Transcript of Carlson’s War: Part 2

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. 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 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.

Man, at first it was really bad. People were banging. In certain areas of jails, in prison, people bang a lot. You don't wake up to bang. Well, you're waking up to mortars is waking up to bang. Then when I wake up like that, my adrenaline has spiked.

In prison, 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. He would train specifically for cardio so he could outlast anyone in that small space.

He's telling me, he's like, Man, it was just like I was back in Iraq.

Josh Josh Fridgen, his Special Forces buddy, 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 suicide attack from his cell.

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.

On my calls with him from prison, Carlson told me he was having combat nightmares, and his violent outbursts got him put in in solitary for a long time.

He was screaming, 24/7, screaming, crying, fefees, people were through, pissed.

Josh Frisian 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. So he's got to sit in there alone with his thoughts. I think that might have been one of the better things for him, where you're forced to sit there and think about your problems.

It was terrible. I mean, it's silent. It's besides people screaming, people flooding their cells. But otherwise, there's no TV, there's no radio, none of that stuff. Dealing with that was very hard for me.

I think that's where he found God. That's where he said he found God. Basically, that was probably the big turning point for Dave, where he just started rebuilding.

To rebuild, Carlson had to find a new mission, and he comes to the idea that he should serve others.

I need to go out and selflessly pursue helping other people that are in my position. I feel like I can maybe help prevent them from going down the same road that I did.

So let me set the scene. Just months after he found faith in solitary, Carlson 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.

We're here today on the matter State of Wisconsin versus 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.

When we come back, the sentence.

Mr. Carlson, this criminal justice system, frankly, has bent over backwards. Frankly, sir, the response to all that has not been good.

We'll be right back.

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We're back with a Sunday story from Up First. Here's NPR's Quil Lawrence.

Dave Carlson's hearing on September 3, 2015, takes place before Judge Donald Hassan. Hassan happens to be a veteran himself. He served in Vietnam. In his opening remarks, he doesn't sound convinced that Carlson deserves any more second chances.

Mr. Carlson, this criminal justice system, frankly, has bent over backwards and gone through a lot of hoops in an effort to maintain you in the community. Frankly, sir, the response to all that has not been good.

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 Hassan seems to have already done the math for Dave Carlson's sentence.

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. The sentence today is two years on each count. Two years confinement, two years extended supervision for an aggregate of four years.

And that sounds like four more years in prison. And his family and his combat buddies all gasp. But then the judge explains that it's concurrent with time served. Actually, he's going to be out in a couple of months.

That, by my estimation, Mr. Carlson, will better prepare you for your return to the community, because the next time you come to the community, sir, all that we wish from you is your success.

I realized the judge had the same question I did. How did Dave Carlson go so wrong? And even for all his missteps, the judge is betting that Carlson can fight through this.

So the I trust you, Mr. Carlson? I want to. That's why I didn't put you in prison today for what amounts to be six years. I'm giving you the challenge, sir, of leaving the state prison system here in a fairly short period of time. But you know what? If we can do it. You're very capable of it, Mr. Carlson. If these guys behind you believe that you're capable of it today as well, or they wouldn't be here, right? Sir. Okay. So to them, you owe something, too, right?

Yes, sir.

You do. All right, that's the order of the court, Mr. Carlson. We don't need you back for good luck, okay?

All right, sir.

But the judge isn't 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. 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.

At the end, he called me a fine young And honestly, it wouldn't matter what sentence he gave me. That meant a lot to me. 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 on the wrong road.

Dave Carlson walks out of jail, a free man, on December 30th, 2015. He moves into an apartment his grandma has rented for him. He hunkers down. 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. 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.

In a way, even though he's been home from war for seven and a half years at 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.

The biggest thing is just trying to keep a middle ground rather than trying to race too far ahead too quick.

I checked in on again a couple of months later. You sounded good.

Hey.

Hey. So how you been?

Not bad. Just leaving the gym right now. Oh, yeah. He headed to the other gym.

He tells me he's been exercising like crazy to keep busy and working as a trainer at two gyms, and he's met someone.

I'm dating a female that she does CrossFit now, but she also has a personal training at the gym that I work at. That's cool. Basically, it's not something super serious. It's just we do a lot of workouts together and stuff.

That girl, her name is 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 we met. And I was struggling in that marriage at the time. So he walks into this boxing gym, and he had on high top Jordan tennis shoes, a sweat track suit almost thing, sweat pants. Then he always wore a tight-fitting... They wore it in boxing to make him sweat more, but it was a tight-fitting, wicking shirt, and it would be tucked into his sweat pants and just serious, the most serious person I've ever seen.

Alicia at first doesn't like him. She thinks he's 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, and one day they actually have it out.

I'm not joking when I say this workout was a deadly workout. It was just him and I in the gym. I think it was like we both saw a push in each other. I'm not backing down, you're not backing down. I think that workout meant a lot to both of us in terms of a partner or seeing someone who has that ability and that mental toughness to push through something that was miserable. That was the first thing that had gone through or did it together.

In the months ahead, Alicia gets divorced. They move in together, and she starts to realize what she is getting herself into.

I was like, holy shit. I looked up his record and was like, oh, my gosh, my dad is going to kill me.

But she says it was like they were both starting from nothing. And they're in love. Both of them are thinking about going back to school and a job outside training at the gym. Things go really fast, maybe too fast. Something inside Carlson isn't keeping up. He's been out of prison for about a year when Alicia says he starts to slip.

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? And he never would care. But then we were at dinner and he was like, Well, I think I'm going to get a drink with you.

What comes next, according to Alicia, is a year and a half of insanity. This relapse, it's pretty common. But Carlson's on probation. He's one drunken traffic stop away from getting hauled back to prison. And amid that insanity, Carlson and Alicia, they get married, and she's pregnant, and she's committed. She doesn't want to give up on their marriage. Their son is born right in the thick of it.

I had a brand new baby. David was completely out of his mind.

So Dave Carlson is out of his mind, and then he outright disappears for six weeks. Alicia tries to track him down in some pretty bad parts of town. Finally, she finds him in a hotel.

They wouldn't let me have a key to the front to his door. And I don't remember the reason, but I ended up figuring out which room it was, and then I removed the screen and the window was unlocked, and I ended up scaling the side, and I climbed in the window.

I was sitting at a desk. I had drink alcohol, and I had a pile of cocaine in front of my face with snorting cocaine.

And this is already after you've got a son. Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah, that I wanted to die. I didn't want to take on my responsibility of being a dad because I knew that I was going to suck at it, and I was going to teach my kids all kinds of bad shit. So maybe my dad, it was best that he was gone, not in my life for the majority of it because maybe I'd have just been even worse off. And maybe I'm going to do that to my kids. Maybe it's inevitable that that's what's going to happen. Yeah, I think all of that shit was going through my head.

Alicia and a mutual friend lock him in their apartment and say, You're not leaving unless it's to the VA for rehab. Eventually, he goes to inpatient rehab at the VA in Saint Cloud, Minnesota.

It was like, I'm just going to do whatever I need to to keep this. I want to get David back on the rails because I feel like if I can get him help, he has so much potential. This is just a part of his story. I believe that he has so much more to offer this world, and he's here for a reason. I just have always felt that with him. He feels like he has a bigger purpose.

I was always hoping Carlson was going to make it, but I've seen lots of vets fail. The fact is, by now, we've lost four times more Iraq and Afghanistan vets to suicide than we've lost in combat. So maybe it's holding his new baby in the peace and stability of the VA hospital. Maybe it's Alicia. Maybe it's his growing sense of serving God. Most likely, it's all of that. 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.

There's a quote, and I'm going to butcher it, possibly, but it's a proverb about, I would rather be a warrior in a garden than a gardener in a war. 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.

And so that's who Dave Carlson decides he's going to be. From early in his relationship with Alicia, he talked about going to law school. Now he acts on it. He takes the LSAT.

Then it was just little good things kept happening. I ended up graduating grad school, which was a huge help. We bought our first house in that time, which was really cool for both of us. Then he got into law school. Then that was just like, whoa, I can't believe this is happening. You did it. You're doing exactly what you said you're going to do.

They both felt the change. There's a new energy in the relationship. They have another child, another boy. For all of us, time keeps passing. There's a pandemic. More than 4,100 people have died in New York from COVID-19 so far. Racial justice protests. There have been about 9,000 protest-related arrests in the US since the death of George Floyd last week. I was overdue for a check-in with Carlson in March of 2021. I call him up on Zoom, which has been invented.

What's up?

Hey, how are you?

I'm good. How about yourself?

Good. Good to see you.

You as well. A lot better set up than the jail phone.

Oh, yes. He's now a student at Mitchell Hamlin Law School in Saint Paul, and he's working as a paralegal on the side. At this point, I've been talking to Dave Carlson for years. That was a long time ago now. It feels like a long time. I don't even remember how long ago that was.

Yeah, man, that was, I don't know, six, seven years now.

He's close to graduating from law school. At this stage, when I call to talk with him, it's not really interviews anymore. We're just talking about life, like how we're both new fathers. I'm afraid to jaywalk.

I quit chewing. I chewed. Did you? Yeah, I quit chewing. I was like, damn, this is a selfish-ass thing to be doing. You turn 10 years old and I get jaw cancer or something.

He and Alicia, they're making things happen. They founded a company they call We Adapt to mentor and serve the communities that Carlson escaped as a kid. So they're working with youth. They take these young people on mountain biking trips and all sorts of physical fitness stuff, mentoring. And he knows these kids look up to him because because he's strong and because he's fought at war. But he's trying to teach them a different lesson about fighting than the one he grew up with.

I thought then that the value was the actual violence, being able to do that violence to other people. It just needs to be deserving people that you did the violence to, which is backwards. Now, I fully believe and know that violence of any kind is wrong. It's the least effective way to do anything. Now, does that mean that They're just... If you could snap your fingers and there's no violence? No, because there's still situations that I would be violent over, like my family's safety. So you have to be able to do that, but you shouldn't want to do that.

So again, he's talking about being that warrior in the garden. But it's one thing to talk about how to act. It's different when you get put to the test, and that's what happens next.

I'm yelling at her like, Stop, stop, stop. And so I go after. And I'm playing in my mind. I'm literally like a flashback to Iraq.

We'll be right back with more from the Sunday story.

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Carlson is in law school. He's a paralegal. He's got a A strong family and a growing business. Then this thing happens that could destroy it all.

I'm literally just pulling in the on-ramp to Eau Claire, and I get a text- It's from a colleague.

She has a client in trouble. The client's husband is threatening to rape and kill her in front of her kids. Carlson and his colleague rush to her house.

We devise this plan of we tell the wife, get the kids in the vehicle, you get in the vehicle as we're driving by.

Just pick up out front, not going into the house, because Carlson's got to protect himself, too, here. He's still on probation.

So we pull into the driveway.

And then the plan goes to hell. Carlson's colleague jumps out of the car and heads right into the house.

I'm yelling at her. Stop, stop, stop. And so I go in after. And I'm playing in my mind. I'm literally like, my brain is now processing this as if someone has just kicked the door and I'm second man in.

Imagine being Dave Carlson, who did for two years in Iraq, amped up on adrenaline, kicking in a door and rushing in to maybe kill the people inside before they kill you. That was the mission. That was survival.

So we get in. The wife is in the corner, like cowering in the corner.

The husband is standing by the stairs. He's a bigger man, but Carlson is on him.

He slammed into the wall. We're fighting down the fucking hallway, and I finally get him down. I think I put one leg around a hook jiu-jitsu around his thigh.

But this time, he's not having a PTSD flashback that he can't control. He's not having a relapse. In fact, he's keeping it together and just using the skills he learned as a soldier.

I stretch out, and I'm just telling him, You need to relax. You need to relax.

And he does. And then it's done. The guy stays down. The wife and kids are safe. The cops arrive. Carlson calls his probation officer. He expects to go to jail.

I go straight to the courthouse. No, I went straight to the gas station. I bought six hard boiled eggs. I ate six hard boiled eggs, went to the courthouse, and then waited.

I understand everything except the eggs. Why did you eat six hard boiled eggs?

Because I thought I was going to be in jail. You get hungry as hell. You get hungry as hell in jail. If I'm going to go to booking- Hard experience has told you to fill up before you go to jail. Yeah, I thought for sure I was going to jail.

Carlson knows things about jail, but this time he also knows lawyers. When he ends up before a judge, he knows what to say. He doesn't go to jail. He goes home, and he keeps on studying. Then the next time I call Dave Carlson, it's to plan a trip to come see him and his wife. They're now three boys in person. It's been almost exactly 10 years. Then I'm standing in the bleachers at Mitchell Hamlin Law School in Saint Paul with his mom, Heidi, and Alicia Alicia, and their three boys who can't sit still. What's going on in your day?

Daddy's going to be up there.

Some of his siblings and a few of his formerly incarcerated friends are sitting together. Graduates, will you please stand as you're able for the awarding of your degrees. We hear a keynote speaker talk about how far many of these graduates have traveled to get here today. 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. David Carlson. 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. Carlson went through some very dark times when he was punished for the crimes he committed with a really messed up PTSD brain. Despite this, he'll tell you he loves this country. He's proud of his service. When I went to visit him for the commencement, we sat down face to face to talk one more time. But before I could ask him my question about war, Dave Carlson did something I was not expecting. He asked me a question that's been on his mind.

Why are you interested in a story like this?

Like you?

Yeah.

Oh. I didn't really have an answer, but Carlson did. He knew why I'd been doing this for a decade.

Are you familiar with the concept of an alcohol ex-anonymous? Like your recovery, It depends on the person, the person you work with, their recovery. So your support of this person isn't just part of their recovery, it's part of your recovery, right? Just as important. You're interconnected. I think you're part of this at work the same way that I'm part of your recovery, you're part of my recovery.

And I saw what he meant. Dave Carlson has been part of my recovery. I want to be clear, I was a war correspondent, not a soldier. But I spent really hard years watching senseless destruction at war, and I lost people I loved. And so for me, coming home, the best thing I could have done was to talk to Dave Carlson and other veterans, 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. As for my question about getting past war, the answer seemed clear to me. Dave Carlson had made it. We were sitting in his big house in Eau Claire. It's big enough for his three boys each to have their own bedrooms. There's a playground right down the street. Carlson and Alicia seem happy. In my mind, his 10-year odyssey is over. He's made at home. But that's not how he sees it. He says he's just keeping the wolves a day.

I mean, honestly, I don't think it's ever safe. But I think that if you can build the community that you have, 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? You got that 360-degrees perimeter of security. And just right now, I think that I'm trying to tighten up my portion, my sector of fire, so that when I do relax, I can just enjoy those relationships and that my family can thrive without there being some impending danger looming just ahead.

So that's the mission for Dave Carlson. 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 He's earned it. He called me up just the other day. He passed the bar. Dave Carlson is now a practicing attorney.

You can hear more of Quill Lawrence's reporting on veterans@mpr. Org. 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. Press one if you're a veteran. This Sunday Story series was produced by Andrew Mambo. It was edited by Janice Schmidt and Andrew Sussman. It was fact-checked by Sarah Knight. Quaisi Lee mastered the episodes. Original music for this series, composed by Tim Lawrence and performed by Quill and his brother Tim. A special thanks to Louise Treas, Bruce Foster, and the many others who generously provided feedback and assistance. The Sunday Story team includes Justine Yann and Lianna Simstrom. Our intern is Thomas Coltrane. Irene Naguchi is our executive producer. I'm Ayesha Rosco. Up First is back tomorrow with all the news you need to start your week. Until then, have a great rest of your weekend.

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