Marine Lt. Gen. Jerry Carter remembers the exact moment he knew his life had to change. In 1985, Carter was working at McDonald’s when a customer said she had accidentally thrown out her car keys. So, Carter’s manager asked him to look for the keys in the restaurant’s dumpster.

Carter spent about an hour rummaging through garbage. It was a hot summer day, and he ended up covered in lettuce and reeking of trash. Then his manager came out and apologized because he’d forgotten to tell Carter that the customer had found her keys in her purse.

“That was my last day at McDonald’s. I said, ‘I’m not going to live through another day like that. I’m worth more than that,” Carter recounted.

Without bothering to change his clothes, Carter marched straight to his local military recruiter’s office. A

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