This week on Chopping It Up, Keith sits down with homegrown Valley kid Efran Pulido — and Part 1 of his story starts a long way from real estate signs and collared shirts.

Efran walks us through how his family first came to the Santa Ynez Valley: his grandfather in the Bracero Program, his dad alone on a horse ranch where Sunstone sits now, ready to hitchhike back to Mexico until no cars came… so he stayed and built a life here instead. We talk about learning English at Solvang School, crying in front of a black-and-white TV because he couldn’t understand a word, growing up on Elm Street breaking windows and playing basketball, and running the full gauntlet through SYVUHS.

Then the story takes a hard turn: losing his way in Isla Vista, answering a random recruiter postcard meant for the Army, and getting poached by a Marine who walked in and dropped the line, “You wanna be on varsity?” From there it’s Okinawa, Hawaii, and finally EOD school in Florida—training to be the guy who walks up to bombs on purpose.

By the end of Part 1, Efran is rolling into Iraq at the height of the IED war, watching burned-out convoys coming the other way, living at Checkpoint 22 with Iraqi National Guard, and suiting up in a bomb suit on his birthday to walk down a major highway in 120° heat toward a blinking device that might end his life.

Part 2 picks up right where we left off—with the largest IED in the region, a 500-pound bomb, and the moment Efran earns the Navy Commendation Medal for Valor.