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  • 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.

I always wanted to be a Marine.

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