WTBL - Walking the Blue Line

Lyle (00:04)
Welcome to Walking the Blue Line. We're the Johnstons. My name is Lyle and we are a law enforcement family and we want to invite you into our world. We're going to initiate a series of podcasts and a continuing series where we hope to discuss all the issues being a law enforcement family.

Yvonne (00:09)
I'm Yvonne

Lyle (00:25)
Yvonne and I have had some trials and tribulations over the last 30 years as we've been married. We've been together for 32 and I've been involved with law enforcement and dreaming of law enforcement for close to 50 some years.

Yvonne (00:40)
In fact,

you said it was more like a preaching calling, right?

Lyle (00:43)
Exactly. Yep, I ⁓ started dreaming about this when I was in fourth grade. Could have done a lot of other things, but this is where I was called to. And I think that the Lord had something in mind. And I probably wasn't really in touch with that until this lady came into my life and we got closer to God, ⁓ grew our relationship.

Yep. And we ⁓ have been following this walk in the Walking the Blue Line. And it's ⁓ started, you know, with family of mine long before I was ever independent and out on my own. Most of my family was involved with the Montana State Prison in Deer Lodge, Montana, where I grew up.

Yvonne (01:36)
And I have some family member in Ohio that are also involved or police officer.

Lyle (01:43)
right? And I have to say, although the law enforcement line, was my main ⁓ area of expertise. spent some time in the military and when Yvonne and I first met, I was a military member in the National Guard, as well as working in law enforcement. And although she has some family members, that probably wasn't her first choice for husband.

Yvonne (02:09)
No, probably not. was kind of a love-hate relationship there.

Lyle (02:14)
Yeah, I told her she should love my job. And I think over the years she's grown grown into it a little. Yeah, I don't think she's ever loved the job.

Yvonne (02:16)
I loved you

not the job.

It's a little

scarier on my end of it You're wondering if they're gonna come home at night and now I have a daughter and son-in-law They're in the same field. So I worry about them,

Lyle (02:37)
Our daughter Dallace has kind of followed in my footsteps. She was dating a young man who is someone I would have never envisioned in law enforcement when I first met him. ⁓

Yvonne (02:50)
He's grown into it quite well.

Lyle (02:53)
Well, I wouldn't have envisioned him as my son-in-law when I first met

Yvonne (02:56)
me neither.

No, he didn't like horses. Drove an orange car.

Lyle (03:00)
He

was a little bit of a city boy and soccer soccer player skateboarder

Yvonne (03:04)
soccer player.

And our daughter is the exact opposite. She's a country girl. She's a horse girl and she grew up riding horses and competing in 4-H. ⁓ What was that other?

Lyle (03:21)
She did WASET, which is the Washington High School Equestrian Team. ⁓

Yvonne (03:26)
the girls did SASHA

which is Spokane area horse Association

Lyle (03:30)
Small horses. horses.

So our kids have had this country lifestyle. We've had all of the various barn farm animals with sheeps and donkey and ⁓ chickens.

Yvonne (03:47)
But

getting back to Dallace, she converted Drew. He is now a country boy and they own a farm not far from ours. And they actually worked together on several, they're not really dude ranches. What were they?

Lyle (03:50)
.

Yeah, like guest ranches, somewhat dude ranches, but ⁓ more so they just went for daily trail rides into some of the national parks.

Yvonne (04:11)
But they moved to Wyoming and Montana, both of them, over the summers and worked there, ⁓ well, for what, three, four years?

Lyle (04:21)
years?

At least three years. They spent a couple years in Glacier area and one year down in the Yellowstone area. Right. And so ⁓ when they gave that up, they were both looking for careers, jobs. ⁓ Dallas had decided early on to go into something law enforcement. So she sought a criminal justice bachelor's degree.

Yvonne (04:28)
and by the Tetons.

She's now completed and ⁓ Drew is working on his and he actually changed his major to criminal law.

Lyle (04:56)
Right? Criminal justice, yeah. Yeah, criminal justice. Yeah. And so both of them are following in those footsteps. And now they both actually are deputies for Spokane County Sheriff's Office.

Yvonne (05:07)
Very proud of both of them. Our other daughters are living their lives too pretty well. I'm proud of all of them.

Lyle (05:09)
Yes.

As well, we've got a couple other kids that may very well follow in those footsteps. They haven't joined the ranks yet, but they've put in their applications for ⁓ jail or corrections officers. So we'll see where that takes them. Time will tell. ⁓ It is a career field that definitely takes a toll on both you personally and your family.

Yvonne (05:41)
Working the 15, 16, 24 hour shifts sometimes when there's a call out. It's tough on everybody.

Lyle (05:49)
Yeah, there were a number of you know special events that I've missed over the years because I was working or things funerals and such that I didn't make it to ⁓ because duty called and ⁓ You know

It's kind of a tricky area because when you talk with the administration and such, everybody says family first. ⁓ And yet it doesn't really turn out to be that way. And the same with the military. So, but.

At the same time, these are both institutions that we absolutely need. You know, need law enforcement out there patrolling the streets and keeping people safe. You need military for ⁓ the country. So, you know, these are things that we've lived with and that we've worked around, not always peacefully, but we worked around.

Yvonne (06:44)
But we hope to give some light to all sides of this kind of life, Walk in the Blue Line, the comedy, you know, the scary stuff, God and how he's influenced us and working, you know, with people. ⁓

doesn't seem like it, but that's kind of your job is you ⁓ work with individual people and their families and you're trying to help them and a lot of them don't really think that even if they're the ones that call you, they end up cussing you.

Lyle (07:18)
Yes,

and Yvonne hits it specifically on the nail on the head is that ⁓ one of the things that we hope you'll get out of our program is the fact that law enforcement is here to help. It's why I chose that. I wanted to help people. It isn't all about power hungry cops and trying to stamp on people's rights or any of those kind of things. I knew that I didn't want to be a firefighter and I didn't want to be a medic, but I wanted

to help people and this is an avenue that I found I could do that. Speak up for those that can't speak up for themselves. Speak up for the people that are the victims of the crimes, you know?

Yvonne (07:58)
Well,

and you were also on cold case files and you were able to solve several of those when 20 years old.

Lyle (08:07)
Yeah, I had some great partners that I worked with and you know, it's a team effort, but I did get the credit. I got a credit for solving a cold case here in Spokane County. It was the first one to actually go to trial and have a conviction. ⁓

and ⁓ we put someone in prison that needed to go there because he had taken a life. And the number of victims aren't just the person that was killed. That whole family suffered. ⁓

anything I can do doesn't necessarily bring that person, it won't bring that person back, but hopefully it will grant them some peace that justice has been served. So that was kind of my goal. Cold cases. ⁓

Yvonne (08:59)
Well,

and in this in this podcast, we're going to try to do YouTube and Facebook pages. We want to bring the stories that, you know, we've lived and there's actually quite a few of them. And even our daughter and son-in-law, they haven't been in it very long year to year and a half. And they've got their stories too. A lot of funny ones, a lot of scary ones, lot of crazy ones. You've worked with some.

Lyle (09:26)
Interesting people.

Yvonne (09:29)
Individuals, yes. And

oh, sorry, didn't mean to cut you off. We also like to introduce our friends and our family that are also in this.

Lyle (09:38)
line.

Right? mean, working in this line, most of your friends are going to be those people that you work with ⁓ because you have some of the same shared values ⁓ and such, and they're the people that you hang out with the most, ⁓ even when it's shop talk or not. ⁓ Yvonne and I ⁓ have some good friends that we went on some great motorcycle trips with and have done things with over the years. Yvonne has a spouse of a

⁓ law enforcement person got to come out on some ride-alongs and ⁓ there were some funny things that happened during Yes, we were always chasing people. Yeah doing our job but

Yvonne (10:16)
We always got into pursuits.

Also got to go up with you in the ⁓ airplane out there when you were in the Montana air guard well no Yeah, I got to watch him refuel and I got to lay down there in the little yeah, whatever you call that thing that you like

Lyle (10:31)
Washington.

Yeah,

on the wall behind here you can see a little plaque, a retired from the Washington Air National Guard where I was a air refueling specialist or what they called a boom operator.

So I would fly with the military and we would refuel jets in the air. So I had like a side job to you. ⁓ You know, when I wasn't busy enough chasing crooks, I was out there raising kids and animals, breaking horses and all of the other good stuff. So it's been a wonderfully blessed life that we've gotten to live and ⁓ we hope to share some of those stories with you. ⁓

everything that that we've done and hopefully you'll find that interesting.

Yvonne (11:25)
And also we hope that if you guys have any questions or anything you're interested in, if you want to shoot them our way or as we get into this, we're just beginning, we don't know which way this is going to go, but we hope to bring you things that you are interested in or, know.

Lyle (11:41)
Exactly, so I do plan on highlighting a number of the investigations that I did as a homicide investigator. ⁓ I doubt any of you really will recognize me, but I have been on Dateline, I've been on Forensic Files, a number of various programs. And so some of the cases that we'll highlight have either already been on television, ⁓ but...

There are many more that took place that no one has ever heard of that had their own interesting twists and turns. So we hope to bring those to you.

Yvonne (12:18)
As well as stories from our friends who've been in it, our kids and ⁓ family members. I have family in Ohio and my sister's married to a retired police officer. And we hope to bring you stories like from all over, like all over the United States, all, you know, different avenues of.

Lyle (12:36)
Yep.

And then like the questions, you know, I'm not going to give out any legal advice. I'm not in a position to do that. But at the same time, if you have questions about, Hey, what would you do in this situation? I certainly would be up for trying to answer any of those. Maybe take some emails from our listeners and address those through our podcasts to answer your questions or we'll answer them directly in email, if not appropriate for the.

Yvonne (13:07)
We possibly are going try to do some lives on Facebook. So if you guys want to interact that way, we can do that. We got to get our followers on YouTube to do that. But we can't on Facebook.

Lyle (13:19)
So again, welcome to Walking the Blue Line. Why don't you come along with us on this journey? We'll see where it takes us and hopefully we'll all have a good time.

Yvonne (13:30)
and hopefully we can like spread a little bit of the gospel too because God sure got us through a lot of hard times.

Lyle (13:33)
Yeah

He certainly has and so until the next time that we meet may God bless you and we'll have you in our prayers and Stay tuned for more to come and let us know what you'd like to hear about