From Tragedy to Purpose with The Salty Twins (Part 1)

Marlena: 0:17

Happy New Year and welcome back to a witch, a mystic and a feminist. We are extremely excited to begin this new year and this new season of our podcast with our guests. These two gentlemen mean the world to me. They are content creators, entrepreneurs. They are the salty twins, my cousins, Ricky and Tony Simpson. Yay here. Welcome to the show. Thank you.

Ricky: 0:47

I gotta say I love the love the jacket. Yes, all. Thank you. Well, we're triplets with the salty twins

Marlena: 1:01

the salty triplets are five.

Jamie: 1:04

No quintuplets. Yeah, no, that's

Ricky: 1:08

it. No, yeah. Three. None of us can

Marlena: 1:15

figure this out our listeners.

Jamie: 1:18

Have no idea.

Marlena: 1:19

We can figure this out. Right. So I was gonna ask you guys, tell us a little about yourselves. But that's just such a dumb question. You know, when you go to interviews and stuff like that, it's like, tell me about yourself. And it's like, that's really vague. So I'm gonna tell everybody a little bit about you guys. So awesome. And how I met you and stuff. Yes, they are my cousins. I met them when they were probably about eight or nine years old. Their mom, my auntie Linda. married my uncle Richard. And we are one big happy family. Yeah. You guys were born and raised in Henderson, Nevada. Correct? Yep. Just outside of Las Vegas. Yeah, on the outskirts. Very cool. And then both of you are married. So Ricky, you got married in 2014? Wow.

Ricky: 2:09

Yeah. So I got married to my wife in 2014. And then we ended up bringing Tony into the relationship with my wife, I've been with my wife for 10 years. So then Tony has been married for I think for coming up on 2019. Correct? Yeah. Coming up on three 2004? Yeah, two different women.

Christy: 2:34

Thank you for clarifying for our listeners.

Marlena: 2:40

So I mentioned you guys are content creators, and you guys have a tick tock and YouTube channel. You want to tell us a little bit about that. And we'll go into it more later in the episode as well. But why don't you give us a little background about that right now?

Tony: 2:54

Yeah, so with the salty twins will kind of explain how it all started and everything. But pretty much what we do is we travel, we fish and we spear dive. And we're basically trying to teach other people how to harvest their own food. So instead of going to, you know, the store, or a fish market, you know, taking the time to have a relationship with the food that you consume. And understanding that when you're eating meat, especially you're taking a life, right and having that connection. And so the salty twins and fishing has been kind of therapy for me most of my life. And so doing that as a profession for a living, what's better, you know, to be able to be in a peaceful environment and be able to experience therapeutic sessions basically, on a daily basis while trying to help other people. So that's a kind of synopsis of a little bit of the salty twins.

Jamie: 4:01

That's amazing. That's fantastic. Yeah,

Tony: 4:04

very cool. What's your take? To g o crazy all the time?

Ricky: 4:11

Well, there's there's two things that are super important to us. It's veterans and it's underprivileged kids. And so Tony is a veteran, he served in the military for six years, went overseas, came back and had PTSD through that with his experiences. And me personally, I've always been a rebel. And so when I look at kids who are in underprivileged situations, in my heart, it's really important to help them out. And so those are the two areas that we strive to improve or give back or like charity work, things like that. So yeah,

Christy: 4:53

so it's amazing. In one of your videos, you mentioned that it was therapy. I mean, in a lot of videos, right? Therapy, but you also mentioned healing. You mentioned PTSD. But where did that start? Like what was the initial thing that kind of kicked that off?

Tony: 5:08

Yeah, I guess we'll kind of go into, you know, our life story here in a little bit. But really, what made the transition what was going through so much heartache, and rough times of life tragedy. And I've always had this mentality of overcoming, I've always had this mentality of watching other people, you know, smile, be happy, and truly love themselves and love the people around them. And most of my adult life, I haven't felt that way. And so from reading books and listening to audios and diving into self development, I realized that a lot of the times when I'm outside and not caught up in today's society, the materialistic things the day to day life, you know, the nine to five grind. And when you're out in the elements, it was a sense of peace, it was basically a time for me to reflect on my own thoughts. And so that's kind of what the therapeutic session or the therapeutic feeling of fishing was. And then Ricky and I actually got into freediving and spearfishing, basically, that took it to a whole next level. Yeah, if you know what scuba diving is, it's like that without any oxygen tank, so you're just holding your breath. And so we go diving in 40 5060 feet of water, and you have to be able to basically meditate and relax your body, so that you can retain as much oxygen inside your body as possible. And you're diving down 60 feet, and you're basically hunting your own food. So you have a spirit guide. That's exactly what you do. Yeah. And it's pretty incredible, incredible. I've been 4050 miles offshore and seeing little baby sea turtles on the top of the water. I've swam with dolphins, I've swam with 100 year old turtles, swim wood seals, Ricky and I were out in Hawaii and like 300 feet of water, you couldn't see the bottom.

Ricky: 7:18

So 14 foot Tiger mass amazing. Oh my god, yes, multiple.

Tony: 7:25

It's crazy. And just experiences like that, you know, give you a sense of a little sense of what this world's capable of what this earth has to offer, instead of spending the most valuable precious time for a paycheck to you know, send it off somewhere, and then you never get that time back. So might as well do something that we love, or at least attempt to do something that we love. Right?

Ricky: 7:54

Well, that's that's comes into, like the healing part right time is it's not just doing what you love. But with with us, a form of meditation has transformed us and helped us spiritually, emotionally, socially. You know, all of that. And with especially spearfishing, you have to be able to calm yourself. So you're getting in a state of meditation, right? Like, have you ever I mean, you can have active meditation, but and try to hold your breath after you run. And it's like 10 seconds, right? Yeah. And then you know, if you can call them yourself, and a lot of it self talk, a lot of it's focusing on breathing different things like that. So it's just meditation. And when you're holding your breath down there, there's, there's nothing in the world that matters except for what's right in front of you. And Tony and I talked about he did a meditation a couple months ago, where he looked at a great and or Yeah, reason, a reason. And he looked at a reason and he meditated about that race and really focused on it and the curves, the texture, what it looks like something so small and in defined, right like in, in our world, we get so distracted with what's around us. And we don't focus on what's present and what's in the moment. And that's where frustration that's where you're not healing, that's where, you know, the mountain just keeps growing. And you just keep getting smaller, right. But where this all came from was my mom. When we were young, she would take us down to the water. And she would lay there and tan and look all beautiful. Tony's over here fishing, and I'm fishing and I stopped fishing because I could distract it but Tony still doing it. That's why he's catching a fish. So then I grabbed two fish and I'm like, Mom, look at the fish. I didn't catch what I'm playing. So, but that's where it started. Right? It's it's an example of somebody else lead that put us in a position to start reflecting within. And hopefully we can influence or impact at least one person in our life.

Marlena: 9:51

So why don't you take us back to your childhood and what it was like growing up with your mom and with your older brother Jay. Yeah. At the same time

Tony: 10:05

Alright, ready? 123? Yeah. Yeah, kind of our childhood in short form. We were raised in US household so my parents got divorced when we were five. My mom remarried Richard, which is my stepdad, which is blood related to Marlena. And my dad remarried. And so basically growing up, we are kind of pulled in many different directions. You know, we're trying to please her dad, we are trying to please her mom. But the one thing that was consistent in our life was unconditional love from our mom, our mom was, is an angel. I've never met someone that could go through so much and maintain such a positive attitude, and constantly be giving more than she could ever receive. Growing up, I remember her taking literally hours out of her day, taking us to the lake, when she didn't even want to be there. You know, now after being a little bit older, I don't have kids, but Ricky does, you know, they'd probably rather be doing something else. But taking us fishing because we loved it or driving an hour and a half up the mountain dropping us off to go snowboard coming back into town, and then making that drive to pick us up. Not just one time, but many times, you know, weekend after weekend. And this is

Ricky: 11:38

there's three of us. Right? Right. Well, yeah, Tony, you had me and then my older brother Jay, which was 14 months older than us, and all of us are trying to go in different directions. And somehow, someway, she always managed to make it happen.

Tony: 11:52

Yeah, she started working in the school district just volunteering at with actually Ricky's class. I think it was your third grade class. And Miss Baker. She was at my wedding. She wanted to be around us. And we wanted to be around her. And one thing that she started saying was GWTOY it stands for guess who's thinking of you, we say it all the time GWtoy, and she used to write it on sticky notes and put in our lunches. So whatever, you know, we'd open up our lunch, it say GWtoy, and it was basically a way for her to remind us that she was constantly thinking of us, and she loved us. I love that. So that's a little, little bit of mom. No, no, you got anything

Jamie: 12:40

great. It's the family motto now. Oh,

Ricky: 12:42

yeah. I remember when I was 18. And I was like, where am I gonna get GW toy tattooed on me. You know, everybody's like thinking of something small on the wrist. Or now the first tattoo I got was my whole arm. My mom was like I was like, it's for you, though.

Jamie: 13:04

You had to outdo everyone. Everyone's like oh, are

Marlena: 13:10

so what's one of your earliest memories of your mom.

Ricky: 13:15

Good or Bad?

Tony: 13:19

Bad. Did you get in trouble? You probably got in trouble. No good. I got in trouble. But she'd never punished like she would punish me but not like it was more of like a disappointment. She always wanted to understand like she would ask question, you just never wanted to disappoint. Mom. That's the thing. There's a difference between getting in trouble and then just feeling like it's the worst. She had such high hopes for me. And I really fucked up.

Jamie: 13:44

Can't you just ground me? It's ground me.

Tony: 13:47

Yeah, exactly. She used

Ricky: 13:49

to float in the pool all the time. Oh, yeah, that's it for the pool. And I always wanted to like jump on. Get her hair wet. She didn't want to get her hair wet. Her hair was always up in a ponytail high ponytail. So with my daughter, that's that's actually what I do with her hair. I'll put in like two ponytails or I'll put in one single one. It just reminds me of her. So Oh, remember that time zone. We went to the Mason, we've spent like three days grabbing rocks, the lava rocks that were there because Mom, mom wanted to redo the whole front yard. So she made a trail of herself. She was always in the garden. And she made a trail of lava rocks that were from the mesa. And we've loaded up with these big rocks always afraid that somebody would stop buying sounds good. couldn't do that. But we still get it. Awesome.

Marlena: 14:38

It sounds like you know, there's that one episode when they're in Hawaii. And they're like, you know, don't take don't take TIKI TIKI

Jamie: 14:50

steal stealing stuff early. Got exactly

Ricky: 14:53

got it. teaching us

Tony: 14:55

the good ways. Yeah. Yeah, I

Ricky: 14:57

got blamed, but I just couldn't forgive me, mom. But yeah, it was the Brady Bunch. You know, on my mom's side, my stepdad and my mom. You know, when they got together, both of them had three kids. And so, you know, when we all got together, it was pretty much it was a bunch of kids running around in two parents, you know, trying to figure out what's

Tony: 15:16

going on, you know So, yeah,

Marlena: 15:19

like I only have, I cannot imagine the level of the six of you.

Ricky: 15:25

I'm wanting done to one and died. I'm with my wife,

Tony: 15:30

and twins. I like twins or something else to like our energy levels. We're just feed off of each other, you know,

Jamie: 15:40

it hasn't stopped.

Marlena: 15:44

I remember going out to Vegas, and this was probably one of the first times that I had met you guys. And I wasn't even married to Vince at the time. I was married to someone else. So. So that was a long time ago. Probably over 20 something years ago, so. But yeah, you guys were crazy. Like your energy was just these kids are

Tony: 16:16

blonde, blonde hair

Jamie: 16:18

age difference. So how between you guys and Marlena. So how old would they have been when you met?

Marlena: 16:23

Probably eight or nine? Nine? Right? They were little at all? Yeah.

Tony: 16:28

Oh, we were we were little all the way till we were 411 195

Ricky: 16:33

pounds my freshman year. I was the perfect height

Marlena: 16:37

with the skater haircuts. And yeah, they were just nuts. And it's, you know, like, 150 degrees out in Vegas. And, you know, they're like going skateboarding to wherever and to

Ricky: 16:50

skate city.

Jamie: 16:51

I love it. That's fantastic. Yeah,

Ricky: 16:53

my mom would drive us all the way to anthem with us. 20 minutes away, dropped us off, and she had a van. So she, she would fit probably five kids, four or five kids, she would drop us off, come back, pick up another group of kids, take them, drop them off, come back. And then she'll drop off lunch, like halfway through the day. And then do if we didn't skate down the wash all the way back, which we told her we got a ride. But we really did that. She would come and pick us up and drop us back off. But she always did stuff like that. Her whole world revolved around us, which is thinking back you, you know, you don't think of those things. Right? Right. It whatever you the way you grew up in you think is normal, and everybody grows up the same way until you become an adult and you look back and you start seeing different perspectives on people's lives. And that's one of the blessings that we've had the opportunity to do is to really understand what my mom has done in the example that she provided, right? Because if I mean, we could have gone our whole life, and she never got sick, we never had the opportunity to really reflect on the type of person she is and how to influence and help others as well as ourselves. Right? And all these little things, even though they may be tragic. They've really truly helped define who we are and where we're trying to go. Right. Absolutely. So

Tony: 18:15

yeah, it kind of makes you it brings you to a crossroad, right, a crossroad of okay, do I figure this out? And do I try to figure out what this tragedy is trying to teach me? Or do I just suffer? You know, do I just sit in my feelings and basically put a blanket over the world. And it's tough, you know, it's tough. Sometimes you're going down that road and to make those changes, you know, you've got to be able to, to face reality and be able to try to have a Objective Mind to be able to work through those things. Absolutely. And then you come to the conclusion of the song. It

Ricky: 18:54

wasn't always like that, right, Tony? No, it wasn't always like that. Like, there was even all through your whole deployment. You know, you're you're dealing Mom, mom passed away right after basic right? Right. Right before basic. So then Mom, mom passed away 2013, you went to basic, then you came back for like couple weeks, and then you all of a sudden you're deployed? Right?

Tony: 19:16

No, no. So it was our 21st birthday. And two weeks later, she passed away. And then I was actually supposed to go to basic training, but I was able to work with the military and move it back so that I could go to mom service. And so we moved it back, went to basic training, and then did ai t, which is basically your job training for the military for the army. And then a couple of years later, I got to,

Ricky: 19:46

but yeah, like through that. What what I was trying to say was I'm kind of stepping forward a little bit but through that time period of her passing away to you getting out of the military was roughly six, six and a half years, maybe seven years, right? Yeah. That period of time you didn't really reflect on the feelings and the emotions of her passing and how that affected you. You were focused on other things deployment all that oh, yeah, yeah,

Tony: 20:14

I was in such a dark place. That I, literally mentally I prepared myself to die overseas. I don't think I think Ricky knows this. But that's what I wanted to go overseas and fight for a country that provides freedom. I know we're not perfect, but I am very patriotic. And I wanted to go on any deployment to put me in the biggest shithole you could find. And I literally, I had three houses before I got deployed. I liquidated them all, like I liquidated my life expecting to lay my life down overseas. And that's not what happened, thank God. But that's where I was, you know, kind of crazy. Yeah. And now Now, it's,

Ricky: 21:01

you think back at like when everything happened, right? Like we were juniors in high school. You know, both of us had girlfriends. My older brother 14 months older than us. He was a senior, you know, he he always dated a year older two years older, for some reason, they were always attracted. Anyway, he was a stud, you know, beautiful. Yeah, it was it was. Yeah, he did are small and he's tall, you know. But yeah, it was s3. And then all of a sudden, Mom contracted while we were eating cookie dough. It was like a prom or something like that. And, you know, as you're like cooking and stuff, you naturally take a bite of the spoon, whatever. Great. Like I used to do it brownies before this. But yeah, she she had some, you know, couple other people did whether it was Tony or me, I don't know. But then, like the next day, or the day after that. She started film sick. And so my stepdad Richard took her to the hospital. And they sent her back home saying that she has like the flu, not to worry about it. And then in the middle of the night, I believe my my stepdad Richard founder at the bottom of the stairs, and she had blood in your stool and rushed her to the hospital. They put her in an induced coma right away. And, and she was at St. Rose off of St. Rose and St. Rose Dominican in Yeah, in Henderson. Henderson. And she was there for a couple of months. And she was immediately in like an induced coma. So one day, you know, she's she's cremisan and taken us everywhere in her whole life is, you know, her and, and then two, three days, four days later, she's also in an induced coma. And, you know, we're we don't know what's going on so that everything doesn't process, you know, especially when you're younger, and you haven't experienced death. You think that she's just kind of come out of it. And yeah, she was there. And then we used to play music. And, and we would see her toes twitch. Remember that Sony? Jack Johnson? Yeah. Which JJ was the one that you know, brought Jack Johnson in our life, right. But yet her toes would twitch. And you know, we're talking Oh, my gosh, she she hears that. You know, and we believe that, you know, now more than we did back then more of it was like, oh, cool, you know, but anyway, and then, yeah, she was there. And then we moved her to another hospital. That was supposed to be better care. But the facility was just the whole aura of the place was dark. And she was there for I think a week or two,

Tony: 23:40

well back back up just a little bit. So when she was in this in the coma, basically, they found that she had ecoli. So they needed to take it out. And they ended up taking out like 15 or 20 feet of her intestine, something like that something ridiculous

Ricky: 23:58

half, half our large, large intestine

Tony: 24:02

to have for large intestine. And so she didn't she was still in this coma. And she was having difficulty coming out of it. Because of, I think, the trach that was down her throat and, you know, it's kind of a process it does, you can just pull it out and it's done. And so JJ was really the only one that was able to keep her calm enough to be able to get her out of it. And she got out. And then she was herself. So she had the surgery. You know, nothing changed psychologically. And I remember seeing her upstairs in a normal room. I think at this point. She ended a normal room in the hospital and normal room in the hospital. Yep. And so we're like, awesome, cool. It was a fluke that, you know, she just got sick now. It's done pretty much and she's healing. And then did she go to the rehab facility after this, or did she come home for a week? No.

Ricky: 25:00

So she went to the rehab facility that I was talking about. It was a hospital rehab facility and like looking back, it was just very dark aura, just the whole energy of it. Anyway, that's when her heart stopped. I think three times. The alarms went off off, they came in and stabbed her in the chest and had her heart start and again. And, you know, through this whole process, Richard was by her side the entire time. Right? Immediately, it didn't matter about work, it didn't matter about bills, it didn't matter about anything, except for providing the best care for her. And I can almost guarantee from the time she got sick to the time she passed away for four years, there was nobody that left her side, she always had somebody there by her side. And that's a huge reason of him, right. But he was also there when all this stuff happened at the rehab hospital facility. And enough was enough, you know, and he was able to move her from there to Desert Springs hospital, sort of.

Tony: 26:05

So when she was getting because her heart was stopping, basically, her kidneys were shutting down. So she her legs started swelling up, and she was going into kidney failure. And they rushed her from there to Desert Springs hospital. And this is where she stayed for the next year. And I think they took like six liters of fluid out of her in a day day and a half from her kidneys failing. And we were there for so long that and this is our senior year, or the ARB summer, it happened right at the end of our junior year, and then summer, and then

Ricky: 26:44

junior year, and then March of 2009 2009. And then into 2010, which is here that we graduated JD graduated in 2009.

Marlena: 26:55

So she was in the hospital when when Jay graduated.

Ricky: 26:59

Yeah, yeah. Yeah. JJ came in with his cap and gown and, you know, yeah. So when we went to Desert Springs, yeah, just became normal. Like, we would get out of school and we cruise over and see mom and, and, yeah, so yeah, she, she was, yeah, she had kidney failure. She had liver failure. She had plasma transplants. So she was hooked up to a machine that filtered her blood and took the old plasma and put the new plasma in as well as I think she had. Did she have white white blood cell transplants? Do you?

Tony: 27:39

Yeah, it was, it was unreal. I mean, she mostly had a half a dozen to a dozen major surgeries. She was up and down. Some days. She could talk someday she couldn't. She had bed sores. We were sleeping on the ground and on chairs in the hospital overnight. Richard was there there was. I mean, it was so up and down. It was like a roller coaster one day, she was good. Awesome. She's coming home and the next day, like she was completely out of it. And there's pictures online, you can go online type in Linda Rivera, E. Coli. And you can read the story. It Yeah, it was

Ricky: 28:17

like when when she got sick. There was a recall. And what had happened was 350,000 people had gotten affected by a 69 people had gotten hospitalized. And there was two people who were severely ill one of them being I think, like a nine or 11 year old girl, and she ended up getting paralyzed from the neck down. And then my mom who actually is the worst case in the history for somebody who had survived, right, and survived. I mean, somebody who had, you know, survived the E. coli been in there, which originally happened and they pulled it out through her colon. And then she survived another three and a half years after that. But yeah, luckily, the little girl ended up regaining like 95% of her her feeling and stuff back. But who would have thought, you know, they cook and cookies, you know, that just, it's just a bizarre, weird thing that happens, but it's definitely been a pinnacle of our lives, right? Like, we don't eat cookie dough. No,

Jamie: 29:16

honestly, it's all what we all did, right? As children licking cake batter eating cookie dough. And it was because of your mom's story that and with my children, I won't allow it home. But like, store bought, it just doesn't happen. I can't. It's too close to home. It's too close to

Christy: 29:34

home. I met Marlena right around this time. And so I remember our circle kind of sharing what was going on. And since then, because I again, growing up with my mom, my mom would hand me the beater Right? Or whatever it was from the cookies. And we would we would eat it. And then when I met Marlena and I heard about this, I'm like, it's not worth it. It's not worth the risk. So we made we made that change too, because that shouldn't shouldn't happen,

Ricky: 30:02

right? And think about like, How many people does this happened to where they don't figure out where Right? Right? We were blessed enough. And I don't say that lightly right. I'm not putting the switch ration down, I'm saying that we were blessed to figure out where it came from. Because if not, when my mom died, she had $6 million in medical bills, oh my god,

Tony: 30:28

over seven and a half, I believe, imagine

Ricky: 30:30

that, okay, all of a sudden your mom dies now now. Now you have to figure out in your whole entire life is trying to pay off that medical debt, figuring out a way, you know, trying to bring it down whatever the case is, right? How many families has this happened to where they don't find out who, where it came from, you know,

Tony: 30:45

whether it's foodborne illness, cancer, all these other things. And, and from my perspective, it comes from how society is set up. You know, like, the FDA is supposed to protect us from stuff like this, where the GMOs and the processed foods, all this is, is it's basically quick fixes to feed people in a quick way. Well, with the salty twins, what we do is we teach people how to organically harvest your own food, you know, and I'm getting into more of gardening and stuff like that, to be able to be fully sustainable. But it all comes down to the mentality of you are what you eat, you are what you consume. A lot of people think that it was the eggs that got my mom's sick, it was actually the flower.

Ricky: 31:31

Right? Wow. Yeah, there was a farm that was like 200 miles away, where they raised cows. And what they think it happened was, you know, the manure, right becomes airborne, just naturally, little particles, and a windstorm blowed over and landed, and somehow I've gone through like customs back there. And then got mass distributed, just

Tony: 31:57

blended into the concoction called cooking.

Jamie: 32:02

That is insane. Yeah.

Ricky: 32:04

But yeah, like Jamie was there, Jamie was, you know, right. Like you had seen him from the beginning to everything and Christy, you know, you start coming to the picture and stuff and just imagine like, like your guys's family, though, you know? And, like, if that happened to you, and you didn't find out like, that's the biggest thing for me is, like, whether it's a kid or you know, a parent, just like things could have played out so differently. In so many ways, what if my mom didn't go through this, right? Think about that? What if my mom My mom didn't go through this? Would Tony and I and whoever Marlena right? Really understand the type of person that she is and was and the impact that she had. Right? And with that, like, even through suffering, I believe a lot of things happen a certain way to help us understand certain people always say like, why do the best people die first? Well, we're on this podcast, aren't we? Yeah, she knows how much I love her. And I know how much she loves loves me. But But I really, truly try to think about things like that. Like, like, we can always go back and try to change things. But what's, what's the ripple effect of, you know, the butterfly wings? Yeah, yeah, the butterfly effect can be crying. Welcome to my life.

Jamie: 33:26

It's finding the positive in the tragedy and in moving forward with that and doing good with it, right. It's not just to stay in and and what if what if we could have done this, it's taking that that moment and moving forward and doing the things that you know, your your mom is so proud of you to for doing? I mean, I How can she not be this is beautiful. You know, she's here listening to all the stuff you're talking about. So, remember,

Christy: 33:54

the finger wag, remember.

Jamie: 33:59

And I'm pointing she's hearing everything you're saying.

Marlena: 34:07

Your mom was so very positive. I mean, she was probably one of the most positive people I knew. And so when she got sick, and when she was fighting, how did how did I affect her emotionally? You know, her positivity? Did that affect it at all?

Tony: 34:28

After a while. But the first couple years, the entire time she was in the hospital. She was extremely positive. There was times where she could not talk. And she could only What's the noise that she used to make Rick something you sold me on? It was something Oh, yeah. Yeah. So she she had made that sound. And that, and that's kind of how we communicated. But there was times I remember she had all these different machines hooked up to her she had a hole in her throat. She was swollen after, you know, six, eight. months in the hospital, her feet started, she started out her fingers

Ricky: 35:21

are stuck like this, because they weren't massaged, right? So think about three years of, you know, your, your tendons tightening up, and your her feet were hurting all the time, because they're stuck like that she couldn't lift them.

Tony: 35:34

And we'd come in, and it was all about us. Like, it was like she wasn't sick. That was her mentality of, you know, just giving more than, than what you have for, you know, just just trying to be super positive. And it was like we had so much love and support looking back from Green Valley High School, from our friends from her friends, family, it was unbelievable. We had people praying all over the world for her. And it just goes to show all the love that she brought into this world. And it's Ricky, and my and Jays responsibility and Richard's responsibility to take that love and multiply it. And the biggest thing in this world, I believe, is people just need to be loved. You know, looking back when I was going through this, you know, I did a lot of things and made a lot of mistakes, because I was hurting because I didn't know how to deal with losing the most precious thing in my life, or watching the most precious thing in my life slowly deteriorate. And it gave me a perspective to have patience with people that hurt other people, because hurting people hurt other people. You know, someone that's super happy, and loving and loves themselves and loves their life. They're not going to go out and hurt other people. And so reflecting on the decisions that I made as a young adult, it gives me a really good perspective on people honking me on the way to work. It gives me a good perspective of, you know, family members or friends having short tempers, it just means that they need a little bit more love. Yeah, you know. And so this situation really opened my eyes to that.

Marlena: 37:33

Then your mom passed away, and Ricky who actually spoke before the FDA in Washington, DC, correct?

Ricky: 37:41

Yeah, yeah. So I'll backtrack a little bit. So from Desert Springs, she was out there for about a year, year and a half. And then she transferred up to California. We had my stepdad and our attorney, Bill Marler. Oh my gosh, she's incredible. A great guy doing great things. They worked together and tried to find the best rehab facility for my mom. So after a year and a half of in the hospital, they moved her from Desert Springs to CPMC up in San Francisco, California Pacific Medical Center. And she was up there for I think, two years, maybe two and a half years. And from the time of Desert Springs to California Pacific Medical Center, JJ became her caregiver. And, and my stepdad, Richard obviously was there the whole time. But when he wasn't physically there at the hospital, JJ actually, like flew on the jet with her, we had to get a private jet because of her, you know, they later on there, and he was her caregiver up there. And then then I started kind of stepping in and I was flying up from Vegas every other week, taking care of her in the hospital. And then when she got out, I moved in and became a full full time caregiver. And when she passed, I have the opportunity to go and speak in front of the FDA as Marlena said, I got flown out there, Nikki and I and my wife. And yeah, I had my whole paper of my story of my perspective on what happened. And I walked in there and it was like a big huge classroom almost, with like tall every stair and then the teachers at the top. And I stood right there and I'm looking at all these grown adults that look like you know, they honestly don't really care if I'm there or not. But I started reading and I was taught to look at the class. So I've read and I look and I'd look around not at one place. I I spoken and it seemed to do something and it helped fund $20 million dollars with the FDA which sounds like it did a lot but looking back I don't know what it did you know, maybe it went into their pockets maybe it actually did something but it's an example of what can be done you know, it's the entryway and then I got to our hotel woke up in the morning and my whole newsfeed on my Facebook was like blown up my phone was blowing up. Everybody's like look look on look on Yahoo look on Yahoo. I ended up being like the top story on Yahoo for that day. And then all of a sudden, everybody started calling my stepdad and different. Maybe Bill Marler trying to get us on a talk show and speak about what happened. And, you know, what that can provide, right is is more eyes on families and things and people who who are eating, and the whole thing of the Saudi to illustrate like, we just want to be better and safer and more reliable on ourselves instead of relying on everybody else. Right? That is what could have been. But with where we were, we settled outside of court. And so the name of the company that got my mom's sick, it's very easy to find you literally Google E. coli, Linda Rivera, and and pops up. And that started becoming announced, right, not out of our mouths, but through people doing their own research. Now, at that point, that company threatened us to take everything away financially. If we continue down this road, well, we're at a position to where, you know, you look at $6 million $7 million dollars of debt, you know, or speaking.

Tony: 41:30

And, yeah, and getting mom that care. Like, that's the one thing that was able to extend mom's life, for sure, was the ability to get her the top notch care that she needed. And we did not have the finances to do that. And it was really, really important to be able to help my mom any way we possibly could or put her in a good position to be able to heal.

Ricky: 41:56

So yeah, so at that point, we had opportunity to grow and share my mom's story and really impact people. But we had to step down and back up and we didn't pursue that. And so everything kind of subsided. And as you know, in this day and age, the story only lasts for a day, right, six years later, we start to salty twins, and we're starting from the ground up again, right? We're two years into this. And this is the first time we've spoken on any podcasts or any channel at all outside of the salty twins, about our story and what we're trying to do, because we truly believe that you three beautiful women, right there have impacted so many people, and especially our lives and the beliefs that you guys have and the values and the things that you're trying to do and are doing. We mash up and we are 100% for. So that's why we're here. That's why we're grateful. That's why it is a honor. And we've been invited and immediately Tony and I were like no questions asked. Yeah, because we've denied other people. But they just won't do it for you. No.

Christy: 43:02

Well, we're honored. Yeah, we are seriously honored. Truly, you chose to tell the story to speak again, on our podcast with us, right.

Ricky: 43:11

I'll take a picture of myself and I'll sign it and mail it to you after this. Oh, thank

Christy: 43:15

you. Yes.

Ricky: 43:16

Will you signed my sweatshirt? No, no, no.

Christy: 43:22

autographs are sweatshirts.

Ricky: 43:23

I'll give you a big ol hug. You're making me blush.