Last month, theCHIVE community came together to raise $150,000 for one of the best soldiers in the American Navy. It was a campaign that required a lot of help to have even a remote shot at getting off the ground. Caleb, Active Duty Special Forces, was undergoing treatment for stage 4 Right Parotid Mucoepidermoid High Grade Carcinoma, one of the rarest cancers in the world. His wife, Jenna, is pregnant with their third boy and they had just purchased a new house to support their growing family. But with Caleb fighting for his life at M.D. Anderson in Houston, the bills at home were piling up fast… “We were underwater.”
But when Marcus and Melanie Luttrell and Chive Charities set their collective mind on helping somebody, help usually arrives. It’s like the perfect storm of charity.
In addition to the flash campaign, I put my most prized personal possession, the very first Keep Calm and Chive On ever made, up for auction on Ebay. It’s the t-shirt that launched a global phenomenon. While that faded shirt had some miles and history on it, I figured it would fetch maybe a few thousand dollars. Instead, a bidding war erupted. When the dust settled after 3 days, the first-ever Keep Calm tee was auctioned off for $20,000.
And that’s where our story gets interesting.
We couldn’t wait to find out who paid such a large sum for this little piece of history. A few hours after the auction Zach Lee at The Chivery received an curious email. Zach grabbed me and took me to his computer. I had to read it twice to believe what it said. I printed out the man’s email and starting wrapping this package that’s been on my desk for a month.
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