Howard Rizio near Katahdin, Maine

Howard Rizio

I've been a Marine, a corrections sergeant, a narcotics detective on a DEA task force, and a real estate broker. In 2015 I was arrested in a Walmart parking lot by men I used to work beside.

That afternoon is where my life stopped making sense, and where I started looking at it honestly. Not so much at what happened, but at the man it happened to.

I've spent the years since questioning almost everything I thought I knew. I served as a mentor in a veterans treatment court. In 2024 I thru-hiked the Appalachian Trail as Wingit, with no experience and no plan, then spent eight months living out of my truck as a trail angel. I didn't conquer the trail, or myself. I cooperated.

I don't have answers to hand out. What I can do is show you where I was standing when something shifted, and trust you to notice your own. That's what I try to do on YouTube, on Facebook, and in my first book, Nothing Left to Hold Onto, coming in 2027.

Cover of Nothing Left to Hold Onto by Howard Rizio

Nothing Left to Hold Onto

A Memoir · Coming 2027

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Conversations

Podcasts, interviews, and speaking

I'm glad to sit down with podcasts, groups, and organizations, especially those serving veterans, recovery, law enforcement, and hiking communities, or anyone questioning the life they've built. I don't come with a program. I come with a story and what I've learned looking at it honestly.

Things I can talk about:

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