NOAH CURRIER: I always wanted to be a Marine.
My dad was a Marine, and my grandpa was a Marine.
So I enlisted right after high school.
I had my mom sign for me.
I was only 17 years old.
NOAH'S MOM: I said, oh, it's all great.
Just as long as he doesn't have to be in a war,
I'm good with it.
Next thing I know--
NOAH CURRIER: I did two deployments.
The first one was right after September 11,
and then the second one was the invasion of Iraq.
When we got back, we had four days
until we were able to fly home from Camp Pendleton.
And on the third night, a friend of mine
fell asleep at the wheel.
We rolled about a dozen times down a hill.
I broke my C4, 5, 6, and 7 in my neck,
which left me paralyzed basically from the neck down.
It was a pretty big hit.
Seeing myself in the mirror, sitting 90 degrees the way
I am now was a really hard pill to swallow.
I felt like everything had been taken away from me.
My job had been taken away.
My brothers were no longer around.
My physical being was no longer the same.
I had nothing left.
NOAH'S MOM: It was a dark time.
He was this strong Marine who'd just fought a war,
and now he's needing his mom to do very basic things.
NOAH CURRIER: When you're first injured,
it's hard to not focus on all the things that you can't do,
and it takes a long time to start realizing all the things
that you still can do.
After about six years of being in this spot that I was in,
a friend of mine drug me to an adaptive sporting event.
He took me skiing in Aspen.
I thought to myself, quadriplegics
aren't meant to go skiing.
I was like, I'm going to end up breaking everything
that I have left.
But getting out of your comfort zone
is really the key to anything.
That's when you feel alive.
I felt that I got a piece of me back that I'd been missing.
It was only a matter of months before I was skydiving.
I started competing in other events.
And I would ask everybody if I would see them again
at another event, but there was a barrier
of entry, which was money, especially for the guys that
have to bring a caregiver.
You have flights.
You have hotels.
You have equipment.
These things are not cheap, but they're the key to recovery.
So I said, what if we sold t-shirts?
We could start a non-profit or something.
During the invasion of Iraq, the UN
was using a term, Oscar Mike.
When you needed somebody to get on the move or a unit
to start moving, you would say I need you to get Oscar Mike,
and you didn't hesitate.
You started moving.
So four guys in wheelchairs started building shelves
in my two-car garage, and we started
stocking our first shirts.
And now we have the Oscar Mike Foundation and Oscar Mike
apparel.
The Oscar Mike Foundation exists to keep injured veterans
on the move through adaptive sports.
We've had over 400 veterans from all over the country go
through our programs so far, and we've
offered over 1,000 sporting scholarships.
Veterans come to the compound for the week,
and we do everything from wheelchair rugby to flying
airplanes to off-roading.
The apparel company is really to minimize overhead
for the foundation.
If we can absorb as much of that as possible,
then every dollar that's donated to the foundation
can go a lot further.
We had to create a website, so we
sat behind a computer for a very long time
and eventually figured it out.
If somebody were to search how to support veterans or veteran
t-shirts, those are all the things
that we're trying to come up at the top of the page on,
and Google Ads is really helping.
We've done double the traffic and revenue year after year.
After your accident or after leaving the military,
a lot of people struggle with finding purpose.
And adaptive sports does give you purpose.
You're around a bunch of people that have
chewed the same dirt as you.
Nobody else can understand what it's
like being a quadriplegic, a paraplegic, an amputee--
Come on.
And then also being a veteran.
[CHANTING]
NOAH'S MOM: It isn't just the sports.
It's the camaraderie.
It's the family.
This saved Noah.
This saved his life.
So it's not a stretch to say that it
is saving other lives as well.
NOAH CURRIER: If you're in a wheelchair,
your life stops where the pavement ends,
and it isn't until you open your mind
and you start trying new things that you realize
it doesn't have to end there.
There are no limits if you don't want there to be.
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