Prize Money

The National Guard has contracted with a marketing company named Docupak to manage a new program called the Guard Recruiting Assistant Program, or G-RAP.  The gist of it is this: current Soldiers and Airmen bring in new enlistees to the Guard and in return are monetarily compensated (henceforth referred to as "prize money").  It's not a bad little program, actually.  I signed up for it back in February and after completing the online training, I was paid $50 by Docupak and sent a nice collection of National Guard recruiting material (t-shirts, stickers, DVDs, etcetera).  The funny thing is that it wasn't the recruiting material that the Guard sent that lead to my first prize.

A long while back Ashli acquired via eBay a black canvas briefcase emblazoned with the U.S. Army's "Army of One" motto and logo.  I had been using this briefcase to carry around my books at college, and it was the briefcase that attracted the attention of a prior-service student in my astronomy class.  We struck up a conversation about the current state of things (the wars, terrorism, the Guard) and then she said she was thinking about getting back in.  I told her about the G-RAP program and asked her to let me know, because I could use the money!  Not seriously expecting anything to come of it (though half-hoping it would), the semester ended and I figured I'd never see her again.

Lo, about a fortnight later she called to say she'd talked to a recruiter, visited MEPS for a physical, and re-enlisted! Totally the wrong order to do things, which I had told her before during the semester and then told her again on the phone. It should have been that I referred her via G-RAP, the recruiter would then contact her, and then the enlistment would occur. She'd done it backwards and as a result my ability to collect the prize money was in question.  But I took down her information anway, entered it at the G-RAP web site, and then gave her recruiter a call to see if we could salvage my prize.  Luckily her recruiter had not yet entered her information into his computer, so my referral in the G-RAP web site might yet go through.

A few worrisome days later and yes!  My referral was credited and I am now scheduled to receive a prize totally $2,000 in two easy payments of $1,000.