The brainless zombies on the hit AMC show "The Walking Dead" seem content with their existence of merely walking nonstop until their inevitable demise. However, for one actor who played a walker, that couldn't be further from the truth.
Actually, he’s traded walking in for running. And cycling. And swimming — all of which he does as a double arm amputee.
In fact, Hector Picard, 50, just became the first double arm amputee to complete the Ironman World Championship in Kona, Hawaii, on Oct. 8, which was his 140th triathlon. He completed it as part of his #RacingForTrueChampions campaign, where he races for children supported by the Broward Children's Center, a Florida nonprofit that helps infants, children and young adults with special health concerns.
A life-altering event set Picard on this path. On March 31, 1992, Picard, an electrician, was doing routine work on a deactivated transformer. Unfortunately, it wasn’t actually deactivated.
“As soon as I made contact with my right arm, 13,000 volts of electricity went through my right arm, down my side and blew out the top part of my foot,” Picard said. “I guess on my way down — I don’t remember any of this, I grabbed again with my left, and again I got 13,000 volts to my left arm and down my hip.”
This caused him to fall two stories, while on fire. It also put him in a coma — one he didn’t wake up from for 30 days.
When he woke up, he found out he had second- or third-degree burns over 40 percent of his body, and that doctors had to amputate his entire right arm and half of his left arm.
“I usually tell people that it was a shock to wake up in that condition, but I look at it as a second chance to do something with my life,” Picard said.
Adjusting mind and body
After this accident, Picard had to completely learn how to do basic functions again. Everything from eating to getting dressed now had to be done differently.
Picard learned how to use a prosthetic arm on his left side, and he eventually mastered a myoelectric hand that can grasp objects, allowing him to perform much more dexterous tasks.
What changed the most was his approach to life.
“I’m alive, and I have to do something with it,” said Picard, who lives in Fort Lauderdale, Fla.. “I couldn’t just relax and let life pass me by.”
However, someone very important to Picard, according to him, did pass him by.
“My wife at the time decided to have an affair, and she did it multiple times, and she thought that I had no other choice,” Picard said. “I had no other choice but to take it from her because no one would be interested in me. I took that as a challenge.”
Stepping up to the challenge
Picard seems to take everything life throws at him as a challenge — further proved by an exchange he had with a couple at a gym shorty after he and his wife divorced.
“A couple came up and asked me if I had ever considered competing in a triathlon. Now I wasn’t a cyclist, I wasn’t a swimmer and I hated running, but I saw it as a challenge,” Picard said. “I saw it as a form of therapy for what I was going through at the moment. I went into it, and I fell in love with it.”
Triathlons are grueling competitions that consist of running, cycling and swimming portions. For Picard, running isn’t too different from that of non-disability athletes, but swimming and cycling are a different story.
“Swimming I do on my back,” Picard said. “The first race I did in 2009, they allowed me to wear fins. … But as soon as I left the shore, the fins fell off. So it was either give up or keep going, and I began swimming on my back, and I thought, ‘You know what, this works.’”
He also has a customized bike where the brakes are moved from the handlebars to the frame, and he uses his right knee to apply the rear and front brakes. He has a specialized sling where his left arm can be attached to the handlebars so he can steer, and he electronically shifts gears using his chin.
‘Walking’ and talking
That’s one of his many firsts.
From what he knows, he's also the first and only amputee to have acted in "The Walking Dead," which films in metro Atlanta. He portrayed one of Michonne's two "walker pet" zombies in the midseason premiere of season 4, "After."
While cycling across the country from Florida to Washington, he did an interview for Fox News that caught the eye of the show’s casting director. A quick Facebook message later, and Picard was cast in an episode.
“I’m very limited to what I can be for Halloween every year,” Picard said. “It’s always been a zombie or a mutilated character or something, so I have a lot of experience in trying to be a zombie or a walker. Just to be on that show was a dream come true.”
Picard made it clear that none of this would be possible without Novation Settlement Solutions. He started out as a Novation customer when he was attempting to raise funds for himself after his divorce.
John Marsano, the president of Novation Settlement Solutions, said that soon after he started working at Novation two years ago, the sales team talked about him and his story. Marsano soon wanted to meet Picard for himself.
“We sat down and talked for about 40-45 minutes — well, it was actually mostly him talking and me being completely taken aback and engaged and quite frankly amazed,” Marsano said.
After that breakfast meeting, Picard became the official spokesperson of Novation, and he was given one simple mission: Do your racing and inspire people. Since then, Picard has been giving motivational speeches.
‘The true champions’
One of the places Picard spoke included the Broward Children's Center. The center especially struck a lasting chord with him, so he launched his #RacingForTrueChampions campaign.
“This year, I said, ‘Every single race is dedicated to a child from the center,’” Picard said. “I wear their picture throughout the race, through the swim, the bike and the run. I get my medal, and then a couple of days later, we do a medal ceremony at the center where I present that medal to the child.”
Brianna Ploude, development and marketing manager at the Broward Children’s Center, talked about how much Picard and his races mean to the kids in the center.
“The children’s faces light up every time he’s mentioned,” Ploude said. “For example, there’s a young boy named Julio who is waiting for his run in November, and he’s been waiting since January for his race time. Every time he sees Hector, he asks, ‘Are you still going to race for me?’ And he always says, ‘Your race is coming up soon.’”
She added that Picard is “racing in terms of an athlete, but he considers our kids the true champions.”
For the Ironman World Championship in Hawaii, Picard wore all 25 children’s photos he previously wore throughout the year. He got choked up talking about it.
“The children are the ones who carry me through these races,” Picard said, struggling to keep his composure. “I definitely want to be a hero to these kids. I want them to look at me and hopefully someday say, ‘If Hector could do it, I can, too.’”
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