"Part 2: Craig Garber's In Search Of Heroes Interview" by Ralph Zuranski
Ralph Zuranski: So you’d say that it’s sort of a moment by moment thing, so you’re saying that if somebody’s in danger of being run over by a car or somebody’s in a burning house it would be hard to do it at that time, like a lot of people look at heroes as firemen and soldiers and stuff that are actually being paid to do those types of things, and I think that this person is a much greater hero if they’re not being paid to do a job, but actually you’re willing to sacrifice your life in a moment to save the lives of others.
Craig Garber: Yeah, I think that people who sacrifice their life, most of the time don’t go into something thinking that, Okay, I know I’m going to sacrifice my life for this. So, that’s kind of a hard question to answer, I think about 9/11 for example.
I think in that situation that a lot of the firemen and the cops, and the guys who ran in there, they probably had a conscious level of awareness of, I’m probably going to be sacrificing my life to do this. But that situation doesn’t happen to often, when it’s, ‘I know I’m going to be giving my life up for this cause.’
I think you do things that are important to you and, Hey, Who knows what the outcome of anything is going to be, what actions are going to be taken.
Ralph Zuranski: Yeah, I think that those guys are real heroes because you can just walk off the job, to have the courage to basically go in and know that that may be your last day on Earth, I think that that is real heroism. That’s the same with our troops.
Craig Garber: Absolutely, that’s balls.
Ralph Zuranski: Yeah, so did you have a dream or a vision that set the course of your life?
Craig Garber: I did, but I guess I had two different, you know as you age and evolve or should I say mature instead of age, as you mature, your vision, and what’s important to you changes. That has evolved like that for myself as well. I guess when I was younger my dream or vision was just to get the hell out of where I was.
I had a pretty miserable childhood, I guess. I just wanted to get out of where I was. I grew up in a violent and abusive household with a lower income, you know, you see the projects on T.V. in New York City that’s where I grew up in, the Bronx, that’s where I grew up. I didn’t know the rosy side of the world. I had a sense that better stuff existed out there, but I was never exposed to it, but people will often say, how can these guys in the ghetto be holding people up and be so violent, that’s all they know.
They don’t know that if I work hard and I study, that I can go out and make a million dollars.
No, all they know is that they live in poverty, my mother lived in poverty, my mother’s mother lived in poverty, and my kids will live in poverty. So they’re programmed for all that negative stuff, so I was programmed for that, but in the back of my head I knew that my dream or vision at that time was to get the hell out of that place.
I didn’t know how to do it, I didn’t know what it looked like, didn’t know where it was but I knew I had to do it, and I knew that’s what I wanted.