Jocko Podcast - 310: Relish The Struggle and Keep Reaching For The Stars. With Jose Hernandez

Episode Date: December 1, 2021

0:00:00 - Opening0:02:43 - Jose Hernandez3:29:03 - How to stay on THE PATH.3:47:36 - Closing GratitudeSupport this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/jocko-podcast/exclusive-content

This is Jocko podcast number 310 with Carrie Helton and me Jocco Willink. Good evening, Carrie. Good evening. I went back to the living room and sat down on the couch. Newspaper clippings, letters of recognition, and photos with important individuals were scattered across my coffee table. The 47 years of my life were summarized in a pile of images and words. My life story stared me in the face. one photograph in particular caught my attention it was one in which i was holding a single tomato in one hand

and a bucket full of tomatoes in the other i was wearing an old blue t-shirt and a pair of shoes that were ripped my abuelo jose and my siblings stood beside me my abuelo posed with his straw hat we were all wearing old dirty clothes the agricultural field seemed infinite in the background the color of the shirt i was wearing in the photo was the exact color of the shirt i was wearing as i gazed at the picture at that moment i had to smile thinking about how things in life came full circle i was now wearing a blue NASA polo shirt and not an old blue t-shirt. It dawned on me that there is no secret formula or magic for making dreams come true. The only way to make a dream come true is to have the passion, the work ethic, and the foundation of a good education to help go from one step to the next

while pushing aside the obstacles in life. And that right. there is an excerpt from a book. The book is called Reaching for the Stars. It was written by a gentleman by the name of Jose Hernandez, who has had an incredible voyage that led him from those fields, picking tomatoes as a child out in central California and doing that to help pay the bills for his family. And that journey took him all the way to man's final frontier. space aboard the space shuttle as an astronaut.

And it is an honor to have Jose with us here tonight to share his story with us and also share some of the lessons that he learned along the way. It's a great honor. Jose, thank you for joining us. Thank you for inviting me. It's a pleasure to be here. It's a wild story. And I kind of jumped to the end there.

The voyage that you've been on the whole way and the perseverance. that you've shown, just an incredible story. Yes, I think it just epitomizes the American story, you know, of what's possible here in this great country of ours, of being able to reach the American dream if you're willing to work for it. You know, I always tell folks when I give my talks, I say, look, I'm a religious man, I'm a Catholic man, but I also know nothing's going to fall for. the sky for me. Anything I want in this world of ours, you got to work for it. And my father taught me

that at a very young age, and you saw that fact that working with my grandfather in the fields, picking tomatoes, I mean, they taught us that work ethic. And they said nothing's going to come for free in this world. And I certainly believed it. And I just developed a great work ethic as a result. Incredible. Well, you know, if we're going to go through the story, we might as well go through the story. Again, the book is called Reaching for the Stars. And as I read the story, look, folks, I can't read them. I'm not going to read the whole book.

That's not what we're here for. But you've got to get the book to get all the details. The level of detail that you give is incredible. There's funny parts in the book. There's sad parts in the book. There's triumphant parts in the book. And there's failure in the book. So it covers the full spectrum of.

of human emotions. And so if you want to hear the full story, you got to get the book. Again, it's called Reaching for the Stars. So I'm going to jump ahead a little bit. Here we go. I was born August 7, 1962, in French Camp, California. At that time, my family lived in Stockton, California.

That is where the story of my life begins. I grew up surrounded by the love of my family and the many hardships that come along with being part of a migrant family. My memory begins at the 8th. of five precisely as I started school. I remember boarding this bus to school when we were living out in the countryside near the city of Modesto. The school located in the small town of Salida. Salida, am I saying that right? Salida. Salida seemed very large and was filled with students who seemed a lot bigger and older than me. The classrooms were decorated and filled with rows

of shiny new desks. The desks had built in compartments that allowed us to store pencils, crayons, and papers, I could not believe I was assigned my own beautiful desk. Phrases of gratitude were silently running through my head, but all I could do is stare at the blackboard because I did not speak the language. I tried to figure out the meaning of what was written down and drawn and colored chalk. I never dared to raise my hand to ask a question, let alone answer one. I also never fully participated in any of the classroom kindergarten activities like singing, storytelling, or playing board games. It came to. It came to you. as no surprise that my kindergarten teacher whom I called La Mastra spoke only English.

She was not sure I understood everything that was being taught, much less being said. I remained silent with the hope of being invisible to everyone. So that's what it kicks often. Going into school, no English, zero. Yes. And the teachers, they're just teaching in English and that's that. Exactly. Deal with it.

In those days, there weren't any. programs like English as a second language where they put you and they try to beef up your English skills they just threw you in the general population and you sank or swam you know and then and that's the way it was and you know if there's proponents that say that's the way it should be and there's others that say no we need an English as a second language as a program to help the weaker students and so but in that particular case I had no choice I was just thrown in there what do you think what's the way to to do it.

Just straight immersion? What's your opinion? When I went to college, I took Spanish. I took three semesters of Spanish. And I had a friend that's Mexican that I took Spanish with, and he grew up speaking Spanish. I got better grades than him in Spanish class. And when I got done, I could barely, you know, I'd go to a Mexican restaurant. I couldn't do.

I was worthless. I was worthless at speaking to. But I learned like the rules of grammar. Exactly. Yeah. But I remember sometimes the teachers, they had. the thought, the professors had the thought that this is immersion. And so they wouldn't speak to you in any English at all. And I thought to myself, sometimes I thought to myself, I really wish you

would answer this question for me because I don't know, I'm not figuring this out. I don't know, what do you think? I think it should be a hybrid because I think there's students that will do well under an immersion program, and then there's other students that really need that extra help so that they can get to that next level. And I'll tell you, you know, my first experience in kindergarten was just as you described it there, but it actually occurred in three different places because, you know, my story begins well before I was even born. My parents are from the central state of Michoacan in Mexico.

And my father at the young age of 15, out of economic necessity, comes from a family of 12. He's one of the oldest boys. He had to come and work in California in what he knew, which was agriculture. And he quickly set up a routine, which was common amongst folks from Michoacan, which was you would spend two months in Southern California, Ontario, Chino area, picking strawberries. then you will move up to Salinas, and you pick strawberries and lettuce. And then you will go up to the Stockton-Modesto area for five months.

There you start off with the cucumbers, then the cherries, then you got onions and peaches, and tomatoes, and then you end the harvest with the grape harvest. And then he would go back home for three months and cool his heels. Well, when he was 19, he met my mother from the same hometown. They got married. She was at the old ripe age of 14, you know, which would have been a crime these days now, right? But they got married, and luckily, my dad incorporated my mom into this nomadic lifestyle. And, of course, kids come along during the marriage, right?

And there's four of us. I'm the youngest of four. And where you were born dictated on what month you were born in. See, I was born in August. Okay, so you were in America then. The last stop, yes, the last stop. I was out, and my brother was born in September. Then I got a brother and sister born in December, and they were born in Mexico.

Well, getting back to, now imagine we were living this nomadic lifestyle as a kid, and Spanish is the only language I knew how to speak. Right. Now I imagine the kindergarten. My first kindergarten is going to, in the Ontario-Chino area, you know, they stick me in. as I learned where the bathroom's at, they take me to Salinas and just as learning where those bathrooms are at, I'm down to my third kindergarten teacher in Stockton. And so you can imagine it wasn't a very conducive environment to learn. And that's eventually why your dad decided to stay

up in America, right? Yes, yes. As a matter of fact, in the second, and remind me to say some about my teacher at the end when we blast off and all that because I always forget to tell that part of the story, which is pretty cool. But it wasn't until I was in the second grade. In the second grade, we were in our last stop in Stockton. And my dad gets up in the morning about a week, a week before we go to Mexico. He makes what we call the grand annuncio, the big announcement. And the big announcement was he would get up and say, kids, We're going to Mexico next week. Talk to your teachers and get three months worth of homework.

Why three months? Because that's what we stayed over there. And my father, my parents didn't put us in school over there because Christmas vacation came along and all that. They said, no, no, no, no, no. You guys are going to self-study. And so my mom would wake us up every morning in my grandma's house. We would go to the kitchen.

They would give us a cup of hot chocolate piece of French bread. from 8 in the morning to 12, all four of us will be doing our homework. You know, the homework was stained of chocolate, but we got it done. And so in the second grade, when he told us to do that, to get the homework, I went to my second grade teacher, Miss Young. And, man, she was a second grade. Who's your first crush, you know? Guilty as charge, you know. In my mind, it was me and Miss Young, you know?

And I remember she was tall, young, Asian, and long black hair, and tall relatively to a second grader, because now I see her. The poor thing is short, but she was tall back then. And I asked her for my homework. And she looked at me with this frustrated look and said, you tell your parents I'm going to come home and talk to them. and that's when Ms. Young came and convinced my parents that we needed to stay in one place. And that's what sort of changed the whole dynamics, the whole direction of our family. And I love to tell the story to educators because, you know, I tell them, hey, I know you feel like you're not making a difference. But let me tell you, one little thing my teacher did that changed the trajectory of a whole family.

and I tell them this nice story about Ms. Young. And she actually came to your house to meet your parents and tell them? She did, yes. My mom, when she told me that she was going to come and talk to him that evening, I went running home. I didn't even wait for my siblings because they were in elementary school too. I went running home because I, you know, I felt like Paul Revere, right? Teachers coming, teachers coming, you know, with the lamps, you know, and I tell my dad and my mom about it. And my mom, of course, like any Latina woman, instead of worrying about, because my dad, first, when I told him the teacher was coming, he started taking off his belt because he said, you must have did something bad.

And I kind of backtrack and convince him it had to do with our trip to Mexico. And my mom, different priority. She actually said, we have to sweep and mop and make a nice dinner because the teacher's coming. And so, yeah, they pulled out all the bells and whistles when the teacher came. I loved when visitors came to our house because, you know, we lived a very humble life. I never, ever went to bed hungry thanks to my parents' hard work. But I'll tell you, man, we had our fair share of beans and rice and tortillas and salsa. But when visitors came, the protein magically appeared in a form of a nice, thin steak, you know, chicken or a pork shop.

And I remember I used to get so happy when my dad would say, hey, your uncle's coming or your grandpa's coming. Translation, we're going to have meat on the table. But yes, she actually came and she convinced. And she told a beautiful story to my dad to convince him because my dad is a very, what, how should I put it? A very proud man. And I remember after dinner, they went to the list. small living room and my dad and Miss Young thanked my mom for the dinner after she brought coffee and she basically said I didn't really come here to to have dinner but thank you very much. I really

came to talk to you about the education process of your four kids and I remember this story because my dad and mom did not speak English at the time. Ms. Young didn't speak Spanish so I was the official translator since she was my teacher. And when she said that, that she was here to talk about the education process of the four kids, my dad immediately got uncomfortable because I know what's going through my dad's mind. He was saying, it's not a complaint of one kid, it's a complaint of four kids, you know. And Ms. Young saw how uncomfortable he got. And she said, no, it doesn't, it's quite the contrary, senor. It has to do the fact that I've had the privilege of having your four kids in my class and let me tell you they all love school they're good students I said but

this nomadic lifestyle that you're living is not helping them and my dad immediately stops miss young says hey hang wait wait wait wait wait it's it's true that that my wife and I only have a third grade elementary education were farm workers and and while my kids help me in the weekends in the fields and seven days a week during the summer, whenever they're school, I said they're either in school or they're doing their homework, they're self-studying. I said, we take serious their education. And Ms. Young said, yes, but you move from to three different towns, three different school districts. You know what my dad's response was? He said, yes, but we move on a Saturday. Which was true.

finished school on a Friday. Monday we were in the new town, new school district, and we were in school. So we didn't miss a day of school. He was right about that. And then Ms. Young would said, yes, but then you go to Mexico for three months. And my dad says, yes, but they take your homework. So in my dad's eyes, he was meeting his obligation of giving us an education. He didn't realize that moving us around was detrimental to the process, the educational process. And Ms. Young was clearly frustrated, and then I watched her closely, and then she kind of smiled, almost as if she got an idea. And, you know, she must have studied psychology because she was brilliant at it. The first thing she does is she caters to my dad's ego.

She looks at Mr. Hernandez and says, Mr. Hernandez, your kids tell you. me that you have many years experience in agriculture. I said, man, I think you can be considered an expert on agriculture issues. Oh man, you didn't have to tell that to my dad. My dad starts pulling up his collar. So, oh, yeah, I'm not sure I could be considered an expert, but I do know a thing or two about plants. Can I help you?

And man, Ms. Young lets out a bigger smile. She took the... He took the bait. He took the bait. And Miss Young said, well, yes, as a matter of fact, you can't. She said, you know, I'm going to give you a problem, and you can tell me what happens because I think that's going to help me, but I think it's also going to help you. And my dad says, sure, what's the problem? She goes and she says, imagine I give you a small tree in a potted plant.

I'm going to give it to you. It's a fruit tree. My dad says, well, thank you. He said, now I want you to find the best ground, fertile ground, dig a hole, and you plant it. And you take good care of it like the expert that you are. You're going to fertilize it, water it, everything. You take good care of it. My dad says, I can do that for you, Ms. Young?

Absolutely. Then she looks at them and says, three months later, I want you to find another piece of ground, equally as good. Dig a hole. Transplant that tree there. keep taking care of it. My dad's puzzle look now, says, okay. And then Ms. Young grew up very quickly, says, and then another three months, what's more?

Every three months, I want you to transplant that tree, Mr. Hernandez, but you're going to take good care of it. It's going to get all the water, all the fertilizer, all the nutrients it needs, because you're the expert. You're going to take good care of it. Then she looks straight in the eye to him and says, now you tell me what happens in the long run to that tree oh my dad starts thinking starts combing his mustache like he likes to when he's very pensive

and says well miss young that's very easy he says the tree's not going to die but you're going to stunt its growth because it's going to be weak and if it's a fruit tree it probably won't even bear fruit why let me tell you why a tree needs to be in one place so the roots can grow deep and the branch even raises up his hands so the branches

can grow big and tall and he's doing this and you can count to two seconds big and tall and then you can see his facial express he got it I mean it took him two seconds but he got it because he sheepishly kind of pulled his hand down

and I got to get because my dad is very proud, but I got to give him credit that day because he, you know, he could have got mad or denial, whatever, but he actually just looked at Ms. Young and said, is that what you mean? And Ms. Young said, that's exactly what I mean. I think my job is done here, and she excused herself, and she went off. And I'll tell you, that year we still went to Mexico, but on the way back, We used to go by car, and from Stockton to Mitraucan, it's almost a three-day trip. On the way back that year, we didn't stop in Ontario, Chino. We kept driving north.

We didn't stop in Central California, Salinas. We kept driving north, and we went straight to Stockton. From then on, that was our first and only stop. And then our trips back to Mexico, we still went every year, but our trips to Mexico shrank from three months. to three weeks centered around Christmas vacation, and all of a sudden, our education started to get traction. And why did it happen? All because the visit of one teacher, and this is why I always love telling this story

to educators. I said, you just never know what little seed you're going to plant that's going to give fruit, no pun intended, in terms of helping kids. So whenever you're down and out, think of this story, because I'm sure there's something you've done in your career that's effective. a kid. You may not know about it, but I'm sure something that you've done positive has helped a family. Yeah, no doubt about it. That's an awesome story. I know there's another thing you mentioned in here that had an impact on you. I'm going to the book. It says, Star Trek was my favorite show growing up.

My brother Chava had a toy model of the USS Enterprise spaceship from the show, which was my favorite toy to borrow and play with for hours and hours. In Stockton, where we spent a majority of the year, While in California, we lived in a small, rented three-bedroom house located on the east side of town. It was an old house made a wood with a tile roof and had a small bathroom, a round dining table, and a living room with old furniture. Although the kitchen was small, it was always stocked with the necessities for making a delicious Mexican meal, tortillas, tomatoes, peppers, and onions. The quarto or bedroom I shared with Chava and Gill had only two beds, a desk, and a dresser.

Our furniture was rather austere, and most of the pieces were secondhand. The most luxurious item my family owned was the black and white television set. And even that was old by normal standards. The street we lived on reflected the humbleness of its residents. My family included, with a few exceptions. My neighbors made a living working either in the fields or the canneries. The canaries processed vegetables and fruits brought directly from the fields. This is where the tomatoes are packaged after being turned into ketchup or paste.

and where the fruits are canned to become fruit cocktail. I came from a world bordered by limitations, primarily financial ones. Fortunately, as a child, I occupied myself with something that did not require any De Niro because it was free. No one knew about my special hobby because I did not talk about it. Fueled by the scenes of Star Trek, I spent my time looking up at the sky, especially at night. At the time, I did not know exactly what had mesmerized me, but there was something of

up in the sky that fascinated me. I spent hours in my bedroom gazing through the window and staring up at the stars. I stared at the stars thinking those stars over there are twinkling and that one over there is not. Those over there look yellow while those over there look blue. All of them appear to be the same, but they all are so different.

So even from a young age, you were fascinated by what you were seeing up in space. Yes, and what really helped was the fact that Aside from watching the first run Star Trek series in William Chattner, who, by the way, recently became a real astronaut, right? He went up in space. That's right. He just did. He crossed the Carmen line, so he became an astronaut, got his wings.

But what really inspired me was, you know, after watching things like Star Trek, loss in space and those type of programs, when we used to go out to the fields, it used to be in the early dawn. It was still dark outside. And so we would go out to the fields away from the light pollution. And so you're in pitch dark still. The sun hasn't come up and still needs 20, 30 minutes for it to come up. I would go outside and you would go up and you let your eyes adapt and you stargaze. And you can see the stars so clearly. You know, and even clouds like the Milky Way, those type of things.

you can make out because it was so clear. And those are the things that really grabbed my imagination. And I said, you know, one day I'm going to be up there. You have a good section in here. You learned just an awesome lesson from your dad. You say this. As I grew older, I would, this is now you're working. You're working in the fields.

As I grew older, I would learn the manias or bad habits of the other workers. This included bending the bottom. of their metal buckets inward to create less volume and thus appear to fill each bucket even more quickly. That's for the cucumbers, yes. I would also learn how to swiftly reseat a bucket of peppinoes to make it look more full when it was really not. All tricks of the trade, I told myself.

This was how we Hernandez kids spent our weekends and summers. We knew that it was our responsibility to do, and there was no way of getting around that. Every morning spent in the fields promised us the same routine of going to and fro, picking fruits or vegetables from the ground as the rays of the hot sun hit her backs. During one Saturday in particular, I fell over, accidentally stepping on a yellow overgrown peppino that was rotten. I remember it's rotten stench as I threw down my bucket standing there thinking, I'm all covered in mud. I stink. I'm tired and I'm sunburned. My siblings can continue working alongside my parents, but I'm not going to anymore. I want to go home, watch TV and play. I decided to quit.

I went to my father and pulled on his pant leg to tell him, dad, I'm tired. I want to go home. When he heard what I told him, he leaned down, took hold of both my shoulders, and with a surprise look on his face, asked, what's wrong? Did something happen? Are you okay? Look at me. I'm dirty.

I fell in the mud. I want to leave. Plus, I've already made $10 for the day. I cried to him. The day's almost over, he said. Just keep on working. I don't want to. Fine, he said.

Take a good look at yourself. You don't want to see you don't like what you see right now. You don't like working in the fields and the hot sun are getting dirty. Am I right? Well, if you quit now, you'll be creating a pattern that is easy to conform to. If you don't work hard in school or in life, this will be your future. Is that what you want? No, I answered him.

Well, then, don't settle for $10. The day is almost over. Get back to work, he ordered, with just the right. balance of authority and love and his version of tough love what my father told me that day in the fields changed the trajectory of my life it turned into the speech that transcended the end of a long day of working in the fields we would hear it when all four of us sat in the backseat of our ramshackle car father would turn around to look at us before he would turn on the engine and he would say so how do you guys feel right

now we of course tired sweaty covered with mud and we would answer accordingly good he would say because you kids have the privilege of living your future right now living our future right now we would ask curiously yes he would say i'm not going to force you to go to school or get good grades but if you don't this is the type of job you'll have for the rest of your life this is the future that awaits you so if you want to quit school right now no problem i invite you to start coming to work with me every day as of tomorrow. My father's words made me realize that if I continued going to school, I could do whatever it was I wanted to do in life.

If I studied hard, I might one day make enough money so my parents would no longer have to work in the fields. To this day, I believe my father's words changed the course of my destiny, and I am so grateful to him for that. I sometimes talk about the fact that I think one of the hardest things for kids to do is connect what they're doing right now to their future. They don't understand that is how hard they work right now is going to put them wherever they end up in the future. And your dad made that connection loud and clear for you all, didn't you? Exactly. And he put it very well in saying

you have the privilege because he said, you know, your neighbors, you know, aren't working in the fields during the summer. They're off goofing off and having fun. Your friends, they're in the neighborhood. They're not doing that. But you all. They don't know what their future is like. So they're happy, go lucky, carefree, and they don't care. Dittily Squad about going to school. But you know what your future is at. Here it is.

You're living it. So you want to do this the rest of your life? And I said, man, I don't want to do this. I think I'm going to do well in school because I want something better than this. And so it was a hard lesson. I know my kid, one of my kids was telling me the other day, we were walking through our town and there was you know like a some some homeless drug addicts clearly on drugs clearly just in a totally bad position in life and they were telling me that when they were little

I would walk by those people and say that's what drugs do to you and they remember that it's the same yeah the same tip of the same type of approach your dad took exactly left an impression on you So now I'm going to fast forward a little bit again you got to get the book to get the whole story I'm skipping giant swaths of the book but going fast forward a little bit here things at school continue to get better making friends became easier and speaking English became less of a challenge as time passed I did not consider myself fluent in the language until the age of 12 on the other hand mathematics never gave me any problems I had my routine down and I followed it strictly as a soldier would every day after school I would do my home

watch TV and then play outside the only things that differ from day to day with the questions that invaded my mind I made it my personal mission to track down the answers to every single query that popped into my thoughts constantly pursuing knowledge while satisfying my curiosity you were into school huh yeah you know what really helped was um my father you know in those days they um they had the world book encyclopedia and they used to have salesmen that would come to your house and they sell them to you. And I remember my dad, they came one day, and it was expensive. It wasn't, this was like 300, back then, it was like 300 some odd dollars or something. And, you know, my parents didn't have that kind of money. But they bought the whole A through Z selection. I'm glad they didn't just

get like A through E. Exactly. They bought the whole thing. And man, whenever I needed to find something out, it's the good old world book encyclopedia. I would read it. I would even go to bathroom and take, you know, A with me or B or whatever, you know, thumb through it as you do your business. But that, you know, those little things that my father did really, really helped out. Where do you think your father, obviously he had this incredible grasp on the fact of how important education was? Where did he get that from? I think he got it from the fact that he had been working in the fields himself since he was 15. He came, even before then, back at home, he used to work in the fields.

And I think he realized, he says, hey, I don't want to put my kids through this. And when he saw, when he came to the states, you know, he saw what people that had an education, what kind of jobs they have. And that's what he kind of, you know, wanted us. My mother, you know, both my father and my mother had they, had. Have they, if they had gotten an education, I think they would have been well-renowned psychologists because they were like expert, expert motivators. My mother, I remember every Friday we used to cash, we used to get paid in the field. They still gave you checks, paper checks back then.

And so on Friday after work, we would go directly to a gas station, Chevron gas station, and it had a little mini-mart. My siblings would go inside while my dad gassed up, and they would buy chips and soda. And I would say, hey, get me one too, because my mom would then drag me like across the street to Bank of America to cash the checks. And I remember we were standing there inside the bank.

It was about 4 in the afternoon, hot summer day, about over 100 outside. And, you know, you go into a bank, nice and cool, right, and air conditioning. And so we're standing there in line, and I'm minding my own business, enjoying the cool weather there. And then I feel a tug on my shirt, and it's my mom. I said, what's up, Mom?

And she points to what obviously is the bank manager. And she says, what do you see there? You know, it was this dude, you know, a very nice tailored suit with a nice tie, and dress very nice. And obviously he was, you know, one of the muckety mucks there in the bank, right? And I said, well, I see a man. And she says, no. I said, I see you.

I said, look at yourself right now. Of course, I was sweaty, kind of dry cake mud on my Levi's pants and tired. And it says, look at your hands. And, you know, they're all dirty and everything. I said, this is why you have to, pointing to my head, says, this is why you have to work with this. If you work with this, that's how you're going to dress, and this is where you're going to work. In a place like this, air conditioning, inside, in the shade. But if you work with this, it says your body is going to break down.

You may be able to do it for a few years, but eventually your body's going to break down. So she would always say, oh, oh, aye. you know, you better do well in school. So they both kind of like bombarded us from different directions and subtle and not too subtle ways of making sure. And she was the one that helped us develop the study habits. Because as soon as we came home, you know, my parents would always race from the fields back home to make sure they were home before we got home from school so we wouldn't find an empty house. and my mom's routine was she would dart to the kitchen. She would make her fresh tortillas, the beans, rice, and salsa.

And that was the bait because we would come home from school. We would come home from school. We were hungry, and she would sit us down and she would feed us. But then we couldn't get up. He says, crack open your books, show me that you finish your homework, do your homework, and show me you finish. and only until then we would be allowed to get up and go to play outside with our friends. But she was the one that instilled those study habits that came in handy once he started college, the fact that you had that discipline of saying, hey, I got to take care of this before I can enjoy myself.

Here's another impactful moment. Fast forward in a little bit. It was during that particular summer of 1969, when a major event occurred that would make a big, difference in my life despite the war in Vietnam the internal conflicts in the US and the hippie movement it was an important year for humanity it was a year that left a strong impression on me at the tender age of seven on the morning of July 20th 1969 the entire world was glued to the television set waiting in awe for an historic event to take place mankind had managed to do the unthinkable a person was about to set foot on the moon

Later that night, the first images of Neil Armstrong on the surface of the La Luna were transmitted into households around the globe when he put his foot on the moon and he uttered the famous line that transcended time. That's one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind. When I heard these words, I felt indescribably shocked. I was captivated by this man by this science which left me in awe. absorbed in the broadcast, I got up abruptly to get closer to the television screen. I had an epiphany.

During that exact moment, I discovered what I wanted to be when I grew up, an astronaut. And from that moment on, I was determined that absolutely nothing would get in the way of my dream. And thus the dream was born. There it is. You remember watching that, huh? Yeah, yeah. It was such a big event. You know, I think everybody would, in the whole world,

I was watching that because it was an amazement. Because to think that, you know, the Apollo rocket and the capsule, you know, which has less computing power than your average cell phone, was able to go and using vacuum tube technology, we were able to go to the surface of the moon, send a couple of humans down there and then bring him back home safe and sound. I mean, it was just amazing. It was like Star Trek going live, you know, for real.

So I was just amazed and I was, you know, I was saying, you know, this is what I want to be. Another, your parents are getting a lot of credit today. Here's another little point where they get a ton of credit. The only people I did share this dream with were my parents and to my pleasant surprise, they offered me with words of encouragement. My father sat me down at the same kitchen table where my mother made us do our homework every day and offered me a few words of advice.

He said if I followed his recipe, I could do anything that I wanted to when I grew up because we lived in the United States. He explained to me that my siblings and I had the opportunity to live the American dream. Looking at me very seriously, he said, first, identify what you want to be when you grow up. Second, know how far you are.

from your goal. Third, draw yourself a roadmap that gives you all the steps it will take to get there. Fourth, get yourself a good education. Fifth, and finally apply the same work ethic that you have and your work in the fields to your books and subsequently to your job once you graduate from college. Mix all this together, Jose, and you can be successful at anything you want to do, including becoming an astronaut. Yeah. Out of the gate. And I took that hook, line, and sinker. Because, you know, when you're seven and you're 10 years old and your father tells you something, you believe it. So if he told me, follow this recipe, and you'll become an astronaut.

Man, I took that hook, line, and sinker. I said, I'm going to be an astronaut. I really believed that at the time because I said, these are steps I can follow. And I believe my father. And this is why I love sharing that recipe because it works. It works. And this is why I try to tell people, I said, to reach your full potential, I said, follow these five simple ingredients.

Later I added a six ingredient, which is perseverance, and we'll talk about that a little later. But I added that six ingredient. And I said, if you guys follow these six ingredients, I said, you know, sky's now longer the limit. Spaces, because I proved that. You know what's amazing when you were sitting there saying that, when you're a kid and your parents tell you something, you listen to them.

I mean, imagine if your dad would have had a different attitude. Imagine if your dad would have said, oh, you'll never be an astronaut or you don't have the chance of doing that. I would have never been on it. You never would have done it. No. Because I would have believed him. I said, you know, this is too monumental for me and where I'm at, social, economically, you know, it's not for me.

And I would have believed it if my dad would have told me that. But he didn't. It sounded like early on, your dad especially was pretty accurate. adamant about you understanding that your future is your choice, you know, and he provided the alternative right up front for you. You experienced it, you know, working in the fields. And then, so I've got to imagine you coming to him with a choice. You've decided, you know, at this point as a young kid that space is, is it for you, you know, being an astronaut. So I've got to imagine, you know, he was really open to that and, you know, I'm encouraged.

And I'm certain, you know, he didn't believe I could reach it. Right. You know, obviously. But he was so interested in us getting an education that it's like, you know, he said, if that's what motivates him to go to college, finish high school and go to college, so be it. I mean, this is the same thing I tell my kid, my oldest kid. He's a, he's finishing up his Ph.D. in Purdue and Aerospace Engineering. Wow.

has two masters, a bachelor's. And I told him, you know, when I hooded him for his first master's, you were standing there in line. We had never talked about his future in terms of where he wanted to work. And I thought he was done with his first masters, but, you know, he said he was going to graduate school. And he wanted his Ph.D. And I said, oh, cool, great, that's great. And I remember, as we were standing down.

in line, I told him, son, why, why Purdue? And he said, Dad, you know, I took a page off of your book. He says, I made a list of all the astronauts that got selected by NASA, or they graduated, and guess which school has graduated the most astronauts? I said, let me guess, Purdue. They said, yes, including Neil Armstrong. And so, so that's when I told him, you know, that's when I told him, I said, son, if wanting to be an astronaut motivates you to get your PhD, I said, you go on and be an astronaut because you know what? Once you get that PhD, there's going to be a lot of opportunities open enough for you. You may not make it to be an astronaut, but I think you will. I said, I think you can make it, but you're going to have so many other choices in life with two masters

and PhD and bachelor's. And so, yeah, exactly. Powerful. Yeah. Your family eventually moves into a little place and eventually buys a place. Yes. Eventually buys a place. You say here, after a few more years of renting,

my parents would buy this house from the landlord. The landlord facilitated a rent-to-own finance plan that I, as a 12-year-old kid, helped translate and explain to my father. Finally, the family had a place to call home, although our new barrio or neighborhood was far from ideal.

It had a slew of problems, just as any other barrio in South and East Stockton did. Since we were in one of the older, more depressed neighborhood, we witnessed far more crime than other people who lived in the newer part of town. I started to become more, fast for in a little bit, I started to become more social at school and in my barrio. It was at Fremont Middle School where I met Carlos and his older brother, Alberto. Another person I hung around with in school was my friend Sergio. He lived across the street for me. The four of us were like brothers.

We stick together through our adolescent years. we were there for each other in good times and in bad times. Do you guys know what a pocho is? Ask Carlos while we were sitting on the stairs in front of my house. No, Sergio and I answered jointly. A pocho is a Mexican born here in the United States, who is neither a Mexican nor an American. Like us, he explained.

Carlos and Sergio wore those white T-shirts without sleeves, baggy gray khaki pants and shiny black Stacey Adams dress shoes that always look too big for their feet. Their accessories generally consisted of a bandana either neatly folded in their back pocket or worn around their head covering most of their forehead and a chain that hung from their belt loop. Is it a bad thing to be a pocho? I asked. No, but in case you haven't noticed, they don't seem to like us here in the U.S. or in Mexico. They will pick on us here or there. That's why we have to stick together.

If we don't, we'll be easy targets and they'll get us. Who will get us? the gringoes and the Mexicans that have come straight from Mexico. As I said, they don't like us. When we go to Mexico, they tell us that we're too Americanized. Meanwhile, the gringos call us dirty Mexicans. Either way, we can't win. It's like we have no roots and don't seem to belong in either place.

I'm telling you, that's why we have to stick together. Fast forward a little bit. Things around my neighborhood were never easy. Gangs were everywhere. And they congregated on a daily basis hoping to define their territory. Drugs like marijuana were commonly used and sold in our barrio. Drive-by shootings occurred to a lesser extent, but nonetheless kept the neighborhood on edge. Families were dysfunctional, divided, and grew apart due to inattentive parents suffering from alcoholism or other various addictions.

The children from these broken homes were quickly recruited to join gangs, so year after year the membership of these groups multiplied. I admit that it was difficult to escape that environment, although I managed to steer clean. of such activities I had to somewhat assimilate in order to survive. Soon my appearance and attitude begin to change. As I spent more time with Carlos Alberto and Sergio, I became tougher and tougher. Or so I thought. I began wearing baggy pants, oversized flannel shirts, and shoes that were one size too big. I walked down the streets with an attitude while I was emulating Alberto's gestures.

My objective was to conceal the true Jose while trying to look like the redoneal. rest of my peers. I did not want to be labeled a schoolboy or bookworm so that I could avoid being harassed. However, when I was in class and with my family, I was my true self. I was playful, studious, and responsible. But when I was on the streets, I was one of the homeboys, as we pochos would call ourselves. The price of assimilation was steep. Soon I started to deny I knew how to speak Spanish and I began paying less attention to my Mexican roots. So there's some alternative paths besides the one that you were trying to go down. That's right. That's right. You know, these three friends of mine that... And what age group, what age are you at this point?

This is a junior high. So we're talking like 12, 13? 12, 13, 14. Yeah. Yeah. And it's at that point where you kind of, you know, there's there's some points in your life that. marks you that says, hey, you know, I've got to change the way things are in the direction I'm heading. Because I was doing that with my friends because you had to do that in the neighborhood. But then you went back to school. You went back home and you tried to clean yourself up so that your parents don't see like you're turning into a thug, right?

Kind of thing. And then you start thinking about, okay, I'm doing this more and more and more. Am I going in too deep kind of thing? and you try to extract yourself from it. And you see my buddies, you know, they went into it. And, you know, they went into it feet first and didn't try to come back. They, you know, they embraced it and got deeper and deeper. Then started using drugs.

I didn't use drugs. Then they started dealing with drugs. And, you know, when I started seeing all these things of how it was changing them, because they were a good two, three months ahead of me in the process of transformation, if you will. And I saw where they were heading. I kind of saw that roadmap. And I said, man, I don't want to be like them. And little by little, I just started pulling away, hanging out less and less with him. And to the point that when I got into high school, you know, well, these guys made the transition to high school probably one semester,

and then they just stopped going. And I kept going through high school, of course. And so So they were still my homeboys. They were still in the neighborhood. And in a sense, it was great that they were still around because, you know, that was kind of like the protection that I had in the neighborhood because they knew I was, you know, everybody else knew I was associated with them. And so no one dared mess with me because then they had to respond to these guys. And these guys were very good and, you know, they respect the decision I made. And it's not like they harassed me and say, oh, no, we're going to get you now because you left,

they actually said, no, you go do it. That's pretty awesome for them to be able to say that. Because a lot of times what you find with kids is they don't want anyone to get ahead. They don't want anyone to go further. They'd rather just drag them back down. And I see that in every, actually I see that not just with kids. I see that with humans, human beings.

There's a lot of human beings that when somebody makes a move, to try and elevate and try and go further and try and do more, people discourage them instead of encouraging them. Yeah, it's the crabs in the bucket cinder. One starts coming out, hey, come on down here, and you get pulled back down. So that's a real testament to those guys that they actually, instead of trying to drag you back down, they tried to lift you up and help you get out of there.

Was there anything that happened that you saw, How did you recognize that the path that they were going down was not the right path? Because, you know, you write it about it in here. Here are these guys, you know, when you're 13, 14 years old, what do you want? Well, you want money. You want girls. You know, you want a cool car. You want to be popular.

And here are these guys. Well, guess what? They had money. They had, you know. They had girls. They had girls. So they kind of had the stuff that a young, 14, 15-year-old kid wants. how did you realize that the path that they were going down was the wrong path?

Very easy. We went cruising one day. We would cruise around Stribly Park, and then we got shot at. That wakes you up. I say, I don't want to be a statistic. You know, we got shot at because these guys are dealing, and it must have been dealing in the wrong area, and they got shot at, and I was in there, you know, innocent bystander,

yet, but I was there, and they were caring, you know, and I said, man, I don't want to do this. This is not how I want to end up. And you were able to see that, luckily. Yeah. You know, you got another story in here that's an interesting story. It's just a good life lesson. You found a wallet with money in it. Tell us that story real quick.

Yeah, yeah. We found a, I found a wallet and, I forget how much money. It had a significant, had like about $6, $700 in it, cash. Dang. And, but it had a, it had a, you know, an ID and everything. And I had an address and everything. And I remember I found it. I went home to my dad, you know, and I said,

Dad, I found this wallet. They said, what's in it? I said, there's about $600 bucks in. My dad looks at it first and, you know, I can see the temptation he had. just as I did. And I think more than anything, he just wanted to teach me a lesson and said, you know, if there's an owner here, we ought to try and reach out for him and try and do it.

And unfortunately, he lived like in Oakland or somewhere who was visiting relatives. So we waited like about a week or two when we had a weekend and then we drove to Oakland and we found the address and I gave it to the guy. The guy, it was an older man, you know, probably in the 60s, and said something about, he had sold something, a car or something, I forget what he did, and said he had lost the whole wall, and he thought he would never see it. He couldn't believe it.

And, you know, he gave me a $20 reward or something like that. And I was happy. I said, hey, I did something good, and I got 20 bucks out of it. And I think he gave my dad another 20 for the gas and stuff. Yeah. But, yeah. But teaching that lesson of doing the right thing, doing the right thing, even though it might sting your,

If you sting your finances a little bit, it's still the right thing to do. And that's what your dad was wanting you to know. And that was at the same age? That was kind of that same time frame, 14. No, that was a little younger. A little younger. I was probably about 11. Okay.

Still that kind of money, you know, as an 11-year-old. That's a lot of money. It's a lot of money today for me. $600. $600. $400. $14, I probably would have said, hey, you know, this is a good down payment for my car that I'm going to get next year or something.

But no, I was too young. Fast forward a little bit. I started my freshman year of high school at Franklin High School at East Stockton. At that time, Franklin was one of the toughest schools in Stockton with a delicate balance of Caucasian, Latino, and African American students. Fast forward, I found refuge in something I awkwardly called my best friend. Math. Yes, math made me smile. It was fun.

It remained my strongest subject as I maintained good grades throughout four. years in high school. You talk about a guy, Mr. Zendias? Sendejas, Sal Zendez. And he told you, you were kind of talking to him about, you know, your past and your history and your ancestors. And he said, I think you can find who you really are in the history of your ancestors' country. I know I did. Jose, don't ever be ashamed of your culture and its traditions. They are what make up your identity. You should be proud of who you are. Do you know why? No, I answered attentively. Because you belong to two countries and two cultures. And that's a wonderful thing.

Not everyone is as fortunate as you are. So that's a kind of a reversal on the pocho thing where they're telling you don't speak Spanish. Like people, like your friends, hey, we don't speak Spanish. You were hiding the fact that you spoke Spanish. Yes. Yes. And I'll tell you shortly after Sal Sanchez, my teacher said that, you know, I think I was in, a junior in high school.

And I'm not sure if you talk about the homecoming float, but it falls very good with this story. Was when I was a junior in high school, I started participating in student government. Senior, I became student body president, but

junior, I was barely starting. So I was part of the student council. And so I went to the meetings. And we were getting ready for a homecoming. And, of course, every class, the senior class, the junior class, the sophomore and freshman, have a float, right? And they have a homecoming float. And I remember ours, we wanted to build a float and everything. And they were saying, okay, but we need a flatbed and a truck.

Does anyone have a flatbed and truck? And no one had one, because my dad drove a flatbed and a truck, so I knew I had one. Right. But I wouldn't say anything because I knew my dad. My dad is not going to lend it to us in the sense of drop it off somewhere where we can work and use it. And then he'll go pick it up once we're done. He's not like that. He's the type that says, oh, yeah, you guys want to.

Sure, you can use it, but you guys come here so I can keep my eye on my truck and my flatbed. So you have to come here. And, of course, we lived in East Stockton, where's part of Stockton? and we lived in, at the time, it was a, that two-bedroom dilapidated rental that we still didn't own yet. And actually, we did own it by then. And so we owned it, but it was in the worst part of Stockton. And so I was embarrassed to have my classmates come to my house because I figured, you know, surely they live in better houses than this two-bedroom dilapidated piece of junk that we lived in, right?

but that was our home. And so I resisted. And we had meeting after meeting. And then it became clear that the very last meeting, they were going to cancel the junior entry for the homecoming floor because we didn't have a flatbed or a truck. I finally had to fess up. I said, you know, I have one.

And, oh, you do, great. I said, but there's a catch. And I said, what's that? We got to build a float in my house in our front yard there at the flatbeds there. My dad won't let take it anyone. Oh, don't worry. We'll go. what's the address?

So I gave him the address and, you know, and building the float, it's after class. They usually start on the Monday because the thing is on Friday. And so we start on Monday. And so people came. And I remember the first dad was kind of like embarrassed, but, you know, they all jumped on the truck.

They started working on it. Then all of a sudden my mom starts bringing in burritos, tacos, water fresca. My dad brings out the boom box and puts music. My brothers and sisters start helping out. And then the next day, word got out, hey, there's good food and music. Party. Party.

Exactly. So it got bigger. You know, by Thursday, it was like, you know, it was overflown. And it was great. And I remember a guy, a friend of mine comes to me and he looks at me. And he says, man, I'm so jealous of you. And I said, jealous of me. And this is a Caucasian guy, lived in the north side of Stockton, good place.

He had one of those, you know, what, Smokey and the Bandit cars? Oh, Trans Am. Trans Am. Oh, dang. Oh, dang. Yeah, he had, you know, he had barely started driving, and he got a new car. And he said he was jealous of me. And I said, I said, dude, look what you're driving.

And you're jealous of me? And he said, yeah. I said, you know, I, um, sure I have this. new car and I live in North Stockton. Says, but you know, my parents are divorced. I never see my dad. My mom's a nurse. She works long hours. I hardly see her. I always come home to an empty house.

And to think you come home to this, I said, this is what I want. And that's when I realize that, you know, bringing in both parts of my culture to identify who Jose is was the best thing to do. and that's when I stopped being embarrassed of my Mexican heritage. That's when I embraced it. And I said, you know, with lots of pride, yeah, I'm a Mexican-American. Because I'm able to get the best of both cultures to define who Jose is today. And so that's, you know, after hearing Mr. Sendejas's words, you know, I put it to use.

And I realized I had this conclusion that said, hey, it's not bad getting the best things of both cultures. Of course, there's people that get the worst things of both cultures, and that's real bad. You know, I thought that's my buddies down the street. But, you know, that's another thing. It's all on what you focus on, too, right? Exactly. You know, you focused on those positive aspects, you know, pursued that. Took your places.

Yeah. You talk about that you did end up being the, like you said, this. student body president, class president. That's pretty cool. You talk about the election in here and stuff like that. Fast forward a little bit. You say one day I heard a news brief on the radio that said, Costa Rican Franklin Chang Diaz, the first Latino American astronaut candidate at NASA,

makes his dream come true. The news commentator talked in depth about Dr. Chang, Diaz's struggles and triumphs in his quest to become an astronaut. Quote, Franklin Chang was born in 1950 in San Jose, Costa Rica. He was sent to the United States after finishing his secondary education with only $50 to his name and without knowing a single word of English. He recounted that all he had was a suitcase full of aspirations, end quote. So you had a little someone to relate to a little bit. You were looking at him that way.

Exactly. Well, I figured he was opening the road for others. I said, you know, once they selected the first Hispanic American astronaut, I said, well, then, you know, that always. you know, that opens the door up for me. And so, yeah, so he was someone that really kind of put fuel to my, added few to my fire of wanting to become an astronaut because now I said, now I know it's possible because he's living proof. And it resonated so much because, you know, he had brown skin like I have.

He spoke with an accent like I did. And he came from very humble beginnings just like I did. I said, well, if he can do it, why can I? And so it empowered me. You got into a bunch of different universities, get done with high school, fast forward a little bit. You end up going to the University of the Pacific, which is up in Stockton, had a great engineering program. And it would allow you to be at home. Yeah, I saved on room and boy.

And then I was able to work in the fall at the canary during the night shift. I remember, you know, the first two months of school was always tough because it was August, September, and then as you get more seniority, you go into October, November, and the canaries, and then you get laid off. But I remember, you know, it's tough because you go to work at, and the canary was only a block away, so I would walk to the canary from my house. And I would walk in this big yellow raincoat because I worked in cleanup from 10 at night to 6 in the morning. And then I will get home, shower, eat something, and then my classes started at 8 o'clock at EOP, finished till about 2, 3, and then did some homework, and then fell asleep about 7 and about

9.30, get back up and go back to work. On the grind. On the grind. The literal grind. But, you know, it was only a short period. It's like three months kind of thing. On average it was about three months. But, you know, that helped me.

The canary paid pretty well compared to fieldwork. So they paid very well. So that along with the fact that I didn't have to pay room and board allowed me to go to Pacific and, you know, pay the tuition, my part of the tuition, because I got Cal Grant and Pell Grant and those type of assistance to get to help pay for the tuition. I got to cover this one section because we talked about a little bit. You talk about your friends here. Years later after drifting apart, I would find out that he did. This is Carlos. He did indeed not continue his education.

He ended up doing low skilled work and low paying jobs. Drugs robbed his brother Alberto of his future. They found Alberto's lifeless body in his apartment and autopsy revealed that he died of a drug overdose, probably the result of heroin or cocaine use. As for my neighbor, Sergio, he too did not have an opportunity to make something of himself. One day, years later, as I was getting an award for one of my projects, I received a call from my mother who told me that the neighbors stumbled upon his business. body which was hanging from a tree in the park. To my knowledge, no arrest were made in connection with his death. It remains unclear as to whether it was a suicide or a homicide. I truly believe my friends were not the individuals they appeared to be. They were just three little boys who needed

role models in their lives to steer them in the right direction. If someone would have made them realize the importance of going to school or infused them with self-confidence, their destinies would have been very different. When I received word of their deaths, I felt impotent, wondering perhaps if I could have done something to help them make the right decisions. You know, when you were talking earlier about Mrs. Young or Miss Young, and it's not just educators, you know, that have the opportunity to have a huge impact on people's lives. You know, anybody, if you're listening to this right now, you can help so many people that you reach out, talk to them, try and show them the right direction.

I mean, it's, you don't have to be in a position of a thought. to be able to help people and steer them in the right direction. And it's, you know, and that was the great differentiator between them and I. You look at my parents, they were involved. You know, they didn't know. I mean, sure, they didn't go to PTA meetings and none of that, but they were involved with, you know, keeping an eye on us, making sure we wouldn't stray and making sure we were doing well in school.

Whereas with my friends, you know, one of them, the one of them, the one that lives across the street, he, you know, his father was never there. He would only come, he would come home like a day, two days before the first. Why? Because that was when the welfare check arrived. And he was sweet talk, his wife, you know, take like 90% of the money, disappear for the rest of the month, and then give him 10% to fend for the rest of the month for the whole family, which was terrible. And then on the other side, the two brothers, both the mother and father were alcoholics.

And so it was a dysfunctional family on both sides there that didn't help them. And so when you become successful and then you hear what happens to your buddies, you can't, you know, feel, you know, you can't help it, but to feel bad because you say, is there anything I could have done to have helped them along the way so they wouldn't have ended up the way they have, you know, ended up in, you know, one OD, another one still selling drugs on the street, and the other one, apparent suicide. And you say, you know, you do feel guilty because you say, you know, maybe I could have done something. But, you know, who knows? You know, speaking of people, having them, tell us a little bit about Senora Bello.

Oh, Senora Bello. Bello, yeah. She was a tough cookie. She started off in, actually in junior high. And then when we went to high school, she actually transferred to the high school. So we got a double dose of her, which I don't know if it was good or bad. But the first dose I got of her was in junior high. And she was the one that basically, remember I told you, I started to forget my Spanish and everything.

she's the one that sort of turned that around and said, no, you will learn Spanish and you will learn it in a correct manner. And all that stuff. As a matter of fact, I went to Guadalajara. She was a Spanish teacher, so she set up a trip to Mexico, and we went to a blind school and got boarded there and would spend like two weeks during Easter in Mexico. And so, Shem, she was tough as nails. You know, she was a tough cookie, tough grader. Everything didn't cut you any slat. And then in high school, she became biology teacher.

So then I went to Mexico, Baja, California, twice with her, again on Easter, with the biology kids. And we would do plant taxonomy and marine biology in Baja. And, you know, we would, like, make corners of different quadrants, and we would have to classify every plant in that quadrant. So you get a good idea of what kind of vegetation existed in the Baja Desert kind of thing. And then we were always sleeping under a tent and stuff like that. So it was, it was interesting times there. And, again, she was very, very tough on us.

But, you know, that's what prepared me for college, man, Because without her toughness, I think I wouldn't have had the mental toughness to get through physics and chemistry and calculus and all those engineering courses. Yeah, you ran into her as you were starting university. And one of the things she told you, and this is going back to the book, she said, you're all grown up now, Jose. You're about to turn 18 and embark on your college career. You know, I was once young in college just like you. I know the challenges you're going to face. The only thing I ask of you is not to forget who you are.

where you come from. Don't allow anything or anyone to deter you from your schoolwork. She was staying on you. Yeah, yeah. She was a second mother. She was exactly like a second mother. And so she kept an eye on this. You got a cool story in here.

I got to read this one because I enjoyed it. You're checking into one of these classes. Good morning class. I'm Professor Andreas Rodriguez. I will be teaching you physics. Are there any questions? Dr. Rodriguez was very short, man, with Silvery White. who always seemed to have an unlit cigar used more like a pacifier in his mouth for his hand.

He talked with a very heavy accent because of the cigar. I guess he was of Cuban descent. Later I would find out my assumptions to be correct. Will a syllabus be handed out? Asked a female classmate very hesitantly? Syllabus, there's no need for one. The curriculum of this class is going to be something none of you have ever seen before. It's not going to make any sense without me personally guiding you throughout the semester.

Let's begin, shall we? I shivered with goosebumps. when I heard him speak and what I thought was an unfriendly tone. Looking around the classroom and seeing all the new faces once again brought me back the same feelings I had when I was in elementary school when I was trying to figure out what the writing on the chalkboard meant. The only difference now was that the board was plastered with symbols and numbers, not words in a foreign language. I did not know. Just 10 minutes into his lecture, I was beginning to think that there was no way I would ever pass this class. The chalkboard was filling up with one physics formula after another.

I might as well have been staring at Egyptian hieroglyphlyphics. Professor Rodriguez was talking and writing so quickly that I could barely keep up. I just wrote down everything he wrote down as fast as I could without understanding any of it. Any questions? He asked. No one raised a hand. I took a deep breath and as I exhaled, I dared to raise my hand. Professor Rodriguez, I really don't understand anything you just wrote on the board, I told him.

Some of my classmates began to laugh, making me feel like an idiot for raising my hands. Professor Rodriguez looked at me, smiled, and asked, what's your name? Jose, I responded. Well, Jose, the reason why you don't understand anything that I wrote is because it's nonsense. It's nonsense. It's a joke. And if you all look closely, you will see that this was a lesson in disguise. In disguise.

Everyone became silent, embarrassed by both their own ignorance and their fear of not speaking up. They all seemed to wish they had found themselves asking for clarification. That's a good trick. You referred back to someone else here, Dr. Jones, who said, don't ever be left with any doubts or questions. Better to be ignorant for a moment than for life. If you don't understand something, simply ask. That's correct.

Good lesson learned right there. Well, you know, I figured, you know, and Dr. Jones was the director of a program there at UOP, University Pacific, the community involvement program, which gave scholarships to kids from the local area to attend the university, which is a private university. And, you know, they paid up to like 80% of your tuition. So I remember, you know, we had like a two-week orientation before school started. And one of the things, this was an African-American tall gentleman, Dr. Jones. And he would always call us, you know, his kids, you know, from the program.

But he would always say, hey, you need to sit in the front of the classroom. class. Don't sit in the back. Why get it filtered? Sit in the front. Ask questions. Always do. And it says, and then he would say, you know, Jose, we're giving you a scholarship, right? I said, yeah. I said, but how much are you paying a year? I said, I still have to come up with about $3,000. He says, okay, get your money's worth. And so that's exactly what I thought of when Dr. Rodriguez was doing all this stuff and I'll sit there in front and writing everything. I don't understand none of this crap. Don't understand it.

And I said, man, I'm paying three grand. I said, I want my money's worth. So I asked and I said, I don't understand this. And that's when he said, good, I'm glad you don't because you shouldn't. I said, I just want to teach you guys the lessons that because we're going to go through a tough course here. If you guys have any questions, you ask them. So don't assume because it's only going to get worse, he says. It's going to get worse.

If you let it pile on, you need to understand the basics. So ask questions. Then he started with his lesson. Yeah. I didn't go to college until I was older than Navy. He sent me to college when I was 28 years old. And I would sit right in the front row. And if a professor talked about something that I didn't understand, I would immediately raise my hand.

I don't understand that because I was a grown man. You know, I didn't care what the other kids thought. I just wanted to make sure I understood what they were putting out. But that's something I learned in the SEAL teams. If you're starting to learn a tactic or a technique and you're not getting it and you try and pretend like you get it, it's going to catch you and it's going to bite you. It's going to bite you. It's going to bite you.

That same thing being an astronaut is that you can't pretend. You got to understand because you know what? This little button, it could save you or can kill you. Fast forward a little bit. You end up with a job opportunity. This was not only a job. It was an opportunity. Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory is a premier research facility dedicated to national defense and is funded through the Department of Energy.

It was located just 40 miles from my home, allowing me to commute to work while I was making some money too. I could not stop thinking of how I would feel on the first day walking through those doors. So you had this opportunity to get this job at a lab. That's a huge opportunity. Yes, yes. It was premier national laboratory, R&D and defense applications. So, and what year did you do that? Was that, did you start interning there?

Yes, I started interning in 83 and again in 84. And then I got offered a job in 85 career, but I went to my master's degree. And then I got hired in 87 full time. Fast forward a little bit in May of 1985. At the age of 22, I found myself dressed in a black and orange graduation gown with my standard issued black cap ready for college graduation. I could hear my mother's applause as I walked across the stage to receive my diploma because it was the loudest with my degree in hand I stopped to show her what I had written on top of my cap before exiting the stage. It read, Ola, Mama. It was a symbol of my gratitude for everything she had done for me for my entire life. I remember clearly how everyone turned to look at her as she rose from her seat and how her crystalline eyes, which were holding back tears, met mine as she blew me a kiss. Big day. Yeah, very big.

You say I wasted no time in starting my career at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in Livermore, California. This is where you decide, well, got to go through the mindset here. I came to the conclusion that for me to flourish and successfully compete in this environment, I needed to obtain a postgraduate degree. This realization coupled with the fact that I could not stop thinking about how I could get into the NASA astronaut program led me to my next big decision. in life to attend graduate school. After all, Dr. Franklin Chang Diaz had a doctorate degree

and NASA chose him to go into space. So you're checking these boxes. End up going to the University of California at Santa Barbara. And this was the first time you got to go to school where all you had to do was go to school. Exactly. And then the first time away from home too. Okay. And so, but yes,

it was the first time I had a full right scholarship, even paid for my room and board. And my only job was to go to school. Because every other time when I was in undergraduates, I was in the canary working in restaurants, a work study, tutoring, doing everything. I was always busy. And here, the only thing I had to do was go to school. And it was so easy.

Luxury. It was luxury. It was so easy because I said, what else do? I always felt when I was there felt so guilty because I said, what else do I need to do? I said, no, you're all caught up. That's luxury. I had that kind of luxury, too. So I went to college.

Like I said, the Navy sent me to college. But the Navy, for some reason, it was an old program. I got commissioned as an officer before I went to college. So then I did two years at a SEAL team. Then they sent me to college. So I was an officer. I didn't have, like Johnny Kim, who you know, Johnny Kim, when he went to college, he had to do ROTC.

And we went to the same college, University of Navy, but he had to go to ROTC and put on his uniform and do whatever the Navy requirements were. I was just, just go to college. That's the exact same as you, just getting a full pay. I was getting a paycheck. Actually, my deal was even better than yours, I think, because I was getting a full maybe paycheck. Oh, yeah, yours was better. I was the highest paid college freshman of all time.

It was almost a bit. And getting your tuition paid, right? Yeah, and my tuition was fully paid. Yeah, it was ridiculous. That's great. But for you, going from where you, all your career, you were working at the cannery from 10 o'clock at night until 6 in the morning, and now you're just there just focused on school. Exactly. Luxury.

Exactly. It was. Awesome. You were kind of making a transition to another level. Meanwhile, this happens. Going back to the book, Couple Murdered in Stockton. Yeah.

News article. The article confirmed that the victims were family members from my father's side. Dumbfounded, I immediately called my parents to inform them of the tragedy, but they already knew they were distraught, understandably so. I started thinking my parents live in a neighborhood similar to the one where my Tio and Dia were just murdered.

How could I allow my own parents to continue living in such a place? So you start feeling like you've got to do something about your parents. Now this is where you start getting psychological back on your parents. That's right. Because you knew you could just say, hey, I want to move you in with me. Well, they're going to be resistant. They're going to be resistant because they're used to the old neighborhood, oh, used to the corner supermarket and those type of stuff.

And I knew there was going to be resistance. Right. But I wanted to get him out of that. neighborhood because I said, you know, same thing that happened to my uncles. Right. Could happen to them. Yep. And of course, they were resistant, so go ahead.

Well, you go ahead. What did you do? You played a little psychological warfare on them. Yeah. Well, you know, I had just bought a house myself because I was working at Livermore. So I bought my first three-bedroom two-bath house in North Stockton, nice area. And I was living by myself, of course. And somehow I wanted to get them to come live with me.

And of course They resisted They said no me This is our home This is where we belong I said yeah but look what happened to Uncle and that And said no that's not going to happen to us

And finally I said This is what I'm going to do I said I'm going to tell mom that I really need Help With the house cleaning And And And

And And And And Also I'm going to go to the pharmacy, they'll buy me a few condoms, and kind of just kind of hide them where she could find them.

And I know she was going to clean and she's going to find them. She's probably not going to say anything to me about them, but I know she's going to have a conversation with dad. And the conversation, I figured, I kind of figured, I said, she's going to say, hey, we have to move over there and make sure our kid doesn't make a mistake. Look what I found. This and that.

And there's a good Catholic, you know, parents old-fashioned. So it worked. It worked to the tea. It worked. The next thing I know is they're packing their stuff and they're moving over. So, yes, I did use a little bit of psychology to get them over there. And we've never talked about it since then. She hasn't mentioned it.

I've never mentioned it. It just worked. It just worked. It just worked. Fast forward a little bit In 1991 You lost your Your grandfather

Yes And that was I mean your family was close Even though you Even though you spent less and less time in Mexico As you got older You still I mean this was like a huge

This is a huge impact for you A huge loss Yes because I grew up As a kid I would spend three months over there In their house With them Growing up with him

You know, my parents were there. My siblings were there. Cousins would come over, but my grandfather and grandmother were there. And so, you know, they were like the matriac and patriarch of the family kind of thing. And so it was a big loss when we lost them. Yeah, because then, well, your abuela, then shortly thereafter, you say this, God must not have wanted to experience such grief for two long months after my grandfather's death. Her Alzheimer's rapidly accelerated and robbed her of her last memory.

It was not long before she reunited with her soulmate. That's great. And then you lost your mother's mother as well. Right. And all this happened in a pretty short period of time. Sure. With a period of about three years, I lost all three of them. So my grandfather on my mother's side, he passed the way of tuberculosis when I was about two or three years.

So he got to know me. I don't remember him, but he got to know who I was. But yeah, in the short span of those about three years, we lost all three grandparents. Now, as this is happening, you're still working at this lab. and while that's going on, December 8th, 1991, the Soviet Union falls apart. Which has effects, I mean, global effects, obviously. This was the superpower.

This was the fall of communism. And you say this in the book, it was not long after the fall of the Soviet Union that the expensive Star Wars defense programs, such as our own X-ray laser program, came up on the Congressional Budgets, stomping block. Yes.

So you were working, you were working on things that were used for defense? Yes. The project I had work, when I got hired as a career employee, because I had worked at the lab already, but when I got hired as a career employee, they gave me a choice of about three projects. They had a life extension program where they extended the life of nuclear warheads. And so you worked on how to evaluate them and certify them so they can stay longer on the shelf. And we call them good in good operating order.

That was one project. The other one was working in the National Ignition Facility, NIF, where it's nuclear fusion, 192 x-ray beams, creating nuclear fusion to create energy, which was pretty interesting. But the third one was developing an x-ray laser. This is a nuclear-pumped x-ray laser where you have a nuclear event and you have a beam of focus x-rays that would be deployed up in space that would be pointed to any oncoming Soviet missiles in the event of a first strike by the Russians. When those missiles go exothermic up in space, you detonate this device, you have high-energy x-ray particles that take out the electronics package

and then they float off harmlessly. So out of all these three projects, that's the one that interests me because we had to put it up in space. So I figured, you know, I've got to learn how to put hardware up in space. I think NASA would be interested in this. Not to mention working on a nuclear x-ray laser beam. Exactly, exactly. And we would do our testing in Nevada test site. this was when underground nuclear testing was allowed.

And, you know, whenever they did any nuclear event, you know, the labs, they would give you real estate. They would have about 30 experiments in a nuclear event. So they had a whole team that just dedicated to preparing for a nuclear event. And then they say, okay, this is your real estate. And you would go down there and put your package. In our case, it's the X-ray itself right next to the bomb. and then a bunch of diagnostics, fiber optics, so that when it happens, we're able to measure the flux, how strong those x-rays are and how, you know, the density of it and all that,

so we can basically measure its performance. And that's what we were doing. And so to me, it was great. It was, and, you know, they would throw money at it. So money was never an issue in terms of, I need this, I need that. And we would, so it was fun times until the Soviet Union collapsed. justification for grandiose projects, and justifiably so, went away, and so that's why they canceled it. Yeah, you know, you described this well. When you're talking about how much money you were able to utilize,

you say, I credit the advances in Defense Shield projects, such as our own X-ray laser as leading to the downfall of the former Soviet Union. In short, Reagan's strategy, that's Ronald Reagan, Reagan's strategy worked. My own conclusion leads me to believe that an effort to keep up with the Joneses,

the Soviet Union dedicated to both, of its budget to similar programs while paying less attention to their economy and internal infrastructure. As a result, the USSR created the perfect social and economic storm that led to unrest and its eventual downfall. That's great. Fast forward a little bit. One question started to linger in my mind was, how could we utilize to our advantage the insight gathered from the work on the x-ray laser? My boss and mentor, Clint Logan, could not have agreed more. Clint decided that mammography, was the best way to match both our skills and the tools we had developed.

That's a big leap. We also had personal motives for improving mammography. The wife of our leader in the X-ray laser program had been diagnosed with breast cancer. And I had just lost a young friend to the disease. On many occasions, I served as an interpreter for my 28-year-old friend and her husband as she underwent treatment for her cancer. I was astonished to learn that eventually one in eight women in the United States acquires this whole. horrible disease. So you guys figured out that some of the technology that you had used or you had invented

could actually be used in a positive way for helping detect breast cancer. That's correct. The area I was in charge of for the x-ray laser was evaluating the man-made materials called aerogels that were used as pads for the x-ray laser. and the way I evaluated them was I would x-ray them and create images to see how homogeneous this man-made material was so that you could match it because you had to put about eight of these type of bricks on both sides and you got to match the interfaces else they lose energy as it transfers from one interface to the other. And the way I did it was I did x-ray imaging, but then I also started

to fool around with how x-rays interact with matter. And I started writing some code called Monty Carlo 3D code analysis that models how the x-rays react with matter. Because some x-rays go through, some get completely absorbed, and some collide with material and create lower energy x-rays. And that's scatter, which is noise in the image. And so I modeled all that. And when the project got canceled, this was like a neat little tool.

And so Clint, my boss and I felt like we had an answer, but we didn't know what the question was. And then all of a sudden we got sensitized to breast cancer. And we said, I wonder if we can redesign the mammography machines that create these images. because they use film and they developed a film and then the doctors look at it at a light table. Well, we created an electronic detector and we designed the x-ray tube to be more optimal for human tissue diagnosis. And we were able to create what's called the first full-filled digital mammography system for earlier detection of cancer. earlier because we demonstrated that our images had much more information content than the film screen images. And then we opened up a whole new area of study called computer-aided diagnosis where we were able to

basically point out possible early precursors to breast cancer, which are microcalcifications, stellate and circumscribed lesions, asymmetric glandular distortion, all those type of things that we'll catch the eye of a radiologist and say, hey, maybe we should look here. And so we put it in a smart expert system so that you not only acquire the images, but then you would put it in a super sensitive mode and then outline the areas where the radiologists should focus on and check out and see if it's worth going in for a biopsy or doing something else to the patient. So we were pretty proud. I always tell people, you know, when they ask me, what's your proudest,

professional moment. A lot of people expect me to say, well, you know, I flew on space shuttle discovery and went up into space, international space station and all that kind of stuff. I was a flight engineer. But that's not it. It's the fact that, you know, this device that we created at Lawrence Livermore Lab, which was a nuclear defense lab, yet we repurposed that technology for something, you know, that could work here for the civilians, was developing a, an x-ray mammography system that detects cancer at earlier stages. Everybody knows that if you detect cancer at an earlier stage, the greater probability of the patient to be saved occurs.

And so I'm convinced that this device has saved hundreds of thousands, if not millions of lives since its inception back in 97, 98. Yeah, that's awesome. We could just end there, I guess, right? We could just end there. but the story goes on a little bit. It does. In early 1992, when I was 29 years old,

I called the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, NASA, to ask about the requirements to become an astronaut. I was hoping to make myself, make what was a far-fetched dream for many, a reality for myself. Here were the requirements. Career in a technical field or medicine, check, five years experience, check, highly desirable, graduate degree, check.

Nothing prevented me from applying since I met all their basic requirements. Hence, I decided to contact NASA. Much to my surprise, the main operator put me in contact with Astronaut Selection Office. As part of the first step in the application process, the Aspernet Selection Office sent me a 12-page application. I promptly filled it out and mailed it back to NASA. Fast forward a little bit. I finally received a letter in the mail four months after having received the acknowledgement of my application. It read, thank you for your interest in NASA.

At the moment, there are many qualified applicants. applying for astronaut positions with NASA. Unfortunately, we cannot invite you to an interview for this selection cycle. We encourage you to continue applying for future selection cycles. So, denied. The first of many. You got denied. I've a chunk here.

I got to bring Adela into the story. Yes, my wife. And you go through a really cool story about, how you met, how you got together. It's in the book. It's great. Fast forward a little bit past that. It's Adela and I dated for more than two years before he decided to get married. We were not in any rush to tie the knot, even though we knew we were meant to be together.

Six months after we got engaged, we exchanged vows in a traditional Catholic ceremony in Lodi, California at St. Anne's Catholic Church. On the way to pick up Adela, the limousine got lost in constant her to arrive 45 minutes late to the wedding. Talk about a nervous groom. I was starting to fear she'd changed her mind. True story. You were sweating it, huh? I was sweating bullets. Maybe she's bailing on you.

Exactly. Fast forward a little bit. Another year passed. So once again, I filled out the 12-page application. It waited for an answer. Then after four months of waiting to hear whether or not I had been accepted, I received another rejection letter with the words to the effective, don't call us, we'll call you.

This process of applying and being rejected repeated itself. every year while I continue to working at the laboratory. Whenever I received a rejection letter from NASA, I would remind myself that there is more than just one star and one goal in life. I had no other choice but to move forward with my life. Adelaida's positive influence helped me develop a healthy balance between work and family. Thus, I could safely avoid being consumed with the notion of trying to become an astronaut. She helped me cope with NASA's rejections while encouraging me to sustain my dream.

I still wanted to become an astronaut, but I also wanted to live in a enjoy my life on my way to becoming one. A little over a year and a half into our marriage, Adela announced that she was pregnant with our first child. We experienced our first pregnancy with all the excitement of first time parents and all the nerves too. The reason I wanted to highlight that part, obviously having a baby, that's awesome. But also, you're going to pursue this dream.

You're getting rejected from this dream. But you know, you use this term here that there's more than one star and more than one goal in life. So even though you had this goal of becoming an astronaut, you couldn't make that the be all end all. I couldn't let it consume me. I used it as a motivator, as a driving force, but I didn't want it to consume my life. You know, I wanted to enjoy life. And I wanted to say, look, it's okay if you don't reach your goal. Because as long as you give it your best, you know, it's like my father would always say, say, hey, you know, shoot for the stars. You know, but, you know, the worst that can happen is you're going to be on top of the world, you know.

And so that's that's that's what I was doing. I said, you know, the fact that I was driven to become an astronaut and was sort of navigating my career in sort of way, you know, had, it had my career. and an upward trajectory. So it wasn't like they were competing priorities. Yeah, well, it's like your son. They compliment him. It's like your son. He wants to be an astronaut, great.

Even if he doesn't get it, he's got his dang PhD in a couple master's degree. He's got all these doors open to. Exactly, exactly. But that's an important thing for people to remember. Like, you know, it's great to have that big goal. But even if you don't make that goal, look at where you got to. Exactly. And sometimes you are the one that changes that end all goal.

It's not the fact that you can't get there. Sometimes the fact that you prepare yourself a certain way opens up the doors to other opportunities that you weren't even aware of. But all of a sudden, hey, I can do this now. Go ahead and do it. If that's what you want to do, go ahead and do it. It's okay to change midway as long as you're going up. Fast forward a little bit during Adela's pregnancy with our second child. I was traveling extensively to the former Soviet Union for Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in the U.S. Department of Energy.

As luck would have it, I would found out while I was still in Siberia that Adela had gone into labor and given birth to our baby girl. That's right. I'll fast forward a little bit. During one of my trips to Russia, I came to an important conclusion. Nothing in life happens or is accomplished purely by chance. Goals and dreams are realized through planning, perseverance, and hard work. As I was leaning my head against the window of the state-owned car that was taking us to our hotel, I thought of how my childhood dream had evolved with my graduation from college and my work

at one of the most prestigious laboratories in the United States and the world. It was because I worked tirelessly that I could see my transformative effect that my dream had on shaping each outcome in my life. I also focused on bettering my physical strength and health because astronauts are susceptible to rigorous training and medical exams before blasting off into space. I ran a marathon almost every year I applied to NASA with the exception of the year that I was finally selected to become a member of the astronaut class. Little did I know at the time I began this routine that it would mean I would end up running 11 marathons. Additionally, I took up flying lessons at the Tracy Municipal Airport and obtained my SCUBA certification through the laboratory's scuba diving club.

These were skills I suspected and later confirmed were indispensable to have for an astronaut. I learned many things during the time I spent enhancing my skill sets, but above all, I learned that patience really is a virtue. It is simply the best tool to have in one's toolbox when learning something new. So you're doing everything you can, learning to fly, learning a scooby dive, getting in awesome shape, running marathons. Yeah, and I have to, you know, I got to give more credit to my wife, Adelita, because I remember, you know, once the, I got rejected the sixth time and I had gotten a rejection letter

and I even scrunched it up and kind of I was in the bathroom shaving when I got it and opened it and I threw in the garbage can and I missed the can and fell on the floor and you know I was so pissed off. Rage. I didn't pick it up. I didn't even pick it up

I said a heck with it, you know. And my wife I guess was cleaning up that day and she saw the piece of paper. Had it landed in the garbage can, she wouldn't have picked it up and opened and said, but it was on the floor, so she's, oh, what's this? And she sees that it's another rejection letter, and she sees it scrunched up.

So she's putting two in two. She's a pretty bright girl, so she knows I'm giving up. And so she goes and she shows me the letter. She says, what's this? I said, you know, they keep saying that over 12,000 people apply for only 10, 12 positions. And man, they've rejected me. This is six times they rejected me.

I said, I think I'm going to give up. I said, enough's enough. I said, look, I got my graduate degree. I'm working at the lab and all that. And she says, so you're going to settle for that. Is that what you're going to settle for? She got you. She not only said that, but then she said, you're going to settle for that and you're a quitter.

That's what got me. And she said, I'm a quitter. I said, no, I'm not a quitter. I said, look, you're giving up. And she looked at me and she says, you know, you better think about this because I know you. She says, if you give up, you're always going to wonder what if. What if I had put in that seventh, eighth or ninth application? And that's going to gnaw you from the inside and you're going to grow to be a bitter old man.

and I don't want to be married to a bitter old man. So you better think about this. And that's when she got me thinking. I said, you know, she's right. And so what I did, what I did was that's when I started doing the things that you just mentioned there. What I did was I sat down and I asked myself a fundamental question. I said, what do these guys have that are getting selected that I don't have? And that's when I noticed that, well, they have the same education.

They're about the same age, similar experience. But then I took a deeper dive. And that's when I found out that they were all pilots. So that's when I invested in my sauce. I'm going to become a pilot. And then another year I found out that they were all scuba diver rated. So, man, I would drive from Stockton to Monterey, California every weekend. I got basic, I got advanced, I got scuba rescue, master certified.

I want to make sure that's a new I knew how to scuba dive. So I got those under my belt. And then the opportunity came full circle. You said I was in Siberia. The opportunity came full circle to work with the Russians. Remember, before I was working against the Russians, protect us against the Russians. Now that the Soviet Union broke up, they were asking for help to take control of their nuclear stockpile, the newly formed Russian Federation.

And no one wanted to go and help the Russians from the labs because it was tough duty. You know, you had to travel five, six times a year, three weeks at a time. To Siberia. To Siberia of all places. You know, you think you take that 13-hour trip to Moscow from New York. This is after taking a five-hour trip from San Francisco to New York. Then you take that 13-hour to Moscow. You think you're there.

you still got another six and a half hour flight into Siberia. Talk about being in the middle of nowhere. And no one wanted to do it, but man, I raised my hand. I told my boss put me in, coach, I'll go. I said, but there's only one condition I put. He said, what's that? He said, well, I wanted one-on-one Russian language instructor because I want to learn Russian.

because if I'm going to be doing this for a long time, I think I should know the language. He said, yeah, we got a continuing education project. Knock yourself out. So I did that. And I didn't do it because I wanted to get to know Siberia in the middle of winter, but I did it because I had read in the newspaper that the U.S. and Russia were going to start working in the space program together.

And so I kind of put two and two together, and I said, hey, we're going to be working with the Russians up in space. So this is my differentiator. what's going to differentiate me from the 10,000 other applicants, 12,000 other applicants, is that how many are going to be able to say they go to Russia, they work with the Russians, they, yeah, pan am I by Ruski-Jazik, you know, those type of things. And so that's what when finally things got going. And all thanks to Adelita's prodding of me and, you know, and getting to my pride and saying,

hey, don't be a quitter kind of thing. Meanwhile, not only is she working psychological warfare on you, she's a little more after, this is back to the book, a little more, after our second child, Karina, joined our family, my wife and I found out we'd be once again bring a life into the world. And then halfway through my drive, fast forward, halfway through my drive of the hospital, I received a call from my mother, tell me to slow down and drive carefully as the new baby and its mother were doing fine. missed another birth.

Yep. Pulling me, I never hear the end of it, especially from the kids. My family and I began to prepare to move to Washington, so you got a job offer up in Washington. It's the same job from the lab, but working at DOE headquarters, Department of Energy headquarters. I started thinking about the years NASA denied my admission into their training program, 1992, 1993, 1993, 19, 1994, 1995, 1996, 1997. Right before we left for Washington to start my two-year assignment, NASA finally called offering me the invitation I've been waiting for my entire life. The person on the phone informed me that out of more than 4,000 applicants, only 300 were selected for a closer look at their applications.

Out of those 300 candidates, only 100 were selected to continue onto the final round of the selection process, and I was one of them. We, the finalists, were placed in a conference room where the astronaut selection manager Dwayne Ross explained what we would be doing during our week-long stay. He informed us that we were the third group of 20 candidates and that two more groups would be visiting the Johnson Space Center in the coming weeks. The purpose of our extensive exams was to help determine whether we met the medical requirements for a flight assignment of the 100 finalist interviewed. only 10 to 18 would be selected to become astronauts.

So this time you made it a little closer. Little closer. Little closer. Down to the final 100. Exactly. From the thousands to the 100. And they're doing medical exams to you. Are you doing any testing like physical testing?

Yeah, yes. Yes, they do everything from physical testing to psychological testing, aptitude testing. And then they culminate everything with an hour-long. interview with the whole selection committee this I was thinking this has to be the most highly screened job in the world it's one of I can't imagine there's I mean I guess maybe the president of the United States although that's questionable yeah because they get elected yeah they're getting elected yeah I can't imagine a more highly screened

job than being an astronaut I mean just just the course and again there's a lot of good details you put in the book about this by the book um you talk about some of the the The stories of the other 19 individuals were truly amazing. Some were military test pilots. Other were helicopter pilots, still others were medical doctors, while the rest were engineers and scientists. Eventually, Dwayne Ross called and gave me the news. Jose, thank you for your interest in our program.

Unfortunately, you are not selected in this interview cycle. We encourage you to continue to playing as we will be selecting future classes. But wait, there's more. Dwayne Ross continued the phone conversation and said, Jose, if you're interested, we would like to offer you a position as an engineer here at NASA, Johnson Space Center. However, this does not guarantee that you will be interviewed, let alone selected, during the next selection cycle.

If you are interested in applying to become an astronaut, we suggest you get more operations experience, and we believe you can gain this type of experience and knowledge here at NASA. So they gave you a job offer, which I was surprised when I read this, you didn't take it. Exactly. Explain why you didn't take it. I did not take it because I had just... arrived to Washington, D.C. on my change of station assignment from Lawrence Livermore Lab. The lab had spent about $25,000 moving my family and I. We had a house rented and everything

lease signed with, and the job was paying for it, but I was working at DOE headquarters down in downtown Washington, D.C. And I had a commitment for two years. And I couldn't in good conscience, you know, after being there a couple of months, say, well, you know, I changed my mind. Thanks for spending that 25K. I'm going to Houston now. I didn't want to burn any bridges or I, well, not that it was burning bridges, but more than it wasn't the right thing to do. You know, I had made a commitment and I wanted to fulfill it. So I gave Duane Ross a call and I told him that I respectfully have to decline the offer. But I gave him my story. I told him, this is why I feel I cannot.

do it and and he understood you know I figured he I'm never going to hear from him again because I turned them down but lo and behold the following you know a couple years they they call again 1992 once again renewed my application by now I felt I could fill it out with my eyes closed for the second time I was one of the hundred last hundred finalists just like the time before these lucky 100 were inviting groups of 20 to spend a week go through a series of medical and psychological exams, interviews, and towards the various training facilities. When NASA decides to let the 100 individuals know whether they've been selected or not, the calls to all 100 people occur within the span of a few hours.

It was rumored that if a candidate picked up the phone and the Johnson Space Center director, who was George Abbey at the time, was on the other end, it would be good news. However, if it was the astronaut selection manager, Dwayne Ross, or any other interview panel member, one could almost guarantee it would be a thanks but try again type of call. True to the rumor, when I received the call from Dwayne, it was to tell me that I had been seriously considered, but it was not my year. He then went on to suggest that again, I consider an engineering position at Johnson Space Center. So then you go and talk to your wife, Adelaida.

Say, may I talk to you for a moment? She said, of course, something wrong. You said, I want to talk to you about something really important. I have thought about the whole situation with NASA a lot, but before we finalize our decision, I want to confirm something with you. We are getting ready to head back to California, and I'm probably going to get a promotion

and a nice raise when I report back to work at the laboratory. That said, I think it is best job. I think it's best for me to turn down the job offer with NASA because they offered you another job. Yes. Houston is hot and muggy anyways. We'll have less money to spend, and Adelaide interrupted me.

Honey, if moving to Houston and working for NASA as an engineer is what it will take for you to make, your dream come true then we'll move to Houston in a heartbeat boom yeah and that was the deal yeah so now you now you accept the job um at NASA as an engineer as an engineer as an astronaut no it's still really cool yeah I'm in engineering yeah and low man on the totem pole um on January 21st 2003 we welcomed our fifth child second baby boy into the world a few days earlier on January 16, 2003 at 9.39 a.m., the space shuttle Columbia took off for its scheduled mission with seven astronauts on board. Columbia was scheduled to land back on Earth on February

1st, 2003 at 7.15 a.m. The orbital maneuvering system engines were turned on for a. D-orbit burn. This burn allows the atmosphere to capture the space shuttle Columbia and thus begin its re-entry to Earth. Within minutes, the temperature sensor on the left wing's brakes began to show an increase in temperature. It was the first serious indication that something was wrong. At 7.59 a.m., the last words from the space shuttle Columbia were transmitted. Understood. Three minutes later, Columbia broke apart, raining a field of debris across the northwest parts of Texas and Louisiana.

You use a term in here. It's normalization of deviation. And I started thinking about that term and what it means and how it obviously have impacted this horrible incident with losing the space shuttle Columbia. But it seems like something that we, a mistake that we, something that we can do in our own lives, this normalization of deviation. Can you talk about that a little bit? what caused the accident and how that idea of normalization of deviation played into it?

Sure. Well, by that time, I had been there for three years at NASA, and I worked myself up to branch chief of the materials and processes branch. And this is the engineering branch that does the failure analysis and finds out root causes of failures of materials. And so when the space shuttle disintegrated up in northwest Texas, Louisiana, you know, my group was one of the first groups that were out there picking up the pieces. We were the ones that put the hangar in Florida and outlined the shuttle

and brought every piece in forensic evidence and put it all together and did the testing in terms of the materials to find out where the breacher. occurred. And once we were pretty certain that that's where the breach occurred, which is on the left wing leading edge, which is a reinforced carbon, carbon substrate, hard substrate. We went to Southwest Research in San Antonio and we built a full-size wing of the shuttle and then we looked at the image analysis and saw pieces of foam that fell from the tank insulation that big orange tank center tank that fell and hit the the left wing leading edge we found out we calculate the speed the size of it and we replicated that experiment at Southwest Research through a air gun fired that those pieces of foam to the wing leading edge and recreated basically the the cracks that occurred because

that's the material that helps on reentry you're up to about 2700 deep degrees and you know the aluminum structure inside its aluminum melts at about nine nine hundred degrees or so so if there's a crack in there it's gonna get in there and it's gonna affect the structural integrity of the wing and that's what caused it to snap and create that catastrophic failure and pieces all over northwest Texas occurred and and so so during All this time, you know, the president had the Columbia Accident Investigation Board or Board formed.

And since I was the branch chief, I gave a lot of briefings of the findings. You know, there's a whole team's hundreds of hundreds of people that contributed, certainly not me, myself, but I was one of the spokespeople in terms of telling the science part of it, the results of what we measured and all that. And so I got a lot of face time with a lot of people at NASA, and they ended up, you know, they started looking at me and trusting me and all that, that, that, you know, we came up with the story of how, what was the root cause of the failure, which is, of course, the piece of foam that did.

And, but shortly thereafter, the following year, they have a selection, a selection of astronauts, and I'm again one of the finalists. And this time, when I sit down across the 18 people that are there, I know more than half of them through this accident investigation board. Franklin Chang Diaz is sitting there. He's one of the guys. So it's kind of like I come home to family now. Before it was a complete set of strangers, and now everybody knew me.

I knew them. And I think my work spoke for itself. And I think that's what finally did it. But unfortunately, you know, we had to lose a space shuttle for that to occur. I mean, it's kind of like a bittersweet moment for me. With the normalization of deviation. Explain that that term. It's like where something goes a little bit wrong and you go, you know what?

It's not that big of the deal. It's like a normalization of issues. Yes. Yes. what happened was in that sense, we've had debris fall off the tank in the past. And our engineers would cry wolf. They would say, hey, something happened here, and we don't know what's going to happen on reentry. And, you know, they would do that three or four times.

And you did see pieces, but it didn't hit anything. And so everybody... So wait, so they weren't really crying wolf. they were actually saying this could cause a problem, but nothing ever bad happened. Exactly. Nothing ever bad happened, but the fact is, the fact is that when they cried Wolf, when it really did happen, because they had normalized that occurrence, then the powers to be didn't put enough weight behind it to say, let's stop and let's go out, do an EVA

and let's inspect the wing leading edge where it hit. Because that should have been the proper response. All right. And that didn't happen. And so that's why I call it normalization of deviation. Yeah, and it seems like, well, the way I thought about that after reading it was thinking about just us as human beings in our lives. And we make a little mistake, but we get away with it.

Right. And then you go, you do something that you know you shouldn't do, but you get away with it. You don't, you know, you go and eat a donut. Well, you know, it's just one donut. then you look up in a month and you've had a bunch of donuts and all of a sudden you got a problem and you got five pounds on you right so we got to be careful of that that idea um what discipline what a travesty that was um to get to that point you were just talking about in the fall of 2003 the selection process for the next wave of hopeful astronauts opened once again i turned my updated application

the fact that i worked for nassah did not guarantee my acceptance and they made sure i understood that when I accepted the job at NASA in 2001. Working at, this is a beautiful point. Although I was anxious for the selection process to begin, I can honestly say I was content and at peace with where I was in life. If I was not selected to travel into space, I would accept that since I was happy working with NASA. Working at NASA made me realize that spaceflight involves tens of thousands of people

and that every single person is as important to the success of the mission as the seven crew members aboard the space shuttle. So you realized that? And that was a, you know. Yeah, I worked in the trenches with everybody. And so I had the opportunity to appreciate what, with the dedication of everybody. Because, you know, when I went to work there,

you know, I took a 10% pay cut from Lawrence Livermore Lab because I made too much money at the lab. So, you know, that was one part of my hesitation of accepting the job that my wife convinced me and said, hey, don't worry about it. We'll make it happen. And so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, the, the, the, the, uh, point I'm getting at is that the people that work there can make more money elsewhere. Mm-hmm. But they love their job. Right. And they're doing everything possible. And it only took me, uh, you know, when I, when I, when I was part of the whole process of the accident investigation, and I saw,

saw the dedication of everybody. And then, in previous to that, when we were preparing for launches, I saw the dedication of the people during their normal activities. And so a lot of people always told me when I got selected in 2004, they said, are you crazy? I said, the space shuttle just disintegrated last year, and you just got selected. Aren't you afraid? And I said, no. It said, because I know these people. I know there, you know, there's tens of thousands that we depend on, but I know they're here because they want to be here. You know, they're going to dot their eyes and cross their T's because these are dedicated folks. I mean, I had firsthand working with them in the trenches, and I know their dedication. So I was a piece of

mind. When I jumped into my space, I was more than confident things were going to turn out good. When going fast forward a little bit, when the whole interview process ended, I, along with 99 other aspiring individuals had nothing to do but wait. About four months later, I received a telephone call while working in my office. Frankly, I was prepared for the response that I knew all too well. However, this particular call did not come from the center director or the astronaut selection manager, Dwayne Ross. It came from a senior manager, Colonel Bob Cabana, who is in charge of the flight crew operations directorate, and who was an astronaut himself. I knew that. I knew, that if the center director was calling it was sure to be good news when somebody on

the recommendation board like Bob was calling I really did not know what to think I was puzzled he started the conversation with the usual salutations and then went on to ask if I thought I was replaceable as head of the materials and process branch my response was genuine when I told them that I thought everyone was replaceable and that all along I had taken upon myself the responsibility to mentor and train folks to be ready to take my place. Good, he said. How would you like to come work for the astronaut office? I quickly realized I had been accepted. My whole body went numb. The second I heard the good news, I did not know how I was going to be able to hold the telephone without dropping it. A nervous

laugh escaped my lips, but no words came out as I listened to Bob continue speaking. Now, Jose, you cannot tell anybody beyond your immediate family about this because it will be announced at a press conference on May 6th at NASA headquarters in Washington, D.C. Warned of the voice at the other end of the line. I agreed, said goodbye and hung up. I did not tell anyone anything. I still had four hours before I could go home from work, and I could not think of anything else but telling my beautiful wife Adelaida,

she had to be the first to hear the good news, followed by my kids and then my parents. The 10-minute drive home seemed to last an eternity. Adelaida, Adelaida, guess what? Our opportunity has come. Finally, I got accepted. I'm going to be an astronaut. There it is. So how many total times did you apply?

It was the 12th time. The 12th time. 11 straight years of rejection. Exactly. And the 12th time, there you are. 12 times the charm. NASA press conference took place. I still had to keep the big news of secret from almost everyone.

At 11 a.m., my fellow astronauts and I were brought face to face with the press. We were all nervous and careful of our every step as we walk single file line, just like my siblings and I had when we entered their house after coming home from school. When the cameras and microphones were directed at us, I remember thinking to myself, I'm an astronaut, not a famous movie star. My palms were sweaty and there was nothing I could do about it.

We were introduced one by one, Satcher, Cassidy, Arnold, Dutton, and Hernandez. And Cassidy's a seal. And he was in your group, huh? Yes, he was. My classmate. Good friend of mine. That's awesome.

Our first big training assignment involved traveling to the naval air station in Pensacola floor. Once there, we spent six weeks going to ground school, being taught water survival techniques, learning how to co-pilot the T-34 airplanes. Ground school involved not only learning basic principles of flight, but also putting those principles to work in high-fidelity flight simulators. Probably the most interesting activity during the six-week training program was the one where we went on submersible device that simulated the fuselage of a helicopter. This device is effectively known as the helo dunker.

So when you get picked up When you get picked up for the program You're still not an astronaut You have to make it through How long is that training program? Two years, this astronaut candidate program It's two years You go through a lot of academics

You go through the learning the systems Of the space shuttle 18, you know, typical airline has about Eight or nine subsystems An airline plane The space shuttle has 18, and you have to learn each one of them. You have written tests on each one of them. Then you've got single system trainers, so you master each one of them.

Then you've got multi-system trainers where they start cross-pollinating the systems and how one system affects the other. And then you've got the high fidelity motion-based simulator, where then a pickup crew of four of you are in the cockpit, and they throw everything but the kitchen sink at you, and you've got us, you know, it's either an asset run or it's in orbit operations or it's a landing, but they'll fail things for you and you've got to figure it out. And you've got to pass all that.

Every Friday there's a test. It's like being in finals week for two continuous years. I mean, pretty intense. I mean, I'm sure it's similar to like for SEAL training as well that you have to go through all these things. But it's not only, you know, it's academic, mental, physical, the whole combination of things where they really stress you and, and, you know, that's how they figure out you've got the right stuff. If you're able to survive that, then you move on.

You get your wings and now you're eligible for a flight assignment. How many people that get selected to enter the pipeline, the two-year pipeline, how many people don't make it? You know, it's very rare that a person doesn't make it because they've been filtered. So filtered. They've been filtered. You know, the book says 4,000. That was when it first began, but when I was in, and my 12th tribe, we were up to 12,000.

This past selection run, they were up to 18,000 applicants. So they filter it pretty well, including the psychologists that filter everything, that, you know, when they select you, you know, they have a high probability 99.9% that you're going to make it because you've been filtered, you've been tested, aptitude testing, psychological testing, stress testing. So they have a feeling that you're going to make it. But you still got to do it. Yeah, no, that's the impression that I got when reading this. Also talking to Johnny Kim is that if you get selected, they've already figured out. Because the thing that's interesting to me is you talk about, you're putting these failure situations over and over again.

And, you know, there's people that panic in those situations. There's people that lose their cool in those situations. There's people that don't want to handle themselves. That's why I think it's interesting, like just because you, became a pilot. Well, if you panic, if you become a pilot, you learn to get control of your emotions and not panic. Same thing with scuba diving.

If you panic while you're scuba diving, if something goes wrong, you're going to have some real problems. You're going to have some problems. So those are things that they're looking at your application and going, well, he's a pilot. So we know he's at least going to be able to detach from his emotions. Oh, he's a scuba diver. So when things get intense, he's not claustrophobic. So they have

all these things in line so that you can, you have a very high percentage chance. Obviously, you could have some kind of a medical anomaly or something, but that is the, I do, I'm curious, I'm sure people will give me feedback if there's a more highly screened job than astronaut. And I know you just gave some props to seal training. I could tell you, there's all kinds of knuckled daggers in seal. I'm probably case in point, you know, exhibit A, that what we go through is more about

just being wet, cold, and miserable. But so fast forward a little bit. Once our two years of training and testing were over, we held a small graduation ceremony at Space Center, Houston. Kent Rommel, the chief of the astronaut office, said a few words before presenting each of us with a silver pin with the astronaut logo on it. This is a symbol used for astronauts who have yet to travel into space.

A gold pin symbolizes that an astronaut has already flown on a mission. So you get the new guy symbol. Exactly. But it's an important symbol because you're now eligible. You're in the pool of eligible astronauts. When they select a new crew, you could be one selected. Whereas before you were just an ask-can, astronaut candidate. You couldn't be selected to train for a real mission.

Now you're eligible to get assigned. And meanwhile, you talk about that you have, so once you become an astronaut and you're not an ask-can anymore. I'm using that. That's a good one. Once you're not an ASCAN anymore, you're an actual astronaut, then you spend 20% of your time sort of focused on training and simulations and getting ready to fly a mission.

80% of your time is work. Yes. And your job was a Cape Crusader. Exactly. Tell us about the Cape Crusader. Yeah, we call them C Squared's. That's Cape Crusader to C's. C squares.

It was great. It was a great job. You know, two weeks before launch, you and three other buddies, a group of four astronauts. You know, you fly over from Houston to Florida where the bird's at, the shuttle, and you start prepping the vehicle for launch. So you start prepping the inside and doing testing with ground control and everything. So you get everything ready for the mission.

And then the day of the launch, then if you're the lead C-squared, then you get the number seven on, you know, how you see all those white, quote technicians. The number seven is always the astronaut. There's always an astronaut there because he's the one that buckles their fellow astronauts into the cockpit of every mission. And unfortunately, your face is the last one they see before they go up into space. And so, and I did that a couple of times. you know, I, for like, for like two years I participated as a C squared, but during the last part of those two years I got, I was the lead C squared because that's how usually happens is

the lead guy. First, you're the new guy, and then you're the middle guy, and then you're the expert, and then you get assigned, so you move out, and then so the middle guy becomes the expert, and so that's kind of like a fiefel, first in, first out kind of thing. You become an expert, by lieu of your experience, but then you get assigned to a mission. And so that's what happened to me. I participated in about seven launches during those two years. And the last two, I was the lead C square. And it's great because you go there two weeks before.

You're in crew quarters, so you spend time with the astronauts. They arrive about a week before the launch. So you spend time with them before they're going to go off to their mission. You're debriefing them on the status of the bird and how things are going and all that kind of thing, any questions they have. And then the day of the launch, you know, you go out there with them and you're out there strapping them in and getting them ready. And then it's pretty neat because you're also part of the rescue crew.

So you're in the closest, the absolute closest part you can be to watch the launch. Oh, dang. I mean, you feel. So where, physically, where are you? You can feel one of the bunkers. You can feel the heat. You can feel the heat of the exhaust, you know, because it's so close. I mean, it's dangerously close.

So you're sitting there in a bunker. Yeah. And you watch. With a bulletproof glass or some kind. Yeah, exactly. And you can watch. How far away you think you are from it? Let's see.

I would say about a mile, a mile and a half maybe. And you can still feel the heat. Oh, yeah. You can feel the heat. And, uh, but it's just amazing. I mean, that launch that you go out. I mean, it's, it's, it's, it's crazy. When you see it take off.

And you can't believe that big, heavy piece of metal is going to take off. And, you know, you know, Yeah, there it goes. I was going through Navy boot camp. So this is September, I think it was either September and October of 1990. And I'm in Orlando, Florida, going to boot camp. And I'm standing at parade rest out on the grinder. And there was a space shuttle launch.

And we sat there and watched this thing go up in space. Yeah, yeah. It's quite an image, isn't it? Even from that distance. Yeah, very cool. Meanwhile, going back to the look, my wife, Adelita, had just opened up a restaurant in Houston, down the street from the Johnson Space Center on the corner of Saturn and Gemini in the Clear Lake area. So she's just getting after it going and opening up

at a restaurant. She always had a dream of opening up a restaurant. You know, she grew up in the same socioeconomic conditions I did. Her parents are from Mexico, and she was born over there because she was born in November. Okay. There you go. Else she would have been born here, but she was born over there. And so she came up with the same upbringing I did. And so her dream was always to own and operate a restaurant. And so once I got situated, I got selected. I was jogging one day and I found this place that was for rent. And I took her. I said, how about here? It's only a couple blocks from the restaurant. So we opened it. It was called Tierra Luna Grill. And Tierra Luna means Earth Moon, but my buddies, astronaut buddies, didn't call it Earth Moon because Tira is also dirt.

So they call it Dirt Moon Grill. So let's go Dirt Moon Grill. And so that would be their hangout for the astronauts to eat. But I remember the very first time I went out there as a C-squared. Adelaide had just opened up the restaurant. And so imagine this. You know, we get up at three in the morning. and so I go and prep the vehicle, and then I go and the astronauts arrive about 6 o'clock.

So we then tuck them in into the space shuttle, you know, close the hatch, secure everything, do our leak checks, everything works out. We go out to the muster area for the rescue area, and we see them blast off. And that was my first, that was the first shuttle I seen in person launching. I was that close. And so it takes off. It takes off. And this is about 9.30 now.

So as soon as it takes off, there's nothing for us to do. So what do we do? We hop on the T-38 jet that's right there that we had flown in from Houston. And we go back to Houston, Ellington Field. And Ellington Field is about six miles from Johnson Space Center. And it's still midday. I said, well, I'm not going to go home now. I said, I could go back to the office.

So I'm driving to the office. But on the way is Adelita's restaurant. So I want to go get some lunch. Get some dirt moon. Yeah, let's go go Dirt Moon Grill and get some lunch. And plus, I want to tell Adelita the whole exciting what I saw. Oh, because that was your first one. First one.

Yeah. So I'm over there so excited. And, you know, because I flew on the T-38 over the Gulf, over the pond, landed. So there I am telling Adelita. you know, how I flew the T-38 jet, we're back, how I saw the space shuttle, you know, to think that the space shuttle, I was on the space shuttle at three, four, five in the morning,

and now it's up in space, and my buddies are up in space, and she's kind of like looking at her watch, and so she wasn't even paying attention to me. She's like, blah, blah, blah. Yeah, exactly. It's kind of like the teacher from Charlie Brown, right? And so I kind of, I say, hey, what's wrong?

And so nothing. I said, well, yeah, maybe you can help me. I said, sure, what can I do? I said, do you have about an hour, hour and a half to spare? I said, yeah, I probably can. I'm not, no one's expecting me back in the office. Yeah, I got an hour and a half spare. I said, well, my dishwasher didn't show up today.

I said, would you mind, you know, this is the busy time. The busy time's coming. It's close to lunch. Would you mind washing the dishes for me for just about an hour and a half just until the rush goes over? And I'm still in my blue flight suit. Get some. You know, so I put on an apron and I, you know, roll up my sleeves and there I am, you know,

spraying beans and rice off the plates because it's a Mexican restaurant, you know, and all this stuff. And she walks in and I said, you know, I tell her, I can't believe it. It's at three in the morning I was in the most sophisticated piece of machinery that humans could ever have made. and then I was flying a T-38 jet across the pond, the Gulf of Mexico, landed it here. And what am I doing right now? I'm washing freaking beans off a plate. And she just looked at me,

I said, but you're doing a damn good job. The most overqualified dishwasher of all time. Probably the only dishwasher ever to take a T-38 jet to work. Exactly. And so that's, you know, it humbles you. Gotta say humble. The family humbles you. The family, yeah. And I'll tell you the other story that I didn't tell you also that has to do with the blue suit too.

Is which one was it my fourth daughter, my fourth daughter. I mean the fourth in line, third daughter, the youngest daughter of them all. I remember when I got selected as an astronaut. Well, they give you that blue flight suit, right? and because it has your Velcroed name tag here and everything, the NASA meat ball logo and American flag and all that kind of stuff. It looks pretty cool. So they give it to you.

So I bring it home, you know, the first day they gave it to me. So, you know, I want to try it on and make sure it's the right size they gave me and all that. So I put it on. My wife has a full dress mirror in the bedroom, right? So there I am. I'm putting it on. You know, it has zippers galore everywhere, right? Zippers here, zippers here, zippers here, zippers here, zippers here.

zippers on the legs and zippers down the pant legs and all that stuff so i'm playing with them getting to know and then you know posing kind of doing my best you know hero shots kind of thing you know hey i'll be true for i was kind of you know i was flexing kind of thing you know all that kind of stuff and then my my five-year-old daughter walks into the bedroom the doors open and and and and and and she's kind of like yeah she was younger she was four years old because i remember she she still had her little you know, kind of the Maggie Pasoire. Yeah. And she's looking at me like this and tilting her head one way,

tilting her head the other way. And I said, oh, she's going to see me in my blue flight. She heard, you know, because we've been talking that, I became an astronaut and this and that. She's going to go and she's going to hug me and say, hey, puppy, I'm so happy you're an astronaut and all that. That's what the reaction I think she's going to happen. As she sees me, I didn't get embarrassed that she saw me.

posing because yeah she's little if it was my wife I would have been a little but she was a little kid so I so you know I said hey meh how you doing and she's still turning her head and then in between the pacifier and everything you know she points at me and she says you look like Papa Smurk so from then on it became whenever I want to look for my suit I said where's the Smurf's Because when it's in the laundry or something, I say, where's my smurf suit? I need my smurf suit. And so, got to stay humble.

The family will keep you humble. The family humbles you. Exactly. Going forward a little bit, you say everything seemed to be going according to how I ideally imagine it would when I was a kid working in the ruts and groves of the fields. Though my life seemed in order, there was a certain sense of emptiness. There was no reason for me to feel this way since I had everything I'd ever wish for. Out of nowhere, I heard my mother's voice saying, what is the purpose of having goals in life, working hard for them and achieving them if you cannot share them with others?

Even though I was sharing this moment with my family and friends, I was still not completely enjoying the moment or myself. This was particularly true after coming to Stockton to speak at a school. I felt the excitement my visit generated when I shared my experiences with the elementary school children. But then when I returned to Houston for training, it felt as if I had never visited Stockton. Something was missing, something that would give, that could give continuity to my visits. During this time, my friends and colleagues had called or emailed me to tell me what a positive impact my selection as an astronaut had made in the Stockton community. That was when the idea hit me. Why not start a foundation that capitalizes on my role as an astronaut and allows me to inspire kids to do well in school?

So therefore, Angel Piccon, am I saying that right? And Patty Tovar, two of my great friends, helped me start the legal framework work for establishing a nonprofit organization called the Jose Hernandez, reaching for the Star's Foundation. Angel and Patty put together a board and helped me define the foundation's mission, which is to inspire kids to dream the impossible

and to emphasize that through education, anything is possible. And you say, I do not believe in just pointing out a problem and expecting the government to solve it on its own. I would like to think that this is the responsibility of every person in the United States and that the private sector and foundations such as mine should take some ownership for resolving this issue. And that issue is getting more kids into specifically STEM. STEM, science, technology, engineering, and math fields, yes. So you got that foundation started. We'll talk a little bit about that at the end.

Sure. You asked to see me, sir. I said. as soon as I walked into Mr. Steve Lindsay's office, Mr. Lindsay was an active astronaut and the chief of the astronaut office. He was a very intelligent and slender, all-American Air Force man whose grayed hair, great-haired head stored a half-century's expert experience and knowledge. Yes, Jose, please, have a seat, he told me politely. I've called to inform you that you have been selected to form part of the crew

of the upcoming STS-128 mission. In about 15 months, you will be at the International Space Station. We will announce the names of the rest of the crew members at our all-hands meeting. This was something that I had longed for and wished for my entire life. It was the preamble to my dream come true. My dream had been actualized. I found myself one step closer, a significant step closer to flying into space. I thought finally my time has come.

the big day. Yes. You got told it was a go. Fast forward a little bit. Here we go. As the launch date approached, it became harder to sleep. I tossed and turned for hours until I was finally able to sleep soundly. Part of the reason I was not able to sleep was because I kept thinking about what could

possibly go wrong during the mission. What if something fails? What will happen to my family? How will my wife, kids and parents handle it? Those thoughts disrupted my tranquility. Luckily, though, as the date approach, there was no time. left to worry about anything but the mission our crew began adapting to a new schedule going to bed at 8 a.m. and waking up at 4 p.m. We were forced to shift our sleep cycle because those were the hours we would be working on the international space station

The closer we got to launch date the more lucid our mission objectives became our first objective was to transport a new crew member Nicole Stott to the ISS and then return home with another astronaut Tim Kopra who had already spent more than two months in space. Second, we had to conduct three spacewalks to replace one of the station's ammonia-filled tanks. Last, we had to take an Italian-built portable laboratory called the Multi-Purpose Logistics Module, affectionately called Leonardo. We also needed to bring back to Earth about a ton of equipment and waste no longer needed

aboard the ISS. With all that said, we had only 13 days to complete our three mission objectives. So you've got to schedule heading up there. A heavy schedule. They're not playing around. They're going to get their money's worth out of you. Exactly. Fast forward a little bit.

And I'm going again, look, you've got to get the book. If you want to get the details of what's going on, and it's really fascinating to hear what you're thinking about as this progresses and all the things that you're working on, the things that you do as a team. Look, I'm skipping over a bunch of stuff. But what you do as a team to kind of come together as a team, seven-person group that you're going to be working together.

All this really incredible stuff. Again, I'm not doing an audio book here. Buy the book if you want to know what happens. Yeah, there's a lot. You're skipping. Oh, yeah, of course. So I am skipping to this part here. We arrived at the launch pad and entered the elevator to go up the 192 foot level where

we had access to the shuttle's hatch. A walkway allowed us to approach the white room that was next to the hatch. It was in this white room where we put on the last of our. gear before entering the shuttle and getting strapped in by the close-out crew. One by one we were called in to take our seats. Fast forward, members of the close-out crew exited the shuttle. The hatch was shut and closed. It was then that the close-out crew performed a cabin leak check and then disassembled the

white room to clear the launch pad. During the last hour before launch, I sat strapped to my seat on the flight deck. A million different thoughts were. rushed through my mind. Fast forward a little bit. Suddenly I heard the countdown reached the nine-minute hold. That is when the final systems checked

are conducted by the launch control center. It was almost time. Make your final adjustments and prepare for takeoff, we heard. Cabin revision complete. Manual's ready. Seconds before launch, the bottom of the launch pad was sprayed with water in an effort to cushion the noise and vibration

as a result of the power dissipated by both the three main the three shuttle main engines and the two solid rocket boosters. Everything was going to plan until Pete Nicolenko, the launch director, informed us that the weather conditions were unfavorable. 50 minutes later, our mission was aborted due to local thunderstorms in the Florida skies. So close. So close.

Ouch. A few hours later, a new date and time was announced for, the discovery launch Wednesday August 26 2009 this was a 48 hour slip the mission management team who had set the new launch date obviously did not share our optimism about the weather improving within 24 hours as we woke up on wednesday we found out that it was not going to happen then either we discovered a defective fuel control valve which is being replaced at the moment we push back the launch date again for 1159 on Friday August 28th 2009 NASA informed us. That reminds me of, you know, when you're on an airplane on the tarmac, and first it gets delayed, and then it gets delayed again, and all of a sudden they go, hey, we found a maintenance problem. The next thing, you know, a flight gets canceled. We're debboarding.

And that was a legitimate, there was a chance that you wouldn't, if this got rolled a little bit more, there would be no launch at all. That's right. So the whole thing is in jeopardy. Yeah. But was that faulty fuel valve? Would that have been a problem? That's, you know, the thing that we don't know, you know, we're kind of lucky the weather was bad.

Yeah. Because you don't know if that faulty fuel valve would have acted up during that launch. Right. And once we shut things off and then started back up, we got that indication and we replaced it. So, you know, it could have been that the weather saved us. Could have been. You just never know. Luckily, on Friday, we once again found ourselves sitting inside Discovery ready for takeoff with only two and a half hours to go.

I knew it was only a matter of time before a button was pushed and we would be well on our way into space. The NASA team in Houston was confident that the third time was indeed a charm. Suddenly in the blink of an eye, the countdown clock was set into motion after having reached the nine minute hold. We could hear the countdown nine minutes, five seconds, four, four, Three, two, we closed our helmet visors as we heard the three main engines light up. Shortly thereafter, we felt the gentle vibrations of the engines. About two seconds later, as the countdown reached zero, the noise level increased in a magnitude, and the vibrations grew more violent.

The two solid motors attached to the side of the external tanks that had ignited. Just as I thought the whole shuttle was going to shake apart or fall to one side, I felt a lot of pressure on my back. I heard zero takeoff. Through the corner of my eye could see the tower staying behind as we lifted off. We were on our way. Immediately the muscle memory of our training simulations took over. I quickly focused on my job as mission specialist too, which was to execute the role of a flight engineer.

I began reading off the predetermined milestones to our commander and pilot while monitoring the screens and gauges in the front and above me to ensure none of them would deviate from their expected readings. The most dynamic parts of our mission were blast off and the subsequent eight and a half minute flight into space. During the latter, we went from resting on the launch pad to orbiting our planet at more than 17,500 miles an hour at an altitude of some 280 miles. Two and a half minutes into our launch, the two solid rocket boosters separated and fell to the ocean about 200 miles northeast of the Kennedy Space Center. After the initial two and a half minutes, the next six minutes became quieter and the ride became a lot smoother. When we reached eight minutes and 30 seconds into the flight, we had reached the main engine. caught off. This basically meant that we had reached our top speed of 1,000 or 17,500 miles an hour and it turned off our main engines. The next step was for us to monitor the separation of the

external tank, which was feeding our three main engines. The external tank typically ends up so high that it does not survive reentry into the atmosphere and thus disintegrates into pieces before falling harmlessly back into the ocean. The shuttle usually possesses enough energy to continue upward and when appropriate, begins orbiting the planet. Soon after this happened to us, we reached a microgravity environment and began floating in space high above the earth.

Our mission was well on its way. When that thing starts to rumble, how's that feel? Where that thing starts to go. You know, I'll be honest with you, Jocco, is that, you know, if there was any, piece of fear during this whole process of being an astronaut, I would have to say it's probably the first three seconds of when you reach zero and you feel the three engines light up and then you

feel the two solid rocket motors turn on, come to life. All of a sudden, things are vibrating and, you know, this is the type of stuff that can't be simulated here on Earth. And so you don't know what to expect. And yeah, at that moment, you, you know, the first thing I said is, Jose, what did you get yourself into? Yeah. But then shortly after that, as the book indicates, you know, muscle memory takes over. And, you know, we've done a bunch of simulated motion-based asset runs as a crew. And so I focus onto my task at hand. You know, I had the best seat in the house because I'm sitting a little aft of the two pilots, the commander and the pilot, Kevin Ford, and my commander, C.J. Sturke out, great marine pilot, and Kevin Ford is an Air Force pilot.

And I'm sitting a little behind them in the middle, so I get the panoramic view. But, you know, of course, I have to hawk all the 10 screens of both pilots so that if anything goes off nominal, I peel off with the person that owns the system. And me as a flight engineer, you know, I'm the one that's basically quarterbacking what the problem is, diagnosing what we need to be doing. And between the pilot and I, we solve or try to minimize its effect while the other pilot flies the nominal portion of the mission. And so, but nothing happened. It was the best simile.

I always tell my commander, this was the best simulation run ever because nothing happened. everything occurred as it was supposed to occur, unlike our simulations where they throw the kitchen sink-ass. And so, but man, you know, words can't describe those eight and a half minutes of powered flight because, you know, you start off like the greatest Disneyland ride ever. And then as you move up to two and a half minutes, when the solid rocket boosters pop off, it becomes smooth a ride, more quiet ride, but you start accelerating more and you start feeling the pressure against your chest. So you end up feeling about up to, it goes almost up to three Gs of force right on your chest. And that's, three Gs is about, what is it, three people that weigh exactly like you on top of you.

That's how three Gs feel. So at the mark of eight and a half minutes, you're ready for this to be over. You're ready for main engine cutoff, Miko. Because when that happens, you stop accelerating so that 500-pound gorilla disappears. And now you're kind of loosey-goosey in your seat, but you've got your seatbelt on. But now you're in a microgravity environment orbiting Earth once every 90 minutes on a continuous basis. 17,000 miles an hour? 17,500 miles an hour.

God. You're traveling. But because now you're not accelerating, you don't feel the G forces. So now it's kind of like being on a plane going 500 miles an hour. You don't feel that. You only feel the takeoff kind of thing. And so, yeah. So, you know, it's crazy because you know, when you look out the window and you see the U.S.,

you go off and do something for 20 minutes, and now you're flying over China or Australia or over Europe kind of thing. It's the craziest feeling I've ever had. It says, wow, this is a good way to travel. Yeah, and it's as you're describing that, both in writing and then you're talking, you're sitting on a freaking bomb. On a bomb. That's what you're sitting on. All that stuff just wants to explode.

And it's just control. Yeah, it's a little bit. It's a control detonation. Yeah. That's what it is. And you're on the top of that. And you're on the top of that puppy. Yeah.

Once you get into space, you go into this schedule of all this stuff that you've got to do. Right. You detail it in the book. It's a great read. One thing, you had a little case of nausea while you're up there. A little bit of sea sickness, I guess. Yeah, they call it S-A-S space adaptation sickness. So it makes you feel a little nauseated.

You know, one of my crew members lost their cookies. I didn't. I actually lost them on the way back, which is a 1G re-adaptation. But on the way up, one of my crewmates did get sick to the point they had to throw up. But it goes away after a day or so, that feeling. It's kind of like being in the back of a bus and going up in mountain curves and all that. You kind of feel a little car sick, nauseated, but then it goes away. But then it goes away.

Fast forward a little bit. Day three, we're about. about 183 meters away from the International Space Station. Our shuttle began the 360 degree rotation for the purpose of being photographed using high-resolution photography and video by the space station crew. They take pictures from the space station

of the space shuttle just to make sure there's no damage on liftoff. But that's got to be pretty weird to be up in space and you're 183 yards away from this other big chunk of metal. Traveling at 17,000 500 miles. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But that was one of the new procedures as a result of the Columbia accident that we put

is that we would, before we dock to the station, we would reach a certain distance, stop, do a holding pattern there. And then we would do a maneuver where we would show our belly to them. And as we're showing our belly, they're filming everything. Of course, down linking it to the engineers down on the ground, looking at that leading wing edge and any other type of things that other damage that could have occurred

to your TPS system which is your thermal protection system which is the underbelly and the wing leading edge of the shuttle that we investigate and inspect the docking you call it a collision in here it says a collision or soft dock

that's got to be crazy too you're aiming the space shuttle at that thing and you're going to connect. Yeah, you're going to connect. And I'll tell you, it was even kind of crazy, a little bit more crazy for us than normal because nothing real big happened in terms of malfunctions during our mission

except this one thing. And the shuttle has built-in jets to maneuver in space, including the Oms engine, orbital maneuvering system. Those are the big engines that we fire to slow down so that we can get back into the atmosphere, but we don't use those for docking. We have built-in jets that are on the nose,

the tail, and near the wings of the shuttle, and they fire to maneuver in space. And we have two types. We have the regular, we'll call it RCS jets, reaction control system jets, and then we've got the verneers, which are the fine-tuning jets. They're kind of like the small ones. or one-tenth the thrust the big ones. And so as you're docking to the station, you use the rough ones, the RCS. And then as you get in, you switch to the fine ones so you could do the fine tuning so that you can dock

because the pilot, the both pilots are at the controls. I'm at the station as flight engineer giving them, and they're using, they have a target, So they have a camera system. So they're looking at the camera. One's looking outside. And then I'm looking at the screens, giving them speed, giving them distance. And then also whether they're in plane or out of plane in terms of, I give them numbers to indicate that if it's all zeros, it means they're coming in plane.

And then if it's a different number, I give them so that they can provide some type of correction. And they're doing all that. But as I mentioned, as you get closer, you switch over to the fine jets, which move you very little. But our fine jets fail. So there's no vernier jets. So we got the big hunking, rough, you know, coarse jets that we can do. So now our commander, C.J. Sturke, a good Marine he is, you know, when you move a vernier jet, you know, you move. little but when you move when you do the regular RCS jets it goes like that right

and so what he has to do is he's looking at the at the approaching speed he's looking at the at this but now he has to time his firing so that when he fires it as it goes it hits at the middle and and we practiced that during uh during, because we practice everything. So we practice, so we've done that before. But the fact is that, you know, that was probably one of the Pucker moments we had in saying, gee, how we get this right?

Because if not you, you could damage the docking mechanism. You could get stuck or you could just bounce off kind of thing. But he did well. I mean, like the good Marine pilot that he is. Semper fine. Yeah. You get docked. sleeping up there, that sounds like it's a strange experience.

You got to like tie yourself into a sleeping bag, basically. Exactly. What happens is you got tie the four corners of your sleeping bag to structure, and then you got to slide in and you zip yourself up. The sleeping bags have holes so you can stick your hands out. And the weirdest thing is you don't need a pillow. Because your head doesn't bob. Right.

There's no weight. Yeah. your hands, whatever position your hands are, that's how you're sleeping. You know, I've got these cool Frankenstein pictures of my crewmates like that, because that's the way you sleep. I mean, whatever position you're in, you're going to sleep in that position. But I'll tell you, it was the weirdest feeling going to sleep the first and second night. But after that, I said, you know, this is the best sleep you can ever.

You know, no tempered pew. Yeah. Nothing mattress Mac in Houston can sell with respect to his mattresses. This is the best sleep you can get because you got no pressure points. You have no pressure points. What's the, how many hours would you get to sleep for? You get to sleep up. It was on the average about six hours and ten minutes.

That's what my sleep thing said about six hours, ten minutes. Day eight, you got this in here. The eighth day of the mission was a very special one for me. Jose, the interview is set up and ready. You have four minutes and 30 seconds to do it, I was told. I was delighted to hear Carlos, a famous Mexican reporter who had been following my story for some time. Truth be told, I was terrified at the thought of knowing that millions of people in Latin America were going to see my interview. It was only after I returned and conversed with him that I found out he felt the same way.

This was a historic interview as it was the first live interview from space conducted in Spanish. The minutes went by so quickly that I felt my time was up just as I was getting started. We talked about the view of Mexico from space, including the attractive coast of the state of Quintanuru and the Yucatan Peninsula. We also spoke about my inability to detect borders that divide Earth into countries. There are no borders from what I can see up here. Our world leaders should see how beautiful and precious our world looks from this perspective. I said to the reporter. One world from up there, huh?

Yeah, you know, interesting story there, Jocco, with respect to what happened after that. You know, I basically said, you know, the most beautiful thing, there was two takeaways. The first one had to do with what you just mentioned is that I was able to see Canada, the U.S. and Mexico,

but what struck me in awe and that's so beautiful is that we couldn't, I couldn't do differentiate where Canada ended, the U.S. began, or where the U.S. ended in Mexico began. And this aha moment, I said, man, I had to go out of this world to come to this conclusion that down there, we're all just one, because borders are human-made concepts designed to separate us, and how sad, because from my perspective, we're just one down there. And it would be great to have our world leaders give, to give them this opportunity,

because I'll show you our world will be much better. Now, the thing that what the news got out of all this when I came home, and you can look up at the New York Times and the L.A. Times came up with the headlines saying, a Mexican-American astronaut wants to open borders. that's what they got out of this my story. I say good grief. But everything has to be politicized.

They want to get people to click on those headlines. Exactly. Which I found it so sad because I said, I wasn't even talking about that. I was just talking about the concept that were just won down there. But somehow from there, they got the fact that I wanted to

remove all borders and let everybody come into the U.S. what can I say that's the that's the media for you yeah so again I'm gonna I'm gonna skip forward

you gotta read the book to get some of these details about the flight day 14 on this day we made a final preparations to begin the deorbit procedures this included closing

our payload bay doors and once again putting on the orange LES suits for the entry phase of our flight observing the beauty of the earth from space

was something I have not been able to put into words well not in a way where I felt I was able to truly do justice to this spectacular view. I felt goosebumps knowing that few people have had the privilege of looking at our planet from my perspective. I marveled at the blueness of the oceans, the whiteness of the clouds. At one point, I was able to make out the lights of some cities.

I can see San Francisco, Mexico, City, and Houston. I managed to steal a few more moments for myself while the rest of the crew worked. Without anyone noticing, I made my way over to a corner. and pulled out the crucifix that Adelaidea gave me and said a prayer. Let us, Lord, see your love in the world. Forgive us for our wrongdoings. Give us faith to trust in your goodness. Forgive our ignorance and weakness.

Give us the power to continue trusting wholeheartedly and show us what we can do for peace on earth. Amen. And you guys end up spending an extra time up in space, an extra day. Yes. The weather was not cooperating in Florida and flight rules are that if it's more than a couple of rotations around the earth and you still can't land, you postpone it for 24 hours. And if it's still bad weather, you go to

your second preferred landing site. And so you got your second preferred landing site, which was California. Yes, Edwards Air Force Base, not too far from here. Yeah, yeah. And which was kind of nice because you were going to land in California, but also your family wasn't going to be there. Yes, yes. My family was waiting for me in Florida because they wanted to witness the landing in person. And of course, once it got canceled, they didn't have enough time to fly and meet us over here at Edwards Air Force Base. But I kind of liked it because, you know, it's California.

And I'm landing at Edwards Air Force Base. I call it poetic justice because it's some 80 miles from. Chino, Ontario where I used to pick strawberries. So here I am coming in with a, you know, in a NASA space suit, a good old American flag on my shoulder and coming in as a U.S. NASA astronaut when, you know, 40 years ago I was, you know, over there picking strawberries. This landing was no joke, too. I mean, you describe it here as each minute past the day.

distance between our shuttle and Earth lessened. The planet also grew bigger in size before our very eyes, which means that we were getting closer to home. In my mind, I was counting down the minutes until we were safely on the ground. Our landing point at Edwards Air Force Base in California was a mere dot on our map. As Discovery darted across the sky at high speed, I saw on our instruments that we broke Mach 25. At that point, we were traveling at slightly more than 25 times the speed of sound.

I could feel the buffeting of the shuttle with the atmosphere, and I noticed an orange glow outside our windows. We were definitely in the atmosphere now. I noticed gravity slowly taking its effect as the weight of my helmet attached to my orange LES became heavier. At about 26,000 feet, we broke through the cloud layer, and I had a good view of the ground both below us and in front of us. By now, the shuttle had the characteristics of an airplane.

As the aerodynamic surface controls were responding to the commander's input, The shuttle slowed down to normal airplane speeds and behave more like a gliderwood since it did not have an active propulsion system during the landing phase of the flight. This, of course, meant we only had one opportunity to land it. Our commander and pilot had practiced these landings hundreds, if not thousands of times in simulators and in actual approaches, utilizing one of the two planes that have been modified to be able to fly the shuttle's landing profile. At 400 feet with the gear already armed, our pilot Kevin activated the gear down command. This poised the wheels of the shuttle for contact with the surface of the pavement at Edwards Air Force Base in preparation for landing. The landing strip was ready in no time.

Soon thereafter, we were literally racing down the landing strip until the parachute deployed and the pedal brake slowly brought us to a complete stop. the opening of the shuttle doors reminded me of the times I had to open them to welcome back. The returning astronauts, however, this time I would be welcomed. And indeed we were welcome back. I was told by one of my class colleagues as he unbuckled my seat. We patted one another on the back. Once I was able to stand up, I exited the shuttle with a smile on my face. The seven of us crew members were beyond ecstatic.

Everything won is planned. Our mission commander began to congratulate us and said we did it. We couldn't have asked for a better team. all of us had to spend an extra day on the base before we were able to go home. As I waited for the moment when I could go back to Houston, I could not fathom the irony of my dream going into space, both beginning in and concluding in the golden state. As a boy, I dreamed of becoming an astronaut as I picked crops.

As a man, I would exit the shuttle as an astronaut on a landing strip located just a few miles from where I grew up picking strawberries. It was poetic, really. There was truly this delightful symmetry to my life that helped me realize the importance of remaining humble and remembering where I came from. Epic. And the story goes on here. You go on to talk about retiring from NASA, going into the corporate world as an executive. Let me tell you a little bit about the retirement part of it.

It was a hard decision to go about in deciding, Jocko, because I'll tell you, I remember when we got back, when we got back from space, shortly thereafter they announced the retirement of the shuttle fleet. So they were going to retire the whole space shuttle program. I think they had four or five flights more manifested, and then after that program's over. But they had them all assigned. Because they assigned about four or five crews ahead because they're training already for the next flight or they're going to get ready to train.

And so I knew, you know, since I just got back, I'm in the back of the line, right, of the queue. So I knew I wasn't going to get assigned another mission. But then I was one of the prime candidates. What we were going to be flying is, and we were flying already, was with the Russians, right? We pay the Russians $50 million per seat, and we go up on the Soyuz, and they'll take you to the station. So I was one of the prime candidates because of my background of traveling to Russia for five years and knowing Russian and all that. And I thought, okay, well, I'm going to be one of the first ones. I'm down for that.

I'll do that. But then you read the fine print, and you read the fine print, and what you don't realize is, that the training in Russia, it's a three-year training program. And so 80% of the time you're in Russia. And it's not continuous. It's like you go six weeks, you come back one week. You go eight weeks, come back one week. You know, 12 weeks, come back, two weeks, kind of thing like that for three years.

And then you go up for six months, continuous. And then when you come back, you go on the road for six months, continuous, divulging everything, all the science you did. And all in all, it was a four-year ordeal where you were going to be gone about 90% of the time, 85, 90% of the time from home. And I got five kids. My oldest at that time was 15 years old. And the youngest was about seven years old. And so I did the math, and I said, you know, all these kids, I'm going to miss, you know, they're in Boy Scouts, they're softball, baseball.

proms, high school graduation. You know, this 15-year-old is going to be a 19-year-old already off in college. At least I assume he's going to go to college. I'm not going to be around to find out or to guide him. And so quickly, I think my Hispanic culture kind of kicked in and I gave a lot of weight to the family. And I'll tell you, man, it was the hardest decision in my life because, you know, we just got through reading what it took to get here, to get there, to get assigned, and to be part of NASA.

And after flying only once, here I am considering chucking it all the way because I could fly again. But, you know, I kind of just thought about it, prayed about it. I didn't want to talk to my wife about it because I know her answer is we can do it, we can do it. I didn't want her to convince me. I said, you know, this is, you know, there's a fine line where, you know, you do it for what you want to do for you. And then that fine line of being more egotistical than, you know, not considering other folks. And so, you know, I thought about it, thought about it. And finally I said, you know, I think the best thing for me to do is to just leave, give someone else an opportunity.

I mean, I could stay and not fly, but I'm taking up a billet. I said, and that's not fair either. I said, it's probably best for me to leave and give someone else. Give the johnnies of the world a chance. Johnny Kim's seat. Exactly. Give the Johnny Kim's of the world and opportunities so they can fly. And so it was the hardest decision that I could have made, but, you know, I look back at it

And I look at where all my kids are at in life right now, all college graduates. My young is a 7-year-old is a freshman in mechanical engineering at UC Merced. You know, the PhD, my three girls have their bachelor's. One of them is finishing her master's in May. And one of them is a big influencer in TikTok. Okay. And if you guys really want to have a laugh, because I come on a lot. She films me a lot.

Go at the Vanessa Hernandez. Okay. And you'll see her. You'll see me make a fool of myself. But, you know, anything for my daughter, you know. You're not doing tech talk dances, are you? Or are you? Oh, you got to look at it, man.

All kinds of stuff, man. I'm telling you, all kinds of. She graduated from... So you truly will do anything for your family. Exactly. Tech talk dances. She graduated from Loyola Maramont, and she works for a vitamin pharmaceutical company near Loyola Maramont.

So she still lives in... the LA area. And, but she's been, she's been, you know, doing social media stuff and she's going to start her own podcast, too. They already contacted her before to start, but, but she's been doing good on TikTok. I mean, she represents a few companies in TikTok, and she's, I think she's banking more on TikTok than she isn't her day job, you know, and working a lot less so, but, but yeah, but it's those decisions, you know, that I think, you know, I really, you know, I look back at it, And I don't regret it because I look at how my kids turned out because I've been here for them and I continue to be there for them. And so I think I made the right decision.

Yeah, well, that's definitely a difficult decision to make. I know I was in the military and that's the decision that military individuals like myself have to make at some point. Are you going to keep going? You're going to keep going on deployment? You're talking about missing all those things? I missed all those things. I missed everything, you know? and eventually had to say,

I owe a little something. I've done what I can for the country. I owe something to the family that I've left behind for months and months and months and months at a time. So I agree. People ask me, what's the toughest decision you ever made in the military? And they think I'm going to say

some tactical situation or some mission. It was like, no, deciding to get out was the thing that I fought the most about and it was the hardest decision I had to make. And people tell me, well, didn't you, know you've gone in? Why did you go in the first place? I said, no, that the rules were changed midstream. I mean, they decided to retire the space shuttle fleet. I mean, I thought the space shuttle

fleet, you know, they told me it was going to be going on for another 10, 20 years, and I would have got another three, four flights under my belt. But when you take that away and they say, hey, the only game in town now is with the Russians for the next 10 years, I figured, you know, I think it's time for me to leave then. If you guys change the rules and I value my family as much as I do, And I think they need me at this point in their life pre-teenage teenage years. I mean, that's the most important part of the kids growing up stage. And, you know, I think it's a job where both parents have to be present. And, you know, thumbs on them to make sure that they, just like my parents were with me,

make sure that they're, you know, on the straight and arrow, go heading in the right direction. Yeah, yeah. And then you ended up getting a job in the corporate world. you end up running for Congress. Yes, yes. I get convinced, well, they convinced me to run for Congress. And it was, yeah, that's a long story in itself too. But it was at the urging of President Obama.

You know, he sought me out not once, not twice, but three times. And when you get sought out the third time and your commandant, and chief straight out tells you the first two times he said you ought to consider it and the third time he said he told me and I quote I'm going to make the ask I said please run for Congress in California so when the commander in chief stares at you in the eyes and says run for Congress what do you do you salute the flag and so so I did you know I gave it my best we we were they didn't put me in my district because my district is I'm a Democrat, so my district is a heavy Democrat,

but we already had someone there that had seniority. So why knock off a seniority level Democrat and put a freshman there? Why not go after a Republican seat? So they sent me next door. At the time, they were plus 11 in registration, and we lost by one and a half points. So we almost made it, but,

but it left a bad taste in my mouth I can't imagine the taste that left in your mouth yeah politics you know it's kind of like you know I just don't have you know I have the stomach for a lot of things but but when it's stuff like that it's kind of like there's no rules and you know they're scrupulous I mean it's just like no ethics at all and I said you know that's not me so one shot was enough at that one I think for now

never say never never never But for now, I think I'm doing okay where I'm at right now. Yeah. Now you go around, you know, you do speaking events right now, and you talk about that a little bit here. And I want to close out, you know, we've covered some of the book, but I wanted to close out the book with this little section where you talk about what you talk about. You say, I share with everyone the magical recipe for success that I applied to my own life. It is a recipe that I learned from my parents.

and I also share it here with you. One, identify your goal in life. Two, realize and understand how far you are away from that goal. Three, develop a roadmap to get there. Don't skip steps. Four, get yourself a good education consistent with your goal. Five, develop a good work ethic and put your heart into reaching your goal. Six, and this is the one you added.

You mentioned earlier, exemplify perseverance, never give up on your dream and remember that it is the journey, not the destination that is of most importance. Then you continue on. These are not the steps to become an astronaut. These are the steps to harvest your own stars. The recipe works for anyone in any part of the world. And trust me, it's infallible. So that's what you go around talking about. I'm a motivational speaker and I share my story and also that recipe and talk and talk about what, you know, what it took to get there.

And like a good engineer, I try to try to basically capture it in a formula type of environment like the recipe that you just read off there. I also give a three element strategy that says, hey, to reach your goal, you know, you've got. You've got a, and this I learned afterwards, right? You've got to know what the minimum requirements are. Once you define your goal is natural tendency, and 99.9% of us get this, right? You ask yourself, what are the requirements to get there? You know, you want to be a doctor. You know you got to go to pre-med, medical school, and pass the boards, lawyer, pre-law, law, past the bar, astronaut.

You know, you got to go to the STEM field, get graduate degree, four or five years experience, then start applying. So that's the first one. Everybody gets that one. You know, it's no the requirement. Second one is emulate successful people that you want to aspire to be like. In other words, you know, ask yourself, what do they have that I don't have? You know, if you want to be a CEO, and study, find out how they got there. You want to be an astronaut? Study an astronaut. I mean, That's what I did after my sixth failure, remember? I compared myself. I found out they were all pilots.

So what did I do? I invested in myself. I became a pilot. Then I found out they were all scuba certified. What did I do? I invested in myself and became scuba certified. The third stage of that strategy is you've got to create a differentiator. In other words, differentiate your,

yourself from differentiate yourself from the competition. You know, at the time, you know, it was from 4,000 and went up to 12,000 that I had to differentiate myself. So it was no accident that I took that job going to Russia. It was strategic in my career. I say, it's going to help my career, obviously, but it's also going to help me over here because, you know, I just read that the U.S. and the newly formed Russia,

to sign an agreement to build what was going to be the International Space Station. So it didn't take a rocket scientist to figure out, even though I am. I know you are one. Even though I am one. But I didn't take a rocket scientist to figure out we were going to be working with the Russians. So my great differentiator is during these next five years in this project, I traveled more than 25 times to the Russian Siberian countryside and work with the Russians. And all this, you know, help me get the upper hand on the other,

14, 12,000 applicants because very few of them could say or claim similar experience than what I had. And at least that got me in the door to start getting interviewed. And then the rest I would just sell myself. So, yeah, so that's the three-element strategy that I add up to that. And so that's what you're doing now. Now you got your foundation, the Reaching the Stars Foundation. Yes, at astroj.h.org. If you go look at it, astroj.org, you'll see everything we do in the Central Valley, where we try to motivate kids to get interested in STEM careers, science, technology, engineering, math.

We have a summer academy at the University of Pacific, same school I went to, where we have kids from the 7th to 12th grade in the six-week summer program where we basically inundate them with STEM. concepts, fun STEM concepts that they can take back to their school and get ahead, start in their math and science courses they're going to see the following year. So we basically expose them to those concepts that we know they're good. We know what the core curriculum is. So we expose them to those ideas in a fun, experimental, experiential way so that when they go back to school, they say, oh yeah, I've seen this. It's my fact, I know the experiment, and so they do very well.

And so we do that for them. And then we also have a science blast where we get over a thousand kids in the fifth grade to in a one-day exploratory type of environment where we have all kinds of hands-on experiments. We have people from Lawrence Livermore Lab from Google, from Apple, come, and they talk about what their careers are and basically expose them to STEM careers. And why do we do that at fifth grade? Because that's the age when I decided I want to be an astronaut. So I figure if it's good enough for me, it's good enough for them.

And then whatever monies we have left over, because we sort of have on a year-to-year budget, whatever monies we have left over, we give scholarships to the kids. No, that's awesome. I know that's what America needs. America needs kids that are growing up that want to learn STEM. Yes.

We need lots of engineers and scientists. Yeah, that's the competition for the future. The Chinese and Chinese are all over. India are kicking our butts and producing more scientists and engineers than we are. And that's going to cost us in a long run. Big time. Strategically. 10 years from now, 20 years from now, it's going to cost us if we don't, if we don't rectify the situation.

Yeah, I know I can find myself sometimes being pretty down on the academia for people that are going to the debt and they're borrowing all this money to go to college, but they get a degree that doesn't really give them a job. They'll get a degree in something that doesn't, you can't go. You don't have a skill set. I mean, engineering is a skill set.

It's something that you learn, something you know how to do. So the fact that you're doing that that program is leaning kids in the right direction for something that can actually provide not only them with a good career, but also provides America with something that we desperately need And we're desperate to need even more in the future.

And on top of all that, you also have a winery, right? Well, first of all, you know, all that is just volunteer. You know, I get nothing out of it, right? Except I feel good. But you still have to put it together. Oh, yeah, yeah. Yeah, it's a time sink. Right, right.

But unpaid time sync. But I'm saying on top of all the time you spend doing that and all the time you spend speaking, you also. But before the winery, I also have an engineering. consulting business. Oh, okay. That's first. Yeah, I have Tira Luna Engineering where I do aerospace consulting.

For example, I helped Mexico buy and launch three communication satellites from Boeing Corporation. That was a $1.2 billion purchase for Mexico. And they hired me because the Undersecretary of Communications was he himself admitted. He says, look, I'm an economist, a politician, economist. Politician, economist, I know Diddley Squad about satellites, and here we are spending $1.2 billion. Can you help us? So I worked on a neat project for about four years, helping them launch three communication satellites so they can have Internet throughout all of Mexico.

Any population over 5,000, the government put a dish so they would have connectivity to the outside world, which is pretty neat. So I do that. I've also helped a university build a CubeSat, small satellite 10 by 10 by 10 centimeters, and with NASA we launched it for free for them, and they became the first university in Mexico to have built, design, and key word operated their own satellite from space. So we did that for them. I'm helping, I also created an aerospace curriculum for them, working with a three-campusiness university

in northern Mexico, and that's Tiraluna Engineering, which, by the way, if you go to the dot-com store there, Tirulunaengineering.com, you can actually get the book reaching for the stars. You can get the children's book there, and you can buy an Amazon, and quite frankly, you can probably buy it a little cheaper, but if you buy it through our website, you'll guarantee that I can sign it and dedicate whatever you want me to say on it. I'll dedicate it, and the proceeds go to... my foundation. So that's why I want to make sure and clarify that. You know, I think it's like 30 bucks for the book or something like that. But it's signed by me and we send it off. And so you

can do that at tarolunaengineering.com. And then as as if that wasn't enough, I kind of come full circle and my wife wanted a back to the fields. Exactly. No, my wife wanted a home out in the country. And so about five years ago, you know, when we were well down established back in Stockton, I started looking for some property because, you know, happy wife, happy life, right? And so I started looking for some property so that we can build a house out in the country because she wants to live in the country. And I said, yeah, okay, I'm a country boy too. And, man, I saw the price and they were expensive.

And then I ran into this 20-acre vineyard. and it was income-producing, and it was only about twice as much as an empty three-acre lot in the country. I said, man, that's a no-brainer. I'm going to become a farmer. Back to your roots. Back to my roots, exactly.

Back to the fields. Back to the fields, and I became a grape farmer. And the reason why I was so into it was, because, first of all, I know how to pick grapes, but that's the only thing I know. I don't know, Diddley squad about running a vineyard, but you know who does? My dad, my dad's worked in there all his life.

And so I told Pops, that's what we call him Pops. I said, I told Pops, hey, if I buy this vineyard, would you teach me how to run the vineyard? He said, yeah, son. So these past five years with him, you know, he's 84, strong man, it's good, you know, field work background. He's strong and healthy. You know, this is the best five years I spent with him quality time. He's teaching me, you know, what to fertilize, how to fertilize, when to water. And, you know, he gets up on the tractor and he plows and mows and mows and all kinds of stuff that he does.

Helping me with the vineyard. And we sell all the grapes to a winery that makes a champ, well, sparkling wine. Can't call it champagne here in California. Sparkling wines. That's right. And it's corbell. So we sell it to them, but then they make the mistake of one day inviting me to see their processes. And I saw how they make it.

That engineered mind starts going to work. Exactly. I started looking at the process of how they make wine. And, you know, my favorite phrase is, hey, this ain't rocket science. I can make this. I can make this. Probably more efficiently, too. Exactly.

Exactly. And so I started, you know, a couple of years ago, start working with my own formulations and making my own wine and finally I settled on three concoctions that we have and so I started my company again everything under Tira Luna. Remember it's Tierra Luna Engineering? Remember my wife's restaurant who was called Tira Luna Grill? When we came to California and I opened up Tira Luna Engineering I handed a dollar to my wife. She said, what's this for? I said, I'm buying your naming rights of your now defunct restaurant because you're over here. You closed it down here. here's here's the dollar I'm going to call it here Luna engineering and then after that I

opened another company called Tiraluna Sellers that's what is C C-E-L-L-A-R-S Sellers dot com and then that's where I sell my wine now this is the first year we came out with it it's a direct to consumer and hopefully we'll end up being in stores and stuff later on when we have production but we're right now we're sort of just sort of just getting it out there and getting it known. And we have three varieties. You know, we have a savant blanc, which has my grapes. So if you want to drink wine from my vineyard, you'll see that savant blanc is the one to go.

And then I buy grapes from Lodi, and I make a red Zinfandel, which is also good. And then I buy grapes from the Napa area, and I make a red blend. That's a combination of Merlo, Tempranillo, Syrah, and Petit Cyril. I call that the Red Blend. And then I named them after constellations because the company is called Tearluna Sellers. But like the first one I ever made was with my grapes. So I call it New Star, which is Nova Stella. Okay.

In Latin, Nova Stella. And then the Zimvindale, I call it Stella Z. you know, Z constellation, and then the red blend, I call it Stella Rocha, this is a red star, right? And so, so, but, but yeah, it's a great, it's a great activity. I enjoy it. You know, it's kind of like another challenge that, you know, you start from nothing, and you create the labels, you create the formulation, and all of a sudden you got this nice bottle and said, you know, I'm the one that created this. This is so cool. And so, so it's, it's in job. I love doing this. I love doing this.

Yeah, that's, uh, man, you're just getting warmed up, I guess. I guess so, yes, yes. And, and then, and then to top it off, you know, my son, my youngest son, I told you he was going to UC Merced, right? Um, he got accepted to University of Pacific and he got accepted to UC Santa Barbara amongst other schools. But the three he liked was UC Santa Barbara, University of Pacific, and UC Merced. And I was certain he was going to pick Pacific or Santa Barbara, but he picks UC Merced. And I told him, why, son?

I said, why did you pick? It's fine. I said, you go wherever you want. But I'm curious, why do you pick UC. Merced? He said, well, these are the schools that are student-centric. In other words, they don't focus too much on research, but focus on the students and success.

And so I liked all these three schools. I said, but why summer said, well, the tipping point was in Pacific, it says, my brother and you are alumni. I said, yeah, that's true. And at UC Santa Barbara, my sister and you are alumni. I said, yeah. So, you know, I'm going to always be known as, you know,

the brother or the sister or the son of saying, I want to come and form my own, you know, create my own route. And I said, well, I respect that. I said, that's fine. So the Friday, Saturday we were supposed to move him in, right? And this was a few months back when the semester was starting. We were supposed to move him in, the storm and everything. But the Friday before, one day before, I get a call from the governor's office and says,

you've been appointed as a UC regent. So now I'm a UC regent. You know, overseeing the 10 UC campuses, the national labs, Lawrence Livermore Lab, falls under my purview also. So we go the next day Saturday. I thought nothing, I said, oh, thank you very much. I appreciate yes, I accept and all that.

So the following day, I go with my son and my wife, and there we are moving him in. And as we're moving him in, along comes the chancellor, his assistant, the photographer. He's taking pictures with my son and hike because I'm the new regent, you know. And my son looks up, well, he looks down on me because he's taller me.

He looks down at me. He says, I'm never going to get rid of you, am I? I said, no, you're not. So I'm also on the UC border regents. Impressive, man. impressive. Well, look, we're going on, I think, over three hours right now. Three and a half hours. Yeah, three and a half hours. Time flies, doesn't it? It does indeed.

That's probably your typical interview anyway, right? Yeah, around three something. Between three or four, yeah. Yeah, something like that. Oh, good. I'm glad I had enough material to at least meet the norms here. You met the minimum requirements. I met the minimum requirements. It's just, it's a fascinating story, and it's just unbelievable to hear. Kerry, you got any final questions? Just an incredible story. Thanks, you know, thanks for sharing all the lessons from your dad and from your story.

I mean, it's just incredible, man. Thank you. Yeah. Oh, the one thing of Miss Young, remember I told you not to let me forget about this. Oh, yeah, teacher. I was just about to remind you of that. Okay. Don't worry. All right.

All right. I'm glad you're reminded me. Yes, yeah, good, good. I'm glad you reminded me. No, I'm just kidding. I forgot. I've dropped the ball. With Miss Young, you know, one of the things is when you go off on the mission,

you get to invite 100 people in the VIP section. That's about five, six miles from the launch pad. So that's pretty close to. And for a Hispanic family, it's like, okay, which of my cousins aren't coming now, right? They're so large. But thank God I had Caucasian crewmates that didn't have quite a hundred relatives. So I was able to siphon off.

Week. I was able to siphon off a bunch of tickets. And so I had the school district look up, Miss Young, and Miss Bayo. Now, I couldn't look up Mr. Sendejas because he passed away in a car accident. But three most important teachers and also Mr. Rodriguez, he also passed away of cancer. So two of them were gone. And so I looked them up and I had them invited and flown. they were sitting next to my parents,

both Ms. Bayo and Ms. Young were sitting next to my parents witnessing in real life there the launch of the space shuttle and the impact that they had on me. I thought that was kind of only right thing to do and try to get them out there and have that experience with us.

Man. Outstanding. Outstanding. Well, you know, again, thank you so much. Thank you so much for joining us. Thanks for sharing your story. Thanks for sharing your experiences. Thanks for sharing your lessons learned.

Thank you. Unbelievable lessons learned. And thanks for what you've done for mankind to, you know, not only in the medical field and then in the final frontier of space. And then on top of that, what you're continuing to do right now with your foundations, trying to get out there and get kids pointed in the right direction. You know, we talked about what happens when kids get pointed in the wrong direction. We know how that turns out. It's horrible. and to see someone like you that we're able to overcome those boundaries and overcome the ultimate boundaries

and make it to where you've made it just so much to learn. And I just want to say thanks for coming on. And thanks for sharing. We appreciate it. Well, thank you very much. And I noticed you have a Twitter too, right? And so I want to invite people to get into my Twitter, which is Astro underscore Jose. So if you guys come and follow me.

And you're on Instagram as well. At Instro underscore Jose on Twitter. at Astro underscore Jose. And then once again, the foundation is astrojj.org. Yes. And then Tierra Luna Engineering. Tierra Luna sellers. That's where we can find you.

Yep. We can either launch satellites or we can have a glass of wine. You got us covered. And if you drink enough wine, it's probably both. Thanks, Jose. Appreciate it. Thank you, Jock. Great being here.

And thank you for the time. and you were very generous with your time and I'm glad we were able to go over my story and I hope folks enjoy it. And like I said, if they want to get some more, buy the book and read it. I think it goes well with a glass of wine myself. You got us covered.

Thanks, Jose. All right, thank you. And with that, Jose Hernandez has left the building. Man, very cool. Unbelievable story. Everything full circle with that guy. Everything. Amazing, man.

Just incredible story. Obviously, he set a high bar on a long journey. I always come out of these things thinking to myself, well, I better raise the game. I better raise the bar. I better do a little bit better. I think that's what we all need to do. K dog, what do you got? How can we raise the game?

What do we need to do? What do you got for it? So we're raising the game on a. Strategic level and a tactical level, right? All times. Check this out. Check this out. Getting it, right?

Check this out. So I'm going to start tactical, though. And that's Jock Fuel for me. RTD, go in a can. Need that hitter. Tactical solution, right? But it doesn't stop there. Yeah.

It serves the greater goal too, right? The more strategic goal, which is staying on the path, staying healthy, not polluting my body with sugar and freaking chemicals. chemicals, preservatives, additives, right? So we're doing both here with the Jocko Fuel or Jocko Go RTD cans. Check. Getting after. Ked on, right?

Rock and roll. He spent all night thinking of that, didn't you? No, bro. I just cracked this go about 20 minutes ago, and it came to me when we were talking to Jose, man. Yeah. You know, he was always moving, making little tactical moves that were serving that greater vision. And even, you know, even when it came to, when he was talking about retiring, you know,

that strategic vision was still, you know, taking care of the family. He had achieved that highest goal. And now the vision was to take care of his family, make sure they were good to go. Just rock and roll, man. It's thinking it's strategic at all time. And you're right. And I sort of talked about this with that idea of the deviation. Right.

And the acceptance of deviation. And how one minute you're like, hey, you know what, it's just one. Donut and you just start to accept it. You start to accept it. You start to accept it. Don't accept it. Don't accept it. You got to stay on the freaking path.

You can't accept these deviations from the path. You got to get. And if you deviate, look, if you deviate, get back on it. So that's where we're at. Yeah. Get something that's good for you. You can drink something that's literally good for you. You don't have to drink something that's poison for your body, which seems crazy.

It seems crazy that in this day and age, we have to tell people, You don't have to poison yourself, but people the companies that make this stuff have figured out oh, we can get people addicted to sugar We got them addicted to the rush that they're going to get and that fake dopamine hit that they're going to get and it's all lies and it's literally bad for you You might as well just go and just just hit up the local freaking drug dealer and get some of that meth going that's where you're at That's what you're doing to your body. That's what you're doing your mind. Don't do it instead get something that's literally good for you. 100%. And I've got friends who are addicted, addicted to energy drinks,

and thus addicted to everything that comes along with that energy drink. And it can lead to catastrophic failure, right? We don't want to do that. So, Jack, I go, RTD. We also have Joint Warfare, Super Cruel Oil, Discipline Powder. We've also got the new pre-workout. Got that in the sniper flavor. Jay Piedel just straight.

Just drew in the dry. What do they call it? Dry, dry scooping. He's dry scooping that. Now I've seen other people just dry scooping that. Chasing it with a sour apple sniper and scycinper. Chasing with sour apple sniper.

So legit. So yeah, get that stuff, the joint warfare, the super cruel. That's how you're going to, how to see old buddy of mine call me the other day. He goes, hey, bro, I got to ask you a question. And he's my it. I went through buds with this, a matter of fact. And he was. like, are you sore every day?

Or you're at what's going on? I go, hey man, you got the, I go, you got joint warfare? He goes, yeah. I go, you got super curly? He goes, yeah. And I go, and you're sore? And he goes, yeah. And I go, well, quit complaint.

That's as good as you're going to get. Like, you're, say, you're getting a little older. But you don't want to go off that stuff. Mulk? Got to get that mold. If you're still sore, bro, if that's that muscle soreness, the doms, get on that mulk train. Get on the mold train.

Get on the mold train. Right. So we got we got by the way speaking of milk I just got to mention this. Yeah. It's hot mulk season. Ooh. Because it's wintertime. Even here in California, look even here in California. It gets a little, look it's a little cold, a little cool in the morning time, right? So you've got to, and this is the key point is you got to warm the milk first. Don't put mulk in milk and then warm it up.

You got to warm the milk, then put the milk in. I'll do an instructional video as we approach the Christmas season. I've never done hot milk. Oh, bro. It's like hot chocolate, but it's good for you. Dang. So, stand by for that instructional video. You're good to go.

Yep, so get yourself some milk, whatever flavors you want. Vitamin D, 3. You should 100% be on that for your life. Same thing with Cold War. Oh, it's wintertime. There's germs around. Cool. Just crush them with cold.

We're fighting back on this side. Back on this side all day long. Look, you can get this stuff at vitamin shop. You can get all of it at vitamin shop. You can get the drinks at Wawa. Go hit a Wawa. Just clear the shelves. You can also get it from joccofuel.com.

And if you subscribe to any of these things, which is a good call on multiple fronts. First of all, it's a good call on the health front because now you don't wake up sore and broken because you miss joint warfare. You don't go to bed with a with a craving. your stomach because you didn't have any milk left. Don't let that happen. Just subscribe. And that's one front, health front.

Other front is financial front. If you subscribe to something, we're paying the shipping, homes. We're here for you. Get that free freight. Get that free freight going on. So there you go. Another thing that we've got is, well, we got OriginMane, Origin USA, OriginUSA. We're making stuff.

You see my post the other day? We're making stuff. We're making jeans. We're making boots. We're making geese for that Jujitsu. We're making sweatshirts, hats. Just what you need. That's what you need.

What you need. What you need. We're making it. We got a safety toe boot now. We got work, heavy duty work pants. Just what you need. And it's all made in America. And it's not just made.

This is the thing. I'm big on this right now. The made in America thing. Not just made in America, but what origin is doing right now in America, bringing manufacturing back to not just Maine now, but North Carolina, too. Where origin is and North Carolina is 30 minutes from where I grew up. That's huge, man, to know that down the road, there are kids in my hometown right now

that can go get a job at origin. Are you freaking kidding me? I'm fired up, man. We're not kidding you. Not just made in the USA, originated. Because the material originated in America. the workers originated. This is American made,

and it's how we're going to win the economic war. Absolutely. So there you go. Check it out. OriginUSA.com. Get some stuff. Get some stuff. Oh, wait, it's Christmas time. Get some stuff for Christmas.

Hey, what if you could get a gift for your friend, family member, whatever? You could get them a gift, and you could give America a gift of support. What if you made their future better because you bought, something that was American made. I'm just saying the option's there. You don't have to buy something from a communist. You don't have to do that. You can. You can. Look, you can. But you don't have to. Jack, Jack called me out in Austin straight up, saw my jeans, wasn't wearing. Oh, was it, yeah. He was like, hey, you know, we got a company that makes those in America. I was like, oh, it burned me up, right? So I got full benefit from that Black Friday deal at origin. Tell you what,

Check. Delta 68's inbound. Check. All right. So there you go. Origin USA.com. Go get some. We also have our own store, jaco store.com. We've got the Discipline equals Freedom shirts on there.

Raskards, T-shirts, hats, beanies. It is officially a hoodie season. I think we can all agree. When you're going hot mulk, you're in your hoodie season, 100%. Hout. Houty season, squat season. That's what we're doing. We've got hoodies there.

We've got women's gear. We've got Warrior Kids soap made by Aiden out there getting after it, Irish Oaks Farms, Jocko soap out here staying clean. We've also got the shirt locker. My brother Echo Charles making my brother Echo Charles, the big dog. Oh, that's the other guy that you hear sometimes. Echo Charles is making a new shirt every month and they are certified legit shirts. Certified legit. We were just at the Jocko Live.

saw, you know, troopers out there with the Warpath shirt on with the jaco riding the tank. I mean, just all of all of these awesome shirts. Get on the shirt locker. Again, subscription situation there. So subscribe to this podcast on iTunes, Google Play Stitch or wherever you're listening to. Leave reviews, man. They are hilarious. And Jock reads them.

And they're awesome. Yeah, sometimes. Sometimes they're just cool, you know, good. But sometimes they're funny. I haven't done a, I haven't done a review in a while. I'm reading one of us. I need to get back on that train. Also, we have the Jocko unraveling

that I do with my friend, D.C., we have the grounded podcast, which we haven't recorded in a long time. Is that thing dead? What are we doing? You know, we need to get it undead.

Yeah. We all are doing Jiu Jitsu. We talk about Jiu-Suituituit, I just need to hit record more often. Got a Jocco store. Goh. Yeah, we got Jiu-T-Sirts on Joccoe.com. So we'll get back to that grounded podcast. We have the Warrior Kid podcast for the warrior kids out there.

We also have Jocko underground.com. As you know, look, There's situations where we have been banned in certain scenarios. We don't like that at all. I probably got banned today, possibly, because I told people to get off their phones and get off, fight the algorithm. Fight the algorithm. How happy do you think the algorithm controllers are when they hear that?

I bet you that thing gets beat down and freaking alarms going on monetize. Yeah, they have like freaking alerts going off in brain control, mind control, brainwash central. They're like, hey, we got a rebel here. We need them put down. back. Yeah. They're fighting against the algorithm. So look, we don't know what's going to happen.

We push against the algorithm hard enough. Algorithm is going to push back. They'll push us right off. But guess what? We'll be okay. We'll be standing by at jocco underground.com where we have a little oasis set up. It costs $8.18 a month. But if you can't afford it, that's okay.

Email assistance at jocco underground.com. And we do a podcast. We do a separate podcast on there, kind of like as a thank you. You. It's a thank you. Q and A, answer a bunch of Q&A, talk about some other subjects that are tangential to what we talk about on Jocko Podcast. But most important, it just is a contingency in case something goes haywire and we have to abandon the major platforms.

It's okay. We'll be in jaco Underground.com. You can also find us on YouTube Jocko Podcast YouTube channel. Subscribe there. Got some great videos up of the podcast where you can see what you can see what you can see what you what Jocko and Echo and I and our guests look like. KDowl put himself in the mix. Hey, not bragging.

So look, when Echo, can you explain that when I talk about being the AD and kind of coming through at the critical moments? And so what Echo's done, the good tactical move, he's made it seem like that's funny. Ha ha ha. He was like, he went with that to make it seem like, yeah, Jocco is just kidding because he doesn't want, he doesn't want to say the truth, which

is, as you know, at the critical junctures, at the critical junctures, there's usually a little bit of, like, you know, that little connective tissue, right? Hey, look, Echo brings, he brings the major bulk of the muscle mass to the scenario, but that Achilles tendon, you got to get ready. So, the assistant director, myself, let's face it, sometimes I got to come in with the big win. You've seen it. I've seen it, but I will also say.

I will also say that Echo Charles is open-minded in these scenarios straight up. Luckily, he's humble enough and he knows he doesn't push back. When the assistant director comes in and makes a suggestion, Echo Charles is humble enough to say, yeah, Jocco's right again. Open-minded, open-minded, for sure. But we, so we've got those videos up on our. Our YouTube channel, Origin, also has an amazing YouTube channel where they show you what it's like to bring manufacturing back to America. Check them out on YouTube as well.

We've also got Psychological Warfare, which is an album with tracks of Jocko helping you out of moments of weakness. Highly recommended there. That's the fundamentals. You want to get reps in on the fundamentals. Go hit Psychological Warfare up. I owe another one of those albums, by the way. I know. Totally.

I got to prioritize next few. that. If you want something cool to hang on your wall, don't worry, Dakota Meyer's got you covered. Cool stuff to hang on your wall, which is all you need to say. It comes from Dakota Meyer and it's cool stuff to hang on your wire wall. Check out flipside canvass.com. Order something for yourself, Made in America, by the way. Also, got some books. Final Spin. I can't say too much about it, but let's face it. If you haven't read Final Spin, you want to. You probably need to. Go get that.

Go get that. There you go. There's your advice. Leadership strategy and tactics field manual. The code, the evaluation, the protocols. Discipline equals freedom field manual. Way the Warrior Kid, one, two, three, and four. That's what I'm trying to do.

Kids are out there. They need those books. They need to be on the path. They need to get steered straight. Unlike Carlos and Alberto and Sergio that you heard about on this podcast today. Get the kids on the path. Way the warrior kid. one, two, three, four.

There's Christmas. There's a life-changing Christmas. Is that a bold statement? No, it's not, actually. Life-changing Christmas. Get way of the warrior kid, one, two, three, and four. For all the kids that you know, make an investment. Every kid that you know, get them all four of those books.

Change their life. Get them on the path. If you got little kids, get them Mikey and the Dragons. Best little kids' books ever. Extreme ownership, dichotomy of leadership that I wrote with my brother, Lafabin, don't forget about about face by Colonel David Hackworth. I wrote the forward on the new edition. We have a leadership consultancy.

It's called Eschelon Front. We solve problems through leadership no matter what's going on. Leadership is the solution. Leadership is the solution. Go to Escalonfront.com for details there. You can also come to one of our live events. We have the muster. We have field training exercises.

We have EF Battlefield. We have the next muster is in Dallas, Texas, March 24th and 25th, if you want to come and get some of that. We also have an online training program called Extreme Ownership Academy. Leadership is not something you just learn and you're good. It's not like that. It's something that you have to train in constantly. It's something that you have to work on constantly. It's something that you improve on all the time.

It's a perishable skill, by the way. So that's why we created the Extreme Ownership Academy. Go to Extreme Ownership.com. I'm on there three times a week, two times a week, four times a week, answering questions. You want to talk to me? If you're like, oh, I'd really like to meet Chaco, just go on there. That's the other thing about this leadership skill is that it helps to have a guiding,

you know, a guiding hand, a mentor, you know, somebody who knows what they're talking about, helping you along the path. You guys do that three times a week. you and Laif, you know, on a live event, you know, J.P. Dave, the echelon front instructors guiding you through this stuff. I mean, it's a no-brainer. Yep. That's it. Go to extreme ownership.com. Come and hang out. Come and learn. And if you want to help service members active and retired, you want to help their families, gold star families, check out Mark Lee's mom, Mama Lee. She's got a charity organization doing all kinds of awesome stuff for veterans.

If you want to donate or you want to get involved, go to America's mighty warriors.org. And if you want, well, if you want more of my, what is it, marathon mumbling, which is what I seem to do, if you want more of Kerry's inquisitive inquiries, well, then you can go on the interwebs on Twitter, on Instagram. on Facebook. Carrie's at Carrie underscore Helton.

I am at Jocka Willink. And also, don't forget that at Astro underscore Jose is where you can reach Jose Hernandez. And also he has the reaching for the Stars Foundation, astroj.h.org. So you can check that out as well. And then, as you heard him say, he's got Tierra Luna and Tierra Luna sellers. Tierra Luna Sellers.com. Tierra Luna Engineering. Engineering.

Tierra Lunaengineering.com. If you want to get some help getting into space or you want to drink some wine, Jose's got you covered, which is awesome. And for all those men and women out there, right now in the Army, Navy, Navy, Air Force, Marines, thank you for keeping us safe here on Earth. And also, thanks to our police, law enforcement,

firefighters, paramedics, EMTs, dispatchers, correctional officers, border patrol, secret service, and all first responders. Thanks for keeping us safe here at home. And to everyone else out there, remember. Remember, Jose Hernandez, his family, give us an incredible example of what hard work and persistence. Twelve years of persistence, by the way, persistence can do for us. And he gave us a simple plan to follow. Identify your goal. Identify where you are in relation to that goal.

Map out a way to get there. Educate yourself thoroughly around that goal. Put in the work. People don't want to hear about that step. Put in the work. Working at a cannery from 10 o'clock at night till 6 o'clock in the morning, then go on a class at 9 in the morning. getting two and a half hours of sleep when you get to home from school going back to the canary

that's putting in work that's putting in work and finally never give up persistence persistence persistence persistence persistence 12 rejection letters i guess it was 11 rejection letters got it on the 12s 11 rejection letters 11 years of rejection and what am i doing what can i do how can i get better where can i improve and on top of all that listen it's the journey, it's the process, it's the track, it's the voyage that are the most important part. And if you go on that path, even if you don't make it to the end of the path, if you go on that path, look at how much further you are along in life. Look about how much better you have improved as a human being. So relish the struggle and even relish when you come up short,

which you will. That's part of it. Keep reaching. Keep scratching. and no matter what keep getting after it and until next time this is kerry and jocco out