COLORADO SPRINGS — A journey of a thousand miles is said to start with a single step, and one man has walked over 8,000 miles so far to help others.
Jim Hickey started walking in 1998 to help raise money for those dealing with cancer. In January, he walked 128 miles from Cheyenne, Wyoming, to Denver, Colorado, to raise money for Justin Smithey, who is battling brain cancer.
Monday, he started another walk for Justin and Lindsey Gill, who suffered a traumatic brain injury in 2014. He plans on walking from Colorado Springs to Loveland by March 20. Hickey doesn't collect money himself, just directs people to the GoFundMe accounts of the people he is walking for.
He said he started walking fundraisers as a way to honor his father who passed away from prostate cancer in 1995.
"It's just something that I have to do, you know? I didn't want what my dad went through to mean nothing. You know, the pain that he went through was absolutely horrible. And, I wanted to take what I saw and do something positive with it. So this is actually, the walks that I do for other people, is actually because of my father and that's how I look at what I'm doing," he said.
Hickey said he walks about 13 miles a day, but he has done more if there is no where to stop on his route.
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