Don Nguyen

With just three days left in his 23-day, reality television ordeal, Don Nguyen was the very embodiment of the show’s title, “Naked and Afraid.” Cold rain and winds pounded and compromised his primitive shelter in the Namibian wilderness.

A black man, a Mexican American woman, and a Filipino American man walked into a park. On a gloomy April afternoon in Seattle, they’d been given a set of coordinates and were instructed to find each one, in sequence, using their maps, compasses, GPS apps on their mobile phones, and, on occasion, their wiles.

Don Nguyen’s first commercial guiding trip out of Mt. Rainier did not go as planned. Midway up the mountain a slow moving client stopped suddenly in his tracks while clutching his chest in pain. He was having a heart attack. It was Nguyen’s first time in charge of a rope team on Rainier and one of his clients was in serious danger of dying.