I'll never forget the day Randy showed up at our facility. He looked like Mike Tyson before the face tattoos—powerful, intimidating, covered in gang tattoos with visible gang branding on his arms. Most of my dispatch team took one look at him and made instant judgments. I could see it in their eyes, the way they shifted uncomfortably, the whispered conversations that stopped when he walked by.

Randy was silent for the most part—hence the nickname that would stick with him. We never found out exactly what happened to his vocal cords, but based on the scars we could see, we could only imagine what that man had been through. His voice, when he did speak, was shallow and scratchy, making communication a challenge that most people didn't want to deal with.

But here's what I learned that first day: I like to talk. Randy barely had a voice. We made for a dynamic duo. While others saw someone to avoid, I saw someone who needed a fair chance. This wasn't charity or pity—it was simply refusing to judge a book by its cover. It was treating people the same no matter what, managing them with the same standards and expectations, completely ignoring the things that make people different to find common ground.

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