Scott DeLuzio:    00:00:00    Thanks for tuning into the Drive On Podcast, where we’re focused on giving hope and strength to the entire military community, whether you’re a Veteran, Activity Duty, Guard, Reserve, or a family member, this podcast we’ll share inspirational stories and resources that are useful to you. I’m your host, Scott DeLuzio. And now let’s get on with the show.  

Scott DeLuzio:    00:00:22    We have faced challenges we expected and others we could never have imagined. We have shared in the heights of victory and the pains of hardship. We endured floods and fires and storms, but through it all, we have seen the beauty of America’s soul in the steel in America spine. Each test has forged new American heroes to remind us who we are and show us what we can be. We heard tales of Americans like Coast Guard, Petty Officer Ashley Leppert. Ashley was a board, one of the first helicopters on the scene in Houston during hurricane Harvey through 18 hours of wind and rain, Ashley braved live power lines and deep water to help save more than 40 lives. That was an excerpt from President Trump’s, 2018 State of the Union Address, which my guest today Ashley Leppert was honored with being not only invited to, but also got a nice little name drop thrown in there, by the President, which was pretty awesome. So anyway, welcome to the show, Ashley.  I sort of let the President do the hard work, with writing your intro for this episode, but why don’t you go ahead and tell us a little bit about yourself and your background.  

Ashlee Leppert:    00:01:34    Awesome. Well, Hey Scott, thanks for having me.  That is a pretty epic intro. I’m still greatly humbled every time I hear that. So, well, like you said, my name’s Ashleigh Leppert and I was an avionics electrical technician in the United States Coast Guard, for about 14 years only to medically retire.  I was stationed in New Orleans back in 2017 when hurricane Harvey had hit over in Houston.  I was one of the first crews out.  We did some amazing rescues and it was a complete honor to be there at the State of the Union representing such a small service.  As you know, we’re kind of the redheaded stepchildren of the military a little bit. I digress anyways. That’s a little bit of my military background.  Currently,  as I mentioned, I’m medically retired, so I wrote a book about my life and some things that I overcame, called The Hurricane Within. So now my new passion project is to really just share my story and inspire as many people as I can with some things that I’ve been able to overcome and just show my resiliency.  

Scott DeLuzio:    00:02:50    And that’s awesome. Yeah. And I appreciate you coming on the show to share some of your story.  Obviously we’re not going to give all the spoiler alerts, so all the spoilers away for your book, but enough to get everyone interested in going out and buying that book. I think just from what I’ve learned about you and your story, I think it’s really interesting and, I think it’s a great story. So, I do have to ask, what was it like getting invited to the State of the Union?  Did they call you first? Did you get a letter, did it go through your chain of command somehow? Like how did all that work for you?  

Ashlee Leppert:    00:03:32     So after Hurricane Harvey had happened, as you can probably attest to, we do our job and we don’t really expect any accolades or anything from it. We just went out, we did the best job that we could, we were very proud of what we did, but it was just like, okay, back to work, we need helicopters up in the air and things fixed. So I went right back to my normal routine, but one day I...