Episode 21 - Interview with the United Cajun Navy's Brian Trascher

Dave and Drew talk to United Cajun Navy's Brian Trascher about how the group got started, where they now go, and the invasion of Greenland.

Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:08

Savaged Podcast. We are Dave and Drew, episode number 21. Dave Ropolo, a writer with the Savigate. My name is Drew Merle, St. George City Councilman and local attorney. I work for Tips. This week, another special guest, Brian Trasher of the United Cajun Navy. Thanks for coming on.

SPEAKER_00 0:26

Thanks for having me. Excited to be here.

SPEAKER_01 0:28

So another big guest for us.

SPEAKER_02 0:29

We're doing really well in the guest category. And we got the best from the Cajun Navy. There's a couple of these guys rolling around, but we got the better of the two. I can't remember the other guy's name, though. He's dad to us. He takes a bunch of selfies online, but this guy gets it done.

SPEAKER_00 0:42

I'm the one that uh was has a little bit more of the social graces. And when I say a little bit, I mean a little bit. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 0:50

So um I'll start you off hard-hitting question. Do you ever look at some of the boats and people that the some of the boats that volunteer for your service and go, man, maybe not. Maybe that's a poor choice. That that that's not gonna cut it.

SPEAKER_00 1:03

So fortunately, uh when it's a when it's a vessel that we uh like pre-certify, like one that we know we can deploy, we actually have to get them inspected by the uh the state fire marshal. Okay and wildlife fisheries. And uh so I have a scapegoat. I could say, hey man, I was I was rooting for you. That old wildlife agent.

SPEAKER_01 1:24

Everything I could do.

SPEAKER_00 1:25

Yeah, he took a look at that boat and told me no way.

SPEAKER_01 1:28

Water's coming in it.

SPEAKER_00 1:29

Right, right, right, right. Yeah. It's not supposed to so it's supposed to smoke, but not from there.

SPEAKER_01 1:37

Okay, so good. So there is a process to do that. So how many boats do you have certified that you could deploy at any given time?

SPEAKER_00 1:45

It's it's a uh it's an ever-changing database because guys move or they peel off or they you know start a family and a wife says first thing that's gotta go is the boat, you know, that kind of thing. But uh I mean like I have a database of over a thousand boats that I can deploy. Um not all of them are but not all of them are certified, but like in a in a pinch I can get wildlife to come like get somebody to to do a bunch of them. And then there's people that just sort of like self-deploy. And I don't want to encourage anybody to like go against the grain, but uh let's just say that that's when enforcement is it's probably at its weakest point. Um so uh just make sure that you're uh if your boat's up to Coast Guard standards, you're probably passed a wildlife test, if that makes any sense. You got your all your safety equipment, your fire extinguishers not expired, uh nothing's leaking or smoking, you know, that kind of thing. You got all life jackets and PFDs and all that. So yeah, just uh just try to try to stay legal out there.

SPEAKER_01 2:41

Now, this is not an ice chest, I'm going fishing kind of deployment.

SPEAKER_00 2:45

Well, listen, I people ask me all the time, like, how do y'all get these volunteers to just drop what they're doing and and come travel sometimes hundreds of miles? And I say, listen, when you got a guy that uh, you know, maybe maybe does shift work or he's you know off for a few days, and you say, Hey man, you wanna you want to load your boat up with some of your buddies and get away from the wives for a few days, it's not that hard of a sell. No, you know what I mean? But no, we just look, it's it's we say it's the Cajun way, man. You know, like going back to the way way back in the day out in those communities that were off the grid and uh not, you know, you didn't you got to everybody's house by boat, you didn't get to it by car, you had elderly people who needed medication, and a lot of times I I've heard stories about you know somebody in down to bayou going and uh taking the boat up and picking up the doctor or the midwife and bringing him or her back and going to make five or six stops for people that needed health care and then bringing them back to where they could get in their car and go. So it's always kind of been that way. You just kind of you just kind of take care of your own community. Uh, and a lot of it was done by boat back in the day because it just wasn't any roads going down in the areas.

SPEAKER_01 3:49

So do you have a certification when you do the process? Did does the guy who gets the certification, does he get something that he can go, hey honey, look, I have to keep the boat or I have to keep a boat because I could be deployed at any moment.

SPEAKER_00 4:04

That's uh that's actually a good idea. I don't think we have uh I don't think it actually issues anything like that, but we could easily uh create something like that because yeah, we we do want to listen that we I always tell people we have it's not just men, it's a lot of women that are involved with the United Cage Navy. Uh, but for all the guys that do come and spend multiple days and sometimes multiple weeks with us, like majority of them have a Mrs. at home that's letting them do that. So we appreciate we appreciate their uh sacrifice as well.

SPEAKER_01 4:32

So I guess you're right. In the modern standard, any life partner that could see that and go, Hey, I could be deployed at any moment. This has got to be okay.

SPEAKER_00 4:43

Yeah, yeah, in modern standard, we have dudes that have husbands at home that let them come out and go out. So, I mean, there's there's that too.

SPEAKER_02 4:49

Brian, has anyone ever called you and said, Listen, I'm taking the boat out this weekend. I told my wife I was going on a gig with the Cage Navy at the time. She calls you up, let her know we were trying to rescue someone. I wasn't down in Leaville fishing.

SPEAKER_01 5:02

Do you offer that service? Do you have a pre-recorded method that can be used at any moment?

SPEAKER_00 5:08

There's a uh, yeah, there's like there's like the standard menu price. That's the upgraded menu price.

SPEAKER_02 5:15

Well, it's that's the premium package. Correct. That's right. You're getting in the excuse business. Right.

SPEAKER_00 5:20

You want me to you want me to lie to your wife, dude. That's gonna cost you so money. If she's Latina, I just simply won't do it. Not happening.

SPEAKER_02 5:28

Yeah, you don't want to get into that. How you get stabbed.

SPEAKER_00 5:30

That's that's 100% right.

SPEAKER_02 5:31

So tell us um, walk us through how you started the Cajun Navy. How'd this come up?

SPEAKER_00 5:35

Yeah, well, I didn't start it. Um, and and uh the uh the the origins of the United Cajun Navy. Uh well let me back up a little bit. So the the colloquial term Cajun Navy was dubbed by some media member way back in the late 1960s when there were uh a lot of people taking boats around New Orleans uh after Hurricane Betsy in 1967, the city had the levees had breached, the city had flooded, just much like in Katrina. Um and then that a couple years later it was Hurricane Camille, which is more toward the Gulf Coast, but there was still a lot of flooding around South Louisiana. And so we have found some kind of archives of that term being used, Cajun Navy. How it came to be for us was uh, as y'all know, uh Todd Terrell, our founder and president, uh Baton Rouge guy, um Catholic high guy. I went to Brother Martin, you know, he couldn't get into Brother Martin, so we had to go to Catholic over there. No, he just didn't live close enough. But no, anyway, so Todd was one of the guys that went down um after Hurricane Katrina, and there was hundreds, hundreds of you know, uh, people that took boats down there to help with that rescue effort. Um if everybody remembers that there was a lot of uh there was some you know chaos and I'll call it like borderline violence. Uh a lot of it was overblown, but there was some there, it wasn't all completely made up, and so a lot of people left, you know, for safety reasons. Or they had just exhausted the amount of time they had to uh to give to the effort. Uh when General Honore got appointed as uh commander of Joint Task Force Katrina, he put out a call and said, Hey, all these boat captains that are still here, you know, come meet me at the supernome tonight at six o'clock or whatever it was. So there were sixty-eight that showed up, sixty-eight boat captains. And Todd was one of them. And that's when the general got them all together and said, Listen, he said, We still have people out there stranded. He says, our mission is to save lives. He's like, I have the ultimate executive authority in the state. It's like, don't let any politician or you know, HOA president, anybody tell him you can't go here, you can't go there. It's like if you see people in danger, you go rescue them. He's like, and uh, and I'll take I'll take the the heat, you know. And uh and that way and he said, Y'all are gonna be my Cajun Navy. We're gonna go out and save lives. And so fast forward to the course the floods that happened here in 2016 in the Baton Rouge area, uh, Todd had had gotten a bunch of his his friends together that had gone down after Katrina and said, Hey, we we're needed again, let's let's get out there. And then there was a lot again, like several not just his group, but there was a lot of groups and a lot of hundreds of boats, I think, that had gone out for these rescue efforts. And that that's kind of when he got the idea of like, hey, this is gonna keep happening, and the the government response is gonna be uh inadequate at best, probably most of the time, uh, especially if it's this catastrophic. So we need to have a a full, like a full-on organization, uh, and you know, a name and a brand and all that. And then so he kind of started putting that together and Hurricane Harvey hit the next year, 2017. And that was when I actually got involved. Um, and I'll tell that story in a second, but that was basically the the origin of the United Cajun Navy. That's how Todd formed it and decided that it was going he wanted to have a a nonprofit that was the mission was to go out and be the first shrimp boots on the ground, get people what they need, save lives, make people comfortable until the cavalry arrives. Um going going forward, and I have a tendency to ramble, so you stop me.

SPEAKER_01 9:00

Oh, you're doing great.

SPEAKER_00 9:01

So 2017, I had done uh I had done some work down in Cuba, first Trump administration, uh, and we'll come full circle because Cuba's back in the news, right? But but I had made like so I had just made like my fifth trip down there, and that on that particular trip was when the current president, Miguel Diaz Canel, uh became, you know, took over for it was the first time there was a non-Castro president of Cuba in 50 years or whatever. So I'd come back, I had gone out to some meetings in California, I got a call from a network out there that wanted to do an interview about the transition in Cuba. I get to the station, Hurricane Harvey's hitting. They're like, hey, we got to bump this interview. You know, all hell's breaking loose in Houston. And uh the the producer was like, wait a minute, you're from New Orleans, right? Did you go through Katrina? I'm like, yeah. He goes, Well, why don't you come on air and just talk about like, you know, what's what it's like to have a major hurricane in a populated city? I'm like, yeah, I can wing that, you know. And so during the course of the interview, uh, there was a um uh uh the the lady interviewing me said, you know, hey, how how do people help? Like, do they call the Red Cross? And I'm like, oh God, no, don't call the Red Cross. Like, I said they the money don't get to the people that need it. I said, they, you know, and and I just really just was shooting from the hip. I did not plan to say that, it just came out of my mouth. So I get home the next week. I had a message at my office from the Red Cross. And they weren't, they were not mad at me. They they just they wanted to let me know that they worked with a uh and and in the process of saying don't give the red cross. I said, there's a group called the Cajun Navy that's on their way out there to Texas and they're helping, and they you can donate to them through PayPal or their Facebook pages or whatever. And uh they said, no, we work with a guy named Todd Terrell who's got a Cajun Navy group here. We'd like for y'all to meet. So we went to dinner, we talked, and then Todd and I met a few times subsequently after that, and he was kind of laying out what his he had a really good vision. He just didn't have any real means of putting it together, putting it on paper. You're a lawyer, so he didn't have a paper and up. He was not, it was not part of the paper and up process. So I came in and uh I helped him paper it up. We got our 501c3 designation, did got sort of compliant as a nonprofit, and um, and that's when he decided that he was keeping me, that I wasn't leaving. And so uh eventually I became uh the national vice president of uh what is now a large and uh international organization now and with 15 state chapters of United Cajun Navy around the United States.

SPEAKER_01 11:20

Wow, I didn't realize you'd uh franchised out.

SPEAKER_00 11:23

We did, yeah. I'd love I'd love to uh I'd love to get to the point of a franchise because that means you could charge a franchise fee. But we're just about to call them chapters now.

SPEAKER_02 11:30

I was just about to ask you, are you charging us for this visit? And we didn't I didn't realize you were this big. You're gonna bill Drew for this? No, this is his office. That's not how the lawyering process works.

SPEAKER_00 11:40

Well, what it is is uh when he comes after me, like for an ethics fine, we'll just be like, hey Drew, remember.

SPEAKER_02 11:44

So that's why he's here incredible. He's trying to make friends with as many attorneys as he can.

SPEAKER_01 11:47

Yeah, he's so he's so well on his way. He's got a whole army. So with the chapters, do you help them? Uh number one, do you understand what good food is? Is that like a do you have like a chapter book for them to teach them the process?

SPEAKER_00 12:01

I always we don't have uh we we have a policy and a policy and procedure manual um that we have to have. Um and but it's not really specific to those other states. So first first thing, just for your listeners' sake, right now, and we're expanding, and this is about to change, but as we speak here, all of the the chapters of the United Kingdom Navy are in SEC states. So they're all in states that know how to play college football.

SPEAKER_01 12:26

Excellent. But also just a coincidence, right?

SPEAKER_00 12:28

Just a coincidence.

SPEAKER_01 12:28

It does make the cooking part a little bit.

SPEAKER_00 12:30

Yeah, I was gonna say that I've really had no bad food in any of those states that I've been to there. But we have uh, but yeah, so we are expanding. There's a couple uh of of uh other areas that are interested in coming under our flag that we're trying to onboard now that would kind of take us more westward, you know, that manifest destiny, as they like to say in our old history books. Huge fan. Yeah. And um, and so yeah, that's kind of uh that's kind of where we're at. But no, they you know, it's basically what it is is everywhere we go, we always end up having a handful of volunteers that sort of the cream rises to the top, and we basically just say, Hey, would y'all like to continue to be part of this organization? We'll set you up a chapter here, we'll get you your own sub-Facebook page. You know, you can use our brand, we'll show you how to, you know, get get involved in your community, fundraise, all the kind of stuff that we need to do. And then and then that way when something happens in their state, we immediately have people on the ground.

SPEAKER_01 13:22

It's easier to help when you're next door. Yeah, 100%.

SPEAKER_00 13:25

Yeah, we have people on the ground that can respond, that can tell us who's who, who's in charge, who's not, and who to stay away from, how bad is it, what do we need, all that kind of stuff. And it it makes it it makes it's how we've gotten so good at our response time.

SPEAKER_01 13:38

Is that the toughest part of of the gig is trying to identify the bad actors before they do something that negatively affects what you're trying to do?

SPEAKER_00 13:47

It's not hard to find the bad actors. They will always present themselves uh early and often. Uh, but but you know, there's different uh like for instance, uh in a lot of states, North Carolina after Hurricane Helene, it became very apparent that between the uh the state police and then various county law enforcement, whichever county you were in, and the National Guard were the guys and gals that were in charge. In Texas, for the the hill country floods, it was the Texas Rangers and the United States Coast Guard that seemed to be taking the lead. Now, not to say that there wasn't other agencies involved, but the everywhere I went, those are the guys I got orders from. So that's the kind of intel that's important. Like who do I need to go check in with? And look our standard operating procedure now is we'll walk up, say there's a flood in Manatee County, Florida, and I'll go up there and I'll find, you know, the sheriff, police chief, whoever I can find to talk to, and I'll hand them a placard that has our information, what we do, our capabilities, the names and numbers of the people that are here, and say, if you need any of this, call me. If you need us to stay out of the way, just tell me that we'll do that. And uh they appreciate that because they know they don't have a bunch of cowboys in their hands that are gonna go out and self-deploy. Because I'm gonna tell you this anybody's in search and rescue, especially on a volunteer basis, there is no quicker way to make an enemy out of a local sheriff than for him to have to send his deputies to go rescue some people that were trying to rescue somebody.

SPEAKER_02 15:10

Boy, you're right.

SPEAKER_00 15:10

You know what I'm saying? So you better know what you're doing uh and have your act together because uh they they always appreciate they appreciate the sentiment of the help, and in some cases when we do help, they very much appreciate the help. They don't want to have to rescue people uh that are there to help.

SPEAKER_01 15:26

In a time where they have limited resources, exactly.

SPEAKER_00 15:28

Yeah, he's got half his deputies haven't called in to work yet, you know. He don't know where they are. Uh yeah, it's it's chaos. He's got CNN in his face, he's got the mayor, he's got the governor calling him, like, what are you gonna do about this? Like, he's under a lot of pressure, so you don't want to add to that. You want to take pressure off by saying, Hey, our resources are your resources, you just got 20 new guys, you know. If you need us to do something, let us know.

SPEAKER_01 15:50

Do you get still get any pushback from various groups when you come into their come into a community? Do you still get pushback or are you that much of a known brand at this point that it's hard to do?

SPEAKER_00 16:00

Well, so being a known brand has helped a lot. Like there's very rarely have we ever gone anywhere and somebody's like, I never heard of y'all. Like that doesn't really happen anymore. But uh, but I think it's the way we approach it, like I just described, to where it's very non-confrontational, non-threatening. I think a lot of these uh uh guys who are in gals are in charge of law enforcement agencies in the past have just come across groups that self-deployed, did not ask permission to be there, did not ask for any kind of guidance, and I they rightly do not like that. Um the way we approach it is here's what we can do, here's what we can offer you. If you need nothing, we will go to the next town.

SPEAKER_01 16:38

Does it come now down to like, holy crap, I wish we were this organized with our response? Thanks for coming in.

SPEAKER_00 16:43

We we in in the a lot of the smaller towns, it's exactly what you get. We were just up in uh Oklahoma on a search and rescue of a young boy that had gone missing for 10 days.

SPEAKER_01 16:52

Wait, Oklahoma has water?

SPEAKER_00 16:54

Yeah, well they do. They got they got uh they got rivers and stuff. But yeah, they have tornadoes. Um, tornadoes. So um, yeah, so we a lot of those small communities that have very limited tax bases and resources. Um, when you come in and you're like, hey, sheriff, you need a helicopter, I can have one here in 20 minutes. You know, really? Okay, yeah, let's get it. Uh because he's like calling the National Guard and they're like, we might be able to get you one tomorrow. I gotta put in a requisition, you know. So yeah, they appreciate that.

SPEAKER_02 17:21

So y'all do so the Oklahoma case, right? It wasn't a flood, but y'all go and y'all do the aquatic searches, like the rivers, the lakes, still, so y'all are still a hundred percent water. You're not like fanning out over field searching, right?

SPEAKER_00 17:35

We're not we're not 100% water anymore. We we're known for that, but uh like for instance, in in the case of Hurricane Helene in in North Carolina, when I got out there, I I knew that there was like kinetic flood waves that I was hearing about wiping out little towns and stuff, but but when I got there, I realized there was no water operations. This is a mountainous area, all helicopters. We ended up renting 50 helicopters.

SPEAKER_01 17:55

So is there a United Cajun Army?

SPEAKER_00 17:58

There could be. There's a group, uh, I believe that's called the Cajun Army. And they are uh I I don't know a lot about them. I believe they're just a very similar type of uh disaster response, nonprofit that mainly focuses on, you know, like I guess like land-based work. I got you.

SPEAKER_02 18:18

If you can quit looking that up now.

SPEAKER_00 18:19

Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 18:20

So somebody I was looking to see if they maybe challenge them to a football game. That's what I was looking for.

SPEAKER_00 18:24

Yeah, that's not a bad idea. Yeah, we could have a Cajun Army versus Cajun Navy. Raise some money for that. Yeah, we raise some money, do flag football. Uh yeah, but no, we we but yeah, so we do everything from uh horseback search and rescue. K9, we do GSAR and USAR. We have pilots in the organization. I'm one of the pilots in the organization. We have drone pilots. Um we just have a lot of different types of uh technology and equipment that we can use. We even have a harvicraft. I haven't used that yet in a in a SAR environment, but I'm interested. Interested to see it work. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 18:54

So is this your full-time? Do you do this full time or is this still a strictly volunteer?

SPEAKER_00 18:58

But yeah, it's still strictly volunteer. We have nobody uh on staff that's paid at this time. Um we're not really sure. As we keep keep growing at the pace we're growing, I I think it inevitably we'll we'll hit a tipping point where we'll probably have to get to that that point just to be able to retain the type of talent to run an organization that large. Uh but right now, no, I still gotta I still gotta work for a living.

SPEAKER_02 19:19

So Todd's running around taking all these selfies for free, he's not getting paid to do that.

SPEAKER_00 19:23

I'm sure I mean, you know, he probably gets donations from only women that follow him.

SPEAKER_01 19:26

Maybe his only fans page.

SPEAKER_00 19:27

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 19:29

That was not me, Todd.

SPEAKER_01 19:30

He's probably not listening. No, he's too busy. Hey, can't come on the show. He's obviously too busy.

SPEAKER_02 19:34

He's probably at a barbecue in Mississippi somewhere.

SPEAKER_00 19:37

I don't know. I was with him earlier today. I don't I don't know where he's at right now, to be honest with you. Just open Facebook, you'll find out.

SPEAKER_01 19:42

He's been offered by Governor Landry to be part of the envoy to Greenland.

SPEAKER_00 19:49

I uh that was uh that was a genius satirical article by the Sadvocate to say, uh, because I had a lot of people call asking if that was real. And I just, of course, you know, said, of course it's real. You know what I mean? Like why would I do it why wouldn't it why would it not be? You know what I mean? Like um, yeah, so no, we uh we do work with we we work very closely with Gosep. We've had General Mafus, who is the director of Gosep, come and tour our facility at the Batoners Airport. Um, they actually we did a mission for Gosep. After Hurricane Melissa, we moved 360 pallets of MREs and water that was owned by the state and and moved it by various means to to Jamaica to distribute uh as relief. It was all stuff that was still good but was gonna expire before next hurricane season. And so uh governor figured what better way to make use of than people that need it today and uh trusted us with that mission. And when I told them, yes, sir, we can absolutely do that. I had no idea how we were gonna do it, but I will tell you that it was a combination of uh other nonprofits, um, the United States Navy and the United States Marine Corps, between and the United Cajun Navy all working together. We got 360 Samad pallets down to Kingston, Jamaica.

SPEAKER_01 21:04

So if y'all did go to Greenland, you would be immediately the largest military-esque force in that country.

SPEAKER_00 21:11

Yeah, I would think so. Uh I don't know how the boats are gonna work when the water's all frozen over there.

SPEAKER_01 21:16

It's a process of well, you you didn't know how to transport uh to Jamaica and you figure that out.

SPEAKER_00 21:22

Right, but I knew that the water between us and Jamaica was not frozen. I knew that much.

SPEAKER_01 21:26

Uh y'all don't have any ice rigs?

SPEAKER_00 21:29

Not yet, but we need some of those icebreakers, so I think that'd be cool.

SPEAKER_01 21:32

So there's no anticipated invasion of Denmark at this time, is what you're telling me.

SPEAKER_00 21:36

I mean, I I think they better watch their mouth. I think they've been a little lippy. Yeah, you know.

SPEAKER_02 21:41

Have y'all ever been out doing you know, doing a search and rescue? And of course, you got a bunch of guys from Louisiana, probably some Cajun special bass boats. Has anyone ever stopped and just started fishing? Our guys? All that water, a Louisiana guy. You know, they're bringing bait just in case, you know, if thing gets called off. I don't know what they got. Have you ever? Had a call and Ray and says, Man, we're over here fishing. I really can't get to that.

SPEAKER_00 22:03

Yeah, if we ever have that guy, we just nickname him Cousin Eddie and tell him he's going home.

SPEAKER_02 22:07

You know, like not before he catches any fish, though. He'll probably go.

SPEAKER_00 22:10

I gotta tell you, we we uh we did a pretty prolonged deployment out there in North Carolina after Hurricane Helene, and uh we got to know some of the locals and uh we nicknamed them mountain cajuns because the Appalachians are very similar to Louisiana, it's just mountains versus swamps. Um for some reason they throw a lot of their fish back that they catch. That's something I still haven't got in my head around. But they did teach us how to fly fish. So we did get out there at you know, turned during some downtime and and uh got to do some some bass fishing. So you thought that was a crazy question, but it's really fun, but but not in the middle of a certain list, you know.

SPEAKER_01 22:40

No, no, only during the downtimes. I think that was a c clarification. Right.

SPEAKER_02 22:44

Come on, I think I got something. Give me a second. Right. Hold on, stay afloat.

SPEAKER_00 22:48

Hold this, kid.

SPEAKER_01 22:50

That's right. So where is the farthest y'all have been so far?

SPEAKER_00 22:54

Uh as the crow flies, I believe well, it depends on what's further away from Louisiana, Alaska or Hawaii. Um, obviously we we've deployed to both of those states. Um now we have done um we've done a lot in the Bahamas. We we've sent emissaries to um Israel, uh Turkey, and uh Poland and Palestine. Uh, but that was not like full that was not like response. It was more like us sending people over there with supplies to hand out, like literally uh for some things that were going on in those countries, but not like it wasn't a search and rescue, it wasn't like uh an official response. It was more like just a humanitarian giveaway, kind of hey, here's some teddy bears for the kids and uh, you know, other other types of just commodities that people needed at at the time, uh you know, for stuff that was especially during the Israel Palestine conflict was really heating up.

SPEAKER_02 23:50

Let me ask you this do y'all have other volunteer positions for people who don't have watercrafts? Like, where do you need help?

SPEAKER_00 23:57

Yeah, absolutely. So the the first thing I always say, you know, people ask, like, what does a volunteer look like? You know, we say time, talent, or treasure. If you have the time to give, we will find something for you to do. If you have specific talent, we will put that talent to good use. If you're fortunate enough to have treasure and you want to donate, we can always use funds because everything we do costs money. All the trucks that you see with the United Kingdom Navy logo going up and down the highway uh cost money for us to get the stuff here and to send it back out. So every time it's it's a double freight situation. Um, we we've kind of divided it up into what I call uh my special ops volunteers, and those are people who are highly skilled, almost all combat veterans, former law enforcement, people that can uh handle some really rough situations. I'm not worried about if they if I know that there's a high chance we're gonna come across any uh deceased people that I'm not gonna be paying their psychologist bill for the rest of their life, all that kind of stuff. Um and then I have volunteers that are in the warehouse. We have a 55,000 square foot facility now at the Baton Rouge Airport, um, and we get stuff in every day that's not sorted, and it has to be sorted and categorized and put in a certain way in the warehouse so that when we get a call and say this is what we need, we know where that stuff is. And it's not like the last scene in Temple of Doom where there's just rows and rows of boxes with no labels on them. We have to know what what's there and where. Um, and so we need that. And if somebody uh we have people that all they do, they don't ever leave home. They just they help us answer our emails and social media messages and phone calls um and uh and stay in touch with people for us because we when we're on deployment, we get absolutely overwhelmed. We get thousands of messages, we can't possibly keep up with them all. Um, and then we have uh what I tell people is one thing that's very easy and free to do is follow us on social media, like and share our posts because that helps the algorithm push us out there more, and we do generate revenue from those social media platforms, and and that helps, and it's like I said, free and easy to do.

SPEAKER_01 25:58

Do you do you have a place for a guy who creates memes? Is there a special department for that?

SPEAKER_00 26:04

I I have uh uh there we have a uh like an actual like a award for like best meme of the year. You know what I mean?

SPEAKER_02 26:13

Yeah, follow Andy. Listen, if you follow him, you will see he has all the talent of anyone at the Savicate. That's why I invited him here.

SPEAKER_00 26:24

Oh man.

SPEAKER_02 26:25

This guy trolls the gr the greatest I've ever seen. He's a fantastic troll.

SPEAKER_00 26:30

We we uh see he's blushing. Of course he is. Todd wishes I would do it under a pseudonym, but exactly I didn't know that many people were watching.

SPEAKER_01 26:38

Todd's like my wife wishes you would do it separately, some other place.

SPEAKER_02 26:42

Yeah, his wife doesn't know he does it, he does the podcast.

SPEAKER_01 26:44

So don't say that.

SPEAKER_00 26:46

Oh wow.

SPEAKER_01 26:47

Yeah, I was afraid.

SPEAKER_00 26:48

Yeah, memes are always welcome. Um, we get a lot of trolls, we get a lot of haters. There's there's people And what's the what's the reason for that? Uh I you know, I don't know. I think I think you just have a lot of really unhappy people that just sort of get like some kind of dopamine hit by attacking us. You get some people who just sort of wish they were doing what we were doing, or maybe they're like sitting on their butt not doing anything, and they're just kind of jealous where these guys are out there making a difference, um, and and I'm not, and they're just making me feel worse about myself. We got people who call themselves the Cajun Navy that are not, and they use our uh they use our our content and our brand and all that to try to raise money.

SPEAKER_01 27:28

That's when the special lawyers come in.

SPEAKER_00 27:30

Exactly. Yeah, there's always trust me, we got dude, we got lawyers for uh we got lawyers for certain like you know, those kind of things, and we got lawyers for uh we got one lawyer that all he handles is like the trademark and patent stuff now. We got lawyers that handle, you know, when we gotta unfortunately people try to screw us and we have to sue them, you know.

SPEAKER_01 27:49

And um well the problem comes in if somebody's allowed to to steal your brand, not just the money part of it, but if they go out there to one of these sites and they're pretending to be you and they do something catastrophically stupid, it's you that's gonna reflect it.

SPEAKER_00 28:05

Well, and that's exactly what happens, and that's that's kind of it got to the point where we we ignored it for a while because it was just sort of like we figured it was petty and it would go away. There was times when we had to get litigious about it, and then there was times when we literally would show up somewhere and and we would be like persona non grata, because like, well, there's Cajun Avi's guy who came in here and you know just just stole everything and and left, and it's like, yeah, it wasn't us. But they don't those people out there that in another state, they don't know, and they don't have time to sit there and verify all the verify all that kind of stuff. So um it it's gotten to the point now where uh I have a much shorter fuse. Like I have the sh I have the shorter fuse, Todd's the bigger bombs. He's got a longer fuse, but if anybody ever lets it get all the way to the top, it's gonna be a nuke. Whereas I have a short fuse, but it's more like a grenade. Yeah. But I've had enough to the point where um I'm just, you know, we we got these lawyers, we slap suits on people when I think they did something illegal. I get I I recommend uh or I request the attorney general to enjoy the suit and pursue criminal charges against them. Like I've just I've had enough.

SPEAKER_01 29:08

That's it. Because if you don't stop it, if you don't cut it off immediately and you let it fester.

SPEAKER_00 29:12

We're getting close to having a couple of scalps on the wall, and and uh when that happens, I told Todd, I said, because he's you know, again, like, man, uh do we have to go that far? And I'm like, listen, we get a couple scalps on the wall and we hang them up to where everybody can see them. Yeah, uh, people are gonna think twice. It's not gonna stop people from like taking pod shots on Facebook. That's just free speech.

SPEAKER_02 29:32

Right, right.

SPEAKER_00 29:32

That's the downside of free speech. But when you actually go out and and actually steal like a picture that we posted or a video that we posted, put it on your own Facebook page, pretend like it's you, put up a link for people to donate, you know, actually take uh uh like uh somebody wants to donate like a like a four-wheeler or something to the Cajun Navy and they accidentally call the wrong group and those they accept it, say yeah, yeah, we'll take it. Like, yeah, I mean that's the kind of stuff that's just gotta stop.

SPEAKER_02 29:57

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 29:58

So did y'all deploy to Jamaica?

SPEAKER_00 30:00

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 30:01

And how was that?

SPEAKER_00 30:02

From what I heard, it was hot. I never actually went down there. Um, we we have a incident commander named Josh Gill who led the team. Uh the first team we went down there were mostly um uh medics, uh folks from Tanjibaho Parish that went down there first and set up uh just like a medical triage unit um with supplies that we sent with them. Then Josh went down there and sort of got him into a uh an ICS structure and and and got him into a battle rhythm. And they were there for about five weeks and we we tarped a lot of roofs, we you know fed a lot of people, um, helped a lot of folks. I sent I sent uh one of my friends down there who's a uh a chef and he's like a he's like a bait to plate type chef, like you know, like custom custom kind of dinner experiences. And um he went down there uh because they had we gotten found finally found a house for like the five or six people we had down there, and um, and he I he'll send him down there to cook, so because they were going out early and coming back late, and so this way they have like hot meals in the morning and evening. And uh anyway, he's uh he's the guy that I like taught me how to spear fish. He's experienced. So he like borrowed some equipment from a local, went out, dove, got lobster, got a bunch of fish and stuff, and he's feeding our guys and some of the people in a little little village that they were in and stuff. So just yeah, things like that uh made made uh Jamaica. Oh, here's an interesting story. I got a call from uh a nun, which I haven't gotten called in one of those offices in a long time, you know, like since grammar school, probably. But no, this is like the mother superior of some order. I can't remember the name of the order. She's out of Pennsylvania. She called me up and she said, Hey, I got a mission down there in Jamaica. And she's like, one of my nuns is actually from Sulfur, Louisiana. She's like, You think you could help me? I said, Well, I would have helped you anyway. I said, But just having having a nun from Louisiana helps.

SPEAKER_01 31:50

The next question wasn't, How does she look?

SPEAKER_02 31:53

Todd would ask that.

SPEAKER_00 31:54

This guy was like, Right, right, right. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 31:56

Can you send me a picture of her?

SPEAKER_00 31:58

Yeah, I know. Picture it didn't happen. Uh yeah, no, I mean I went to Cactive School my whole life except for college, so I knew better than that. Those old penguins and how to throw hands like inmates. You know, so anyway, they uh so she uh had a bunch of equipment, uh like solar generators and water filtration stuff. She wanted to send, she just had no idea how to get it down there. So she said, if I send it to you, can you get it down there? Yes, ma'am. So we she shipped the stuff to Baton Rouge. We got it on trucks, we got it on boats, got it down there, got it delivered to the uh the mission, and she contacted me and just was overjoyed and and very thankful. And uh, and so yeah, just it's it's it's kind of weird. Uh everything comes full circle, but you'll never know where you'll get the call from. I've got a call from Pennsylvania to a group based in Baton Rouge about something in Jamaica who happens to have a nun from Louisiana living there doing the Lord's work, right?

SPEAKER_01 32:49

What are the odds?

SPEAKER_00 32:50

You can't make it up. No, so I I actually, when I do like a lot of public speaking engagements, I'll bring videos and pictures because I I tell people like these stories I tell, y'all probably gonna think I'm full of crap. So I have to bring evidence just to let you know that no, this really happened. Like that lady got her shoes back, but this really did happen, you know.

SPEAKER_01 33:08

When is the TV series coming? Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 33:13

Let me tell you what, we've been approached about uh a few different times about some kind of TV series or documentary or movie or whatever. And it the the problem is is that apparently right now what's hot in Hollywood is scripted series. And I actually had a couple of very in-depth meetings with uh some very reputable production houses out in in California. Um and I looked them up, I checked them out, and all I they were who they said they were. Um and but yeah, but that's what they wanted to do, is more of a scripted series. And I'm like, well, we can't do that, like because we're not actors, first of all. Um and second of all, we've Todd's been approached about people just wanted them to like recreate a rescue scene just for them to film it, and he won't do it. He's like, if it's not authentic, I don't want it, I don't want to be in it. So it's just a combination of that. I think at some point uh the story is probably interesting enough for somebody to to present it that way. I just don't know what the right format's gonna be. And uh uh, but I think that I think it will happen. It just gotta be done the right way.

SPEAKER_01 34:18

It just feels like of all the crap that's on TV, this would be pretty good.

SPEAKER_00 34:22

Listen, I told, and this is exactly what I told the lady out in Hollywood, I said if you get Taylor Sheridan to sign on as the writer, we could do whatever kind of scripted series you want.

SPEAKER_01 34:31

What about 50 Cent? Because we can do a little Louisiana vibe and he's more of a he's more of a production guy.

SPEAKER_00 34:36

Like, I mean, if he wanted to produce it, yeah, but I mean I want like Taylor Sheridan talent writing the script.

SPEAKER_01 34:41

Yeah, I gotcha.

SPEAKER_00 34:41

I mean, if it's gonna be scripted, it's got to be written very well.

SPEAKER_01 34:45

I mean, I think that I mean that just seems like low-hanging fruit. If I'm at if I'm at Netflix and and literally look at the crap I put out on a daily basis.

SPEAKER_00 34:52

We've been yeah, we've been contacted by Netflix Discovery Channel, and and we we've gotten more into uh the weather. We have our own meteorologists now, we have storm chasers now, and we get to go out and um and and go chase with guys like Reed Timmer that are very uh famous in that field, and um they've all been featured on TV shows and stuff. So I think it's getting to I think it's getting to the cusp of that, but like I said, it just has to be presented to us in a way that's not gonna cheapen our brand and not gonna feel cheesy and not make Billy Nungesser cringe when he watches it because he's the guy out there trying to sell Louisiana, and I don't want to put out a product out there that's not that's not good. Shoot him, no, rescue him, rescue him. Right, right, right. There's that, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 35:34

All right, enough to wrap for another episode of the Savaged Podcast. We are Dave and Drew. We have an episode every single week released hopefully on Wednesdays, and you can find us everywhere podcasts are located. So Apple, Spotify, uh, Bus Sprout, if you can find a podcast, we're there. Or you can just go directly to thesavic.com.

SPEAKER_02 35:54

Thanks for tuning in. Don't forget to follow the Savagid on Facebook, Instagram, and X. We now have a Facebook group. You're welcome to join called the Savicit.

SPEAKER_01 36:01

And with that, it'd be great if you would like us, uh, click subscribe, leave us a positive review. These are the things that help us uh keep doing the show, grow the show, bring more people into the Savaged Podcast family.

SPEAKER_02 36:14

Yeah, uh, you can also send us your comments, suggestions, or questions at podcast at the sabvocate.com or text them to us at 225 255 2480. We'll see you next week.