Shields & Stripes Graduate : Airforce Chief AJ Kehl

Episode: Redefining Veteran Healing w/ Shields and Stripes | AJ KEHL | Vegas Veteran Voices Podcast

Firefighter. Senior enlisted leader. Air Force chief. The guy who stayed calm when alarms went off and everybody else looked for someone to follow.

What nobody saw was the slow grind under the surface. Years of shift work, traumatic calls, divorces, and constant responsibility that did not have an off switch. The kind of weight that does not show up on an X-ray but still keeps you awake at night.

On this episode of Vegas Veteran Voices, AJ walks through that journey. From Misawa, Japan to Las Vegas. From the firehouse to retirement limbo. From “I am fine, others have it worse” to admitting he needed help and stepping into the Shields & Stripes program, where he finally felt what it was like to live without constant pain and internal noise.

“It was unbelievable how much it resonated with me”

The turning point started with his wife.

AJ had already retired from the Air Force and was in that strange in between space. New house, young daughter, no uniform to wear to work anymore, trying to figure out what life after service was supposed to look like.

His wife, a registered dietitian, mentioned she had picked up a contract with a nonprofit that focused on Veterans and first responders.

Shields and Stripes.

He glanced at it, said it sounded admirable, and moved on.

A few days later, stuck in an airport delay, he finally pulled up the site and started reading. The story of the founder. The focus on both visible and invisible injuries. The combination of physical training, occupational therapy, mental health, and nutrition support built into one integrated program.

“It was unbelievable how much it resonated with me and what I felt my needs were,” he says.

He applied on the spot without even telling his wife.

By the time he made it to the final interview, he had to come clean to both Shields and Stripes and to her. He was honest about the connection, honest about what he had been carrying, and honest about what he wanted to work on.

He was selected, along with seven other Veterans and first responders, for a three week in person intensive at EXOS in Scottsdale, followed by nine weeks of virtual care.

For a man who had never seen a therapist in more than two decades in the fire service, that alone was a massive step.

From Misawa To Identity Crisis

Before Shields and Stripes, AJ’s whole adult life was built around uniforms and responsibility.

He spent his career in the fire business. Aircraft emergencies. Structure fires. Rescue. Hazmat. Med calls. Base emergencies. He describes Air Force firefighters as having to know “a little bit of everything and a lot about a few very dangerous things.”

Every day brought a different role. One day on the airfield crash truck, needing to know every fuel load and egress point on every aircraft. The next day on the rescue truck, focused on high angle rescue, confined space, and technical problems no one else on base was trained to solve.

He deployed. He led teams. He climbed the ranks. Eventually he put on chief.

And under all of that was the culture many firefighters and first responders will recognize.

You see something traumatic, you go on the next call. Someone dies on scene, you wash the rig and reset. You go through a divorce in the middle of your career, you bury the shame and show up to shift anyway.

“Nobody was really asking how the caretaker was doing,” he says.

When he finally retired out of Misawa, Japan and moved his family to Las Vegas, he described what many Veterans feel but cannot always put into words.

There is space. There is quiet. The mission goes away. The identity tied to rank and role disappears.

“There is an identity crisis that comes out of twenty plus years,” he explains. “You have to learn how to be a civilian. You feel different in a lot of ways.”

That unsettled feeling is exactly what he carried into Shields and Stripes.

Inside Shields & Stripes: Mind, Body, And The First Real Pause

In Scottsdale, AJ and the other participants stayed together in a hotel and reported every day to EXOS, the same performance environment that trains NFL prospects and professional athletes.

The structure hit all fronts at once.

They had strength and conditioning coaches teaching proper movement, bracing, and loading so they could rebuild their bodies instead of just working around chronic pain.

They had a dedicated physical therapist who treated them with the same level of focus used for elite athletes. For AJ, that meant finally addressing decades of back and knee pain that had been “normal” since the early days of his fire service career.

“There are levels to it,” he says, comparing this experience to previous physical therapy. “We were doing things I had never seen before. And for the first time in a decade, I was pain free.”

They had a registered dietitian and chef, making nutrition support part of the healing instead of an afterthought.

And every single day, they had mental health sessions.

For a Veteran and firefighter who had never sat with a therapist before, going from zero to daily therapy was jarring.

It also changed his life.

EMDR And Moving The Memories

AJ describes the therapy environment as the first place in a long time where he felt fully safe to lay everything out. Door closed. No rank. No subordinates watching. No sense that what he said would be used against him in an evaluation.

Just an honest inventory of the moments that had stuck to him.

Calls where someone died. A baby lost in his arms. Firehouse trauma, personal trauma, the accumulation of years of stuffing things down and driving on.

His therapist had him list out all of those events on paper. Seeing them in one place was its own shock.

Then they began working through them using EMDR, a therapy that uses guided eye movement or other bilateral stimulation to help the brain process traumatic memories and store them in a healthier place.

Before EMDR, certain memories felt like they were sitting right in front of his face. Always there. Always sharp.

After EMDR, he describes those same events as feeling distant, like they had moved from right in front of him to a point far off on the horizon.

“It did not make them disappear,” he says. “It just stopped feeling like a constant threat.”

For someone who had spent years taking care of everyone else, that shift mattered. It gave him room to breathe, room to see himself as more than a collection of injuries and responsibilities, and room to imagine a future where his body and mind were not constantly on edge.

Why Programs Like Shields & Stripes Matter

During the conversation, AJ and Brenton talk honestly about Veteran suicide.

The numbers change. Sometimes official reports say twenty two a day. Sometimes seventeen. Sometimes lower. What AJ and Brenton both point out is that any number is too many.

Five a day is too many. One a day is too many.

AJ shares a moment from 2019. He was at the Chief Master Sergeant of the Air Force’s house in Washington, DC, standing on the back patio when the Chief of Staff of the Air Force walked up and asked him, straight out, “How do I get after this suicide thing? How do I stop this?”

It was a reminder that even at the highest levels, leaders do not have a simple answer.

What they do know is that isolation, untreated trauma, chronic physical pain, and the belief that asking for help is weakness all add up to a dangerous mix.

Programs like Shields and Stripes try to interrupt that pattern.

Eight people in AJ’s cohort. Each with their own story. Each dealing with their own combination of physical injury, job stress, and invisible wounds.

For some of them, that three week program and the follow up care might be the difference between staying on the ledge and stepping back from it.

Even helping one person find their footing again is worth the cost. In AJ’s case, it helped eight.

From Rank To Real Life: Transition Lessons AJ Wants Other Veterans To Hear

One of the strongest parts of the conversation comes when AJ speaks directly to people who are about to transition out of the military.

The first thing he says is simple and honest.

Your rank does not follow you the way you think it will.

In uniform, people react to stripes and stars. Outside, no one cares about what used to be on your sleeves or your chest. What follows you is your character, your integrity, and the way you treat people.

The second lesson is about skills.

AJ urges Veterans to think hard about the soft skills and leadership traits they developed in service. Things like staying calm in chaos, leading teams through uncertainty, problem solving, questioning broken processes, and caring about people first.

Those traits are valuable in the civilian world, but only if you know how to talk about them. He encourages vets to take interviews even when they are not sure about a job, just to learn the landscape and practice translating their experience into civilian language.

The third lesson is about health and benefits.

“Start going to medical,” he says. “Nobody cares about your medical problems except you.”

He talks about how many Veterans wait until the last minute to document injuries, mental health issues, or chronic pain. Then, when it is time to file a disability claim, there is nothing in the record.

He and Brenton walk through simple steps: use the nurse advice line, use telehealth options while on active duty, be honest with providers, and stop brushing off symptoms with “I am fine.”

They also talk about why disability benefits matter. Not just for the monthly payment, but for long term access to care, programs like VR&E, and support that can make the rest of life feel less like a constant struggle.

Leadership, FIRE, And People First

AJ also shares the leadership framework he built over his career, wrapped up in the word FIRE.

First things first

He learned the hard way that when you put everything else ahead of family and people, things fall apart. In leadership, first things first means putting your people and the culture they live in at the top of the priority list.

Implement radical truth and transparency

He believes in honest conversations, even when they hurt, and in sharing information up and down the chain so everyone understands what is going on. Hoarding information kills trust.

Remember where you came from

He never wanted to become the leader who forgot what it felt like to be a brand new firefighter sweating in gear, confused, and frustrated by pointless tasks. Remembering that perspective helped him cut out nonsense and protect his crews.

Empower at all levels

The best ideas rarely come from the very top. They come from the people closest to the work. AJ tried to build environments where even the newest members felt safe raising their hand and saying “this is broken” without fear of being shut down.

Those same principles carry forward into his life after service. Whether it is talking with other Veterans about transition, building a new identity in Las Vegas, or sharing his story publicly, he keeps circling back to the same truth.

People first.

Why AJ’s Story Matters

AJ’s episode is more than a single Veteran story. It is a map a lot of people will recognize.

Service that becomes an identity.

Invisible injuries layered under visible strength.

A culture that celebrates toughness and quietly ignores pain.

Retirement that feels less like a finish line and more like a free fall.

The fear that asking for help means you did not earn your stripes.

The quiet relief of finally walking into a room where you can tell the truth.

For Veterans and first responders who see themselves in his words, AJ offers proof that it is not weak to ask for help. It is another form of courage. The same courage it takes to run toward a burning building or launch on a midnight mission, just pointed inward instead of outward.

For civilians, his story gives context. It shows why programs like Shields and Stripes exist, why mental health resources matter, and why “thank you for your service” is only the beginning of the conversation, not the end.

Final Message

AJ Kehl is not defined only by his rank, his years in the fire service, or the calls that still replay in his mind. He is a father, a husband, a retired chief, and now a graduate of a program that helped him feel both physically and emotionally different for the first time in years.

He came out of Shields and Stripes with less pain, more tools, and a clearer sense that he can still do good work in the world without wearing a uniform.

That is what Vegas Veteran Voices exists to show.

Not just war stories. Not just highlight reels. Real conversations about anxiety, identity, leadership, finances, physical pain, and the quiet moments where you finally admit, “I cannot carry this alone anymore.”

Stories over stigma.

Connection over isolation.

Honesty over silence.

If AJ’s journey sounds familiar, his story is a reminder that you do not have to wait until everything falls apart to ask for help.

Episode description

What if the hardest battle isn’t in the field... but in your own mind?

In this episode of Vegas Veteran Voices, AJ Kehl, a U.S. Air Force Veteran with over 22 years of service and a career firefighter, opens up about breaking the stigma around asking for help and discovering the power of mental health support.

AJ shares stories from his time stationed in Misawa, Japan, where trust and discipline shaped his worldview, and later, how years of firefighting and leadership took an unseen emotional toll. Like many Veterans and first responders, he never thought he “needed” therapy until he joined the Shields & Stripes program and experienced what true, holistic recovery could feel like.

Through physical training, peer connection, and EMDR therapy (Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing), AJ learned how to process the memories he’d been carrying for decades. It wasn’t weakness... it was the strength to face what he’d buried.

Now, he’s using his experience to encourage others to take that same first step to break the silence, seek help, and discover that healing doesn’t require a diagnosis, only honesty and courage.

Featured Guest: AJ Kehl, U.S. Air Force Veteran & Firefighter, Shields & Stripes Program Attendee

Learn More about Shields & Stripes: https://www.shieldsandstripes.org

Topics Covered:
• Serving and living in Misawa, Japan, structure, culture, and reflection
• The hidden toll of decades in firefighting and military service
• Breaking stigma and realizing therapy isn’t “just for the broken”
• How EMDR therapy and holistic healing changed his perspective
• The Shields & Stripes mission to rebuild mind, body, and spirit

Vegas Veteran Voices is a nonprofit media project amplifying real Veteran stories to fight stigma, build community, and promote mental health through storytelling.

In their words

“I deepen relationships with people when we’re talking real.”

“Nobody was really asking how the caretaker was doing.”

“There is an identity crisis that comes out of twenty plus years. You have to learn how to be a civilian.”