Today we're at the Fifth Annual Stoked Awards and Stoked Awards are basically our way of
honoring and thanking people who give back to their community and help stove and have
achieved a certain level of success in their life.
Like I remember when Steve first said, hey we're going to do this thing called the Stoked
Awards.
I didn't know where he was really going with it, but he wanted to do a fundraiser without
it being a fundraiser and really make it be more of a celebration and it's become that
and more.
Before coming to the event, I didn't really understand how Stoked worked, like luckily
before I came to the event, I had dinner with Sal and we kind of broke it down how it works,
the mentor-mentee relationship, then I totally understood it, it made a lot more sense.
But thanks to the fantastic work of NCAT's LA, it's really strong, ladies and gentlemen
are still appreciating the Stoked Awards to the level of success.
Tonight is special, when you have, you know, when you give an award to someone that they've
never heard of, you know, it ends up being like a volunteer, like Ann, you know, or mentoring
bears, they get to hear first hand from people who live it every day, whose lives have been
really affected.
It's a powerful vision for me to see people of color and those that may not have the opportunity
to say or understand that, yeah, I didn't know I could surf, I didn't know I could snowboard,
I didn't know I could skate.
This is really a supreme and humbling honor to have this give you a part of our organization.
From Steve, myself, and all of Stoked, I just want to say thank you and congratulations
to our two thousand subscribers.
Today we're honoring Paul Rodriguez.
Paul is a big supporter of us for the past year.
Not too many people know, but he is one of the people instrumental in helping us to grow
significantly in this past year.
We're celebrating the fact that he helped us out and for all of the success that he's
had in his career as well.
We spent the last three days with us here in New York City.
Monday, he was out of that school program with Steve.
Four hundred kids came out to meet him.
He was in the school program and just been cruising and spreading the basketball.
I feel really proud about what Stoked's doing.
You know, when I was a young man, I could have used a little mentoring at times.
I could have used like an older brother figure to help kind of give me direction in life.
Somebody who's kind of already been through the ropes and can kind of help you navigate
through some of life's issues, you know, so you don't necessarily have to learn the hard way.
We're not really out to make professional athletes at all.
I want them to be successful individuals and use the lessons from, you know, falling down
and getting back up in their life.
For us, it's just a way to get kids to start thinking about other things that are associated
with skateboarding.
So, like, getting gnar or, you know, Steve Rodriguez.
And you have somebody like Alex Corprin.
You know, I look at those guys and they're leaders.
Like, they work really hard.
I feel like the Stoked gang is helping to teach the kids how to go out and be independent
and take some responsibility for their own future and not just think that it's just random
acts of luck that happen to people in life.
Whether sometimes people get success or not, it's not luck, you know.
It's all a formula.
There's a certain way to go about it.
So, I think he's really trying to help correct those kids in that way.
Well, definitely thanks to Steve and the whole Stoked mentoring crew for the hospitality
and taking me around and bringing me around this whole week.
I've had a fun time, especially thanks to the City Polytech High.
It was an honor for them having me and letting me skate through the hallways.
So thanks for having me.
