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I am a big proponent in politics in DC, in Sacramento, behind the scenes of my job.
Any politician that will listen to me, any lawmaker, I fight and advocate for over a
whiskey and cigars and wine.
Hey, you have to fund NASA.
You have to support this private space industry.
The future is out there.
It's out there.
We need to go grab it.
I think in the last 30 or 40 years.
We've gotten away from looking up and we're looking down at our own problems.
I feel like the more we go out there, the less we're going to be in conflict here.
At least that's my hope and my dream.
And I am man.
And the only way to do that is have the courage to get in the capsule.
Go float around.
Josh Whitfield is the United States Army veteran, awarded the Purple Heart for his service in
Iraq.
Today, he's a political consultant and works as the district director to California State
Assembly member Heath Flora.
Josh attended Aviation Challenge 13 times in his youth and is a member of the Space Camp
Hall of Fame.
I'm Ryan Verecelli.
And what I'm doing is I'm going to be a part of the world's most important part of the world.
You know what I find?
Big military background, especially on my mother's side.
And one of those perennial generation military families, you know, lineage can be traced
all the way back, Revolutionary War and everything up.
So my great grandfather fought in World War II.
I have uncles and stuff, Vietnam.
My biological father fought in Desert Storm in an obviously, you know, mean, the war on
terrorism, cousins, all that.
So big military family.
I grew up in California Central Valley, right where the Central Valley ends in this year
in about the hills began in a very small town called Waterford, which is about about two
hours east directly on the map line from San Francisco.
So if you're driving from San Francisco to Yosemite National Park, I'm about two hours
east on that route.
And grew up there, very rural part of California.
It's not beaches or urban.
It's a lot of fruit and nut trees and orchards and cows.
And so that's where I grew up.
Very close.
And that's kind of how I fell into the space camp world.
Very close to Aviation Challenge, California, when it existed, a town just about 30 minutes
south of where I grew up called Atwater at the old Air Force Base there.
That's where Aviation Challenge, California was.
And that's how the hook was set as a kid, so to speak.
Aviation Challenge, California operated in Atwater during the late 1990s until financial
problems ended the program in 2001.
How old were you the first time you went to Aviation Challenge?
Ten years old, I think.
Somewhere between nine and eleven, I don't know.
We'll call it ten.
Mock two, it did.
Mock two twice, then mock three eleven times.
Eleven times?
What would drive you back eleven times?
I mean, obviously some of that is helped by the fact that you were so close to it.
Well, yeah.
The mock two in California, California shut down and that's where Unspill and Alabama
came in for me.
Yeah, I think it was just really kind of a passion.
As a kid, we all grew up watching Nickelodeon and seeing the grand prize being going to
space camp.
So when I was very younger, I was trying to convince my parents to send me to space camp.
And then finally, when I was nine, ten-ish, my mother's will broke and she started researching
it and she came back and said, hey, there's this other program that she just rightfully
thought would be more in my wheelhouse.
I'm very interested in space and all that.
But I'm as an athlete.
I played a lot of football.
There's no doubt that I was going into the military from a very early age.
So she showed me the aviation challenge program and the fact that aviation challengers had
a program 30 minutes away from the house made her feel more comfortable for me at that age.
As I grew up, obviously, I mean, my first time doing the mock two thing in California
was fantastic, like most kids who have no idea exactly what they're going to find in the
program.
I showed up nervous and made friends for life.
And so just going back all those times really is with each passing summer as I got older,
especially in my junior and senior year of high school, the kids that I went to camp
with.
And there's a group.
You could talk to Chip Yarbrough, Ruth Marie Oliver and all the old AC guard.
They'll tell you there was just a group of us in the summer.
And then there was a separate group of kids in the winter who just came back perennially.
And it's a very niche small group.
But we cut a lot of lawns and we begged a lot of family members and we just kept coming
up with the money to come multiple times.
I think it went five times in a row in one summer, five weeks in a row.
Wow.
Did space camp influence you as far as where you wanted to land in the military?
I'm struck by the fact that you did aviation challenge a whole bunch.
And so my gut would say you ended up in the Air Force, right?
But you didn't.
You were in the Army.
Believe it or not, I wanted to be a sonar operator in a submarine.
I think that I think it's going to surprise a lot of my fellow Hall of Famers when they
hear that actually.
Like I said, wanted to be in the Navy, being a submarine.
The recruiter told me it was very honest.
It was a rare, honest recruiting moment.
He said, eh, more than likely you're going to be stuck sweating in the front of a bow
of some surface ship instead of being in the submarines.
And so I went right next door to the Army and I said, hey, look, I want to carry on my great
grandfathers.
He was the last of my family to be in the Army.
Everyone else was in the Navy Marines Air Force.
And I said, hey, here's what I want to do is I want to be because 9-11 obviously had
a big impact on me.
I was in high school when 9-11 took place.
And I said, look, I want to be in combat arms, but I don't want to be inside of a tank.
And I don't want to be in the infantry.
What do you got for me?
I said, cab scout is perfect.
And this is where it wasn't an honest recruiting thing.
Little did I know until it was too late as 17-year-olds showing up at Fort Knox, Kentucky
for basic training that a cab scout basically is a hybrid of an infantryman and a tanker.
So I got instead of not giving me what I wanted, the Army gave me both of what I didn't want,
a little bit of both worlds, which in hindsight actually turned out for the best.
I really enjoyed my job.
A cabry scout, essentially in a conventional sense, is go behind enemy lines and scout
and recon it's a reconnaissance job and report the movement to hire command.
So the infantry, the tankers, the air force, whoever artillery can have a better idea of
where the enemy is.
So basically, scout was my job.
I was a dismount team member for most of my career.
Though at different times I drove a striker combat vehicle to infantry carrier.
Actually the striker is kind of a multi-rolled thing, but we won't get lost in the woods
there.
But I did some time driving those vehicles and I did some time as the gunner of those
vehicles.
And I did some time as a commander of a striker vehicle as well.
I did some time with the air calve and that's helicopters and stuff.
So I got just a little bit of everything, but predominantly for most of my career I was
in a striker brigade.
Where I received the Purple Heart, I was, we were just on a routine patrol.
This was on Easter Sunday, 2008 actually, so easy to remember.
We were in Baghdad, East Baghdad, kind of we're in an area called Easter Sheet.
So it's pretty much the farthest Easter in reaches of Baghdad suburbs.
And we're on just a routine patrol.
Definitely was a low intense time.
And there's a lot of it I don't remember.
So a lot of this stuff, you know, because I took a very significant head injury.
But basically, you know, it was a low intense time.
We had run across an unexploded tow missile, probably from a striker, but it's an American
weapon.
It's an unexploded tow missile look like possibly the enemy had made it into an IED.
There's some suspect stuff there.
So we did what we normally do.
We cordoned off the area.
We called EOD, which are the bomb explosive disposal specialists.
They took their sweet time getting out, which is pretty typical.
And as we were waiting for them to show up, it looked like perhaps that was going to be
part of a bigger ambush.
So we, you know, I was a part of a pretty confident unit.
So, you know, we were fairly smart about it.
But what happened is school, school got out and we were kind of on a T intersection and
the top of the T was kind of a main artery.
And then the stem of the T was kind of a smaller street.
That was the lead scout.
So it was the front, the truck in front and school got out and we were trying to redirect
the kids obviously away from this dangerous explosive situation.
Kids are the same wherever you go in the world at the kids.
They want to take the path of least resistance and it's like herding cats.
And so basically I had to re-I had to take my vehicle out of its original safe defensive
position and re-position it.
I did it in such a way almost like a cop would position its patrol car to shut the street
down to redirect kids into a different location.
One kid in particular unfortunately was being very belligerent.
He ended up being kind of the trigger man to start off the ambush that I got caught
in.
Fortunately, that kid pulled out a weapon and the fight was on.
And then, you know, we started taking fire.
My vehicles started taking fire from both sides in that very constricted area.
And eventually I took an RPG round from the top of the building down on top of my striker.
And that's pretty much all I remember because I hit the turret.
I was in direct.
But there's one of my sergeants, Dwayne Liming.
He was a transfer from the Navy.
He used to be like a Navy welder.
And he welded all this extra steel on our vehicles.
And if not for him welding extra steel around my turret, I would not be speaking to you today.
And that's the truth.
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Accounting for my injury time and rehabilitation.
I enlisted in 2005 and I retired medically in 2010.
At that point, what did you see as being the next thing for you?
Yeah, I didn't know.
I was going to be a career guy.
So that's probably one of the lowest points of my life.
When I got the news that my combat career was over, I didn't agree with that decision
then.
I don't know if I do know.
I don't agree with that decision now.
Unfortunately, I felt like I was caught up in the politics of the whole head injury
thing and the Walter Reed scandal and all this stuff.
And I did have a significant head injury and basically the doctors who are obviously smarter
than a ground pounding knuckle-dragger like me, they said, hey, look, man, you're very
lucky to even be living independently.
And the truth of the matter is they told my parents, well, you're covering like, hey,
you got to get ready.
He's probably not going to be independent for the rest of his life.
Initially, I had to relearn a whole lot of things.
It was a significant brain injury.
Luckily, I had great medical care.
I was accepted into a special program at the Polytrauma Center in Palo Alto.
That's a team of the VA and Stanford Hospital.
But excellent doctors and I was very, very lucky, very blessed to get into that Polytrauma program
where the most significant gains in my recovery took place.
And now, you know, I'm living independent and doing well.
I mean, obviously, there are deficits.
But without, I think without those doctors, it would be a different story.
So to the Army's credit, they offered me like career, like, you know, to get out of combat
arms, but I wasn't interested in writing a desk or being a trainer or a drill sergeant
or a recruiter for the rest of my career.
So I said, thank you.
I'll take my GI bill, go to college and make real money.
That's what took place eventually.
But I got out and I got into politics by chance through contacts in the military.
I and some other folks locally here.
I ended up getting a meet Senator John McCain from Arizona.
He offered me a job as soon as I got out of the Army.
I worked for his presidential campaign and largely my career has been politics ever since
except for I took a year, took a summer, I should say, to go back and be a crew trainer.
Because I wanted to give back at least once, one time to space camp and aviation challenge.
And I was very happy I did that.
I did a little college while I was in the military.
Did some junior college here locally while I was recovering.
A couple of online schools, Brandon University and Norwich University online.
So that's kind of where I went.
So ERMEU, Brandon University, Modesto Junior College and Norwich University.
What did you major in?
Political Science in Military History.
John McCain brings you on to help him during his campaign.
In what role was that?
Yeah, I ended up being the grassroots coordinator for pretty much all of Nevada by the end of
the campaign.
Originally I started in Las Vegas in Clark County which for all intensive purposes is
Nevada because 86% of the population lives in Clark County which of course is where Las
Vegas is.
So yeah, it was a learning experience.
I didn't know anything really.
I knew some politics.
I've seen the West Wing.
I knew I had an interest in politics because of the whole 2000 election thing when I was
a kid.
I was very fascinated by the whole Bushmore thing and how the Supreme Court ended up kind
of deciding that election and how close that election was.
It was just kind of interesting to me.
So I really didn't understand anything about elections politics and that was a definitely
I showed up in Nevada with no idea what I was doing.
And I got thrown into the fire.
The Western Regional Campaign Manager is a man who I love and adore and respect and admire.
John Pichon who ended up being my boss later on and giving me my full time job after that
campaign was over at a national public affairs firm called Meridian Pacific.
I ended up getting, I took my year off, did the space camp thing and then I got a job at
Meridian Pacific after that.
And I did that for 10 years.
What did you do while you were at Meridian?
Political consultant.
I worked on elections from city council races to mayors races to state legislative races
to governors races to congressional and senate races.
So I did the whole gambit, did a lot of issue advocacy work.
It's kind of a complicated business.
I was a part of a team that got a lot of Wal-Mart's built in California.
I got to convince city councils to approve planning and zoning.
And so basically, you know, the firm was a full service firm and I did the full service
of work.
I was blessed to be able to work with all three of the partners at different times in my career.
Basically getting people elected and getting things built.
Like if you're a fan of Disneyland and the Marvel land and Star Wars land and our firm
was involved in that, Disney was a major client for Meridian Pacific, you know, FedEx.
You know, it's just different.
Politics is everywhere.
People don't realize it.
But you know, the world doesn't turn unless people vote on things in this country and
people maneuver and advocate to get different things passed.
So I was a full gambit of what we did in our services.
I had a battle, a serious battle with the late stage of Malinoma.
And my wife started to ring me and keep me closer to home.
And I had to unfortunately make it one of a very emotional and difficult decision to
leave Meridian because I'm so loyal to that firm and those partners who did so much for
me and my career, but struck off on my own and haven't looked back since.
Did you ever run for any offices yourself?
Yeah, I ran for city council here in Waterford.
I ran an a special election to fill an open seat in 2013 and won one there.
And then I ran again in 2014 for a full term, served out my term and decided again because
of that cancer fight that I spoke of before and some other stuff.
You know, really wanted to refocus on family life.
My wife and I are trying to have kids, you know, just just redirectional priorities.
I decided not to run again in 2018, but in 2014, I was the top vote recipient for the
city council race again.
And I it's different when you're in a small town.
So when you know everybody by name and everybody knows you.
So to have the affirmation, to have the embrace of my neighbors and my friends to lead was
special and I accomplished everything I really wanted to in those five years in a small town.
We got a couple street lights put up, a McDonald's and a Burger King.
We completely completely revamped our downtown, enhanced our police department, built a new
fire station, built a new city hall.
So I feel and I learned this.
I learned this from Sergeant Major Gleason, who is a legend and a myth and a legend and
the aviation challenge Huntsville world.
He taught us all as kids, leave it better than you found it.
So less than I took into my military career and my two terms on the city council.
I prefer being the guy behind the curtain.
I enjoyed the time and local government.
I love I love local government because when you vote on things, you actually get to see
the result.
So when I when I make a vote to appropriate money to pave a street, six months later,
I get that see the result of that.
And I get to get to see the folks on that street go, Hey, man, thank you.
These potholes were killing my car.
I appreciate you listening to me.
So there's some real like reward there.
But the higher you go in politics, you know, obviously at the state level and certainly
in the federal government, that's that's not the way things are right now.
But I much prefer being the guy behind the guy.
I'm too opinion and too I'm too much of a military grunt.
I don't have the the patience and where with all to sit on the, you know, to sit on CNN
or Fox News or MSNBC and and and play the game.
I'd rather just I like getting things done.
Right.
I like getting things done.
I I'm the district director for California State Assembly member Heath Flora.
He's the minority leader minority floor leader is the number two ranking Republican in the
California state legislature.
I handle veterans constituent issues.
I handle veterans legislative issues.
And I work with a great team.
I just find a three year effort here in California.
My team and I, we just passed a a bill AB 21 19, which is a medical foster care program
for veterans.
It really hurts your heart to see how slow the the gears of democracy and politics work
in this country.
Nothing is done quickly.
Nothing good is done quickly.
And the point is, is, you know, it took my colleagues and I three years to get this bill
passed and signed by the governor of California.
But we did.
And we passed this bill with a bipartisan push.
I didn't receive one vote against it.
The governor signed it into law.
And we we have finally delivered on a promise for veterans here in the state of California
to to to make their time convalescing or those who are struggling with mental health
issues or those who were wounded in combat and can't take care of themselves, which could
have easily been me, right?
Instead of veterans, we don't do very well, Ryan in a typically they don't do well in
an institutionalized clinical environment.
Veterans aren't comfortable in hospitals.
Veterans aren't comfortable being locked up in facilities.
So this foster program allows them to stay with a family that probably has veteran ties.
You know, it's very similar to foster children, right?
You know, you know, we provide them a better home than being put in an orphanage or something
like this.
You know, there's too many veterans.
California is the most popular state in the union has the most veterans of any state in
the union has the most veterans per capita of any state in the unit.
Too many veterans are out on the street too many veteran homelessness.
I don't want to get all political about this.
My point is, is getting stuff done is what I care about and getting this stuff like this
bill passes what is how you handle all the other nonsense that you see going on in the
national news.
So that's what I like to do.
I like to help the people out.
I have an employee who manages it day to day, but I own a private security firm here locally.
We do a lot of agricultural security, but we do some retail loss prevention and, you know,
your basic security guard stuff.
We have a couple bars that we work at and stuff like that.
I found that I needed to do that for my employees because driving around orchards and ranches
all day gets monotonous and boring.
So I had to find some ways to change it up and make some more money for them, inject
some excitement into their lives.
But basically about 80% of our businesses as ag security out here, you know, protecting
ranches and farms and such.
We also have some homeowners associations and stuff like this.
So yeah, I've been doing that for a man.
We're approaching five years.
It seems scone by so quick.
Do you do you mind talking a little bit about about what you're doing with Ukraine?
Some some people that I know and served with decided to go over there and fight.
I think my generation of veteran is at least my groups of friends were super offended
on a personal level that in the 21st century, we're still we're still doing the things from
the 19th and the 20th century.
Those of us who have seen combat and those of us who are in at the time that I was in
and we knew exactly the horrific, terrible things that we're going to take place over
there.
So we knew right away February 24th that this was this was going to be catastrophic to the
innocent civilian population.
Some of my younger friends and colleagues decided to go and fight.
There was a group of us older veterans who understood that our fighting days are probably
long past.
And we got together on discord, which is a place you can do like voice chatting, video
game stuff.
And we were just getting together and we just just formulated five of us to two of my friends
who served with the United Kingdom's military forces.
Three of us here in the United States.
We said, hey, look, we got to do something because our conscience couldn't help that
these other people we know and love are over their fighting.
We had to do something.
And so we came up with this idea of, you know what, let's go over there and let's take
humanitarian aid to the places that the NGOs don't feel safe doing.
We have the skill set.
We have the training.
We have the experience.
We'll go up to the line that the NGOs go to and then bringing in our own stuff obviously
because we didn't want to take away from what the NGOs were doing because we knew there
was going to be such a wide influx of refugees.
So we took our own stuff.
We took it into dangerous places, dropped it off to mothers and children and people living
underground, living in holes, living in bunkers, living in basements who desperately needed
diapers, hygiene products, female hygiene products, food, water, you name it.
We started as we grew in credibility with both the Ukrainian government and other governments
that were involved here.
We started getting more things, solar powered battery generators and stuff that these people
needed to survive and help out.
And so we took supplies in.
You could look at the Ukrainians who are very proud people.
They don't want to leave their country.
They don't want to go to other countries.
They want their country.
And in their pride and their patriotism for their own country, they didn't want to leave
their village, their farm, their home.
And so people would go off to fight.
They'd leave their families behind.
And then when the Russians came in, families of those were punished, were targeted.
And so there became a real need to get people out.
When young innocent people, young kids, women, elderly people are being targeted in this
way, it became clear of this pride of we have to say is like, no, please, can you take
my kid and can you take my family and get them out?
And so basically the bottom line here is we bring, my team bring and we've found other
groups.
I can't tell you folks how amazing so many people had the same idea without even talking
to each other.
And I think we've got to go to the church groups, regular groups, like rotary groups.
I met Rotarians from the United States and Canada who just, we're going to, we gave two
weeks to help out.
So many groups, military veterans, everyone you can think of, there's just such an outpouring
of support.
I think it's one of the most untold stories of this war.
It's never happened like this before.
This huge groundswell, not affiliated, no NGOs, no nothing.
Just people who said, hey, this is wrong.
This is wrong in the 21st century.
We got to go do something about it.
And so the group has grown and we've coalesced to groups have teamed up.
My team has teamed up with a couple other groups.
And so we're bigger and better.
So instead of bringing like seven suitcases of stuff in, we're bringing in three semi-trucks
of stuff in.
Wow.
And instead of bringing two or three people out of harm's way, we're bringing five or
six vehicles of people out of harm's way.
So it's grown, it's become more complicated.
But the bottom line is, is we're bringing stuff in to areas that are hard to get to and we're
evacuating people out.
That's what my team is doing in Ukraine.
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You're a Space Camp Hall of Fame member and you've been to Aviation Challenge 13 times.
If for some reason somehow you were given a chance to go up into space today, maybe on
a civilian flight or something, would you go?
I wouldn't even pack a bag.
I would just show up and what I'm wearing right now.
It'll never happen, you know, so I don't want to, I guess maybe if I'm an old man in
like space flights or like airplane tickets now, which I guess is possible, you know,
with everybody working Virgin Galactic, Blue Horizon and SpaceX.
But yeah, yes, I would, there would, I wouldn't even hesitate.
If I was in a wheelchair, I would put my dentures in and wheel myself to the rocket and put myself
in the capsule.
I would love to go to space and I mean this seriously.
If I didn't meet my wife, I would have been one of these crazy people to sign up for that
one-way trip to Mars.
I'm so hopeful in the future that I have the resources maybe to go.
I would probably sell my house to do it, but my wife would beat me up.
But yes, I would go and those people who have gone, the inspiration crews, especially man
more power to him, I look up to him.
Whatever your goals or dreams are, you want to be an athlete, you want to be a business
person, a lawyer, a doctor, an astronaut, you want to serve in the military, you have
to put in the work.
You have to put in the work.
I will always have my hand in mentoring young people somewhere.
When I left Aviation Challenge, I started coaching high school football and then there
was a need.
The girls basketball program at the high school was a disaster, so I left football.
A lot of people were like, what are you doing?
Your football player, you don't know about basketball, but the program just needed somebody
to care about it and foster it.
We had seven winning seasons, just won the school's first ever section academic title
and basketball last year.
As a coach, the media, when they talk to you, what's your secret to success?
It ain't nothing but the fact that I've convinced my players for seven years to put in the
work.
It's the girls who put in the work that have equaled success.
We were a high school.
One of those movies, like nobody, seven years ago, nobody, when you saw Waterford on the
schedule, you're like, that's a win.
That's a war coming in there and we're going to smoke those small town kids.
I instilled a mentality of what I learned and Space Camp and Aviation Challenge and also
in the military of, hey, where do we want to be?
You have to set a goal and then you have to set realistic steps to get there, but it's
the work.
It's the putting in the sweat equity to get it done.
All these athletes that you see, all these rock stars, all these movie stars, these are
people that put in the work, these successful businessmen, these lawyers, these doctors,
whatever.
I would tell young people, you have to be willing to put in the work to reach the success that
you can because you can do it.
I've got a spaceship that I'm waiting for.
I'm flying up to the stars.
I'm going to dare to explore this time.
I'll let you know what I find.
Thank you.
♪♪♪♪