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Veteran and Metro Broker, Brian
Wess, invites you to join him at the 4th Annual Defenders of Freedom
Veterans Recognition Ride on Sunday May 22nd to benefit the Wounded
Warriors Project.
Interviewer: Hi, I am Kathy
Soltero with metrobrokerstv.com, and today we have in our studio Brian Wess with Infinite Horizons Realty in Colorado Springs. And Brian instead of talking about real estate
today you have a very important event
that's coming up that you want to talk to us about?
Brian Wess: Yes I do, the 4th Annual Defenders of Freedom Veterans
Recognition Ride to benefit the Wounded Warrior Project.
Interviewer: And you have been doing this how long?
Brian Wess: Since 2008, started organizing the
event.
Interviewer: How did it get started?
Brian Wess: I'm a
veteran myself and I wanted to do something for our disabled veterans coming back from the global war on terror in Afghanistan and Iraq. One night I just happened to be watching Bill
O'Reilly and he and Tony Snow mentioned the Wounded Warrior Project, so I did a little bit of research on it,
found out it was a great organization, that almost all of the funds that are
donated go directly to helping the wounded warriors, so their administrative
costs are very thin.
Interviewer: Well tell me about it, I mean what's a day
like for this event?
Brian Wess: Well it starts
off in the morning, one of our sponsors Lockheed
Martin, a great, great group of people there, they jumped in right away the
first year to help us and, and lent us their parking lot to stage for the event.
So we start by getting people signed up
and, and they pay their registration donation and we give them a pin for having
ridden in the event, and then we line the bikes up and about 10:30, we have a
ceremony where we have a presentation of
colors by one of the local military installations,
at 11 o'clock we ride out behind police
escort, it's a 40 mile ride...
Interviewer: Wow!
Brian Wess: ...yeah, the longest one in Colorado.
Interviewer: Oh that's awesome, how many people would you
say have participated in it?
Brian Wess: Well over the
years, our first year we had about 215, second year we were up over 400, last
year we were up over 500.
Interviewer: Oh that's fabulous, so what do you expect
this year?
Brian Wess: I'm expecting again between 500 and 600
riders; one of the things that I'm most proud of is, in the three years that we've
had it so far, we've collected just
under $14,000...
Interviewer: Oh that's fabulous.
Brian Wess...and all that, every
dollar goes directly to the Wounded Warrior Project, thanks to our
sponsors.
Interviewer: Is that money that stays locally or does it
go nationally or is it...
Brian Wess: It actually...
Interviewer: ...goes into a big national pool?
Brian Wess: Yeah it goes, it
goes to the National Wounded Warrior Project
and they handle it but because Colorado
Springs has five military bases and we actually have at Fort Carson: a Wounded Warrior Recovery Center, a lot of that money does end up
coming back to the folks in Colorado
Springs.
Interviewer: Well give us the particulars, the when,
where, how you can get involved in it?
Brian Wess: Well this year
it's going to be armed forces weekend
again like we do it every year, Sunday
May 22nd. We start
registrations about 9:00 a.m. in the morning out at Lockheed Martin there on Highway 83 and you know right off of Northgate
in that area, and I have a website, I'm also on Facebook this year too, it was kind of something kind of new we
started, but on my website on brianwess.com
we have a "Veterans Ride"
page where they can go right to it and that gives them the details about not
only who our sponsors are, but details about the ride, where the route is and
all that good stuff. You come the day of,
we only register on site, we sign
you up, you pay your $15.00 if you are a single rider, $20.00 if you are a
couple on the same bike and we give you your pin, you get lined up, there is
some music usually you know sometimes there are some refreshments that are
donated and things like that.
Interviewer: Wonderful and then at the end of the ride
what happens, people just...?
Brian Wess: There is an after party.
Interviewer: Okay, okay well we had to let everybody know
there is something to go along with it.
Brian Wess: Absolutely we,
we actually end up out at Frankie's Too!
and Poblano's in Falcon and you know, we stop and there is food and drinks specials and we hang
out and socialize and you know it's just been, it's been a great day.
Interviewer: Well Brian thank you very much for telling us
all about that. I think hopefully this
year it will be as great a success as always.
Brian Wess: I hope so too,
thank you.
Interviewer: You bet. And for more real estate related
videos tune into metrobrokerstv.com.
Posted on April 05, 2011 11:54:12 by Scott.Shields
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