Who Do You Call After the Call? — with Tyler Van Handel
Operation Coffee Podcast · Episode 2
Pick where you want to listen or watch:
▶ Listen on Spotify → ▶ Watch on YouTube →Ask a police officer who they talk to after a bad call and most of them will tell you nobody. Tyler Van Handel had a different answer, and it took him years to get there.
Tyler is a police officer. He’s also a mentor to a 13-year-old kid through the Outagamie County Mentoring Program, and in a couple of days a dad.
We start with what it took for him to look in the mirror and admit something had to change. Tyler is honest about how long that took. “It took forever,” he says, and he means it. We get into Wisconsin drinking culture, the towns out here that don’t even have a stoplight but have five bars and one church, and why “just have one” was never on the table for him.
Then Tyler shares the best advice anybody ever gave him: find your fire team. In the military a fire team is the four guys you run every maneuver with. In the civilian world it’s four or five people at different ages and different places in life — the ones you call when the crisis comes. Because it’s coming. Tyler talks about how long it took to build his, and why you have to be patient with it.
If you’re a first responder and nobody has ever asked you who you talk to after a call, this one is for you.
His Hold My Coffee moment goes back to his grandma and her instant coffee — the constant on good days, bad days, and everything in between. Now it’s the first sip after a scene that left him frozen to the bone, and the cup he brings his wife every morning before work.
Recorded in the roasting room at Operation Coffee in Appleton, Wisconsin.
Coffee. Conversation. Connection.