I'm sure he'd like to get back into that helper role again. I know if I'd been in his shoes, that's what I'd want to do...after I'd thrown out the underwear I'd been wearing first. Until next month...