Steve Tarani – Founder of PreFense
At the risk of aging myself, I remember once upon a time we somehow survived without the use of cell phones. Having a cell phone way back when would have certainly saved the day on many an occasion, especially one that ended up as a most profound life experience.
It was winter rush hour, and I was stuck in peak bumper-to-bumper Los Angeles traffic. To make matters worse it was not only dark but raining. In most parts of the country inclement weather is just part of the driving experience, but in Southern California, rain – especially at night, has the same effect on fair-weather drivers as a blizzard does in New England.
Wide-eyed, white-knuckled and completely out of their element, not one single driver either noticed or cared about the middle-aged Hispanic woman standing out there alone in the rain beside her car broken down on the freeway shoulder with her car door wide open. Visibly terrified and bawling her eyes out in the dark, she was way too close to the yellow line facing on-coming traffic.
Pulling out of traffic I parked by her car, exited my vehicle, clicked on my flashlight and shined white light on the wet pavement in front of her to alert other drivers while approaching her in the torrential downpour. She was completely petrified, drenched to the bone, shaking from both cold and fear and to make matters worse she was non-English speaking. Throwing my jacket around her shuddering body and using my limited Spanish vocabulary, which consists of about twelve words, she understood that I was there to help and that her stepping back away from incoming traffic was a good idea.
As I approached the open door of her car it was painfully obvious that she had been standing there for a very long time as the interior was completely saturated. Failing every trick in the book trying to get her car started and fumbling through her reluctance to communicate, I somehow managed to decipher that she was married and lived nearby.
Given few viable options, she finally agreed to step out of the storm and into my warm dry pickup truck with which I drove her immediately to the address she cryptically provided. Even when we arrived, at what was apparently her home, she was still wide-eyed and freaked out.
One knock on the door and it flung wide open. I could feel the blast of radiating warmth and was nearly blinded by the bright light that pierced the surrounding darkness when two little heads popped out the door and yelped “Mama!” As her kids ran toward the two tearful eyes peering out from behind my windshield, the woman’s dumbfounded but incredibly grateful husband, who was also non-English-speaking and wouldn’t stop shaking my hand, sported an ear-to-ear grin that was unmistakably translated in any language – “thank you!”
It was at that moment, standing in front of that open apartment door at night in the pouring rain helping a family avoid what might have otherwise been a horrific catastrophe, when I vowed to empower others to fend for themselves.
A perpetual student of the martial arts, self-defense and weapons training, I became an instructor that I might be able to train others. Working as a training contractor internationally, I was privy to countless stories from my clients from many walks of life. They shared with me their personal experiences of physical abuse, human trafficking, how they were mugged, assaulted, and every possible combination of extreme physical violence you can imagine. Seeking the skills to defend themselves and their loved ones, they came to me to learn how to stop an attack. After much time and consideration, it occurred to me, “What could these people have done to not find themselves in that situation in the first place?”
Working as a part-time deputy for a rural county in Northern Nevada, we responded to a call where an out-of-state felon had broken into a family’s home and was holding the homeowner and his family hostage. We solved the problem, but the family was really shaken. When we investigated what happened, it was apparent that they had made several preventable blunders.
Why did they leave all those tools out in the backyard to assist an invader in breaking into their home? Why did they not have an emergency family plan? Shocked at what I considered to be just plain common sense, I wondered why they made it so very easy for predators to break in. This and many incidents like it drew me to the stark realization of how very little most people know about keeping themselves out of harm’s way.
Being part of a protective detail and eventually working world-wide as a contractor expanded my observation of this “lack of protective awareness” phenomenon to a global perspective. This expansion was further amplified after I was recruited and worked in protection as a full-time employee for the CIA. With time and experience I had an epiphany – a paradigm shift in perspective regarding protection.
As a result of this epiphany, I volunteered my services to help build programs designed to assist with the protection of people working in very nasty high-threat areas overseas. Having successfully completed this venture and observing its beneficial results, I codified my discoveries of select protective concepts and measures that really worked and why.
When word spread to the private sector (corporations with overseas operations) about the success of my protection methods, I was increasingly called upon to assist with similar protective efforts. Working on one of these projects it hit me like a brick “Hey wait a minute, what about everybody else living back home in the states?” My thoughts drifted back to that lady in the rain by the freeway in California separated from her family all those years ago and to the rural families of northern Nevada and to all my family and friends and their families who would benefit tremendously from developing such skills and confidence.
All my buddies at the CIA thought I had officially lost my marbles when I elected to follow my passion to protect others. They asked, “You’re going to give up a guaranteed government paycheck every two weeks and a federal pension to pursue some crazy idea about hardening civilians?”
My response was “Sure, not everybody cares or even thinks about their own personal safety, but what about those who do? Where can they go to get the same training as the professionals? What can they do to gain the skills and confidence to either avoid or mitigate the very real threats that we all know are out there?”
You can quit your job but you can’t quit your passion, so I went full circle and began teaching protection classes again, this time not only to military, law enforcement and government agents – but to young adults leaving home for the first time, hardworking professionals battling rush-hour traffic to provide for their family, moms and dads concerned about the safety of their family and their extended community. Now with Smartphone in hand, my life’s mission is to empower them to alleviate those concerns.
The classes were further developed into a comprehensive training program offering the same skills and confidence used by elite protective service professionals. It was later named Preventive Defense or “PreFense” for short and provides everything you need to know, and do, to not find yourself in a bad situation in the first place. PreFense allows you to solve a problem before it develops into an active threat allaying the need for any use of force such as a weapon or martial arts.
Between 2014 and 2024 interest in PreFense grew exponentially. Professional training programs, products and services were expanded to meet the growing demands of not only concerned parents and families, but also to those larger organizations who take duty of care of their associates seriously as well as entrepreneurs, small businesses, associations and houses of worship.
What is PreFense?
At its core, PreFense is a methodology used by protective service professionals to avoid unwanted events and keep their protectees safe from harm. It is a way to avoid the need to dial 911 or use self-defense. It is used to prevent violence at home, work, school and when traveling and is THE recommended use-of-force alternative.
Today, PreFense is a suite of professional training and advisory services that protect you, your family, your community, organizations and houses of worship from current and emerging threats. It is a comprehensive body of knowledge made available digitally (on line), in print (book form) and via in-person presentations (lectures, workshops, etc.), and presents a growing community of those choosing to be trained and prepared to meet the challenges of our ever-changing world.