We figured out why the stream of emails and calls haven’t stopped. Tom went on Morning Joe and talked about Charles and us again along with NBC’s kickoff of Hiring Our Heroes Week. Sue and I started answering the emails and thought about how many people can we possibly hire? Can we expand the company enough to make a difference? We can maybe hire a few more. How do we get them into Chicago for training?
We decided to work through the day and meet tonight over dinner and try to make a plan and implement it. Then at about 11AM our emails presented us with an invitation to the White House. We knew is was spam because they needed so much information. They asked for our social security numbers, gender, full name; first middle and last, date of birth, city of residence and the only thing they didn’t ask for was our American Express.
While she and I are going back and forth with what a dirty trick this was, the doorbell rings and it’s a reporter for the Northwest Herald asking for an interview. We asked her what she thought and she said we might want to call the White House. Sure, let’s call the White House. They will know. Well folks, we did call and the woman on the other end said: “yes, Mrs Costigan you and your husband have been invited by Michelle Obama and Dr Jill Biden to attend the one year anniversary of Joining Forces on the White House lawn.”
On a personal note, after we picked ourselves up off the floor and called our daughter, she informed me that this was going to cost “an entire outfit for mom; dress, shoes and purse”. I then starting to call all our credit cards to see which one had the best sense of adventure and wanted to take a chance on this shopping spree!
Anyway, here we are with a reporter in the house, emails and calls still coming in at a pretty good clip, some TV station in New York wants to know if they can interview us, trying to borrow money for a trip to the White House and all we wanted to do is to hire a soldier that needed a job. To think I used to like Brokaw. 😉
All kidding aside, we were the ones that got lucky by hiring Charles and his subsequent comrades and all this was happening because of that? We’re not complaining; quite the contrary, but maybe these things are happening for a reason. Maybe it’s our chance to do something special on a much larger scale. I’ll get back to you pretty soon when we have it figured out or at least have a plan.