Wasatch Crest founder and CEO, Jim Huffman and executive director, Rich McDonald, CMHC, share how they became friends through trail running, embraced addiction recovery, and began Wasatch Crest as an addiction treatment center in Heber City, Utah.
To learn more about our addiction treatment programs in Heber City, Utah, reach out.
Video Transcript
Jim:
Hi, my name is Jim Huffman I’m the owner and CEO of Wasatch Crest Treatment Services.
Rich:
And I’m Rich McDonald. I am the executive director of Wasatch Crest Treatment Services.
Jim:
Rich and I go back quite a way, before working together here at Wasatch Crest, over 20 years now. Our friendship started as ultra runners here in the Wasatch Mountains.
Rich:
We met at a hundred-kilometer trail race in Provo. We ran together quite consistently for about 10 years until I retired.
Jim:
It’s been an awesome journey for us. Training probably three, four, five days a week together, running these crazy races. People would say we must have a screw loose in order to even be running these races in the first place. We probably did.
We knew each other when we both needed to be in recovery and we’ve continued that friendship as two men in recovery. It’s a journey that has pretty interesting chapters.
Rich:
It’s interesting to look back and think that we both finally decided that we needed help and needed to get sober within probably nine months of each other.
We’ve been working together for over five years and what we’ve been able to develop and build at Wasatch Crest has been pretty remarkable.
Jim:
During the early chapters of our friendship, when we were running together, we were both doing different things before we got sober. After we got sober, we both sort of found our way into the same area. I’ll let Rich tell his story about becoming a therapist.
My background had been other things non-treatment industry-oriented for many years. To have had recovery become such an essential part of my life, and then to be able to combine recovery and business into one area has been an amazing thing for me.
Rich:
When I did my undergraduate at the University of Utah, my long-term plan was to become a therapist, but you graduate and you think, “I don’t know if I can do more school,” and you have kids and start building a career. I never decided to go back to school. I was happy where I was and with what I was doing. It took me going to treatment to realize that I needed to do work that had significant meaning, to do something I’m deeply passionate about, but also to give back and be a positive force in our community. I want to help other people.
I decided while I was in residential treatment that I needed to start looking into graduate school. I had a couple of champions along the way. One of them being one of my therapists in treatment. Every time I saw her, she said, “Have you applied for graduate school?”
Eventually, I went back to school. I also would have never guessed I would be working in addiction recovery. The fact that I get to do this every day combined with how important my recovery is for me, I’m filled with gratitude.
Jim:
It reminds me in a sense of my dad who was a career park ranger. He ran national parks for the National Park Service for over 30 years. It’s where he started his career and it’s where he ended his career. I’ll never forget my dad saying he felt like he’d never worked a day in his life because he loved it so much. He loved the parks that he managed and protected. What we get to do now and how rewarding it is, doesn’t feel like work.
Rich:
For the past eight and a half years or so as a therapist, getting out of bed in the morning, I can’t think of a day where I thought, “Oh my gosh. I can’t do it. I can’t go to work.” There are days I know it’s going to be a tough day, and there are tough situations that come up, but at the end of the day, I don’t feel like it’s work. I feel like I get to do what I love every single day.
Jim:
Rich and I started these journeys in the recovery area independent of each other. He had gone back to school to become a therapist. He started working at this program, which was previously under a different name. I had found my way into the recovery space in the same time frame, but we were both in other areas.
Rich called me one day and said, “Hey, would you be interested in coming in here and becoming the new owner of this program?” My response was, “Absolutely, I’d be interested in taking a look at it.”
When that transition was completed in December 2016, Rich and I both knew that we wanted to create a new legacy. We wanted to rebrand the program, and we wanted that name and that brand to represent the thing that was also integrated with our story as friends and ultra runners. We started playing around with different names and the name that we came up with was Wasatch Crest.
The reason we came up with Wasatch Crest is it’s the name of the Wasatch Crest trail that we trained three, four, five, six, and sometimes seven days a week. Five a.m in the morning, evenings with headlamps on.
Rich:
The cool thing for me too is I can sit in my office and look at the Wasatch Crest. I can’t see the trail, but I can see the Wasatch Crest. It’s the mountains behind us here. It’s a good reminder of why we’re here. What we’re trying to do. It’s super important.
It’s important to mention the fact that it’s not just the name. It goes a lot deeper than that. It’s about the programming and the kinds of experiences we try to help our clients have. Being in the mountains not everybody’s going to start trail running, but we can sure get them out moving and facilitate experiential groups.
I hope that by the time everybody leaves here there’s at least a spark of passion about something. It doesn’t necessarily have to be the mountains. If we can help people find that they’re going to love recovery.
Jim:
One of the things that are unique about Wasatch Crest is that both our ownership and our overall leadership entail people who are also in recovery and that’s important. It means that we understand from our own experience what that journey is like. Some therapists and clinicians aren’t necessarily in recovery themselves. That doesn’t mean that they’re not a good therapist or they or they can’t relate but being a therapist and being in recovery gives Rich a unique perspective that our clients can appreciate and feel connected to.
Rich:
Not only do I get to help people with their recovery, but I get to look at many of the experiences and stories that clients share with me through a lens that I can relate to. That’s important to me to build something special here, something that sets us apart from other programs. A huge piece of that is working from a place of love and respect and helping clients find that passion, build the life that they want to protect, find the things that maybe they’ve lost through the process of addiction, or new things that get them excited.
We do an incredible job of meeting clients where they’re at. By the time a client finishes residential and moves to the next level of care, most of them would look back and say what I thought was going to be the worst or the hardest experience of my life turned out to be something beautiful that I’ll always remember with real fondness and nostalgia.
Jim:
You use the word relate and that’s important because, for us, each client or family isn’t a number. We can relate. We can relate to what it feels like to be in that place at that time. We can also relate to the importance of those moments of opportunity for our clients and their families to start that new journey here with us. In some cases that may be their only shot. We know how important it is to be there for them at that time.
Rich:
It’s one of the biggest responsibilities we have to take, the fact that this is a deadly disease. We cannot forget that. I talked with the team about it, quite a bit. This may be somebody’s only shot at recovery. I better be able to go home at the end of every single day and know that I did everything I could on my end to help them get there.
Jim:
We’re now almost six years into this and what a great journey. It’s been amazing to have all these different chapters for us right too, as runners as two men in recovery and now working together to build something that we’re proud of. That’s unique and different. It’s by no accident when you look back on these different chapters of our lives and kind of weaving them together, it’s by no accident that we’re here today, that we’re engaging in this work together, and what an awesome experience it’s been.
Rich:
It’s been incredible. I get out of bed in the morning excited about doing this and to be able to do it up here in the beautiful Wasatch Mountains and watch people’s lives change in front of my eyes, what a gift. I’m super grateful for that and the opportunity I’ve had to work with Jim. It’s crazy I agree it was not a coincidence.
Retreat to Wasatch Crest to Recover
Throughout our residential, transitional living, and outpatient addiction treatment programs, our clinicians and staff are dedicated to providing healing care founded on compassion and respect. We work to help you understand addiction, integrate healthy coping strategies, and create a fulfilling life in recovery. To learn more about our addiction treatment programs in Heber City, Utah, reach out.
