Paying it Forward

This time last year, team member Matt was going through chemotherapy treatments for cancer and team member Bob was in the ICU undergoing emergency brain surgery. It was a brutal, scary, and exhausting year for not only Bob and Matt, but all their friends and family members as well. We all learned firsthand what it's like to spend long days in the hospital, to drop everything to become caregivers, and to get difficult, life-changing news. And all of us are adults! It's even more difficult for children diagnosed with critical illnesses who are forced to face challenges well beyond their years. We are so lucky that Matt won his battle with cancer and Bob made an incredible recovery. Now we're celebrating by paying it forward - by raising money for the Make-A-Wish foundation through the Trailblaze Challenge!

The Trailblaze Challenge will have us hiking a whopping 27 miles of the Pacific Crest Trail...in one day!! We'll start before dawn in the mountains of Wrightwood, California, and finish in the desert after 14+ hours on the trail. It's a daunting task but one that we are ready to tackle to make some wishes come true! Research shows that wishes have proven physical and emotional benefits that can give a child better health outcomes and increase their chances for survival, and we want to help bring that kind of joy and support to kids in our community. Wishes can range from a trip to a pickle factory, becoming a superhero, giving their baseball team new uniforms, or even pushing all the buttons in the elevator of a tall building! 

Make-A-Wish grants thousands of wishes each year, but they only have the funds to grant wishes for less than half of eligible kids. After the challenging couple of years we’ve had, we are extra motivated to do what we can to fill that fundraising gap and give these kids something special to look forward to! Please support this impactful mission by helping us hit our Trailblaze Challenge fundraising goal. All donations are tax-deductible and your money goes towards granting wishes right here in Southern California. Thank you so much for your support!

The Team

Amy Hartman:

Raised in Colorado by a family of avid skiers, sailors, rafters, and explorers, Amy has always had a passion for adventure and the outdoors. That passion took her to Montana State University and the mountains of Bozeman, where she joined the Sigma Beta chapter of Chi Omega. It was through Chi Omega’s long standing philanthropic commitment to the Make-A -Wish Foundation that she also discovered a passion for helping Wish Kids. After several years of covid delays and Matt getting cancer (for attention), she is thrilled to finally be participating in the Trail-Blaze Challenge. 

Matt McRee:

Born and raised in North Carolina, Matt is an Eagle Scout who loves the outdoors, as well as traveling and cooking. And reading. And writing. And sometimes his cats. But the thing he loves most is his wife Amy, who he met while attending graduate school at NYU’s Tisch Asia in Singapore. Oh, and because there’s room for one small, insignificant factoid: he beat rectal cancer. The funniest cancer. During the two year fight he received a truly humbling amount of love and care from friends and family and even strangers. Now he’s trying to pay that forward to children who are fighting bigger battles than he did. 

Tyler Peck:

A native of South Carolina, Tyler has now been in California for a decade. He enjoys Television (his job), traveling (to hotels), and hot showers (especially at said hotels). Moving from a small town to the less small town of Los Angeles, Tyler feels that getting out of the city and into the outdoors is a great way to reconnect to his roots. It’s also usually where he’ll find his closest friends and wife too. He’s excited to be out there with an even greater purpose this time. 

Caty Zick:

Caty is a Michigan native, a UCLA Bruin, and works in TV! She's had her own health challenges (Postural Orthostatic Tachycardia Syndrome) since childhood, and hiking has been a vital way for her to build crucial cardio fitness. For years, she didn't have the confidence to work out, fearing her heart condition would lead to a 911 call from the gym. But this group of friends and family encouraged her to try hiking, and in 2020 they conquered one of Caty's lifelong dreams: to summit Half Dome in Yosemite! That challenge was for her, this challenge is for the kids! 

Bob Zick:

Bob is a lifelong endurance athlete who now spends half his year in San Diego. Last year, Bob was hit by an out-of-control skier while snowboarding, resulting in a subdural hematoma. He kept training for the Tokyo marathon but realized something was wrong and underwent emergency brain surgery in the nick of time. In the year since, he has been on a long path to recovery, but he is back to running, biking and hiking--a favorite pastime that has led him to hike the entire Colorado Trail! He is excited to hit the trails for Make-A-Wish. 

What's in a Name? 

Fun fact--four of the five of us are TV writers and we’re reasonably sure that Bob has at least seen a television! One of the biggest signs of success in the television industry is syndication, where the show is re-aired on a different network, often with a hefty payday attached. If something seems particularly primed for syndication, we’d say it has “syndication legs.” Now we’re on the trail of a massive payout (for the kids), and we’re using our own syndication legs to get there.