Joseph Ungeheier Go Joe

          I was born in Orange, California in 1981 to a middle class family. I'm the oldest of three boys. My brothers are twins and are two years younger than me. We were home schooled until my freshman year of high school. I played football, baseball, and wrestled for Elsinore High where I graduated in 99'. 

          After high school, I joined the US Coast Guard and was stationed on the USCG Cutter Cowslip in Astoria, OR. I spent a year working ocean buoys from Coos Bay, Oregon to the Straits of Juan de Fuca. In 2001, I went to helicopter rescue swimmer school and became an Aviation Survival Technician. I was stationed in Kodak, Alaska for the remainder of my enlistment. I was able to put my training to good use on a dark and stormy night in 2002 when the fishing vessel Comando was in distress off shore of Cold Bay, AK. I was lowered from an H60 Jayhawk into the Bering Sea and pulled myself onto the Comando where I found the injured captain of the Comando and hoisted him into the the H60. We took him to the medical facility in Cold Bay where we determined the captain needed a higher level of medical care so a C-130 Hercules landed and we transported him to Anchorage, AK. The case last about 19 hours from start to finish and in the end the Captain of the Comando was safe and thankful for our help. I received a handful of awards for the case and the experience of a lifetime for a 20-year-old kid from Southern California. In 2004 I got out of the Coast Guard and was given the opportunity to go make some money commercial fishing. I was offered a job on the fishing vessel Tenacious, a 38' auto baiting longliner out of Kodiak. I fished with that crew for 7 months until Some friends of mine off the fishing vessel Clyde had an opening on their boat and they asked me to come work for them. The Clyde was one of the High-liners of Kodiak that had made a name for itself for making money and having a good time doing it. The Clyde is a 46' hand baiting longliner captained by the wild eye'ed Irishman, Seamus Hayden. So for two years I worked the hardest I had ever worked, made the most money I had ever made, and had some of the craziest adventures of my life. My desk boss on the boat had told me one day that if I didn't plan on being a fisherman for the rest of my life that I better go use my G.I. Bill and go to college while I was still young enough to do so.
 
          When we finished that fall I looked into college. I enrolled for classes in the 2007 spring semester at a JC in Southern California and left the great adventures of Alaska. My best friend from high school had started his own small construction company at the time so I worked for him through college. In the fall of 2010 I graduated magna cum laude from California Baptist University with a BS in Kinesiology. That winter, construction slowed down. One of my neighbors told me he had a friend who just bought a race shop and needed some remodeling done so I checked it out. Here I met Kevin Davis and his family, the owners of GreenArmy Motorsports, where I picked up a couple months of work. However, I ended up working for him for 3 years racing Pro-2 class in Lucas Oil Short course and Offroad Trophy Trucks in the states and Baja Mexico. But at the end of 2013 I decided that I needed to grow up and get a real job that I could support a family with. I left California for Texas and took a job with an air emissions testing company in Lewisville, Texas. So for the past 3 years I have been traveling the country testing everything from 500 ft power plat Stacks to oil field compression engine emissions.

          In 2014, I met Erin Armstrong, now Ungeheier, in the margarita pool at Ceaser's Palace in Las Vegas. I splashed her with water and she fell in love with me! Actually, she got pissed at me because she had just put sun block on even though we were in the shade! We ended up spending the rest of the weekend together. A couple weeks later she texted me and told me that she had won a kickball tournament in New Mexico which qualified her team for a national tournament in Denver. I suggested that we meet again in Denver so I could watch her compete in this tournament and she thought it was a good idea. I booked a flight. Unfortunately, the morning I was suppose to fly out I got an email from the airline asking me if I enjoyed my flight which was surprising because I was under the impression that my flight was not until that evening. So I checked my itinerary to find that I had booked a morning flight but thought that I had booked an evening flight!