A common question I get asked is why I founded my company Threat Management and Protection, Inc. (TMAP.) Let’s not beat around the bush. Part of my motivation was financial. After a long career in law enforcement, they didn’t just rip up all my bills. I had to earn a living!
Now for the real answer.
Running a private sector risk management company allows me to change lives for the better—without endless red tape and paperwork. Yet a recent callback to my days working in youth corrections serves as a good reminder changing lives for the better has always been my focus.
Our story starts in the mid-90’s. Back then I served as a parole agent at the Fred C. Nelles Youth Correctional Facility in Whittier, California. I’d worked my way up through every unit of the massive facility housing up to 1,000 boys found guilty of serious crimes. Kids didn’t get sent to Fred C. Nelles for truancy or pranks. No, the lost young men I interacted with daily had committed murders, rapes, and other heinous crimes.
Few were the hardened lifelong criminals you’d find inside Chino or other prisons throughout the U.S, though. These were boys who made terrible mistakes due to gang affiliation or coming from broken homes. They could still possibly build a life on the outside—if they could straighten out.
A kid named Frankie Guzman serves as a perfect example of this.
Now, I’m not going to pretend like I distinctly recalled Frankie years after my time at Nelles. Nor did I check up on him throughout his life. But I worked with thousands like Frankie. He fit into a certain mold I got good at spotting.
He was a first-time offender busted for armed robbery—a serious felony. He committed the crime with other gang members, some of whom got away. He was lost and scared in Nelles’ harsh prison environment. He’d never been away from home for long before.
Truthfully, the real reason I learned to spot boys like Frankie—troubled teens who still might have a future—was because I saw much of myself in their faces. Don’t worry. This won’t turn into a sob story. I thankfully never entered “Fred’s Place” except via the “employees only” door.
Still, in my teen years, fifty years ago, I ran with a fast crowd. I rode a chopper, hanging with a crew right on the edge of outlaw territory. Somehow, I kept my grades up while partying all night with my biker buds, stumbling home at 3 AM.
In the 1997 film Heat, the main characters Robert De Niro (the robber) and Al Pacino (the cop) both see themselves in each other—though they remain on opposing sides of the law. That’s how I reflect on my teen years. I could have gone either way but I wanted to make a positive impact, so after a few “bumps and lumps” I parked my chopper for good, choosing the “white hat” of criminal justice.
My life experiences helped me understand youth offenders. Plus, a work-study program while at CSU, Long Beach with State Parole opened my eyes to the potential of doing good within the penal system. From the start I thought to myself, ‘I can help some of these guys’ so that’s what I set out to do.
Along the way, I picked up valuable knowledge through various assignments, including in the medical-psychiatric program. As a result, when a guy like Frankie entered the facility, I marked him off for special attention.
As a parole agent, I wasn’t required to have direct inmate interaction until it was time to consider someone for release. But I knew that was a disservice to these boys. Trying to rescue them from futures as career criminal and lifelong convicts, I formed groups to work through their problems. I’d say out of 80 boys in the ward, our group would typically contain 30 guys. I worked with them in various ways to try to return them the life they were throwing away.
Eventually, I connected with a psychologist named Raquel Camaro. She shared my passion for helping troubled kids fix themselves. We created a plan for individual counseling, group sessions, and weekly chapel trips. Through this process we helped boys understand what had happened leading up to their crime(s) and how to improve themselves.
Every one of them came in blaming society. Yet through hard (inner) work, some realized the fault lay much closer to home. We did this with many boys. So what makes Frankie stand out? His tale is the reason you’re reading this, even if I didn’t think of him for nearly 30 years.
I couldn’t have picked Frankie out of a lineup, but he recalled me clearly. A few months back, my longtime assistant Flip and I were reminiscing about his time years ago in trouble. That’s when I looked up Fred C. Nelles, which closed in 2004. The facility’s website included a collection of videos from people who had worked at the facility and former inmates.
Flip and I played several back to remember my time there. Then my jaw hit the floor as we watched an interview with one Frankie Guzman. To my astonishment, Frankie started talking about me.
Here’s Frankie in the embedded video:
“There was one person who was very impactful on my life… a parole agent named RJ Kirschner. He was the first person who helped me understand what my original trauma was… His intervention…by rounding up a group of 15 of us and making us be honest, gaining insight into what made us tick… that laid the foundation for me to be in a position to work on myself, go to college, and ultimately become the person that I am.”
Those words pack a punch just reading them. Once I got over my shock at being remembered by an inmate so positively, I decided to find out just what Frankie had done with his life. The story is nothing short of amazing.
Frankie Guzman’s life was no fairy tale. After release from Nelles, he failed to go straight multiple times, leading to more prison time. Yet, he was tenacious about pushing forward. He didn’t get into drugs, neither did he reunite with his old gang. Instead, he gravitated toward those people he wished to emulate. Eventually, he got into Berkeley, then UCLA law school. He then became a youth advocate, helping other at-risk individuals avoid the same mistakes he made at their age.
Through it all, he’s maintained I changed his life. That makes me proud. Even better, his work is carrying on. At this very moment, he’s improving the lives of today’s troubled teens.
Stories like Frankie Guzman energize me. It’s not often you get such recognition years after the fact. It proves I did improve lives throughout my law enforcement career. Since closing that chapter of my life, I’ve since applied the same empathy to my many clients as the owner of TMAP.
These days, through my agency, I can be personally invested in my clients’ happiness and society’s betterment—at the same time. (Happily, these twin objectives almost always work together.) As I reflect, helping troubled boys turn their lives around isn’t all that different from what I do now. I credit my own life experiences with supporting those victimized by criminals or requiring protection. If I hadn’t walked on the edge between safety and lawlessness fifty years ago in my youth, I might not have the same capacity to help so many people.
People like Frankie.
So long as I’m breathing, I’ll strive to make lifelong positive impacts on my clients and colleagues (and even the bad guys). If this is the kind of commitment your business or your family needs, give the TMAP team a call.