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thedrifter
11-27-07, 03:49 PM
Military-themed phone charity makes bold goal
By Rick Hampson - USA Today
Posted : Tuesday Nov 27, 2007 8:03:28 EST

NORWELL, Mass. — At the holidays, for a service member at war, there’s nothing like a phone call home. Brittany and Robbie Bergquist have provided more than $1.4 million worth of them — 24 million precious minutes.

The Bergquists are teenage siblings who didn’t even own a cell phone in 2004, when they heard that an Army reservist faced a $7,600 bill for making calls home from Iraq.

They founded Cell Phones for Soldiers based on three ideas: Most people have an old, inactive cell phone lying around; they’d probably donate it to the right cause; and they’d probably agree that, as Brittany puts it, “Everyone has a right to call home.”

In three years, an effort that began with a piggybank raid and a car wash has turned into a booming home front charity — one that has turned its founders’ lives upside down and won them devoted friends throughout the military and beyond.

Cell Phones for Soldiers solicits unwanted cell phones, sells them to a recycler for about $5 each and uses the money to buy pre-paid phone cards that are shipped to the war zone.

“We take for granted our ability to call home and speak to our families,” said Brittany, 16. “The troops don’t do that. They appreciate what we’re doing. That’s what sparks us to do more.”

During the past three years, CPFS has given out more than 400,000 phone cards, many in envelopes the founders addressed, stuffed and licked themselves. “A lot of tongue paper cuts,” says Brittany, who appeared with her 15-year-old brother Monday on ABC’s daytime talk show, “The View,” to ask for more phones.

CPFS collects at least 50,000 a month, more than all but a few companies in the nation. (Its recycler says it just passed Wal-Mart.) The 7,000 drop-off locations range from AT&T retail stores and Liberty Tax Service offices to Fabulous Freddy’s Car Wash in Las Vegas and Fine Line Auto Repair in Anchorage, Alaska.

The organization sends about 25,000 one-hour phone cards overseas each month. This holiday season, the Bergquists are working toward a bold goal: a phone card a month for each of the more than 185,000 U.S. service members in Iraq, Afghanistan and the Persian Gulf. That would cost about $750,000 — half of all they’ve raised during the past three years.

But Bob Bergquist, the youths’ father and CPFS overseer, said that with hundreds of millions of cell phones sitting in Americans’ drawers and attics, “We haven’t even scratched the surface.”


Dear Brittany and Robbie,

“When a person has been separated from the ones they love for months, a chance to talk on the phone is something that a soldier or sailor will stand in the pouring rain or the desert heat forever for. You are giving these men and women a lifeline. You are giving them their chance to stay connected to their wives, sons, daughters, mothers, and fathers. ... Loving words from home can change an entire day in seconds over here.”

William Tucker, USS Elrod


Optimism and innocence

On the morning after Thanksgiving, when many their age are shopping or sleeping, Brittany and Robbie are sitting in a studio in a deserted office park near Boston.

They’re doing 20 consecutive satellite interviews with local TV stations from Peoria, Ill., to Santa Barbara, Calif.

They’ve been up since 4 a.m., at the studio since 5:15, in front of the camera since 6:25. Between interviews, they yawn and stretch and tease each other. But when the interview begins, they’re focused, hitting the same questions out of the park over and over with seeming enthusiasm.

“This is how we get the word out,” Robbie shrugs. “This is our fun.”

They have other lives. Brittany’s a junior at Norwell High School who’s been a cheerleader since she was 6. Robbie’s a sophomore at Boston College High School who was one of two sophomores this year to play varsity soccer.

Every interviewer asks: How did this get started?

It began one morning in 2004 in the sunny kitchen of the Bergquist family’s colonial-style home on Boston’s South Shore. The kids were getting ready for school, as were their parents. Bob teaches middle school science, Gail special ed.

The TV was on, and there was a report about an Army reservist from Natick, Mass., who’d unwittingly racked up a cell phone bill from Iraq of more than $7,624.

“We thought, ‘That’s not right!’” Robbie recalls. The troops had to pay for their own calls home? Didn’t they have a right to call home?

The teens had a cousin in Iraq; they knew how worried his parents were after they’d not heard from him after a battle.

They ran up to their bedrooms, pulled the plugs out of their piggybanks, ran back downstairs and threw $14 on the table.

Bob Bergquist says he’ll never forget the moment — their outrage over injustice, their optimism, their innocence: “I still get choked up.”

They went to school and got classmates to contribute a total of $7. Then they went to the bank, opened an account (the bank manager kicked in $500), and began organizing bake sales and car washes.

Before they could go any further, the soldier’s cell phone service provider forgave most of his debt. Even so, Brittany and Robbie wanted to help other troops afford to phone home.

They soon realized car washes and bake sales wouldn’t raise nearly enough. Then it hit Brittany: Some of her friends got new cell phones every six months. Her parents had six old ones around the house.

They would ask for used cells, load them with pre-paid minutes and send them to the troops.

Next snag: The Pentagon told them that for security reasons, they could not send cell phones to Iraq. But by now, the Bergquists had hundreds of them. So they kept their charity’s name and chose a new tactic: recycling.

They came up with a perfect business model: They were asking people to do something that made them feel good and didn’t cost them anything.

“It skyrocketed like wildfire,” Brittany said. “Thousands of people wanted to support the troops, but they never had a way to do it.”

The teens’ feel-good story spread. Soon, cell phones filled the Bergquists’ garage, blocked their front hall, surrounded their white baby grand piano. Every day after school, they’d find scores of phone messages and e-mails, requesting cards or offering phones.

On Christmas Eve 2004, the teens stayed up till 4 a.m. addressing envelopes so their parents could get some sleep.


“Today I received 2 phone cards in the mail from you. ... My husband, Paul, is serving in Iraq, and being able to let him hear our 3-month-old son cooing over the phone helps him get through another day.”

Barbara Schmidt, St. Louis


AT&T joins the cause

Now things are better organized. There’s a salaried bookkeeper and an 800-number for cell phone donors and those requesting phone cards. Most of the phones are mailed directly to the CPFS recycler in Michigan.

CPFS distributes its cards in various ways, often by request: to individual service members abroad; to their relatives at home; to units for officers to distribute; and to organizations, such as CarePacks, that send gifts to troops.

The program keeps growing. Brittany sent a blind e-mail to a name she found on the AT&T Web site, and in May the company donated $300,000 in phone cards and became the teens’ partner.

“It worked its way up the company,” AT&T spokeswoman Susan Bean said. “It was such a cool idea, no one could say no.”

Amazon, the online retailer, now inserts CPFS mailers for used cell phones in its shipments. Every few months, Enterprise Rent-a-Car turns over 200 to 250 abandoned cell phones. Several casinos in Las Vegas and Reno do likewise.

The Bergquists have learned to enjoy celebrity, including being recognized at the local mall — Robbie can’t get over being asked for his autograph — and visiting the White House in 2004. (Brittany slipped on the floor as she stepped into the Oval Office to shake hands with President Bush.) Microsoft gave them an Above and Beyond Youth leadership award.

When Brittany and Robbie appeared Monday on “The View,” AT&T surprised each of them on the air with a $100,000 college scholarship. Next, they’re scheduled to appear at the Army-Navy football game Saturday in Baltimore and the Cotton Bowl in Dallas on Jan. 1.

Brittany has turned out to be a natural publicist who calls a personal appearance “an opportunity.” She hands out business cards: “Founder, Cell Phones for Soldiers.”

Robbie, who started out very much the junior partner — “I wanted to support Brittany” — has grown into a relaxed, confident pitchman whose persona plays off against his sister’s ardent sincerity.

They’ve learned to deflect questions about their feelings about the war.

“We don’t want to cause any controversy that would make anyone not drop off a cell phone,” Brittany said.

This year, as usual, their Christmas will be swallowed up by CPFS’s seasonal demands.

“We’ve accepted that at this time of year we have to double the amount of time we spend on the program,” Brittany said.

During the past three years they’ve missed countless school games, dances and parties. Family dinners fall victim to conflicting engagements, which the family splits up to cover.

Brittany, who was student government president, had to quit for lack of time; this also is her last year as a cheerleader, even though she’s in line to be captain as a senior.

“That will be hard,” her mother said. “We have to see how she’s going to handle that.”


“War is ugly, and my unit here has recently experienced some events and losses of some great soldiers. ... Receiving a phone card from people like you makes the year deployment much easier on us. Thank you for your selflessness and providing for those of us going through hard times over here.”

Spc. Kevin Schultz, combat medic, Najaf, Iraq


Parents brim with pride

Why do the teens keep pushing? “I think it’s the gratitude they get,” Bean says. “They’ve sort of gotten addicted to making a difference.”

Brittany said they’re energized by e-mails from Iraq that tell of long drives and long waits to reach and use a phone.

“We know that [our] sitting in front of a camera at 6 a.m. means more recycled phones and more phone cards for the troops,” she said. “That’s why we do it.”

She talks about the time the family went to Esko, Minn., to give phone cards to a reserve unit leaving for Iraq. She watched the soldiers say goodbye to their families as they boarded buses.

“You see these big, strong guys, going overseas for a year to fight for us, and they’re sobbing. I don’t know ... it’s hard to watch.”

Bob and Gail Bergquist often are asked by other parents how they brought up such conscientious kids.

“We taught them to save bugs,” Bob said.

When the teens were younger, the family put any bug they found inside the house on an index card, carried it outside and set it free.

“We tried to get them to be aware of their effect on other living things, to instill in them that there are other people in the world, and some are not doing so well,” Bob said.

On Thanksgiving, at Brittany’s last football game as a cheerleader, Bob saw her heading away from the field with something cupped in her hands. He walked over for a look: She was holding a ladybug.

Ellie