Interview with Elijah Shaw November 2015 Newsletter | Page 4

Photo Credit: Dwayne Franklin

When protecting your clients whether it be a Celebrity, Fortune 500 Company, or a Political client, can
you recall one of the most dangerous experiences by working on the job?
“It’s something I can’t talk about because of the nature of the business, but I can recall in 2003 the MTV
Music Awards that was held in Miami. After the awards show, the particular client I was working with
needed to get back to Atlanta. We needed to head back out quickly and we were going to fly privately.
We were so pressed for time so we were going to jump on this private jet and leave Miami, Florida and
fly to Atlanta. The pilots were conversing between themselves and they were a little concerned, so I
went over there and asked them what was going on. They were trying to figure out how they were going
to navigate the storm that was happening. Should they fly over or under it? The client wanted to go and
leave now and head out because he had an appointment he had to make and the crew was willing to do
that. I had to slow them down and talk to them to try to figure out what was the issue. For the next 45
minutes I got a crash course on aviation and weather pattern, and eventually I ended up saying, ‘hey we
can’t do this because if we fly, it’s going to be following in this direction.’ We cancelled that trip. The
storm ended up being Hurricane Katrina and we would’ve been flying basically right through it, so that
was one of those nearly avoided crises.”