ENCINITAS — Speaking to a crowd Friday in Leucadia, at both the beginning and deep into the pursuit of their own dreams, Colin O’Brady warned of the “zone of comfortable complacency.”
O’Brady, an author and adventurer, said his 11 world records were not the result of a linear path of success, but of setbacks along the way. The missteps “weren’t failures, they were the way to success.”
He spoke at the third Milkowsky Tax Law Endurance Event, which awarded scholarships to four winners from 10 finalists. The event drew more than 120 attendees, according to John Milkowski, the firm’s founder, including the finalists’ families and community members who had pursued their own passions in various fields.
Food was catered by Kai Ola Sushi and Habit Burger. Attendees could bid on items such as a signed McGill’s skateboard, an Invita Head Spa treatment and beans from Talitha Coffee Roasters.
The night’s top prize went to Gian Araquel, 18, a senior at Mission Hills High School. Araquel won a $2,000 scholarship, which she hopes to use to pursue a career in nursing. She said she is still evaluating college options, but as someone who moved from the Philippines last year, she would love to serve those in need in her home country.
O’Brady said he was impressed by how she confronted fears and anxieties when she “unlocked these whole new possibilities” by flying “across the world to start a new life here that she believed in and dreamed.”
Araquel said she was honored to receive the scholarship and that O’Brady’s compliments resonated deeply because of his message of “going beyond your norms.”
“His book is something I tell myself,” she said. “If it’s for you, it will come to you.”
Second place went to Allison Mondragon, 16, a junior at Steele Canyon High School. Mondragon said she hopes to use the $1,000 scholarship to pursue a degree in criminology at San Diego State University before attending the police academy. She hopes to become a detective.
The current San Diego Police Cadet said she wanted to follow in the footsteps of her father, a police officer who died when she was 6.
“Since I was little, I’ve always looked up to police officers fighting crime,” Mondragon said.
Third place ended in a tie, with Adam Mendoza of Gompers Prep Academy and Jason Small of the Monarch School each earning a $500 scholarship.
Milkowski said that after the students “search deep and think about what they like in life,” he hoped they could use the scholarship money to “get to that point early and not have to miss out on something that they really want to do.”
He said that was why the firm invited a speaker like O’Brady, the first person to cross Antarctica solo and unsupported, and part of the first team to row across the Drake Passage, among other notable achievements.
O’Brady said every student and everyone listening will “face adversity. We’re going to face setbacks. That’s how it is.”
“Dream those big dreams, but the persistence, the chipping away every single day of saying, ‘one more percent that I can do, one more thing, one more step, that’s how we get there,’” he said. “Failures – they’re not failures, they’re not dead ends, they’re not wrong turns – those are the way.”
