1KHO 835: Good Moms Do Not Allow Their Children to Play Roblox | Nic McKinley, DeliverFund

**Ginny Yurich** (0:00)
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Welcome to The 1000 Hours Outside Podcast. My name is Ginny Yurich. I'm the founder of 1000 Hours Outside. And today, I'm so excited about this. Tech entrepreneur and evil crusher, Nic McKinley. Welcome.

**Nic McKinley** (1:28)
Hey, thanks for having me.

**Ginny Yurich** (1:30)
We are going to be talking about some in-depth things today. This might be one you want to listen to without your kids first, and then come back. We're going to be talking about some pretty deep topics here about human trafficking and safety of kids online. Nic, I would love if you go way back. So you talk about your life story, and you were rescuing people kind of all along, all the way back to Montana.

**Nic McKinley** (1:54)
Yes.
I like to say I was a rescued kid who then started rescuing. I actually was orphaned when I was very young. I don't exactly know what age, sometime in my twos.
I came from a pretty rough environment, and was in the foster system, and then was adopted by who I consider my parents, some incredible people who then obviously changed my life. They rescued me. Statistically, I should be dead or I should be in prison. Instead, I have really been, just by the complete grace of God, afforded the opportunities to do some incredible stuff. So why not use all of that skill and capacity to then go help to rescue other kids? So yeah, I grew up in Montana. I was a ski patroller when I was in high school as a volunteer, and it was a real popular decision around the dinner table at the time when I decided that I wanted to go straight into the military instead of going into college. But I went into the Air Force, became an Air Force pararescueman. So that's the, if anybody's unfamiliar with it, it's the Air Force's ground special operations component that is responsible for rescuing pilots who are down behind enemy lines, special forces guys, SEALs, whoever gets themselves into trouble and needs to be rescued. That's what Air Force pararescue teams did. So I got to do that for a number of years and then transition to the CIA.

**Ginny Yurich** (3:29)
So starting at 18, you served for 11 years, but starting at age 18 as a pararescueman, and then before that, rescuing as a ski patroller, this is going to be such a dumb question and I don't know another way to say it.
Did you rescue a lot of people? Like is it something that happens often?

**Nic McKinley** (3:48)
So it depends on, so yes and no.
So in, you know, when I was a ski patroller, right, I mean, I was just a volunteer high school kid who was trying to cut his teeth and learn. And so I was obviously not the primary on any rescue, right? There were professional ski patrollers, there were paramedics who were doing that. But I participated, I would say, almost every weekend and somebody got hurt and had to be evacuated off the mountain to a higher standard of care. And then same thing when I was in Air Force Pararescue, the missions that PJs do, it's not like a, you know, paramedic firefighter on an ambulance where they're responding to car crashes and they're kind of doing a rescue, if you will, every single day. PJs, the most highly trained rescue personnel in the world. And so we're really called in when, like, nobody else can do it. You call in the PJs and the PJs get it done, right? So the world record for the highest altitude mountain rescue, I think, was on Mount McKinley. I don't know if it still is, but it was the Air Force Parachute Team in Alaska that has that world record. You have, when the Coast Guard can't-