WESTMINSTER — If Jose Flores has an off switch, he doesn’t seem too interested in finding it.
After 30 years in the Army, Jose Flores finds a new way to serve
“I bring the noise, I bring the energy,” Flores said.
Spend a few minutes with the retired Army first sergeant, and that becomes clear quickly. He jokes, laughs, bounces from one story to the next, and occasionally even has to remind himself to rein it in.
“Boo yah, energized. That’s old school,” Flores said during an interview, before adding, “OK, settle down, Jose.”
That energy is now at the center of a new chapter in his life: hosting a podcast where Flores hopes a little laughter can lead to much bigger conversations.
His podcast focuses on stories of faith, resilience, culture, and perseverance, giving veterans and civilians a platform to talk about their lives and experiences.
“Motivating mindsets is about faith, resilience, culture, um, perseverance,” Flores said, “and, um, given a platform for people to, to say their story, to say what’s on their mind.”
For Flores, the goal is not to conduct a perfectly polished interview. He wants the people sitting across from him to forget they are being interviewed at all.
“After a while, it doesn’t even look like there’s, like, we’re doing an interview; we’re just family, just two people,” he said.
Flores said the idea behind the podcast can be traced back decades — long before he had a microphone or knew how to produce an online show.
He joined the Army at 17 after growing up in New York City and went on to serve for 30 years, eventually retiring as a first sergeant. His last military assignment was at McDaniel College in Westminster, where he served as a senior military instructor teaching ROTC military science.
Flores said becoming a noncommissioned officer taught him that leadership meant more than making sure soldiers were trained and prepared.
“Part of taking care of them is having a conversation, where you’re from, you know, what, what, what do you like to do and so on,” he said.
Those check-ins stayed with him.
“It started in the military. It started with, when I was a leader, checking in,” Flores said.
When he eventually decided to turn that instinct into a podcast, there was one problem: he had no idea how to make one.
“The first time I was lost like last year’s Easter [eggs], girl. I was like, what? How do you do this?” he recalled. “So I went to YouTube university.”
Flores taught himself as he went, describing the process as “building the plane as you’re flying.”
The jokes and larger-than-life personality are not new.
While looking through an old basic training photograph from 1981, Flores immediately spotted something different about himself.
“Look at that grin. Look at that grin,” he said.
After completing a 20-mile road march, Flores said nearly everyone else in the photograph looked serious.
“I was the only cat that was smiling because I’m like, this is stupendous. We get to eat chow after this,” he said.
More than four decades later, the grin is still there.
But Flores said there is also a serious reason he chooses to approach life with so much energy.
“I’m not serious anymore. I, life is too short to be serious,” he said. “I’ve lived through some stuff that’s been crazy.”
Flores said his military experiences left him with PTSD. He also openly discusses reaching a point in his life when he attempted suicide before deciding to seek help.
“Yes, I did try to take my life. Yes, I got help,” Flores said. “It was a point where I raised my hand and I said, 'I need some help.”
He said surviving those experiences changed his perspective on what matters.
“Once you come out through something like that, your whole worldview changes,” Flores said.
That perspective now shapes the conversations he wants to have with his podcast guests.
Flores said he does not expect every veteran to discuss difficult experiences, and he does not push guests to reveal something they are uncomfortable sharing. Instead, he tries to create an environment where people know someone is willing to listen.
And he hopes someone watching may recognize a piece of their own story in the person on the screen.
“If there’s one person out there that’s going through something that the person is going through and they’ve made it, that’s what it’s about,” Flores said.
For a man who proudly says he brings the noise, the mission ultimately comes down to something much quieter: asking a question and listening to the answer.
“You don’t know whose roof is leaking unless you live there,” Flores said. “Everybody has a story to tell, you know, and unless you ask. You’ll never know.”
This story was reported on-air by a journalist and has been converted to this platform with the assistance of AI. Our editorial team verifies all reporting on all platforms for fairness and accuracy.
