Goldstar’s Wife and Orlando Winery Team Up to Help Tunnel To Towers Nonprofit

ORLANDO, Florida. – Tunnel to Towers non-profit helping families of those who have fallen in battle or been seriously injured for almost 2 decades.

Crystal Blasjo is a Goldstar bride who in 2019 was offered a brand new home by the foundation after her husband Aaron Joseph Blasjo, an elite Green Berets special forces sergeant, was killed in Afghanistan on May 29, 2011. Blasjo became a widow. with an 8 week old baby.

“He loved what he did and he supported a country he believed in,” Crystal said. “Aaron was fun. He was always happy. He always gave his heart to everyone. I mean he would help someone he didn’t even know.

She said it had been 10 difficult years without her husband, but after Tunnel to Towers contributed some of those difficulties just got a little easier.

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“It’s a lot of relief. I was able to go back to school. I have now received my Associate Degree and am working on my Bachelor of Education and without Tunnel to Towers’ gift of a financially mortgage free home I could not have been able, ”she said. “I can spend more time with my children. “

The association was founded by the family of Stephen Gerard Siller, a New York firefighter who died on September 11, 2001 after going through a tunnel to the Twin Towers, according to the organization’s website.

“It’s an incredible foundation. I mean literally, any money that goes and donated to this foundation goes directly to our families of our servicemen who were catastrophically injured; our families of the missing, ”said Crystal.

For Yanick Arakelov, a US Army veteran who founded Silk Road Wines in Orlando 8 years ago, getting results for injured first responders, soldiers and their families is part of his company’s mission.

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“We want to do everything we can to ease this pain and show that they will never be forgotten,” Arakelov said. “It is our core value to help charities because we have been lucky and successful at what we do and we wanted to give back and help those in need of help. It is important that we remember and honor these sacrifices.

On Saturday, as the nation commemorates 20 years of the 9/11 terrorist attacks, Arakelov and his company will host Wine for Warriors, a gala to help raise funds for Tunnel to Towers and for a charity in his homeland of the Republic of Georgia. At the event, first responders from Orange, Seminole and Osceola counties will be honored.

For more information or to book for the gala visit: https://www.wineforwarriorsgala.com/