dabbling in commercial real estate while I was figuring out what was next, when something profound happened that changed the direction of my life. My friend Jerry and I were moose hunting in Alaska. We were dropped off by a 1941 Grumman Goose in the remote wilderness, and our only means of communication was aviation radio. When a plane flew overhead, I could relay a message back to the bush pilot who dropped us off to come pick us up. We ended up shooting a large moose way outside of camp. It took us three-plus days to hike it back to camp. While we were hiking, I never saw an airplane or any contrails which was odd. I remember saying to Jerry, “Something bad has happened. What could have happened to make airplanes stop flying?” My gut reaction was that some kind of nuclear holocaust had happened. I told Jerry that if they didn’t pick us up by the planned date, we needed to start hiking to Anchorage, which was 350 miles of mountains, glaciers, rivers and lakes. On the day we started packing up camp, we heard the plane that dropped us off in the distance. It landed on the lake and tailed into shore, the pilot shut down the engines, stuck his head out the window and said, “They blew up the World Trade Center. They took them both down.” As my brain was trying to process this, it hit me in the chest. First, an overwhelming sadness, I had no idea how many people lost their lives. Then I felt the anger of being attacked on our own shores. As all these emotions welled up in me, and I thought, “I came from nothing, and look what I was able to do. This country, which has been so good to me, is under attack. What have I ever done to deserve this?” And I didn’t have a good answer. Despite travel restrictions being in place, I was still able to make it to Ketchikan, Alaska. It was like a new world. There was police tape everywhere, snipers on the roof, Humvees patrolling the roadways, and I wondered what I was coming back to. When they finally opened the borders, I flew home and walked straight into a recruiter’s office and said, “I used to teach at NYU. I have my pilot’s license. What can you do with me?” The recruiter asked me how old I was. I told him I was 34 and he said “Good, 35 is the cutoff.” I ended up getting sworn into a combat search and rescue squadron, which was a great mission. Nobody’s ever upset when search and rescue show up. I ended up doing a couple of tours to Afghanistan during Operation Enduring Freedom. After that, I served eight years in the Air National Guard. When we weren’t deployed, we did a lot of domestic search and rescue and domestic counterdrug work. This experience helped me to find the answers I was looking for when 9/11 first happened: This country’s been good to me, and I needed to feel like I deserved it. From there, I started building a commercial real estate company with my partners, then, our own broker-dealer and then some investment banking in commercial real estate. When our commercial real estate portfolio got big enough, I saw an opportunity to self-insure. So we started a captive insurance program and then turned that into a national program of renters insurance. Then I saw another opportunity in Montana — there’s never been a commissioner of securities and insurance who actually had a securities and insurance background. And, I thought it was a great opportunity. I ran for and won the seat of state auditor. I was in that office for four years, after which time I assembled a team and ran for Congress, and here I am today in Washington, D.C. Similar to my military experience, I have yet another opportunity today to give back. I look 15 MONTANA AUTO DEALER
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