“Oh my God, STOP!” Emily Compagno shouts from her office somewhere in New York City. We’ve just discovered over a Zoom call that some of her best friends from college were my friends from high school, and somehow, in the last 20 years, this had never come up.
“Wait, wait, I have to text them,” she says as she picks up her phone to dictate a text message. “You’ll never believe who’s interviewing me right now. Matt…wait, how do you say your last name?”
We’re barely two minutes into our call, but already she feels like an old friend. The world-traveled NFL cheerleader turned Fox News host is genuinely excited about this odd coincidence, and all at once, our long-scheduled interview slips into casual conversation.
She’s the popular girl in high school who still took an interest in everyone, even though she didn’t need to, stopping to ask genuine questions at the Chess Club table before heading to cheer practice. That brand of real interest and gratitude has made her universally likable, from the soldiers she’s visited to the muscle car enthusiasts she’s enthralled with her custom-built Mach 1.
West Coast Childhood
Emily Compagno grew up as the youngest of three daughters of a U.S. Navy Commander stationed at Oak Knoll Naval Hospital near Oakland, California. As a child of the ’80s, she was part of the last generation to roam freely during the day, exploring the woodlands and foothills around the Bay Area until the figurative streetlights came on.
“It was before the internet, before cell phones. What we had was family bonds, imagination and the great outdoors,” she says. “There was a magic to growing up in the ’80s in Northern California. We were a total national park family and all five of us would pile into the Volvo station wagon and go to Yosemite and the Grand Tetons and Yellowstone, up into Banff and Canada.”
Later, she attended college at the University of Washington, on the doorstep of Mt. Rainier, Olympic and North Cascades national parks. This early exposure fostered a grand appreciation for nature and the importance of the parks system.
“There’s a magic to the National Park system, the awe, the grandeur, the beautiful theater of God’s great earth, and in the incredible ways it’s represented in these national parks,” she says. “In Northern California, the Pac Northwest, it’s just, it’s breathtaking.”
Her love for the outdoors was solidified during childhood summer camps in the Sierra Nevada foothills, where she worked on a ranch, learning farming and basic animal care. After graduating from the University of Washington, she returned to work there as the director of animal husbandry.
“It was so poetic and fulfilling for me to go back and give back as this steward, and try to impart how much that experience meant to me,” she says.
A Muscle Car Becomes A Raider Nation Icon
After spending a couple of years post-college working at Far View Ranch and E/L Ranch in Montana, Compagno returned to the Bay Area to attend law school at the University of San Francisco. Throughout her law school experience, Compagno had one image as her laptop screensaver: a 1972 Ford Mustang Mach 1.
“Growing up, I’d go to car shows with my dad,” she says. “He has more of a European taste, like Alfa Romeos, vintage Mercedes. But my own taste was for American muscle. The ’72 Mach 1 was my dream car. I’ll never forget the first time I saw one; it’s like when you see the love of your life. I just knew that instant that was my car.”
Call it fate, call it manifesting, call it a borderline-obsessive scouring of Bay Area car guides, but ultimately, Compagno managed to find a Mach 1 for sale in Stockton, from a woman owner, no less.
“I drove out there with my mom, and it was love at first sight,” she beams. “I bought it and drove it all the way home. And I had my dream car with the original 351 Cleveland engine. It had been overhauled a little bit by an Impala specialist, so it was sort of a Frankenstein.”
In 2007, Compagno joined the Raiderettes, the cheerleading squad for the Oakland Raiders. Her gregarious nature made her one of the squad’s most popular dancers during her tenure from 2007 to 2010. Her gritty American muscle car, which she had named Malosa, was a natural fit for Raider Nation.
“A lot of the charitable events that we would do as Raiderettes included car shows, right? For charity,” she says. “So, I would always bring Malosa, and she was a beloved member, not only of Raiderettes, but also of Raider Nation. I used to sign autographs as Mustang Sally, for people who knew my car.”
She recalls once coming out of a game at the Oakland Coliseum to find Malosa wouldn’t start, and a generous group of fans helped bring her back to life. Another time, Compagno and a group of fellow Raiderettes were stranded by the side of the highway and rescued by California Highway Patrolmen. As a thank you, she offered them a signed calendar, which they politely accepted.
Over the past half-decade or so, Malosa has found new life as a fully overhauled custom car, thanks largely to Veteran-owned Innovation Performance Technologies in Pinehurst, North Carolina. Today, Malosa is a bright orange muscle machine adorned with flames and features a Raiders sugar skull etched onto the manual shift knob. Instead of Ford’s iconic running Mustang, the gauge panel displays a silhouette of Compagno’s pet Doberman, Duchess, whose face is also featured on the fuel filler cap.
Aesthetics aside, Malosa is powered by a 5.0 GEN2 Coyote Aluminator from Ford Performance and paired with a Tremec T-56 6-speed transmission, finished with a 9-inch setback shifter built by Sikky Manufacturing in Baltimore. The interior is custom, as are the 18-inch wheels. The spirit of the original car remains, but Compagno says only two original pieces are left.
“She is the amalgamation of an incredible community of veterans and veteran supporters that came together to custom build this car for me,” she adds with sincere gratitude.
Emily On Supporting Veterans
While it might be nice to think of this massive custom overhaul as a pure act of chivalry, it’s a token of appreciation for Compagno’s work with veterans. She comes from a long line of military service, from her father back to her great-great-aunt, who served in the U.S. Army Nurse Corps during World War II. So, in 2009, when she and four fellow Raiderettes were invited to visit troops in Iraq, she was honored to have the opportunity.
Her group was sent to Sadr City, a notoriously rough forward operating base in Baghdad that had never hosted a VIP or celebrity visitor.
“(The soldiers) kept thinking there must be a mistake,” she recalls. “And people kept telling us, ‘You’re not going to Sadr. No one is sending NFL cheerleaders to Sadr City. The only visitors we get, we shoot at.’”
But there was no mistake. Compagno and company spent the afternoon entertaining the troops, even performing a cheer stunt with a soldier who had previously been a cheerleader.
That night, the Black Hawk helicopter scheduled to take the Raiderettes back was diverted for a Medevac flight, leaving them stranded in Sadr City overnight.
“The commanding officer, Colonel Tim Karcher, said, ‘I have three daughters at home and there is no way I’m going to sleep until you girls are safely out of here,’” she remembers. “And we pulled this all-nighter with the soldiers in the courtyard outside in the FOB, never went to sleep, just laughing and talking. It was like summer camp, and I hope that they felt just like they were back home for a night.”
Shortly after the Raiderettes’ visit, an IED struck the vehicle that Karcher and some of his men were driving, and he lost his legs. Later that day, Sergeant Timothy David was killed by another IED. Compagno and Karcher remain friends to this day, and their story begins her new book, Under His Wings: How Faith on the Front Lines Has Protected American Troops.
The book is a three-pronged tribute to men and women in uniform, chronicling the stories of Compagno’s family members who have served, her experiences visiting service members overseas and stories from fighters and family members who have had deeply personal experiences with God.
“It was an honor to serve as a witness to them, especially because some of them had never shared their story before with anyone,” she says. “And they were trusting me to carry their voice adequately and accurately.”
“Spoiled” By Weapons of War
Compagno leveraged her media opportunities as a Raiderette into guest appearances as a TV legal analyst, where she was ultimately discovered by Fox News. Today, she’s a co-host of Outnumbered, which airs daily at noon EST and averages around 2 million viewers a day. Prior to Outnumbered, she hosted a Fox Nation series called Weapons of War, which offered her the chance to experience some truly unique firepower.
“I am now totally spoiled because of what I shot for Weapons of War,” she says. “Everything from the .50-caliber minigun out of helicopters and the Sherman tank with a 15-pound round. I even shot a musket. But my favorite is the flamethrower. Every year, I ask Santa for a flamethrower. Hey, you never know!”
Currently, she’s enjoying shooting a KSG410, which she describes as “light and fun,” and she is also the proud owner of a custom Glock 34 Copperhead made by shooting coach to the stars Taran Butler. He crafted the weapon as a thank you for Compagno’s work with veterans; it too has an image of Duchess laser-engraved on the magazine.
But nothing, she says, can top shooting from an open Black Hawk helicopter.
“Yeah, while in Iraq I got to shoot out of a Black Hawk, with the butterfly handle, and that was pretty phenomenal,” she says. “It was just out at the desert, but at the time they were like, ‘Don’t tell anyone!’ But now I’m telling you, so…”
She shrugs and raises her eyebrows, as if to say, “Hey, you seem cool. Wanna hear a story I don’t tell most people?” It comes across as charming as she sits in her Fox News office, cluttered with Bay Area sports memorabilia, military medals and roughly 10,000 pairs of shoes. Like so many service members and Raider fans before me, I too felt for a moment that Emily Compagno could be my friend.
There’s More To Emily’s Story
The Emily Compagno hits keep on coming online at hookandbarrel.com. You’ll want to check out the companion video full of a great selection of “Hot Takes” Q&As shot during our cover shoot at Bluemont Station in Bluemont, Virginia. The prestigious grounds are known as Whitehall Estate.
The place is steeped in history as the estate was once owned by President George Washington’s brother, John Augustine, whose beautiful country home is called Whitehall. Rumor has it that Washington himself used to ride mustangs (see what we did there?) on the grounds.