With help from The Heroes Project, injured veterans are reaching new heights.
Tim Medvetz was always an adrenaline chaser. In 1998, he rode his chopper from his hometown in New Jersey to his chosen home, Los Angeles, where he became a member of the notorious Hells Angels and set off on worldwide travels. But on September 10, 2001, everything changed.
“I was riding my motorcycle at over 100mph through the city streets of LA, hit a pick-up truck, and was lights out,” he says. “I woke up the next morning and saw all the nurses and doctors staring at the television. I couldn’t speak because I had tubes down my throat, but as I focused my eyes on the screen, I saw the Twin Towers come down.”
Having broken nearly every bone in his body, Medvetz began the long process of rehabilitation. For someone who was used to being constantly on the move, having to spend six months in a wheelchair before gradually moving to crutches was a mental and physical struggle.
“It was all this negativity surrounding me, with the message of: ‘Just feel lucky you’re alive.’ But that just wasn’t good enough for me.”
The answer, it turned out, was Mount Everest. Sitting on his couch in his Hollywood apartment, relying on pain medications and alcohol, Medvetz happened upon a book about a climb of the Earth’s highest mountain and decided this was the challenge that would get his life back on track. A month later, he’d sublet his place in Hollywood and get a one-way ticket to Nepal, where for four years he immersed himself in the Sherpa culture, trained and — having never climbed a mountain before — reached the top of Everest.
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