.
Wolf Creek Starting out everybody experiments with drugs and drinking as kids. I never really started into drugs until I was an adult,” said Bobby Hargrove, who is also known as “Lynx.”
At age 21, Hargrove had a job working in industrial painting. Unfortunately, it was partying with friends and co-workers who pushed the “go” button on his drug use.
Around 1995, he received tax papers from his employment showing a great deal of money he earned that year. Yet, all he had to his name was a plastic tote with all of his personal belongings inside of it.
“I had no car, no house and I didn’t own anything. I smoked up all of that money in a year, so I quit. I got a job working for a heating and air conditioning company making $7 an hour,” he said with an “I can’t believe it” laugh.
Perhaps Hargrove was on the right path after learning a hard lesson. Yet, later in his life, and with a wife, he began using cocaine, which lasted about 10 years.
“The cocaine took away everything that the ex-wife didn’t take and left me in the same spot I was in before,” he said.
Hargrove quit using drugs once again when a second wife told him he couldn’t do it.
“The first time I quit was because of the money,” he said. “The second time was because I wanted to honor my wife.”
Although single again, Hargrove has been clean and sober since 2010.
“I’m not willing to sacrifice my life anymore to drugs or women,” he said. “They’re my two biggest vices.”
Hargrove’s drug use could have cost him his freedom or his life, as he recalled one incident in particular that was quite rattling.
He was doing drugs with other people when he left to use the restroom. During that time, someone in the room took his money.
When he rejoined the group, Hargrove noticed his money was missing. He reached for and racked a nearby shotgun. Someone grabbed the gun from him, but a round was discharged sending it through the living room window, out the bedroom window and into another building.
Hargrove has learned a lot of lessons the hard way, but today his highs come in the form of firefighting. He also has a higher authority to answer to.
“I don’t do it anymore because it would totally disappoint God. God tells us to serve, and the fire department is how I’m choosing to do that,” he said.
The lowest moment in his drug use as he reflected back “was all the money I lost. It kicked me in the butt. Eighty-thousand dollars was a wake-up call for me.
“It was such a wrecking ball toward progress. If I had found the fire department way back then I would have been clean and sober my whole life. I would have been so much better off
than I am today,” Hargrove said.
While his peers helped him start using drugs years ago, it’s his peers today he believes will help keep him in line and hold him accountable. He enjoys the company of his fellow firefighters, and said it gives him purpose and a reason for staying off drugs.
“They’ll call you on your crap. It’s like a family,” Hargrove said affirmatively.
He has advice for others who are where he was.
“Get the heck outta the area you live in and go somewhere where nobody knows you,” Hargrove said. “Go to an area where they don’t have dope.”
He once sent one of his workers offshore on a boat to keep him from using. That man has been drug-free for several years. Avoiding temptation and accessibility is key.
“You can’t be around anybody that does dope and think that you’re gonna get clean,” Hargrove said.
He hopes his experience with drug-related loses helps prevent others from falling into the same trap.
Between the firefighting and his business, Fix-It-All Home Repair, Hargrove is a happier man today.