Episode Transcript
[00:00:09] Speaker A: Ukraine was a roller coaster.
Spent a lot of time over there in early 2022, went over there multiple times. For a country that's not been thriving ever, they're definitely hurting now. The human loss, like politics aside, you know, history aside, any of that stuff, right is right and wrong is wrong and it's just needless death.
[00:00:29] Speaker B: Welcome back to Code Red. My name is Zack Terry. I am your host and on today's episode we are welcoming Seth Griffith. Seth is an operator for Aerial Recovery. It is a mission not for profit organization that is driven to step into some of the darkest places and bring hope and life, whether that's a natural disaster, a war zone or human trafficking happening all over the world.
Seth is going to tell us about not only what they're doing, but how you can get involved. This is one of those episodes that if you know someone who is in the military, they'll want to watch this. So be sure to like share, comment and make sure that our brothers and sisters who served in the armed forces have an opportunity to hear how they can get involved as well. You're not going to want to miss this one. Welcome to Code Red.
Seth Griffith, welcome to Code Red. It's good to have you in studio today.
[00:01:37] Speaker A: Thanks for having me, Zach. Glad to be here.
[00:01:38] Speaker B: We met after a church service like what, three weeks ago maybe?
[00:01:42] Speaker A: I believe so.
[00:01:43] Speaker B: And you've just recently relocated down from Nashville.
[00:01:46] Speaker A: Nashville, Tennessee.
[00:01:47] Speaker B: Grabbed lunch together and was fascinated with what you're up to in life and what God has you doing. Tell us about Aerial Recovery.
[00:01:57] Speaker A: Yeah, Aerial Recovery. We're a registered 501 nonprofit and we are passionate about rehabilitating veterans and first responders.
I'm a veteran. Our co founder, Jeremy Locke's a veteran. We have a lot of capable men and women. They go through traumatic events and then they want to try to get back to being more themselves and being an asset in their communities. And what we're doing is we're taking veterans and first responders and getting them some healing, finding out, meeting them where they're at and then hopefully repurposing them into being humanitarian special operators to work alongside of us. We can't do this by ourselves. We're lean and we need to use capable people to come alongside of us and we respond to natural and man made disasters and we're combating human trafficking with these amazing people that come alongside of us and have servants hearts.
[00:02:44] Speaker B: Saving lives and stopping evil, I think is what the mission statement said.
So it's one of those things you hear and you think, why is somebody just now figuring this out? Just a great idea. Because you'll have guys who've been active duty and these are military guys, sometimes Special Forces that have either seen combat or seen some dark things.
And you've come from a special Forces background as well, is that correct?
[00:03:15] Speaker A: Yeah, I did some stuff in the air. I was in the air Force for 20 years, worked with some special operations units to do some deployments. And I've seen full spectrum what these men and women are capable of.
[00:03:25] Speaker B: And so, and we all know, and being a pastor and working with guys, I was in an army base up in Alabama at Redstone Arsenal in that community and here it's mostly Navy, but having a lot of our people who've either from the Vietnam era to now who've seen action in battle and will come back and it has an effect on people.
And so whether it's PTSD or whatever it might be, there's, we're getting better at knowing how to minister and how to what therapy works there. But so often it's just, man, you were on the edge of the edge of the point of the spear and now you're coming back to just normal life. And that in itself has got to be difficult for, for men and women to, to wrap their heart mind around.
[00:04:19] Speaker A: Yeah. When you, when you're kind of reprogrammed to think a different way for a long time, whether you're a veteran or a first responder, it's. And then when you have to shift gears and start that next chapter, everything you've experienced along the way is, is going to, you're going to be bringing that with you, all that, all that baggage. So to be able to see that you don't live at your, you know, use your past as a reference, not a resonance, and then what can I carry forward is a great way for people to start looking at it. But sometimes they've got to go through a lot of self discovery, healing, owning some of their own mistakes, being vulnerable and talking about difficult things to get back in a better place to be able to do these things again.
[00:05:02] Speaker B: And if they don't, if they don't have people that are helping and investing in them, oftentimes they'll self medicate and just try to fix themselves.
[00:05:12] Speaker A: Yeah, I self medicated for a very long time. I think I shared this with you a little bit at lunch was for a lack of better words, a functioning alcoholic for a good part of the latter part of my career.
And it was a way for me to Numb myself. A way for me to not feel, you know, obviously feel so many things and I did not handle it right and I own that. But a lot of veterans, they don't really know where to turn. They feel like the system is broken. And a lot of us feel like, well, some people are way off, way worse off than I am. So I'm not gonna go, you know, take appointment time from another veteran that needs it worse than I do.
So we just want to heal people, we just want to meet them where they're at. And we're really passionate with our Heal the Heroes initiative about pouring back into people with servants hearts and showing them that they don't have to do this with bombs and bullets anymore.
Some of our biggest skills is all the training that we received in our mindset. And now we can lead with our hearts and our minds and go be God's servants in a world that's very dark.
[00:06:18] Speaker B: Do you think to some degree, if guys are in, whether they're in combat or they're just in a situation where you have to be on full alert, there's a measure of adrenaline and excitement to that.
Did you experience any of that coming from active duty when you come back to the real world or civilian life, was it kind of boring?
[00:06:43] Speaker A: It was very mundane.
I talk about this quite a bit actually.
You work with like minded people for a very long time. You're very mission oriented. It's like playing a team sport. And professional athletes go through a lot of these same things, like what do I do next?
Can you ask the question one more time?
[00:07:01] Speaker B: I'm sorry, I'm wondering and the reason I'm asking where I'm getting it from. We did nine years in itinerant ministry. So I would go into a church and do a revival or crusade or youth event conference, whatever it was.
Every one of those events, like I would lay awake at night the day before, praying and anticipating like this could be the next great awakening.
So you were living in that code red moment of just it could really come down, it could happen.
And you go into it with that sense of urgency. And there was an adrenaline rush to it that when I transitioned into a stable pastoral ministry, it's not the same. And so week after week after week long obedience in the same direction. But there was a sense even in ministry of going from that adrenaline rush to what do I do when it's not there? And there was a sense in which you began to grab at straws and think, okay, I've got to replace that with something and sometimes it can be a dangerous straw you grab.
[00:08:10] Speaker A: Yeah, it's some. Some guys, they'll engage in reckless behavior just to get a rush. I've never really been that guy.
A lot of guys, they almost forget how to enjoy things because you're, you know, you get. Once you've seen so many different types of things, you kind of start becoming desensitized to a lot of it. To your point of the adrenaline rush, I don't get the same enjoyment nearly as I used to from a handful of things, whether it be water sports or even watching football.
I'm still into it. But there's just something that happens where the part of the pleasure center in your brain and all that. If you've had bruises, traumatic brain injuries in there, you're dealing with a lot of stuff. So the guys are definitely getting out. They're missing the competitive nature of training. They're missing maybe the rush of jumping out of a plane or rappelling off of something.
And they're just trying to. To blend in and sometimes feel very misunderstood in trying to do that.
[00:09:09] Speaker B: So as a. From the pastoral perspective, we've witnessed that guys who would come into the church, if they're, let's say, five, eight years off of active duty, they've just moved to the area. Sometimes they're like, in the civilian world, but they're serving the base in some capacity because that's their expertise. So they'll move in and. And probably within a year, they're beginning to get antsy and they're looking for that next move. And a lot of times it's just moving because they've done this. If they're career military, they've moved their entire life, and then suddenly having that vision for not. It's not boring. It is kind of boring. It's like, you know, the Christian life in some ways, while it's a great adventure, at the same time, you know, you don't want. You don't want to be living with instability perpetually. You don't want to be living with a marriage that's just about to fall apart or kids that are rebelling constantly. And so the goal is to get to a place to where we can just treat it like a farm.
We're weeding it, we're fertilizing it, we're watering it. But life is something that we're trying to manage that way.
Our military brothers and sisters, when they come in, I've noticed a sense of man. That level was here, and now I'm here with passion. And adrenaline and action.
So I see what you're doing in aerial recovery as a healthy alternative.
You want to keep this thing that can kind of hit that adrenaline high and give you that boost, make you feel like you're using your skills to contribute.
But at the same time, it's in a safe way.
Not safe for the rest of us, but it's in a situation where you can walk into it and do good and it's mission by mission you're not having to worry about. Are there ulterior motives here? But you're looking at it saying, I can go in and serve and in the hottest of places sometimes, but get back to that sense of feeling useful and helpful.
Is that accurate?
[00:11:36] Speaker A: Yeah.
A lot of our veterans and first responders, they're lacking purpose. They had a very purposeful, honorable job for a long time and they've shifted gears to your point earlier. If someone just separated from the military and they're here and they're kind of figuring out what they're going to do next, that transition is going to look different for everyone.
It looked different for me for a while until I discovered this.
Once I found this vehicle, I climbed aboard and I've been loving it and thriving ever since.
It's going to be different for each veteran and we would love to talk with everyone about what we're doing. For anyone that we know personally here that's lacking purpose, is lacking identity.
It's really, really common and a lot. And they feel like they, their mission is over and let me tell you, it's just beginning. If they want to really see, like peel layers back.
For a lot of us, the mission is just beginning.
[00:12:30] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:12:31] Speaker A: Because there's so much work to do with modern day slavery. Excuse me, with, you know, these, you know, the climate is, the planet's been getting hotter. It's no, no secret. It's been doing that since the last ice age. I believe I'm wrong, but the storms are getting stronger. People live in, you know, coastal areas. People aren' prepared. So we've got that sweet spot where veterans can come on, they can get some healing and getting back to feeling like they're at their base again. Right. Like, okay, I'm at my baseline. I can maybe handle some additional stress right now and do a deployment. But we're able to take those guys and show them purpose. We're able to feed them and helping them heal from their traumas. Now they're going out and they're helping all around the planet with any number of problem sets that we Encounter.
[00:13:20] Speaker B: How did you get engaged with this?
[00:13:22] Speaker A: Work a great. So actually it's a funny story.
Not so funny, but parts of this story, if I was to tell the long version, would be funny. A great buddy Austin said, you gotta meet my buddy Jeremy. He's a Green Beret. He's in Syria right now. This is when I was back in Nashville and we were flipping a bunch of houses and Jeremy got back from Syria, met him at a birthday party in July of 2020, and then was at another. It was at a wedding in Texas in September. Linked up again, and then we just stayed in touch. And he was in Nashville. He was getting out of the Army. He was an active Duty Green Beret, 5th Special Forces Group up Fort Campbell. It's about an hour north of Nashville.
And during his internship that he did, he was basically. They were building out what aerial recovery is going to look like and we just became friends. And then in spring of 2021, we started talking a lot more seriously.
Got married to my lovely bride Jenna, who you all met on May 1st of 2021 and was kind of at that point building custom homes in Nashville and doing about 30% of my time with aerial recovery and came in full time end of August 2021. Remember the earthquakes in Haiti?
[00:14:32] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:14:33] Speaker A: I was not able to respond on there with the team, but that event was the catalyst for them being like, all right, let's just get this done.
They hired me to be the director of disaster response and I supported Brittany, Jeremy, Marco and some of our amazing volunteers from the rear from Nashville on the computer, helping with mission planning, helping with contacts, tracking them, situation reports, stuff like that. And then have been aboard ever since. And it's really woke me up. And it was a great move for me. It was a great move for my family.
It's helped me reach the highest version of myself through just continually focus on healing, generally focus on serving and just being part of something bigger than myself.
[00:15:15] Speaker B: When, when veterans come into the program, there's a. There's a series of training, a time of sort of equipping and getting. Getting their bearings. What does that look like with their recovery?
[00:15:29] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah, it's.
[00:15:31] Speaker B: So, I mean, I'm assuming some of this, but I'm thinking I've saw that there's an acclimation period of just kind of learning what you do. And I'm assuming there has to be some kind of strategic planning that you're not just saying, okay, here's your gear, go to work.
Tell me about what that looks like.
[00:15:53] Speaker A: Yeah, we're very big planners. So Green Berets are probably the best. Not probably. They are the best planners we have in our U.S. armed forces. They will mission plan for 20 hours for a two minute mission.
They're really great at what they do. They're great trainers, they're great advisors. So we've developed a training program to where our volunteers that come in or our heroes that come to our Healer Heroes program get trained up in a basic disaster response training which includes osteo medicine, search and rescue techniques, rescue ropes, stop the bleed mission planning, how to handle a key leader, engagement, like if you're talking to a local sheriff or maybe even a president of a country at some point, a disaster to respond to. And then we have an advanced training that's our special operations, advanced reconnaissance. And that's more of the tip of the spear kind of going up the mountains. In Haiti when an earthquake happens and it's 100 degrees. Or in Ukraine rescuing orphans and non combatants. Just don't want to die from all the aggression and fighting. Or in Pakistan when a third of that country is underwater. Couple years ago, offering to help in any way, shape or form we can.
[00:16:54] Speaker B: Is there, is there ever a sense, is there a vetting process to say, hey man, this person might need to get some counseling before they go into the program?
[00:17:03] Speaker A: So we're real big at implementing a long look at people. And so people that go through the Heal the Heroes program, obviously we know more about them, about their walk, about what hurts, and then we're meeting them where they're at, engaging their capability. Because you're right, we've had some turnover with our staff for that point because people just weren't through their healing journey yet. And they were in a good spot, but they weren't quite there yet. But we're real big about making sure that we don't put anyone in a bad place. And the long look allows us to see them in a training environment. Because just because you were an infantryman or whatever 10 years ago, that was 10 years ago. Where are you at right now? Because we're going to meet you. You got to meet us and we got to have accountability who you are so that we don't put you in a bad position somewhere in the United States or responding to disaster or somewhere around the globe doing something.
So we do have an implemented process for that. We do emotional debriefs after missions to see where guys are at. Because some of the stuff you see is a little difficult to process.
You know, some of the earthquakes you See, I mean, we saw so many dead bodies in Turkey in 2023, it just became kind of like seeing a plant getting numb too, over there. Yeah, you see it, you're like, oh, again.
And then a little further down the road. So the long look gives us the opportunity to see someone in disaster response training see some, you know, see, you know, what are they like, what's their personality like?
And that allows us to gauge if they would be a good fit for doing some of the anti human trafficking task force training or some of the other anti human trafficking missions and training that we do.
[00:18:35] Speaker B: So, and then, so saving lives and stopping evil, that's sort of the twofold mission. Saving lives is going to be more your natural disasters. Stopping evil would be the things like human trafficking. Let's talk about each one.
Tell me about, let's start with the stopping evil. What exactly are you guys? What evil are you stopping?
[00:18:55] Speaker A: So, I mean, God's children are not for sale, right?
And women, children, men.
There are a lot of people that are coerced. There are a lot of people that are manipulated. A lot of people are tricked and they get in situations that they don't even understand. Some people, because of the economy in their, in their area, it's, it's, it's just kind of not necessarily accepted, but it's just one of those things.
[00:19:18] Speaker B: It's a cultural norm.
[00:19:19] Speaker A: A cultural norm. And a lot of other people are just looking the other way while this happens. Or there are some movements that are trying to normalize some of the stuff, some of the pedophilia, the age differences and what you're attracted to. You know, obviously, you know, we've got a lot of, you know, stuff going on with transgenderism and people with just that are confused in general.
So the manipulation runs deep. People are groomed in a lot of this stuff. The evil starts on the Internet and people with children need to be super careful. But it's all encompassing and it's, it's, it's a big problem across our planet.
[00:19:55] Speaker B: It's been interesting to me in mission work to observe that some of these third world countries are very conservative in family values per se. Like, you know, their family units stay together. They have a tribe mentality of how they raise their children.
And at the same time, so you kind of think, okay, those two things don't go together. You don't see, like, alcoholism may be a big thing, the men may be off and the ladies raising the kids, but you don't think about the transgenderism and all of Those type of issues in that society, it's kind of like the 50s for the US that just wasn't so much of an issue then.
But in a strange way, whatever the enemy's doing here, he's doing it everywhere. I'm talking. You can go to Havana, Cuba, where you don't have gang violence, you don't have.
You don't have a big narcotics ring happening in Cuba.
But even there, with the controls that the communist government has put on the people there, you have a transgender movement. And it's everywhere.
And that's just been an interesting dynamic.
But I think you're right. There's someone behind that who's pushing these things to happen.
[00:21:17] Speaker A: What's your take? Why do you think it's getting so much.
Why does it have so much energy.
[00:21:21] Speaker B: Behind it right now when I've explored it? So when it happened in Cuba and we saw it with Castros, we found that there's usually one person in the family that the enemy's kind of gone after. And so this was one of the daughters of one of the presidents down there, and she felt passionately about this issue, and she was in that community.
So it's almost like the leader says, okay, we're going to make an exception here because we have someone in our family who has gone into that lifestyle, and we do. We don't want to disenfranchise her, so we're going to make an exception. We're going to be kind of toe the line or have conservative values and all these other issues on that, we're going to give them a massive pass.
And so I think it's a. It's a satanic strategy that will cause people like us who believe conservative values for 99% of the things out there.
It's an area that we don't understand, we don't have a playbook for. And we're looking at it and going, I don't, you know, even in scripture, where's transgenderism? Where does it show us how to. How to respond to this?
And in. In the absence of clarity, it's like the enemy just manipulates that and causes us to just lower our defenses. It's what it seems like. Does that make any sense?
[00:22:55] Speaker A: It does.
It does. There's definitely something to be said about singling out the. The slow buffalo or the, you know, the, the, you know, the weakling. It's.
I don't. I hate to say it that way, but, like, it's so.
[00:23:12] Speaker B: It's like this. It's not so much that Universally, like some of the greatest people I know are in that community, like the greatest artist or technical thinkers, whatever it may be. It's not that they're weak as a human, but that particular area, for whatever reason, has been compromised. And we all have areas in our life that are broken like that.
[00:23:32] Speaker A: I feel like everyone has things about themselves they don't like.
[00:23:36] Speaker B: Exactly.
[00:23:38] Speaker A: And I just. I choose to work on those areas of me, not try to. And I've worn a social mask. I wore it a long time when I was drinking heavily.
I'm familiar with wearing a mask. It's a different mask. But, I mean, I get it. But I don't understand, and I don't understand all the push and the playbook that you were speaking of.
It's stacked against, you know, people, you know, working on themselves first. It seems like it's. If you talk to someone or it's crept into our household with our youngest, and when he talks to someone, they're almost afraid not to affirm as a. As a specialist, as a professional, what this person's feeling because they're afraid of catching backlash or something.
[00:24:25] Speaker B: Oh, totally.
[00:24:26] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:24:26] Speaker B: It's very difficult to find anybody who will say, hey, look, I get that these feelings and this.
This sense of reality that you have is real.
At the same time, there are feelings that I have that are real that I've got to say no to.
[00:24:43] Speaker A: Yeah.
Every one of us at one point has been unhappy with ourselves in one way, shape or form, but now there's this new path you can take that is leading people to think they can change that or they'll feel happier if they're. This.
[00:24:57] Speaker B: I found.
You know, we mentioned earlier, it's almost like a religion.
So there's denominations, lgbtq, the Alphabet thing, but it's almost like a religion in that there's community.
It's very tight knit. It's very affirming.
In my first church, we had a couple, a gay couple who came to our church, and they were interested in membership and all of this. And I'm like, okay, I get you want to go to church, and you're welcome to go to church here. I don't understand. We're like the most conservative church in the county. What drew you to us? And it was a family thing. They had family there.
As we got to talking, one of the two in the couple had an std, a serious std, probably aids.
They had not been sexually active for years.
And I said, why do you consider yourself gay if you're not sexually engaged? Well, they're still same sex attracted. But in his mind, he said it's more than just that act for him. He said it was a lifestyle in a community. He said we've got a community of people. And what he would describe sounded like the church.
It was like we've got the large community, a movement and then we've got small groups, we've got curriculum, we've got symbolism, the flags.
[00:26:22] Speaker A: Sense of belonging is huge.
[00:26:23] Speaker B: Oh, it's huge.
[00:26:24] Speaker A: I mean you want to be a part of a community. You want to have a place where you feel accepted unconditionally, as imperfect as you are, right?
[00:26:31] Speaker B: And so in, you know, as a pastor, you see people all the time who are at the end of their rope. They've tried everything else, they turn to Christ, they find a sense of acceptance and belonging. They find, they find a structure of understanding of worldview and they're in and they're in for life.
It's almost the same conversion experience for a person who's wrestled with that, those temptations along the way and then suddenly they enter into the community and everything is laid out for.
The only thing that I've seen that they will kind of second guess it is if they observe someone trying to leave that community.
So if someone is in that community and they're hyper accepted, you can do no wrong because that's just a different Alphabet in different letter. So we'll just call you something else if you want to do that. Go for it, man. It's all acceptable here.
The only thing that's unacceptable is leaving.
And if they say, okay, I'm going to be a straight cisgendered guy, I'm going to join a Baptist church and love Jesus.
They have no letter for that.
[00:27:51] Speaker A: They don't. And what would we, if someone left the church, what would you and I do? We would pray for them, right?
[00:27:54] Speaker B: Pray for them, love them, go after them, try to win them.
But when you leave that community, it becomes all of the wickedness comes out.
And we've seen it in this city when we would lead people to Christ from that community. It's difficult to leave for them because those are long term thoughts and systems they've given into when they leave that community.
I'm talking vicious, vicious attacks.
And so it takes a lot of courage to leave.
But it's like leaving a cult, you know, so it, for me it looks a lot like a religion in that regard. I don't want to call it a religion, but it looks like a religion and it behaves like a religion.
And so, I don't know. I think that's worldwide. I think that's happening all over the planet. And you'll see certain places, just like in Scripture, where they get a foothold, like in Sodom, and it's marked by that particular sin issue, and it attracts that community.
But in every community, I do not know of a church that's not wrestling with it. People in their congregation that struggling with it.
So it's a global pandemic as we speak.
The problem we all face as adults, we all face temptations and threats.
Sometimes we make the right decision, sometimes we don't.
But it's not okay for children to be the collateral damage.
And. And I do believe that especially in a nation that allows freedom of choice, you know, if friend down the street decides to act like he's changing gender or whatever it might be, that's his right to do that. I don't agree with it. I'm not going to support him. But at the same time, I do believe you have the right to make that decision if you choose to do so.
When it's forced on kids, that's where it's a different category.
And I think what, what you guys have seen, where you've stepped in, is when kids began to be the seeds for these organizations, and they're. They're roped in at an early age to trafficking and exploitation.
At the beginning of the.
The start of aerial recovery, was that on the radar or did that evolve?
[00:30:33] Speaker A: Yeah, it's been on the radar the entire time.
[00:30:36] Speaker B: When they started, they. They had that in their mind that they wanted to help those kids.
[00:30:40] Speaker A: Yes. Oh, yeah. Yeah. Brittany.
So we have two co founders, Brittany Turner and Jeremy Locke. Brittney saw evil, you know, as early as 12 years old, into her teens, on some mission trips, and she watched a documentary that really formed and shaped what she wanted to do and be passionate about.
So it's not lost on us, you know, what happens. And we want to not just be a beacon of light when it comes to, like, helping the situation, but also helping with awareness of what's going on.
[00:31:13] Speaker B: Help us help our audience to understand how real this is. Because, honestly, total transparency. You know, I grew up in Alabama, moved to Florida eight years ago.
One of the first things I was asked to do was to go to Guatemala to meet with the president and first lady to discuss how we could curb human trafficking.
And honestly, I went into that meeting thinking, why did they pick me? I'm not even sure this is real, honestly, because I've never seen someone who said, yeah, I was a slave, I was trafficked, I'd never met that.
I wouldn't know a prostitute if I saw them. I mean in this little community.
It's here, I know it now. But at that time it just seemed like kind of naive I guess to that. So I thought it was just kind of a sales technique.
[00:32:06] Speaker A: Honestly, most people don't know what they're looking for. Modern slavery looks nothing like it used to. There's no change, there's no, there's no prison guard for this.
It's absolutely happening.
[00:32:19] Speaker B: How does it work?
[00:32:20] Speaker A: How does it work?
[00:32:21] Speaker B: How does it work?
So if you have a family that's impoverished, third world country and they've got a child, how does that child go from being a happy kid growing up, playing with his friends or her friends, how do they go from that to being in a very adult industry and situation?
[00:32:41] Speaker A: Sometimes it's as simplistic as you know, they're the youngest kid, they're the less beneficial to the family so they're treated as such and they're a money making.
[00:32:51] Speaker B: Asset and that's more sought after the younger.
[00:32:55] Speaker A: Sometimes it varies.
Every person has a different fetish, it seems like, or desire when it comes to this kind of stuff. This. We've, we've, we. There was a guy that was making videos down in South, I'll call it South America that was teaching other people like him how to time and time again have sex with someone as young as six months old and not damage them.
So yeah, the problem starts, it starts in the family.
When economically developed or challenged countries like Venezuela, you know, you name it, it goes on and on.
You're going to try to support your family how you can. You're going to, you know, if you've got seven kids, I hate to say it like that but you see where I'm going with this.
It's not necessarily accepted or unaccepted but it's just look the other way and there's just a lot of it's happening that began.
[00:33:51] Speaker B: Somebody hears that this is a thing, they move in that direction. Is it a network? Like when I think of narcotics or something like that.
[00:33:59] Speaker A: It's, it's, it's organized.
[00:34:00] Speaker B: Who's organizing it?
[00:34:01] Speaker A: A lot of it is organized by mid level criminals. Then you know a lot of it, sometimes it's tried in with drugs obviously if you think about that they go hand in hand but it's, it's, it's happening and it's, they're, they're, they're Good at what they do, but what they don't, what they don't account for is that now there's people out there actually trying to do something about this.
I'm not going to go into that all too much for obvious reasons, but criminal enterprise is not dumb.
And there are some places prostitution is legal. Right, but is it legal for a girl that told you they were 20, that's been working there for five years or six years?
Think about that, you know, or, you know, just seeing, you know, in. In a room, you know, child's toys next to potentially sex toys in an establishment somewhere in central South America. Not.
[00:34:59] Speaker B: Right, well. So, yeah, and I understand there's only so far you can go, but. But we can imagine. And there's been some documentaries about, about this sort of thing.
You know, I would just say today that it's real. It's. It's happening. It's happening on a big scale.
It's global.
It's not just in these impoverished third world situations.
It's in Florida. I think Florida is the gateway for a lot of these people that are being trafficked. And it requires to put a stop to it. It requires every level of running interference from the national leaders recognizing it and saying they're going to do something about it, to, you know, legislators writing the laws differently, having borders that are safe and closed and checking about who's coming into this country down to, thankfully, people like yourself who can at times go in and run recovery missions.
And, you know, I'm thinking about this guy who's seen action in the military.
He's desiring a way to plug in, a way to use that skill set that doesn't always transfer clearly from Lowe's department store to the front lines of the military.
And he's looking for a way to use that skill set and those gifts. It just seems like you're solving two problems with one stone.
[00:36:34] Speaker A: Yeah, two stones with one bird. Yeah, we're definitely funny there.
We definitely have seen good results from approaching things the way that we have.
By helping servants, we are helping serve others.
[00:36:52] Speaker B: Right?
[00:36:53] Speaker A: And it's cyclical, and the healing is continual and the mission is going to be continual.
We can't do this by ourselves without our volunteers, without our heroes, without our sponsors and donors and supporters. It takes an army to do any of this.
[00:37:10] Speaker B: In just a moment, I want to really delve into that because this is one of those things that I look at and go, okay, man, I've been trained to preach the word. I can do that. I don't really need to be going in these operations. As cool as it sounds to me, and as much as I would love to be a part of it, that's really not my place in this work. But there is a place for people like me in this work and we want to talk about that. Let's talk a little bit about natural disasters. What are some of the natural disasters where you guys have served?
[00:37:41] Speaker A: What we served here in my new home state of Florida.
We were down here very active in Helene and Milton last summer. We're gearing up right now. We're in storm season. It's July 2, right?
[00:37:53] Speaker B: Yeah, it just began.
[00:37:54] Speaker A: So everyone be prepared, be ready to go.
Part of resilience is being prepared.
Hurricane Ian a couple years ago crushed Pine island and all the down there, actually, matter of fact. So the. When we came down for Helene, I wasn't part of the initial team. I stayed back in Nashville because we were worried about some flooding going on back there as well because the storms are pretty bad. But the team pivoted from, from Helene down in Florida to up into Asheville, where we spent 90 plus days.
[00:38:21] Speaker B: And that area was. Was, oh, my God. You didn't expect it to hit the way it did there.
[00:38:25] Speaker A: People moved to Asheville because nothing weather related happens in Asheville. And you may get some snow, you may get some rain.
[00:38:31] Speaker B: It has always been kind of one of the most pleasant places to live. I'm thinking Charleston, that's been considered a more pleasant part of the country to move to because of the lack of natural disasters. But up in those mountains especially, they are not prepared for this.
[00:38:49] Speaker A: Well, the terrain is very channelized. There's creeks everywhere coming out of the hills. And some of the mountains, the high terrain.
Yeah, you know, they received. I Forget it was 7 or 8 inches of rain and then there was a little break in the rain. And then they got like 30 inches from. From Helene and that water had nowhere to go. The ground was already saturated. Creeks became rivers. Houses that were hundreds of feet from these little creeks were washed away, roads washed away.
Horrible, horrible. And it's.
What do you do? You know, we're going to respond. We got there as quick as we could.
I got in a couple days after the guys were there, had a buddy help me get in out there.
[00:39:28] Speaker B: But when you go into an area like that, what is your mission control? How do you set up shop?
[00:39:35] Speaker A: We will go in and we'll integrate with local law enforcements and authorities right away. We'll introduce ourselves, we'll show our certifications. You Know, here's who we are, here's our capabilities, our qualifications, here's the equipment we have. So they kind of see that we're a legitimate organization. We're not just showing up and we're going to be, you know, a liability out there or something. We don't want to be the first responder that other first responder has to respond to.
[00:39:55] Speaker B: Right.
[00:39:56] Speaker A: So we integrate in with them. We, we see if they have any taskings for us. We integrate in right away. We like, we're really good at doing area reconnaissance, reporting back what we're seeing into hard, hard to reach areas. That's where are some of our military training that's kind of specialized comes into hand.
[00:40:10] Speaker B: Is this with planes or helicopters or.
[00:40:12] Speaker A: What do you do? Helicopters. We use helicopters in Asheville for sure. We actually. So really cool story if I can for a second from Asheville, there was a mother and her 10 day old baby that was in really bad condition. I can't remember like the exact specifics of it, but our team, Charlie and a couple other guys, they got in and they got, they got the mother and the baby out and safe to a hospital, which is really, really cool because they weren't going to make it much longer. And it was.
[00:40:38] Speaker B: Let me, let me ask about that a little bit because I watched some stuff about that particular event.
Phil McGraw was engaged in that, if I remember correctly. Was that the same one?
[00:40:49] Speaker A: I'm not recognizing the name Phil.
[00:40:51] Speaker B: Dr. Phil.
[00:40:52] Speaker A: Oh, Dr. Phil. Yeah, Dr. Yeah, we run Dr. Phil show.
[00:40:54] Speaker B: I'm sorry. So. So you guys, you guys have some connections in some pretty significant places. I that that needs to be said. And he's one of those. And I think one thing that was really cool with it when because just getting to this baby that was on the brink, it was a life or death situation.
And just getting to that baby, the regular first responders were not going to be able to do it. It was going to require somebody with your capabilities to step in and they were willing to let you do that.
It was a challenge. If I remember correctly, from the air, just getting the chopper into them.
[00:41:34] Speaker A: Yeah.
To land a helicopter you have to have a little cleared space. Sometimes to find access point for a helicopter landing zone can be tricky.
[00:41:42] Speaker B: But this baby was within hours.
[00:41:45] Speaker A: Yeah. Was not doing well at all.
[00:41:47] Speaker B: And so you guys were able to go over the debris to get to the child. Get that child, I think to Nashville.
[00:41:54] Speaker A: Asheville.
[00:41:55] Speaker B: Asheville. Okay. And then baby made it.
[00:41:58] Speaker A: Yep. Baby mama doing okay. We were able to coordinate, you know, A rooftop landing. You know, one of our heroes and volunteers was. Was helping us out and saw what was going on. And he was a. A pilot in the 160th at Fort Campbell, helped us with getting in. And we were able to get on the rooftop and get mother and baby into proper care immediately.
[00:42:18] Speaker B: And in those situations, communications are down, cell phones only last so long with no power.
So if I again, correct me if I'm wrong, but if I remember correctly, Elon helped with some Starlink devices. Dr. Phil called in a favor and got some Starlink devices in so that you could communicate with some of the people on the ground there.
[00:42:41] Speaker A: We got a ton of Starlinks over there. We got some help from Elon with Starlink's in Ukraine as well. But, yeah, Starlink has been such a blessing because some of these areas we would go out to on area reconnaissance. Once you get up in the hills, I mean, the people were wanting to rebuild their houses. They wanted to leave. So we're trying to figure out, okay, what's the best and highest use of us being there to get them what they need. It's starting to get cold at night, you know, no food, running water. So bringing them generators, bringing them a Starlink, checking in, doing medical assessments, just able to be what you and I would hope someone would show up for us if something happens, what we were trying to be for them.
[00:43:18] Speaker B: Awesome. Tell me about your work in Ukraine. How has that gone?
[00:43:22] Speaker A: Yeah, very rewarding. So do we have time for a little story about that, please?
So the work in Ukraine was great. The team did amazing things with establishing safe houses in Western Ukraine to not displaced people from their country, which the lack of accountability, not be able to get trafficked. A documentary will be coming out about that called Hidden War. Some point in the future.
Ukraine was interesting because, I mean, obviously there's war going on and we can't be armed or now you're a target.
[00:43:52] Speaker B: I wondered about that. I wondered how.
[00:43:53] Speaker A: So we were just evacuating people, but we would bring medical supplies to frontline fighters, you know, so they could stop the bleed, take care of themselves. Some X ray equipment, stuff like that, but we would never want. So if we would drive. Ukraine's a large, very large country, so you drive all that way, you don't want to go in with empty buses and vans. So we would bring in aid. We bring in, you know, tourniquets, stuff like that in, and then bring out as many souls away from harm on the way back into Western Ukraine, and safe houses that Were established.
Very rewarding work. And it very, very.
I'm not getting emotional here, but it was very interesting for me because I literally found all I knew about my father's side of the family previous to this. They were Western Russian Jews that fled because of all the persecution and, you know, went to Poland and UK, ended up in St Louis where Sheldon met my mom.
But about 30 minutes, where I was about to be one of the only people walking into Ukraine because millions were leaving, I talked to my. My. My half brother Alex, and he was like, you. Our family's Ukrainian.
[00:45:02] Speaker B: Wow.
[00:45:02] Speaker A: Grandparents, great grandparents lived in Kiev. So I literally found this out about myself.
[00:45:06] Speaker B: Oh, my goodness is.
[00:45:07] Speaker A: I was getting ready to walk across the border into Ukraine with a tough box and Barack and hat pulled down low.
Just kind of keep a low profile. Just my head was just doing this. Like, what did I just. So anyways, that was.
[00:45:19] Speaker B: That's awesome.
[00:45:20] Speaker A: Very, very interesting. So obviously I had a passion for being there.
It was not an easy time being there.
My wife and I, Jenna, we had to decide if I was going to be home when her father died, was dying from cancer, or if I was going to be home for the funeral. And I was in Ukraine when he passed. We had been messaging through. We had secure ways to message where we're safe, but she was messaging me that he was just breathing out of reflex now. And she was trying to calm me, even if it was just for me to listen to her cry. Right. But I couldn't even answer her call because there was an air raid going on. And I'm not going to answer the phone for my wife to just to be present with her as much as I could. Being thousands of miles apart and her hearing air raid sirens and Ukrainians speaking and potentially some explosion. Yeah. So Ukraine was a roller coaster.
Spent a lot of time over there in early 2022, went over there multiple times.
For a country that's not been thriving ever, they're definitely hurting now.
And it's the human loss, like politics aside, you know, history aside, any of that stuff, right is right and wrong is wrong, and it's just needless death.
[00:46:31] Speaker B: Wow. Yeah. Well, you know, it always helps me to cut through all of the things that you see on mainstream media and hear from someone who's seen it and been there. And I can't imagine, you know, you watch it day after day. It's like there aren't. These oftentimes aren't military bases. They're attacking their communities.
[00:46:54] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:46:55] Speaker B: You know, and just seeing that and imagining what would we do if that happened here?
You know, it would be insane.
[00:47:01] Speaker A: It would be insane. Oh. So here to, to put that into perspective a little bit. Remember when the half of a condo building in Miami fell a couple years ago?
[00:47:08] Speaker B: Right.
[00:47:09] Speaker A: I may be misspeaking a little bit, but that was one building and it was all over our news.
[00:47:13] Speaker B: Right, Right.
[00:47:14] Speaker A: When that earthquake happened in Turkey near the Syrian border In February of 2023, 350/,000 buildings fell at 4:30 in the morning.
[00:47:27] Speaker B: Wow.
Wow.
So the average person that hears this, they want to learn more.
Website.
[00:47:36] Speaker A: Yeah, we have a great website. We have a great team behind us.
[00:47:40] Speaker B: And all of this is going to be in the show notes by the way. But perfect.
[00:47:43] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah. Aerialrecovery.org we have ways to your point earlier for people to get involved if they've got a resource they would like to let us use in different part of the country or world during disasters, we would love to talk with them.
[00:47:55] Speaker B: So what would that be like if someone has a home in a third world country near it someone has a.
[00:48:00] Speaker A: Warehouse somewhere and they say hey if something happens here, you guys can stage out of here. Someone has a boat, someone has heavy equipment, someone has a plane. Those are nice. Helicopter, really nice.
So. And what we can do in turn is we can make them a part of our global resource alliance and we can make sure that we show like how amazing our team is and how amazing a lot of our fellow Americans or people around the world are with their hearts with letting us use their assets to help other people in their time of greatest need.
[00:48:30] Speaker B: I'm going to ask this because that's not me. I don't have those kind of resources. Right. But, but if someone does, I know people who have those kind of resources.
Can they use that to be a favorable thing at tax season so they can get a tax right off the road.
[00:48:48] Speaker A: We can do an in kind donation receipt. It's not uncommon for nonprofits to do that because again it takes an army of us. And what we want to do is when we receive a donation in we want to make sure that donations go into the the best and highest use a direct rescue or heal the heroes or you know an initiate anti human trafficking not paying salaries which is why we keep our staff so lean and we like we have amazing volunteers and heroes help us.
[00:49:14] Speaker B: Let me say from my research it's like the highest rating of a not for profit that I've seen.
[00:49:20] Speaker A: Yeah, we've been very, we've been so we became a nonprofit in Ukraine and you know, we were, there was some growing, some a learning curve with becoming a nonprofit.
But what we learned is that transparency is the best way to show everyone what you're doing. You know, we've got the platinum, platinum seal transparency.
You know, we've got everything up on our, on our website to show, you know, what's going on. You can see, you know, where the spin goes. You know, we're not, we're not paying large salaries. If I was driven by money, I would not be doing this. I would not still be serving. I didn't serve because I wanted to be rich. I served. I fell in love with serving, fell in love with the mission, the guys. And now I've fallen in love with giving back again and serving still.
[00:50:02] Speaker B: If I remember right, Jenny's sister, what's her name, the co founder, Brittany. Brittany. Brittany doesn't take a salary, if I remember correctly.
[00:50:09] Speaker A: And she works her butt off.
[00:50:11] Speaker B: That's awesome.
[00:50:11] Speaker A: That woman works circles around pretty much everyone I know.
[00:50:15] Speaker B: Wow.
[00:50:15] Speaker A: Not even pretty much.
[00:50:16] Speaker B: She does tell me a little. And we're gonna put, we'll have a QR code that we'll put up for people that want to give because every little bit helps. And I know it was really neat. On the website, you go to the give page, there's an option for monthly givers. Those are huge for, not for profits. People don't realize it.
[00:50:35] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:50:35] Speaker B: But somebody might be able to write a $10,000 check, $100,000 check. Somebody else may be able to do a dollar a day.
But it all works together.
[00:50:45] Speaker A: And it does. It all works together. There's a place for everyone. If, if someone can give five bucks, we, you know, obviously we love that.
[00:50:52] Speaker B: Right.
[00:50:53] Speaker A: But it takes all of us and we can't do it all on our own. And it's a way for other people to give back and to serve at some level as well and feel good about what their money is going to. I mean, it's one thing to donate and get a non charitable form that you can, you know, use for your taxes, but if you're passionate about, you know, what is we're doing and you see it and you get to know our organization, what we're doing, talk about feeling really good about giving back.
[00:51:20] Speaker B: Right. That's, I mean, you're close, you're close to the family, so you, hopefully you can answer some of these questions just out of curiosity. But I know when the Shaffers move down, then I would, you know, I would get to know them. I would see pictures hanging up with Brittany, with like Richard Branson, you know, these people that are, you know, world famous, you know, folks.
And obviously whatever it was she was doing was really moving a needle. It was really, you know, some awesome stuff. Found out they were involved in some things in Africa, providing water for communities in Africa.
How did, how did that transition go from whatever she did to make her mark in the world toward rescuing kids from trafficking and disaster relief and all this?
[00:52:14] Speaker A: I wouldn't say it was a transition. It was kind of part of her plan. It was part of Brittany's plan. She wanted to help economies, she wanted to help people, and she wanted to help fight evil.
And how do you do a for profit company that's gonna do that? So she developed real estate in Nashville. She became very successful. She's been in of front Forbes. She's transitioned communities that were not thriving in Nashville and made them great. And she accumulated some wealth by doing that.
But her ultimate goal has always been to getting to this, to aerial recovery. It's what she's always been wanting to get to. It's what drives her, it's what fuels her entrepreneurship. And we've had a lot of great entrepreneurs that work alongside and with us because again, it takes an asymmetric look at this thing. And Jeremy, myself, we're going to look at things a different way than an entrepreneur will. And if we all sat and looked at a problem on a whiteboard with 10 very smart people, we're going to get 10 great ideas. Oh yeah.
[00:53:16] Speaker B: I pastored a church that had 70% engineers in it. And it's like you need a few engineers, but when everybody's an engineer, it's tough. So a good blend of those skill sets are important.
It's interesting to me that she transitioned from in the secular world or the for profit world.
There's a level of excitement there that I'm sure would be comparable to the guys who've been in service, been in the military. And there's certain adrenaline rushes and highs that you get from both places. You close a great deal. There's a thrill to that.
And it's not bad. It's a good thing. It's God given.
[00:53:58] Speaker A: Money will amplify your heart.
What's already in there, money's gonna amplify it. So if you're a turd, you're gonna be a bigger turd.
[00:54:04] Speaker B: That's right.
[00:54:05] Speaker A: If you're amazing, you're just gonna become a force.
[00:54:09] Speaker B: So, so true. But yeah, it's exciting. It's exciting to see that, that she's channeled those skills and passions towards something that. That seems to be doing such a great work and brought people like you guys around.
How did the team form?
[00:54:29] Speaker A: Very quickly.
So there, you know, Marco has been here for a long time. He's great at video.
You know, I came in, you know, in August of 21, and then that was kind of the core nucleus. And it still predominantly is as far as, like, our core has been there for the longest time. We've got all the lessons learned. We, you know, it formed very, very quickly. And it wasn't hard for us to.
To start walking together because we were so aligned spiritually, you know, physically. We, you know, we take care of ourselves. It's very important for us to, you know, because we never know when we're gonna need to be called on. So we also have to be ready spiritually for that as well. Relationally, you know, there's all these pillars that if you've got. If you've got your life pointed in the right direction, then you could be in a good spot to be, you know, a light walking out there. If you're not taking care of your stuff at home, if you're not being a hero at home first, doesn't matter what you're doing out here.
[00:55:23] Speaker B: Such a good word.
[00:55:24] Speaker A: You gotta. You gotta be a hero at home first. And sometimes I miss the mark on that because we stay busy. Love you, Jenna.
But I'm doing my best, and I'm the highest version of myself now. And I wouldn't be here if it wasn't for this organization showing me a way for me to get back and serve. When I came home from the gym one morning in February 21st was a little emotional, and Jenna was like, what's wrong? And I said, I feel like I'm being called to something else. And she thought I was talking about politics.
No.
But I didn't know it was going.
[00:55:52] Speaker B: To be this wow.
[00:55:53] Speaker A: And I've not looked back since.
[00:55:55] Speaker B: When you think about this line of work, this calling, it's one of those things. It's kind of like running a funeral home. You're always going to have business. People are always dying, right? So you're always going to have a mission. There's always going to be natural disasters. Until Christ comes. New heavens, new Earth, we're going to have this sort of thing happen. Evil is always going to be there.
So I'm asking a question that I don't. I'm curious how you're going to approach it, but how do you set goals for that like, if you're, if you're looking at it and saying in five years, if we hit all of our marks, our goal is to do this five years, 10 years, whatever.
Is it just to be ready? Is it. How do you grow the organization? How do you know what a five year plan budget might look like?
[00:56:40] Speaker A: It's a moving target. It's literally a moving target.
A lot of times we're reactive to opportunities that present themselves to us. Sometimes it takes us a lot, a lot of time to develop things. You know, when you're working with other, other countries and different systems, it's, it's, you know, a different pace.
We just know what we're doing, what we're supposed to be doing.
[00:57:04] Speaker B: Yeah. Are you, Is there a cyber component to it?
[00:57:06] Speaker A: There is very big. Yeah. It's. The Internet is a dark place where a lot of the grooming happens, but.
[00:57:11] Speaker B: I'm sure that's where you get a lot of your recon and.
[00:57:13] Speaker A: Yeah. You know, yeah, a lot of stuff you got to look at, it's not pleasant to look at that you see on there, like menus of stuff basically at certain times.
But it's. The Internet is a dark place and parents monitor your children, especially any of the children's games that have the messaging parts on there, because those messages don't log, they disappear. That actually happened to us in our household. You know, our youngest was on some kind of messaging thing and was told to download WhatsApp.
That's where he basically entered a relationship with a 51 year old man in South America. That was telling zachary he was 17.
[00:57:47] Speaker B: Oh my goodness.
[00:57:48] Speaker A: Internet.
[00:57:48] Speaker B: Wow. Yeah. And I think the families that care the most about that sort of thing, you can build walls around your home really high, but the enemy can find that one narrow access point.
[00:58:02] Speaker A: I mean, if you think about it, you would think my house will be pretty safe, right?
No. Yeah.
[00:58:08] Speaker B: Wow.
[00:58:09] Speaker A: There's an Internet connection.
Politics.
[00:58:11] Speaker B: Yeah. It's like, it's like the whole world has access at that point. And so it's a, it's a dangerous thing.
Seth, thank you for coming in.
How can we pray for you?
[00:58:22] Speaker A: Pray for the evil that's happening in the world.
Pray that, you know, our team stays safe with the right, the right vision, the right mission, the right intent.
And pray for, pray for our son.
Pray for a world that's hurting.
[00:58:40] Speaker B: Amen. I know, you know, you're new to this community, so a lot of our audience is going to be local here and so I encourage them to get to know you guys to support what you're doing, and we're looking forward to ways that we can get more plugged into what you guys are up to do.
[00:58:55] Speaker A: Super looking forward to getting more involved with the church, making some friendships there, and just building community here. It's important.
I'm a community guy. We have community in the military. I had. I had amazing community back in Nashville, and I'm going to make an amazing community here. And I'm just super proud to be here and want to be an asset and want to be a friend.
[00:59:13] Speaker B: Well, you'll fit right in. You're our kind of people. God bless you, man.
[00:59:17] Speaker A: Appreciate.
