Wings4Heroes: Amputated Veteran Mental Health & Recovery

Today, I sit down with Lyubim Kogan, founder of Wings4Heroes, to discuss a powerful and unconventional approach to veteran recovery. Mr. Kogan shares how witnessing the long-term effects of war—particularly amputation, trauma, and abandonment—led him to build a mission-driven program focused on restoring independence, dignity, and purpose to wounded veterans. 

In this conversation, I explore how Wings for Heroes combines controlled extreme experiences, physical rehabilitation, and immersive environments to interrupt deep psychological despair. Mr. Kogan explains why traditional systems often fail amputee veterans and how his program addresses gaps in physical therapy, mental health support, and long-term reintegration. We also discuss the importance of treating veterans as capable individuals rather than permanent patients. 

We also cover Mr. Kogan’s philosophy of mission over charity, transparency over bureaucracy, and action over rhetoric. From helping veterans relearn independence through international travel to scaling veteran-focused rehabilitation in both the United States and abroad, this episode highlights what it truly means to keep our promises to those who volunteered to defend freedom. This is a conversation about responsibility, service, and rebuilding life after unimaginable loss. 

wings4heroes.org

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*Couple O' Nukes LLC and Mr. Whiskey are not licensed medical entities, nor do they take responsibility for any advice or information put forth by guests. Take all advice at your own risk.

Transcript

 Ladies and gentlemen, welcome back to another episode of Couple of nus. As always, I'm your host, Mr. Whiskey, and I am currently traveling on the road, so I'm not, if you're watching, you can see I am not in my normal studio set up, so I apologize ahead of time if the video and audio quality is not as good as it normally is.

But I am traveling on the road to meet up with some former guest of my show in real life. For the first time, so that's super neat to get to. Meet the people who have been on the show and, you know, see if they're, if they're really who they said they were, you know, so it's awesome to hang out with them.

And today I have a guest with me. We're gonna get into something that I think is really important as always. Serving the veteran population. We know that they have. A huge rate of mental health issues of suicide, and there is so much that can be done for that because it is a culmination of a lot of factors.

You know, suicide and mental health isn't just from combat, it isn't just from, you know, non-combat trauma. It isn't just from whatever it may be. It's a lot of different things. And so all the different ways we help veterans really matter. And so I'm here with. The founder of Wings for heroes.org, Lou Beam Hogan.

So great to have you here and we're gonna get into what you do. But first, I'd love for you to tell us a little bit about yourself. Just an overview. Thanks for having me here. Really great introduction.

I think, you know, it just, you know, you, you really, you really said it all. I've been seeing the same picture for. More than four decades and, you know, doing, doing something about it was, you know, that's what Wings for Heroes is, is just, I think that we don't really, we under underestimate what we can do in the long term.

And like you said, those issues do exist. There are a lot of them and there are more and more every day, and the system is just not able to keep up with it. So. So here we are. Here we are. Yeah. Right. And so can you tell us a little bit about your journey first of all, I am a civilian who is servicing the military population.

The, I grew up in the seventies and when I was five years old, the Afghanistan war started and it lasted until I was 16, almost graduating from high school. And, I moved to the States in, in early nineties and you know, I really had an amazing journey because the United States for me, was the perfect place.

I came as a teenager and I had a lot of things that I wanted to do, and I found a place that really, like if you want to do sports, so you want to do academics, it's just like you can do it your own way. There was not like a set set system that you had to fit in. I'm not fit in at all. And I had a really awesome journey for 24 years in the States.

And then in 2015 I ended up in Ukraine and I saw exactly the same thing and I stayed, I actually, I stayed, I took over a nationwide infrastructure company and it was actually at one of our gas stations that I saw a double MPT roll out in the wheelchair. And the guy went towards the highway and I.

Remember, you know, thinking that there is nothing, there is nothing there. Like you and I, we could not walk. And just to put it in perspective, we, we were 25 miles away from Hungarian and Slovakian border. So it's all big trucks. You know, it's a lot of, you know, a lot of, lot of heavy machines moving stuff across the border and, and maybe 20 minutes.

No more than that. We had a huge storm cane and I took one of our pickup trucks and we went and found that guy. We just followed where he rode and he was on the side of the road, you know, all splashed and wet and nobody, nobody was, nobody stopped. And we put the wheelchair in the back and put the guy inside and he was in such bad shape, man.

You know, he had like the old uniform. There was just a skeleton in there and, and you know that there's like not much life left in, in that man. And, and then when after, you know, just to give you numbers the war in Ukraine started back in 2014. It's when, russia annex Crimea, and nobody really said anything because the world was in fear of escalation.

They didn't know how far it's going to go. And the escalation came in 2022. And basically in the first, in the first three years the, that war produced more than a hundred thousand amputees. Wow. And when, yeah, when I was thinking about one guy and starting and doing something. That numbers, they, they like took off and surpassed any idea or plan that I had.

And it was exactly when I, we flew our first guy and just, you know, the idea was I wanted to take combat veterans that had amputations. And bring them. I run program, this program in Turkey because we have the beach, we have the mountains, we have really awesome culture, food, everything works here. And I have a community and communities, people who fly.

We fly paragliders. That's my sport. It's like little plastic bag, you know, that hangs above your head and you have little strings and there is no fuselage, no engine. And when I flew the first time, I got really scared. Like I was really p. Freaking out and my sport was ski jumping and I thought that relatively compared to other people, I'm more brave and it was not the case.

And I thought, you know, when I, I was researching this, I, well, I actually, I did learn to fly and I learned to fly. I have a professional license, I can fly passengers. My idea was that if we take somebody who experienced loss of limb and we go over the cliff, like the subconscious mind kicks in and it's, it's things that we are going to die.

It shuts off everything else. You don't have any other issues. So literally my idea was that I wanted to take some, somebody who had amputations. A combat veteran, and I wanted to put them through a controlled, traumatic experience. And if you read psychology, a lot of psychologists say that for people who are really depressed, who are experiencing like deep sense of loss, there could be one that, that it has to be like immediate and it has to be really, there has to be a lot of sensory involved and that can jerk somebody, bring somebody back to life and mm-hmm.

I thought that, you know. There will be a moment when they'll forget that they're missing Allego two. And it actually happened, you know, after we've sent the first guy, we were sitting watching tapes and all the volunteers like, ah, here, here's the moment. You know, because he doesn't get scared. He's in, you know, he's, he's, he's been at war and he's been in a soul brigade and he lost a lag.

So he really doesn't care about, like if you ask him, he always says yes. And it's like, I don't care. Like not, I cannot repeat word for word on your show, but he just doesn't really. Hm. And right, that was, you know, there was a really successful thing when it worked. But then what I found out that they need more and more is physical therapy.

So we are continuing the story. And what makes WINGS for For Heroes unique is that I thought, let me follow this one guy. You know, he was 20 years old when he volunteered to go. To defend his country. And then within the year he lost his life. Well, he was 20 for 10 days. He just, he just, he was a teenager and then he turned 20 and then he volunteered.

Anyways I thought like when he came back, there was nothing. The guy's just sitting at home, you know, he, his, his dream was to play soccer. He wanted to be a soccer player, professional. That's any, anything. It was just till now he doesn't talk about anything but soccer. It's his. It's his life. And when he came back from war, obviously soccer was out of the question and he gained a lot of weight.

He was extremely depressed. And I thought, let me just follow this guy and see what happens. So I. I brought him here in June of 2024. That's when we flew our first passenger and then he went home. But while, while the way I structured the program is we have two different parts that veterans can participate and number one is like recreational.

There was, you come, it started with seven days. Now it's 10 days. You just come in. It's, it's posh. It's really from morning to night we're doing something. And then. At the beginning of the season, I I invited number one. He's invited to every opening and closing for the recreational. If he wants to come, he can come at the beginning or at the end.

So he came at the beginning. And this, this year actually the beginning was really neat because we had, the first time we had a deaf veteran, and he's also, you know, he was almost three years in the front line. And what happened was that they dropped a grenade from the drone. Right next to him and it took out right side of his his face and wow.

They just stitched the ear. You know, there is nothing. It's like if he went to Poland and he had plastic surgery, so if he's wearing sunglasses and the hat, you can't tell, but he completely cannot hear anything on one side. Then we had, you know, some things I realized, you know, when you see a guy or a girl who's missing a lag, like we naturally all looking like maybe that person will need help some.

Kind of assistance. Or if somebody is in the wheelchair, you know, somebody who is with limited mobility, like we have this subconsciously we, on some level, we have empathy for that person and we will, we're willing to help. But when you have somebody who is deaf, first of all, they're always suffering because they have permanent imbalance in their ear.

There's always some noise going on, right? There's always something going on. And the second thing is that. You really need if you're standing on the side, in our case, on the right side, if he's deaf, you really needed to yell that he hears on the other side. And, and that's like, we had actually people complain in the hotel that somebody's shouting.

The administrator called me and they came over because I put them in the hotel right next to me so I can walk over at any time. And he says, somebody complained and they went to the door and, and they're shouting and they called and they said, we are having dinner. Nobody, there's one volunteer with us and we're just having dinner.

We're not even playing loud music. And I said, okay, keep it down. And, you know, it was like really really bad mood because they were really not doing anything. And I'm walking out the door and I am realizing like they have to shout for him to hear. So I turn around and they go back to administrator and I say, look, listen, I'm sorry I forgot to tell you, but he's deaf.

He's like, what do you mean he's deaf? I said, yeah, he's deaf. He's a veteran, you know, he's blah, blah, blah. And he looks at me, he like turns like pale. And he said like, man, I, I feel so bad, you know? He said, I'm gonna go and explain. And to all the guests. He said, I wish you'd told me before. And like, I had no clue.

You know, I couldn't tell you anything because I don't know, I'm just watching and learning and observing. I'm not, I'm not, you know, I can hear while I have all four my limbs. I, I, I, i'm just, I just had this thing, you know, it's like I, I I am observing. I'm really good at my natural talent is building processes in any operations.

That's what my mind does. And we go back to number one, our first MPT. His girlfriend told me that. And the program runs. I bring one, one plus one. They can bring a wife, a girlfriend, a spouse, a caregiver, anybody, because that way I don't have to worry about, you know, finding somebody. If somebody has special needs and they come with another family member or caregiver that's like that, it's, it's a non-issue.

Right? So, number one came with his girlfriend and I, I, I talked to her and she said, look, he has this personality, like he's such a strong guy. If he's in pain. He said he will drop off. He's like, we did not see him for six weeks after his amputation. We came in, he said, look, please don't come back because I really need to scream and I need to cry, and I cannot do it when you're around me.

Hmm. So he sent everybody away and he had such a great experience, you know, when he came here for the first time and then he disappeared, you know, and I, we just lost contact. It's like one thing when we meet, we do something, but. With this experiment. It was such a huge deal. You know, we had so many people involved.

We had, he was referred by to us, by the governor who found the p We have a service. They service the third, the sold brigade, which is the oldest brigade in the Ukrainian war. They're the first ones and they're the biggest ones, and they're well-funded. They have a lot of support. It's probably like the one brigade that has.

Th they're their guys and girls, they get everything. Like if they need to go back to a hospital, they, they need, they go to capital, to, they go to Kiev to have surgeries or whatever. They just go in, they check in, they don't need to call. They're really well taken care of. So the governor sent us to that service and that service gave us a guy who was a double amputee.

And it was like a week or eight days before coming here. He gets scheduled for another surgery and he cannot come. So they found us another guy who is, thankfully for our experience, he, he was missing only one leg because if the first time we got a guy who was missing two legs, I don't know how we would do it because Turkey is not, you know, like it's really great when you plan ahead, but for the first time, yeah, for the first time, we got a perfect guy.

So I'm following this guy and what happened? He came back in April and he said they didn't do the amputation right, the first ti the first time, so he had to go back and get another one, like the part that they didn't cut off, right? It started getting. Right. Infected or something. It was dying. It was dying off.

So they needed to re amputate. And when you do that, you need new prosthetic leg, you need to learn again. You know, it's this, the whole process from the beginning and he just dropped off. And I said, okay, cool. Let's go see my physical therapist. Let's just get you checked out. So we go to my physical therapist and it's April, they were here, nine to 19th.

We go to my physical therapist, she just sends him walking down the hall and she is like, oh my God, Luby, look, look at how he's walking. I said, what? She says, look at his leg that he's, the leg that he has. Like when the prosthetic leg, when it sideways, it's okay. But once he start throwing, he said, look at, he's throwing his leg like to the side.

And what ha what's happening was that he's a big, strong guy. So his muscles are super strong, but he's always standing on one leg and he's compressing the muscles on that leg to the point where they started pressing on the sciatic nerve. Mm. And the sciatic nerve is the longest nerve that runs from the back all the way.

Yeah. I think it goes like to the heel or somewhere. It's a really long nerve. And he says like, you know, he's so big and he's active, he's young. He said he can do one wrong move and he's gonna become paralyzed. I said, what do we do now? And she says, you have to bring him back for an intensive physical therapy.

We have to do 30 days to see if it works. She said, we just really have, but we have to do it right now. You don't have more than like next month to bring him and. I brought him back and we did physical therapy together. You know, we did 12 one-on-one physical therapy sessions. Then I have a swimming coach, you know, we got him a swimming lane.

He'd learn how to swim and he actually, he really, wow. It was improvement in swimming. The guy who he, you know, like imagine if, if you have two legs, you're kind of floating evenly, but if you don't, it's really hard. And for him it was like to learn how to breathe and that. He started, we have, we have a cycling.

'cause he here, first time he got on the bike and for one month it was like watching a madman. You know, he went so hard. He knew. It was like the only chance. And he, he lost 10 kilos, which is like more than 20 pounds. And he got so strong that we were riding bikes on the last night, the night, next day he was going home, he ripped out the paddle and, and here this clunk, boom, boom, here's my paddle in the middle of the dark.

So, you know, it was an incredible experience watching him, and that took more than one year. So what I can say right now is that I don't have big numbers. I don't have. I didn't go the route. Let's take a lot of pictures, you know, raise more funds and just keep turning. That movie I was learning and I want, I wanted to see what it takes to go from like, I'm depressed, I don't wanna be here.

I'm checking out two right now. He's a captain of his MPT soccer team. Wow. They played just their first nationals and while he was rehabbing here, he qualified for a $75,000 prosthetic leg. The government's gonna pay they or they already paid for it? He's already using it. Nice. So, you know for him, is that like he doesn't have a knee.

It's one of the big things about amputations, if they have a knee, it's like they joke between themselves. He's saying, look, you ready for the assault brigade? But if they don't have a knee, then they cannot do a lot of things, especially like walk down the hill. 'cause they can just roll over. And that new prosthetic device, it has like AI.

Everything. Yeah. Stuff is getting fancy. Yeah, and, and we, we have, our youngest volunteer is five years old and she said when he gets that prosthetic leg, he can run, he can jump and he can bike just like us and really he can like jump on a rock and it would hold him. So that's know's Good. That's. I think that's the, you kind of got the beeline of the whole right, and you know, did they answer?

Did they answer your question right. Mr. Kin? Well, I have great respect for what you do, because it's not often, of course, it's not something that doesn't exist, but it's not very often that we see a civilian. Doing so much for the veteran populace. You know, a lot of times it's veteran supporting veterans, so I have a lot of respect for what you do.

Because although we're all humans, at the end of the day, a lot of people separate veterans from civilians as you know, different people. And so a lot of times it's just veterans helping veterans, but at the end of the day, it's a human issue, you know? So I really appreciate and respect what you do going out of, I consider it going out of your way to serve a population that.

You know, quote isn't your own. Of course we're all human and so I appreciate what you do. And so how does, you know, you've kind of told a little bit about what Wings for heroes.org does. How do people, so how does the process work? So do veterans reach out to you? So basically family members, so basically right now, mm-hmm Um, I took two and a half years to see if it's going to literally fly.

Then when it flew, I thought it was like this is the end, but it was not the end, it was the beginning. Mm. So adding physical therapy, psychologist, adding all these little things and seeing how it works on a small scale and keeping tabs on everything, which is the most important thing you know, because by.

Education training. I have a degree in accounting and finance, and I, I worked all my life in finance. So I created this process and then I added the numbers and I, I went and I looked at, I compared to what, you know, how much does it cost for other I'm not a charity. First of all. Wings for Heroes is a mission, and the mission is about keeping the promise and the promise.

The way I see it is that. When somebody goes to defend their country, any country, I think when you there is east and west, that's it. There's just two sides. You know, if you look at the barbarians always want to come from the east and they wanna go west and they want to take stuff. And the West is more civilized, more hardworking, further looking, you know.

In, in or more looking into the future, it's like it's, it's a totally different game and it's always between the east and the west and the bullets they start flying from the east to the west. I don't really, you know, not thinking about a war that was started in another direction is hard to find. In between every war and peace there is space, and in that space, that space is occupied by men, women, and men and women.

Who place themselves for everybody who is not a soldier, who is a civilian at home. You know, people are living their lives, and as long as the people who occupy that space, then you and I, we can have this conversation. And if that space becomes empty, you and I cannot have that conversation. Mm. And I was born in a place where you could not have the conversation.

Then they were left to the United States, and meanwhile that country actually was allowed to say what, you know. To be free, but then the east came back again and we are going through exactly the same thing like 50 years later. And it's, when I see or anybody sees it repeating, you know, decades after decades, you can do two things.

Number one, you can look away and pretend that you're really busy, you know, with, with things and you have other stuff to do, and there's a system and the government that has to take care of it. Or you can step in, you know? And I just decided to step in. And in my case, I don't, I don't even think I was, I decided, I think it found me, you know, like everything in my life led me to this point.

And when I got to this point in the United States, you know, I really had dreams and big dreams. I went to great school, I became a national bestseller. You know, I got to speak at the United Nations with my mentor. Brand Tracy 2015. And from there on I could have I greenlight stay in the states and just capitalize, materialize, monetize 23 years of hard work and sacrifice.

And that's, you know, learning building business. But I was in Ukraine and I had a chance to do something really wild, like that thing could not work. And I thought I would try, you know. There are a lot of people. If it worked, then it would be great, but if it didn't work, it was a company that had more than a thousand employees.

And imagine like at war, if it goes away, then there's, there's, they would not find another. It would be really hard finding work. And I thought I can go back to the states, write more books, you know, do more speaking engagements, grow my practice. Make more money, you know, just live a good life, really. In the United States.

Life is really good. It's really comfortable, it's really predictable, it's really safe. It's really peaceful. It's really, it's all the good things. It's not like this once you live in other places. But the thing is that like I find that overcoming difficulties is the real satisfaction. You know, it's not, the satisfaction is adding.

At some point you're just adding 0, 0, 0, comma 0, 0, 0 comma zero, right? You're just adding zeros. There will be no ones, it would be just zeros. And that experience, I thought it would be like a really solid one. If, if I stay and do it, it would not be focusing on the zeros, it would be focusing on the important things.

And I think that decision changed everything because the next thing I was standing, I see what's going on. I cannot look away. I see the results, the consequences, how civilian population of one country is suffering. Because one psycho decided that he wanted, you know, to put a. Flag on a map. He will never go there.

Right. But he approved it. 40 million people, you know, 10 million people are gone. Yeah. We don't know how many dead because nobody's counting and more than a hundred thousand MPGs. And this time it's not only men. Like before, you know it's women, it's kids. Mm. And you know why this war is so different than any other that we had ever, ever in this, in the history of civilized nations.

Yeah. In the history of our world, this is the first time that the nuclear power is using nuclear power blackmail to withdraw borders. There was nobody who's done it before and the United States could have taken over the whole world, you know, after Harry Semen Nagasaki. Okay. We are in charge, so we are experiencing, we are living through nuclear blackmail and nobody's saying anything.

Mm. And I am here cleaning up that mass as much as I can. You know, like I said, I'm not, I'm useless. You cannot send me to war because I'm gonna walk around with my machine gun, look for wifi. Not, not that bad, not that bad. But you know, I just I just think, and another thing, big thing, is that I wanna make a point that it's always easy to like point fingers.

Think that somebody else is gonna do the work for you. You know, the work that nobody wants to do that. Like I'm paying my taxes like the government and the system should do it. And I think that if people try to do more for causes that are important to them, and my freedom is the most important thing, man, I ran for my life so many times, so many times from one country to another.

You know, I know what that means. I got. To move to the United States because of the First Amendment, and I realized that when I was on the red carpet in Hollywood, getting a re award for a book, you know, I left because freedom of speech and religion. I got an asylum from the United States. I came as a refugee to the United States.

I could write in my book whatever I wanted to write, and I wanted to say. Whatever I could say. I started a radio show back in 2006 and I could say whatever I wanted to say on the radio. I still have accent now, then I dunno who would listen to me. But you know, it's the only place where you can do it, nowhere else.

And if we make promises as, as a society to men and women who go and volunteer to defend us and we don't keep those promises. What is going to happen if we don't? Right. Like, you know, I agree. Once it's broken, then it would really, really hard to backtrack. So I'm not just doing it for me. You know, I think I'm, I had an opportunity to, to fulfill public service, I would say like this, and I thought, okay, I will try.

Well, and I think I, I love your point because so many people are like focused on, we need to end this war. What can we, you know, this and that, and they're focused on these big global issues, but they're just a regular, you know, person. And it's like, you can't stop the war by yourself. It's just someone who's not a politician.

Right? Because that's, that's up to them. And we have you know, we can use our voice to influence and help make decisions, but at the end of the day, it comes down to, okay. Within my power that I have, what can I do? What can I do in my local community? Or what can, in your case, if, if I can't stop the war, how can I help the veterans who are coming back injured?

Right? It's all about what can we do? So many people are focused on something that is out of their control or what they can't do, and we need to focus on what can we do to the best of our abilities to, to help as much as we can. So I really appreciate what you do and I, I want to clarify. So. You are working with international veterans, do you have veterans from America and Ukraine?

Perfect timing for the perfect question. When I was thinking about how to do it practically. I knew that if I go to the States, you know, I had my own registered investment advisory firm. I started companies for clients, I sold companies for clients. I've seen, I've been through the whole process. I ran a big national company, so I really understand how things work and one of the things that I knew was that if I go to the States, I'm going to have to, first thing I'm hiring lawyers who will write me.

A plan that will say, look, if you want to be compliant and you want to service veterans in the United States, here's the list. Here are the requirements, here are the insurances, here are the people you have to hire. And we would spend, I don't know, three years, a hundred thousand plus in just getting anything done.

Mm-hmm. And I thought, well, actually I saw, I'm in Turkey, I saw a local pilot fly a person. With an MPT, they just took a prosthetic lag and they had two assistants and they were sitting on the ground and they actually, it was, it was really impressive how they took off. It was just so took, took really fast and smooth.

And they went up to that pilot and they said, look, this is the idea that I have. Could you fly if I bring veterans, could you fly them? He said, yeah. I said, but we don't have a chair. He said, it's no problem. We will fly. Just, we need good weather conditions and we need two assistance. And, you know, I've flown more than a hundred flights and know what I'm doing, which is, it's not a good idea to fly.

And then, you know, if somebody has a prosthetic leg, fly them without a chair. Because if you land the wrong way, it's, you know, it's bubbles air. And that thing costs $75,000. I'm not talking about injuring the person is always the worst thing, but you can bla break a really expensive equipment and I was able, you know, I was able to find somebody who agreed and I was able to find somebody who would give us, give us a hero here, not in the United States.

Once it's flew here in the United, in, in, not in the States. I went to the States and I found a fly site where I can do it in the States. It'll be in Tory Pines in California. They do have a chair. They have pilots, local pilots. They have insurance. They know how to fly limited mobility passengers.

They can, they can fly quadriplegics, you know, and when you have a quadriplegics person cannot move. And, and, you know. Tory Pine is right next to the biggest US Naval base. It's San Diego, you know, and geographically it's perfect. So I found how to bring the recreational side to the United States.

Now rehab, they're gonna come here and first of all, obviously it's the cost. You know, when we're doing 12 physical therapy sessions, not counting everything else, it's, it's less expensive to fly them, to house them, to feed them. To show them. And we're not talking about the, you know, the comradery, the environment of we, I have more than a hundred volunteers and I have this, these guys, when they come here, there's 24 7 concierge service, 24.

They wanna watch Sunset, they wanna watch Moonrise, they wanna watch Moon set. Somebody will be there. They wanna take a canoe on the sea. Wow. We are on the Mediterranean side. They can go take a canoe out at night in the summer. It's really still, you can watch when it's full moon. It's just really peaceful.

So for somebody who had a traumatic experience to come to a peaceful place like this, it's always warm here. Like I have to stop in July because it's really hard for anybody who has a prosthetic lag to be in this heat. And we have to stop like in February because you know, we have a lot of rain. But in any case, we can run 10 months out of the year.

So, you know, that's actually the next step. And one of the things that I, I it was one of the ideas like, imagine if, if a person loses a limb at war, like when they come back home, they get a lot of things that you cannot do. You cannot, you cannot, you cannot, you cannot. Just, a lot of you cannots.

And I think a lot of people just accept it. And this experiment was awesome that I took a kid who's never been outside of the country and he had to make it to another country. So you go through passport controls, you go through airports, they forgot a wheelchair and just getting through that process. By the time he came here the third time, he is completely independent.

He can leave at home, you know, fly here, go to the market, to the, you know, Friday bazaar or Tuesday bazaar. He knows where to go, how to find things. Volunteers are calling saying, look, he's not answering the phone like we are saying, do you need anything? He doesn't say anything. He is everything. Okay. I go and I said, look, they're worried about you.

He says, lube, I know the number. If I need anything, I will ask them. Just tell them they, they can relax. Like I know, I, I go to the taxi driver, I tell them, drop me off next to where the soccer field is for the local, for the local soccer team. He lives like right next block. But anyways, what I'm trying to say is that imagine if you get a guy, a girl who had an amputation and they travel all the way to Turkey.

They spend here time. If rehab, they'll stay here a month or more. It will be just such a mind blowing experience. It just would be they will come back home completely independent. Nobody will ever tell them, you cannot do this because you don't have a lag. It'd be like, you know what f you, I just went to Turkey and I seen the world and I can travel and I can do whatever, so don't tell me anything.

And that's actually, you know, our number one is traveling, but they went, he took his girlfriend to Paris. They went to Germany. Like really his quality of life, man, like I am saying that, I just thought, let's just see what it takes. And the thing is that you die. Yeah. It takes a long time. It takes more than a year for, and we were lucky because this guy is young, positive, you know, he's always like, yeah, come on, let's go.

Let's do it. Let's do it. Anything I, I wanna do it. You know, I just wanna live a little more. So he progressed really fast, but number two is deaf and he's drinking and he doesn't have anything. Nothing in his future, nothing. The system is not helping them. Nobody knows that he's suffering. Some jerk told him to get off the bus because, you know, he said, you know, active duty, you have three bus ride.

And somebody told him, look, get off the bus. There are too many of you.

So you know, it's real. Screwed up situation. And in any case, I created this environment. Next step I want to take it. You know, I want to, I want, I want to scale it. And one of the things that I solved is that I found a way I want a hundred percent of the, you know, I was self-funded for more than two years, so everything I put, I, I'm only not putting in the money, I'm putting in time, experience, everything.

I know how it is built and I know how it's going to work. And one of the biggest issues I wanted to solve is that, look, if I'm doing something for veterans, it's like you know that there are a lot of charities that say, ah, look at this picture. It's so sad, so sad. Help us out, give us money. Or These poor children, these poor, blah, blah, blah.

You fill it in. And then they get the money, and then they have offices, and then they have staff, and then they have more staff, and then they have millions, tens of millions, hundreds of millions in the bank and. The problem is not going away. So like I'm anti charity. I'm mission driven, and my thing is that whatever donations will come in, in the future, a hundred percent of them will go to veterans.

I cannot take a dime from that. You know? It's not mine. I'm providing service. I understand. I have to figure it out, how I will pay myself, but I think that it's time that. People are giving money to something, it has to go directly. So I have transparency. I open all my bank statements. If anybody wants to come here, see how we do it.

We are, we are open source organization. Like I want people to come. But like you say, you're traveling, maybe you hop on the plane and come see how we operate in Turkey. And when we fly in San Diego, I think San Diego would be first. Part, so you have to go there and watch that too, because it's super cool.

You know, when they take off and when they come back they, it's like mental orgasm times 1 million, just like in space, you know, from just, you really flying, you know, that feeling of free flight for somebody who went through a big loss. It's, it's a really liberating experience. Yeah, and we're gonna have in the description for this episode, the wings for heroes.org website link.

So for anyone who wants to check it out, to read more about the organization, see how to support you all that information is gonna be in description below. And I just wanna, again, take the time to say thank you so much for what you're doing. I know you're podcast guesting to spread the word because you know mm-hmm.

People need to know about this, and I think it's important. And so this isn't just for the amputees, but also for if you're the friend of one, a family member of one please share this information with them, especially if you've seen that they have just. Their life has changed. You know, it is a life altering event.

And if you can do anything, even if it's just sharing information to try and make their life better, then you ought to do that. So, Mr. Luby Hogan, thank you so much for coming on the show today and sharing your story. I can tell that you're, you know, a really good guy. Try to do, like you said, serve a mission.

You're mission driven, and so I really hope to continue to see how your organization expands to help even more and more veterans. Thank you Mr. Whisky for having me and for the first recreational event in San Diego. I hope to to meet you there in person. Yes, sir. And thank you for creating this space.

You know, it's really important because if you didn't do, like you said, it's, it's not just doing something, you know, everybody can do a lot and a little, and I think you're doing a lot because you create a platform where, you know, voices can be heard. I know. I'm just looking for that one person who's gonna say, okay, this sounds like a real deal.

I want to go check it out. And here's the thing, all I'm asking for people is to just check it out. Really what I've built is for somebody who sacrificed, and it's everything that existed was developed from the need. You know, like follow and what do they need? Okay, let's make this, what do they need next?

Let's make this, it's not invented by some corporate strategy. It's, it's like, battlefield tested. Right. Right. So again, thank you so much for what you do and yeah. I hope to connect with you in the future. Yeah. I will talk to you soon, I'm sure. Thank you so much. Okay.