S.O.S. (Stories of Service) - Ordinary people who do extraordinary work
Theresa Carpenter
259 episodes
3 days ago
Send us a text A young paratrooper with a near-perfect PT score, big plans and a bigger heart grew dangerously ill at Fort Bragg. He was sent back to the barracks, where missed formations, unanswered calls and a holiday weekend combined into six silent days. By the time anyone knocked, it was too late. His mother, Heather Baker, walks us through the painful timeline—ER turnaways, worsening vitals, redacted pages, and a claims process twisted by contractor loopholes—and the moment the Army Sec...
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Send us a text A young paratrooper with a near-perfect PT score, big plans and a bigger heart grew dangerously ill at Fort Bragg. He was sent back to the barracks, where missed formations, unanswered calls and a holiday weekend combined into six silent days. By the time anyone knocked, it was too late. His mother, Heather Baker, walks us through the painful timeline—ER turnaways, worsening vitals, redacted pages, and a claims process twisted by contractor loopholes—and the moment the Army Sec...
Send us a text The story opens at a dinner party and ends with a near-unheard-of legal result: dismissal with prejudice. In between is retired Colonel Dan Wilson’s toughest battle—how a decorated Marine became the target of a false allegation, why the case grew despite exculpatory DNA, and what happens when command climate, politics, and process collide. We trace Dan’s life from childhood in Africa through four decades of Marine command, the accusation, and months under a gag orde...
Send us a text A hard conversation worth having: we sit down with retired Army Lieutenant Colonel Daniel Gade to examine how the VA disability system, built with noble intent, can trap veterans in dependency and distort how America sees its warriors. Drawing on his combat wounds, hospital experience, academic work, and policy roles, Daniel makes a clear distinction between having a condition and becoming that condition—and shows how incentives, ratings, and advocacy ecosystems can push vetera...
Send us a text A forgotten reformer changed how we think about military education, then got written out of the story. We dig into Alden Partridge’s bold vision for the citizen-soldier, why his mastery-based model threatened entrenched interests, and how his practical ideas—shorter paths for proven mastery, rigorous field training, and decentralized leadership—can still fix what’s broken in today’s force. Franklin Annis walks us through Partridge’s rise at West Point during the War of 1812, t...
Send us a text Imagine trading a wall of meetings for a calendar with white stripes where thinking, planning, and decisive action actually happen. That’s the shift we explore with Juliet Funt—keynote speaker, author, and founder of the Juliet Funt Group—whose work helps teams cut busy work and create the bandwidth to do their best thinking. We dig into why white space isn’t idleness; it’s a performance tool. Juliet shows how modern work confuses motion with progress, burying judgment under e...
Send us a text Power reveals character, and nowhere is that more visible than inside military sexual assault response. We sit down with Jeff Goris—career aviator, senior SHARP advocate at Fort Hood, and later a Department of the Army civilian—to unpack how a program meant to protect survivors gets kneecapped by backlogs, weak command emphasis, and investigations run by the very people with skin in the game. From the McQueen scandal to the wake-up after Vanessa Guillén, Jeff traces the specifi...
Send us a text What does it really cost to lead with integrity when the system leans the other way? We sit down with Forrest, a former naval flight officer and mission commander, whose career bends from high school dropout to strike planner for Kosovo—and later into the crosshairs after he refused to hide a serious security breach on a remote island base. The stories move fast: carrier decks and air tasking orders, isolated duty stations that no one wanted, and the everyday creativity require...
Send us a text A 62-mile race that lets you sleep at night and still pushes you to your edge? We’re bringing a new kind of endurance event to the Colorado backcountry to honor Navy SEAL Ryan Larkin and fund life-changing sleep recovery through 62 Romeo. Over three days from Montrose to Telluride, ten fire teams face rugged terrain, military-style navigation, and surprise challenges that reward strategy and teamwork—not just speed. Rob Sweetman, a former SEAL and founder of 62 Romeo, shares h...
Send us a text Headlines say the VA system is broken and rife with abuse. Our conversation with Marine veteran Clayton Sims tells a different story—one grounded in lived experience, policy fluency, and a community-first approach to getting claims right without fear or costly consultants. Clayton shares how a rough transition and a hurried VSO visit pushed him to learn the language of 38 CFR and the evidence behind service connection. We unpack the realities of infantry life—miles in boots un...
Send us a text A university president tells faculty to “keep doing what you’re doing” on DEI and critical race theory—just don’t get caught. That’s the moment Dr. Rick Adante, a cognitive neuroscientist and NASA analog mission lead, decided to blow the whistle. What follows is a rare, unvarnished look at how policy theatre and word swaps can allegedly shield millions in federal and state funds while undermining the very laws and standards meant to protect students, researchers, and the public...
Send us a text A decorated field artillery officer and former West Point garrison commander says one strange night derailed 27 years of service—and exposed how fragile due process can be on a military post. Tony Bianchi recounts leading a week of storm recovery, an alumni dinner where a trivial carving-station moment sparked a rumor, and a late drive home later portrayed as a gate run. Hours after he went to bed, senior MPs gathered behind his house and colleagues woke him at 2:45 AM—an...
Send us a text This episode pulls back the curtain on a NATO headquarters usually seen only through press releases. Marine officer and Foreign Area Officer Andres Caceres explains how honest analysis on Afghanistan, ISIS’s rise, and Russia’s moves toward Crimea collided with a staff culture that valued appearances over results—and what happened when he refused to go along. Andres contrasts early command lessons—where clear standards cut alcohol incidents to zero in Japan—wit...
Send us a text The story begins where many people stay silent: a brutal childhood, a foster system that felt like survival training, and the desperate need to belong somewhere that demanded the best. Daniel Odell found that place in the Army, even as he served in a role many overlook. As a cook in Iraq, he learned how a hot meal and five minutes of kindness could hold fear at bay. He also chased perspective—volunteering for flights, witnessing the shock of medevac tents, and carrying images t...
Send us a text A submariner’s guide to fixing family policy does not begin in a committee room; it begins in a NICU. Jeremy Hilton joins us to share how his daughter’s complex medical needs reshaped his Navy career and pushed him into a mission to reform the Exceptional Family Member Program and modernize Tricare for military kids. He walks through how lived experience can drive real policy change, from filing an IG complaint that actually moved the needle to finding mentors who opened Hill d...
Send us a text A decorated OSI agent who helped capture Taliban fighters and aided disaster survivors should be building a life in his forties. Instead, Robert Condon has spent 12 years behind bars, sentenced to 30, while his mother—retired Toledo police officer Holly Yeager—keeps fighting a case she believes was built on pressure, politics, and broken process. We open the file and follow the twists: a drug ring investigation that put Robert at odds with command priorities, a single accuser w...
Send us a text A single afternoon changed everything. Lisa Regina—actor, filmmaker, and founder of A Right to Heal—was assaulted by her fiancé, then thrust into a tabloid cyclone that made recovery even harder. What followed wasn’t a rebrand; it was a rebuilding. With a legal pad and a pen, she wrote her way out of shock, turned fragments into a monologue, and found a voice that could lift others who felt alone. We dive into Lisa’s creative roots, the grind of early set life, and the quiet l...
Send us a text Headlines rarely match the ground truth. We sit down with retired Lt Col Lenore Hakinos to unpack what it took to stand up Camp Delphi in Donna, Texas during the 2021 surge of unaccompanied minors. As a joint planner with deep logistics and emergency management experience, Lenore helped build an expeditionary base camp—dorms, medical intake, process flow—all under HHS leadership with ORR and FEMA in support. What she found was a system designed for care but strained by scale: n...
Send us a text What would you do when the order on your desk contradicts the conviction in your gut? We sit down with former Green Beret captain John Frankman to unpack the moment duty collided with conscience during the COVID vaccine mandate—and the ripple effects that followed. From early pressure cues and deployment rules to a surreal JRTC pause where troops were told to decide in the woods, John walks us through the machinery of coercion as he experienced it: shifting policies, career thr...
Send us a text A uniform shouldn’t cost a parent their child. We sit down with retired Army officer, attorney, and parent advocate Erhan Bettistani to unpack how military service collides with family court—and why a little-known administrative process, the Family Advocacy Program’s Incident Determination Committee (FAP IDC), can tilt custody decisions without basic due process. Erhan brings research published in Family Court Review and Military Law Review, plus firsthand stories from Warrior ...
Send us a text What does leadership look like when control disappears? We sit down with Jeff Moss—Bronze Star Army aviator, bestselling author of My Leading Edge, Pfizer veteran, and Inc. 5000 franchise owner—to trace a life built on moral courage, mentorship, and service that lasts. From piloting AH-1 Cobras in Desert Storm to refusing to field unsafe aircraft under pressure, Jeff explains how clear standards and documented truth protect people and missions. Then we pivot from the flight lin...
Send us a text What do you do when the institution you served closes ranks—and you’re left to fight alone? We sit down with Marine veteran and former Nevada National Guard member Andy Lindstrom to unpack a hard, complicated story: years of reporting alleged misconduct, a firing justified as “not a good fit,” and a hearing that arrived nearly three years late. From claims of fraternization and sexual harassment to allegations of wage suppression and payroll fraud on the state side, Andy walks ...
S.O.S. (Stories of Service) - Ordinary people who do extraordinary work
Send us a text A young paratrooper with a near-perfect PT score, big plans and a bigger heart grew dangerously ill at Fort Bragg. He was sent back to the barracks, where missed formations, unanswered calls and a holiday weekend combined into six silent days. By the time anyone knocked, it was too late. His mother, Heather Baker, walks us through the painful timeline—ER turnaways, worsening vitals, redacted pages, and a claims process twisted by contractor loopholes—and the moment the Army Sec...
