At this year’s American Heroes Run, Kelly Thrush of Arizona by far had the best cheering section, including a couple of adorable tikes, his niece and nephew, holding up a posterboard sign with the message, “From liver transplant to 100 miles, look at what you can do Kelly.” I had the fantastic opportunity to cover a few laps with Kelly and got to hear his remarkable story. An aspiring professional baseball player, Kelly fell instead into the world of college partying. He later worked in restaurants and bars, which fueled his drinking even more. Kelly drank so hard that his boss sent him to the hospital and Kelly eventually found himself on his own deathbed. With perhaps hours to go, Kelly received a new liver, which went against normal protocol because Kelly hadn’t even started getting sober yet. He awoke feeling immense gratitude and has ever since dedicated his life to showing gratitude and giving back. He also started hiking and eventually progressed to running ultramarathons and completing a Grand Canyon rim-to-rim-to-rim hike to raise funds to give kids opportunities to get into the outdoors themselves. We cover this gripping journey in two episodes. In this part, I think you will get a lot out of hearing about Kelly’s story up to his transplant and how slim a chance he had of even being around today, getting sober and losing weight, and to be able to make the difference in the world that he now does.

Kelly Thrush
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Bill Stahl
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