Im speaking to a bunch of people whom i know, love and respect. I ask you to please not a guy with his speech. [laughter] im just blown away by how many people are here and i kind of just want to save all the time for oneonone with everybody. There a lot of you havent seen in a while but my mom wanted me to speak or like an hour and someone else told me to be brief, be funny and be seated so im going to try to find somewhere in between those two. Im going to read a short excerpt from the book and then im going to talk for six or seven minutes and then we will get to signing. A brief disclaimer before give the story. I dont want to give away the punchline so maybe i should wait until afterwards. I dont know if i lost my place there. At this point i have gone through Pilot Training and my appointments and applying with the California National guard. Toward the end of the twomonth operation that i talked about briefly in the book the upcoming break where both was planned to spend time back at home. The time california was experiencing one of the worst wildfires in recent history so before we are able to leave we were immediately recaps from the Marijuana Eradication Mission we were on. They were there to pull out marijuana from the forest. We were rehabbed with helping local firefighters. We have been fighting to protect the same forest out of which we had just been pulling marijuana. Fighting the wildfires was an incredible ordeal almost like navigating through terrible storm through the smoke was so thick. In order to build this each other or maintenance crews had to market our camouflaged helicopters with orange painted it was quite a sight to see our warfighting machines covered in hot pink candy cane stripes along with a threefoot tall j. Nine for painted on her belly to signify jolly 94. For large operations in wildFire Suppression we would augment our core team with the rest of the squadron. By aircraft commander and director of operations. The secondincommand could see was our Flight Attendant on the day that we got shut down. Matt weimer was our experience gun or. He was the oldest guy in our squadron. He was an easygoing smart dude always quick to smile. We were kept together as a crew is rolled into the Fire Suppression undertaking for the locals were just as mad at us on these missions, angry at us on a marijuana eradication issue in the cost of their pot so they were just as mad at us because we are dipping out of their pond to fight the wildfires and they didnt have time to irrigate their crops. The way that wildFire Suppression works as firefighters on the ground tell us where they want to drop the water. Usually they fly through the smoke in order to drop water next to an active fire. An excellent aircraft commander instead of doing everything himself he knew he had a young copilot, that was me. Its unnerving as im sure was that may take control and while we were filling her water buckets the aircraft hunkers down and lose the water bucket. As i flew the helicopter with a water source i could hear the backend is calling out 20 feet, 15, 10, five, or, three, two, hold, okay start back up. Thats a point where the bucket received half the water. This point i started slowly to it the bird up as the bucket would open the with water as it climbed and this is a rather delicate operation. At the Higher Elevation this can be a recipe for disaster. In the event of it mattered emergency the pilots are ready to hit the dump switch which takes a water out of the bottom of the bucket. Reese was carefully guarding the controls as i was on the deck. Theres some language im going to skip. Who the f is this guy . At 12 00 he called out as a brief trying to hold the perfect a stable hover and slow climb while keeping all parts of the aircraft out of the water. They crept forward i would have to correct backwards which be putting the tail lower than the nose. He was incredibly dangerous to be Worth Holding a solid cover. A quick glance at the front of this out holograph son anchorman yelling at us from a small hill hill feet above the water level. A sense of uneasiness began to permit the cabin. Either he was mad at us as we confiscated sweeter he thought we we are taking water in the middle of a drought. Either way it wasnt a good situation. We would end up drowning in a [bleep] hole. All because we were trying to save kids. Wed have no way to defend ourselves. Transitioning forward i announced as a slowly push the stick forward and pull the clutch out to give the injured more power unfortunately the lunatic was directly in our traffic lane are taken offline as the trees around us preclude a different track so we kept it fly right over him which normally would never do. Waters away somebody said said. We reported with a chuckle. Cle i glanced over at reese and he had an expression on his face of a open and looked look down at somebody accidentally tripped the buckets which because the guy had just gotten 200 gallons of water. From the back i hear we got you. He shouted to the uproarious laughter. I read this book and a form of compressed time and its all coming back to me now. I havent read it. He began yeah lets find another place. We had a good chuckle. We found another place with a new bucket full of water. We stay just high enough above the flames to prevent damage to the aircraft it wasnt uncommon to get a bit overheated after 12 are spent for roasting like a marshmallow over campfire. Were careful not to get too close but sometimes you push it in that day we were flying as low as a kid to reach our spot chosen by the firefighters on the ground. We saw large tree on fire on a hill to our left and i dont know everything around it had burned down or fed i spend tall. It was completely engulfed in flames right as we passed out big or little too close and i could feel the skin on the nape of my neck starting to sting like a bad sunburn. About three seconds later i started coughing loudly. Okay that was close. I inhaled so much heat that i couldnt breathe or talk for a minute. Reese glance at me as we continue flying straight ahead. We were in effect flying on the side of fire and wood and concentrating on flying high enough above it. The fact that it was on our side we were prepared for a pilots not do that again he said. We smelled like chain smokers who suffered from heat exhaustion. The trip was usually pretty quiet and the crew ended up dozing off exhausted. Usually we all just wanted to shower and go to sleep but about three days into the firefighting we started having a lot more fun. We are becoming firefighters. We had no idea how long we either. Before long we felt like we did identify different areas of the forest by the look and smell the smoke and each tree bird differently. Wow i explained one morning as they begin their trip into the cloud of smoke, this smells like. I hope we are not over a trash site that i hope there arent any animals down there. He kind of smells like a skunk. [laughter] you people in austin got that a lot faster than i did. Well that will help me score with the front desk chick. This is smoke to keep me from getting lucky. Whatever you need to tell yourself. We all laughed. The intellect of the day went downhill from there as we traded jabs and laughed at one another. We even started getting other pilots on a radiofrequency. This was ridiculous as we all know because it was a goodnatured ribbing about having to squeeze one more tip out of an empty fuel tank. We may have pushed it have pushed a little too much ourselves flying until we were running on cancer eventually or find a canton and it was time to drive back. On the drive home reese pointed out a diner and we all jumped for the chance to grab a bite to eat. It was during this meal that i began feeling like the heat exhaustion was getting to us. Everyone was laughing uncomfortably and giggling like what you been up to longer working out in the sun too much. We devoured our money meal and order more food. We began testing other foods trying to see who would come and join the party. We were having way too good of a time to call it a night. Restarted the funny to text our flight commander. No one seemed to realize this wasnt a great idea given that it was 10 00 at night. We started ribbing him like we started ripping each other and then he hit us with a sobering response. I look down at my text on a vacation of what i read made me lose my dinner. That series across a table and realize you got the same text. Are you guys hide the text said. I think we are going to have to test you wind you get back or you have to is military aviators we did not have experience at this. We get tested every 90 days or so. It wasnt the past that you took. We looked at each other for three seconds enteric. We all let out a and began laughing. We followed suit for laughing at the ridiculous suggestion a few minutes later i stop laughing. Oh my. We are all the fire we have been working all day was a cannabis field and a good size one at that. They shook their heads in disbelief. None of us had an experience on what being high felt like so elected to each other laughing. Steves eyes are bloodshot. His eyes are ours bloodshed. He was right of course and we enjoyed another good laugh. Everything was a lot funnier than usual that night. I think we on the was going on. I was just glad to have finally experienced it and they couldnt have picked up a better good of guys than to do it with good old jolly. Later i realize that drugs are bad and hugs, not drugs. Thats right. [applause] i should have prescreen that story a little bit. Ive been speaking for seven years as i mentioned and i always tell variations of the same story and its the story of a shootdown predicted the honest with you that story is all of chapter 8. It takes way too long and i really dont want to keep you guys here that long. That story has a lot of lessons in a lot of leadership lessons and usually its about how to change the world and how to become in the kyle busch person. I looked out of the crowd tonight and i simply cant give that speech because you guys are all so, i just respect you so much anywhere so accomplished. I just had a speech last night in denver and i was talking to a bunch of college students. I can talk to them about it great i apologize in it as ends because its a difficult thing for me talk about. Im going to tell you a different story. Its a summer of 2007, my first appointment. We are all playing xbox at 2 00 in the morning and all of a sudden their radios go off to everyone starts galvanizing into action. We got called out on the medevac and we are in afghanistan. So we get into the aircraft and we start getting more details coming over the radio. It was causing a physiological response. So we start getting more details on the radio and we here we are going into an area that is incredibly hot. They are going launch two apaches which is not normal. Its one of the worst areas and we are going out to save a 3yearold local national who has some long burns because he walked in on his dad making bombs. The fertilizer in the chemicals in the air bird his lungs. Clearly we were ready to go into anything to say this particular life not do any life is more valuable than another one but when you are going after a kid its a little bit different. We start at the rotors and feel the rotors pulsing and is similar to that feeling that pruest not very jovial and joking around like we normally are. Some people try to jokes and they were not landing and we realize this was going to be really tough mission. We had out come in for a landing. We are night vision goggles for brownout landing. The veterans in the audience knows one of the worst things, youd rather get shot at. We executed that landing a get on the ground safely. Our special form medics and now its time to sit and wait. We wait for them to bring the patient had. With night vision goggles you dont have a lot of personal vision but i see some movement in the corner of my goggles so i turn in my book and we are going to checklists. There is never silent. Your eyes accomplishing something but i announced to the crew what i see and there is silence in the cockpit. I see a mob of people starting to form in this very unfriendly town. They are pointing at us and talking to each other and then they start walking toward us. The mob is getting bigger and people are coming out of their are more and more people and now they are running at us. This is the worst possible scenario because we dont want to pick up and leave. We dont want to hurt anybody and honestly they are running at us and we are terrified. They could be like wis sad, what is that noise . Some people havent even seen cars let alone a helicopter. We dont want to get hurt ourselves. In the aircraft i think about my brothers and sisters that i would die for. I break this only silence and tell them what i see and they confirm that is what they are saying as well. As i hold my breath because we dont have a Standard Operating Procedure for this i see up Passy Kempner in less than a 10 feet did you get here that cartoon record needle off the record. Everybody just kind of stops. It was a perfect show of force because it didnt hurt anybody but a show them. If you are coming to herd as you probably want to rethink that and if you are coming to check this out you can check us out from there. They loaded the patient and we took off and it was great and we got him the medical care that he needed. But it was a high stress transmission that we were doing because he wanted to win the hearts and minds and we wanted to save lives especially neck town, lets show them we can do some good. So that story is a culmination of me following my passion and my dream in my heart and my calling. It comes as no surprise to you that along that road there were a lot of people who try to stop me from accomplishing that from getting there either wellintentioned people who were trying to protect me or didnt think i would succeed and want to me to be happy or didnt think it was tough enough or didnt think women should be in combat or any other reason. I never let anybody deter me from my path and they faced a lot of door shut in my face that later i had a reporter asked me how did you push draw that failure . It took me a minute to understand what they were talking about in a met all the doors that were close to my face and i was like oh i never thought of it as failure i guess. I just thought of it as something that was making it harder for me to accomplish my goal you think thats important when you think about following your dream. I would challenge anybody for people who come to me from entering and that kind of thing, i would challenge anybody having a midlife crisis i will let you guess who im looking out over there. Its definitely not my husband. I would challenge you to identify with what is your passion and then flick away the barriers in the negative people and the people who would demonize your goal and tell you that its wrong and explains to you why you cant do it and why you shouldnt do it and just put those away. Including the fear of failure. The reason i picked this to talk about because i think its applicable at any age. I have reached a lot of people and have gotten to hundreds of emails from people across the country and i have never read one email that said i really wanted to be a pilot and i tried really hard that my eyesight wasnt good enough or i tried really hard and i could make it for a aged out, not once. I heard lots of people saying i really wanted to do what you did but i was so afraid that i wasnt going to make it that i just didnt try. And i got an email from a woman who said i wanted to be a combat rescue helicopter pilot and i wish i had read your book five years ago because i think maybe i could have done it but i was so afraid i would be rejected and that i would fail and what would that mean for me. Your book will sit on my shelf forever for my understanding of what could have happened. That broke my heart. My wish for you guys is that nobody and nobody that you all know was ever in that situation because i think the most thing to point out about that story is she told me she was 24 years old i was selected be a pilot when i was 28. Do i tell her you still have four years, you can still do it . Giving up so early so young i couldnt believe it. Im shifting my message to dont let Something Like fear or rejection or failure keep you from trying out a new dance move on the dance floor, writing a book pursuing a career that you are afraid you are going to fail at it so what . I have failed that plenty of things. Doesnt say anything about you. So i think thats important. What i would say to her and i may reply back to her and some wisdom words of wisdom i heard recently. I heard they rarely calls upon us on the the person is said to mean a serious moment i was like wow thats really deep. Where did you hear that . Who said that . Last [laughter] my favorite moment of that is inspiration is everywhere. They can be in a childrens cartoon and lets make sure that is what our kids are watching and we bring up lessons from that too. Find what inspires you and serve your heart. Follow your heart. Let the bears away. Dont let negative people stop you and get out there and change the world. Thank you so much for coming. [applause] [applause] i hope you guys have some good q a because i think where about to sit down. Are we going to do that now . Okay comment rate. Im really excited about your book. My motherinlaw told me that the movie is also being made. What can you tell us about the movie . Well im an introvert. Like myersbriggs 26 introvert and i wrote a book about the history of the rescue in afghanistan. My agent convince me was the only way i would get the story out is if i told the story but she promised it me it would he a couple hundred books sold to my friends and family it was said on the shelf. She lied. Six weeks after the book was sold the movie rights were sold to tristar and the movie was going to be written. Now i have to write that were returned this check. This happened so fast and Angelina Jolie got attached to the project and she played me, obviously. [laughter] i walk through the Grocery Store and i get mistaken for her all the time. So the great thing about her being attached other than the fact that she is attached is a started attracting other talent and we got jason holmes is the guy who adopted american snipers so varied setting about the quality of this script. Handing your story over to someone and let them do whatever they want to. They should start shooting around the summer but im not sure. And no questions are offlimits, you guys. Thank you, appreciate that. This book deals with some tough topic so feel free to ask about them too. Who is going to play your mother, grace . [laughter] who was it that played in that Mommy Dearest movie . I dont know. Thats probably going to be, i was always pictu