 I joined the infantry, the first unit was in Germany, right about the time the ball was coming down, 89-90, and after about four years it just started getting dull after the Gulf War, and I had two predecessor squad leaders that joined Special Forces, so that's the path I wanted to go on, and see if I had what it takes. So I went and joined Special Forces, we were the first team to go into Southern Afghanistan. At that time it was early in the war, we had some new elements come in, they brought in some new equipment. This equipment malfunctioned, had a bad battery signal, so they changed one of the BA-5590s, and what that result did is kind of recalibrated the laser to where the next shot would calculate the location that you're at. So this attack P at the time, lays the target, sent that coordinate up to B-52, who obviously plugged in that coordinate and dropped a 2,000 pound JDAM on us. There was this young E-4 that was in the OT, occupational therapy with me, and he was brand new, 101st, just lost his arm. What are they going to do? They're not telling him anything, you know, and he had a hook, and I remember I had a bunch of business cards in my car at that time, and I said, let me give you all these, and it was, you know, the secretary of this, and the, you know, four star general of that, and all these kinds of things, and I said, you know, these people told me to call them anytime, you know, I have an issue, so take all these and call them. I mean, seriously call them. They're here to help, and there's no reason he should have this, and then it was just kind of, I don't know, it's just one of those things that affected me, like, we can do better in this. I nominated Mike for the outstanding disabled veteran of the year for all he's done. You know, since I've known him since 2012, he's always going above and beyond at helping all veterans, but particularly disabled veterans in legislative work to outdoor activities. You name it, Mike is doing so much, he's bent over backwards. He himself being a disabled veteran, he knows how important it is that we continue to improve things for disabled veterans. Mike has done a wonderful job as a member of the Minnesota Department of Veterans Affairs. The three things that really come to my mind off the top of my head are his ability as a legislative director to assist us in giving the funding for the three new homes in Minnesota, Veterans Homes. The Bell Pass that provided $32 million in funding to go towards these three veterans homes. He's also been instrumental as it relates to the Sport Our Troops grants program. And lastly, I think most recently is the COVID-19 funding for families of veterans that have been affected by COVID-19 and lost income. We've been able to help over 4,000 veterans with distribution of about $6.2 million. So I originally met Mike when he was the legislative chair for the Minnesota Department of Veterans Affairs. Mike learned that I used to hunt and loved to hunt. And once I was injured, I assumed I couldn't do that anymore. And so he encouraged me to pursue that, that he can still do it. Not obviously different challenges, but he completely motivated me to not give up in my pursuit of being able to hunt again, just having to be a little more creative over it. Mike has been instrumental in encouraging me and others to get back into the outdoors, regardless of our injuries. Ah, little Somali. There's that one, yeah, nice. The outdoors has always been part of my life. That was where the funnest times of my life were as a kid, was in the outdoors with my dad, with my, you know, cousins and my friends. And it's just been the most joyous time of my life ever. So I think one thing with Mike is his passion for the outdoors. You know, Mike's a big hunter and fisherman, and that is something that he's brought to other veterans. And you see Mike get other vets out there on the water or out there hunting. And when you get a group like that with some shared experiences, the vets really start to open up. They start to really be able to talk about some things maybe that they don't talk about and connecting the outdoors and those experiences is something that he does great. I think inherently people want to help veterans and want to be connected to that kind of help. Most of them just don't have someone who will put it together for them. I met Mike. He had been on a hunt and I helped him sort some issues out he had with that hunt. At that point in time, I realized that we needed to do something differently than what was being done. Those of us that have lived in the outdoors have an idea that there's a healing process that becomes pretty visible and that if we can combine some of that with these veterans that are sometimes not having the best day and give them some peace and provide opportunities for them to talk to other veterans that may have had the same issues or maybe veterans from a previous generation that had issues in a different way to get pretty positive results. I asked Mike to research who we should work with. He said there's no question we should be working with the VAV. It took him some time to research it but that's what he came up with and so I started to put together these fundraisers which took place and we raised a million and a quarter and helped more than 3,000 veterans do things in the outdoors that made them feel better about life. You're disabled but you don't really have to worry about that. You just got to kind of figure out what brings you joy and do it.