Since Wednesday, there have been applications for Turning Points from more than 19,000 schools.

Many people close to Charlie Kirk and Turning Point USA have shared heartfelt reflections since Wednesday’s unspeakable tragedy.

As someone who only admired his work from afar—and occasionally coordinated with incredible people he had trained—I waited until now to share my own brief encounter: a five-minute conversation with him two years ago in Dana Point, Southern California.

I try not to take VIPs’ time when hundreds are waiting to talk with them. But as Charlie passed by, I tossed out a quick line: “Charlie, I just learned we have one close mutual friend—Brent Hamachek.”

With no spotlight or cameras running, Kirk spun around. It felt like a movie scene where everything else fades and only the two main characters remain. Kirk lit up and said, “No way, you know Brent Hamachek!?”

For the next five minutes, he joyfully talked about Brent—how Brent had been a key mentor in his life, how he taught him to engage honestly and to disagree without being disagreeable. Charlie wanted me to tell Brent how much it meant that he always made time to meet with him when in Arizona. He was also glad that both Brent and I were in his native Midwest “fighting the good fight.”

People often joke about everyone getting “five minutes of fame,” and some say success makes people forget their friends. But here was Charlie Kirk—already famous, surrounded by hundreds of people with money and influence—fully immersed in a conversation with me, someone offering nothing but gratitude for a mutual friend who had once guided him when no one knew his name.

That friend, Hamachek, even co-authored with Kirk Time for a Turning Point: Setting a Course for Free Markets and Limited Government for Future Generations in 2016, when Turning Point USA was still very much a startup.

The next year, Kirk joined Hamachek back in his old stomping grounds—where he had been captain of the Wheeling High School basketball and football teams—just an hour south of our Milwaukee HQ. Together they presented at the Heartland Institute (see photo).

Hamachek has interviewed far more interesting guests than me (most recently this Chicago interview), but watching that 2017 conversation between Hamachek and Kirk at the Heartland Institute (video here) you see the same warmth toward a mentor, and the same contagious optimism, that I witnessed in my five minutes with him “off stage.”

Peter Schweizer, a former Chair of my Advisory Board, once introduced me as a “Happy Warrior.” But after those five minutes of not fame, I walked away convinced: Charlie Kirk was the Ultimate Happy Warrior.