welcome to the Kindness Chronicles, where we hope to inject the world with a dose of the Minnesota Nice that it desperately needs. Steve, you're kind of swaying over there. There's just a rhythm to the rhythm of those words. It's great. Rhythm of those words. You're saying them more sincere than, uh, sometimes you just, da da da da da da da da da. I think you're... What are you talking about? I'm KG is here with us. KG? Hello, I, I kept thinking about DeBarge and the rhythm of the night. Really?
Yeah. Yeah, that sounds good. El DeBarge. El DeBarge. And, uh, KG, you, uh, they let you out of the submarine. You sound a lot better today. Much better this week. I want to thank the fine folks at, uh, Target for once again coming up with a great solution to my, uh, Bluetooth issues. Your Bluetooth issues and our, uh, special guest this week comes to us from Semper Fi Flow, Molly Ambrose. Welcome, Molly. Hi, thank you. I'm excited to be here. Well, we're happy to have you.
You were brought to our attention by our friend Crafty Karen. Karen Liam and Karen, uh, Karen, I would imagine, is a fan of the work that you do because her son Michael, who's one of our favorite guys, is a Marine in Japan. Yes, he is. So, Molly, tell us a little bit about yourself, how you came about this great idea and, uh... How we might be able to help. Okay, well, um, my son is also a Marine. He went in in 2015. Can you just tell us quickly that story?
That was kind of fun when you shared with me the... Um, well, when my son was a junior in high school, he told he had a recruiter come to our house. But before the recruiter came over, he told me that I had to be nice because I tend to be. I have four children and five years, so they're very close in age and I tend to be a little protective and he's our oldest and he told us about the Marine Corps and we're virgins to the military.
My dad was in the Navy and that was about as far into the military as we went. Um, and I answered the door and this 20 year old kid in a uniform is standing there and there's no way that I can like, like dig my claws into him and say, you can't have my kid. He's a kid himself. He was and we let him do a steal and he left and I shut the door and I said, you're not going in. How'd that work out for ya? That didn't work out.
Uh, he ended up that weekend going to a mini boot camp up at Camp Ripley and on that Saturday night, he had his phone and he texted me and he said, these guys are crazy along with some explicit. Language, so I won't say those. This is the Kindness Chronicles. We try and avoid that language. And then he, uh, he came home on Sunday and never talked about it again. Graduated from high school. He, uh, went a year at Normandale and college and he texted me on a Tuesday.
I was a tennis pro at the time and he said, Mom, I reached out to my recruiter and I'm taking the ASVAB test tomorrow and I'm going to be enlisting on Thursday. Wow. Um, I'll be off the tennis court in two hours. You and dad and I'll talk when I get home. And when I got home, his phone was there. On the counter his keys and I said, where's Nick? And my husband says, he's not here. And I said, where is he? And he said, he's at Mac. They got him. So he, uh, I can still burst into tears.
Um, he passed the ASVAB on that Tuesday, that Wednesday and he enlisted on Thursday. And it was, um, actually he enlisted eight years ago, a couple of days ago. Wow. Wow. That's amazing. He went, he went back into the office five days later, or well, when he enlisted, they told him that was in July or June, they told him he'd be gone December 7th. You'll go to boot camp December 7th. So that's like six months. All right, we can probably deal with that. Give us time to adjust.
He went in on his birthday, June 29th, and they told him that he was going to be leaving in two weeks. And he said, my mom will kill me. And he said, tell your mom to blank blank, and you're gone in three. And he was gone in three. And I bet your mom said, blank, blank, blankety, blank. Yep, and it was the hardest day of our life when he left. But it was the best decision he's ever made. It was one, it was a great experience.
I have fantastic friends like Crafty Karen is one of my dearest friends. Um, but when he went in, I needed to do something with my energy. And so I went to a, uh, a marine mom, a Minnesota marine mom meeting, believe it or not, there's a group of us that get together and I had never been, and there are a bunch of women and they wanted to cut king sized pillows in the thirds and some, and I'm like, Whoa. I put my hand up during this meeting and I said, I'm Molly Ambrose.
My kid is new into the Marine Corps. I don't sew, nor do I have the funds to be buying king size pillows, but has anyone called Mike Lindell over at MyPillow for pillows? And all these ladies, there's about 60 of them, looked at me like I was crazy. This was a Saturday morning. By Tuesday morning, I had 50 MyPillows in my basement. Holy cow, so I had to do something, right? So I put together a care package mission and then that turned into, and that was in, I believe, I think, 2015.
The end of 2015, maybe 2016, we did that and then our daughter did it for her senior capstone project and she did 350 care packages. Wow. And we got the local kids in San Joseph donate their candy from the schools. We had all this free Halloween candy. How could I not continue to do it? What's the stuff? Well, I would just put it, I would just put it out on Facebook. And I'd say, hey, you know, I'm doing care packages. If anyone wants to drop stuff off, let me know. Here's my address.
And then people just started supporting me. Well, that turned into, uh, me going to the high school and, um, having a little misfit at Chan High School because they didn't have a wall for the military kids. What do you mean a wall for the military kids? Right, so the kids that graduate, you know, they put the wall up where everyone's going to college. Oh, I see. All that stuff. Oh, yeah. They didn't do anything for the military. So I kind of went crazy.
They put me down in the media center and this woman gave me a card that said, Colonel Bob Ayotte. Well, every time I, and he said, call this gentleman, he'll help you. Cause I was kind of like this Marine mom going crazy here, you know. Or we could say you're the crazy Marine mom going, no, I wouldn't say that. I just wanted my kids to be, kids to be acknowledged in the military. It's a scary deal, you know, I didn't know how. What, what we were getting into it all.
Um, I did call, I did call Colonel Bob Ayotte. I tried calling him several times. Every time I got to the last digit of the phone, I hung up because I could not say thank you for your service, and I could not get my son as a Marine out of my mouth without crying. So Molly, who's, Molly, who's Colonel Bob? Colonel Bob Ayotte, he's a retired colonel from the army. He's a local Chanhassen, um, gentleman. He and his family, his daughter, I'm going to say it wrong.
And I, she is very high up in the army. I should know her rank. I'm so sorry. She's down two down from a colonel. So she's probably a captain, or a major? A major. So it goes captain, major, lieutenant, colonel, colonel. Yep, she's a major. a major. Cool. Major Liz Ayotte. Jeez. Love her. Impressive. So I got to talking to Bob. I finally called him. Long story short, he told me about a couple of veteran families that needed some care packages.
I said they don't need care packages because I'm sending toiletries, Halloween candy, coloring books to the troops. These people need to be adopted. So that holiday, that Christmas, I adopted nine military families of Minnesota that were struggling. We're just kind of had a bump in the road, you know, they're heroes and they just needed someone to care and reach out and help them a little bit. And how did you identify? Um, they go through, well, Bob, Colonel Bob had, had.
Uh, vetted a few of the families. I got them through the Carver County Veteran Service offices to start and they vetted them. I never vetted any of these families, um, so I knew that they were legitimate. And then I put it out on Facebook and all my friends and neighbors and family adopted these, these families. They got thousands of dollars of stuff. It was amazing. In the following year, we did 25 Carver County families.
That were better to cover County and then that turned into me going statewide Okay, Molly. I have a question for you. So yeah, so it sounds like you have an energy That's an energy. Would you say she has energy? I love it! I was going to ask if you ever like, uh, inhale. Because there was a lot of... Ha ha ha ha! What a pause! Oh, that's great. Internet stuff. Internet stuff. Okay, Steve, Steve, ask your question.
Hold on, here's my question, Mark. So, um, it sounds like you bring yourself to this and you're a very resourceful person, obviously. My question to you is, um... So this is a, this is an act of kindness where you're supporting troops that are in other areas. You're supporting families. You came here, um, really, you, you came to that first meeting because you were missing your kid.
But what, you know, is that, what's, what's driving you to continue, um, now and what's drive, what drives the people that you want to know why? Yeah. If, if, if anything happened to my son, If he was, if, if he hit a bump in the road or just, you know, something came up, I would hope someone would scoop him up and help him out. Okay. Where's your son right now? He's here. And actually on Thursday at 11 59 PM, he will be done with his eight year contract.
Oh. So he did four years active service and now he's four years call up. So he's hanging out here waiting, you know, and, and, but when you sign up, you're signing up for eight years. Okay, so after those first four years of active duty, if you're m o s, your, what your specialty is, is you can continue or they still want you or you wanna re-up, you can. And so what was, what was your son's, what was your son's reaction? He was motor transport. Motor.
What was his reaction to this support and what are, what are some, we don't wanna hear a little more stories about, like, um, what, what, what, what are these families doing after this, you know, response to them? Well, well, um, Well, the family is, you know, I, I, okay, so really my husband and I, besides the veteran service officers are the only ones that meet the family.
The families are always anonymous, so I get them through the veteran service office or the readiness officer or wherever I have my contacts. They give me families, the families give wish lists, the families used to be, um, not know anything about it. And I would just show up with a trunk load of gifts. Um, now we kind of want the families to know that, you know, you, you don't have to worry about Christmas.
It's going to be taken care of or whatever holiday that they would, they celebrate during the holidays. We're going to take that burden from them. So what's their reaction? What's their reaction when you do that? They, uh, we show up and we open up our, the back of our Expedition Max and it is stuffed with gifts. And everything is wrapped, everything is donated, and we just drop them off and we leave. And usually they're just sitting there going, what just happened? Oh my god. Right?
I do sometimes hear, I get thank yous through the text, but really my job is to get everything coordinated, collect everything, drop it to the family, not to get involved with the family. Very cool. I don't want to kind of be magical there. But to date, we have taken care of 93 families. We have shipped over 40, 000, 4, 000 care packages. And we have, and we also adopted a veteran home in Minnesota every holiday. So we've taken care of all five of our veteran homes.
So now we're on the second rotation. Of taking them again, so that's the military. So Mike, I guess, how do you get the stuff from point A to point B? How does it get like cleared to be shipped? I can't imagine that's an easy process for you guys. I figured it out.
I put out I put out a. Uh, a list of everything I'm collecting, and then I do an Amazon wishlist, so it makes it really easy for people just to click on it, and then it gets shipped to me, and I put everything into categories, and come, uh, early, late, uh, early November, my house becomes a care package haven, I, and I do it usually myself, because it's easier, because I'm an insomniac, so I do it like two in the morning, but, uh, I Put together 25 packet boxes, and then I put stuff in each box
until they're done. Molly, are you Santa Claus? I was gonna say, it's Molly you know, families. I'm in quite a few groups. And I asked them who has a deployed... And will you ask your child if they will accept 10 to 25 packages and hand them out to people that aren't getting anything? One of the questions... That's how we do it. One of the questions that I asked you was, um, you know, what's, what's your operating budget? And your response was... Not very much.
So you're doing this on literally a shoestring budget and nobody's taking salaries. This is all volunteers at this point. It's 100% volunteer. Um, I've been doing it for seven years. Um, right now we have identified because my husband and I put about 10 to 12, 000 miles a year on our car, personal vehicles for Semper Fi Flow. So we have decided we're big road trippers.
Um, so we decided that maybe it's time to, to get flow on the go and start a campaign to try to get a sprinter van so we can go to like Camp Pendleton, Camp Lejeune, Fort Campbell, wherever their troops are coming back from deployment.
And we would like to show up with a collapsible laundry basket with cleaning supplies, laundry, Uh, laundry detergent, uh, towel, a set of towels, a set of sheets, some snacks, um, and toiletries for deployed troops with the single troops, uh, the men and women that are not married because the others go home to a house, but when they get back to from deployment, they're dropped off at new barracks with the stuff they've been carrying on their deployment. Most of their stuff's in storage.
Their cars are back at home at their home state because they've been gone nine months. So we want to be there when our son got back from nine months of being on the USS Essex. He was dropped off at New Barracks. Luckily, we were there with his car and all of this stuff. There's all the other guys didn't have their parents there. They're like, Oh my God, my car is back in West Virginia. My crap's across base at a storage unit. I love the pictures. I checked out the website today.
I love the pictures of the other guys with Girl Scout cookies and stuff. And they look like they really appreciate that. That's cool. Absolutely. Absolutely. Absolutely. So in February and March, uh, we were gifted, uh, through a bunch of, uh, Girl Scout troops and neighbors, 1, 500 Girl Scout cookies. Oh, wow. That we ice spun around and turned into care packages. That's fantastic. Um, what is your son, uh, so your son is coming to the end of his commitment to the, to the Marine Corps.
What's his plans going forward? Well, he's been home for four years now because he did his four years active. So he's, he's now, um, just working in human resources and now he's, he's expressing interest a little bit in law enforcement. Oh, very cool. Very nice. Lord knows we could use some good law enforcement out there with all the retirements. How about you, Molly? Are you going to continue? Are you going to pass that, pass it over to somebody now or? Absolutely not. Oh, cool.
Um, remember, Thank you. Yes. My, I'm holding onto this with my kung fu grip I, uh, no slowing down. This is my, this is my passion. This fuels my, my purpose of, you know, oxytocin to figure out this gives her the oxytocin boost. Yeah, it does. Absolutely. So how can, how can people support you? Molly, tell us, do you have a website? Do you have Yeah. Uh, Facebook. I'm very active on Facebook. Okay. Really active on Facebook called Emper Fi Flow. We do have a website, emper fi flow.org.
Okay. If you're a Minnesota resident, we have a PayPal, okay? Which is FY Flow 1 1 1 at gmail do com, so you can donate through there on our website. We do have a donate button. for PayPal. Um, you can go on, um, uh, Semper Fi flow. We have a Amazon wishlist. I post quite often on my Facebook page and I will also get it. We're updating our, our website right now currently. So we will be putting the donate button on the front page.
Um, being a Minnesota nonprofit, we can take money from a different state as long as we're registered in that state. Oh. Interesting. So, during the update of our website, we'll say which state. Uh, we can collect from. So where did the name Semper Fi Flo come from? Explain Semper Fi Flo. Colonel Bob Ayotte, Semper Fi means always faithful to the Marine Corps. And Flo is Florence Nightingale. Oh, oh, so it's just f l o. So back flow.
Yep. F l O. So back when we started out, he called the local Chanhassen. Villager newspaper did a story about me and he called and they interviewed Bob and he called me Semper Flow. Oh, I get it. So when we went to make that, so in 2019, um, in 2016, you know, I'm just a mom, a marine mom doing what I think is right. And in 2019, I turned it into a nonprofit. We needed a name for the nonprofit. And Colonel Bob said, you've already, but you already semper fide flow in the paper. There you go.
Branding. It's all about the branding flow. It is. And we have a cute little logo. I love it. And I want a Sprinter van so I can have her cute logo on the side. Why do I, why do I believe you're going to get that Sprinter van? I have a good chance, I have that you will have that van. You know, and I do need to tell you guys a couple things. Um, I had Bold Recovery North reach out to me.
Um, they're for alcohol and drug recovery and the Hazelton Foundation and on September 30th they are doing a mobilized recovery day of service and they're paying it forward to our military. So they, they asked me after me telling them what I do for Semper Fi SLO, they asked me if I would like to be their recipient of their Pay It Forward. So at the day of service on September, on September 30th, it's called Sobergate.
Um, and the, the, I believe the Vikings and the Wild have committed their partners with it. Um, there, there's going to be a whole bunch of stuff going on there. Where does it take place? But they will be, pardon? What is it? The Hazel team. Hazelton. I believe it's the Hazelton Foundation. Sobergate. And, and I can get you the information. Um, they're doing all the, the. Uh, media stuff this week or, or putting together all their stuff.
Um, but they will be doing hygiene package, packets for my care packages. Cool. Very nice. So they're, they can get up to a thousand people to show up at this event. It could be really huge. So yeah, that, that's. They spotted your, uh, your systems and your, uh, your way about, about putting this together and they're, they see that. You know what you're doing, so that's fantastic. Well, I just love doing it. I really do. Um, and we support the Minnesota National Guard a lot.
Uh, when we had the George Floyd incident happen, they were all, uh, told to be down here within hours. They didn't have socks, underwear, towels, nothing. We scooped in, we went over to Kohl's, and we purchased everything that they needed. Who thinks about that, John? Except Yeah. That's what you think about. I would never think about that. I would never think, Oh, those guys would never think about, let's circle back to your son. You mentioned it was a great decision.
Hindsight now tells you this was the right thing for him to do. What type of changes did you see, uh, from, from day one to maybe when he came back for the first time at the end of his tenure, uh, serving the country and how did it impact his life moving forward? He's confident. Um, I mean, we, we did a pretty good, and I'll be, I'll be honest, we did a pretty good job raising him. The Marine Corps polished him up. Oh, I love it. They turned him into a man. They made him responsible.
They taught him how to iron. You know, they taught him responsibility. They taught him make your bed. That's the first thing you do in the morning because at the end of the day, if you didn't accomplish anything, you accomplished making your bed. Well, we've got, uh, we've had the privilege of watching young Michael Liam, uh, grow into the man that he is, and he is an impressive guy. Absolutely. He's one of my favorites. Yeah, he's just such a great guy and he comes from such a great family.
His uh, absolutely. You know, dad is a retired Minneapolis police officer and, uh, I think the Marine Corps probably was the best thing that young man has ever done in his life as well. And uh, yeah. And he is a lifer. He's a lifer. So, and he's, he'll, he'll be in his 20 years where my son, he went to Japan and found himself a wife, and now he's got a little guy named Riker. His wife, Yumi, so he's, uh, Yeah, cute as can be. Well, um, Molly, we appreciate your, uh, we appreciate your time.
I have one last question and it's regarding Mike Lindell. So Mike Lindell gets some bad press, you know, and, you know, just keeping the politics out of it. Did you, like, connect with Mike Lindell himself or how did that go down? I just cold called his company and I told him, Hey, this is what I'm, I want to do some care packages for the military. And you know what? I need to tell you something about Mike. Politics aside, you can feel however you want. I don't get into politics.
I have a rule on that. Um, but he has donated over a thousand travel size, my pillows and covers for my care packages. He also has paid for two rounds of our shipping, which is over 7, 000 a time. They are 22 a box. So I put in these boxes, um, you know, uh, uh, pads of paper, pens, color crayons, coloring books, toiletries, candy. If we get the, my pillows, they get a whole, uh, we, we do the Christmas. So they get a Christmas ornament or some sort of holiday themed item in there.
They get foot powder. Anything you can imagine that you need when you're out there is what We, we put in these boxes, they're 22 a piece to ship. Isn't that a crime? Well, they're going to our troops. And we have to pay 22 a box. Well, they don't, they don't get there for free. I mean, you've got people that are handling them. I, you know, I guess. Absolutely. I guess I understand. Mike did pay for those. My daughter's capital. Stone projects.
He shipped out 350 care packages and we had no idea how we were gonna ship them. And then all, and I told my daughter, I'm like, Megan, figure out you gotta start calling companies and getting some money because it's gonna be expensive. You got three 50 care packages in our basement. Wow. 20 minutes later.
The phone rings and a, and an angel named Caitlin Gamlin called and she's like, Molly, this is Caitlin over at MyPillow and we're just wondering how are you going to ship all these care packages? And I said, I, I don't know. And she's like, let's figure out how we can pay for that. Wow. And they did. Well, that is, uh. And they did it again the following, that was in spring. Of, uh, I believe 2017, and then the fall of 2017, he paid for my holiday ticket also. Which is another 300 care packages.
We work really hard not to address anything political, and people have opinions of uh, Mr. Lindell, but uh, that story should tell you something about the man. But I'll tell you another thing is, the number one thing that we get thank you'd for is the pillows. Interesting. They're a godsend for the guys that are out in the, and gals that are out in the field. Yeah. You know, usually they're crumpling up their, their camis or something to put under their head. Well. So, it's pretty awesome.
Go out and uh, go uh, go check out uh, Semper Fi Flow. And, uh, maybe go buy a MyPillow to support, uh, Mr. Lindell. Alright, it was great talking with you, Molly. Thank you, Molly. It was wonderful. Great work. Look forward to visiting with you. Thank you very, very much. Alright, thanks.