PHOENIX — May 4, 2011 is a day Chandler native Chelsey McHale will never forget; it's the day her older brother, Clint, lost his life after going off-trail on Camelback, falling fifty feet.
"There's a part of me that's always somewhere else," explains Chelsey.
That missing part is a huge piece of Chelsey's heart.
"It took a really long time for me to realize he's not coming back... I didn't want to think there could be a life without my brother."
But sadly, that's been Chelsey's reality for 15 years.
Chelsey remembers being just days away from her graduation at Northern Arizona University, studying for her finals, insider her Flagstaff dorm room when a knock at her door changed everything.
"He texted me that morning and sent a picture of us the last time we hung out," explains Chelsey. "I get a knock on my door from the RA at NAU who hands me a sticky note and says, 'There's an emergency with your brother. Call this number.' So I called the number, and that's when I figured out what happened."
It was then that Chelsey received the devastating news. Her older brother, the funny, happy, adventurous young man who still had his whole life ahead of him, had died.
"His funeral was the same day as what would have been my college graduation," she explains. "Instead of walking down the aisle to receive my diploma, I was walking down the aisle with his coffin."
But through her family's tragic loss, Chelsey says she has found incredible purpose - making sure this doesn't happen to anyone else.
"I didn't ask for this mission; grief handed it to me," says Chelsey. "So I'm driven by loss, and it makes me focused on saving lives. It will always be personal to me."
And that personal journey has taken Chelsey all over the Valley over the past decade and a half. In 2017, she accompanied ABC15 on an undercover assignment, stopping at Valley resorts to see what advice they were giving hikers about the hidden dangers.
And before that, in 2014, Chelsey successfully petitioned the City of Phoenix to add a sign featuring her brother's photo, along with important safety tips for all hikers.
Chelsey continues her work as a hiking safety advocate, realizing she's not only saving lives but also giving meaning to her brother's life, even years after it ended.
"It feels amazing," says Chelsey about being able to help others while also keeping her brother's memory alive. "You also want to keep their spirit alive. In all my advocacy work, he's with me. We're working together. Just in different ways. We're working together as brother and sister, doing this together."
And Chelsey's advocacy work isn't over yet; eventually, she'd like to create an in-school program, similar to DARE, where she'd go into classrooms and speak about the dangers of hiking, trying to drill the message in early that safety always comes first.
