Two South Florida residents have joined forces to rescue children trapped in Ukraine’s war zones. Raul Mas, a lifelong resident of Coral Gables, and Joshua Garay, who grew up in Miami-Dade’s Westchester neighborhood, have teamed up with military and intelligence professionals to start “Operation Jolly Roger”. The group draws its inspiration from Operation Peter Pan, the humanitarian mission that helped 14,000 children flee from communist Cuba in the early 1960s.
Joshua Garay is an FIU alumnus and a former US intelligence agent. Garay now works with a non-profit child rescue organization, F3 Missing Children’s Intelligence Agency, which is staffed by seasoned veterans of America’s global war on terror. The tax-exempt charitable organization, founded in 2019, has built an impressive record of finding missing and abducted children, often in foreign countries.
Raul Mas, a former international banker and marketing expert, is helping the organization with fundraising, public relations and building a network in Eastern Europe to support the group’s rescue operations.
“Operation Jolly Roger will be different than Operation Peter Pan because it involves operating in a war zone” Raul said, “but the men and women involved in this endeavor are absolutely the right people to do it. They are highly-skilled analysts and former military and intelligence operatives accustomed to working in challenging and dangerous environments…and they have a proven track record of rescuing children.” he added.
Within minutes of launching Operation Jolly Roger, the group had their first case: an American father desperate to get his Ukrainian-born wife and toddler back to the United States. They had been visiting family when the war broke out. Similar cases are flowing in daily as well as requests from large groups of children, including an orphanage.
“This is a no-fail mission for us” said Joshua Garay “but we know how to do it. Our team has decades of experience finding America’s worst enemies as well as rescuing our own troops trapped behind enemy lines. We are professionals and these challenging environments are where we do our best work” he added.
More information on Operation Jolly Roger can be obtained by visiting their website at operationjollyroger.com
This article was originally posted on Miami’s Community News.
