I don't remember my first call from Daniel Trigg after I'd been deemed a "street team leader," only that it took place in my dorm room and it was not as productive as I'd expected. We discussed what would be needed for The Rescue and what he was going to be emailing me. That was how a lot of our conversations went.
[me looking at my phone seeing Middle America pop up as the incoming caller]
>>Hello!
>>Hey Becky it's Daniel Trigg from Invisible Children.
[yes, I know]
>>Hey Daniel, how's it going?
>>Not bad, how are you?
>>[long-winded explanation about my day/week] ...So what did you call for?
>>I wanted to check in with you about The Rescue
>>[detailed account of what I'd been up to as far as planning]
>>That sounds great. I'm going to email you [insert new official document here]
>>Awesome. Hey I had a question...
And that's more or less how our conversations went nearly every time. He never said much, but I always seemed to get the information I needed.
I realize now that a lot of what I was asking of him was way too much. I wish I'd known how unprepared Trigg was before I went about assuming he was the authority on the entire matter. Obviously he should have been the authority and so that was not an ungrounded assumption to make. Unfortunately it was simply the wrong assumption. The poor interns were literally thrown into a phase of planning for which they knew nothing and had less to go off of. Each coordinating six or so cities: acquiring permits, establishing team leaders, etc. That is what I needed to know from The Rescue: House Party video. I needed to know how much power I was truly wielding. Apparently it was a lot.
After the House Party on March 25, I stuck around St. Louis trying to get as much done as possible. Saturday morning of that week, I jumped in Eron and drove down to the Arch grounds myself. I don't believe I'd seen them in about 7 years and had no more to go off of than the map I'd downloaded off the internet and spent an afternoon coloring on my dorm room floor to de-stress. I carried Berlioz with me and filmed the entire area--the Arch, the steps, the grass, and even looked for outlets in which to plug things--as well as priced parking. The $6 parking at the Arch itself was not necessarily the cheapest, but certainly the safest.
I went home that night and loaded everything up to my computer before splicing it together as a video and emailing it on to Dan and to Daniel. The problem with this was not that I'd given Daniel a clear idea of where we were staying, but rather that my idea of where we were staying did NOT coincide with his idea of where we were staying. Regardless, I made it back to Columbia having at least seen the Arch grounds and feeling more and more excited about the whole thing, but nervous about fitting it all in.
Atop my hectic daily schedule, I also factored in acquiring Rescue items...from two hours away. For this, I have to dedicate a small portion of my epitaph to the wonderful Lindy Bateman. Not only did she and Sarah Schulte and Zac Mueller gather everything for me, they were able to do it all in a timely fashion and ask for more to do! I love people like that.
So began the wonderful excel spreadsheets. I had one for everything.
- one for all the items I'd collected
- one for all the items I'd left to collect
- one for all the items I'd been promised but had not yet received confirmation on
- one for all my volunteers and their contact information
- one for all the volunteer positions that needed to be filled and who was filling them
- one for News stations and their contact information
- one for the people from Mizzou, Truman, Stevens, and SEMO attending and their carpool situation
- one for my "To Do" list, which included separately things to do in Columbia and things to do in St. Louis and things to do at The Rescue itself
I distinctly remember two straight weeks of, for lack of a better term, pure living hell. Without my planner on me right now I can't describe which ones they were exactly, but dear lord were they awful. Up at 7 every morning and back to the room around 8 or 9pm and later to bed around 3 or 4am. I had exams in everything, at least one major paper due, and a project I was working on. I was out of town both weekends. I missed 3 days of class for work. I had office hours where the only thing I could do was sit on the phone and on my computer organizing everything I had.
There is nothing more frustrating than not being able to get things done yourself. I would have loved to have been able to collect all the items myself, to get dressed up and march straight into the police headquarters to talk things over, to walk around the Arch grounds and mentally map everything out. Unfortunately, I couldn't do that. Therefore I seethed in my office from 2 hours away, accomplishing little, but not for lack of trying.
On one such bored day I was doodling on graph paper and found that I could plan out the signs needed for The Rescue. These I hurriedly transferred to digital copies and then emailed them to Cassie Herrington, Annie Bastida, and Dan Parris. They gave me positive feedback, so I forwarded them on to Trigg and to Lindy (who passed them along to Zac, my wonderful talented artist).
I'm still impressed with how they turned out. Partly because I designed them, and I'm not a designer. Mostly because Zac did a truly fantastic job. He asked me lots of questions in the process to make sure he got the banners just right. It's times like that where I wish I had known that Trigg was not given much direction in this process. Zac was asking me about canvas material and dimensions and potential circumstances for the banners. Ultimately I threw down some numbers and let him run with them. I don't know how much it mattered in the end, thankfully.
Another bored day in the office, I sat down with my manila folder and spread its contents out. I was on the phone for a solid hour with 3 or 4 different people asking small favors of them or large requests that I could but pray would be fulfilled. I reported everything dutifully to Trigg and asked if there was more I could do. All the while, Kevin from Add9 sat two chairs away from me and listened while he attempted to study his sheet music (Add9 is an a cappella troupe). My favorite comment from him was after I'd hung up my now-dying phone.
>>You going to St. Louis?
>>Yeah at the end of April. My entire organization is going.
>>Oh that's cool. Add9 is going to [location]. What were you talking about? Do you have stuff planned in St. Louis while you're there?
>>Yeah, I'm in charge of one sector of our international event and it's being held in St. Louis.
>>Nice. Sounds like you're busy.
>>You have no idea.
>>At least you're not planning it. Then you'd be really busy.
[blink]
>>No, I'm planning it. I haven't eaten in 2 days and I have 2 exams and a paper due tomorrow. Believe me. I'm really busy.
I was so excited for this event; I can't even put it into words. At the same time, however, I was so frustrated. It was difficult to get a hold of Dan because of his own work, which I understand. Talking with him was great, though, because I could direct him wherever I needed him to go and if he was capable, he would get it done for me. Getting a hold of Cassie, on the other hand, was all but impossible. In the weeks leading up to The Rescue itself, I heard from Cassie only twice. Twice. And she was supposed to be one of the three people leading this?
She's a lovely girl, no denying it. I loved getting to work with her that night in St. Louis. However, I would not try and put her in charge of a major event. She seemed not to realize the scale of the entire ordeal. Truth be told, I didn't either, but I knew Invisible Children was asking the impossible of me and that I had to pull through because Invisible Children makes a business of achieving the impossible.
The House Party was over spring break, so I used that time to try and get together what I could, which at the time was not much. Two weeks later I found myself back at home for Easter. That was a huge help to be in town that weekend. Cassie went home to Kentucky for the weekend, so I completely missed her, but Dan was in town and I got to meet up with him and his fabulous girlfriend Kristen Huyett.
That was a fateful trip to downtown Kirkwood. Not only did I realize that I was actually the one person (moreso than Trigg) in charge of the entire event, I also met Kristen--the greatest person to have come my way at that point. She was fantastically connected and politically driven. She was outgoing and friendly and overjoyed to be working with Invisible Children. I am so blessed to have 'found' her. Thank you, Dan Parris.
That one weekend alone I was able to gather nearly all the rest of my supplies and found a band of volunteers that Kristen would supply. I could kiss the ground she walks on. Seriously.
I remember the last couple of weeks leading up to The Rescue. Two or three straight weeks of me carrying around my folders everywhere. Every spare moment (at meals, before and after classes, during classes, before bed, in between homework sets) I spent pouring over those pages, double- and triple-checking everything I'd accomplished and mentally trying to work out a way to get everything else done in time. Who did I know? Where would be a good place to find X? If I were living on the streets and needed X I would...
Before long, my friends stopped seeing me. I was forever working on The Rescue. I know, except for maybe Meredith and I doubt even then, that they had no idea the scale of this project. It's nice that I was so involved with an organization, they thought. It's cool that I got to "help out." They didn't understand and I truly didn't have the time to explain it to them.
