This episode offers a sobering examination of the catastrophic fires that have ravaged parts of California, particularly focusing on their impact on horse racing . Peter Thomas Fornatale and Shannon Kelly engage with Jodie Vella-Gregory and Kristina Schulz, who provide firsthand accounts of the crisis, detailing the urgency and fear experienced during the height of the fires. The conversation reveals the immediate response measures implemented at Santa Anita, where a crisis plan was swiftly executed to ensure the safety of horses and personnel alike. From there, Jodie Vella-Gregory highlights the 1/st team's initial response to the crisis and how it organically evolved into a way to help the community as a whole.

Throughout the show, listeners learn about the amazing job the 1/st team did in delivering crucial support to affected individuals, detailing the various forms of assistance available. Shannon Kelly also informs listeners about the role of the Jockey Club Safety Net Foundation in the crisis so far and the recovery yet to come.

This episode not only highlights the challenges posed by natural disasters but also showcases the strength and unity of the racing community as they rally to support one another.

Takeaways:

• The ongoing crisis in California due to fires has deeply impacted the racing community.
• Shannon Kelly discussed the scope of assistance provided by the Jockey Club Safety Net foundation.
• Eyewitness accounts reveal the harrowing experiences of those affected by the California wildfires.
• The collaboration among various organizations showcases the racing community's commitment to support each other during crises.
• The Safety Net foundation is prepared to assist individuals in the racing industry for the long term.
• Efforts to help the broader community during the crisis reflect the racing community's strong ties and responsibility.

Hello and welcome to another edition of the on the Lead podcast, a joint venture between in the Money Media and the Jockey Club.

I'm your host, Peter Thomas Fornitel.

Very happy to be with you for an episode where we're going to be talking about some things that are not so happy.

We're going to be tackling the ongoing crisis in California in terms of the aftermath of these fires.

And to do it with me, I'll bring in my regular co host who is really in double duty today because not only is she the co host, but she's here in the capacity of her day job, as it were.

I speak of Shannon Kelly.

Shannon, how are things with you?

Hi, Pete.

Do I have to interview myself?

Like, answer and like, as if I was Lindsay Lohan in the Parent Trap playing two twins.

I'll be over here in the corner.

I'm so glad to be doing it.

Obviously, like you said, it's a tougher topic, it's a serious topic and it is very near and dear to what I do on a daily basis.

So for those that don't know me beyond your lovely co host, I am the executive director of the Jockey Club Safety Net foundation, which is the charity underneath the Jockey Club's umbrella that helps the people of horse racing.

That was certainly very much at play with the recent news.

We're going to talk to a couple of guests today who have firsthand experience, but maybe this is a good time to talk a little bit wide angle lens, Shannon, about your role in the crisis from the chair that you sit in here in New York City with, of course, your heart going out to all our friends in California.

Yeah, I think it's a really good example to talk about what the Safety net does and how far our scope really does go.

The Jockey Club Safety Net is a charitable trust.

It assists people in horse racing and we assist people in all aspects of horse racing.

So if you work on the front side, you're on the backside, you're a groom, you're a hot walker, you are a exercise rider, you're a jockey, you're a trainer, you work at the breeding farms, you're a mutual clerk on the front side, or you work in facilities.

All of those people, if you work in horse racing, can apply to us for help.

Our help really comes in many forms.

I would say 90% of the type of help that we give, especially at least now, is what we would consider basic living needs.

So that could come in the form of rent, electric bills, car bills.

The other part of the type of help that we're giving is outstanding medical bills, co pays, things like that.

We have two types of assistance.

We have a monthly assistance program where you have about 30 people who get a check from us on a regular basis.

And then we have people in these one off situations.

Sometimes we have say a groom who gets the flu and he's out of work for four weeks and needs help paying his rent or putting food on the table.

That's something we can help with.

Or an exercise rider that might have an injury while working a horse.

We can help with the outstanding medical or ubers to get to the doctor, whatever it might be.

So our scope is really vast.

So when everything happened in California, of course, instantly I got in contact with all of my network out there.

It's very important to what we do in order to have a very big network with other industry organizations and charities.

And that's what makes us really unique.

We have contacts in all of these racing jurisdictions, whether it's their benevolence, association with the horsemen, or it is a chaplaincy or it's a clinic.

We have contacts at all of these racetracks and at the farms and they come to us when they need some added assistance.

And Safety Net, because of our scope being broad, can really help.

When the fires happened, I instantly got in contact with Jodi Bella Gregory, who's going to be on our show and said what can we do?

And just opened up the lines of communication and that is the first step.

And now we're ready and able and we'll talk a little bit about what the future looks like and how Safety Net's going to help.

But the phone lines are already open and we're ready and prepared to take on any cases that might come out of California because of the fires.

I assume this has been a particularly busy time for you or does it take a little while for you guys to be able to get involved and offer direct assistance?

That is a great question.

And I will tell you, yes, it does take time.

Oftentimes in all situations when we there's a mass rush right to the Internet of being like, oh my gosh, someone got hurt, something bad happened.

Safety net, can you jump in?

And yes, we can.

But it's very important in these types of situations where help could be needed long term and extensively to almost allow the dust to settle a little bit so that we can evaluate the situation and figure out what's the best course of action.

Are they somebody that just needs immediate help with now or are they going to be someone who this is a long road of rebuilding their lives.

We definitely take a bit of a pause and then we say, okay, let's work with our contacts and say, what can we do next?

So, yes, it wasn't crazy phone ringing off the hook.

It's just making sure that our donors and our board and our staff are aware that these cases could start really flowing in over the next couple of months.

And I love that approach, just because that's going to be a much more efficient way of spending money and helping people as opposed to just throwing money at a problem.

You're doing it in a more strategic way.

I like that idea.

We've talked before, Shannon, on these airwaves and just offline too, about the idea of horse racing as kind of a microcosm for the world and for businesses everywhere.

And I think this is an interesting example of an area where horse racing maybe does it better because we have this safety net idea baked into the cake, as it were, due to the work you're doing.

I just wanted to personally thank you for doing it and for being part of what I think is one of the best things the Jockey Club does, because it just doesn't really exist in the outside world in the same way.

Is that fair to say?

I would completely agree.

I would say on the one hand, horse racing is so unique that we do have so many charities and benevolence organizations and assistance resources.

And one might say, is that a good reflection on the sport?

And I would turn it and say yes, because we take care of our own.

Our issues sometimes are very unique to the world with when we work, issues that pop up that you don't necessarily see in other worlds, like the fact that this industry is a 365 job for a lot of people in inclement weather with, you know, horses that can be very temperamental.

It opens us up to a lot of situations.

And that's why I think this situation in California just shows that while we have our own unique issues and things to tackle, we're also not immune from the bigger world at large of what can happen.

And I think our name kind of lends to that.

Right.

Most people don't have a safety net built in for emergencies of any kind.

And I would say that horse racing is not immune to that.

And so to have a foundation like ours whose scope is so broad, it allows us to really be that for people in this industry that cannot have it.

So we actually are inherently prepared for situations just like this.

I think that shows in the work that you do and it's going to show throughout the course of this episode.

All right, you can stop being a guest and get ready to go back to being a co host because we've got some great questions for some people who were out there, boots on the ground.

And it's going to be a perspective that people are going to really appreciate and it's going to make this thing that you've read about, it's going to make it real and I'm looking forward to learning more.

We will be back talking, just you and me, at the end of the episode because I do have a few more questions for you.

So don't get too complacent on me in your co host role.

Oh, I have to take off my hat.

Okay, fine.

That's fine.

Let's jump in.

Foreign.

Show.

Very happy to be joined by somebody I've known in real life for a few years now from trips out to Southern California.

She is now the VP of Industry relations for First Racing.

She's Jody Vella Gregory.

Jody, how are things?

Things are good, Pete.

I know we've only known each other just a couple years, right?

We're not exposing how old we are here.

We know how.

I love that.

I wanted to talk to you about this crisis, specifically from a Santa Anita perspective.

I wanted to go back to the moment that you found out what was happening and ask you about Santa Anita's role in deciding how to proceed with this tragedy.

I think even living through it, it's hard to comprehend like how that day when it first started unfolded.

Think of like hurricane style winds, like 100 mile an hour winds but like with a fire.

And I wish I was exaggerating, but it was very intense.

It was scary.

Anyone that was evacuating is driving or trying to get somewhere and you're literally driving into like full blown trees that are in the middle of the road, doors off of fences and homes and painting that picture.

And then obviously Santa Anita and the community that lives on site with the horses and the people and the employees and everybody, I mean, it immediately jumped into crisis mode because ultimately it's a massive property.

There's a lot of moving parts.

I don't think anybody slept for hours, days actually going into it because it was, it was monitoring.

We didn't know where the fire was going to go.

We had no idea.

I mean there's no rhyme or reason.

We couldn't predict where, where things were going to happen, what was going to happen.

And so we just sort of started having these hourly, bi hourly calls trying to come up with a crisis plan.

Plan to evacuate horses, humans, make sure the employees were taken care of.

Definitely a community and it's definitely a really large family.

Unfortunately, we're seasoned in crises.

I knew that the team would come together and do what they needed to do, which is exactly what happened, but just never want to be in that situation.

How close did you guys come to evacuating?

Any perspective you can give on how those decisions were made, I think would be interesting to hear.

Obviously there was a lot of just seeing how things were going.

We were all using certain apps and resources, the resources that were given to the local communities of like, look, you have to evacuate, you don't have to evacuate, you might have to evacuate.

Like it was very like real time and obviously that was getting monitored very, very quickly and right away.

We did put in if anybody wanted to evacuate their send their horses down to San Lu Rey or Del Mar or anywhere that had availability.

We did have horses, some horses go to San Luis Rey.

We immediately gave that option.

We would help pay for them, we would get them sorted.

We had vans and trucks and everybody like on the ready to go.

And some trainers did do that immediately just for precautionary, even though that wasn't a mandatory at that stage.

And so basically our crisis plan was should the evacuations get to a certain level or into a certain area, that would be mandatory evacuation for us, even if we weren't in a mand evacuation area.

Because as you know, just logistically thinking or speaking, it's a lot of moving parts.

Like I said, there's a lot of horses, a lot of people.

That's not just something you can bring in a couple vans for and problem solved.

So even if we weren't in a full mandatory evacuation, we had to start thinking if we got to this point, then we had to start doing it because it would obviously be a very large undertaking.

Luckily we didn't get to that.

But I mean, it was, it was very touch and go to that point.

From the people perspective.

Santa Anita has such amazing on site resources, both provided by First Racing and Santa Anita staff, but also the other charities and horsemen organizations that are based right on site at your racetrack.

So if you could give a little insight into how that all factored in how the different organizations like the cthf, the cdc, the toc, all of those groups had to come together in order to be prepared for the next steps.

The crisis does actually bring a lot of people together.

And everything we do in horse racing, I think we've shown Time and time again, we're stronger when we're actually working together and coordinating efforts.

There was no hesitation in any of this.

To your point, the cthf, the Winners foundation, the chaplaincy, the ctt, the toc, all of us, like, we did come together.

How would we fund this?

Where are we able to put the horses?

I mean, all of the properties, like Del Mar, San Luis Rey, Pomona, we were all on calls just trying to make sure that we had enough stalls for horses.

Should we have to evacuate everybody and then same with the people as well.

Obviously a priority there.

Do we have hotel rooms that we can reach out to?

Do we have airbnbs?

Are there facilities that we can make sure people have a safe place to go to?

Even just like something where, when San Anita wasn't in the direct line of fire and we were past, like, that crisis point, we opened up the facility to anyone that needed the services here.

We ended up actually providing housing in the jockey's room and in the quarters there for, I think, 22 firefighters that came in from, like, Idaho and just people that needed places to stay.

Like, we are obviously a massive facility, so any resources we had, we just wanted to make sure that they were available to people.

But, yeah, to your point, it was like all of the different stakeholders came together and we all just had a plan.

I mean, this is our home.

This is our livelihood.

This is just.

It's bigger than anything, you know, making sure these people and horses are taken care of.

I want to drill down a little bit more, Jody, on that pivot between your concerns, Santa Anita's concerns being, are our people going to be okay?

What do we have to do for our people to that outreach to the community beyond the backstretch?

Because that's fascinating.

And while it's certainly been talked about and reported, I don't think it's been emphasized enough, that idea that at some point there was a realization made, hey, we have room.

We can help this community at large.

How did that transition happen exactly?

We literally just celebrated our 90th anniversary on December 26th.

We're in our 90th year.

We were entrenched in the community around us.

This isn't just a racetrack.

We have to take care of all of our own and anyone that supported us and the people that are around us.

And the pivot wasn't even a second thought.

It was okay.

Like, we could technically race.

We could.

That weekend.

Basically, the only thing that would have potentially stopped us was the air quality.

And air quality levels were actually, like, not that bad.

I mean, there's the CHRB and like, the heista rulings of that.

And technically we could have raced.

But I mean, the community, the people, everything, like, we needed to keep everyone safe.

And I think we was just so much bigger than just that weekend.

And the pivot just happened because we're like, hey, we need to take care of the community around us as well.

And we have these facilities.

Basically how we ended up being the massive, like, donation and center where we were just helping people by giving out free food and donations and everything.

Like, that was.

This particular organization was actually at the Rose bowl and it was sort of like a grassroots pop up.

They're like, hey, we also want to help the community.

How can we do that?

So they decided to go to the Rose bowl because, like, that's obviously a big space.

But the Rose bowl was also getting used as a command center for the firefighters to be, like, sent out as well and kind of like a home base.

And just like, seeing how many people ended up coming here, like, it just wasn't possible to have both of those things coexisting.

They got in touch with us at Santa Anita.

We actually had said, hey, like, yeah, come look at our space, but come look at the space was literally like them just packing up and bringing everything over.

And within a couple hours, our team.

I wish I could yell from the rooftops how amazing the team is at Santa Anita.

Not even being biased.

Like, they just were like, this is what we have to do.

This is how we need to take care of the people in the community.

And with ours, we had tents set up.

We were giving out free food.

All of the food that had been prepped for that weekend at Santa Anita got redirected to the service, basically to the community.

We had tents set up for medical services.

And I think that next day we had at least 100,000 people come through and probably even more that Sunday.

The pivot, like I said, it just wasn't even a second thought.

It was, we are entrenched in this community.

The community is in need, and we need to do something about it.

Pivot wasn't a pivot.

It was, we're part of this community.

What can we do to help?

That's amazing.

I love that on the ground perspective.

This wasn't just going to be fixed within a couple days, right?

There are people that are rebuilding.

There are people that lost their entire homes.

This is going to go on for, like, months and years.

And I do just have a lot of respect and a lot of gratefulness for the people that did reach out and donate, I definitely want to give like a shout out to the Glen Hill Farm, the Lavin Family Foundation.

Craig Bernick did reach out immediately and said his family wanted to help support the racing community.

And they just started sending so many, like, donations from Chicago, like pallets and pallets and pallets, because.

And now we're just storing them and giving them out as needed because like I said, the rebuild and trying to get people's lives put back together is going to take a lot longer than just those couple weeks of crisis.

And, you know, at that point, there's also people that lost everything.

They weren't able to take this stuff anywhere.

You know, they didn't, they physically didn't have a place to take these items.

So just having this as something that's ongoing is really helpful and so much gratitude for that.

Appreciate the shout out to our friends at Glen Hill Farm.

We talk on this podcast sometimes about different colors we like to root for.

There's a lot of them, but the orange, white and black are certainly among them.

And a little bit later in the show, we're going to be talking about safety net and ways people can give an earmark money to continue to help the cause in California.

Jodi, really appreciate your time today.

Thank you.

Next up on the show, I'm very happy to welcome in the associate director of catering and event planning from Santa Anita, Christina Schulz.

I wanted to start off with a basic question about your background.

What is your history with Santa Anita?

So my history is I was born and raised and bred in Altadena.

So is my father and my grandparents.

He loved the track, so he would bring me when I was.

I always remember when I was 4 or 5, we'd go to Clocker's Corner and we'd watch the horses train and I'd get hot cocoa and a donut.

It was just a real, real fun time for me and my dad.

My dad and I were very close all through his life.

Oh, that's great.

We love stories like that.

And then at what point did you have the opportunity to be employed by this place you had such warm memories of?

I've been here for about a little over two years now.

I got the opportunity, the best thing ever was to come here.

Just it's a true family here, especially with what I've recently gone through.

And I couldn't even ask for more than what they've done in Sanita.

And everybody has done it first for me and my family, there are so.

Many People that work in all different aspects of putting on a race day.

Right.

We talk about that at Safety Net all the time.

Our help helps people backside and front side.

So you would represent a part of a community that maybe doesn't get a ton of talk about that makes the wheel go round.

Right.

And how much of that community lives outside of the racetrack.

So when this issue affected this area, specifically the area of Altadena, which is such a stone's throw from Santa Anita, but was such negatively affected by this fire.

Tell us, you know, your story, what happened to give our listeners a little bit of an idea of somebody in our racing community who was affected by this.

The day that the winds picked up, I was at work.

We just kept hearing the winds were going to be hurricane style winds.

My house, it's backed up against the mountains.

I do have horse stables behind me.

I left, it was about 4:00 and I said, you know what?

The winds are getting really bad.

I need to button down the hatches.

I need to check on my neighbor with the horses in the back, make sure they're okay because we're very close.

The wind was just really bad.

I was home with my mom and my kids and then the fire started at about 6, 6:30.

The winds were even worse.

My mom is handicapped so I had to think about her first.

So I was making arrangements of where.

I didn't know what to do.

The winds were just whipping.

They were like 80 miles an hour.

At like 8 o'clock I got my mom to safety.

The horses being carted out.

I was seeing the horses go down the street.

I was seeing some neighbors go down the street.

I actually do have three homes in Altadena.

Every one of them burned down.

I'm sorry, this is a little hard.

9:00 came and the fire was still on the, on the east side of Lake Avenue.

I'm on the west side.

So I was listening to the firewatch.

I had that going.

We still had electricity.

I got my cats to safety.

I still had my dogs and my two sons.

We were watering down the house.

10 o'clock hit, the transformer blew and we had no power.

I didn't know what was going on.

I didn't know where the fire was.

I could just see the glow.

Just kept doing what I had to do.

I've lived there my entire life.

I've been through fires.

I've seen the fires.

The fires never went that far down.

And I'm not, I wasn't that far down.

I was up against.

But My other house was further down when the fire jumped and came and the wind shifted.

I was there until 3:30am just really trying to do what I could do to water down my house.

I was watering down the neighbor's house.

We were all there.

The whole town was up there trying to save our homes.

And at 3:30 when the fire was right behind my house, we had to go.

It was not a matter of fact of we can probably save the house.

There was no time.

The ash was, and the smoke was so heavy that it was like snow.

Trees were falling around me.

We were all trying to get out.

I mean, if you could ever imagine hundreds of people trying to run from a fire.

I never thought in my lifetime I'd ever have to go through something like that because it had never come so close to us.

It's been close, but everything was gone.

The fire was so hot.

Thankfully, my family, my extended family that was in another house, my daughter and my grandson, all of our animals, we got them all.

Unfortunately, we didn't get anything else.

First of all, thank you so much for sharing a harrowing story.

I mean, this is real life horror movie stuff and it's terrible, but I mean, that is a blessing and it's wonderful to hear that you were able to save the things that were the most important.

And I hope that gives you some comfort in this very difficult.

It does.

Just knowing that, you know, everybody's, you know, that my family's safe.

I wasn't.

We lost neighbors that no one told us to leave.

And that is what was so hard.

The old, some older neighbors didn't know they were sleeping in their beds.

I'm so happy that, you know, I was able to get my family out and be able to tell everybody we've got to go now.

We talked about in the intro the importance of this community and the race and community coming together for each other.

And I would love to just hear your reaction to what it's meant to you to have your co workers, your work, family, as we like to say in racing, come together for your family.

And does it give you hope as you begin this journey of rebuilding that they have your back?

Yes, it gives me a lot of hope.

I was with Marriott for 30 years before I came to Santa Anita.

When this happened, of course, you know, the first thing I thought about was have to call work.

I'm sure they know.

But the outpouring support from everybody, it was incredible.

I mean, Jody reached out, Amy reached out, Janine.

So many people.

What do you need?

And at that Time, you really don't know what you need.

And just the small tokens of the things that they did for me.

My co worker, Chelsea, she goes, don't worry about it, Christina.

They're like, take care of you, take care of your family, worry about us.

We'll be fine.

That meant the world to me because I could sit back and say, okay, they have my back.

And that was the most amazing moment in my life during that day.

Knowing that sanity takes care of their own.

They support us.

We're family.

The racing community reached out.

It was people I didn't even know.

They found out and there were.

Christina, you know, we.

You may not need something now, but when you do, let us know.

That was.

That's one thing that's very hard, is that, you know, I'm trying.

I have to rebuild homes and I have to find a place to live.

And I.

My needs aren't now, they're in the future.

And knowing that there's resources for the future to help us that need the assistance that's so important right now.

Oh, that's great that you feel that support from the safety net.

And I was gonna.

It leads directly into what I was gonna ask you next, which is what happens from here in terms of the community and decisions about rebuilding and how that works and how you're involved in it.

I am gonna rebuild.

This is my home.

As I mentioned, born and raised.

I've never wanted to go anywhere else.

San Gabriel Valley is the most beautiful place to live.

You have the mountains right there.

You have the ocean 45 minutes away.

It's going to be a long ride, though.

It's.

It's a long process.

I'm going to get through it.

And with the support that I'm having and I'm getting from everybody, I know that if I fall down, I have somebody that will pick me back up and say, christina, you're strong and you can keep doing this.

And sometimes that's what you need when you're going through something like this.

And I mean.

And I don't feel alone.

And that's important.

Not feeling alone in this.

This is a bit down the rabbit hole.

But has there been talk about a way to sort of build a firebox around the community to make it safer, given the way the conditions have changed over the years?

I mean, are people thinking about it on that level in terms of what could be safer for the future?

Yes.

So there are.

I've been looking into as far as rebuilding my home, where I'm going to have.

I'm going to fireproof that.

I'm gonna have some sprinklers.

I have a fire hydrant that's on my property.

I just don't know if it works.

It's been there forever.

It might not work, but I'm gonna actually have the fire department come up and see if it works.

There's certain the eaves, there's things you can put over the eaves that embers cannot go in at all.

So there are some things I will be doing to change.

My houses were wood because they were built in.

The one was in the 40s, one was in the 50s, and the other one was in the 30s.

They were blocks and they were wood, so they just went up real quick.

So whatever I do, I have a great friend and he's a contractor, and him and I've been talking, just really making sure it's safer for next time.

And a lot of people are doing that we've been doing through the community.

Just talking to everybody that is in our Altadena community and the people who are going to rebuild, and there's a lot of us, we're not going to let Altadena turn into a.

A housing community that looks the same.

We want to be unique like we were, and the.

The community is just.

We've all come together and really embrace each other and we just help each other as much as we can, and especially when it comes to fire safety.

Well, Christina, I just want to thank you again for taking the time.

I know it's a really difficult topic to talk about.

I also want to say how glad I am that you have this racing community.

We say all the time it's a microcosm, but it's a beautiful thing and we come together for each other.

And I'm glad both your community of Altadena, but also your racing community at Santa Anita and the racing community at large is ready to help you and all the others that were affected by this terrible tragedy.

So we wish you the best of luck and just know that we here at the safety net and in the money and all of the racing communities that we serve, we're ready to help you whenever you need it.

Thank you so very much.

That means a lot to me.

I appreciate it.

Well, Shannon, that was something else.

I thought you did a good job in our show's first segment today in your dual role.

But, boy, those guests both had such unique perspectives and were really able, in a kind of scary way, make me feel like I was out there in California and I learned so much at the same time.

Yeah, I completely agree.

And I think it's really important for those who listen to our podcast to get a sense of what it was really like.

And like we said in the beginning, yes, this is an issue at large in the California community, but it also is very much affecting our racing community.

And having Christina on and having Jody on talk about how racing was really weaved right into this and affected, it was really, really great.

It seems like this is a perfect case study in a way to take a step back, to remove ourselves for a second in how your organization, the Safety Net, is supposed to work in terms of what you guys are looking to provide.

Is that about right?

I would say so.

I think we use this term emergency situation every day at the Safety Net, but this is exactly it, right?

Emergencies come in a lot of forms, and the extent of the assistance comes in a lot of forms.

So in this situation, we need to be prepared to be hearing from people in the racing community in California for a very long time.

And thankfully, thanks to all of our donors, we have the ability to continue to do that.

So for in terms of a plug, if people want to support specifically the racing community in California, the Safety Net foundation here at the Jockey Club is a great way to do that, because myself is in every case.

So I review every case that our partners and friends out in California, at Santa Anita, at the cthf, at the Winners foundation, at the chaplaincy, we will be speaking to them often and always.

And when they have the right case, which the scope is so big, we will be able to help a lot of the people in the racing community.

They will contact us.

So if people want to donate, we will earmark it.

I will earmark it and make sure that your donation is going to somebody in the Santa Anita community, in the Southern California racing community that needs our help.

So I would love to plug us there.

And yeah, you're right.

This is exactly what the Safety Net is supposed to be doing.

And so, in a weird kind of way, in the same way that it was like with COVID Covid helped us in the sense that it got us to the community that needed us.

It got us to the people, the chaplains, the horsemen organizations, the benevolence organizations that I needed to know in order to get the assistance to the right people.

And doors and those phone lines are now open.

So situations like this, though, the magnitude is so terrible, it really allows us to focus in and get the help that we work so hard to fundraise for to the people that need it.

Crises can come at any time.

There's a lot of people in need.

That's why I believe it's so important to support industry initiatives like this.

The safety net, obviously the most straightforward place you can give.

If you're listening to this show, how can people get involved and is there any advice you would give, Shannon, for other organizations beyond your own where people might be able to be of assistance?

Yeah, of course, obviously, because I run the foundation.

Yes, donate to us.

You can go to tjcfoundation.org it will tell you all about what we do and you just heard about what we're doing and are prepared to do in California.

I also would say go to Santa Anita's website.

They have a list of resources that you can support initiatives.

And I always, always give a shout out to all of the local boots on the ground racing foundations and organizations that can be most effective.

Obviously, we will be there to help them.

But if you want to give directly to those organizations that will be there and are continuing to be there, even for those not affected by the fires, the racetrack chaplaincy in California or nationally, the cthf, the Gregson foundation, you have all of these, the Winners foundation, all of them local to California, go to Santa Anita's website.

They also have other foundations that are outside of the racing community.

If you want to help the community at large, go to their website.

You'll find out a lot.

We will pop that link in the show notes.

But once again, I would say the most efficient way to donate and you know the thought process that goes into it is directly to the safety net.

Give that URL one more time, Shannon, if you don't mind.

TJC Foundation.org and you can go to the donate tab.

Shannon, you did fantastic work.

You're like the Shohei Ohtani of podcasting here, wearing that.

People tell me this all the time.

You know, I, I've been told I'm the multitasker extraordinaire.

So now you all just saw it.

We have to bring a little humor here, guys, because that was a tough, it was a tough episode.

But we're so thankful to our guests.

I'm so thankful to you, Pete, for you and I Always thinking about these stories that we want to tell.

The story behind the people and the horses in this sport is really what sings it.

And I'm so glad to continue to tell these stories with you.

I'm lucky enough to get to interview a lot of interesting people, hear a lot of interesting stories.

These are several that are going to stay with me for a very long time.

Shannon, thanks for the excellent job you always do.

And thanks to everybody else out there for tuning in to on the lead.

We'll be back with another episode soon and we will see you next time.

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