How Team Rubicon Mobilizes Veterans And Civilians For Disaster Relief

The call comes after a storm, a flood, or a wildfire—and before the dust settles, the gray shirts are already moving. We sit down with Evan Farley, Northern Virginia Metro Field Operations Coordinator for Team Rubicon, to explore how veteran discipline and civilian grit combine to deliver rapid disaster relief at zero cost to homeowners. From the organization’s roots in Haiti’s 2010 earthquake to a global network 200,000 strong, this is the story of purpose, speed, and practical help when it matters most.

Evan shares how Team Rubicon mobilizes volunteers into clear roles: site survey teams that scope out needs, muck and gut crews that strip out waterlogged materials, chainsaw operators who clear hazards, and the planners and logisticians who make the whole operation run smoothly. Not everyone needs a trades background—attitude and reliability go far. We delve into the details of joining, including straightforward sign-up steps, a low-cost background check for deployers, and what life is like on the ground: cots in gymnasiums, shared meals, and long days that translate into real recovery for families who thought they’d lost everything.

We also dig into the organization’s surprising range. Beyond immediate response, Team Rubicon now runs rebuild programs that put people back into finished homes, pilots a trades academy to grow skills and careers, and adapts to new needs—from COVID vaccination support to helping resettle Afghan families with muscle, logistics, and compassion. Corporate partners, such as Ford and Home Depot, provide funding and volunteer time, thereby multiplying the impact when disasters accumulate. And at the local level, recurring service projects keep teams sharp and communities stronger long before the next siren sounds.

If you’ve been looking for meaningful service after service or a way to turn your free time into real relief, this conversation makes it easy to step in. Join, deploy, donate, or spread the word at teamrubiconusa.org. If this resonated, follow the show, share with a friend who’s ready to serve, and leave a review to help others find us.

Chapters

• 0:00 Welcome And Why Team Rubicon
• 2:34 Origins In Haiti And Growth
• 5:04 Who Volunteers And What They Do
• 8:24 How To Join And Deploy
• 12:14 Evan’s Navy Path And Service
• 16:34 Transitions From War To Home
• 21:44 The Work: Muck, Guts, And Impact
• 25:54 Corporate Partners And Support

Transcript

Larry Zilliox: 0:15

Good morning. I'm your host, Larry Zilliox Director of Culinary Services here at the Warrior Retreat at Bull Run. And this week our guest is Evan Farley. He's the Northern Virginia Metro Field Operations Coordinator quite a lot for Team Rubicon, one of my all-time favorite nonprofit uh organizations in the world. I have uh watched Team Rubicon and everything they do. I am follow them on all the social media. I'm probably on a newsletter. Um since its inception, I have uh really just thought this is one of the most creative nonprofits taking resources that were out there and oftentimes not doing what they could and putting it into a package that's deliverable to emergency scenes and providing help that's just unrivaled really anywhere in the world. So, Evan, thank you for sitting down with us and and coming out for this.

Evan Farley: 1:16

Yeah, thank you for the invite. It sounds like you can uh I can be interviewing you about your knowledge of team.

Larry Zilliox: 1:22

No, I mean I have been a big fan because um the concept uh is is just really something else. I I thought when I first heard about this and using veterans and putting them to work doing disaster recovery work, you know, there's really no better crowd suited for that. I mean, they have skills, they're used to austere environments, they don't need a holiday in to go volunteer to do something, and they're willing to help. And let me tell you something, I have seen on more than one occasion where a natural disaster has struck, and including in other parts of the world and Team Rubicon gray shirts, those boots have been on the ground before FEMA, before anybody else. So I want to uh commend you guys for that and ask you to sort of start with giving us a little background on how the organization got going.

Evan Farley: 2:20

Sure. It was uh its genesis was in 2010 with the earthquake in Haiti. Jake Wood, the founder and the first CEO and a group of veterans and first responders, went down to Haiti to sort of provide medical support as they could. And um, you know, it became it that gave them the spark, the idea that, hey, we really need something like this that can help out domestically and to grow an organization, which eventually became Team Rubicon. You know, which started from obviously modest means it was eight people responding to an earthquake that size. Um, to these days, we're, I think we're north of 200,000 volunteers. As you said, you mentioned gray shirts. That's what we call our volunteers. We wear a gray shirt. I think the second operation they did, which I can't recall where in the Caribbean it was, they tried to stock up on t-shirts, and the only ones that were available were just some gray shirts they found, wherever it was, and that became the uniform, and that became, again, the moniker we use to this day. And um, and you're right, you know, obviously the veteran-focused part of our legacy is extremely important. And we are veteran-led. But you know, I want to give a bit of a shout-out too to the fact that we've got probably at this point almost 50-50 veterans as part of the organization and what we call kick-ass civilians. People who just are attracted to the mission. They might have emergency management background, might have been a police or something of that nature, or just somebody who I, you know, I meet them every week. Hey, I just Googled, you know, emergency response, volunteering, this, that, and the other. Found your organization, watched a video, thought it looked great, and here I am today. Uh, last week we did a stream cleanup. We might be doing uh in terms of local operations, helping out at various food banks, things of that nature. So we both do what you mentioned, sort of, you know, go to Haiti. We've got teams in Jamaica right now. We've got teams in Alaska right now, and we also just have across the nation weekend service projects because it's important to keep our folks engaged in their communities because not all of us can just jump on a plane, go to Florida for one week and sort of muck out houses that have been impacted, you know, by a flood or a hurricane.

Larry Zilliox: 4:27

Yeah. Tell us how how does somebody get involved with Team Rubicon if they want to help out?

Evan Farley: 4:35

Well, if they look and help out, you know, personally, physically, and we go to you know teamrubicon.org and sign up. It's very easy to volunteer. You know, you'll get asked some basic questions. It's like signing up for any number of things. Um, with with one caveat though, that if you intend to deploy with us, you're gonna go to operations somewhere, you have to have a background check and it costs usually about 25 bucks or so. And that's just to make sure we understand who we're sleeping with in that gymnasium on that cot donated by the Red Cross. Because again, as you mentioned a little bit earlier, we do tend to be in austere environments. There's no holiday ends available. You're gonna be, you know, you're gonna be doing things that it might be similar to what you were doing when you got dumped in the desert at some point and lived in a tent and went to a chow hall, et cetera, et cetera.

Larry Zilliox: 5:19

So if you were lucky and you had that stuff.

Evan Farley: 5:21

That's if you were lucky, right.

Larry Zilliox: 5:24

So so for yourself, okay, your prior service Navy. Yes. And question I always ask is why would you join the Navy instead of the Air Force?

Evan Farley: 5:34

Funny story about that one. Um I had actually I I went through Rotsi at the University of Notre Dame and I had offers from both the Air Force and Navy for Rotsi. And I wanted to fly at that point when my eyes were good and they're not anymore. So the Air Force requirement was at that point, at least, they're like, no, we actually we don't really do a lot of pilot accessions from Ratsi, and you have to have these majors. If you don't do these majors, you cannot get a scholarship. The Navy was, yeah, we get pilots from all over the place. Most of our pilots are history majors. Try engineering. If it doesn't work out, that's okay. I went, okay, Navy's for me. And that's how uh I went to Navy instead of the Air Force.

Larry Zilliox: 6:13

And you retired as a commander? Yes, commander, yes. Wow. How long were you in? 22 years. When did you enlist?

Evan Farley: 6:20

Uh I graduated from Notre Dame in 87, so that was when I was commissioned.

Larry Zilliox: 6:24

Oh.

Evan Farley: 6:24

Yeah.

Larry Zilliox: 6:25

Okay. What was your best assignment?

Evan Farley: 6:28

Well, I had I had one shipboard assignment, USS Ferris, which is a frigate out of North Frank, and is now either razor blades or maybe it's still floating somewhere. It was sold to a different Navy. Uh, but I spent about six years active duty and the rest of my 22 years in the reserves. The the probably the reserve assignment I love the most was I was a commanding officer of a of a CB detachment in Pittsburgh and Phoebus construction battalions. And they're the folks who do ship to shore movements, build all these interesting structures to get stores offloaded and get them to the folks who need them on dry land. And it was just a blast. We had so much fun coming in there, playing CB. I'd never had, you know, small arms training, doing field exercises, you know, qualifying and all sorts of interesting things. And uh it was a blast. And if actually later in my career, when I was a commander, I got to go out to the West Coast, to the to the West Coast unit, and then be in charge of all 10 battalions west of the Mississippi. So so being on the water doing CB stuff, it was a blast.

Larry Zilliox: 7:25

Oh, oh. And 22 years, that's that's a odd number. You see a lot of people, I'm doing my 20, getting in my pension, I'm getting out. Or I'm gonna stay and try to build up as much as I can so that you know I'm gonna get more in retirement. And but 22 years, what was the decision process like there?

Evan Farley: 7:45

It was it was two things. One of which was I had a three-year tour that I with the reserves that ended at that at that point. And as a as a naval reservist as as above the rank of 04, you go through boards every time you get into assignments. So my assignment was up. And and also at that point, I had from my last year in the reserves, was my first year working a really difficult job at FEMA. And there was no way I could devote the time I needed to the FEMA job and give the Navy reserves the time and effort that it needed. And I was like, okay, it's just time to sort of pass the hat to the next generation, and I gotta go do my FEMA job.

Larry Zilliox: 8:20

Yeah. Wow.

Evan Farley: 8:22

Um, what was transition like for you? You know, it it was it was not that hard from this perspective. Um, you know, being a reservist, you you're transitioning once a month in some ways. Yeah. I mean, I did get deployed for 10 months after uh, I mean, for the for the Iraq war in 2003, and that was an interesting transition. But just but just sort of the um leaving the reserves, it left a little bit of a hole there, yes, a service hole. But again, being a reservist and again, transitioning it seems every month. I'm throwing on some cambies, zipping out to the West Coast or to Pittsburgh or whomever, wherever I was at at that point, you know, didn't make that much of a transition. I think it would have been much more of an interesting and a difficult transition just coming off of maybe 20 years of active duty and then just kind of wondering, like, okay, what do I do next? Um, otherwise, interesting transition though, when I was, I spent three years again on sea duty in in a very sort of in a very complicated and and taxing job. And the day you step off that ship, and that's not your responsibility anymore, was quite the transition. I almost didn't know what to do at that point. Like, you know, there was so much put upon you, and then you get relieved of that. And that sort of made it was just a very weird transition. Coming back from deployment, if we want to continue in this vein, was was a weird transition because if you're in you've been deployed over to the Middle East, you're in the middle of that, you know, you're in Iraq or whatever it might be, and it's a very tense situation, no matter what you're doing. And then to come back, fly on, you know, fly back overseas, get dropped off, and then to be in the middle of a soccer field a day later when you've been in, you know, Baghdad a month before or whatever, looking on, you know, rooftops and whatever it might be was was a very, very weird transition. It takes and it took an any number of months to sort of almost like spin down from being in that environment and to relax and to not be constantly alert and to not feel like your brain is analyzing everywhere you're going and everywhere you're looking. So that was that was definitely the most difficult transition.

Larry Zilliox: 10:23

That that's a pretty common thing that we hear uh because you know, in World War II, when the war was over, guys came back from Europe on Liberty ships and that was a month or more that they decompressed. Now you get on a plane and eight hours later you're in the middle of it.

Evan Farley: 10:43

Yeah, it wasn't BWY greeting my family.

Larry Zilliox: 10:46

Yeah. And so there's no time to decompress. Right. You're just kind of thrown into it. So did you make a VA claim or anything? No. Okay. Maybe you should. Maybe.

Evan Farley: 10:56

I I actually I I need to do the Pac Tex training. I need to do that.

Larry Zilliox: 11:00

Hearing. Yeah. Do you need hearing aids? No. You will. Okay. Um especially I can't believe that because you were it had to have been around really heavy equipment.

Evan Farley: 11:14

Yeah, a little bit, but probably more on the machinery side in the Navy. I was in engineering for all three years. Yeah. And uh you really gotta watch it and and really concentrate on hearing protection and and things like that.

Larry Zilliox: 11:25

Yeah. Okay. Listeners, uh, I want you to visit the webpage. It's teamrubiconusa.org. Um, check it out and look at everything they got going. And if you want to volunteer, reach out. And you know, giving back and volunteering really good for you. It really is. Especially when you're deployed or you're you're sent to help people that desperately need help. Whether it's in the mountains of North Carolina, in Florida after a hurricane, forest fires in in the west, these are people that are really hurting and when you go and help them, you think to yourself, Well, that wasn't a big deal. You know, I just showed up and I shoveled out some mud or I, you know, I cut out some wallboard and you know, try to get mold out of a house and and you put in the eight hours, you put in a long day. Okay. But to the people that you're there helping, it is just it is so important and they are so thankful. How often do you deploy?

Evan Farley: 12:35

Personally, about once a year. Okay. Um, I'm still a full-time federal employee, so I don't have control over my schedule as if I had been retired, retired. And I'm sure once I retire, retire, I will do more often. But um, you know, we it it a lot of folks who are retired will do things, you know, once a month, once a quarter, things like that. Again, I'll I'll take annual leave and go down. Uh, I've been to Florida two times in the last three years, uh, Port Charlotte, I believe. Uh, you know, let last summer, not summer. Well, I guess well, the summer before last summer. Last year, there was Hurricanes Milton and Helene, did a lot of damage in Florida, and obviously up, you talk about North Carolina. So I spent a week there actually helping to organize the operation and did a couple days of muck-outs, which is when we go into a house and try to sort of recover the house, whether it's ripping out everything down to the studs, or just depending upon the needs of that house, it might just be portions of that house. But they try to get them back to a point where they can recover and perhaps have you know their insurance come in and and rebuild and replace and and probably save some of these homeowners thousands, if not tens of thousands of dollars. Yeah. And it is hard work. I'm very qualified for it because I can lift things and I can break things. I'm not a builder, never will be. But, you know, we we do not need skilled labor. We need people with attitude. Um, you know, one of our cultural principles is get shit done, if I can say that on the podcast. And and that's what we hire, you know, not hire, I'm sorry, that's what we grab people to do and have our volunteers do, just go in there with a great attitude, you know, get stuff done for that homeowner, uh, give them a hug on the way out, and hopefully a day or two or three days later, they're in a much better place than they would have been. It's free of charge to the homeowner. And again, hopefully they've got insurance or their ability on their own to get the new drywall in or to replace the furniture or whatever it might be, where sometimes that house might have been, you know, condemned, or the insurance people might have just been some, but it might have just said, no, we're not gonna, we can't help. Right. And you're on your own. Yeah.

Larry Zilliox: 14:34

So do you find that corporations will give their employees time off to volunteer with Team Rubicon?

Evan Farley: 14:42

They they do. Um, I just had an interaction with uh the Ford Motor Company. They they sponsored uh a documentary that just aired a few days ago, and I just I for some reason just cannot remember the name of documentary. But it follows a gray shirt uh and his experience um leaving active duty and and and joining Team Rubicon and what he got from that. But uh like Ford, I I can't recall the exact number, but they they both encourage their employees to join Team Rubicon and give them time off. And I think Home Depot, any number of organizations out there do similar things because we have a lot of corporate partners who who donate either either funding, equipment, or their people to also help out.

Larry Zilliox: 15:21

If I were to volunteer to deploy, is there a cost to me? Do I pay my own way somewhere? Do I have to buy my own meals?

Evan Farley: 15:29

No, no. Everything is provided for you. We'll fly you to wherever it is. Um if you're if you're local and you're driving, we'll reimburse you for the mileage. You know, you'll be probably in a gym or something like that on a cot. Uh, but we have, you know, we have breakfast, lunch, and dinner provided. Sometimes it's we're cooking for ourselves. Sometimes we might be like I was in Florida staying at the VFW, and the VFW might provide some meals. Or so everything, everything is is paid for. You know, we we get you there. You know, obviously you're gonna bring your own clothes and things like that. We'll do your laundry for you nine times out of ten if it's available. So it's uh yeah, it's not any kind of out-of-pocket expense.

Larry Zilliox: 16:08

Great. Let's talk a little bit about who can volunteer. So I don't want our listeners to think that you're just looking for guys swinging chainsaws. You need help on multiple levels, whether it's a doctor to provide medical assistance, nurse, uh physician's assistant, all the way down to a guy swinging a uh a sledgehammer or cutting something up with a chainsaw. You need com guys, you need paperwork, yeah. We need planner, we need planners. Yeah.

Evan Farley: 16:41

You need logistics people.

Larry Zilliox: 16:44

Yeah. So is there a list on the web page of what services or what things you're looking for? Or is it just best that they reach out and say, here's what here's my background, I want to help?

Evan Farley: 16:55

Yeah, yeah. I mean, as part of the application process, there are ways to sort of put in specialized skills that you have.

Larry Zilliox: 17:02

Right.

Evan Farley: 17:02

Training. Right, right. And and you know, as you mentioned, a lot of our time could be swinging, you know, we say swinging a chainsaw, God forbid. I am chainsaw qualified. I and from a kid from New York City, that's that's pretty darn good. We can get me chainsaw qualified. But you know, the and a lot of what we do is that sort of mucking and gutting in houses, you know. But if you cannot do that, there are plenty of jobs for you. Right. So let's say before we do, we come to your house, Larry, and and you you you sort of raise your hand and say, Hey, I need some assistance. We will send two-person teams out there to do a site survey. They will walk around your house, they will talk to you, they will assess your needs, and they will report back to the folks who are running the operation to say, this is what we found. We have pictures, this is the needs, is this within our capability to do? So at that point, you know, people with those skills just need to be able to drive a truck, understand our mission and our capabilities, and be able to work with homeowners to understand what their needs are, and then bring that message back to the folks who are running the operation. There are plenty of things like that. Donation management. We have people who actually run the operation, planners, logisticians, um, operational people who sort of organize the mission. So there are plenty of jobs out there for people who want to swing something and break something, or do chainsaw operations, or do heavy equipment operations, and and uh for a smaller subsection, the medical profession, because we have you know qualified teams. We have a team right now in Jamaica doing medical assistance. But again, you can if if it's not your you know your bag of goodies, there are plenty of things that involve swinging hammers and lifting heavy things that we can put you to work for.

Larry Zilliox: 18:41

Wow. Well, uh again, listeners, the webpage is team Rubicon, R-U-B-I-C-O-N-USA dot org. Go there, uh check it out. If you know somebody who may have just separated recently, they're banging around wondering what they're gonna do. Maybe they can spend some time volunteering. Maybe they don't want to get a job right away, they're moved in with a relative and they're looking for something to do. And you know, just send that link to people and spread the word. And also while you're there, I guarantee you there's a button that says donate on it, and it wants you to bang on that button and donate what you can. This uh isn't free and you can't rely on other people to fund it. You need to donate. Every little bit helps, whether it's five dollars or fifty dollars or five thousand dollars, give what you can. Where do you see the organization going in say five years?

Evan Farley: 19:51

Good good question on that one. Um, you know, it's it's it's interesting. There we have sort of core capabilities, as you can imagine. And we talked about, you know, chainse operations and and and things like that. Uh there are a few initiatives that are that we're undertaking. I haven't been personally involved in them, but one of them is a is is rebuild in the last couple of years. So we've had a we've had a couple of very specific operations um starting out in Houston in 2017, where we've actually been rebuilding homes and putting people into those homes, done a couple hundred of those. Um, there was just an academy started, and again, I can't recall the exact name, but it just started in September, where it's like a trades academy where we're taking folks um who don't necessarily have some of those trade skills, spending about two months with them and teaching them how to rebuild and sort of getting them on that, on that path. But I think one of the things that Team BrookCon has been challenged with, but is at its best at is being flexible to a new op to an operating environment. Um whether that's being driven by climate change, whether that's being driven by something like COVID, where, you know, out of nowhere it w it wasn't necessarily uh in our in our skill set or in our um in in our strategic documents to say that, hey, we're gonna suddenly start supporting mass vaccination efforts across the country. Or when the U.S. pulled out of Afghanistan, you know, we never would have thought before that that we would both be helping with uh sort of welcoming them to the United States. And I spent two and a half months every other weekend um resettling those Afghans in Northern Virginia, working with other partners who would get donations of furniture and things like that. And we were the muscle because again, my skill set is lifting things up and putting things down. Yeah. So we're moving couches and but we're getting donations on a Friday and Saturday, Sunday moving folks in. So, you know, it's difficult for me to project where the organization will be, but the organization is constantly looking for new challenges. We are we are Semper Gumby, always flexible. And um, you know, and I think one of the stories that came out of Enduring Eagle, which was the operation that dealt with Afghan resettlement, was there was some meeting with non-governmental organizations, and the State Department was talking about, you know, what they could and couldn't do and what authorities they had, and sort of wondering like who could help. And I think the Team Burbicomp representative literally said something like, What do you need and where do you need it? And that was enough to get us on the path that uh, you know, we see a need, we'll like we'll step in, we'll fill that gap.

Larry Zilliox: 22:20

Wow. Wow. What does the Northern Virginia Metro Field Operations Coordinator do?

Evan Farley: 22:27

Uh any any number of things. I actually have sort of taken over a few more roles than that, but I'll just sort of tell you how we organize ourselves locally. Uh as you can imagine, like in the military has an administrative chain of command and operational chain of command. Operation head community chain of command, excuse me, is is sort of run by the the permanent staff and also in the operation itself. But when you're organizing yourself locally in terms of membership and what you're doing, we have volunteer leaders of which I am one. So I'm sort of responsible for Northern Virginia. We don't have anybody sort of doing this in the district right now, so I'm sort of covering the district. So what that means is, you know, I spend I spend a lot of my time doing outreach to um organizations that are looking for support. Uh food banks, um, it could be this organization, your organization itself. I think we're here in in 2022 doing one of those cleanups. Um, but we we probably in Northern Virginia and DC do at least two service projects a month with a local organization that needs help. Oh and again, a lot of them are food-related, food and security-related organizations and uh or habitat for humanity, you know, things of that nature. Sure. And and we think that's really important to keep our gray shirts engaged and involved in that local community and give back to the community because again, not all of us can just get down to Florida. So there's so there's some of that. There's organizing training. Um, we we go to Camp Snyder, which is you know, two, three miles away from here, yeah, and we do our chainsaw uh both training and then and sort of hands-on practice with them. And and it's sort of it's a good deal for us because we're able to go over there and you know it's a forest full of trees. Some of them are already down, so we practice uh, you know, bucking and limbing those trees. We practice felling things, and and the scout uh camp gets our services where they say, Hey, we have a leaning tree over here. Can you clean up this area over there? So it's a good it's a good relationship.

Larry Zilliox: 24:21

So it's I know another place where you could do that.

Evan Farley: 24:24

Back uh back here. Yeah, I noticed that. Yes. Give us a call. So so yeah, that's it's that. So it's also dealing with the membership. You know, I might be going to VFWs, things like that. Oh, yeah, and talking and doing some recruiting there. So it it involves all those sorts of things and just sort of care and upkeep of our gray shirts. People are always writing me, calling me, whatever. Hey, what's up with this? What's up with that? So um there's a lot of sort of hand holding and and and and doing that stuff.

Larry Zilliox: 24:51

Yeah, wow. Well, listeners, again, it's Team Rubicon USA. Uh visit that webpage, uh, check out all the resources there. Think about volunteering. Uh at least contact the local chapter, find out what they're all about. And uh it's not a, you know, there's no huge commitment here. It's what time you have, you know, um, what your capabilities are. They are not gonna force you to do things that you're not capable of doing. Correct. Um, so you really, really, I guarantee you, they can find something for you to do and a way for you to help, either using your skills, using your ability to think, just being there and and helping out, uh, I think i is good for everybody to do, really. Well, Evan, listen, I can't thank you enough for coming out, stopping by, and sitting down and telling our listeners all about Team Rubicon.

Evan Farley: 25:49

No, I appreciate the opportunity, Larry. I always love talking about Team Rubicon. And uh hope your listeners will check in and check us out.

Larry Zilliox: 25:55

Yeah, for sure. Well, listeners, we'll have another episode next Monday morning at 0500. If you have any questions or suggestions, you can reach us at podcast at willingwarriors.org. You can find us on all the major podcast platforms. We're on YouTube and Wreaths Across America Radio. Until then, thanks for listening.