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