This episode is brought to you by Thorne and I have some incredible news for any of you
that are in the military, first responder or medical professions.
In an effort to give back, Thorne is now offering you an ongoing 35% off each and every one
of your purchases of their incredible nutritional solutions.
Thorne is the official supplement of CrossFit, the UFC, the Mayo Clinic, the Human Performance
Project and multiple special operations organizations.
I myself have used them for several years and that is why I brought them on as a sponsor.
Some of my favorite products they have are their Multivitamin Elite, their Whey Protein,
the Super EPA and then most recently, Cynaquil.
As a firefighter, a stuntman and a martial artist, I've had my share of brain trauma
and sleep deprivation and Cynaquil is their latest brain health supplement.
Now to qualify for the 35% off, go to thorn.com.
Click on sign in and then create a new account.
You will see the opportunity to register as a first responder or member of military.
When you click on that, it will take you through verification with GovX.
You'll simply choose a profession, provide one piece of documentation and then you are
verified for life.
From that point onwards, you will continue to receive 35% off through Thorne.
For those of you who don't qualify, there is still the 10% off using the code BTS10,
Behind the Shield 10 for a one time purchase.
To learn more about Thorne, go to episode 323 of the Behind the Shield podcast with Joel
Totoro and Wes Barnett.
Welcome to the Behind the Shield podcast.
As always, my name is James Gearing and this week it is my absolute honor to welcome on
the show Navy Seal veteran and One More Wave team member Rob Garnett.
Now in this conversation we discuss a host of topics.
From Rob's exposure to surfing as a child, his journey into the military, his experience
both pre and post 9-11, kindness on the battlefield, his unique perspective on service, helping
the adaptive athlete, mental health, the healing power of surfing and so much more.
Now before we get to this incredible conversation as I say every week, please just take a moment.
Go to whichever app you listen to this on, subscribe to the show, leave feedback and
leave a rating.
Every single 5 star rating truly does elevate this podcast, therefore making it easier for
others to find.
And this is a free library of well over 1000 episodes now.
So all I ask in return is that you help share these incredible men and women stories so
I can get them to every single person on planet earth who needs to hear them.
So that being said, I introduce to you Rob Garnett.
Enjoy.
Well Rob I want to start by saying thank you so much for taking the time and coming on
the Behind the Shield podcast today.
Absolutely James, it's a pleasure.
Thanks for having me.
So where on planet earth are we finding you this afternoon?
I am in San Diego, California, so the southern most part of Southern California.
Beautiful.
Well I would love to start at the very beginning of your timeline.
So tell me where you were born and tell me a little bit about your family dynamic, what
your parents did, how many siblings.
Sure so I'm from Southern California.
I was born in Southern California and then bounced around all over the place.
My parents divorced pretty early on so I was bouncing between mother and father's house
in Southern California and then my mom moved to Northern California which is much different,
much more rural.
And so we stayed up there until probably I was finishing high school for so probably
16, 17 we moved back down to Southern California and really got back into the water.
That's where I kind of got reconnected with getting back into surfing and everything to
do with the ocean.
Dressed up school and went into college lasted for less than a year before I dropped out
of college and ended up going to school to be a commercial diver for a little bit.
Did that for a little bit, wasn't really working for me and that's what led me to join the
Navy.
What about profession?
What were your parents doing?
My mother worked at a grocery store and my father was a roofer so he's a trade.
Did you have any military members in the extended family at that time?
No, not really.
I had a grandfather that served in Korea in the US Army but that was really it.
No cousins, no friends or relatives really that I was close with that had served in the
military.
So how young were you when you first did the aquatic sports and then when did that end?
When did you go north?
We did lots of aquatics early on.
My mom was very into making sure we were water safe because we were always at the beach and
so we learned to swim very early and then we did competitive swimming and then later
water polo all through school.
So we were always very comfortable in the water and then lots and lots of time in the
ocean and then in the lakes and rivers up in Northern California.
And were you surfing as a young child or was that something you actually got into later?
No, I did.
I started surfing in probably middle school so 10, 11, 12 I think is when I started doing
some surfing.
We did a couple trips to Hawaii, really got hooked and some good instruction out there
and that's what kind of led me to keep going with it.
When you look back now and the reason I ask this, when those of us in uniform start having
some sort of mental health challenge, the mistake is to just look at where you're in
Fallujah, you were at the 9-11, whatever the acute event was in uniform and there's a kind
of disregarding of what happened to us from birth or arguably even in vitro forward to
when we ever put the uniform on the first place.
When you reflect back now your early life, were there any contributing factors to struggles
that you maybe had later on?
For sure.
I think just having your parents split up is pretty traumatic and then my father was
pretty abusive to my mother so all that stuff I'm sure affected me at a very young age and
set me on the path to some mental health struggles later on, absolutely.
Would you say that also sent you into the protector role as well maybe having seen people
that were vulnerable and feeling like you wanted to be the protector one day?
Absolutely.
Yeah, seeing those things happen in your home for sure kind of keys you up to notice at
other places for sure.
What about career aspirations?
What were you dreaming of becoming when you were in high school?
I just wanted to do something around the ocean.
I just loved the idea of being able to do something on the water and so when I went
to college, to university, I thought I'd do some type of ocean-earing, some type of
oceanography type stuff and so that's what I thought I was going to go do.
I think there's a lot of marine biologists that never finished up in the States, that's
for sure.
Absolutely, absolutely.
We all thought we were going to work at SeaWorld and train the dolphins.
Absolutely, then you find out that dolphins actually aren't very happy anyway so there
we go.
No, exactly.
All right, well then walk me through into commercial diving.
I think this is one of the interesting things for a lot of people listening.
Actually I've got a college education but it was a trade school that sent me into the
actual profession I adored.
How did you find diving and what were your experiences in that world specifically?
Sure.
I was going to school for university up in Long Beach, California, which is a big kind
of longshoreman and lots of commercial diving, lots of shipping and all kinds of things like
that.
That was just something I was drawn to.
I was still really drawn to the ocean so I thought, hey, I can go to this trade and so
I went to this school also in Long Beach, California.
There was choices with becoming a commercial diver.
You can become a medical person, maybe like an EMT that would help run the hyperbaric
chamber, take care of the folks that are diving.
You become an inspector.
You might go underneath the ships or oil platforms and inspect what it looked like or you could
become a welder and actually be the person doing it.
The medical thing kind of spoke to me so I became a med tech.
I went through the process of learning all those skill sets to run the hyperbaric chambers.
You also become a commercial diver.
Then went through some EMT training so I had that medical training and then finished the
school.
I think it was about three or four months.
I can't really remember.
Then I was placed.
They were pretty good about placing you at a job.
I went right to an oil platform in Galveston, Texas.
When I got there, I just realized that it was really hard work, a lot of roughnecks.
It's really just a construction site but on the water.
It's not any different than roofing or laying brick or any other hard physical labor.
What I noticed was I wasn't allowed to dive.
When you're new, you're just kind of holding the hose for the more senior guys.
When you make money, the money we all think you make when you're commercial diving, it's
when you're diving, not when you're holding the hose.
I was making minimum wage and really unable to pay my student loans.
That made me start looking for other ways to make some money.
I've had a couple of interactions with people that work the platforms.
To be completely fair, it's almost like a belittling of trying to make an impact on
the firefighter work week.
Our men and women in uniform work 56 hours.
They work 80 hours if they're forced a day of overtime.
There's no badge of honor with that.
It breaks down the body.
It breaks down the mind.
A lot of the kind of poo-pooing came from, well, I worked in the oil platforms and we
were fine.
It's kind of an interesting perspective.
What did you see as far as the physical and mental health of the people that were working
on the platforms?
Is it an old school kind of attitude to maybe something that needs to be more progressive
as well?
It was incredibly old school.
Just kind of, let's just get to work.
If you were hurt, you're supposed to work.
As soon as everyone got off, it was just kind of a big drinking fest.
Everyone would drink until it was time to go to work and then just do that over and
over again.
No one really cared about anyone else, to be honest.
It's just like, hey, let's get up and get working and get some hours and then go back.
I'm sure it's a place where they can use lots of kind of revamping for how they kind of
handle each other.
Absolutely.
That's the impression I got at least.
At least from these two gentlemen that gave me the honor of their feedback.
What about the transition into the Navy then?
What made you decide to go in the uniform?
Sure.
Funny enough, I would get these notices because I wasn't paying my student loans.
I'd get these notices that said, hey, you're late.
We're going to send the guys to come collect.
I looked on the back of these notices I kept getting.
It was ways to defer student loans.
One of them was to join the service.
I was like, okay, I can do this.
It'll get me away from it for a little bit.
That's what led me to join the Navy.
I joined the Navy.
I went into the Navy recruiting office to figure out what I was going to do.
I really thought that I could go be a commercial diver in the Navy.
I thought I could be a Navy diver.
I thought, hey, I've already done this.
I've already got these certifications.
They should let me in.
They flat out told me, no, it wasn't open.
I wasn't going to be able to do that.
They said, hey, there's this other field that you could try out for where they do diving.
They pointed me towards BUDs, towards SEAL training.
That's how I joined the Navy.
That was really my path to going at all was to stop the bleeding and figure out a way
to pay my student loans.
With the background of surfing, water polo, and then commercial diving, I would make an
assumption knowing somewhat about what BUDs looks like and the training and the confidence
and the entanglements and all these different drills that you guys do that that would have
served you well.
How did it actually serve you when you were in the program?
You're right.
I was comfortable in the water.
It's still a shock.
It's still challenging.
For example, I met guys that I showed up to training with that had never even seen the
ocean before, that had made it through the selection process and had been through boot
camp and a couple other things to be able to get to BUDs.
They had never seen the ocean.
I definitely felt like I had a leg up.
I was already a strong swimmer.
I'd been swimming my whole life.
For me to get into the water and swim when we had swimming, we call them evolutions in
BUDs, it was a break.
I'd say, okay, good.
I know I can be out here.
No one's going to mess with me and I'm confident in the water.
Absolutely, all that water time as a kid and growing up was beneficial.
What about the mindset side?
I know I've had many, many members of the Tisale community on here now and there is
no super soldier prototype.
More often than not, they're not the big gorilla type lads.
Over and over again, there's usually such a strong why behind their story of how they
continued and other people rang the bell.
You've got the aquatic confidence, but obviously there's just that insane suffering.
There's the insane cold.
What was it that kept you going and not becoming one of the attrition statistics?
For sure.
The attrition was really high when I went to BUDs.
I was in the early 90s.
The Navy and Naval Special Warfare were trying some different programs to figure out, hey,
how can we get more people to be successful and not a trite from training?
They sent several of us as a pilot course to a couple of SEAL units before we ever went.
The thought was if you're around these guys and you see that they're just regular humans,
they're not like you said, these super humans that we have these ideas about, then maybe
you'd be more inclined to not quit.
I went to a SEAL unit in Puerto Rico and stayed there for I think four or five months just
training and being hazed by the guys all the time as each group would come through.
What I found was that all that was rough and it got me ready to go, but I didn't have a
really good family background.
My mom was great, but I didn't really have a lot of family that I could go to.
When I saw these guys, I'm like, oh man, these guys, they get to go on these great trips
together.
They have these amazing adventures and they've all been through this whatever it is together.
I wanted that.
I thought, oh man, this is like these guys get to, they're like rock stars.
They get to travel around.
They get to do what they'd want to do.
They stay together all the time and they seem to really enjoy life.
I thought, oh, I really want that.
That really inspired me.
I go, I want to be that.
I want to be a part of this group.
I want to have friends like this.
These guys all talked about how they've been friends for 10, 15 plus years living in the
SEAL teams.
I thought, oh, that's something I want.
When I was lucky enough to then go to Bud's after that, I knew I was like, I want to get
to a team.
I've seen these guys.
I know that I think I can do it.
That was a big motivator for me was to get through it and catch back up with some of
these people and be able to experience what they described every time they came through
to do training.
I know you entered quite a few years before 9-11.
What was the training environment?
Were they still in that more Vietnam mindset that you hear some of the older SEALs being
experienced with?
What was that transition then?
What was the 9-11 switch for you personally?
For sure.
It was interesting.
When I first got to my first SEAL team on the West Coast, there was still, I think there
was two Vietnam guys that were at the team.
They'd been around for a long time.
Both of them had broken service and they'd gotten out and come back in.
A lot of the training that happened was still very much based on Vietnam.
Now, there'd been some other things that have popped up since then.
Obviously, there'd been people had gone to Grenada, people had gone to Panama, and there'd
been a couple other little things.
Everything really happened until 1993 when Somalia started getting really hot.
When I checked in my first team, there were people still coming back from operations in
Somalia.
That was a big change for us was just in 1995 when I got to the team, people were still
going to Somalia and Mogadishu.
We were switching then from the Vietnam style of operating into what they had seen in the
cities of Mogadishu.
That was a big change.
Just while I was there, I watched things change.
Like you mentioned, it changed again when 9-11 happened and we started deploying in
much larger numbers.
Pre-9-11, where did you find yourself roughly deployed?
Which corners of the world?
Each of the teams at that time were regionally aligned.
I started with SEAL Team 3.
Our main area was the Middle East.
We would go to places like Bahrain, Kuwait, or Jordan, all these countries that we had
relationships with.
We would go train with their folks.
It was supposed to be cross-training, but it was always just us training them.
Then we would run into our SBS friends when we would get there and we would all train
everybody together.
But it was really just all those more friendly to Western folks countries.
We would just go on deployment.
We would stay there for several months, do exercises, bounce around, do training, and
then come back.
It was definitely not as focused as it became after 9-11.
Was there any sense, Pree, when you look back now of something like, maybe not even the
terrorist attack, but ultimately ending back in Iraq and Afghanistan back then, or was
it more of a status quo?
It was more of a status quo.
It was just, hey, we go over, we do some training, we come back.
Early on, I think the first thing I kind of remember where we were doing real stuff was
when we had embargoes with Iraq.
Saddam Hussein was still trying to make some money so they would smuggle oil and dates
and all kinds of things, and all of us NATO countries would hop on and do these ship interdictions
where we'd stop the boats, turn them back over, and try to stop the flow of illegal
smuggling that was happening.
But really, until that was really the only thing we did, we'd do some ship boardings
and we'd all rotate between us, the Brits, the Danes, the Poles, or whoever happened
to be rotating, boarding these ships out in the Arabian Gulf.
Everything really happened again, aside from that, and that was kind of small, until 9-11
happened, and then obviously Afghanistan and then Iraq.
So talk to me about 9-11 that day through your eyes.
Sure.
I was actually a BUDS instructor, so I had rotated from being on the SEAL team, and I
was working in Coronado as a BUDS instructor, and we were just a regular day, and then all
of a sudden it's on the news, and quite shocking, obviously.
We all kind of remember where we were on that day, but I distinctly remember coming into
work and one of the towers had already been hit, and then watching the other one be hit
on TV sitting in our instructor office in the back.
That training had stopped, that we made sure everyone could reach out to their families.
I remember distinctly there were some dudes that were in class and had family in New York,
so we were making sure that everyone could reach out and at least kind of figure out
what was happening.
But for everybody, for the whole world, it was pretty shocking, for sure.
Absolutely.
Now, from a training point of view, not specifics, but a lot of times when something like this
happens, everything shifts.
There's a kind of scrambling to catch up, and then sadly, obviously, learning lessons
from the people that are coming home.
What was that kind of training curve from this Vietnam era with the sprinkling of Somalia
to now you're in two arenas within a couple of years of each other?
One of the big things, obviously, was everyone was worried about chemical weapons, and so
the ramp up of training with wearing all that stuff all the time was crazy.
There's so much of it.
We'd spend weeks out in the desert doing all that, using it with vehicles.
So that was a big one.
Another thing that really changed for us from Vietnam on, when SEALs deployed, they'd deploy
in the platoon, which was typically 16 people.
When the war started, we would start deploying with what we called a troop, which was three
platoons, and now we're getting upwards of 50 to 70 guys.
And then entire teams would deploy.
We'd call them squadrons.
And so when it was time for your team to deploy, the entire team would deploy, not just a small
group with maybe an 02 or an 03 in charge.
It would be the full...
The whole command would go, so you'd have 300 plus people would go and deploy.
And so that was a big change for us.
We never operated in big, large numbers.
We became more like a Ranger Battalion with these big, giant groups of people going and
doing big movements that the SEALs had not done before.
And so that was a big change, was those larger numbers and a lot of the biochemical threat
training.
Those are the two big ones that really, I remember distinctly that it was a different
and kind of new thing that we were doing.
And did you find yourself coming out of BUDs and going back into the deployments?
I did.
When 9-11 happened, they actually told us, I remember the headshed of the command of
BUDs, of what we call the center.
They said, hey, if you want to go back now, you can get out early.
You can leave your rotation time.
Typically it was three years.
You could leave early.
And so I met a couple of guys who just left and went back to the teams.
And so I went and immediately went back to a team in the hopes of deploying.
And where did you find yourself deployed?
Was it Iraq or Afghanistan?
Both, both.
Right back into a team, it was kind of shocking because I was in groups that were deploying
with people that had come through with guys that had been through training when I was
an instructor.
Now I was in a platoon with them and we were all going to war together.
So it was definitely surreal to be like, hey, I was just facilitating this training for
guys and now I'm in it with them and we're all going together.
So not something I had experienced before, obviously, but everyone was very, at that
time everyone was super patriotic.
It doesn't matter what country you're from or like, hey, we're going to do this thing
and get rid of these bad guys.
And so whether it was Afghanistan or Iraq, everyone kind of felt the same.
Not quite the same vitriol everyone had when he went to Afghanistan, but similar for both
places.
There's a question I always ask anyone who's been deployed.
And then the backstory is simply in America, especially, we get a very polarized view of
war.
Either kill them all, let God sort them out, stack the bodies or they're all baby killers.
And in the middle are the men and women that we send with our flag on their shoulder to
go and protect the innocence of another country.
Was there a moment, regardless of the politics, aside from the politics, where you witnessed
with your own eyes that there were some horrific people that needed to be taken care of?
Absolutely.
Especially, and more so, I didn't see this as much in Iraq, but Afghanistan, the people
that would hurt kids, that was a big thing, especially young boys.
It's really hard to not want to serve some justice for the way that they would treat.
I mean, you just see the big trucks, the Jenga trucks we call them with all the decoration
on them.
You'd see a guy driving with a young boy and you'd go, I remember when I first got there,
I thought, oh, that's cool.
The dad's taking the son with them and they're just out working.
But that wasn't the case at all.
That was their person that they were going to just pass around when they went to different
spots.
And that part really, it's really hard and it's really dug deep into that culture.
So it's really hard to look someone in the face and talk seriously with them when you
know that's what's going on.
So those people are evil for sure.
One of my friends actually was just talking the other day on an interview and we were
talking about moral injury and he was deployed in the Middle East during that time.
And he used that very example.
I think it was either an abusive husband or even that kind of element.
And as he said, his hands were tied.
And so you're there to be a protector, but you're kind of, you know, the rules and regulations
that you work under, you're not actually able to do the human thing, the ethic thing, ethical
thing, which is to stop certain things from happening.
And this is, you know, I think the inability to say the inability to protect, it's not
PTSD.
It's the moral injury side, which can be equally detrimental.
No, for sure.
And I think it's lucky for us in the special operations, doesn't matter where you were,
we didn't have to experience as much as the regular folks, the regular infantry folks,
the regular Marines, the regular, they just had to stand and deal with that constantly.
For us, we, I think we saw it rarely compared to everybody else, but the impact of that
is horrific, as you're saying.
Well, the other side of the question that we also never hear really on the news is the
kindness and compassion that I've heard over and over again in some of these combat zones.
So when you reflect, what was some of the moments of kindness that you remember?
In almost every country I've ever been, when you're in some type of a bad situation, it's
always amazing, you know, whether it's Kenya or in Ramadi, when you need some help, regular
people want to help other humans.
I distinctly being in long protracted gunfights and having men and women come out and give
us water or something to eat that are there also, or offering to help or calling other
people or wanting to tell you when bad things are about to happen.
That happened so many times.
It was quite amazing, for sure.
Absolutely.
Well, as you progress through, I mean, you know, I know we're going to talk about obviously
one more wave and helping our veterans, but I don't really know much about your own specific
journey.
So did you start having any struggles yourself as you progress through your career?
I did.
I think for us, it was really easy to just keep deploying all the time.
For the SEAL teams, there's West Coast teams and East Coast teams, they're all on the same
street.
So you just move from team to team and so during when the wars were really hot and heavy,
every team always needed more people, whether it's because they just needed more people
or someone had gotten injured or hurt or had it couldn't deploy.
And so you could just go and go and go.
And so I think what happened to a lot of us is you just kept doing it over and over and
over again.
And so you don't take care of yourself.
You don't pay attention to when you go on deployment, you know, you kind of become one
person and when you come back, you kind of try to switch back to being an at home person.
And eventually those just become the same person.
And so I didn't really realize how much that impacted me until I stopped deploying.
I had gotten injured in a pretty good IED at the end and ended up having to go spend
some time at Bethesda Medical Hospital.
And so when I went, what led up to that was me at home, just not being able to do a lot
of things, not being able to relax, not being able to sleep, being angry all the time, drinking
too much, getting into the thing that a lot of us do, which is drinking mixed with nicotine,
just rotating those back and forth to make it through the day and then not being able
to sleep.
And so all of those things together really happened to me at the end of my time, just
because I think I wasn't I wasn't busy.
I wasn't deploying.
And so right at the end, when I retired from the service from the Navy, I got divorced
that same year and kind of had to reset myself.
So I know it's the same story that many of us tell, but I think for me, like you to go
back to your question, I started noticing when I stopped deploying all the time and
stop being busy, I took a job so that I could kind of hang out and be engaged with my family.
And that's when I realized I was a mess.
A lot of people obviously get to a very, very dark place.
And thank God, a lot of ones have been on here found that light right before it was
too late.
Where was the darkest place you found yourself?
When I just realized that I didn't even know my family, I deployed so much and then gone,
I'd missed so much.
I'd grown away from my my then wife years and years ago.
And just we're just doing it because I think we thought we were supposed to.
And I was just miserable.
The thing that I think crushed me the most was not being able to sleep.
And so I was just angry all the time, very short tempered, and just miserable all the
time.
And I couldn't figure out what it was, whether it's migraines, which would come on, just
inability to concentrate.
But just for me was like, all of a sudden, I'm by myself.
I'm like, oh, OK, we got to I got to figure this out.
I think there's such a jarring element to the transition.
It can be military, it can be first responders.
But you know, you have and you touched on I think this is this is one of the unspoken
elements, the busyness, the the adrenaline, the stress, the excitement of some of these
professions.
At the beginning, you doesn't matter what void you got in your life, you can just fill
it with that career, you know, all these calls that we go on as firefighters, you're not
thinking about, you know, your early life, for example.
But as you progress in, you know, if you find yourself taking deliberately taking over time
or more deployments and maybe reflecting back, there's a reason why you're not allowing yourself
to have that time to think.
Now you get to the transition and you've got people who have this incredible tribe, the
shared suffering that you find in some of these uniform professions really binds us
together.
You've got the identity, I'm a seal, I'm a firefighter, you got the purpose every day
you wake up, you're truly trying to make the world better.
And then one day, as you said, so many people are divorced and they find themselves alone
in the home.
And that can be absolutely crushing.
So what what was next for you?
How did you navigate out of that jarring place that you found yourself?
Well I was lucky there was towards the end of that time, my time in the I think the military
was getting really good, at least here in the US at kind of providing a million different
types of therapies, finding stuff that maybe everyone was into, whether it's art, music,
outdoor hunting, hiking, backpacking, all kinds of different sports and surfing was
one of them.
And so the the main hospital here in Southern California for veterans called naval Naval
Hospital San Diego, they had a surf clinic.
And so they were teaching actually severely wounded, you know, veterans of all the services,
how to surf or how to get back into surfing post injury.
And so me and a couple buddies, we can talk about later Alex and other guy Kyle that that
kicked off one way we are all volunteering when we are active duty ourselves.
And so we would volunteer at the surf clinic, helping other people serve.
And that's what really kicked it in for me, I realized how much I enjoyed volunteering
and helping other people.
And you know, it's just like other things.
I think what it did is it took my mind off myself, I could now get back to focusing on
something else.
This is just like it was when I was in the teams, I could focus on the mission and, you
know, people that worked for me or that I worked for, or whatever it was now I can focus
on something else and help these guys and gals do something I loved, which was really
everything in the ocean.
And so that's when I really realized that volunteering was going to really help me and
I really just dove in and tried to do that a lot.
So talk to me then about the genesis of one more wave.
Sure. So Alex, myself and another guy Kyle, so Alex and I had been friends, we had served
together in the 90s on SEAL Team 3.
And Alex was starting one more wave.
And the way one more wave started was we were all volunteering at the surf clinic and a
friend of ours came through the program.
He was an Air Force person.
He was a below the knee amputee and he was just having a really hard time getting back
into surfing after his injury.
And so got that board made for him and kind of got hooked.
We thought, hey, we're just going to keep doing this.
And so Alex is a talented artist.
He started making t-shirts.
And so we were selling t-shirts out of the back of his truck to try to offset making
some of these boards.
And we kept doing that for a little bit.
And so the only boards we made were adaptive surfboards at first.
And that was for people with pretty severe physical injuries.
Maybe they need to put handles on the deck of the surfboard or moving things around for
injuries, fixing the deck for someone that's kind of prosthetic, whatever it might be.
And luckily, Starbucks has a documentary crew.
They heard about us and came to a quick documentary on One More Wave.
And that's really what kind of exploded us into a lot more people realizing that that
was something they could go do.
People want to volunteer.
People want to donate.
And so that's what really kind of propelled One More Wave into another level of, hey,
we need to hire one of us now.
We're all doing this after work.
And so luckily I had already retired.
I was doing some government contracting.
And so I was in between contracts until luckily we hired me.
And so in 2017, I came on with One More Wave and I've been doing it ever since.
But it all started with us working with a Naval Hospital.
I had a guy on the show, English guy actually, Tom Hewitt, who lives in South Africa.
And he was a high level surfer himself, but he started seeing all these street kids, these
homeless children.
I think it was around Durban, if I've got that right.
And so he started a nonprofit called Surfers Not Street Children.
And it was really interesting to hear them talking about it.
Firstly, they had a lot of these kids were terrified of the ocean because I think the
non-African people have been telling them there's monsters in the sea and don't go in,
which there are in South Africa.
But dissuaded to the point where I think maybe they were trying to keep the beaches for certain
groups of people.
So you've got them getting the confidence back, learning how to swim, now they're learning
to surf.
And he got some of it to the point where they're on the World Surf League, some of these kids.
Amazing.
But what was really interesting was he said they would do the session first.
So they've got the ocean, they've got the sunlight, they've got the physical exertion.
And then after the sessions, they'd sit on the sand and they'd basically give the kids
unofficial counseling therapy.
What are you seeing as far as the mental health element of this surfing experience that these
veterans are going through?
I think it does a couple of things.
So I tell people all the time, when you get in the ocean, the ocean does not care.
It does not care if you're having a bad day, if you had a bad day at home, if you're arguing
with your spouse, if it's cold, if it's raining.
So it forces you to focus.
And so that focus lets you either focus on yourself or focus on surfing or something
else.
And I think it kind of lets your brain heal.
And so what it does is it kind of gives you this new purpose of surfing.
And then what we found is what people love is the community piece.
And so just getting together and now we've got monthly meetups where we meet all over
the US to meet to surf.
And all we do is we put up a tent, we get a permit from the beach for four hours and
we just meet and surf.
And we used to try to add a whole bunch of things to it.
We'd say, hey, let's have meals and coffee and yoga, stretching.
Maybe it's faith based in the beginning or after.
And what we found is people would come and skip portions of things that they didn't like.
And what we realized is that everyone just wanted to, one, meet with a bunch of other
people that they felt like they had something in common with, have some coffee and talk
a little trash and then get in the water.
And so that's what we really cut out was to do that.
And now we find that people come and they just love to kind of be there, be around,
maybe not even get in the water, just might come hang out.
Now we do have therapists that will come, but it's not to do anything other than they like
to surf too and they're also veterans.
And so it's amazing because what the VA does here in San Diego, which I'm not sure if they
do in other cities yet, is they'll actually go do their therapy sessions in the water.
If the person surfs, they'll go paddle out with them and go surf and have their therapy
session in the water.
So I think all of that is incredibly therapeutic.
I think what it turns into almost is an unled kind of group therapy session.
Everyone's out in the water.
People might share something.
They may not.
They just have some peace for a couple hours away from everything else.
And so I think it's incredibly powerful.
We've been lucky enough to have many, many of these groups.
And San Diego is our largest group and most of the time it's probably 60% veterans and
the rest are first responders, people with no connection to any type of service, just
people that want to come surf.
And it just brings a really big group of people together.
It's been really incredible.
On both coasts, Oahu, we even have a group in Okinawa and people just come to surf, have
some unhealthy snacks, some donuts or something and some coffee and then go surf.
And that seems to be what resonates for our groups the most is to keep it incredibly simple,
just bring people together.
And it really has made a lot of great connections.
How are you able to help people with the identity piece?
I think service is definitely a huge part.
I would argue, I talk about the yin yang a lot.
The yang is the black, which is actually the soft and the yin is the white.
And our generation collectively were raised on the rambos and the terminators and these
false images of masculinity.
And then you become a firefighter or a seal and you identify with this is what I am.
And then by the time you come out the other side, rather than a yin yang, you're a white
circle now.
You're all hard and no, but it was compassion and empathy really that sent you into service
in the first place.
So it seems like one of the real realities is when you come out, like I know guys that
went into finance and they just imploded because it wasn't fulfilling at all.
You had these people doing arguably the opposite of service.
So what are you seeing with some of these veterans, especially doing the transition,
being able to refind who they are rather than what they did?
I think getting in these groups and seeing what other folks are successful with.
And there's some guys that really like to, now that they've come into the group, kind
of mentor the newer folks that come in and out, especially if they're new to surfing.
Now they can kind of take this on and go, hey, I've been surfing for a couple of years.
I can teach you and kind of help these groups.
And so that has been kind of a neat transition where we'll have people that have been surfing
their whole lives.
We have many adult men and women that have never done anything in the ocean aside from
basically swimming.
And now they want to learn to surf.
And so it's fun to kind of see the progression of a brand new person, someone that's intermediate
and then someone that's been at it for a couple more years.
And so we have a couple of different groups of people where there'll be brand new people
that are helping them transition.
And then there's lots and lots of people that have had some success post-service.
And so they can kind of give them advice on how to do things.
And really what happens a lot is people kind of teach each other how to navigate the VA,
which can be challenging as well.
And so all those things really happen.
And so now people are not just taking care of themselves.
Like I said at the beginning, they're getting to focus on others and kind of help others
kind of make it through this, which is pretty jarring.
Like you said, you're used to being at a fire station or a ladder or a SEAL team.
And then you leave service and you're like, oh, what just happened?
No, I'm just kidding.
I always thought it'd be great to do nothing, but it's not.
None of us wants to do nothing.
No.
Well, it's funny.
One of my firefighter friends said that the goal of the whole mental health conversation
one day is to not have peer support teams.
Just go back to talking around the dinner table, around the beach, whatever it is.
And if you look at how we were for the longest time, tribally humans, it was all inbuilt.
The warriors come home and they tell stories around the fire and there's all this ceremony
and you're trying to pass on to your children.
So you're storytelling with that.
And with this kind of fractured community that we've arguably devolved from in some
point, the goal is ultimately to refine these communities.
And I would say that if we did it completely effectively, we wouldn't even need counselors
anymore.
Just another group of people that have experienced what you have before and you can just hang
out with them and kind of gather some wisdom.
Absolutely.
Now, what about from the physical side?
The adaptive community, I guess if we're going to find a silver lining to the cloud of war,
it's that the adaptive community has just shown us all what is actually possible from
a mindset point of view, from a physical point of view.
What are some of the things that have amazed you when it comes to the adaptive surface
that you've seen and the technical adaptations they've made on these boards to allow them
to serve?
What was kind of the most shocking thing and it still is today now is I grew up competitive
surfing or not surfing, but swimming and then water polo and other sports.
And I'm not sure what sports you did.
I'm sure you did something as a kid.
But you know, when you go to the game or the match or whatever it might be, you spend a
lot of time where we sit mean mug and staring down the other guys trying to intimidate the
other team doing all these things.
That doesn't happen at all in adaptive surfing.
And I assume the rest of adaptive sport, we get in the water and everyone's trying to
help each other.
There's different rules when you're in competition and people actually give up waves to another
person just because they want to help them out.
When we get to events, people will come from other countries and their board was destroyed
during travel.
It was funny, a couple of years ago, we were in La Jolla, which is a spot in Southern California
in San Diego, and the three Brits that came to surf, all their boards were destroyed.
And so everyone else gave them their boards so that they could compete.
And so that has been amazing to me just to see the community and the family that globally,
everyone just helped each other and is just excited when the other person has an amazing
session in the water as compared to what you might see in professional sports where people
are angry if they don't win.
Everyone's very supportive.
So that part has been amazing.
Whether it's seeing people that are amputees surfing, people that are blind, there's many
blind surfers that have a team that's doing all kinds of amazing things, whistling to
them so they can turn, or people that...
One of our guys is a triple amputee, his name's Jose, he's an Army veteran.
He has one arm.
And we've pushed him into waves that I'm scared to surf in and I'm able-bodied.
So it's just amazing to see the things that everyone can do when you have the right mindset.
And especially when you get to represent your country, when we're talking about the world
version of these games, it's incredible to see these folks from every country come and
just literally put everything on the line to compete.
It's fantastic.
I'm an incurable optimistic.
I always tell people I'm an angry optimist, but incurable nonetheless.
Because I truly staunchly believe that most people are inherently good.
And I think if you reflect on the horrors of our history, it's usually the power hungry.
I'd argue the mentally ill few really that caused so many problems.
When you look back now, obviously you've got such an interesting lens of war, but now you're
in this healing domain.
What is your perspective on humanity?
You're exposed to athletes from all around the planet, you've worked with soldiers from
all around the planet.
What is your lens on that concept?
I think everyone's, like you said, is inherently good.
It doesn't matter what your culture is.
Everyone wants to take care of their family, everyone wants to be safe, no one wants to
get hurt, and everyone is a patriot for whatever country they're from.
We're all very much the same.
It doesn't change no matter where you go.
When someone needs help, we help each other.
As much as we might be divided on how you sit politically or globally, how people are
doing things, when it's person to person, it's very hard to find people that aren't
good everywhere.
I was talking to Tulsi Gabbard a while ago, and what's interesting about war is there
are obviously a lot of people that benefit financially.
To use a different metaphor, if you look at our healthcare or disease management that
we've got in America, there's not going to be a push towards making healthy Americans
if certain groups are making a lot of money from sick Americans.
It would be the same in war.
Obviously, there's a lot of people that make weapons and uniforms and MREs and put McDonald's
on basis that's in their best interest economically to keep us at war.
Obviously, from a humanitarian point of view, the goal is to avoid war unless absolutely
necessary.
I would say that World War II is one of those examples.
How do we maintain the checks and balances?
How do we work against this being dragged into war and sending our children off and
being brought home in flag-draped coppins unless it's absolutely necessary?
I wish I could remember the admiral's name.
Someone asked him that question, and he said, we should downsize the military so low that
in order to go to war, we need to have a draft.
Everyone has to be all in because otherwise, we're just going to keep abusing the small
groups of people that volunteer for service, no matter what it is, into doing this over
and over and over again.
If everyone has to pony up, then it's going to be a different story.
I think that's a wonderful answer.
If we kept it so small that if we're going to go to war, it has to be in everyone's best
interest to go.
Everyone's going to have to pony up, and we're going to have to have a draft, which is going
to cause a lot of angst and anger.
I don't care what country we're in.
No one wants to do that.
I think that was a wonderful answer.
I really liked it.
I thought that was really thoughtful that if it was small enough so that we couldn't
keep punishing these same, I shouldn't say punish, keep forcing these same people, small
groups, to do this for years.
I think that would be an amazing change.
I agree 100%.
I think it's even the same with the first responder professions.
Not that we need smaller, but there's a complete opposite impact as far as the priorities.
We're out of sight, out of mind, unless you're the emergency.
Now you're screaming for us and asking why it took so long, but when it comes to supporting
them and giving them the right manpower and maintaining hiring standards and equipment
and all that kind of thing, we're the bottom of the barrel usually in these county and
city conversations.
I think that doing a similar thing in the first responder professions would be interesting.
All right, well then we'll just go down to everyone has to volunteer to be a firefighter
and we'll see how long it takes for you to actually support us again.
Right.
Then you'll stop complaining about people getting retirement benefits too.
Exactly.
All right, we're going back to one more wave for a second.
I watched, I don't know if this is a documentary you're referring to, but there was a four-minute
show on the site and it shows amputee James getting his board made for him and going out
to surf.
So talk to me about the board making side.
Are those people within the companies or are you getting these incredible board shapers
that are working alongside you to try and be part of the difference?
Great question.
So one more wave is tiny.
So we tried not to, I shouldn't say we tried not to, we don't have a surf shop.
We don't make the boards ourselves.
We have a shop that we've used from the beginning and so they'll do that process.
But what happens is someone will hop on our website and they'll apply for a grant.
And so what happens then is I just, it's me.
I talked to every single person.
We just kind of vet that they're actually a service member.
We haven't had anyone try to fake it for a while, but we did a couple of years ago.
And so I get to talk to everybody and then I interview every single person.
We talked for about 45 minutes and we decide, Hey, are you good fit?
A lot of times people will apply and have never surfed and they were, they were hoping
that we would provide that.
One more wave doesn't teach surfing really, what we do is provide the gear.
And so if someone applies and they haven't learned to surf yet, there's just in Southern
California as an example, from where I live in San Diego to let's say the North end of
Los Angeles, which is Malibu, there's eight nonprofits that teach first responders and
veterans to surf for free.
So I'll connect them with those groups.
They'd learn to surf and then we come back and get gear.
So for making custom equipment for somebody, we spend a lot of time talking and then we
make the gear at a particular shop here in San Diego.
And oftentimes when you're talking about James, James is a, I think below the knee amputee.
Sometimes it takes us three or four or five boards to get it right.
And that's because when you're missing parts, the boards act a little bit different.
Imagine if the weight of your body, if you have legs and if you don't have legs, that
your legs weigh a lot.
And so that changes the boards.
So what happens is we build the boards, but what we do a lot of, and we haven't done it
as much lately just because there hasn't been a lot of ask for it, but we do art therapy.
And so I'm not a therapist and I'm definitely not an artist, but we have friends that will
do artwork for the boards for people.
So it could be Alex, that's the founder of WilmerWave.
He doesn't do it as much anymore, but we have a couple other artists that will actually
meet virtually with the veteran and they'll come up with whatever it is that that person
wants.
And so it could be something powerful, something they, some friends they lost maybe overseas
or maybe some family members they've lost, or maybe it's their favorite football team
or their unit, whatever it might be.
We've put all kinds of crazy things into boards, whether it's expended rounds from weapons
or parts of a vehicle that were exploded when the person was injured overseas.
It doesn't matter.
We'll go through that process.
They are a hundred percent involved in what goes into the artwork.
And then we work with the actual shapers, the tradesmen that make the boards to kind
of get it right.
What we try to do often, especially with adaptive riders is to get in the water with them first
to kind of see what's going to work and what's not going to work.
And so that's been one of the more helpful things is to actually get the person in the
water and kind of play around and see what's going to work.
And it gives us a chance to see kind of the person's ability to swim in the ocean because
that's going to be a big deal too.
So once that process happens, we make the board, we present it.
And what we try to do is just keep them surfing as long as they would like to.
So we pay for all the repairs, we pay for all the parts they might need.
Sometimes we need to upgrade a board depending on a person.
So it really just depends on what they need.
But the whole process begins with them getting online, applying, they talk to me and either
we'll connect them with an artist or we'll go right to connecting them with the shapers
and they'll come up with the proper board for them.
Hopefully.
Sometimes it doesn't work and we have to start over, but that's kind of the fun part.
And what are some of the success stories that really kind of stuck out to you?
I think luckily, probably 12%, 15% at the most of the boards we make are adaptive.
The rest are not.
So everyone else is getting geared.
Mental health could be depression, anxiety, PTSD, traumatic brain injury, MST, which is
military sexual trauma, drug abuse.
It could be all kinds of things.
And so those are probably who we give more boards to.
So anybody that has a disability rating from the VA can apply.
So you don't have to be a combat wounded veteran to be available to our services.
So I tell people all the time, it doesn't matter to me personally, if you did 50 trips,
50 deployments to Mogadishu or you were a fireman in the Air Force and you lived in
Kirkland, Washington, it doesn't really matter.
There's no scoreboard.
So I don't care.
So it's same thing if you got kicked out.
Maybe someone had a rough run on the way out of the service and they actually got kicked
out.
And so often what happens is then you won't be at any...
If you get kicked out of the service, a lot of the services that can come from the Veterans
Association, Veterans Administration, get cut away.
And so we will give everyone service, whatever the way they left the service, wherever they
served, as long as they're a veteran and they have a disability rating, we're happy to help.
I spend a lot of time going to some of the VA rehab centers and chatting with those cats
there because there's a lot of men and women that kind of have a tough time on the way
out of the service.
So all those folks are availed of our services too.
I'd never asked anyone in the military about this specifically, but I've talked about it
in the first responder professions.
When we get that angry guy or the person who becomes a problem in the uniform, I always
ask them, well, what were they like when you hired them?
What were they like five years in?
Oh, they were phenomenal.
They were a great leader, but yeah, well, there we go.
So was the job a large contributor to this downward spiral and is cutting them loose,
getting rid of them the answer, or could you send them down a healing path and get them
back to the person that they're supposed to be in the first place?
And to think about that on the military point of view, to have a dishonorable discharge
and then all your benefits gone, I wonder how many people we lost because maybe they
needed the help more then than ever.
In my opinion, they need help more than everyone else.
This scenario I saw happen several times.
So maybe a young Marine on deployment gets blown up several times, gets some traumatic
brain injury, it goes undiagnosed, they come back to the US and then they get into trouble.
They're late a couple of times.
They come in smelling like booze, they get a DUI and they go, you're a piece of crap.
I don't care that you served, that you did a good time and they kick them out.
And there's so many people that it happened to that it's really shocking.
And now those guys, not only do they get kicked out of the thing that they were, this family
they're part of, now they can get no support and now they almost are kind of shunned.
And so those are the folks that really need a hand.
They can just go, hey, just come on over.
Yeah, you know, everyone makes mistakes, you know, come on over, let's go surfing.
I got it.
Yeah, let's do it.
And so I think a lot of people really could use that hand.
I'm sure that's the same in first responder land that, you know, the exact same thing
can happen and then you just kind of cut off.
Yeah, yeah, because it's not even a loss of tribe.
It's having your tribe turn their back on you, which as we know, you know, if you go
back a few thousand years meant death.
So we're wired to be part of that tribe and it's detrimental if we're not.
Right.
No, so just seeing that happen over and over again is tragic.
So I'm always happy to be able to do that.
And what's interesting for us when we started doing that, the nonprofit world, most of the,
a lot of the groups will only support people that are post 9 11 and forward, not for any
reason other than it's, it's easier and it's a big group, but we've been open to
everybody the whole time.
And so a couple of years ago we made a board.
I'm not sure which video we saw for a guy that was in Vietnam.
And then, you know, we're, then we're giving a board way to somebody that was in Syria.
So it's fun to be able to connect the folks that probably feel like they got treated the
worst, you know, whether it's Vietnam and on coming back.
What we do a lot is try to help people get their VA claims working.
A lady that comes in volunteers with us all the time.
She's a surfer.
Her father was a Vietnam veteran and he had never done a VA claim ever.
And then she brought them, she met some of our guys.
We bring VA people to our events just to meet and chat with people and let them know what's
available.
And they did a claim for him and got him back paid and done everything from like 1977 to,
you know, this year, which is pretty incredible.
Someone said to me a while ago now, as far as a number of veterans that we're losing,
that a large portion was actually our Vietnam vets.
And if you look at the homecoming story of a lot of them, it's not ticker tape parades
by any means.
You've got, again, that tribe turning their back on you, you know, organizational betrayal
in a way.
But then a lot of them, you know, went into whatever workforce was and now they're at
retirement age, civilian retirement age.
So now they're once again finding themselves, you know, out of this tribe, out of this purpose
and maybe alone in the house.
And so, yeah, we should be taking care of the previous generations.
I would argue Korea, even though obviously they're pretty old now, you know, the Forgotten
War, that's another group that really probably got almost no acknowledgement for their service.
Zero for many, especially, you know, black and brown people.
You know, it was horrible back in those days.
So it's really heartening to see folks come forward and be able to just point them in
the right direction and get some help.
So that's been cool.
And what about the VA themselves?
It's an interesting lens.
Obviously, I'm, you know, never served in the military myself, but a lot of...
Sure.
But, you know, you've talked about all these different progressive elements.
My wife actually is about to become an optometrist, doctor of optometry, and she's working in
the VA as her last kind of residency year.
And I'm hearing phenomenal things about the care these veterans are getting in the one
close to me in the villages.
So what is the kind of evolution of that?
Are we seeing, you know, changes being made so it's becoming more holistic and spreading
the toolbox wider so these veterans can find their own unique healing kind of cocktail?
I think so.
But I think it's still pretty localized.
I think in the bigger areas, like for me in San Diego, San Diego has the largest veteran
community in the US.
I think then it goes to Norfolk and then maybe Oahu.
So for here, it's great.
There's really a lot of things that you can do.
I think what guys get really angry about is the way we're brought up in the service is
if you have an injury, you get hurt or sickness, you don't report it.
And so this drags on.
And then what happens is now you're out of the service and you'd like to get care for
something that is not in your record because you were kind of...
That's just how it is.
You don't do it.
And so the frustration can be really high.
You go, no, I got hurt doing this thing in the service while you didn't ever report it.
And so now there's this fight that happens.
I think they're getting better about that.
I know in San Diego, it's much better than in other places.
I think smaller places probably have smaller issues or small town type things.
But for here, I've definitely noticed it's pretty big.
Every time I call and ask them to come, they have outreach folks that will come to every
event that I ask them to.
And most of the people are all veterans themselves.
And so they kind of understand it.
So I think it is getting better.
There's definitely a long way to go, but it's definitely better.
When I first retired, they wanted to give me, I think, 14 different types of medications,
whether it's sleep or anxiety or whatever it is, there were so many.
But now they're trying to not do that, I think, as much as offer all kinds of different, what
they call rec therapy, recreational therapy.
And the VA actually runs a surf clinic.
They run all kinds of stuff.
So I think as long as you're willing to put in...
You do have to put a little bit of work.
You have to find it.
It's not as easy to kind of navigate as it should be, but it is getting much better,
I think.
So aside from your own personal journey with surfing, were there any other tools that have
helped you kind of go from that low place and grow yourself?
I think for me, like I mentioned, the volunteering piece was big for me.
The community piece of other veterans after service was helpful for me.
Helping other people is definitely the big thing for me.
And just kind of realizing for me that, and I find this to be hard for adults, maybe especially
males.
I think once you're to do things just for fun or just for yourself instead of doing
stuff for work or for what you think is you need to do around the house or for your family.
Just do something that's just fun just for you that really gives nothing to anybody but
yourself.
I think that was really hard for me.
I think it's really hard for lots of adults, especially males, especially people that come
from first responders or military.
You're just not used to doing that.
You're used to trying to take care of other people.
And so doing things just for me really, really helped me and kind of helped me get some peace
for sure.
Beautiful.
Well, I want to throw some quick closing questions at you before I let you go.
That's okay.
Yeah.
All right.
The first one I'd love to ask, is there a book or are there books that you love to recommend
it can be related to our discussion today or completely unrelated?
The last one I read, I'm horrible.
I don't read very much.
I listen to lots of podcasts, but I read Blue Mind, which is pretty good.
And that was just kind of how the ocean kind of helps heal people through just contact.
And so that was pretty cool.
I really like that book.
And what about films or documentaries?
We're talking about surfing stuff.
I just watched a cool documentary.
Oh, I loved, and some people hate it, the one about the octopus.
It's called My Teacher, the Octopus.
I really enjoyed that.
It's a documentary about this guy that follows an octopus around.
But something that was really fun was watching the hundred waves, like the biggest waves
they're surfing in Portugal right now.
This French woman has surfed the biggest wave ever.
It's incredible.
Her story is fantastic.
But it's on HBO right now, or Max, whatever it's called.
It documents the history of the big wave riding in Portugal at Nazaré, which has the biggest
waves in the world.
Pretty incredible seeing those humans ride down those giant waves.
I've got to go there one day.
My mom and my brother live in Portugal.
They're from England, but they moved to Portugal.
And it's not too far from where they live.
So just seeing the people watching it, and they're just like ants in this freaking wave.
It's insane.
Unbelievable.
Speaking of that, I had Bethany Hamilton on a while ago now.
And watching her, and we're talking about amputees with one arm, getting through these
waves in the first place, but riding against not even the adaptive bracket, but just the
regular bracket with a single arm.
You talk about defying all, or just reprogramming or recalibrating what is possible.
She is phenomenal.
And obviously, she's an advocate for marine wildlife after losing an arm to a shark.
So same as Paul de Gelder, another good example.
She's incredible.
She has a nonprofit of her own called, what is it called?
Perfectly Flawed.
And so she takes girls that have similar injuries or they were born, missing parts, teaches
them to surf here in San Diego every year.
We volunteer and go do it.
Incredible.
And then you see Bethany surf and you're like, holy crap, she rips.
She's so good at surfing.
But what I found was kind of shocking to me.
She brings all these girls, and I think they do boys now, it's called forged or something.
But women and young girls that have those type of injuries or are born with those ailments
have a much higher rate of being attacked or assaulted.
So they had as part of their week long program, they'd stay at the beach, they'd surf, they
have these IDF Krav Maga chicks come and teach them to fight from like their chair or the
crutch or whatever it was.
It was incredible to see these girls like learning how to roll and do Krav Maga and
how to protect themselves because they have such a higher rate of being attacked.
So it's really neat program.
Bethany is awesome.
So I'm stoked.
I've been able to volunteer a couple of years.
That's amazing.
Yeah, I want to get it back on the show at some point.
All right, well then speaking of amazing people, is there a person that you'd recommend to
come on this podcast as a guest to speak to the first responders, military and associated
professions of the world?
I do you should get Jose Jose is a friend of mine.
He's a Jose Martinez.
He's an army veteran, triple amputee, world championship, world champion, adaptive surfer.
He'll make you want to get outside and do something.
Just talking to him is the most stoked person I've ever met still.
Brilliant, if you're able to help, we'll make that happen.
Definitely.
For sure.
All right, well then the last question before we find out where people can find one more
wave and yourself personally, what do you do to decompress?
I go surfing, go get in the ocean by myself.
What about just as a quick side note, when I lived in Huntington for a while, they have
what they call that surf, surf city USA, there was a big controversy as who actually was
surf city USA, but I remember seeing some of the waves were just so, so crowded.
How do you find sections of the ocean so it is therapeutic and not a big fistfight in
the middle of the ocean?
I try to go when the sun's barely coming up because those guys are usually asleep still.
So I try to go very early or we're lucky, we're close to Baja.
We can go down into Mexico.
You can always find spots where there's nobody else.
Beautiful.
All right, well then where can people find one more wave online?
Sure.
So we have Instagram, it's just one M wave or the website's onemorewave.com.
Pretty easy.
Just you'll find this all over the place.
And then so people can apply to actually protect themselves, but also they can donate on there?
They can donate, they can volunteer, they can join a chapter.
Chapter is just, you're not joining a gang.
We're not going to give you a patch and have to do anything.
You just come to these groups.
It just means you can come surf and join everybody in the ocean.
Everyone's welcome.
We're all inclusive.
Anybody can come, we're family friendly.
So join a chapter, you can volunteer.
You can, if you volunteer, we can help you volunteer at one of the competitions.
Those are kind of the most rewarding.
Go volunteer at some of these adaptive competitions that are here on the West Coast.
There's also some all over the place.
So we can connect you with all those folks.
You can donate.
You can follow us on Instagram, whatever your jam is.
Just come hang out.
What I would say, what I always like to say is if you have somebody that's struggling,
you have a friend, it can be a first responder, it can be a veteran, just reach out.
If they don't like surfing, that's okay.
I'll connect them with something that they like.
I guarantee there's something that they're into.
It could be pottery, it could be art, it could be archery, skydiving, hunting, child predators.
There's all kinds of cool groups that you can be a part of and volunteer with that can
give you some new purpose.
Beautiful.
And then what about yourself personally?
Where are the best places to reach out if someone wanted to?
Sure.
You can grab me on Instagram.
That's robgarnett.
Fantastic.
Well, Rob, I want to say thank you so much.
It's been such an amazing conversation.
I mean, obviously your military career in itself, but I'm always enamored by anyone
who has served as a profession, but then looks around and realizes that more needs to be
done.
And so they carry on even though they've transitioned out.
And I think that what you're doing at One More Wave, it kind of aligns with SurfWell
in the UK, which is a bunch of police officers and what Tom Hewitt's doing, even though he
wasn't military specifically.
There are answers to so many of the problems.
And some people like to hike, some people like to surf, some people want to skydive
or just be around animals, whatever it is.
But to know that these programs are there and people can find the right fit for them,
I think is so important.
So I want to thank you so much for being so generous with your time and coming on the
Behind the Shield podcast today.
Thank you.
That's it for today.