We were lucky to catch up with Robbie Capell recently and have shared our conversation below.

Robbie, thanks for taking the time to share your stories with us today So let’s jump to your mission – what’s the backstory behind how you developed the mission that drives your brand?

Our mission at Saving A Hero’s Place is to make sure every first responder fallen in the line of duty is never forgotten. That is the meaning and reasoning behind the Honor Chair. It serves as a place of reverence to ensure the Hero at his/her department is never forgotten. As new Officers come in, it is our hope they will ask about the Honor Chair, thus starting the conversation about who the officer was, etc. It’s very important to us that the fallen are always remembered.

Robbie, before we move on to more of these sorts of questions, can you take some time to bring our readers up to speed on you and what you do?

I am a wife, mother of 3, and grandmother of 1. My husband and I have been married for 28 years and started Saving A Hero’s Place in October 2013. We started the non-profit after the Boston Marathon bombing occurred in April 2013. We honored Officer Sean Collier of the MIT Police Department with an Honor Chair, and it just took off from there. We currently have made/presented 301 Honor Chairs across 30 states, museums, and 2 different countries. I am proud of how far we have come in the non-profit world. While we are still considered a “small” non-profit the work we do is anything but. The chairs are handmade by us in our shop here in Helotes, TX. Each one is unique and designed specifically to the Officer we are honoring. The Honor Chairs are placed at the dept where he/she worked. While most nonprofits raise money to give, we raise money to provide a product. This sometimes proves difficult when it comes to fundraising efforts. To help sway the costs we have a “Guardian Angel membership” where people who believe in our mission can donate monthly to help with operating costs and expenses. Every chair we build is personally delivered by us or one of our “Guardian Angels.” We also hold an annual gala as a large fundraising effort. We are always looking for sponsors, new Guardian Angels, and fundraising ideas.

We’d love to hear the story of how you turned a side-hustle into a something much bigger.

When we began this journey in 2013, we still had littles at home and my husband was still in full-time law enforcement. I homeschooled our children and ran the day to day of the non-profit from our home. We had a small shed in our backyard where the chairs were built. 6 years later, in 2019, we decided to take a huge leap of faith and run the non-profit full time. My husband resigned from the department; we sold our home and moved a few cities over. He became a reserve officer for a small agency, and we still had two teenagers at home at the time, still homeschooling. We continued to build the chairs and deliver them, even through COVID. Fast forward 2023 and we decided to take another leap of faith. We sold almost everything we owned, loaded up the last teenager at home, the dog, and went on the road fulltime. We pulled a cargo trailer to the departments to build the chairs onsite with the Hero’s fellow officers and friends. That year on the road was such a rewarding and unique experience. So many one of kind events and memories we will always have with us. After a year on the road our equipment was just taking too much of a beating with the roads, so we reluctantly made the decision to come off the road. Which is how we found our way into our little woodshop here in Helotes, TX.

We’d really appreciate if you could talk to us about how you figured out the manufacturing process.

We have a few volunteers that help build, but most of our board and volunteers are still fulltime law enforcement. Each chair is handmade, and a CNC is used for engraving. We didn’t always have the CNC. When we first began, the Hero’s name was engraved by hand with a router. We haven’t always used cherrywood either. Pine was the first then Oak. We do have a couple of very unique chairs where one is Walnut and the other is Maple. My husband has always had a knack for woodworking, so his knowledge has helped us get to where we are today. It’s also all about trial and error when it comes to building an Honor Chair. We are always learning something new in the nonprofit world and hope to be able to continue honoring our first responders sacrifice one chair at a time.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.savingaherosplace.org
• Instagram: saving_a_heros_place
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/savingaherosplace
• Youtube: @savingaherosplace