As you can imagine, SHOT Show is hectic. On Monday, I started to receive phone calls and texts from my friend Andrew Ho saying he had something for me. I didn’t know it at the time but he was working as a courier for Derrick Obatake of Steel Flame who had him carry a surprise to Las Vegas for me. It took several back and forths before we finally linked up, and by that time the ‘package’ was burning a hole in Andrew’s pocket. Unbeknownst to me, he had even gone so far to post a photo to my Facebook wall and handed out some of the contents to mutual fiends. Once we linked up, Andrew handed me a small ziploc bag. I opened it and it turned out to be filled with copper dogtags. Each one was carefully stamped with the SSD logo. These beauties were accompanied with a simple card (seen below). I was floored.
Derrick had asked me months ago for a copy of my logo and said he would have a surprise for me one day. Truth be told, I had completely forgotten about it. What a guy. While we gave most of them away at SHOT Show to some really great people, we’re holding a few back to give away to our readers. So keep your eyes peeled for that.
Even though we’ve only met a few times, Derrick honored me by doing something completely selfless. He is one of the most giving men I have ever known and I can only hope to make it up to him. I’ve been wanting to thank him for a few weeks now but I felt it best to wait for things to die down a little.
If you’ve got a jewelry project and need some top notch work, I cannot recommend Steel Flame enough.
