A lone figure at dawn overlooking a still mountain lake — Forged in Fire Part 2

Forged in Fire: My Journey to Apex – Part 2: The Fight I Almost Didn't Win

September 8, 2026

Forged in Fire: My Journey to Apex – Part 2: The Fight I Almost Didn't Win

Part 1 ended with a nine-year-old kid learning that odds don't dictate outcomes. This chapter picks up years later, at the one decision I've ever made that was fully, completely mine: the fight for sole custody of my two daughters, and the twelve years since that have been built on what that fight taught me.

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Why did Brad Clark fight for sole custody of his daughters? Because after his marriage ended in early 2013, he was facing the possibility of not being the one raising his daughters day to day. He decided his girls deserved one person they could always depend on, no matter what, and that it was going to be him — so he went to superior court and fought for it.

How old were his daughters when he won custody? One and three and a half years old. They were too young to remember a "before," which meant however he showed up for them from that point forward simply became their childhood.

Where does "All The Way. No Matter What." come from? It's not a slogan from a marketing meeting. It came from deciding his daughters were going to have one thing in their life they could always count on completely — and that thing was going to be him. It's now the creed behind Last Ride Co.

How does the custody fight connect to Apex Apparel Co.? Apex was built as proof — for Brad and for his daughters — that when life hands you a hard decision, you can choose to become the stable, dependable one instead of the alternative. Every line under Apex, including Combat and Chaos and Last Ride Co., carries a different chapter of that same proof.

The years I don't talk about much

I'm not going to walk you through every relationship that didn't make it. Some of that isn't mine alone to tell, and it isn't the point of this story. What matters is this: for a long stretch of my life, I was still that kid from Part 1 — still trying to prove I was worth something, still filling voids I didn't fully understand. I made choices in those years I'd make differently now. I hurt people, and I got hurt. That's the honest version, and I'd rather give you that than a highlight reel.

In 2015, we lost the family business — through no fault of our own. That business meant more to me than most people would guess. My mom and dad started it back in 1987, before I even understood what they were building or why. They built it so my life could look different than theirs did. Watching it go under didn't erase what they taught me by building it in the first place.

And before that — a month before I turned 19 — I lost my mom to cancer. She was the one person who always showed up for me. Three days after her final surgery, too weak to stand on her own, she put her wig on, got dressed, and had herself brought down to a hospital chapel to watch me get married. That's who she was. When she died less than a year later, I did what a lot of people do with grief they don't know how to hold: I buried it, kept moving, and told myself I was fine. I wasn't. It showed up in the years that followed.

The decision point

By 2012, my marriage was coming apart. It was final in early 2013. I'm not going to relitigate that here — the details matter less than what happened next.

What happened next is the only decision I've ever made that felt fully, completely mine: I went to superior court and fought for sole custody of my two daughters. They were one and three and a half years old.

I want to be honest about this, because the whole point of this brand is honesty, even when it's less dramatic than people expect. It wasn't a drawn-out, made-for-TV courtroom war. But that doesn't mean it was easy, and it doesn't mean it didn't cost me everything I had. I showed up. I did the paperwork, the waiting, the process — all of it, the right way, every time. Nobody handed me sole custody because I asked nicely. There are no handouts. Just hard work. I earned every piece of that outcome, in front of a judge, with my daughters' future on the table.

In May 2013, it landed. I won.

That win wasn't a finish line. It was the starting gun. My daughters were too young to remember a "before." Whatever I built for them starting that day was simply going to be their normal. That's a strange kind of pressure, and a strange kind of freedom — and it's the exact moment I decided I had to become someone I'd never given myself permission to be before. Relentless. Not because it sounded good on a hoodie. Because the version of me that existed before that courtroom didn't have it yet, and my girls needed the version that did.

What I built from there

I didn't stop at the custody win, because that same decision — my daughters deserve someone they can always depend on, no matter what — didn't apply just once. It applied at every fork in the road for the next decade.

I went back to the fire service in 2018 and earned my spot as a Lieutenant the only way it's supposed to happen — by putting myself in front of harder problems than the people around me until there was no choice but to notice. I became a medic, which means I show up on other people's worst days for a living. Nothing recalibrates your self-pity faster than staying calm while someone else's world is falling apart. I'm still out there on the truck today.

In 2021, I lost my dad. Another piece of the foundation I'd built my life on, gone. But by then, what he and my mom had planted in me back in 1987 — build something better for the people you love, no matter what it costs you — was already who I was. It didn't leave when they did.

I finished my Bachelor's in Business Administration in 2024, doing homework after my daughters were asleep because that was the only quiet hour I had. I earned my real estate license this year. And in February 2024, I walked away from the Lieutenant title I'd fought hard to earn — not from the work, not from the truck, but from a leadership above me that had turned into something I couldn't square with the values I was raising my daughters on. That's the same muscle I built in that custody case: recognizing when something no longer matches who you've become, and having the discipline to walk anyway.

The proof

That's where Apex Apparel Co. comes from.

I didn't start a clothing brand because rugged graphic tees looked like a smart market gap — though they are. I built Apex because I needed proof, for myself and for my daughters, that when life hands you a decision, you can choose to be the stable, dependable one instead of the alternative. Every design under Apex, Combat and Chaos, and Last Ride Co. comes from an actual chapter of this story — the custody fight, the fire service, losing the business, losing my dad. None of it is manufactured. It's just my life, put on a shirt, one chapter at a time.

My daughters have watched me build this from nothing. Not because I need them to be impressed. Because I need them to know, the way you only know something by watching it happen in front of you, that no matter what life hands them, they get to decide what happens next too. That's the actual inheritance. My mom and dad gave me that same inheritance in 1987. I'm just passing it forward, one generation later.

The past doesn't define you. What you build after it does.

Wear the standard — Last Ride Co / Apex Core

This chapter is where "All The Way. No Matter What." was actually decided — long before it was a tagline. If it means something to you, the Last Ride Tee // Heavyweight Issue carries that line. Browse the full line at Last Ride Co., or the everyday uniform at Apex Core.

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