Retired Stockton firefighter with PTSD starts fire and ice cream truck to help first responders

Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder and mental health battles are common among first responders, and one retired Stockton firefighter, who's battled with PTSD himself, decided to do something about it after he almost lost everything.

CBS Sacramento's Charlie Lapastora takes us up the mountains to Sonora, where Douglas Satterfield wants to bring the joys of taking his kids to ice cream trucks to the community he grew up in, to give back to first responders.

Doug is no longer hopping in a fire truck to fight fires, but hopping in his newly built ice cream truck, looking to fight for first responders' mental health.

"I know the struggle," Doug said. "And first responders, they deserve the best, man. They put it all out there and they don't deserve to lose it in the end."

It's something Satterfield holds near and dear to him because he almost lost it with a mental breakdown himself in 2021 and was later diagnosed with PTSD.

"I didn't know I had PTSD," Doug said. "I had no idea. I was living life. I was still enjoying the job, enjoying the calls, and our family was doing what I thought was great. I mean, we were surviving and no arguments or anything, but there's just an underlying tension, and you just live at such a high level in life in this career. You're always in a fight. You're never in flight and that's 24-7. So, it's exhausting, but I just didn't know what was going on with me."

Little did Doug know, amidst the long hours and dozens of weekly calls, the fight was also 24/7 in his mind.

"I just keep adding things to my backpack and then things started happening, things that were totally out of my character," Doug said. "So, there was a time that I was involved with law enforcement, officers, and something that I would never have done in the past and now I'm finding myself engaged with law enforcement, of possibly being arrested, but I didn't recognize at that time that I was having a mental break because I was totally out of control."

After resisting help and realizing the coping mechanisms he was using were what he says "very destructive," Doug found help with the West Coast Post-Trauma Retreat (WCPR), run by volunteers, including the clinicians. It was during that retreat that he learned about the "backpack" we wear every day that can pile up, bills, family tension, and, in the case of first responders, calls. It can get so heavy to drag it around all the time, so WCPR helped him learn how to get rid of those rocks.

"I was going to lose everything," Doug said. "And if I knew I was going to lose everything, I knew what the next step was going to be and that scared me. And so, I sought help, and thank God I did."

After what his family calls a transformation in Doug, he decided to purchase an old mail truck he found on Facebook Marketplace, with all tips and part of the proceeds to help pay for other first responders and their spouses to go on the retreat that rescued him and his family.

"He came to me with this, he's like, 'I'm going to buy an ice cream truck'," Lori Satterfield, Doug's wife, said. "And I was like, 'Okay, all right,' but it just kept morphing and kept morphing and kept morphing and getting better and better and better. I just couldn't, I can't sit back and just not be a part of it. I mean, it's so exciting, but it's absolutely, this is his vision. This is his dream and I am just along for the ride and here to support as much as I can."

Hopping along for the ride means something different to Doug these days, taking care of putting out fires at home with porch therapy with his wife every evening and working in tandem with his family in his "Fire and Ice cream" truck.

"I'm done with tragedies and now I'm looking to just fulfill the smiles," Doug said.

And he's encouraging his fellow first responder brothers and sisters fighting on the front lines to take care of the battles they face, within, wanting the process to get help to be more streamlined.

"We just deserve to live," Doug said. "It's just so heartbreaking and so that's just my panic. So this is another thing with this is that, man, when I came out of the retreat, I was in such a panic because I felt like I needed to get to all the guys and gals that I had the golden ticket. I figured it out and I couldn't get to everybody quick enough. I was calling everybody on the department. I was calling the chief and everybody. And I was even telling the chief, 'You need to go to this program. You're, you're messed up.' They just weren't hearing it. And so with this, it provides so much opportunity to talk to other first responders and to give them my experience and how well it's worked for me."

As many as one-in-10 first responders report experiences of PTSD- nearly 3-times the rate in the US general population, according to Texas A&M's Dr. Anka Vujanovic, whose done research on first responders' trauma, and the National Institutes of Health and Mental Health. And that's not including other mental illnesses, like depression, anxiety, or general psychological distress, which can be even higher. Dr. Vujanovic's research also shows that suicide rates among first responders are comparable to rates documented among military service members and veterans.

"In that profession, nobody comes out unscathed," Doug said. "It's the ego. It's the pride. It's that people just don't want to be vulnerable enough to find that healing. and so there's a stigma to it. There's a stigma to asking for help. And the issues are, man, you're trying to do your best. The public gets the best of you, but your family ends up getting the worst of you and that's where we end up failing and we just don't recognize it. And so I'm just asking for my brothers and sisters to stay aware because you're worth it. And thank God for WCPR. Thank God I had the courage to ask for help."

Lori and their three children — Kaitlyn, Ryan and Reid — experienced a different side of Doug growing up as he put in hours fighting fires, not dealing with what was going on internally, and have seen how much he's changed.

"After he's put in so much work and has changed so much, that I look back on those days now and realize how hard it really was," Lori Satterfield said. "But now our communication is so fantastic. We sit on the porch. We have our porch therapy. We sit on the porch at night and listen to the crickets and the frogs and just talk about our day. And a lot of times we talk about our past and the things that our family has gone through. And man, we're just stronger for it. It's been amazing."

"Definitely a struggle growing up, but now, since all the hard work he's gone through, it's been incredible to see the transformation he's gone through," Reid Satterfield, Doug and Lori's 18-year-old son, said.

A transformation started with getting help. Then, it moved into learning the art of "patience" in transforming his truck to make sure it's ready to go.

"I was just asking and praying and believing that something's going to happen," Doug said. "And then here we are."

Satterfield is looking to uplift first responders to help fight their fires with ice cream.

The Satterfields are now just waiting on the county for their permit and they will also do private events, already getting requests for reservations. Once they are in operation, you can track their routes on their website.