It was back in April 2007 that I went on Facebook typed in "Tim Hortons For Our Troops" and saw that there was no groups in existence for sending over coffee to our Canadian Forces in Afghanistan and thats where it all got started. The numbers began to jump quickly and people wanted to get involved. After the group was featured on VOCM News in my hometown of St. John's Newfoundland it started to pick up steam.
CityTV Toronto was the big break this little group needed and then the gift certificates started to pour in the Military Family Resource Centre in Toronto, Ontario which was where I lived at that time. Things were going amazing and then on Wednesday, December 3rd 2008 I attempted to log on to my website at the time coffee4ourtroops.com and saw this.
My website I had created was shut down by a "Security Company" in Pakistan that wanted me to pay them money to get all my photos and website back, I was devastated. It felt like everything I had done for the last nineteen months was all gone down the drain.
I then decided to log on to Facebook chat when I noticed one of my good friends was online who had lost her son in Afghanistan a year previous to this, I told her how upset I was and that I just wanted to give it all up. I will never forget what she said to me next
"Dave, I have met some amazing people through your group that have helped me grieve the loss of my son and have met friends of his also, please don't ever shut it down"
I then thought about our men and women serving and when they have incidents overseas they have to get right back up the next day and continue there mission and that was what I had to do. On December 8th, five days after my website was shut down I was listening to the song "The Red & White" by Julian Austin that says "Do we take the time to thank a soldier for every thing they do"
With that "Thank A Soldier" was launched.
Full screen shot of what I saw the day I logged in to find my site had been hacked:
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