Rick Yarosh’s tank was blown up on Sept. 1, 2006, in Iraq. He says it was “the best thing that ever happened” to him.
“Now, none of you understand why I'm saying that right now … But by the end of this, you will all understand why I can say that,” the retired U.S. Army sergeant said this week to a group of high school students at Lycoming College.
Nearly two decades after he suffered second and third-degree burns on more than 60% of his body and lost his right leg below the knee, his ears, nose and much of the function in his hands, Yarosh travels the country to teach kids how to find hope in their darkest moments.
For Yarosh, H.O.P.E. stands for “Hold On, Possibilities Exist,” a motto to remind one to keep pushing forward in times when it seems that everything is lost or too hard to overcome.
In 2006, Yarosh was awarded the Purple Heart in honor of his courage and injuries following the IED (improvised explosive device) explosion. He co-founded Sweethearts & Heroes, a student empowerment and youth leadership organization in 2015.
Yarosh shared his story to a crowd of nearly 100 high school students as part of Pennsylvania Free Enterprise Week, a summer program for rising juniors and seniors from around the state.
Yarosh: ‘I had it all figured out’
Before he enlisted in the military, Yarosh planned to serve for four years, finish college upon his return and work as a state trooper. He showed the crowd a photo of himself beside his mother the day after he completed basic training.
“That's the day that I had it all figured out,” Yarosh said, gesturing to the screen behind him. “It's good to have a plan. It's great to have goals, but what happens when those plans and those goals get blown up?”
The day his life changed forever, Yarosh was on patrol in Abu Ghraib, around 30 minutes out from Baghdad, Iraq’s capital. He was operating the turret of a Bradley Fighting Vehicle, which he described as a kind of smaller tank, on a road he’d often traveled, on a patrol that otherwise would have been the same as any other day.
But on Sept. 1, 2006, someone planted an IED underground. The explosion went through the bottom of Yarosh’s Bradley, into the turret, and hit the fuel tank.
Yarosh says his turret “melted” into the vehicle. He showed photos of how Yarosh’s Bradley essentially crumpled into itself after burning for several hours.
“As soon as that Bradley was on fire, so was I,” Yarosh recounted. “And I knew the first thing that I had to do if I had any chance to survive – couldn't think about anything else – was [that] I had to get out of the vehicle.”
But the fire covered Yarosh’s eyes. He said his saving grace was that he’d forgotten or just didn’t close the hatch cover above his head that day.
“We were supposed to keep the covers closed just in case we ever got hit with any kind of chemical attack … But that day that I climbed inside, I did not close that hatch cover behind me,” he said.
“Thank God, because if I had, there's no way with the chaos of that moment – with all that smoke and all that fire – there's no way I would have found that little lever that was above my head … I wouldn't have gotten out of the vehicle that day,” said Yarosh.
But once he got to the top of his vehicle, he was struck with two problems. The ground was 10 feet away, and he still couldn’t see; his face was on fire.
“But, I knew I had to jump. Didn't matter that I was standing on something 10 feet tall. Didn't matter that I was blind. I had to jump. I had to take a leap of faith and just hope that I would make it to the ground,” said Yarosh.
Because Yarosh couldn’t brace himself, he broke his right leg, which led to its partial amputation.
“That's how I ended up with that wicked awesome robot leg,” Yarosh cracked before mentioning that apparently you can purchase prosthetic legs on Amazon. “...That is incredibly weird because when somebody needs a prosthetic, it needs to be fitted for them, and there's a lot of steps that go into it. So, you can't just go on Amazon and buy one, and be like, ‘Oh my gosh, that fits perfectly. ’”
Despite everything Yarosh’s been through, or likely because of how he’s faced it, he’s kept a raring sense of humor.
But Yarosh said his darkest moment came after he jumped from his Bradley. He couldn’t get the fire out because he was still covered in engine fuel.
“I rolled around on the ground and I tried to put the fire up, but when it didn't work, I did something that I regret. Honestly, it's the biggest regret of my entire life. That's when I laid on my back and I just stared up into the sky, and I gave up. I accepted in that moment that I was going to die, that I was going to perish,” he said.
“I gave up something extremely important … I gave up hope,” said Yarosh.
Luckily, Yarosh only gave up hope for a moment, and he began to roll again and somehow managed to roll down into a canal, which put out the fire.
“There's times in all of our lives where we deal with difficult things … And sometimes the difficult things that we deal with, they can lead to a lack of hope … if you do give up … you will never see the results that come from getting through it. … And I can promise you something right now, the more difficult something is to get through, the bigger the reward is when we get through it,” said Yarosh.
His wounds were severe. Yarosh knew after his fellow soldiers pulled him out of the water that he might not live. But he cracked a joke after his friend lied that his wounds were not ‘that bad.’
“I looked back at him and I said, ‘Well, at least I'll never be as ugly as you are’ … He just got burned by the burned guy,” Yarosh said to a crowd of chuckles.
“And when he heard that my sense of humor was still there, I believe it gave him some hope,” he said.
Yarosh spent six months at Brooke Army Medical Center in San Antonio, Texas, recovering from his injuries. His friend, Sgt. Luis Montes, who was also manning the turret that day, died of his injuries a few days after the explosion.
Finding hope … and dead spiders
During his recovery, Yarosh said he had to learn how to shift his perspective on adversity. He needed to learn how to see adversity not as misfortune, but in how it can make a person fortunate.
For four months, he said his family hadn’t let him see his own reflection. They covered the mirror in his hospital room with pictures of Yarosh from before his injury with friends and family. But one day, he had asked his mother to bring him his laptop, which had been recovered from Iraq, where Yarosh had uploaded photos from his time in the military.
He saw himself for the first time since Iraq in the reflection on his computer screen.
“They didn't think I was ready, and they were right. I was not ready,” he said. As soon as I saw myself, I felt hopeless … this is a tough thing to talk about, but I believe the toughest things to talk about should be talked about.”
“I was a 25-year-old man and I saw myself and I'm thinking, ‘I will be alone for the rest of my life …That's just how it's going to be. I felt hopeless at that time. Hopeless. But thankfully, when I was in the hospital … I was surrounded by people who just cared, who helped me. They saw that I was hopeless, and they came into my room and they gave me hope … They knew they had to try,” Yarosh said, with several tears streaming down his face.
Family, friends and hospital staff tried to support Yarosh in any way they could, he recounted.
His psychiatrist took a “crazy” way to get Yarosh out of a dark place after an hour of talking, “like he was reading out of the book that he learned from in college,” which didn’t help.
“So, he decided to change the subject entirely, and he started talking to me about dead spiders,” Yarosh said, pausing for a beat. “...This is a psychiatrist. Went to college for a really long time.”
Yarosh said the psychiatrist then left the room for a moment and came back with a whole jar of dead spiders.
“Up until that point, I believed I was crazy, but when he walked in the room with those spiders, I knew that it was him that was crazy … It took me a long time to figure out what he was doing. All he was doing was taking my mind so far away from the problem that I was dealing with that I forgot,” said Yarosh.
Hope “comes in some weird shapes and weird forms,” said Yarosh. But sometimes, “it doesn't work when you're trying to give somebody hope the way you know how to do it, sometimes you gotta go outside the box, close the book.”
Yarosh told several stories about people who saw him beyond his injuries and gave him hope. Once, while out at a restaurant, a little girl around 5 years old first looked at him the way that children often did — with pure fear.
“I can deal with people staring. That does not bother me at all. People stare … That wasn't the issue. The issue was kids being afraid of me,” said Yarosh.
But that time, the girl’s grandfather told her to go up to Yarosh and speak to Yarosh. He said he hadn’t wanted her to approach him because he saw how terrified she looked. She eventually walked over to Yarosh’s table. He said hello to the girl, and she ran back.
“It was like she saw a monster … [but] she got back to her grandpa … and she said, ‘Grandpa, he's really nice.’ … That is not what I thought she was going to say … In that moment of hopelessness for me, that little girl … she dumped a bucket of hope on me, and when she did that, she changed my life forever," Yarosh said. "A little girl who had no clue what she was capable of came over to me and gave me so much hope."
Around the same time, Yarosh started working on recovering his strength and attending sports events with other paraplegics. He eventually began public speaking.
He said he started feeling accepted and significant again in his community, noting he’s shared his story with more than 2 million students.
Yarosh also explained how being blown up in Iraq was the “best thing that ever happened” to him. It led him to meet his wife, Amy, to have two children, Tenley and Grace, and to run his own restaurant, The Sub Factory in Vestal, New York.
“The three most important things in my life today would not be in my life right now if I did not get blown up in Iraq … It took time to say, ‘You know what? I'm fortunate that I dealt with some really difficult things in my life, because it shaped my life and led me to some amazing things,” said Yarosh.
Students react to Yarosh’s story
Students from across the state said they were touched by Yarosh’s story. Several have family members who have served or are currently serving in the military.
Christopher, a rising senior about to start at Warren Area High School in Warren County, said Yarosh reminded him of his father, who he said spent eight years in Afghanistan.
“Hope can change a man's life. And it almost brought me to tears … It doesn't matter how bad something is, there is a way to recover, and he is living proof of it,” he said.
Delaney, a student at Hamburg Area High School, said she also has family who have served in the military. She said she was touched by how kindness can change a person’s life. She spoke about the little girl who Yarosh said gave him that “simple,” but life-altering moment of kindness.
“I have little siblings … and I teach them … about being kind to people, and how they shouldn't be afraid to just go up to somebody and ask them questions about themselves or talk to them about their lives. And that's what my little sister really practices … she goes out and talks to people that she feels like they need someone to talk to,” said Delaney.
Liam, a student at Thomas Jefferson High School in Allegheny County, said he was in awe at how Yarosh learned to handle times where everything feels hopeless.
“I don't even know what I'm trying to say, but when … I'm feeling like I've lost all hope. I guess I can think back to this, and I can realize like he went through this,” he said.
Sweethearts & Heroes is in its 10th year of service.
