Geek Squad Agent Andrew Ward was driving down an icy Kansas highway in February when the car in front of him was clipped by another vehicle and flipped over. It landed with its wheels in the air and roof caved into the concrete.
His heart thumping, Andrew, who was on his way to help with a refrigerator installation, pulled over.
“My first instinct was to jump out and help. No matter who it was,” he said. “This could be anybody. It could have been my wife or my neighbor.”
Most 6-year-old boys will probably be wearing superhero costumes for Halloween this year, but not Aidan Markworth. He’s dressing as a Geek Squad Agent.
The Ohio first grader already has the persona nailed down. He has a white shirt, a black clip-on tie and a serious love of technology.
“He desperately wants to work at the Geek Squad,” said his mom, Kelly. “He breaks down and starts to cry when I tell him his has to wait 12 more years.”
Aidan’s passion for technology started with a child’s tablet and asking the Google Mini questions.
Derek Meister’s family is to Halloween what the Griswolds are to Christmas.
For the past 25 years, they’ve decked out their suburban Cleveland home with hundreds of decorations every October. They have about 30 giant yard inflatables, a graveyard full of Styrofoam tombstones and even a high-tech light show.
“People start coming by while we’re setting it up,” said Derek, a longtime Geek Squad Agent. “Some places don’t even do trick-or-treating anymore, but we still get about 200 kids every year on Halloween.”
Kelvin Tolston lives every day like it could be his last because one day it almost was.
He was hit by a drunk driver 10 years ago, and the wreck almost cost him his life. He was put in a medically induced coma and lost sight in his right eye.
For Kelvin, every moment matters — and the Geek Squad manager brings that philosophy to how he treats customers, too.
“I’ve been through times I needed people to do stuff for me I couldn’t do for myself,” he said.
Geek Squad Academy is an educational program that partners with local nonprofits and other youth organizations that share a focus on teaching youth and teens about technology.
For most students, a Monday off from school could seem like a perfect time to sleep or hang with friends. On Jan. 20, 40 girls chose to spend their free day getting hands on with tech at a Best Buy Geek Squad Academy.
They were from Project Scientist, a national program that exposes girls as young as 4 to science, technology, engineering and math careers.
Andy Bork spent Dec. 31, 1999, at Geek Squad’s original precinct in Minneapolis, helping prepare for the yet-unknown impact of the so-called Y2K crisis.
“We had all hands on deck, waiting to see what would happen,” recalls Agent Bork, who was one of about 10 full-time Agents at the time.
The problem — made prevalent in headlines in the months leading up to the new year — was that computers only processed dates in two digits, which meant that the coming year 2000 would be indistinguishable from 1900.
We just wrapped up another epic season of Geek Squad Academy (GSA). That means 10,000 teens from across the United States learned new skills and got hands-on with the latest technology.
GSA is nothing like a traditional classroom experience. You definitely won’t find a textbook. What you will find is a two-day camp with BB-8 robots used for teaching coding, Legos for stop-motion animation and of course iPads for music production. And more.
We couldn’t have done it without all 1,200 Best Buy employees who volunteered as instructors and helpers.
You can work with people for years and not know much about them. Unless you’re like Katie Moran, a social butterfly who knows just about everyone at Best Buy’s Geek Squad City.
Katie, a Geek Squad Agent at the technology-repair facility in Kentucky, noticed that friend and colleague Agent Mike Beams was missing a lot of work.
“When it kept happening, I started asking him more questions about what’s going on,” Katie said.
She learned Mike was sick and getting sicker.
Young people from across the U.S. are about to learn essential tech skills as Best Buy’s Geek Squad Academy (GSA) summer camp season begins this month. More than 10,000 students from ages 11 to 18 are expected to attend 60 camps this year — the biggest GSA season ever.
“Youth from underrepresented communities face real challenges as job readiness resources and opportunities remain few and far between,” said Andrea Wood, head of social impact at Best Buy. “These two-day tech immersion camps will help thousands of students explore their passions and gain critical tech skills as they look ahead to their future studies and careers.”
After wrapping up a busy day of meetings at the Best Buy headquarters on Tuesday, a group of Geek Squad Autotechs from across the country returned to their hotel to relax. Little did they know they were about to save a man’s life.
Ethan Kimmel of Portland, Oregon, and Nick Potter of Naples, Florida, were hanging out in the bar area, talking to some fellow Geek Squad Agents, when someone in the group pointed out what he thought was a man assaulting an older man about 20 yards away.
It takes some people their entire lives to learn how to live in the moment.
But at just 16 years old, Christian was a master at it. Cancer will do that to a teenager. Christian’s ability to find humor in the toughest times made him an instant friend with Geek Squad Agent Elliot Nelson.
The pair met while Christian was being treated at Children’s Minnesota in Minneapolis. Agent Nelson works at the philanthropic Geek Squad Precinct inside the hospital.
Their shared passion for video games and laughs is a reminder that friends can make even the most painful moments a little less so.
We just wrapped up another whirlwind season of Geek Squad Academy – our 12th! We traveled across the U.S.,from Hoboken to Honolulu, to bring interactive tech camps to kids.
Our employee volunteers taught everything from music production to coding using BB-8 robots.
As our new “Junior Agents” completed the camp, we hope to have sparked an interest in tech that will inspire their future education and career choices. That’s part of our commitment to prepare 1 million youth from underserved communities for the tech-reliant jobs of the future each year by 2020.