Masculinity. Heroism. Sacrifice. The Amazing Story of James Kim

0:00 Welcome to the Unapologetic Man Podcast, the only podcast that's all about self-improvement, confidence, success, women, and being a man without making any apologies for it. What is up, gentlemen? Happy Monday. Thank you for tuning in to another episode of the UMP. And today, I'm going to tell a story about a hero named James Kim. And this story was quite unexpected. I hadn't planned on talking about this, but I heard this story last night and I was moved so much that I wanted to share it with you guys because this guy is an absolute hero and he tapped into something that you two have beating inside your heart.

0:40 And that is masculinity. That is sacrifice. That is heroism, particularly for the people that you love. And that's what James Kim did for his family. And I can't wait to relate to you this story. Before I jump into the content, that my free one-on-one breakthrough session is still available. To learn more about that, go to my website, coachmarksing.com, click on coaching, fill in the short application, submit it, and you and I will get on a free one-on-one call together. All right, boys, let's go ahead and jump into the story because this is a really, really inspiring one.

1:11 At least it was for me. Okay. So this story is about James Kim and James Kim was a normal guy, just like you and me. He had a wife named Katie and he had two kids, a seven month old and a four-year-old. And according to the story that I heard, he absolutely loved his family. Now, for any of you guys who have kids or even guys who are uncles or maybe even a younger sibling, the love that you have for your kid is incomparable. I've never loved anything the way I love my two and a half year old daughter.

1:39 Her name is Lucia and I would do anything for her, man. And I know a lot of you guys listening have kids yourself and you can relate to this. We would die for our kids. I would gladly die if it meant Lucia being safe. If it meant Lucia being healthy, I would die for her in a heartbeat. In fact, and a lot of you guys can relate to this, part of you kind of wants to die for them. Are you feeling me on that? I don't know if it's just something that I experienced or if it's common.

2:04 I think it's common, but as men, our duty is to protect our family. And one instinct that I have that burns true for me is protection. Not only do I want to protect my family, but I want to protect my friends. I want to protect those people who I love. And it goes into my clients too. I'm a very genuine, loving person. And when a client hires me, I give that guy everything I fucking have, all my blood, sweat, and tears. And from my heart, I genuinely want to help that guy and I want to protect him.

2:33 And I think that's why I'm an effective coach. Well, James Kim was totally obsessed with his kids, just like I am with my kid. And you guys listening who have kids, you are with your kids. He would sometimes leave work just to go spend time with his kids. He would just want to sit there watching them because there's something I can't explain it. It's like watching your kid just playing is so unbelievably gratifying. So he was absolutely in love with his kids and love with his wife.

3:00 And they were taking a trip up to Portland. They were from San Francisco and they went North to Portland, which is a city that forgive my geography here. I'm not exactly sure. I'd guess it's probably like what, six hours away. Anyway, it's in Oregon, which is right above California. San Francisco's in California. So they were in Portland and they were making the trip back to San Francisco and it was winter time and it was really cold and they were breaking up their trip into several different stops.

3:25 Well, they were driving and they were trying to get to this lodge that was located on the coast of Oregon and they missed their turn. So they went a couple hours past their turn and finally realized, ah, damn, we missed this turn. We would have to backtrack, go all the way back, swing all the way around. It's going to add up to four hours onto our drive. So they got out the map and they found a road that instead cut through directly to the coast. And this road was called Bear Camp Road.

3:56 Now it didn't show on the map just how dangerous this road was. It went up through the Sierra Nevadas, which is a huge mountain range, went from 400 feet to 9,000 feet in elevation, had unexpected snow storms all the time, was extremely narrow, was right next to a cliff and was just super sketchy, but they didn't know that. So naturally this was a shortcut. So they took the shortcut and they started going up the road. Well, the kids and the wife fell asleep and James is driving. And when the wife woke up, she noticed that there was an absolute snowstorm just beating down on the car.

4:28 James was white knuckling the steering wheel, driving, and there was a goddamn cliff right to the left-hand side of them. She wakes up and she's like, oh my God, well, what's happening here? We have to turn around. This is super sketch. And he's like, yeah, sweetie, I know we have to turn around. There was a fork in the road about a couple miles back and I'm looking for another fork to turn this thing around because the road was just too skinny to turn around. So they keep going forward.

4:51 The snow is just coming down harder and harder. It's slippery. They're right next to this cliff. There's trees falling in the middle of the road that Katie would have to get out and remove. And they finally decided that they were going to have to back up the several miles that they came all the way back to the fork in the road, turn the car around and go back down the mountain. So unable to see through the rear view mirror, James actually opens his door, sticks his head out the door.

5:14 And for several grueling hours, he backs up the entire way that he came until finally, after hours and hours, this neck-breaking exercise of backing up in a snowstorm with his head sticking out the door, finally arrives to this fork in the road. Now, when they got to the fork in the road, they noticed that there was another road, not the one they came up on, but another road that was wider. It was paved. It looked super safe. And it looked like it just went straight down the mountain and would probably get them out of this situation without having to go down the same road they came up, which is super sketchy.

5:47 So they took that road. Now for a while, the road was wide. It was pretty straight, but soon enough, it started getting windy, just like Bear Camp Road. And it was no longer paved. Suddenly there was all these potholes. There was all this dirt. And for you guys who have driven off-road in the forest, it's a pretty damn uncomfortable ride. I don't know what kind of car they had, but I can only assume it was an SUV since they had two kids in it. And that's kind of the typical car when you have kids, but still it's a very brutal ride in a snowstorm on a dirt road.

6:19 And they keep going and going until finally they come into another fork in the road. Well, at this point, it's two in the morning. They don't know what to do. They've been driving for all these hours, very stressed out. So they said, look, it's starting to rain now. Let's go ahead and get some sleep. When we wake up, the rain will have washed away the snow. We can see it'll be daytime again, and then we can drive out of here. So they all go to sleep and they left the car running because they wanted the heater on.

6:42 While they're sleeping, that rain turned to snow and the rain that was on the ground, all the wetness froze. So it made the ground into an absolute ice rink and then it dumped several feet of snow. So that morning it was Sunday. And as they drove down the road to initially get to that fork in the road before they stopped, they did see a snow plow that was parked to the side of the road. So they reasoned, well, being it that it's Sunday, probably tomorrow, Monday, the snow plows will come through.

7:11 They'll clear the road and then we can get out of here. Now, of course, the kids are getting anxious. They're starting to run out of food. It's cold. They're running the car to keep the cabin warm, but they had optimism. They thought, okay, on Monday, the snow plows will come through. So Monday comes around and nobody comes because essentially the road that they were on was a logging road. They had turned off the road and guys, this is highly advisable never to do never go down a road that you're not familiar with.

7:36 I've done it many times and they lead freaking nowhere, especially in the United States. Going back to my wilderness survival episode that I filmed on my birthday, February 3rd, there's hundreds of thousands, even millions of square acres of national forest in the United States. And there's fire roads going all through these forests because if there's a forest fire, the fire trucks need to get out onto those roads. So if you follow a fire road expecting to get out or expecting it to lead anywhere, you're delusional because most of the times they go nowhere.

8:08 So they're on this fire road and snow plows aren't going to come through a fire road, are they? They're only going to stay on the main roads. So Monday comes and finally the family friend notices that they're not showing up. So the family friend starts to get worried, but thanks to herself, well, they probably just stayed in Portland or they're doing some adventure because that's what they were known to do. So she doesn't call the police. So Monday comes, they eat the rest of their food.

8:32 The friend isn't calling the authorities and bears are starting to come around and check out what's going on with this vehicle because they ran out of food. Katie, the mother started breastfeeding the seven month year old and also the four year old just to keep them alive. Then Tuesday comes around and hunger really starts to set in for you guys who haven't eaten in several days or have only eaten a little bit of food over several days. Hunger sucks, man. It just constantly gnaws at you.

8:53 I've never mentioned this before on the podcast, but I once did a 28 day fast. I'm not going to get into it right now, but that was one of the hardest things I ever had to do in my life because unconsciously you just walk into the kitchen, open the cupboard and like grab a piece of bread and want to start eating it. And then you're like, Oh my God, I was in a zombie state. I was completely delusional. I'm not allowed to eat this bread. And then you got to put it back.

9:17 Sure enough, freaking 45 minutes later, you're back in the kitchen looking at food. It's crazy how strong that urge is to eat when you're starving. So keep that in mind. When I tell you the following, they were so hungry that James actually got out of the car, scared away. The bears went to their poop and grabbed berries out of their poop to eat it. They finally determined that might not be the cleanest way to go about it. So they stopped doing it. But sure enough, man, they straight ate berries out of bear poop.

9:43 That's how hungry they were. All right. Now Wednesday comes around and bear in mind for you guys who have kids, like really think about this as seven month old and a four year old trapped in the car. Are you kidding me? That must have been a goddamn nightmare of its own to keep those kids entertained with my two and a half year old man. If she's not entertained at every goddamn living second of the day, she's crying and she's fussing. So that was an added stress onto knowing they were probably going to die.

10:09 And they did have that conversation. And Katie said to James, if the kids die, I want you to kill me before you kill yourself. And James agreed to that. Can you guys imagine that? Having to make that decision to let your kids die because you just can't help them. And then you have to kill your loved one, your wife, your soulmate, your life partner. This must've been the hardest thing that a man would ever have to go through. So it was on Wednesday that they finally ran out of gas.

10:35 James took out the spare tire, lit it on fire to keep the kids and the wife warm while they were waiting for rescue. And by the way, if you ever want to be rescued in the woods, one of the things you can do that I didn't talk about on my wilderness survival episode is light a big fire and either put green boughs on it, which make a lot of smoke or like what James did light a tire on fire because the tire burns black as most of you guys know, and it would signal for rescue.

11:02 So they did that, but the tire went up super quickly. Nobody came. The warmth probably ended. It said in the story that the branches were too wet in order to light them on fire. There's a way around that. I wish he had some training because you could just stack branches around the fire that's already going and that dries them out and then you toss them in, but he didn't know how to do that. So that night they get back into the car, cars out of gas, so they don't have any fire.

11:28 It's less than 32 degrees because obviously it's snowing. I didn't hear how cold it was, but we can only assume at that elevation at that time of year, bro, I probably got down into the teens and a car does not offer too much insulation. I mean, it was a freaking icebox in that thing. So they slept that night in it. Finally, Thursday comes around. James pulls all four tires off the car and lights a smoke signal that nobody saw. Now we come to Friday and James being the patriarch, being the provider, the protector, and the presider of his family decides that he needs to do something and he needs to do something now.

12:03 So he studies the map and he sees that about four miles away, there's a town called Galiz that he thinks he can reach if he just hikes through the wilderness. Now, for those of you guys who are very familiar with wilderness survival, as I spoke about on that podcast, that is not easy to do. That is not easy to do. On that podcast, I talked about how I got lost just because there was clouds and I couldn't see the sun and we got totally turned around.

12:25 So his chances of locating this town from just walking with what I can only assume was a shitty roadmap were very, very low indeed. But look at the situation. They have been there since Sunday. It is now Friday. Nobody's calm and they think nobody's coming. So he has to do what they call affect self-rescue, affect self-rescue. Now, the dude is wearing street clothes. He's got tennis shoes on, jeans, and like a light jacket. And he's in the fucking snow. If you guys have ever been through snow, which most of you have, I mean, tennis shoes?

12:57 Are you kidding me? And I can only assume since they got several feet of snow, when he's walking through the snow, it's like up to his knees, right? This is an absolutely no-win situation. But he convinces Katie, who tried to convince him not to, to go. So at 7.45 that morning, he hugged and kissed his family goodbye and set off on his journey. That day was a Friday. And if you remember on Wednesday, the family friend finally called the authorities. Well, after several days of research, they finally figured out that the Kim family probably went up Bear Camp Road.

13:31 So that's where the search was centralized. So at this time, there's helicopters flying around. There's searchers going out everywhere. And a helicopter pilot is flying and he sees tracks in the snow. These tracks are super deep. They're going down the mountain. This is fresh snow. Nobody in their right mind would be walking out there in the middle of the Sierra Nevada in the middle of winter, unless it probably was James or the family. So the helicopter pilot follows these tracks for several miles and finally ends up above the car where Katie is outside the car, frantically waving an umbrella back and forth.

14:04 Helicopter pilot sees her, dips down just a little bit to make eye contact with her and says basically, Hey, I see you. We're coming. And the helicopter pilot was running out of gas, so he couldn't land and pick him up. He had to duck out, but he quickly called in their location to another helicopter pilot who came up, landed the helicopter. Katie and the two children were saved. So when Katie got to the helicopter pilot, she said, Oh my God, did James get to the town and tell you guys that we were up here?

14:31 And the helicopter pilot had a confused look on his face. And immediately Katie knew that indeed he hadn't reached the town, but instead the helicopter pilot found them in some other way. And he said to her, no ma'am, I'm so sorry. You know, James hasn't arrived to the town. We still don't know where he is, but now that you guys are rescued, we're going to intensify our search and follow his tracks. So that's exactly what they did. They hired a bunch of expert trackers and you don't need to be expert to follow footprints through the snow, but they hired a bunch of expert trackers who followed James's footprints through the snow.

15:02 So initially James walked for three miles up the road, thinking that the road would lead him to the town of Glees, but then for some reason deviated off the road and went down a steep incline down to a river. So as I talked about in my wilderness survival episode, which by the way, if you haven't listened to that, you should at least listen to the first part of it. Cause it's so funny. The little thing I do in the very beginning, listen to that episode, man, give me some love.

15:29 I worked really hard on it. Anyway, James goes down to the river and starts following the river. As he walked, he left markers behind. So he tore off little pieces of clothing. He put little pieces of paper on trees so that if he had to get back, he could just follow that back to where he originally came. So as he walked and walked and walked literally all day long on Friday, he finally realized that he probably missed the town. He made some kind of wrong turn.

15:56 So now it was a purely wilderness survival situation. As night approached that Friday evening, James, let me remind you, had absolutely no winter clothes on. He had tennis shoes, jeans, and a light jacket. And this dude is now faced with a wilderness survival situation in the middle of the night where temperatures could easily drop below zero. I'm not sure if he had a fire. That was one thing I didn't learn. And I really tried to research it. I couldn't find it, but I really don't think he could have survived without a fire.

16:23 But based on his decisions thus far, I don't even think he could have made a fire out there. The stories that I read didn't mention it. So we can only assume that he literally slept outside in the middle of the forest, in the snow, in what was probably a temperature, in the teens, in the single digits, or maybe in the negatives. I just can't even believe that. So he survives the night. And then on Saturday morning, the dude keeps walking, keeps going, thinking about his family, wanting to rescue them, no longer caring about his feet, which were probably completely frostbitten, no longer caring about his own survival, but only wanting to get to that town to save his family.

17:02 And this, I think, is where the masculinity, the heroism, the love that was deep inside his heart, that all you guys have, all you guys have that heroism inside your heart. That's where I think it was unleashed. In this moment where he said, I have to fucking get to this town, and I will die trying to save my family. It's no longer about me. It's all about them. It's all about love. It's all about rescuing them. And a lot of you guys who have a family, you can relate to that feeling.

17:27 I know I certainly can. And that's why this moved me so profoundly. So all Saturday, he hiked and hiked, footstep after painful footstep, frostbitten, starving, freezing, telling himself over and over again, I will fucking die before I quit. I am never out of this fight. Step after painful step next to a river, the freezing snow biting into his lungs, his family going through his head over and over again until finally he fell to his knees, and then he fell to his face. And James Kim died on the mountain trying to save his family.

18:07 A hero who in his heart had that masculinity, had that testosterone, had that love, had that need to protect and to rescue his family. And that's what he did. Because had those footprints not been in the snow, there's no guarantee the searchers would have found them because the helicopter pilot said that they had no idea where they should be looking. And they were actually running out of gas and they were going to leave that search area. But since they found the footprints that James left trying to rescue his family, they followed those footprints all the way back up to the car.

18:36 And James did, in fact, rescue his family. On Sunday, the searchers finally found his body. He was airlifted out and he was given the burial that he deserved, buried as a king, buried as a hero. And they reported later that the town was actually 15 miles. But with all the elevation changes and all the different terrain that James would have had to gone through, it was more like 30 miles away. He completed 10 miles. And the tracker said after they found his body that his trip was superhuman. Those were his words, superhuman.

19:07 And all of us can do that when we have a why inside of our heart. And I'll tell you, I just know this. The biggest why a man can possibly have is for his family. I just know that's true. And that's why warriors throughout all of history will go to war. They wouldn't fight for their country. I mean, they kind of would. They're fighting for their family. They're fighting for their brothers, their sisters and their mothers, their kids. These are the people who they're willing to die for.

19:29 And when soldiers are in the line, they always say, I don't care about me. I just want to rescue my brother to my right, my brother to my left. It's not about me at all. I will die for these guys because they have that Philadelphia, that brotherly love. And you, brother, that's beating in your heart, that level of masculinity, that level of heroism, that level of sacrifice is inside you. And I want to ask you, what are you doing to call it forth? Have you really lived up to the amount of heroism that you have in your heart by facing your fears, going into uncomfort willingly, doing whatever's necessary to take this gift, this breath of life that you've been given and make the best life possible?

20:11 I know for all of us and even me, we fall short on a day-to-day basis. But let the story of James Kim inspire you. Let it be known that even a regular dude from San Francisco who I think, I think his job was like playing with toys and then doing reviews of them on YouTube. I think that's what I read. So this normal dude who had a love for his family that was so deep and so profound that he was able to call forth the warrior inside himself and do something superhuman and attempt to save his family, that's inside you too.

20:39 So every day we need to ask ourselves, are we living up to our potential? Are we going into that fear? Or are we letting the fear conquer us and keep us in a placid state, not realizing our potential? The reason I wanted to share this story with you is because this is exactly the embodiment of what I'm trying to become as a man. It's the embodiment of this podcast, the Unapologetic Man podcast. I will do whatever it takes to rescue my family. I will do whatever it takes to protect my loved ones, to be a good father, to be a good partner, to the woman I'm with, to be a good person in society, and to build myself into the best man I possibly can be because we don't know what happens after you die.

21:21 So search in your heart, brother, as I'm searching in mine. Could you do that too? I believe you could, man. I believe you have that inside of you. I believe that the potential we have as humans is unlocked by one thing and one thing only, love. Love is what unlocks masculinity. And that's why masculinity is a beautiful thing. It protects, it provides, it presides over those who you love, just like James Kim did, saving his family. And James Kim, if you're listening from wherever you are, brother, I salute you and the rest of the men listening right now salute you too.

21:56 Heart to heart, warrior to warrior, you are a fucking champion and I respect you to the utmost. And to James's family, when those kids grow up, they have somebody to look up to. Your father is a hero. All right, gentlemen, on Thursday, I'm dropping an absolutely spectacular podcast. So make sure to stay tuned for that one. Based on the amount of downloads this podcast gets, I might make this a steady thing that I do over the next several years, dropping these podcasts about stories of heroism, stories of masculinity, because I think they're super inspiring.

22:23 And when I heard that last night, brought a tear to my eye, bro, brought a tear to my eye, I'm not going to lie to you. While I was recording this, I had to stop a couple of times and throw the tear off my face out of my non-shooting eye and get back to it because James deserved his story to be told. And whew, man, that one got me down in the fields and I hope it affected you too. All right, gentlemen, get after it, man.

22:43 You have something inside you that's much stronger than you think. So tap into it, brother. What you can do in this life is only limited by your own fears. That's it. If you tap into love, you can do anything, man. Even walking 16 miles through the snow in tennis shoes and jeans and absolutely freezing sub-zero weather in order to save your family. That's what the fuck I'm talking about. Thanks again for listening, boys, and I will see you in the next episode. We'll see you in the next episode.

23:37 We'll see you in the next episode. We'll see you in the next episode.

This transcript was made automatically, so a few words may be off.