Southwest Flavor Ep. 153 - David Corrado, Amber Eghtesadi

**Ron** (0:00)
Good morning, everyone. Welcome to Southwest Flavor. Happy Tuesday to all of you. We have a great show lined up for you. This is episode 153, and our first guest is Dave from Tucson Hearts of Gold. Welcome.

**David Corrado** (0:12)
Good morning, thank you.

**Ron** (0:13)
Good morning. How are you doing today?

**David Corrado** (0:15)
A bit nervous, actually. I've never done a podcast before, so it's my first one.

**Ron** (0:18)
Well, thank you for joining us today.

**David Corrado** (0:20)
Thanks for allowing me to be here.

**Ron** (0:21)
Appreciate it. Yeah, yeah.

**David Corrado** (0:22)
Representing Tucson Hearts of Gold.

**Ron** (0:24)
Tell us a little bit about yourself first.

**David Corrado** (0:26)
A little bit about me. My name is David Corrado.
I wasn't born in Tucson, but I'm pretty much a Tucson native. I've been here since I was a little kid.

**Ron** (0:33)
Okay. You said you went to CDO.

**David Corrado** (0:35)
Did. Elementary, junior high, high school. I hear U of A grad.

**Ron** (0:39)
Cool.

**David Corrado** (0:39)
I was in the Army National Guard for the state of Arizona, Arizona Reserves, and then I was also a Tucson police officer for 21 years.

**Ron** (0:47)
Oh, wow. Okay.

**David Corrado** (0:49)
Yeah.

**Ron** (0:50)
You gave a lot to Tucson.

**David Corrado** (0:52)
Mom would say I gave a lot, but I support my community and my country, so.

**Ron** (0:56)
Yeah. And then now you're with Tucson Hearts of Gold.

**David Corrado** (1:01)
Correct. I'm on the board of directors for Tucson Hearts of Gold.

**Ron** (1:03)
Okay. All right. Tell us a little bit about that.

**David Corrado** (1:05)
Yeah, no problem. So Tucson Hearts of Gold, it's called tucsonheartsofgold.org. It's a family outreach foundation for primarily Tucson police officers. Excuse me.
Started back in 2008 We were under a different 501C3 charity organization called Salif at the time. But basically, we had an officer's child who was dealing with a terminal illness. And at the time, back in the day, officers, we have briefings every morning, our debriefings in the afternoon, and we take off the hat and pass it around, and everyone throw bucks in there, a couple bucks here and there. And that was the way we supported our fellow officers. But we thought there's got to be a better way, a better system to help officers in time, in their time of need.
So this is how it got started back in 2008, and then gradually grew throughout the years. And then in 2000, I think, I believe it was 2019, we founded our own separate 501C3 shared organization, and separated from the previous nonprofit.

**Ron** (2:09)
Okay, wow. We're talking off air that police officers are great at helping other people, but they're not so great at always helping themselves, or asking for help for themselves or their family.

**David Corrado** (2:22)
Correct. So the whole idea behind the foundation is it's when an officer struck with a catastrophic incident, either illness, sickness, financial burden, something of that nature, the income comes to us for our financial assistance. And so it doesn't just include the officer, it includes their spouses or their dependent children as well.

**Ron** (2:42)
Right. Yeah, you were talking about that police officer hit a child that had a dire need.

**David Corrado** (2:48)
Correct. And so a lot of our financial assistance requests are usually to do with family members, not just the officer. So we get a mix. Sometimes it's the officer, sometimes it's their spouse, or sometimes it's their children.

**Ron** (2:59)
Right. And sometimes there's officers that are in need that maybe become disabled or something from the job, right?

**David Corrado** (3:08)
Correct.

**Ron** (3:08)
And that's times when you help them with that.

**David Corrado** (3:11)
Yeah. So as long as they're a member of Hearts of Gold, they can come to us when they're struck with that catastrophic incident in their life. So.

**Ron** (3:18)
Right, right.

**David Corrado** (3:19)
And it's it's changed leaps and bounds from when it first started. You know, so we're allowed to, based on our rules and our metrics and, you know, our guidelines, basically, we're allowed to, you know, help officers out a lot more than we did in the past. You know, we're allowed to hire, I guess we'd say limit amount per year. So.

**Ron** (3:38)
Okay.

**David Corrado** (3:39)
But so.

**Ron** (3:40)
How do you guys fundraise?

**David Corrado** (3:42)
So we fundraise. So a couple of ways we fundraise is, the whole idea behind Hearts of Gold is, has to be a buy-in from the officer. So we ask officers to donate a monetary amount as low as $5. We prefer $7 to $10, but as low as $5 per paycheck.