Latest / The Trauma Therapist / Episode 751: Project 2 Heal with Charlie Petrizzo

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Episode 751: Project 2 Heal with Charlie Petrizzo · The Trauma Therapist

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Or welcome back to the Trauma Therapist Podcast. My name is Gaming Person.
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My mission is to help trauma therapists be their incredible cells, to be human,
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to be real, not just a clinician. I'm a big believer in
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who we are is more important than what we know, and this requires cultivating
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authenticity, genuineness, and vulnerability, and that requires intention. Can learn more
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about my courses and workshops by going to the Trauma Therapist project dot com.
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That's the Trauma Therapist Project dot com. Let's get started, all right,
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Charlie. So here we go to five or three, two and one,
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our folks, welcome back to the podcast. I am very excited to have
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as my guest today, Charlie Patrizio. Charlie, welcome. Thank you guy.
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I'm glad to be here. Thanks for having me. You are welcome.
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So Charlie was born and raised and Staton Allen, New your and his
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young adult he moved to Oldbridge and later Millstone, New Jersey. His story
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of surviving two tragic accidents, including the major brain trauma of a car accident
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and a quote electrocution in which he burned over two thirds body of his body,
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became the focus of the twenty twelve award winning docu drama called Charlie's Scars.
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The inspiration for the founding of Project to Heal came in part from his
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recognition of the care he needed and received from his parents during and after his
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two trials from the accidents, but also from the recognition of how many friends
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offered to help his family during that time. Charlie, Welcome to the podcast.
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Great, Hey, thanks guy. I'm glad to be here. Can't
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wait to talk with you and tell my story. And still ye where are
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you from? Was born in Manhattan, raised the Queens, lived in Jersey,
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and I love it when I get someone who's from the New York Yeah,
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we are, go ahead. I'm from Staten Island, which is kind
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of the forgotten borrow. I know, you're always forgotten. I mean Manhattan
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is when people think of the city, right, What do you think of
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Manhattan? Right? Right? So I grew up in kind of the suburb
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of Manhattan, if you will. But I loved it, you know,
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uh, being a New York City boy, uh, and being one of
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three boys and a father who was a sports kind of not I I uh
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fell in love with sports, you know, especially football, baseball and hockey.
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Still remain a big New York Mets fan. Now that I'm in the
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Carolinas, I've kind of my allegiance to the hockey team I follow changed a
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little, but I still follow New York sports. I still have that New
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York Rangers hat in the back of my closet, even though I follow the
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carol and a Hurricane's hockey team. Now, awesome, awesome, I'm gonna
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I don't think we would have been able to do what we're doing down here
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in the Carolina As if we had stayed up there in the city. Yeah.
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Yeah, well look, let's let's start off here. Well, yeah,
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what the heck happened? Okay, So you know, it's funny because
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when my mom and dad would used to talk about me, I'm the middle
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child. So they say, you know something about the middle child. And
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so my mom always used to tell me, you know, when you were
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born, you came out breach and the umbilical cord was wrapped around your neck
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and you were purple, and so you know, to me, that was
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a I'm like, wow, I was a problem right from the start.
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You know. I was a challenge right from the start, even to myself.
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I was a challenge. So I lived of every normal life with two
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loving parents and two brothers, one a little bit older and one a little
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bit younger. And my first at accident I called accidents happened when I was
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just about five years old, just turning five years old, and it was
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a day where we were home. We lived in an apartment building, and
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my godmother and her two young sons, who were about my age, came
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over to eat lunch with us, and when they went to leave, I
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had a tantrum and wanted to go home with them. They only lived five
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minutes away. I wanted to continue playing ball with my two friends there,
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and so after just I wore my mom out and she said, all right,
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go and so I went. And we were playing with a whiffleball,
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a plastic ball against the garage, and my aunt was sitting there right on
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what we called a stoop in New York and watching us. And one of
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my friends hit the ball over his brother who was pitching the ball, and
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I was standing about ten feet behind him, and I chased the ball into
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the street and I wasn't looking, and there was a car parked and there
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was a car coming down the road. I ran out and it just nailed
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me right in the head. I mean, it was probably going forty miles
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an hour or so. I was a small little guy and it just threw
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me like a rag doll. Now this was many, many years ago.
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I'm fifty nine now. So at the time, the policeman who came,
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they made a decision that if they didn't wrap me up and get me to
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the hospital, I wasn't gonna make it because my head was split open and
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I was bleeding all over the place. There was a fortunately, there was
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a hospital that was about five minutes away. They got me there, they
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stabilized me. They had to fly in a neurosurgeon who, from what I
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understand, was playing poker up in the Poconos with his buddies that day,
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and so they got a helicopter and got him in and he immediately performed neurosurgery
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on me. I remained in the hospital for I don't know about a month.
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I was paralyzed on the left side of my body was you know,
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the right side of my brain took the trauma, and so the left side
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of my body was paralyzed. And so here I was now, after coming
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home from the hospital a kid who had no issues. And when you're just
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about five years old, you know, I mean, you're really starting to
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come into your own coordination at some you know, at some level. And
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here I was. Now I was a lefty and everything I knew how to
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do was gone. I couldn't move my hand, couldn't move my leg,
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so I had to relearn everything writing and it wasn't easy. I mean,
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you know, there's stories of my father told me, stories of him coming
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home from work, like some of the exercises my mom had to do with
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me, because they were pretty sure. And now we know that there's something
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called we know about neural plasticity in the brain. But you know, now
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there's people who think there's and I think there's some strong evidence to the fact
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that there's neurogenesis where neurons can actually rebuild themselves, and they believe such as
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the case, especially for much younger injured And that's what my neurologists really thought.
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What happened with me, because it took a year and a half to
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two years, but I regained my function in my left side of my body.
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Now not having it two years, I started to become more inclined to
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do everything from the right side because that's what I had done for the pet
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and I was never I never regained the coordination I had even as a younger
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child that my father told me. My father was a really good athlete and
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a really good what would you call it, like if he were a scout.
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He knew how to pick out talent. And I had an older brother
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who was really good in sports, went on to you know, play college
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football and it was an all star and everything. And my dad would say
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to me, you know, you were a lefty, and in a year
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and a half younger than him, you were doing things that you know,
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at four years old, you were doing things that I've seen eight and nine
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year olds doing with the ball. Wow, you got hurt, you know,
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you just never you know, you just never got it back, you
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know that, and left so you started doing everything the other way, and
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so, you know, I guess in some ways it was it was a
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loss for me. I mean I ever really realized my potential. I still
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continue to play and compete in sports because my brothers did, and I liked
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it, but I was you know, average at best, but I loved
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doing it. But I also developed a sense for for something that I thought
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I could do better or had more of a passion for given. You know,
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uh where I was and and I just had this overwhelming love for animals,
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most especially dogs, horses. And you know, so I had I
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had my second accident, my second experience when I was sixteen, and this
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could have been prevented. I mean, I was working a summer job for
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a neighborhood contractor, and uh, I was trying to get myself in shape,
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build up some muscle. Like I said, I was still playing sports,
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but I wasn't you know. I was a guy that sat on the
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bench and was called in when the second team used to come in. So
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I was trying to build myself up for sophomore year muscle wise. So I
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was doing labor, picking things up, throwing trash away at big sites.
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But he had a job for us to do, our boss, and it
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was to paint a house in New York City. And he picked me up
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that morning and he said, hey, Harley, does your dad have a
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ladder in the garage. I said, yay, he's got one. He
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said, is it a wooden ladder? I said yeah, So I went
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I brought it out and it was about it. It was about a twenty
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foot ladder. Guy. I brought it out and the guy says, no,
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that's not going to be long enough. We'll use this a little mium
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morning we have here in the truck. Okay. So we went to the
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job and the job site was a house that was on a main road in
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Staten Island, but it was very commercial a lot of traffic. Houses were
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very close to the street and we had to pick the ladder up and face
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it toward the house, and it needed to be turned to get it so
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that we could lay it against the house, and we extended it because the
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peak. It was one of those very old houses and it had a really
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high peak, almost like a third floor attic that we had to get the
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house up over the window. And so when we went to turn the ladder
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it was a bit unwieldy and we we were three feet away from telephone poles.
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So as sixteen years old, all I thought about was, you know,
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this is okay. Those wires up there as telephone poles, telephone wires.
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We're safe. And I didn't even think, you know, I'm like,
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it doesn't matter because we're not you know, We're just going to turn
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this ladder and put it against the house. But when we went to turn
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the ladder, it was extended so high that it was, like I said,
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unwieldy and heavy. And they had these rubber boots on them, these
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ladders to stabilize them. And the one on the right hand side, which
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was the side where the polls were, snapped and the ladder lost a couple
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inches and leaned when it snapped, and I had me and another guy on
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the other side stabilizing the ladder, but it pulled me and it hit the
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wires and there were thirty six thousand there were current thirty six thousand vaults of
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electricity, which my father's a power engineer, and he said, by their
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standards, that's a medium voltage. By my standards, thirty six thousand vaults.
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You know, hitting your body isn't supposed to happen. So when that
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so, my hands were on the ladder, and when that electricity ran through
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my ladder, threw the ladder and hit my hands and my body. It
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just felt like my eyeballs were sucked out of my face and like pulled out
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and snapped back in, and then I was gone. I was gone,
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and I was just laying there for dead pulse, barely breathing, barely.
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Guy across the street eating at McDonald's saw it happen. He happened to be
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a empt He jumped up. Now, the road he had across was a
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major road, and there were cars coming back and forth, and he saw
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me go down. So he's like, what am I gonna do here?
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He saw me stuck to the ladder. He said, I was glowing green.
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I was glowing. He said, there was a glow about me,
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like like the Hulk changing in the old show. And he thought to himself,
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all right, he's attached to that ladder because the electricity's got him stuck
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to it. I need to run across the street and almost tackle him to
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unhook that electric connection. He said, as he started to run around across
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the street. There must have been a transformer that overloaded, and I fell
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off the ladder and hit the ground. When he got there, he immediately
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started putting his hands over my body and he felt, you know, the
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temperature coming off me, And he said, you know, thankfully we had
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been using the hose to clean off some of paint and stuff, and he
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used the hose to cool the bottom of me, where my shoes were still
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on and my pants were still on. He checked my pulse and you know,
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somebody had called the emergency, and he said, like before he knew
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it, he could hear the sirens, and they were there so quick,
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and they were doing what paramedics do, and they got me in the ambulance
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and they got me to a close hospital where they couldn't treat my burns,
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and so all they could do was stabilize me. And so coming from New
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York City, you would understand this. What they did was they were going
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to fly a helicopter into Staten Island and fly me out to Cornell Burn Center
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in New York City up on York and sixty third. But they didn't have
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anywhere to fly a helicopter and landed on the hospital in Staten Island. So
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they had to fly the helicopter to an airfield, take me there by ambulance,
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then get me up in the helicopter. And they said, no,
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it's gonna take too long. So what they did was they called ahead.
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They closed the Arizontal bridge, they closed the Brooklyn Battery tunnel, and they
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closed the far Wow and they threw me in an ambulance, and I swear
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a guy we must have got from what they tell me, I was out.
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They told me that they got to York and sixty third from Staaten Island
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at about ten minutes. They were police cars ahead of the ambulance, police
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cars behind the ambulance, and we made it in ten minutes where there were
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two burn doctors standing by to take care of me. And unfortunately, what
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they found was that what they saw weren't necessarily superficial burns that they thought were
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superficial burns, but that they went deep into my body and badly burned masses
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of muscles that I had to have a look blues. So let me let
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me ask you, so were these burns ones that are normally associated with like
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a fire. I mean, if we would look at you, did you
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look burned like that? Yeah. The The other thing I'd say is that,
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I mean, if you look at my burn so to give your audience
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a perspective, my left side is gone from about two inches to the left
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of my belly button to my spine. In the back, my hip is
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gone. Top of your hip kind of comes up and crests. All of
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that was burned and is shaved down to a knob. So I'm listening missing
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everything from about two inches to the left of my belly button, then down
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into my hip and everything just to about the spine and the back on my
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left side. So if you looked at me, you could look at me
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and say, it looks like a shark took a bite out of me.
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WHOA look a big, you know, And then the other scars, like
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there's one on my head here that you can see because it blew out my
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head. The electricity came in my hands and in my feet and blew out
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my head. Jesus takes my side too. The way it came in my
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side was that when when the electricity hit me, my body jarred and turned
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to the left and stuck to the rung, and it seared me like a
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hamburger, it looked like. But when they got in there, they're like,
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you know, this is more than superficial. And actually, when we
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were interviewing one of the doctors for Charlie scars, he said that we kept
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digging and digging, and we got right up to the stomach lining, and
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we knew that if the stomach lining was breached, we had to intubate him,
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and the chance of him making it was probably slim, and so fortunately
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for me, it didn't hit the stomach lining, so they could feed me
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normally. But I was in that hospital. I was in I was in
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intensive care for like six weeks, said first time, first time. I
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had like six major surgeries, skin graphs, you know. Then spent the
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next couple of summers in the hospital trying to have repairs done to the burns
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on my head to try to make it look a little bit more wht cosmetically
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pleasing for me, you know, because it was sixteen years old. I
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was burned all over my body, sixteen years old, vanities, everything,
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and I just was you know, you know, I think about myself now,
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like as a sixteen year old. Oh my god, I'm a I'm
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a you know, I'm I believe me. There's no there's no mirrors in
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a burn unit for a reason, especially when a sixteen year old is there
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and he's gonna look at himself in the mirror and say, holy you know.
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But I didn't need to see mirrors to know what was wrong with me
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and what I would look like. I just looked down at my side and
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and my whole body was burned superficially, from the top of my chest to
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my waist and then down the back of my legs all the way to my
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feet and up the back. I had all splash burns and a couple of
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third degree burns on my arms, back and shoulder, and then a little
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bit down my left arm. But I had big holes in my hands,
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I mean, the electricity blew holes in my hand that you could see through.
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My dad said you could see through your hand, kind of like Jesus
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with the with the nails. You said you could see through your hands.
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All right, Charlie, let me let me interject here for a second.
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Let me just remind everyone that I'm speaking with Charlie Patruzzo, the founder of
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Project to Heal. Or let's just pause here for a second to thank our
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sponsors. All right, we are back. So how did Project to Heal
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well? First of all, this the twenty twelve doctor doctor drama called Charlie
20:37
Scars. How did that come about? So? My wife, So in
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two thousand and three, I had moved our family down here to take a
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very important role within the financial institution, and I was doing very well.
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Took over national sales manager job and was running mark getting and product development inside
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of the insurance group at a large one of the largest in the country.
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And that's why I moved down here. In two thousand and three, it
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started having some Now it wasn't performance related, but there were some challenges at
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work. And my my wife's father got cancer, run cancer, and we'd
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been down there two years, and she couldn't be up there to help her
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mother. And I started taking on this. I felt, you know,
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this is my fault. I moved us down here for this job, and
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now she can't be even and then my mother took killed, and now I
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couldn't be And so my wife's father died a month after getting sick, and
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she couldn't be up there to help her mother. So I was just beating
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myself up about that. And then my mother got sick and I couldn't be
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up there to help my two brothers with that, and so I went into
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a real bad depression. I ended up leaving the financial services industry. But
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when I finally started to recognize that, I wanted, you know that if
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I look back at my life and all the people that helped me and my
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mother passed on about a year after my father in law, and I realized
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how much she and so many others did for me through those two accidents,
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and how many friends and family helped her. And I was like, you
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know, I want to kind of be like my mother. I always wanted
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to be like my father, very very successful, professionally, very successful,
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top of the industry, and I was making that move. And I was
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running the top bank insurance program, a nuity program in the country. So
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in many respects, I had achieved that. And so I started feeling after
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this loss of my mother, who took care of me and my father in
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law, and just my wife in general. The person she is a person
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of deep faith. I was a person of faith, you know, I
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called myself a Catholic, but you know, and I wanted to lead a
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life of more intentional service to other people because of the people who served me.
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And I also knew that I had this love for these dogs, but
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I just didn't know what to do with that love for dogs. And I
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read this article and it said that the service dog industry, most organizations don't
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have a breeding program, and the challenge for them is that they go they
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have to go to shelters to find dogs to train, and a longitudinal study
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conducted on that very subject, the success of shelter dogs in service dog training,
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found that only one out of twelve or eight and a quarter percent of
23:45
the dogs in shelters could successfully become service dogs. Led me to realize why
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it takes three years for someone to get a service dog. At least that's
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one of the challenges, right, So I said, all right, I
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love these dogs. They are the top dog used for service dog work and
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you know, unchallenged as to being the best breed for the work. So
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what if I, who loved these dogs, could find a way to develop
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a lineage of dogs that became the prototypical candidate for service dog work and just
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donated them for service dog organizations that didn't have, you know, breeding programs.
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And that's what Project Hell became. And today we serve over twenty five
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organizations that you know and they drive to north talk about you know, Look,
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I don't want to toot my own horn, because everything that is good
24:44
that has come to me is from above. I've just had the grace flow
24:48
through me to to kind of think about it and come to the realization that
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I'd be happy as doing this, and I'd also be serving others, which
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is what we're called to do through my faith, and so Project to Heal
25:07
kind of became the thing for me. What kind of dog are we talking
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about, specifically Labrador Retrievers? And did you always have a particular affection for
25:18
those specific dogs or dogs in general? So let me shore a story with
25:22
you. When I was eleven years old, Okay, my dad was allergic
25:26
to dogs and so we couldn't have a dog. Meanwhile, I told you
25:29
from a very early age, after the sports, I loved animals. My
25:33
dad was asked to take a job down in Atlanta, and so the gentleman
25:38
who was running the office in Atlanta asked him to come down with his family
25:45
and spend some time with his family, and we did. It was his
25:48
boss, who was actually up in New York who had moved down to Atlanta,
25:51
but he was retiring, and so we went down there, and this
25:53
guy had a black Labrador Retriever and I got to spend five days with this
25:59
dog named Molly. And I still have a picture of me in these two
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tone leather high heel nineteen seventy something shoes, my bell bottoms and this silk
26:11
shirt with flowers bigger than me on it, with a collar almost as big
26:15
as me, hugging Molly. And I was eleven years old, and I
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said to my mom and dad, because they reminded me, you said to
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us, someday I'm going to breathe these dogs. And it became wow,
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like it happened wow. And I didn't remember that until I started Project to
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Heal. Wow. So Project to Heal and that's project the number two and
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then Heal dot org. Yep, what do you do? So what we
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do? We specialize in expert husband tree of Labrador treevers, and essentially I
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I did some research and I found who was arguably the top breader of Labrador
27:04
retrievers in the country, if not the world, for the past twenty five
27:08
years or so. I went to meet her, told her what I wanted
27:14
to do, and she agreed to sell me one of her girls from her
27:21
foundation stock. Now, this lady had been breeding at the time for over
27:25
thirty years, two hundred and fifty champions to her name. She was an
27:30
internationally acclaimed judge, so I knew I was getting my foundation stock from a
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top reader in the world. And so she served as my mentor for a
27:44
number of years, and then others who closer by here in North Carolina became
27:49
friendly with me and they helped me to learn pedigrees. And over the years
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we've refined that by deciding which puppies from which lines are having the highest success.
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Now the industry average, I think for bread dogs by some of the
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highest. You know, like Knine Companions for Independence is the largest service dog
28:15
organization in the world, and I believe and they breed about it depends on
28:19
the year, six hundred to eight hundred puppies a year, but that's done
28:23
through a volunteer a very big volunteer network. And you know, I've decided
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that I wanted to create a place where all the puppies are raised by people
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who that's all they do. They do it over and over again so that
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every process is homogeneous. So with this puppy, we do a B and
28:48
C, and a puppy three years down the road, we do a B
28:52
and C for the same amount of time, so that we can make sure
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that every puppy's getting the same thing in terms of nurturing and socialization. So
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it would mean that what we're leaving to chance. If they're all getting that
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same nurturing and socialization at the same levels, it would mean that it's the
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genetics that are making the difference, and I could focus more on refining the
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genetics. Now what that's led to is our longest partner, Fidos for Freedom.
29:25
They've been business for forty years. Maybe they have a ninety percent success
29:30
rate with our dogs, ninety percent placing them. So, as I said
29:37
in the beginning, for organizations that use dogs from shelters, the latest abstract
29:42
of a study found that dogs from shelters continue not to work with still well
29:49
over and eighty percent fail rate when they're put into the position of having to
29:53
try to become a service dog. Over and eighty percent fail rate. Now,
29:59
think about the veteran who's got PTSD and is now waiting four years for
30:04
a dog, right because all these dogs are found. Yeah, and he
30:08
goes and bought his brains out. Ye. Purdue University did a study that
30:15
found. Now, first understand who Purdue University of at school is. They
30:19
had the leading authority on the human canine bond in the country. So they
30:25
did a study back and I think the first study was in twenty eighteen and
30:29
they took a group of veterans with a service dog and a group without service
30:32
dogs, and what they found was the group that possessed or owned a service
30:37
dog had lower levels of hyper vigilance, night tremors, outbursts of anger,
30:42
and waking cortisol levels. Those are the four major symptoms guy that lead to
30:48
suicidal ideation. But it's taken four years for these guys to get a service
30:52
dog. What veterans or humans, civilians are getting a heart transplant, are
30:59
getting a live are getting you know, along before these guys can get a
31:03
service dog. And it's course in twenty five to forty thousand dollars. So
31:07
I said to myself, something's wrong here, okay. And what I found
31:11
was that if if I can get puppies that have a very high level of
31:18
success and then can donate them, just by my efforts, these organizations can
31:27
lower their costs. Because if you're making a widget and ninety percent of the
31:33
widgets coming off your line are unsellable, you're gonna be out of business real
31:37
quick, right right now, let me let me ask Charlie. So you're
31:41
you're breeding these dogs and you're giving them to train them if the organizations we
31:48
donate them to train do the training. Uh we breathe. So the most
31:55
important part of it, of a of a dog's life is birth to twelve
31:59
weeks. That is called the critical or sensitive phase. That is when these
32:04
dogs go through the nurturing, socialization, and early obedience training that will affect
32:09
them the rest of their lives. So it has to be done right.
32:14
It has to be done on the proper time frame, it has to be
32:15
done in the proper amounts, and it has to include the proper genetics.
32:21
That's where we specialize. We'se organizations. Then take the dogs from us.
32:27
Okay, and all we hear is, oh my god, I can't believe
32:30
this puppy does this, or I can't believe this puppy is not afraid of
32:32
that. You've got this dog sitting and lying down and pulling a door open
32:37
at eight weeks. Yeah, where are you? Where's Project to Hell located
32:44
wax On, North Carolina, which is about thirty miles south of Charlotte.
32:49
So it's a good area, a good part of the country, easy access
32:52
in and out and right now. So we started this organization when I found
32:58
out that a lot of organizations because they didn't have a breeding program. Because
33:05
starting a breeding program is so expensive requires physical assets and an esoteric knowledge.
33:15
We figured out that if we did this, we could help a lot of
33:19
organizations that didn't have breeding programs. And now we even have organizations that do
33:22
have breeding programs coming to us because that breeding programs maybe aren't producing enough dogs
33:28
for them, and we'll fill the gap. Right. But there's a new
33:32
challenge in the service dog industry guy since COVID, and I've talked to the
33:37
president of Assistance Dogs International, which is a very large organization of service dog
33:43
organizations eighty some odd in the United States, and what I found from the
33:49
president is that since COVID, a lot of these organizations are having challenges finding
33:54
puppy raisers, which are the core of the service dog development, and keeping
34:01
service dog trainers once they've trained them how to train service dog programs. So
34:06
my first challenge was finding a way to help these organizations who don't have breeding
34:10
programs by learning how to breed outstanding or prototypical puffs for service dog works.
34:17
That will always be a process in refinement to me, until you know you
34:22
cheach that you chase that ever elusive one hundred percent. You know you're never
34:27
going to get one hundred percent to succeed. And even if you know that
34:30
one organization that has ninety percent, they've been doing it so long and have
34:36
so many experienced trainers, I think that's their success. So now what we
34:40
need to do is figure out for our partner organizations. All Right, if
34:44
they can't find puppy raisers, who are the people that keep these puppies from
34:49
twelve weeks typically when we donate them to the organization to they're about a year
34:53
to eighteen months old. Well, now they have another problem. They can't
34:59
take in as any puppies to get ready to be put into the task training.
35:04
So Project Heell is now you know, readying itself to fix that or
35:09
to try to address that problem by not only continuing to breed and donate puppies
35:17
to the organizations, but now putting out what we called or what we're going
35:22
to trademark as started for service dogs. Started for service dogs or Labrador retrievers
35:30
whose pedigrees have been used for over fifteen years and have shown their ability to
35:35
successfully become service dogs up to ninety percent of the time when placed in the
35:40
service Dog program, and we will. Now if you have a dog wash
35:45
out, which means a dog who can no longer make it through training,
35:49
rather than giving you an eight month old puppy, you can come to our
35:52
facility and look for a dog the same age that is guaranteed to finish training.
35:59
Because we've seen what that dog can do. You can take it home
36:02
now. You don't have to start a year earlier and spend another five to
36:06
seven thousand dollars. And that veteran, by the way, who's waiting for
36:09
that dog doesn't have to wait another year. Charlie, Look, we've got
36:15
to stop here, you know, listening to you and looking at you and
36:19
just so frigging inspired. I mean, come on, really, your story
36:24
is lack of a better word, crazy. I mean, just here at
36:29
the accidents you've gone through and how you've come back to that, and I
36:37
mean, it's just so heartwarming to hear how this love for dogs have blossomed
36:45
and you're helping people. Man, come on, you know, guy,
36:52
I told you at the beginning of our interview that I wasn't a person of
36:53
faith, that was what they would call a c and E Catholic. I
36:57
go on, Christmas and Eastern because mom and Dad say, you got to
37:00
go to church. It was my wife during my depression who was a rock
37:04
of faith. And one day she was getting my two young daughters ready to
37:07
go to church. And I was laying on the couch in my funk of
37:12
a depression, watching NFL to Day or something, and she was yelling at
37:16
my five year old daughter, who could be a handful at the time,
37:20
who's twenty eight. Now, come on, we got to go to church.
37:22
And there I was laying and I jumped up off the couch. I
37:25
said, give me five minutes. Let me be an example to my kids.
37:30
And I went up, I showered, I got dressed real quick,
37:31
and I said, let's go to mass. I was in the midst of
37:37
a depression, and I don't know what happened, but I was seeing that
37:42
I went to mass there because my daughters did that to my wife, and
37:45
I said, let me be a good example as a father. And then
37:49
I got this advice to read this book by a guy named doctor Norman Vincent
37:52
Peel, The Power of Positive Thinking. And one of the things doctor Peel
37:57
said in his book was to write down down positive Bible verses find four or
38:01
five of them, and I did four thirteen Philippians four thirteen, as I
38:07
can do all things through Christ, who strengthens me. And I started reading
38:13
these things and I started believing them, and then I really started what is
38:16
this Catholic stuff all about? Because I have these self. You know,
38:22
I don't know my faith and I have my own perceptions of what it is.
38:24
But let me find out what's really about. And really, what Catholicism
38:29
all is really all about is taking your focus off of me, myself and
38:34
I and a pity party on me, myself and I, and focusing on
38:38
what you can do to serve someone else with a gift. First Peter four
38:44
ten says we have all been given gifts by the Lord that we are supposed
38:49
to use to serve others. And I thought to myself, when I was
38:52
going through this whole depression and trying to figure out what would be next,
38:57
what gift do I have that I love that could help other people? And
39:01
I started immediately thinking about my labradors. But I was like, how how
39:06
do I help? And then this darned article I came across on the internet
39:12
was the light bulb, And here I am eighteen years later. Now,
39:15
my wife and I did this on our own for six years, on our
39:19
own dime. I would go out training dogs. We breed a couple of
39:22
liters a year, just to see if we were moving in the right direction.
39:27
And by two thousand and eleven, you know, by twenty ten,
39:31
we had so many organizations. I said, what are we going to do
39:35
here, Sandy? Did we go on or we become a nonprofit and try
39:37
to do more? And I felt God calling me to do more, and
39:43
I feel he's calling me to do it again. And so another struggle faces
39:46
me, and that is figuring out how do I get people to believe in
39:52
what I do and show them the healing it Because we're kind of a b
40:00
business to business in other words, we donate the puppies to the organizations that
40:05
see the end result. We don't really, but now that we're moving into
40:12
the started for service dog, we will be so much closer to that and
40:16
we'll actually be closer to the end result. And the goally is to work
40:22
with someone right here, guy in North Carolina, so that we can not
40:25
only continue to provide puppies or started service dogs to our partners who need them
40:30
but in a pinch. If if an organization needs a service dog like tomorrow,
40:36
we'll have a couple around that are that close so they can fulfill that
40:40
need. And that's who we want to be. We will. I'd love
40:45
to keep in contact with you and leave you back and follow your incredible aggression.
40:52
What's the best way for people to get in contact with you, Charlie?
40:54
Uh? Sure, directly, it's Charlie chr l. I E at
41:00
the number two and the word heal, which like healing a wound, h
41:04
eal dot org. That's project the number two heal dot org. They can
41:08
call our office at seven h four two five six four or five six in
41:15
the Charlotte area. We do a lot of what we call mental health days,
41:20
which are where we bring puppies. Since the pandemic, there's been a
41:22
lot going on in the office place. We are invited in for an hour
41:25
or two to offices with our puppies. The employees are like, this is
41:30
the best day ever at work. If I had a dollar for every time
41:34
I heard that guy, I'd be a millionaire. They just people love the
41:37
joy of seeing these eight week old puppies come in and I make them understand
41:43
that part of the process. You are now socializing a puppy, but you
41:47
don't understand how much that means to this process. But you're making someone else's
41:52
life better just by being here holding this puppy right now. Thank you.
41:57
Well, we'll have that linked up again at the show no page okay,
42:00
at the Trauma Evers podcast dot com. Charlie. Awesome, man, We'll
42:05
be in touch. Thanks. Thanks for doing this podcast. Guy. We
42:07
need people like you. I appreciate that. Thank thanks, have a wonderful
42:12
weekend. Let's stay in touch all right, we will, Thank you.
42:15
Bye, guy,