Q1 2020 Texas CEO Magazine

THE
BODYGUARD
In 2020, personal and diplomatic security protection isn’t just for heads of state. Increasingly,
businesspeople are enlisting the help and services of professionals like Mike Ramirez, who provide personal
and executive security protection in dangerous situations and places, whether at a conference abroad or in
a warzone. We asked Ramirez to tell us about his job—and what business leaders should know about it.
How did you get into the profession of personal protection?
I grew up about an hour southeast of San Antonio in a small
town called Kenedy, Texas. From a young age I always knew
that I wanted to be a Marine. In my senior year of high
school, I contacted a recruiter who then came to talk to me
about the Marine Corps at my parents’ house. After about
an hour of the recruiter telling me all about what the Marine
Corps had to offer and all the places I would get to travel
to, I signed my contract, and the path to where I am today
began. I spent the next four years as an Infantry Marine and
a Security Force Marine. In the mid-1990s, I got my first
taste of military personal protection while on a special duty
assignment providing armed protection for a high-ranking
officer. At that time, it wasn’t called “personal protection”—
you were just a military enlisted man assigned to an officer
because their rank warranted protection by a Marine.
After four years in the Marine Corps, I came back to Texas
and went to work for the Texas Department of Corrections.
I worked in a maximum-security state penitentiary in my
hometown of Kenedy. My first year, I worked in administrative
segregation, where offenders are locked up 23 hours a day
because of hostile behavior or because they had threats
on their lives. You’re worried about your own personal
protection at that point. Needless to say, it was not a very
cordial environment, but I learned a lot in my first year at
the penitentiary. For one, I learned how to read people very
quickly and that no two situations are ever the same. Nothing
is what it appears to be when you walk into a cell block.
After my first year in administrative segregation, I took
another position as a correctional field officer. As a CFO,
you ride on horseback every day and take offenders
to work out in the fields. The penitentiary I worked at
sat on a large amount of land, so the prison used the
offenders to do the labor and farm the land. We would
take a squad of anywhere from 25 to 50 offenders per field
officer and have them plant seeds and harvest crops.
Later, I was promoted to K-9 sergeant. My job was primarily
breeding, raising, and training dogs to track humans. If
an offender tried to escape from our prison or any other
prison, we would deploy our human-tracking dogs to
track and capture them. We also assisted local and state
police with our K-9s. If they conducted a traffic stop and
someone bailed on them, they would call us, and we’d
take our dogs out and assist in capturing the suspect.
That sounds a little more pleasant than administrative
segregation. It was! It was one of the most rewarding
jobs and if I ever win the Lotto, I would go back and
do it for free. Getting to ride horses all day and work
with dogs was a very rewarding experience.
Around 2003, the war in Afghanistan had been going for
a couple of years and the war in Iraq had started, I was
still working for the penitentiary. I kept in touch with
guys I had been in the Marines with. When I shared with
them that I was working at a penitentiary, they would say,
“Man, that sounds like a dangerous job for not very much
14 Texas CEO Magazine Q1 2020