字幕列表 影片播放 列印英文字幕 I always wanted to be a Marine. My dad was a Marine and my grandpa was a Marine, so I enlisted right after high school. I had my mom signed for me. I was only 17 years old. I said, Oh, it's all great Just as long as he doesn't have to be in a war. I'm good with it. Next thing I know, E did two deployments. The 1st 1 was right after September 11th and then the 2nd 1 was the invasion of Iraq. Way got back. We had four days until we were able to fly home from Camp Pendleton, and on the third night a friend of mine fell asleep at the wheel, Way rolled about a dozen times down a hill. I broke my C 456 and seven in my neck, which left me paralyzed, basically from the neck down. It was a pretty big hit, seeing myself in the mirror, sitting 90 degrees the way I am now. It was a really hard pill to swallow. I felt like everything had been taken away from me. My job has been taken away. My brothers were no longer around. My physical being was no longer the same. I had nothing left. It was a dark time. He was this strong Marine who just fought a war, and now he's needing his mom to do very basic things. When your first injured, it's hard to not focus on all the things that you can't do. You know, it takes a long time to start realizing all the things that you still can't. D'oh. After about six years of being in this spot that I was in, a friend of mine drug me to adapt a sporting event, he took me skiing in Aspen. I thought to myself, Quadriplegics aren't meant to go see. It was like I'm gonna breaking everything. You know that I have left, But getting out of your comfort zone is really the key to anything. That's when you feel alive. I felt that I got a piece me back that had been missing. It was only a matter of months before I was skydiving. I started competing in other events and I would ask everybody if I would see him again in another event. But there was a barrier of entry, which was money, especially for the guys that have to bring a caregiver flights. You have hotels, you have equipment. These things are not cheap, but they're the key to recovery. So I said, What if we sold T shirts? You know we could start a nonprofit or something During the invasion of Iraq, the U. N was using a term Oscar Mike. When you needed somebody to get on the move or a unit to start moving, you would say, I need you to get Oscar Mike and you didn't hesitate. You started moving. So four guys in wheelchairs started building shelves in my two car garage, and we started stocking our first shirts. And now we have the Oscar Mike Foundation and Oscar Mike Apparel. Asking Make foundation exists to keep injured veterans on the move through adaptive sports. We've had over 400 veterans from all over the country go through a program so far, and we've offered over 1000 sporting scholarships. Veterans come to the compound for the week, and we do everything from wheelchair rugby, flying airplanes, off roading. The apparel company is really to minimize overhead, for the foundation we can absorb is much of that is possible. Then every dollar that's donated to the foundation can go a lot. Further way had to create a website. So we sat behind a computer for a very long time and eventually figured it out. If somebody were to search how to support veterans or veteran T shirts, you know, those are all the things that we're trying to come up with top of the page on it. Google ads is really helping. We've done double the traffic and revenue year after year after your accident or after leaving the military. A lot of people struggle with finding purpose, and adaptive sports does give you purpose. You're around a bunch of people that have chewed the same dirt is you. Nobody else gonna understand what it's like being a quadriplegic, paraplegic, an amputee and then also being a veteran. It isn't just the sports, it's the camaraderie. It's the family. Let's save. Noah saved his life, so it's not a stretch to say that it is saving other lives as well. If you're in a wheelchair, your life stops where the pavement ends, and it isn't until you open your mind and you start trying new things that you realize it doesn't have to end there.