 Jake Kokowitz was born to leave. I don't mean to be mean, but Marine Corps to me is number one. It's always raised to gain first year laughs. With victories comes hard work and Jake was no stranger to doing what he had to do to remain fit for the fight. I loved going to the gym. I lifted weights. I didn't like running. I only ran when I had to. Though finding the desire to run was difficult, no one would have guessed that a fatal accident would leave Jake struggling to make it to the finish line. I was at the bar with my friends and we were celebrating, fighting out that we were PCSE to a company that was employing on a combat deployment. And I asked someone to follow me home on my motorcycle and they were on their motorcycle. And I didn't know that he was drunk and he had contacted my rear tire and threw me into a guardrail. And when I hit the guardrail, my helmet came off and I landed back in the road and a vehicle hit me and ran. I first found out that I was going to have to get my arm mutated or that would be an option. I just wanted to give up. I remember crying for a long time. I wondered why me. But there's a lot of people out there with a lot less than I've got. I felt like there was no reason to give up, especially since the Marine Corps taught me that. So I just kept pushing forward. Every day brings new challenges, but Jake doesn't face these battles alone. There's a lot of people that wouldn't hang around for someone like that. I feel like they take the easy way out and not have to deal with all that. Oh, I'm going to have to tie his shoes the rest of his life. So I'm lucky I have him. And lucky he is. Not only does Jake have a great support system, but Jake is lucky he gets another shot at life. And most importantly, being a dad. There's things that I can't do now that I would be able to do with a prosthetic. Being able to teach my son and my daughter how to swing a baseball bat, shoot a basketball, catch a football, do push-ups. Eventually be able to do that stuff. And I'm not going to be able to do that stuff if I don't work hard. So I'm going to work hard so I can teach them that stuff because I don't want anybody else to teach them. I want their father to teach them.