Welcome back to Caffaro Cast everyone. I'm on the Mike Solo. Frank is actually doing real live work and I have an extremely special guest on today.

Been talking to us for about an hour before we turn the turn the mics on but it's clay hot mocker is I'm pronouncing that correctly.

You're close. It's been worse than that. So clay you were a two star general I was yeah you worked in well you know what before we get into any of that I want to make sure and hit the good stuff for it first.

Tell a little bit about yourself but tell everybody what you're currently working on because that was one of the main things I wanted to get across to everyone and kind of get the word out.

Okay we happy to and thanks for having me on we actually I think used up all my good war stories just be asking before we went live here but yeah so I spend over 40 years in the military I started out as a high school drop out living in a foster home joined the Marine Corps did six and a half years got picked up a win into the army and spent the rest of my career as a special observator.

In the one sixty-eighth and retired as a two star general in 2018 after serving a tour is the J three or the director of operations for U.S. Special Ops Command down in Tampa when I retired a non-profit wasn't on my radar but vice admiral Joe McGuire had taken a position with the Trump administration he had he had been the previous CEO of the Special Ops Warrior Foundation.

And I was asked if I would be interested in applying for the job so I did and I took over September first of 2018 so I'm closing in on you know two and a half going on three years here at the Special Ops Warrior Foundation and that's what I'm doing now in the CEO and the president of the foundation were based in Tampa.

And next month will be our forty first anniversary it's interesting is a foundation was stood up in the aftermath of the failed Iranian hostage rescue attempt in 1980 Eagle claw Eagle claw exactly right you know your history not many people know that I know it was a shit show I do know that was it was that was what the reason you are who you are is because of that shit show exactly which will go into that later yeah that's a really good thing to talk about it's like it's like from the ashes of the Phoenix.

Right that so calm is the most capable special ops command on the planet anyway I digress so you know when that when that mission was aborted at the desert refueling site referred to as desert one a C H 53 or helicopter was repositioning to get gas from a park C 130 and in the dust cloud they ran into each other well more accurately the helicopter drifted into the park 130.

Kill eight yeah free Marines and five airmen those eight left behind seventeen kids so the survivors of that mission made a commitment then and there I don't even think they had redeployed yet and said we're going to take care of those seventeen kids so the foundation was you know a humble effort at the time but it's very sincere to take care of those seventeen kids and the mission is continued so today

we have nine hundred and ninety two children in our foundation that we are committed to paying for the youngest is just over a year old it's the son of Dustin Gabriel

and he's a very hard a special forces NCO from third group that was killed in August of nineteen his son was born three months later in January of twenty and he's our youngest in our education counselors told me the other day that he is class of 20 42 or 20 43 for college.

Our part we really have two major efforts one is we provide immediate financial assistance to severely wounded ill or injured special ops personnel not just operators but anybody is in the command so if they're in severe is defined as hospitalization right you know so impatient hospitalization so we overnight them up to a five K check it depends on what community with some of them

like the Navy seal foundation sends them money so we don't send you know that same amount and it depends the green braze do foundation supports them as well but we send that overnight that check to them and we also provide them an echo show which is sort of an Alexa type of thing with a video

divide video capability so they can communicate with their loved ones while they're in the hospital so it's just money to put the dogs in the kennel fly their mom in to take care of the kids so they can be with their loved ones so that's

that's one of the things we do not our main effort but our main effort is educating the children of fallen special ops personnel and the children of all living in deceased metal of honor recipients

and that support that education is not people think well it's college scholarships well that's certainly a big part of it but it's not all of it not even close so we take a more holistic view so we pay for preschool

and we have found that preschool gives these kids a real leg up for post-secondary education so we pay up to 8K per year per child for preschool

we pay unlimited tutoring from basically preschool all the way through college graduation that includes SAT, ACT, PREP whatever they need tutoring for we pay for and again unlimited

we pay for all their college visits we bring our we bring about 25 to 30 of our high school kids to Tampa every year for a college prep conference which is we help them write essays

we teach them financial management study skills time management they actually live in the dorms of the university at Tampa and here's the cool thing about that week the mentors for those kids

our graduates from our programs that are our children of fallen themselves that have volunteered to come back

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