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Person of the Week: Tim Medvetz and the Heroes Project

He Helps Injured Soldiers Overcome Their Fears and Earth's Highest Peaks.

July 2, 2010
Click here to read the full story on abc.com

Matt Nyman was told he'd never walk again. He was a sergeant first class in the Army in Iraq in 2005 when he lost his right leg and his left foot was crushed in combat.

"I was missing my leg and my back was damaged. I had a collapsed lung and a bad bruising on the other one, on my chest. I had a compound femur fracture, which damaged the peripheral nerves to my left foot. And my foot was crushed," said Nyman, of North Carolina, and now retired.

But Nyman has found inspiration and support from an unlikely source: Tim Medvetz, 39, a former nightclub bouncer from Los Angeles who once rode with the Hell's Angels.

"I know what it is like to be laying in that hospital bed. I know what is going through their [soldiers'] heads. Can I ever be a man again, you know?" Medvetz said.

Medvetz nearly died in a motorcycle accident in September 2001 but bounced back -- pieced together by doctors with metal rods and pins -- and climbed Mount Everest, the world's highest, in May 2007.





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CITIZEN YOU:
DOING YOUR PART TO CHANGE THE WORLD

In Citizen You, Jonathan Tisch challenges readers to take up the mantle of social engagement by showing them how individuals are working to change the world.

Click here to read the full story on CitizenYou.org

September 11, 2001 was not only the beginning of a long journey for our country, but it was the beginning of my own journey down the road of rehabilitation. I was not only determined that I would walk again, but I would walk normally, and without a cane. There is a Japanese expression that goes, "The journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step." I realized that there are setbacks in life, I just never figured that I would be set back to the beginning. -Tim Medvetz

Tim Wayne Medvetz has always sought adventure. After a three-year stint bouncing in New York City at the famed Honky Tonk watering hole Hogs & Heifers Saloon, Tim rode his chopper across the country to Los Angeles. He parlayed his love of bikes and the open road into a successful career selling and building custom motorcycles for Hollywood's elite at the world-renowned Bartel's Harley Davidson.

On September 10, 2001 Tim was racing his motorcycle through the San Fernando Valley when he was hit by a truck in a catastrophic accident that left him partially paralyzed and fighting for his life. He required 8 surgeries to save his foot, which doctors feared needed to be amputated. Two metal plates and 20 screws were needed to repair his cracked skull. He was not expected to fully recover and walk again - but no one told Tim that.

For six long months Tim struggled to regain the use of his legs and find some meaning in his life. Always looking for an adventure, Tim decided that the best way to recover would be a trip. He quickly found himself preparing to climb Mt. Everest.

After climbing Mt. Everest for the first time in 2006, Tim realized that he could turn his passion into action.

A news broadcast about disabled and disfigured returning veterans sparked Tim's interest. He realized he had something to offer these brave soldiers: the chance to put their lives back together through the challenge of climbing.

He embarked on two major expeditions in the summer of 2009 - to Mt. Kilimanjaro in Tanzania with an injured vet named Neil Duncan and to Mt. Elbrus in Russia with another injured vet named Keith Deutsch.

In 2009, Tim started The Heroes Project, a foundation dedicated to raising funds to help wounded warriors climb the world's highest peaks and find a renewed purpose in their lives. The foundation is predicated on the idea that we can make a difference and change the lives of our wounded veterans, soldiers, and their families - one soldier, one veteran, one family at a time.





Photo courtesy of Laurie Lynn Stark

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LOS ANGELES CONFIDENTIAL:
Peak Performance

Mountain climber Tim Wayne Medvetz is taking wounded veterans to new heights By Adam Preskill

Friday, January 15, 2010

Tim Wayne Medvetz enjoys a challenge. An experienced mountain climber with an Everest summit to his credit, Medvetz has set out to climb the highest peak on all seven continents - a feat only accomplished by approximately 200 climbers. Except there's a twist: His climbing partner on each ascent is a different injured veteran from the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

As foudner of the nonprofit The Heroes Project, Medvetz works with charities to give injured veterans a new lease on life. After taking up climbing following his own life-threatening motorcycle accident in 2001, Medvetz can relate to what the former soliders are going through. "It wasn't until I got my feet on a mountain that i felt like I got back to how life used to be," says Medvetz. "I wanted to show these vets their lives are not about lying in a hospital bed."

In September Medvetz summited Europe's highest peak, Mt. Elbrus, with Iraq veteran and amputee Keith Deutch. And Medvetz has three climbs planned for 2010: Antarctica's Mt. Vinson, Aconcagua in the Aergentine Andres and Alaska's Mt. McKinley. To prepare Medvetz trains four to five hours a day at Equinox gym in West Hollywood and climbs nearby peaks such as Mt. Baldy on a regular basis. "LA is the absolute greatest training ground for high-altitude mountains," says Medvetz. "In an hour you can be on a 10,000-foot peak, and then you're back at sea level the same day".





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First he brought Chrome Hearts to the top of the world
BEYOND EVEREST...

Tim Wayne Medvetz has a New Mission - I am, I said

September 2009

It was fall of 2002 when I made the decision to make an attempt on summitting Mount Everest. So I rented my apartment, bought a one way plane ticket to Nepal, packed my backpackfull of gear and told Richard I was leaving for Nepal to climb Mt. Everest. You should have seen the look on his face. That was a funny reaction. You should try it on your friends sometime. It's a good one. We got in his pick-up truck, left the Chrome Hearts factory and drove to LAX.

On the way to the airport amongst saying our goodbyes I knew I'd be gone a long tiome and who knew if I was going to make it back. Richard told me he wanted to help out with my climbing permit on Everest and if I needed any help to just call. Getting Chrome Hearts to the summit of Mt. Everest would be pretty cool. However, that was not even a thought in his head or his heart, just one brother helping another brother make a dream come true; no more, no less.

Five years later that dream came true as I stood on top of the world on the morning of May 21, 2007 at 7 am, holding that Chrome Hearts flag high (the highest "fuck you" in the world). They say there is no such thing as a self-made man. You only achieve your dreams with the help of others. Richard, Laurie, the Stark family, Monico and everyone in the Chrome Hearts family were those others. And no words, article or page in this fancy expensive magazine can come close to expressing my true deepest thanks, not even close. I try saying thank you in other ways.

Climbing Mt. Everest is a pretty selfish task to take on. You have to live it, breath it, and be prepared physically, mentally and spiritually for anything she has to throw at you even if it means never coming back. Like the great Theodore Roosevelt said its best "It is not the critic who counts: not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles or where the doer of deeds could have done better. The celongs to the man who is actually in the arena..."

Climbing Mt. Everest was my arena for five years.

A lot has changed since standing on top of the world two years ago, especially with my country and the soldiers who are coming back from a different kind of arena, war, a battlefield with horrific injuries physically and mentally and everything that goes along with coming back from a war, and they need our help. So I'm lacing up my Chrome Hearts climbing boots again on a quest to climb the 7 highest summits of the world on 7 different continents. Only a very exclusive club of 198 climbers have succeeded. However, I won't be doing it alone.

I've currently started my own organization called "The Heroes Project (www.TheHeroesProject.org)" that is on the front lines of heling our injured soldiers and the project we're putting together involves me taking a different soldier up each of my remaining 6 summits to raise money, press and awareness to a huge problem we have in our country right now while making a dream a reality for these soldiers.

Climbing Mt. Everest was about my comeback, my rehabilitation from a horrific motorcycle accident in 2001 that kept me in a hospital for 6 months with a broken back, broken knee, fractured skull and a severed left foot that was eventually saved. By no means does my story compare to what these guys are coming back from "but I can certainly relate."

I believe that as an American and a human being I need to do my part and ometimes that means showing someone what they thought was no longer possible to them "can be", I'm living proof of it.

This is not just an American fundraising project, its a human project no matter what country you're from. However I cannot do this alone and we need your help.

Please help us in our quest to light a tunnel that may have previously been dark for these guys. We are currently in the fundraising stage and need your assistance. Any contribution, large or small, will be of great help. Our 'end-game' for barebones success is 200k U.S. dollars. For more info go to www.TheHeroesProject.org or contact me directly at tim@theheroesproject.org





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In the Mind of an 'Adrenaline Junkie'

Tuesday July 21, 2009 9:00 AM

In the midst of attempting to scale the world's seven highest peaks while assisting an injured veteran, Tim Medvetz's idea of a summer getaway is beyond grueling.

With Mount Everest already checked off the list, he is now tackling Mount Kilimanjaro with retired sergeant Neil Duncan, a double amputee wounded in an explosion while serving in Afghanistan. Once that is conquered, Medvetz will have a two-week breather before heading for Elbrus in Russia with retired sergeant Keith Deutsch, who also lost a leg on tour in Afghanistan. As soon as those two summits are squared away, Medvetz plans to dive into filming a pilot survival series for the Discovery Channel, for which he headlined "Everest: Beyond the Limit" for two seasons. "They will drop me out of a plane into the Russian wilderness, and I will have to find my way out in five days. That sounds like heaven to me - and I will get paid," he said without the slightest trace of sarcasm.

As for why he's so driven, Medvetz chalked it up to a near-fatal motorcycle accident in 2001, which inspired him to climb Everest. "I've always been an adventure guy and adrenaline junkie. The ball game kind of changed for me when I was in the hospital for six months. That's when I realized, 'You know what? I can die any day,'" he said. "Now I'm always constantly thinking, 'I'm going to die.' You know how they say, 'Seize the day?' I'm that guy. I live that way every day."

But his highway to the seven summits of the world is not fueled by ego. His intention is to raise awareness of the Wounded Warrior Project, a nonprofit that uses sports to help soldiers with debilitating injuries reenter society. Medvetz's ascents are being filmed for a 90-minute documentary that will be given to severely injured soldiers at the Walter Reed National Medical Center's outpost in Landstuhl, Germany.

One WWP representative - each with a different injury and of a different ethnicity - will be joining him on the remaining six ascents. "Basically, I'm the guide, motivator and I'm handling all the logistics. I'm prepared to short rope them up the mountain or carry them if I have to. I'm ready to do whatever is needed. One way or the other, we are going to do this," Medvetz said. "This is not only an American project. Whether you are an Iraqi, Afghani, African or whatever, there are injured soldiers that need our help."

The diversity of his fellow climbers is meant to help motivate others. "Hopefully, they will inspire soldiers that life doesn't just end because you were severely injured in a war. I want them to see that they can go on with their lives," Medvetz said.

Chrome Hearts, The North Face and Equinox are helping to make that happen by sponsoring $50,000 of the estimated $200,000 cost of the undertaking. The L.A.-based climber has spent recent months hiking 10,000-foot-plus peaks in California, climbing the StairMaster with up to a 100-lb. backpack at Equinox's West Hollywood club, working out with a personal trainer and doing yoga. Chrome Hearts tapped him to model a $140,000 belt buckle shaped like the American flag in its new catalogue.

"These guys need our help and they need America to get behind them," Medvetz said. "War doesn't get as much press as it used to, but these guys are coming back with horrible injuries."



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The Joint Project Of The Seven Summits Club, Tim Wayne Medvetz and The Discovery Channel

October 21, 2009 9:00 AM

August 15, a group under the leadership of The Heroes Project lead guide Tim Medvetz summited the highest mountain in Europe - Elbrus.

The group included three Americans: Medvetz Timothy Wayne - The Heroes Project Founder, Sauls Kenneth Brian - the operator of the Discovery Channel and Deutsch Keith Edwin. The essence of the project: the ascent to the Seven Summits by climbers who have become disabled as a result of the wars of recent years.

The aim of the project to show the disabled people that thay can and should live on. Deutsch Keith lost his leg in 2003. But this does not prevent him from being happy.





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Taking Iraq War Vets to the Summit

Duff McKagan's column runs every Thursday on Reverb. He writes about what's circulating through his iPod every Monday.

Thursday, Jan. 21 2010

In the past, I have written a few times about some of the adventures I have been able to experience because of my friend Tim Medvetz. For those of you who don't know him from the Discovery Channel series Everest Beyond the Limit that aired a couple of years ago, he was not only a team member of that Mt. Everest expedition, he also summited the mountain in 2007--an amazing feat for anyone, and for this man in some respects even more so.

I met Tim a few years ago through a mutual best friend, Richard Stark, and it immediately became evident that we shared the same sense of adventure and humor. Tim was fresh from summiting Everest, and I was full of questions for him that night (mixing humor and wanderlust from me may come in the form of "Everest, huh? Cool! Was it high?" Stupid for sure, but Tim dug my line of questions/humor . . . I think).

Later that summer, Tim and Richard rode their Harleys through Seattle and stayed with the family McKagan (our house is now dubbed "Northwest headquarters" because, well, with Richard and Tim, what is mine is theirs and likewise). This prolonged hangout gave Tim and me more time to work on our comedic duo routine, and it gave me time to learn a bit more about Tim.

You see, Tim and Richard were to be taking a ferry from Bellingham up to Alaska, where they would continue their bike trip across Canada and down to New York. It turns out that when this ferry gets to Alaska, one must drive through a slice of Canada to get back into Alaska again. Well, this is when I found out Tim used to be a member of a very famous outlaw bike gang . . . er, club. Canada doesn't allow those kind, apparently, and Tim and Richard found themselves face-down with guns drawn on them at that border, and eventually back on that same three-day ferryride, southbound, back to the Northwest headquarters.

His story since 2001 is pretty unbelievable.

In September 2001, Tim got hit by a car while riding his motorcycle down here in L.A. He suffered tremendous head, back, and leg injuries. He woke up in the hospital only to see a bunch of nurses and doctors gathered around the TV set in his room. As his vision started to clear, he became cognizant of the images of a Trade Center building in NYC falling to the ground. He faced that same despair we all felt, and on top of that, the doctors said they would have to amputate a foot, put a steel plate in his head, and put a steel-mesh cage around his lower spine.

After being threatened with grievous bodily harm, the doctors found a way to save Tim's foot, but only just. His ankle is fused permanently. Doctors told him that his physical activities would forever be limited to a couch, basically. Ah, but Tim was reading Into Thin Air by Jon Krakauer while he was in that hospital bed, and vowed then and there to climb Mt. Everest.

After being discharged, Tim went to Brazil to study jiujitsu with the Grace family for two years, AND became a certified dive instructor and skydiver. I think he did some time in a Brazilian prison too . . . just for kicks.

After his stint in Brazil, he came back to NYC to run the door at the world famous Hogs and Heifers bar before departing to Nepal to learn the ropes of high-altitude climbing. He also spent six months in veritable silence in a monastery there. Silence is not Tim's strong suit. His time in Nepal was followed by a year in Thailand at a live-in kickboxing school. It was now time for him to somehow get up Everest.

Tim joined a team that was going to attempt Mt. Everest in 2006, and maybe this incredible story should be left to another stand-alone column. Suffice it to say nothing comes easy to Tim, and his journey through India to get to Katmandu was filled with scrapes and triumphs. When he did finally get on the team, it turned out that The Discovery Channel happened to be filming this expedition. Tim eventually garnered worldwide fandom as the most intense and nonconforming member of that team. In 2007, he finally realized his hospital-bed dream and summited Mt. Everest.

Over the course of the following year, 2008, Tim, Richard, and I got together more and more often as friends who shared an interest in things like the outdoors, sports, and music. But most important, we all seem to share a sense of family, brotherhood, and honor, things that seem at times to be missing too often in this hyper-fast information age.

Eventually, Tim invited me on a training hike or two. It was on these hikes, and the times that Tim would come to visit my family, that I began to understand the true character that this man has somehow contained under that flesh. Tim got me up my very first winter summit last year, and without him being there, it would have been only a fraction of the fun. Honestly, I probably would not have made it to the top of that mountain without his humor-filled chiding and hard-won expertise.

I found out on these hikes another thing about Tim: He has another much grander and more selfless dream. After seeing a TV special on U.S. soldiers who have lost limbs in Iraq and Afghanistan, Tim was inspired to get up and at least try to help. Remember, Tim was told that he would be an invalid himself. He knew what these kids were facing emotionally when they finally got back home to their mom's couch in Minnesota or wherever, limbless and aimless and suffering myriad emotional difficulties.

Tim has now started a foundation where he himself will attempt all the world's seven highest summits WITH a wounded veteran along for the climb. We are talking about single and double-leg amputees--young men who want to overcome for themselves and carry the message home to their fallen brethren. A message of hope and inspiration, if nothing else.

Over this last year, I have ridden along with Tim on the ups and downs and highs and lows of trying and finally succeeding in getting his "Heroes Project" up and running. Last week he came over to the house with a hand-shot DVD of his first two "Seven Summit" attempts with wounded U.S. veterans of the Iraq War. I was stunned by what I saw. I am proud of my friend.

Tim is a man who, through his own battles with injuries that could have set him back forever on a couch in a fit of despair and depression, really knows what these wounded warriors are up against. He does this not for glory for himself, but indeed, as I have gotten to really know Tim, for the betterment of mankind as a whole.





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