--:-- [Soft music plays in the background]
--:-- Quill Lawrence: This is a Sunday story, and we continue with Quill Lawrence's reporting about combat veteran Dave Carlson. Quill first met Carlson while he was incarcerated more than 10 years ago.
--:-- Quill Lawrence: At the time, Carlson was serving a prison term for a variety of crimes he'd committed after two tours in Iraq. And a warning, this episode includes explicit language, as well as descriptions of violence and mentions of sexual assault and suicide.
--:-- Quill Lawrence: Quill continues the story from here. Dave Carlson went into prison in very bad mental health. And like we said in episode one, incarcerated veterans get very few VA services. So his PTSD isn't being treated. And he does not do well.
--:-- Quill Lawrence: At first, it was really bad. People banging. Like in certain areas of jails and prison people bang a lot, and you know, wake up to bang. And well, you know, waking up to mortars is waking up to bang. And then when I wake up like that, I'm my adrenaline is spiked in prison.
--:-- Quill Lawrence: He starts to behave like he's still at war. He reverts back into combat mode. He's coming up with tactics to keep the enemy at bay. He came up with a whole system for cell fighting. He would put a slick of baby oil at the entrance to his cell so anyone who rushes in would slip. And he would train specifically for cardio so he could outlast anyone in that small space.
--:-- Quill Lawrence: And he's telling me, he's like, man, it was just like I was back in Iraq.
--:-- Josh Fridgen: [ Identified as Carlson's special forces buddy ] His special forces buddy, Josh Fridgen, was in touch with Carlson after he was sent to prison and said that at one point Carlson told him he was in such a dark place that he was plotting a kind of suicide attack from his cell.
--:-- Josh Fridgen: He thought about making a shank, walking up to the guard's window and just slitting his throat and bleeding out in front of them just to give them PTSD.
--:-- Quill Lawrence: On my calls with him from prison, Carlson told me he was having combat nightmares, and his violent outbursts got him put in solitary for a long time.
--:-- Quill Lawrence: It was screaming, 24-7, screaming, crying, feces, people were pissed.
--:-- Josh Fridgen: [ Identified as Carlson's special forces buddy ] Josh Fridgen says Carlson told him he actually felt like he was staring down the devil there in solitary. That's where his head was at that time.
--:-- Quill Lawrence: So he's got to sit in there alone with his thoughts. And I think that might have been one of the better things for him, where you're kind of forced to sit there and think about your problems.
--:-- Quill Lawrence: It was terrible. I mean, it's silent. Besides people screaming, people flooding their cells. But otherwise, there's no TV, there's no radio, just none of that stuff.
--:-- Quill Lawrence: And dealing with that was very hard for me.
--:-- Quill Lawrence: I think that's where he found God. That's where he said he found God.
--:-- Quill Lawrence: And basically, that was probably the big turning point for Dave where he just started kind of rebuilding.
--:-- Quill Lawrence: To rebuild, Carlson had to find a new mission. And he comes to the idea that he should serve others.
--:-- Quill Lawrence: I need to go out and selflessly pursue helping other people that are in my position. You know, I feel like I can maybe help prevent them from going down the same road that I did.
--:-- Quill Lawrence: So let me set the scene. Just months after he found Faith in solitary, Carlson was due for that sentencing hearing in Waukesha, Wisconsin, the one you heard in episode one, where his mom and his grandma and his combat buddies all showed up for him.
--:-- Quill Lawrence: We're here today on the matter of state of Wisconsin v. David Carlson. And at this hearing, the judge is deciding whether to extend Carlson's sentence for the new crimes he committed in prison, or set him free for time served.
--:-- Judge Donald Hassan: [ Identified as the judge ] Mr. Carlson, this criminal justice system, frankly, has bent over backwards. And frankly, sir, the response to all that has not been good.
--:-- Judge Donald Hassan: When you think about it, Dave Carlson has messed up a lot. All the crimes after he got back from Iraq, plus all the fighting in prison, it adds up.
--:-- Judge Donald Hassan: And I'm looking at a fine young man sitting here in front of me today that I'm going to end up putting in prison for a little bit.
--:-- Judge Donald Hassan: The sentence today is two years on each count. Two years confinement, two years extended supervision for an aggregate of four years.
--:-- Judge Donald Hassan: And that sounds like four more years in prison. But then the judge explains that it's concurrent with time served. So actually he's going to be out in a couple of months.
--:-- Judge Donald Hassan: That, by my estimation, Mr. Carlson, will better prepare you for your return to the community.
--:-- Judge Donald Hassan: Because the next time you come to the community, sir, all that we wish from you is your success.
--:-- Judge Donald Hassan: And I realized the judge had the same question I did. How did Dave Carlson go so wrong?
--:-- Judge Donald Hassan: And even for all his missteps, the judge is betting that Carlson can fight through this.
--:-- Judge Donald Hassan: So do I trust you, Mr. Carlson? I want to.
--:-- Judge Donald Hassan: And that's why I didn't put you in prison today for what amounts to be six years.
--:-- Judge Donald Hassan: I'm giving you the challenge, sir, of leaving the state prison system here in a fairly short period of time.
--:-- Judge Donald Hassan: But you know what? You can do it. You're very capable of it, Mr. Carlson.
--:-- Judge Donald Hassan: These guys behind you believe that you're capable of it today as well, or they wouldn't be here, right?
--:-- Judge Donald Hassan: Sir. Okay.
--:-- Judge Donald Hassan: So to them, you owe something to, right?
--:-- Judge Donald Hassan: Yes, sir. You do.
--:-- Judge Donald Hassan: All right, that's the order of the court, Mr. Carlson.
--:-- Judge Donald Hassan: We don't need you back, sir. Good luck, okay?
--:-- Judge Donald Hassan: Aye, sir.
--:-- Quill Lawrence: But the judge is taking it on faith that Carlson is going to make it. The sentence includes 12 years of extended supervision plus three years of probation. So 15 years. It's a huge amount of time to have a cop looking over your shoulder.
--:-- Quill Lawrence: Still, when Carlson called me from the jail phone right after, he was elated, mostly because of the respect that the judge had shown him.
--:-- Quill Lawrence: At the end, he called me a fine young man. And honestly, it wouldn't matter what sentence he gave me. That meant a lot to me.
--:-- Quill Lawrence: I think that throughout all of this, that's all I've been looking for, is just for people to see that I've meant well and that I went down the wrong road.
--:-- Quill Lawrence: Dave Carlson walks out of jail, a free man, on December 30th, 2015.
--:-- Quill Lawrence: He moves into an apartment his grandma has rented for him. He hunkers down.
--:-- Quill Lawrence: I called him up two weeks after he'd moved in. It was like shell shock at first. The first couple of days were really bad.
--:-- Quill Lawrence: It took about a week before I could get my bearings and stuff, just trying to act like I'm back in the world and life is life now.
--:-- Quill Lawrence: In a way, even though he's been home from war for seven and a half years at this point, it's almost like his first real re-entry to the country coming home because he's been in prisons or institutions for a lot of that time.
--:-- Quill Lawrence: The biggest thing is just trying to keep a middle ground rather than trying to race too far ahead too quick.
--:-- Quill Lawrence: I checked in on him again a couple of months later. You know, you sounded good.
--:-- Quill Lawrence: Hey. Hey. So how you been?
--:-- Quill Lawrence: Not bad. Just leaving the gym right now.
--:-- Quill Lawrence: Oh, yeah? Headed to the other gym.
--:-- Quill Lawrence: He tells me he's been exercising like crazy to keep busy and working as a trainer at two gyms.
--:-- Quill Lawrence: And he's met someone. Um, I'm kind of dating a female that, uh, she's a, she does CrossFit now, but, uh, she also has a personal trainer at the gym that I, that I work at.
--:-- Quill Lawrence: Uh-huh. That's cool.
--:-- Quill Lawrence: Just basically, it's not, it's nothing super serious. It's just, we do a lot of workouts together and stuff.
--:-- Alicia: [ Identified as Carlson's girlfriend ] That girl, her name's Alicia.
--:-- Alicia: I was coaching a boot camp class at a boxing gym. And I will never forget the day that he walked into this gym and I was actually married at the time when he when we met um and we were I was struggling in that marriage at the time but he so he walks into this boxing gym and he had this he had on high top Jordan tennis shoes a sweat like track suit almost thing, like sweatpants.
--:-- Alicia: And then he always wore like a tight-fitting, like they wore it in boxing to make him sweat more, but it was like a tight-fitting wicking kind of shirt and it would be tucked into his sweatpants and just serious, like the most serious person I've ever seen.
--:-- Alicia: At first, doesn't like him. She thinks he's kind of an arrogant chump who acts like he owns this gym, but there is this competitive energy between them, a way they both push out this gym vibe.
--:-- Alicia: One day they actually have it out? I'm not joking when I say this workout was like a deadly workout. It was just him and I in the gym.
--:-- Alicia: And I think it was like we both saw a push in each other. Like, you know, I'm not backing down, you're not backing down.
--:-- Alicia: And I think that workout meant a lot to both of us in terms of like a partner or like seeing someone who has that ability and that like mental toughness to push through something that was miserable.
--:-- Alicia: That was the first thing that we had gone through or did it together.
--:-- Alicia: And in the months ahead, Alicia gets divorced. They move in together and she starts to realize what she is getting herself into.
--:-- Alicia: I was like, holy shit. I looked up his record and was like, oh my gosh, my dad is gonna like kill me.
--:-- Alicia: But she says it was like they were both starting from nothing. And they're in love.
--:-- Alicia: Both of them are thinking about going back to school and a job outside training at the gym.
--:-- Alicia: Things go really fast. Maybe too fast.
--:-- Alicia: Something inside Carlson isn't keeping up. He's been out of prison for about a year when Alicia says he starts to slip.
--:-- Alicia: I do like to get a cocktail sometimes at dinner. And I'd always ask, would you care if I'd order a drink with dinner?
--:-- Alicia: And he never would care.
--:-- Alicia: But then we were at dinner and he was like, well, I think I'm going to get a drink with you.
--:-- Alicia: And what comes next, according to Alicia, is a year and a half of insanity.
--:-- Alicia: This kind of relapse, it's pretty common.
--:-- Alicia: But Carlson's on probation. He's one drunken traffic stop away from getting hauled back to prison.
--:-- Alicia: And amid that insanity, Carlson and Alicia, they get married and she's pregnant.
--:-- Alicia: And she's committed. She doesn't want to give up on their marriage.
--:-- Alicia: Their son is born right in the thick of it.
--:-- Alicia: I had a brand new baby. David was completely out of his mind.
--:-- Alicia: So Dave Carlson is out of his mind, and then he outright disappears for six weeks.
--:-- Alicia: Alicia tries to track him down in some pretty bad parts of town.
--:-- Alicia: Finally, she finds him in a hotel.
--:-- Alicia: They wouldn't let me have a key to the front, to his door, and I don't remember the reason.
--:-- Alicia: But I ended up figuring out which room it was, and then I removed the screen, and the window was unlocked.
--:-- Alicia: And I ended up scaling the side, and I climbed in the window.
--:-- Alicia: I was sitting at a desk. I had drank alcohol, and I had a pile of cocaine in front of my face.
--:-- Alicia: I was snorting cocaine.
--:-- Alicia: And this is already after you've got a son?
--:-- Alicia: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, that I just that I wanted to die I didn't want to take out my responsibility of being a dad because I knew that I was gonna I was gonna suck at it and I was gonna teach my kids all kinds of bad shit so maybe maybe my dad it was best that he was gone not in my life for the majority of it because like maybe I would have just been even worse off and maybe I'm gonna do that to my kids maybe it's inevitable that that's what's gonna happen yeah I think like all of that shit was going through my head.
--:-- Alicia: Alicia and a mutual friend lock him in their apartment and say, you're not leaving unless it's to the VA for rehab.
--:-- Alicia: And eventually he goes to inpatient rehab at the VA in St. Cloud, Minnesota.
--:-- Alicia: It was like, I'm just going to do whatever I need to, to like keep this. I want to get David like back on the rails because I feel like if I can get him help.
--:-- Alicia: He has so much potential. Like, this is just a part of his story.
--:-- Alicia: I believe that he has so much more to offer this world, and he's here for a reason.
--:-- Alicia: Like, I just have always felt that with him.
--:-- Alicia: Like, he feels like he has a bigger purpose.
--:-- Quill Lawrence: Maybe it's holding his new baby in the peace and stability of the VA hospital.
--:-- Quill Lawrence: Maybe it's Alicia.
--:-- Quill Lawrence: Maybe it's his growing sense of serving God.
--:-- Quill Lawrence: Most likely it's all of that.
--:-- Quill Lawrence: But Dave Carlson is finally able to turn all that rage, all that power in the right direction, a direction more suited for life outside of war.
--:-- Quill Lawrence: There's a quote and I don't know if I'm going to butcher it possibly, but it's about it, a proverb about I would rather be a warrior in a garden than a gardener in a war.
--:-- Quill Lawrence: And I think that it really speaks to, for me, it speaks to being able to defend yourself, to be able to do harm, but then having the discipline, having the empathy, having the compassion to not do it.
--:-- Quill Lawrence: And so that's who Dave Carlson decides he's going to be.
--:-- Quill Lawrence: From early in his relationship with Alicia, he talked about going to law school.
--:-- Quill Lawrence: Now he acts on it. He takes the LSAT.
--:-- Quill Lawrence: So then it was like just little good things kept happening.
--:-- Quill Lawrence: Like I ended up graduating grad school, which was a huge help.
--:-- Quill Lawrence: We bought our first house in that time, which was really cool for both of us.
--:-- Quill Lawrence: And then he got into law school.
--:-- Quill Lawrence: And then, I mean, that was just like, whoa, like, I can't believe this is happening.
--:-- Quill Lawrence: Like you did it. You're doing exactly what you said you're going to do.
--:-- Quill Lawrence: They both felt the change. There's a new energy in the relationship.
--:-- Quill Lawrence: They have another child, another boy.
--:-- Quill Lawrence: And for all of us, time keeps passing.
--:-- Quill Lawrence: There's a pandemic. More than 4,100 people have died in New York from COVID-19 so far.
--:-- Quill Lawrence: And racial justice protests.
--:-- Quill Lawrence: There have been about 9,000 protest-related arrests in the U.S. since the death of George Floyd last week.
--:-- Quill Lawrence: And I was overdue for a check-in with Carlson in March of 2021.
--:-- Quill Lawrence: I call him up on Zoom, which has been invented.
--:-- Quill Lawrence: What's up?
--:-- Quill Lawrence: Hey, how are you?
--:-- Quill Lawrence: I'm good. How about yourself?
--:-- Quill Lawrence: Good, good. Good to see you.
--:-- Quill Lawrence: You as well.
--:-- Quill Lawrence: A lot better setup than the jail phone.
--:-- Quill Lawrence: Oh, yes. Yes.
--:-- Quill Lawrence: He's now a student at Mitchell Hamlin Law School in St. Paul, and he's working as a paralegal on the side.
--:-- Quill Lawrence: And at this point, I've been talking to Dave Carlson for years.
--:-- Quill Lawrence: That was a long time ago now.
--:-- Quill Lawrence: It feels like a long time.
--:-- Quill Lawrence: I don't even remember how long go that way.
--:-- Quill Lawrence: Yeah, man, that was, I don't know, like six, seven years now.
--:-- Quill Lawrence: And he's close to graduating from law school.
--:-- Quill Lawrence: And at this stage, when I called to talk with him, it's not really interviews anymore.
--:-- Quill Lawrence: We're just talking about life, like how we're both new fathers.
--:-- Quill Lawrence: I'm afraid to jaywalk, you know?
--:-- Quill Lawrence: Yeah, I quit chewing.
--:-- Quill Lawrence: I chewed.
--:-- Quill Lawrence: Did you?
--:-- Quill Lawrence: Yeah, I quit chewing.
--:-- Quill Lawrence: Like, I was like, damn, this is a selfish ass thing to be doing.
--:-- Quill Lawrence: Like, you turn 10 years old and I get like, jaw cancer or something, you know?
--:-- Quill Lawrence: He and Alicia, they're making things happen.
--:-- Quill Lawrence: They founded a company they call We Adapt to mentor and serve the communities that Carlson escaped as a kid.
--:-- Quill Lawrence: So they're working with youth.
--:-- Quill Lawrence: They take these young people on mountain biking trips and all sorts of physical fitness stuff, mentoring.
--:-- Quill Lawrence: And he knows these kids look up to him because he's strong and because he's fought at war.
--:-- Quill Lawrence: But he's trying to teach them a different lesson about fighting than the one he grew up with.
--:-- Quill Lawrence: Like, I thought then that the value was the actual violence.
--:-- Quill Lawrence: Being able to do that violence to other people just needed to be deserving people that you did the violence to, which is backwards.
--:-- Quill Lawrence: Like, now I fully believe and know that violence of any kind is wrong.
--:-- Quill Lawrence: It's the least effective way to do anything.
--:-- Quill Lawrence: Now, does that mean that they're just, if, like, you could snap your fingers and there's no violence?
--:-- Quill Lawrence: No.
--:-- Quill Lawrence: Because there's still situations that I would be violent over, like my family's safety.
--:-- Quill Lawrence: And so you have to be able to do that.
--:-- Quill Lawrence: But you shouldn't want to do that.
--:-- Quill Lawrence: So again, he's talking about being that warrior in the garden.
--:-- Quill Lawrence: But it's one thing to talk about how to act.
--:-- Quill Lawrence: It's different when you get put to the test.
--:-- Quill Lawrence: And that's what happens next.
--:-- Quill Lawrence: I'm yelling at her, like, stop, stop, stop.
--:-- Quill Lawrence: And so I go in after her.
--:-- Quill Lawrence: Like, and I'm playing in my mind.
--:-- Quill Lawrence: I'm like, I'm literally, like, my brain is now processing this as if someone has just kicked the door and I'm second man in.
--:-- Quill Lawrence: So imagine being Dave Carlson, who did this for two years in Iraq, amped up on adrenaline, kicking in a door and rushing in to that maybe kill the people inside before they kill you.
--:-- Quill Lawrence: That was the mission.
--:-- Quill Lawrence: That was survival.
--:-- Quill Lawrence: So we get in.
--:-- Quill Lawrence: The wife is in the corner, like, cowering in the corner.
--:-- Quill Lawrence: The husband is standing by the stairs.
--:-- Quill Lawrence: He's a bigger man, but Carlson is on him.
--:-- Quill Lawrence: He slammed into the wall.
--:-- Quill Lawrence: We're fighting down the fucking hallway, and I finally get him down.
--:-- Quill Lawrence: I think I put one leg around, like a hook in jiu-jitsu around his thigh.
--:-- Quill Lawrence: But this time, he's not having a PTSD flashback that he can't control.
--:-- Quill Lawrence: He's not having a relapse.
--:-- Quill Lawrence: In fact, he's keeping it together and just using the skills he learned as a soldier.
--:-- Quill Lawrence: I stretch out, and I'm just telling him, you need to relax, you need to relax.
--:-- Quill Lawrence: And he does.
--:-- Quill Lawrence: And then it's done.
--:-- Quill Lawrence: The guy stays down.
--:-- Quill Lawrence: The wife and kids are safe.
--:-- Quill Lawrence: The cops arrive.
--:-- Quill Lawrence: Carlson calls his probation officer.
--:-- Quill Lawrence: He expects to go to jail.
--:-- Quill Lawrence: I go straight to the courthouse.
--:-- Quill Lawrence: So I went straight to the gas station.
--:-- Quill Lawrence: I bought six hard-boiled eggs.
--:-- Quill Lawrence: I ate six hard-boiled eggs.
--:-- Quill Lawrence: Went to the courthouse and then waited.
--:-- Quill Lawrence: I understand everything except the eggs.
--:-- Quill Lawrence: Huh?
--:-- Quill Lawrence: Why did you eat six hard eggs?
--:-- Quill Lawrence: Oh, because I thought I was going to be in jail.
--:-- Quill Lawrence: You get hungry as hell. You get hungry as hell in jail.
--:-- Quill Lawrence: So if I'm going to go to booking... Hard experience has told you to fill up before you go to jail.
--:-- Quill Lawrence: Yeah, fill up.
--:-- Quill Lawrence: I thought for sure I was going to jail.
--:-- Quill Lawrence: Carlson knows things about jail, but this time he also knows lawyers.
--:-- Quill Lawrence: And when he ends up before a judge, he knows what to say.
--:-- Quill Lawrence: And he doesn't go to jail.
--:-- Quill Lawrence: He goes home, and he keeps on studying.
--:-- Quill Lawrence: Then the next time I call Dave Carlson, it's to plan a trip to come see him and his wife, and there are now three boys in person.
--:-- Quill Lawrence: It's been almost exactly 10 years.
--:-- Quill Lawrence: And then I'm standing in the bleachers at Mitchell Hamlin Law School in St. Paul with his mom Heidi and Alicia, and there are three boys who can't sit still.
--:-- Quill Lawrence: Daddy's going to be up there.
--:-- Quill Lawrence: And some of his siblings and a few of his formerly incarcerated friends are sitting together.
--:-- Quill Lawrence: Graduates, will you please stand as you're able for the awarding of your degrees?
--:-- Quill Lawrence: We hear keynote speaker talk and about how far many of these graduates have traveled to get here today.
--:-- Quill Lawrence: And I just can't help but smile to myself and think, I'm not sure there's anyone here who's come quite as far as Dave Carlson.
--:-- Quill Lawrence: David Carlson.
--:-- Quill Lawrence: When I started this story, I had this question. I wanted to know how Dave Carlson, how any combat vet, how anyone gets over war.
--:-- Quill Lawrence: Carlson went through some very dark times when he was punished for the crimes he committed with a really messed-up PTSD brain.
--:-- Quill Lawrence: Despite this, he'll tell you he loves this country. He's proud of his service.
--:-- Quill Lawrence: When I went to visit him for the commencement, we sat down face-to-face to talk one more time.
--:-- Quill Lawrence: But before I could ask him my question about war, Dave Carlson did something I was not expecting.
--:-- Quill Lawrence: He asked me a question that's been on his mind.
--:-- Quill Lawrence: Why are you interested in a story like this?
--:-- Quill Lawrence: Oh, like you?
--:-- Quill Lawrence: Yeah.
--:-- Quill Lawrence: Oh.
--:-- Quill Lawrence: I didn't really have an answer.
--:-- Quill Lawrence: But Carlson did.
--:-- Quill Lawrence: He knew why I'd been doing this for a decade.
--:-- Quill Lawrence: So are you familiar with the concept of an Alcoholics Anonymous, like your recovery depends on the person, like the person you work with, their recovery?
--:-- Quill Lawrence: So like your support of this person isn't just part of their recovery, it's part of your recovery, right?
--:-- Quill Lawrence: Just as important.
--:-- Quill Lawrence: You're interconnected.
--:-- Quill Lawrence: The same way that I'm part of your recovery, you're part of my recovery.
--:-- Quill Lawrence: And I saw what he meant.
--:-- Quill Lawrence: Dave Carlson has been part of my recovery.
--:-- Quill Lawrence: I want to be clear. I was a war correspondent, not a soldier.
--:-- Quill Lawrence: But I spent really hard years watching senseless destruction at war, and I lost people I loved.
--:-- Quill Lawrence: And so for me, coming home, the best thing I could have done was to talk to Dave Carlson. And other veterans.
--:-- Quill Lawrence: And telling their stories helped me understand what we'd all been through, and make sense of it, and find a new purpose back here at home.
--:-- Quill Lawrence: As for my question about getting past war, the answer seemed clear to me.
--:-- Quill Lawrence: Dave Carlson had made it.
--:-- Quill Lawrence: We were sitting in his big house in Eau Claire.
--:-- Quill Lawrence: It's big enough for his three boys each to have their own bedrooms.
--:-- Quill Lawrence: There's a playground right down the street.
--:-- Quill Lawrence: Carlson and Alicia seem happy.
--:-- Quill Lawrence: And in my mind, his 10-year odyssey is over.
--:-- Quill Lawrence: He's made it home.
--:-- Quill Lawrence: But that's not how he sees it.
--:-- Quill Lawrence: He says he's just keeping the wolves at bay.
--:-- Quill Lawrence: I mean, honestly, I don't think it's ever safe.
--:-- Quill Lawrence: But I think that if you can build the community that you have, like the network that you have for support, and then that network is stable, I think that then maybe you can relax a certain amount because somebody's got your six, right?
--:-- Quill Lawrence: You got the 360-degree perimeter of security.
--:-- Quill Lawrence: And just right now, I think that I'm trying to tighten up my portion, my sector of fire, so that, like, when I do relax, you know, I can just enjoy those relationships and that my family can, you know, thrive without there being some impending danger looming just ahead.
--:-- Quill Lawrence: So that's the mission for Dave Carlson.
--:-- Quill Lawrence: But still, I hope that sometime maybe sometime he can let his guard down and even relax and look back on what he's done and feel loved and feel proud.
--:-- Quill Lawrence: He's earned it.
--:-- Quill Lawrence: He called me up just the other day.
--:-- Quill Lawrence: He passed the bar.
--:-- Quill Lawrence: Dave Carlson is now a practicing attorney.
--:-- Quill Lawrence: You can hear more of Quill Lawrence's reporting on veterans at npr.org.
--:-- Quill Lawrence: If you or someone you know may be considering suicide or is in crisis, call or text 988 to reach the Suicide and Crisis Lifeline.
--:-- Quill Lawrence: Press 1 if you're a veteran.
--:-- Quill Lawrence: This Sunday Story series was produced by Andrew Mambo.
--:-- Quill Lawrence: It was edited by Janice Schmidt and Andrew Sussman.
--:-- Quill Lawrence: It was fact-checked by Sarah Knight.
--:-- Quill Lawrence: Kwesi Lee mastered the episodes.
--:-- Quill Lawrence: Original music for this series composed by Tim Lawrence and performed by Quill and his brother Tim.
--:-- Quill Lawrence: A special thanks to Luis Treyes, Bruce Oster, and the many others who generously provided feedback and assistance.
--:-- Quill Lawrence: The Sunday Story team includes Justine Yan and Liana Simstrom.
--:-- Quill Lawrence: Our intern is Thomas Coltrane.
--:-- Quill Lawrence: Irene Noguchi is our executive producer.
--:-- Quill Lawrence: I'm Aisha Roscoe.
--:-- Quill Lawrence: Up First is back tomorrow with all the news you need to start your week.
--:-- Quill Lawrence: Until then, have a great rest of your weekend.
--:-- Quill Lawrence: This message comes from NPR sponsor 1Password.
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