Nobel Peace Prize winner rescued by Tampa-based organization

Tampa Nonprofit helps rescue Nobel Peace Prize winner

In a complex mission, Grey Bull Rescue helps Maria Corina Machado escape from Venezuela. Fox 13's Ariel Placensia reports.

TAMPA - A Tampa-based organization conducted a complex and secret mission to get the 2025 Nobel Peace Prize winner out of her home country of Venezuela ahead of the award ceremony in Oslo, Norway. 

Grey Bull Rescue founder, Bryan Stern, described the mission to extract Maria Corina Machado from Venezuela "overwhelmingly, the most high risk that we've ever done."

"She's been a hero of mine for many, many, many years," Stern added. 

The backstory:

Machado won the 2025 Nobel Peace Prize "for her tireless work promoting democratic rights for the people of Venezuela and for her struggle to achieve a just and peaceful transition from dictatorship to democracy," according to the award’s website.

She mounted one of the most serious challenges to current President Nicolás Maduro, who is facing narcoterrorism and cocaine charges in the U.S. But the Venezuelan government barred Machado from running for office. She’s been in hiding since January. 

Dig deeper:

Stern didn’t disclose specifics about the mission to extract Machado from Venezuela. He said there was a land operation, and eventually, Machado was brought onto his boat. 

"The water was incredibly rough," Stern said. "The evening that this happened, we were between 5-foot and 10-foot seas in very small boats in pitch black darkness."  Once on the boat, Stern said Machado took a deep breath and didn’t seem worried like everyone else. He described the Venezuelan as "hard as nails." 

"She didn't talk about the Nobel Prize at all," Stern said. "She did talk about seeing her daughter for the first time in two years."

Machado ended up arriving in Norway after the Nobel Peace Prize ceremony. Her daughter accepted the award on her behalf. 

What we know:

When asked how Grey Bull Rescue got involved in this extraction, Stern said he received text messages from a friend who knew the Tampa organization was working on projects in Venezuela.

"(He) asked if I'd be interested in hearing out a very interesting project. And that's how it was phrased. There wasn't a lot of detail. There wasn't much," Stern said. "And he asked if he could share my number with a contact of his. Out of professional courtesy, he wanted to ask."

Eventually, Stern said he was connected to Machado’s team. Her extraction was privately funded and money did not come through any government, he explained. 

Stern said the U.S. government and his team deconflicted and were aware of the other’s presence.  "In this case, because the U.S. military is conducting operations in this part of the world, I was worried about, I was deeply concerned about being targeted by the U.S. military," Stern said. "We are two boats at sea off the coast of Venezuela in the dark of night doing something, and the eye in the sky sees this. That could be misperceived as something nefarious. That could be misunderstood to be something. And in this part of the world, things fall from the sky on top of boats pretty often and pretty successfully. So I didn't want to be a victim of that. I certainly didn't want Maria to be a victim of that. So we communicated in such a way where the U.S. government, the U.S. military knew that we were doing something in the region. They did not know the details of it. They knew where we would be operating, where some of our rally points were, and then at the very highest levels and at the very last minutes, did we disclose what the objective was."