ABC 7 “PAY IT FORWARD”, VIVINT.COM, HOME TOUR, SUMMER TIME.. 4TH ANNUAL BP EVENT

Wow, where do I begin? It’s almost June 1 and what a great first half of the year 2011 it has been. It has and will continue to be,  year of “first” for many new and different things, for both with my grandma gone and in my recovery. I can’t even begin to explain how blessed and grateful I am to have the Be Perfect Foundation and so many of you great, supportive individuals as a part of my life. You all have helped solidify the statement in my life, “Through tough times, adversity and change it doesn’t change who we are but merely makes us the person we were supposed to be”. Now more than ever I agree with the statement, for almost every aspect of my life and everything that I am involved with is simply “PERFECT”. Many great things have been happening in my life lately. With the semester ending at school and summer ahead it will give me a time to unfortunately be a little selfish with my therapy with adding some more time in the gym, but at the same time focusing more on the foundation prior to our Fourth Annual Be  Perfect Foundation event. My family as well as our hard-working committee is preparing for a hard-working summer to make the most memorable night in the world for all of you to attend this year’s event. It’s pretty to say that that my recovery as well as all spinal cord injury victims recoveries is an adventure and a road trip taken. Not all of us take the same path to get to and reach our goals of where we are trying to be, but no matter what their hard work and determination we are changing our lives as well as the lives of many others around us.  So for this year’s event I would like to invite all of you to The Be Perfect 4.0 Road Trip. I’ve realized that it is not about how slowly it takes to get there, so long as you do not stop and you keep pushing forward, no matter what’s thrown in your way and no matter what the circumstances are. Have you ever felt that sometimes things are just too good to be true? I am at that stage of my life right now.  Everything seems to be going so well and going my way back my motivation level right now is so high that I am determined to overcome anything that is put my way. I feel as if I’m a new person with a whole new attitude towards life and I am ready to take on the world all at once. This perseverance is because of all of you and your ongoing support that you are giving me and my foundation. This support has generated into much exposure and recognition as of recently. I am sure that you all may have heard or saw by now, that the foundation was recognized and honored on ABC Channel 7 news here in Southern California.  At the beginning of May my friend Chris Siebel and myself had saw a promotion on ABC’s news station that they were promoting the “pay it forward” campaign in honor of Oprah’s last week of the Oprah Winfrey show’s. This campaign would choose from several thousand applicants, and narrow it down to just seven finalists and winners that they would grant a $7000 scholarship each to those nonprofits and charities. Chris and I both sent in applications and nominated the foundation for this scholarship, and to our luck I received a phone call back just days later that the foundation was one of the finalist for the $7000. I was notified by one of the reporters in the ABC studio stating that they wanted to come out to the Claremont Club to do a cover story on the foundation, as they were to do for all of the finalists and then they would announce the winners the following week on television, following the first of the last three of Opera’s final shows. ABC came out and filmed over two hours worth of footage at the Club, of several SCI clients in the program, my mom and dad, Mike Albert the CEO of the Club and both Chris Siebel as well as myself. The reporter’s name was Elex Michelson and he had a great crew of cameraman and coordinators helping him. At the end of all the filming Elex and the crew asked if they could get everybody involved that they had filmed and the trainers at the Club to gather inside of the SCI studio in order to take a group picture. After we all gathered around, Elex preceded by telling me that I was one of the most inspirational stories that he had ever done and that the foundation has done many great things. He then proceeded by saying “Now I know I told you guys that you guys are one of the finalists, but you guys are actually one of the winners of our $7000 scholarships”. Hearing those words come out of his mouth was probably one of the neatest things I’ve ever been a part of. It wasn’t just about the money, but merely the exposure that we are getting on television. And I am not talking about the exposure for myself but merely further exposure of the foundation getting recognized finally for all of the great things that we all have been doing to help other people heal. Collectively all of us are huge part of making this foundation go and changing the lives of many families and many victims of spinal cord injury. The story aired on TV at 4 PM on Monday, May 23 following Oprah’s show on ABC. The whole ABC 7 crew put together a great five minute clip about the foundation and how we had received one of the pay it forward scholarships of $7000. It was a very monumental moment for the foundation, as we were seeing for the first time on national television.  This just goes to show the steps that we are taking and how we are pushing forward to finally get some national recognition and hopefully be able to expand our dollars little further to reach out to more spinal cord injury victims. I am very proud of all of us for doing the great things that we are doing, and I want to personally thank Chris Siebel for nominating the foundation and being a very influential part of getting us on TV. Another neat thing came of this, when I told Elex that I was studying communications at University of La Verne and I had an interest of doing sports broadcasting when I got older. One of his fellow colleagues at the studio happens to be Rob Fukuzaki. Rob does the sport zone at ABC 7 news station. What happens to be so ironic about this is that I met Rob a couple years ago at a Laker game, when he came up and introduced himself to me at a halftime of a game. What’s so unique about this is that Rob graduated from University of La Verne as well, with a degree in communications like myself. Elex said that Rob had asked if I would come down to the studio and check it out during one of the NBA finals games. So I can get a little taste of what Rob does for a living. I’m so excited to hopefully get the opportunity to go down to the studio and check it out and hopefully get to see a little bit of what I’ll be doing here in the near future.Exciting stuff… Another neat thing going on right now with the foundation, is how we were nominated to be on vivint.com as one of the charities that you can vote for and endorse to win prize money based off of the number of votes you get. If any of you are ever wondering how you can help out the foundation, you can simply do it with just your time and effort. I am asking all of you who have a Facebook if you can please go on to vivint.com through your Facebook and “like it”. Then proceed to go back to the vivint.com website and login to their vivint gives back program and find The Be Perfect Foundation under the Pacific region, and click on the drop-down menu and view our charity.  Then you can proceed by clicking “Endorse”, which is more or less as if you are voting for the foundation. You can do this once a day every day and help us fulfill our mission of getting up to the top spot and winning $250,000. Please continue to vote from now until August 27 and we’ll see if we can continue to help others heal by winning this money. This only takes about 30 seconds a day, and if you were ever wondering how you can contribute it is simply with your time and effort to just simply vote for us and you will  help contribute in the best way possible. Thank you to all who have and are continuing to vote. This is another example of awareness that our foundations is receiving on the national level. I can only imagine that our big break is to come through and we are to hit it big. I just want you all to understand that it does not matter how small or how big your donation is. It is simply the thought that counts and the fact that you all have and are continuing to donate to the foundation that means the world to me and two other people. So don’t begin to think that if you just give $25, or even less, or maybe even more that it doesn’t count or doesn’t matter. Any amount of money will help change the lives of others and restore hope that was lost after an injury like this. We are all changing perceptions together.I wanted to extend a huge thanks to the Hollett family, for offering up the services of their beautiful household to the foundation. About six months ago both Maria and Glenn Hollett came to my family night and said that they wanted to open their house up for the first time to the public and do a home tour. for those of you who stall or have seen their house up in North Claremont on the hills below Mount Baldy, you can understand why this would be such a big deal. day live in a beautiful 10,000 ft.² Spanish style home, on 3 acres, overlooking the valley in the city of Claremont. The Hollett’s agreed to open up the services of having a home tour at their house only under the conditions that the Be Perfect Foundation would be the beneficiaries of receiving all the money generated from it. I wouldn’t consider these people strangers but at the same time they were friends of ours that we weren’t necessarily that close with, that we would expect them to open up their homes to us. Needless to say it was an unbelievable gesture on their part and they were more than accommodating to make it a perfect night and weekend. The home tour took place over the weekend of May 13-15. On Friday night the 13th, we hosted a private dinner at the home where people paid to come and have a private tour along with the private dinner down in the wine cellar and game room area. The occasion was very well done and very presentable. All of the feedback I got was that the house in the night was simply unbelievable. The next two days on Saturday and Sunday, the house was open to the public for people to come and walk through the house and take a tour of the home and all of its unbelievable assets. Saturday was the slower of the two days but we lucked out and had a more than steady day on Sunday of people coming through the house. We lucked out and have great weather, on a weekend where we thought we may have been depleted by rain. We were fortunate enough to have a huge group of volunteers who came forward and wanted to give their time by helping out at the tour and standing in the rooms and guiding people through the house. Thank you to all of our great volunteers, helpers and shuttle drivers for an unbelievable weekend that helped generate $20,000 for the foundation. PERFECT..Thank you for the Hollett family who was more than generous by offering up the services of their unbelievable home, their time, and effort and even much support back to the foundation. It’s people like these that keep me going and keep me getting out of bed in the morning, when I begin to think that I hardly knew these people and still they offered a such a great deed. Thank you so much to all involved in a great and productive weekend. I had the opportunity as of recently to speak at two local middle schools here in the area. I spoke to both Claremont’s El Roble, and Upland’s Pioneer middle school. I had an absolute great time at both places speaking to middle school kids about life lessons, decision-making, and what the next couple years had in store for them as they transition into high school. I am hoping each kid got something out of it and hopefully are now approaching their lives with the little different perception of how grateful they should be to the things around them. If I did that, and I did my job. With another successful semester in the record books at University of Laverne, I’m excited for the summertime to really get to focus on the foundation and therapy, as I still pursue and continue on with my journey of trying to get up every single day and putting 1 foot in front of the other and taking the biggest step of my life. All of you other reason for me getting up out of bed every morning and continuing my motivation both in and out of the weight room and gym. I am and always will be continuing to fulfill my obligation for all of you by giving no matter what it is that I do in life all I have, in my pursuit of trying to be perfect. I am hoping that for all of you who have read this, that you will continue to wake up with a new sense of urgency and a renewed attitude that will help you persevere through your day no matter what type of adversity is thrown at you. I am not about the social networking thing as many of you know, but I figured I would offer up something to all of you in regards to the social networking aspect. The Be Perfect Foundation is now on twitter.  If you would like to follow us on twitter our name is BEPRFCTFNDTION.. I apologize for the abbreviated name but that is all they have left and was the closest to the foundation’s name. Make sure to check us out and to vote on vivint.com…. Thank you all for taking the time to read this and I will check back in soon. But for now have a great summer, and congratulations to all of our graduates at both elementary schools, middle schools, high schools and colleges, and always remember to pursue your dreams and never give up. And never forget to Be Perfect….. -Hal