In between all the time preparing for the parade and rodeo these last couple of weeks, we have had something big going on in the background...
Ten days ago we received a call from one of our program partners, U.S. Army Wounded Warriors. Christin Barden with AW2 called us to tell us she had another Veteran ready to participate in our Cowboy UP! program and that she even had her own horse! There was one small detail though, "Lacey", a beautiful Appaloosa was in Indiana, and that because of her owners injuries Kristy herself was unable to make the drive to pick her up. Although Lacey's home here is all ready set up, The transport costs were just out of reach to get Lacey to NM, so Christin called Rick stating, "I knew if there is anyone who has a resource it would be you." Well, Rick worked straight away with putting a call out to the horse owner community. A former Team Roper, Kevin Holland responded. Rick briefed Kevin on the situation and he said he would be coming our way and agreed to haul Lacey.
Back up a month or so... While at the Red Cross Breakfast where Rick was awarded his Real Heroes Award, we met Charlotte Lane of Brycon Construction and in charge of their good deed program. Brycon wanted to help out some way with our program. Well one thing lead to another and Rick thought it would be a good deed to bring Lacey home, so he contacted Charlotte and asked her that with the money they would have donated to our program to see if they would be interested in an even better deed - Brycon agreed, and with their support we booked Kevin to bring Lacey home!
Kevin picked up Lacey on Tuesday and have been making their way across country. At a rest stop along the way Kevin took the above picture with his cell phone and sent it last night - have another look, ain't she pretty?
We are excited for Kristy to be reunited soon with Lacey. Kristy credits Lacey as being her therapy - her face just lights up talking about her!
NOTE: Staff Sgt. Kristy La France was wounded when an Improvised Explosive Device blew up her convoy while serving in Iraq in 2004-5.
Stay tuned!
