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.
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