It is not quite midmorning when a stylishly dressed older woman, tears streaming down her cheeks, walks up to Troy Yocum outside the front doors of the Loews Denver Hotel and wraps him in a tight hug.
They stand that way for long moments, his wife, Mareike, looking on, before the woman sighs, pulls away and presses a $50 bill into his right hand. She pats his cheek and slowly walks away.
“Happens like that all the time,” the man says, handing the bill to his wife.
Troy Yocum is a 31-year-old Iraq war veteran who is walking 7,000 miles across the country, trying to raise $5 million for military families in need. He is nearing the middle of the western leg of “The Hike for Our Heroes,” having walked into Denver late last week.
He has raised about $73,000 since heading west from his native Louisville, Ky., on April 17, a distance of 1,815 miles, or what he says is approaching 10 million footsteps.
He came up with the idea for the walk while deployed last year with the 100th Battalion, 442nd Infantry in Basra, Iraq. A buddy had returned home from the war only to find himself and his family in dire straits because the factory where he had worked was out of business.
“I was trying to comfort him, but I felt so helpless to do anything. Charities were in this double whammy — getting way fewer donations because of the economy and this record number of military families seeking funds.”
Yocum returned home from Iraq on Aug. 6 last year and put his idea into motion. With the $30,000 he’d saved over the year-long deployment, he purchased a 1996 Swinger RV to serve as a chase vehicle and a host of supplies he would need.
He enlisted his buddies Myron Koch and Terry Carmickle to drive and be company. Mareike, 27, whom he had met years before in Germany, came to America for the first time March 29. She agreed to walk with him.
He proposed to her at mile 100. They married 165 miles later.
They have averaged about 20 miles per day, accompanied by his 3-year-old shiba inu, Emerson Elaine Eskridge the Superdog — Emmie, for short — and her 1-year-old Chihuahua, Harley.
“If you think driving through Kansas is boring, trust me,” Troy Yocum says, “do not walk it.”
It took him 3 1/2 weeks to cross it into Colorado, which he figures, with the mountains, will take 35 days to traverse on his way to Los Angeles.
He has met 300 mayors on the walk, including John Hickenlooper of Denver — who is the latest to sign his National Day of the Deployed petition, which he plans to submit next year to Congress. Each petition is shaped like a Louisville Slugger baseball bat, his primary sponsor.
“This walk isn’t about me,” he said. “It represents the struggle of all military families, an attempt to get America off its butt to do something for them. Once people see us walking, they get it.”
He will head south from Los Angeles to San Antonio, and east up the Atlantic coast to Boston before heading back to the Louisville Slugger Museum where he started. He figures the entire trip will last 16 months.
The worst thing so far about the walk? He lifts his feet to show the badly rundown soles of his shoes.
“Blisters,” Troy Yocum says.
“The hardest thing? People who walk with us seem to cry a lot. The woman with the $50, I’m guessing she lost a son in the war.”
Bill Johnson writes Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays. Reach him at 303-954-2763 or wjohnson@denverpost.com.
