Tulsi Gabbard

And what came with that was a sense of, I need to make the most of the time that I have.

And so the normal kind of, you know, I was, I guess I was mature for my age.

And I think that played a huge role in that, in wanting to do something positive with my life and the time that I had and not like dick around and waste time.

And so what drove me to eventually look into public service and political office was

There's a few things, but one that really showed me how change was possible in our government was there was a big landfill developer that wanted to build a landfill over one of our major water aquifers on the island of Oahu.

It provided water, clean drinking water, for about a third of the population of approximately a million people.

I was a teenager, I was like 16, 17 at the time, maybe 18.

Even I knew that that was a bad idea, that if you build a landfill over a water aquifer, the possibility of that leaching through and contaminating our groundwater would create a massive crisis.

Because we're the most remote island chain in the world.

You can't just ship in water easily or truck in water from somewhere else.

You knock out a major water aquifer like that, that's over 300,000 people whose lives are directly affected and impacted.

And so I joined a bunch of people.

We went out and we started gathering, telling people like, hey, did you know that this is what they're trying to do?

This land, again, going back to lobbyists and money and politics, this landfill...

company was very cozy with the president of the state Senate who was kind of greasing the wheels for him to get this thing approved and fast tracked.

And so, you know, it was petitions, old school piece of paper pen standing outside the grocery store telling people like, hey, do you know that this is what's going on in your neighborhood?

And many people saying, no, I had no idea.

And then signing their names and saying, well, of course we have to stop this.

Long story short, we stopped it.

The landfill was never put in place over that water aquifer.