TV's Penny LeGate: Faith Through Life’s Storms

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The smiling face and genuine personality of television host and newscaster Penny LeGate has graced Northwest homes for over 2 decades. As co-host of KING TV's Evening Magazine and morning anchor on KIRO news she was (is) a star.

On this Amazing Greats podcast she is authentic, vulnerable and opens up about her life's victories and struggles (...and we didn't even get a chance to talk about her husband's heart transplant and her own bout with cancer. )

Beyond her public life, her humanitarian work speaks loudly of her love of Jesus and her commitment to walking a Christ-like path. Penny has spent years working diligently to help combat polo in countries all over the world as well as traveling to Ethiopia with Dr. James Guzek to shed light on his miracle sight-giving mission. She has also led the charge to help young people struggling with additions and spearheaded the first drive to equip Seattle police officers with the opioid overdose drug, Narcan. Hear about it all in this compelling episode.

In today's pod, you will come to know the Penny LeGate that goes beyond her TV persona.

"Amazing Greats" is a library of interviews with highly successful people who have amazing career and life stories and who share how God has impacted their journey. Hosted by broadcaster Ric Hansen & produced by Klem Daniels. Available on Apple, Spotify, iHeart, Google and our YouTube Channel.

Please help us grow our audience by "liking", "subscribing and "Sharing". Thanks so much.

PENNY LEGATE AT A GLANCE

Seattle Television Icon • Broadcaster • Humanitarian • Christian

Topics

Seattle television • Evening Magazine • Brian Tracy • Faith • Humanitarian work • Polio • Ethiopia • Mera Project • Addiction • Grief • Jesus

Her Faith Journey

Methodist upbringing → Teen faith questions → Campus Crusade for Christ → Faith became quiet → Humanitarian service → Loss and suffering → “Help me, Jesus” → Renewed daily faith

This Episode Explores

• Penny LeGate's Nebraska upbringing

• Her path into television

• Evening Magazine and Brian Tracy

• Her humanitarian work around the world

• Polio eradication efforts

• Cataract surgery missions in Ethiopia

• Her daughter Mera's struggle with addiction

• The creation of the Mera Project

• Fighting addiction stigma with compassion

• Finding Jesus in her darkest moment

• Faith expressed through action and service

• Why nature brings her close to God

Questions Answered

• Who is Penny LeGate?

• How did Penny LeGate begin her television career?

• What was Evening Magazine like?

• Who was Penny LeGate's television partner?

• How did Penny's faith influence her humanitarian work?

• What is the Mera Project?

• What happened to Penny LeGate's daughter Mera?

• How did Penny respond to Mera's death?

• How did the Mera Project address addiction?

• What happened when Penny cried out, “Help me, Jesus”?

• How does Penny LeGate live out her faith today?

Podcast Transcript: Penny LeGate on Television, Faith, Loss & Finding God in the Darkness

Amazing Greats with Ric Hansen

A Seattle Television Icon

Ric Hansen:Hi there, and thanks for taking a few minutes out of your day to hear today's podcast. It just could be our best one yet.

I spent some time with the fun-loving, wise and inspirational Seattle television icon Penny LeGate.

You'll hear about her life, her career, her struggles and her unique walk with Jesus.

Wow, this is a special day for sure, because I think we've been working on this get-together for a year or more.

Penny LeGate:Oh, I think so, Ric. I'm sorry.

Ric Hansen:No, it's all right.

Penny LeGate:Are you ghosting me?

I said, “No, I'm just out of the country right now.”

Oh, man. I have a busy life in retirement, Ric.

Ric Hansen:You are busy, busy, busy.

So we're talking with Penny LeGate. Let me do the official introduction.

For those of you who don't know Penny, you will very shortly, because I'm going to give you just a brief overview, and then we'll slip into the details and the whole story of what Penny LeGate is all about right now.

First of all, you were born in Kearney, Nebraska.

Penny LeGate:I was born in Columbus, Nebraska.

Ric Hansen:Okay.

Penny LeGate:And then I spent most of my formative years in a cowtown out in the western part of Nebraska, in the Panhandle, called Ogallala, Nebraska.

Ric Hansen:Oh my gosh, really?

Penny LeGate:That probably passed you three times.

Ric Hansen:Well, I guess where I got Kearney was there was a television station in Kearney, and you had your first entree into television as an intern.

Penny LeGate:Yeah. I think we say Kearney, just saying it's “Carney.”

Ric Hansen:Oh, it's not the way it looks?

Penny LeGate:Yeah. Yeah. Nebraska wants to mess people up with our pronunciations.

Ric Hansen:Okay, so now it's Kearney. Good deal.

I just couldn't believe a city I'd never heard of had a television station.

Penny LeGate:Yeah, the Nebraska Television Network.

It was my first gig as an intern coming out of J-school, in between my junior and senior year.

And you know what was so cool about that little station? Of course, I knew nothing.

I had only declared my major in journalism late in my junior year because I wanted to be a marine biologist, and there weren't really a whole lot of marine biology programs going on anywhere near Nebraska.

Ric Hansen:Right in the heartland, you don't find a lot of oceans, right?

Penny LeGate:No, not a lot of whales.

Anyway, I switched to journalism and I got this internship.

My parents had just moved to this town, so it was quite convenient.

But here it is: the anchorman and me basically putting on the newscast every day.

I got to write for the anchorman. I was the weather girl. I shot — and now this is really aging me — Super 8 film for our stories and spliced it.

Some people may remember Super 8 film.

So I did everything. I was a shooter, an editor, a writer, an on-camera person.

Ric Hansen:It was awesome. As an intern.

Penny LeGate:As an intern, yeah. I felt very lucky.

From Nebraska to Seattle

Ric Hansen:But from Kearney, you spent time in a few spots. You were in Omaha, Wichita, Pittsburgh, but you really settled here in the great Pacific Northwest when you came out in 1986 to be a co-host of Evening Magazine.

Then you spent several years, I think 13 or more, at KIRO as a morning-show anchor.

But let's go back and start with you as young Penny in Nebraska.

Mom, dad, siblings — tell us about that.

Was there church in your life back in those days?

Penny LeGate:Oh, yes. Nebraska is a very religious place.

Almost everybody is affiliated with some sort of church, and it's unheard of if you don't go to church.

My mother was raised Lutheran, but my dad was Methodist, so we all became Methodists growing up.

I went to church school, Sunday school, summertime Bible camps. We did all that stuff growing up.

My mother was quite religious, but not in what I'd call an oppressive way.

She wouldn't invoke the name of Jesus like, “Oh, remember Jesus loves you,” or “Remember Jesus is going to be mad if you steal something.”

She was just very quiet about her faith, but it was deep.

She was a great witness for living for Christ because she was, I swear, an angel on earth — beautiful woman, inside and out.

She took care of so many people, just full of love, never an angry word.

She was a dream human, really.

So, yeah, I grew up in the Methodist church.

Ric Hansen:What a great model for you.

Penny LeGate:Yes. No, she really was.

Ric Hansen:Did you have brothers or sisters?

Penny LeGate:Oh, yes. I had an older sister and a younger brother, neither of whom seemed to be as interested in church as I was.

When I was in high school, we had a really cool group of kids that hung out.

We had a youth group we'd go to every Sunday. It was mixed denominations — Catholics, Lutherans, Episcopalians, whatever.

We young kids would get together on Sunday evenings and have a lecture with somebody or a talk or whatever.

It was mostly social, really, as teenagers.

But we were an unusually curious group of youngsters from western Nebraska, and we started questioning a lot of the stuff that was in the Bible.

We were asking questions of the people who would come to talk to us — different ministers or social workers.

How did Christ really rise again?

Is it possible that a virgin can give birth?

We just really challenged each other and our own beliefs.

I think a lot of us struggled with it.

I think that we felt we grew up being — I don't know if the word is “indoctrinated” — but you just grow up in the church, and you hear about the church, and you go to church, and believe in Jesus, and you learn to pray and sing hymns.

But when you get to be about 16 or 17, you start saying, “Is this stuff for real?”

We actually did something pretty cool.

We opened up a little storefront space in downtown Ogallala. It was right on what was Highway 30 at the time.

We called it The Ark.

It was a place where travelers could come and get something to eat and hang out.

But mostly we talked about faith-based questions.

It was really cool.

There were no visitors sometimes. We'd just sit around and debate stuff.

Ric Hansen:I know. I'm like taking over your interview here, Ric. Sorry if I'm running with it.

Ric Hansen:It's all about you. It is all about you today.

Penny LeGate:Then I went on to college, and I was still very interested in being a disciple for Christ.

A lot of my friends had gone really fundamental into a church called the Berean Fundamentalist Church.

A lot of people that I went to high school with started gravitating toward that church.

I just didn't feel like I was a fundamentalist at all.

Anyway, I went to a lecture one night of Campus Crusade for Christ, and I joined that organization.

Oh, Lord, it was really hard because they gave you this little booklet and made me go to the student union and walk up to complete strangers with this little booklet.

“Hi, my name is Penny.”

It's like a Jehovah's Witness, right?

“Do you have a few minutes?”

Then I tried to give them my spiel with my little booklet about Jesus and saving you and da-da-da.

Luckily, most people in Nebraska are kind and will listen if they're not studying too hard.

Most of these were students.

And then I just couldn't do it anymore.

It just was not me to walk up to people cold and say, “Hey, let's talk about Jesus.”

I finally decided to leave Campus Crusade for Christ.

And that was it.

So then I just sort of wandered the great wilderness for a long time.

Finding Her Way in Television

Ric Hansen:Yeah.

Ric Hansen on Amazing Greats, sharing television personality Penny LeGate's most amazing journey.

Let's jump back into your broadcast career because I'm intrigued by what happened from the internship in Kearney.

Give us a quick bounce from one station to the next, to the next, that brought you to Seattle.

How did that all happen?

Penny LeGate:After I graduated, I went and got a master's degree at Indiana University in communications.

I finished my master's and got an instant invitation to go to, believe it or not, Indiana Bell Telephone Company.

Now, this is before the Baby Bells were all broken up.

There were 7,000 people who worked for this company in Indianapolis, and they asked me to come and do a maternity-leave stand-in for a woman who was a producer.

These guys had the most state-of-the-art television operation you've ever seen.

My job during this maternity leave, which was almost 10 or 11 months, almost a year, was to produce in-house videos.

I'd go out and interview people about interesting things that people at Bell Telephone might find interesting.

I hosted my own little show called Newsview for that year.

I got some experience, got to do interviews, and then I went to Pittsburgh and worked for a big television station, very well known, called KDKA Television.

It was part of the Westinghouse group.

For people who know the broadcasting business, that was a big group — very powerful stations all over the country.

I started as a lowly newswriter in the newsroom and worked my way up to associate producer, then producer, then kind of special-projects producer.

So I was doing little mini-documentaries and special expanded stories.

This is back in the day when we could do a five-minute story on some local subject. Unheard of now.

I rapidly became frustrated by sitting in a newsroom in the basement.

You probably remember back in the day, all newsrooms were down in the basements of buildings.

You had no idea if it was snowing, if the sun was out. It was just like a prison.

So I'm looking around thinking, “Okay, who are the two people who are getting out of here on a daily basis?”

Ric Hansen:Who were you looking for?

Penny LeGate:Reporters and photographers.

Now, my entry into television was never designed to be an on-camera person at all.

I was really worried because I'm blonde and I'm a young woman from Nebraska with blonde hair and just kind of a goofy personality.

I thought, “I am never going to succeed on the air because I'll just be stereotyped.”

It's like, “A little blonde. I want to be on television. I don't want to be on TV.”

So I thought, “It can't be a photographer, though,” because back then they were shooting these big giant video cameras with a separate battery pack of all these cells that went around, and then separate recording.

The tapes were — remember? — they were like eight inches long by eight inches. These big three-quarter-inch video cassettes.

The only people who were photographers were men — big men.

So I thought, “Okay, what the heck? I'm going to be a reporter.”

Then I went to another station in Pittsburgh to further that part of my career — the on-camera part, writing and reporting.

Then I got an offer to come to Wichita, Kansas.

I'm like, “Oh my gosh, that's a little tiny town compared to Pittsburgh. I don't want to go backwards.”

Because in our business, you know, the bigger your market, the bigger the city, the more progress you're allegedly making.

But I went because I had an opportunity to host a daily live talk show called Kaleidoscope.

Ric Hansen:Isn't that the cutest little name?

Penny LeGate:Kaleidoscope. I love it.

So many colors of different things.

I did that for three years, and I really learned on-camera craft.

As a live television show in Wichita, Kansas, let me tell you, we weren't getting exactly the top stars coming through on their book tours.

Ric Hansen:Yeah.

Penny LeGate:We weren't getting Paul McCartney.

We were getting people who were on the small-town circuits — musicians or whatever.

I did it for three years, had a blast, and then KING TV in Seattle called me up and asked me to audition for this new show they were going to do called Evening Magazine.

That was in 1986.

I prayed. I prayed hard.

“Jesus, let me have this job in Seattle. I want to live in Seattle. Please, please, please, please.”

And they hired me.

Evening Magazine and Brian Tracy

Ric Hansen:Wow, yeah.

That is a big leap, especially to be hosting your own show in literally prime time for TV news in a big market that's not only a great size, but just a great place to live on top of it all.

So you were teamed up with a guy named Brian Tracy.

For those of us who are lifers here in the Northwest, that was really a big deal.

We had these two great hosts with a great show in the evening.

At first, however, your content came from somewhere else, right?

Your content was shipped in, and you guys hosted that content.

Penny LeGate:The concept of Evening Magazine had been around a long time.

KING, for some reason, decided late in the game of this Evening Magazine concept being around all over the country to do it.

There were two hosts and then a national office in San Francisco.

All the different Evening Magazines from Boston and Providence, Rhode Island, Houston and wherever were feeding stories of interest from their area into the national office.

Then the national office would feed them back out to any of the local Evening Magazines that wanted to run those stories.

You didn't have to, but they were really good stories.

It was like watching the national news, but it was feature-oriented.

So, yes, some of it was originally from other markets, and then we would fill in at least a story or two a night from the Seattle area.

Ric Hansen:The two of you were so compatible on the air, and there was so much love between the two of you.

I often wondered if that was real — what the real relationship was with Brian Tracy and yourself.

Because on air, it seemed so natural and so uplifting.

Tell me the inside scoop on that.

Penny LeGate:I first met Brian when I got picked up at the airport by a limousine.

I'm like, “Oh my God.”

They picked me up and said, “We're going to just wait here because we've got another person coming in to audition.”

And it was Brian.

They auditioned three women and three men in different combinations, all together watching each other.

Can you imagine how tense that must have been?

Anyway, Brian slides into the back of the limo, immediately hands me his card, and goes, “Yeah, here's my card — Brian Tracy Productions from back East.”

I'm like, “Oh wow, this guy. Big deal.”

Little did I know, he was no big deal at all.

He was just Brian.

Very different.

He's very East Coast. I'm Midwest.

He's brash and forward, and I learned to hold my own with that whole team.

We all got along incredibly well.

It was kind of magical, actually.

We traveled all over the Northwest, Ric — every corner of the state and beyond — in a little van all day long.

We were out on the road all the time.

We became so close that a lot of people thought we were married.

I told his wife, Joanne, “Don't compliment yourself. I don't want your husband.”

She'd ask, “Are you sleeping with my husband?”

I'm like, “No, no, I'm not. Don't have to worry. I'm not attracted to your husband.”

We just got along great.

We had a great ability to help each other and kid each other.

It was just kind of a magical pairing.

Ric Hansen:Yeah, and it showed up on the air every night.

It really was quite special.

You're hearing all about the life and career of Seattle television legend Penny LeGate and me, Ric Hansen, on Amazing Greats.

We're still good friends, right?

Penny LeGate:Yeah, yeah.

He lives in Fort Lauderdale now, and he's mostly retired.

He and Joanne are down there, and we talk often.

We still talk about important things in our lives.

He knows me like a lot of people will never know me.

It's like a parent knows you, like no one else will know you.

We've just been through a lot of stuff together — good and bad.

Ric Hansen:Oh man, that does my heart good to know that what I was watching wasn't just a facade on television.

That was the real deal.

Penny LeGate:It still is.

Not that he couldn't be a total pain in the butt. Let me just tell you that.

From Television to Humanitarian Work

Ric Hansen:Let's go with that too.

He had his share of problems here in Seattle after Evening Magazine with the whole duck problem.

Just tragic.

That had to destroy you because it was off and running, it was going smooth, it was a great deal, and then all of a sudden the accident and it all blew up.

Penny LeGate:So, people who don't know, there was an axle that gave way on one of the World War II vintage Ducks.

They're called DUKWs — that was their acronym in World War II.

They were boats with a front that dropped down and dropped troops. You've seen those pictures from D-Day when they're unloading people.

Those were actually Higgins boats on D-Day, but they look very similar.

You can drive them off a bridge or whatever, and they're kind of amphibious vehicles used to carry troops.

He used these old vehicles to create a wonderful tour around Seattle.

Ric Hansen:So that actually went into the water, which was very cool.

Penny LeGate:Yeah, that's right. It was on the land and on the water.

Ric Hansen:But then the accident kind of messed all that up.

Anyway, let's talk more about Penny.

So, after your stint at KIRO, was that kind of the end of your on-air experience in Seattle?

Penny LeGate:Yeah, pretty much.

I continued to work for Seattle Channel and host some of their shows and do longer-form stories.

But, yeah, pretty much.

Although I'm still doing a lot of emceeing and traveling on international humanitarian projects.

That continued.

Ric Hansen:Including the Orphans Africa auction about four or five years ago that you hosted.

Thanks to you, because I was on the board and I asked Penny, “Hey, could you do this?”

And by golly, she was there for us.

She was there.

So then the podcast — is there life in A Couple of Dusty Muffins?

A Couple of Dusty Muffins

Penny LeGate:Oh, yes.

There's another very feisty broadcaster retired here in the Seattle area by the name of Julie Blacklow.

Julie is an award-winning, hard-nosed, amazing writer, reporter, friend and person.

We hooked back up.

I knew Julie. We worked at KING.

I was always in the programming department.

For people who don't know, there's an entertainment part of a TV station and then there's more the news part, and they're very separate.

She was in news and I was in programming.

Then when I went to KIRO, we were both in news together, and she was at KIRO as well for a while.

So we worked together peripherally, but knew each other and respected each other.

Then she wrote a book called Fearless: A Memoir, which is absolutely — I can't plug it enough.

If you want a great read, especially about everything that's happened in Seattle and all the people she's covered and all the crazy things that have happened to her, including attempting suicide, she's very honest about her life, her ups and downs, the tragic stories she covered, the funny stuff.

Anyway, I hooked up with her again at a book reading for her book.

I thought, “I'm going to come out and support Julie.”

So I showed up and we started talking.

I don't know, I felt a connection to her.

It was like love at first sight — like between a man and a woman, or it doesn't have to be a man and woman, but between two people.

Not romantic love.

I just thought, “Wow, she's really cool. I should hang out more with her.”

Then I went to her second book reading, and I started reading her posts on Facebook, which were eloquent and heart-rending and honest and authentic.

She is an artist, so she'd paint these pictures and talk about Ukraine or what was going on with shootings — everything.

I texted her one day, “We should do a podcast.”

And she said, “You're on.”

So we got together with another old radio guy from Seattle.

Ric Hansen:Well, he's not necessarily old.

Penny LeGate:But for you, he's pretty old.

Ric Hansen:Yes, well, he is old.

He'll cut this out.

Penny LeGate:He'll cut it out.

You can't cut this out, Clem!

Yeah, another old geezer in radio, Clem Daniels.

He became our audio engineer, and we just started in.

We had no money or anything.

We just started talking about stuff because we had so much to talk about.

It's called A Couple of Dusty Muffins.

Ric Hansen:If people want to look for us, we're on almost all podcast platforms, and there's quite a nice library of interviews and conversations there.

Penny LeGate:Yeah, something for everyone there.

We have 35 episodes in the can so far, and we talk about everything.

Faith, Quietly Lived

Ric Hansen:Let's jump back quickly because I want to integrate the Christian element into this long broadcast career that you had.

Was Jesus a part of that?

I know there was the prayer, “Can I get the job in Seattle?” to Jesus.

You said that kind of lightly, but I'm sure there was probably some serious prayer going on there.

Anything else along that journey where your Christianity surfaced or became a part of who you were and what you did in broadcasting?

Penny LeGate:Yeah. Boy, that's a big question.

I have not been the perfect practicing Christian through much of my childbearing years.

I was married to the father of my children, who was not a Christian.

So it kind of fell by the wayside for me.

Even though I never lost my belief, I just didn't think about it that much.

I didn't apply it very much to my life.

As life went on, I realized that I just felt this calling — a soft calling.

I think I felt this calling always, and I needed to renew my faith, to read more, think about it more, pray more.

There have been certain pivotal points in my life where Christ has been way more faithful to me than I have been to Him.

Surprise, surprise, surprise.

Isn't that how He works?

Ric Hansen:That's how He works, exactly.

Penny LeGate:You won't find a lot of me in the public eye talking about Christ.

But what I do is I live it kind of quietly, like my mother did.

I always love to talk about it with anybody who wants to ask me.

I feel like my faith is at work every single day in the way I choose to live my life.

That means taking the talents that I have, if I do have any as a writer, producer, emcee or whatever, and applying the talents I've developed or been given to help those who are down and out.

To shed light on issues like the children of Uganda who were being abducted by this warlord and taken into captivity as child soldiers.

Exploring these issues in depth and bringing enlightenment and hopefully money and awareness so that some of these situations could be changed.

Polio is one of them.

I've been all over the world on polio projects, and I feel like Christ is very involved as one of the people or one of the forces walking with all these people who are going hut to hut, church to church, vaccinating children with the vaccine.

I just see it.

I see it in action.

It's all about action with me.

I see it happening, and I've been witness to it.

My faith, I think, is what allows me to see it as divinity in action — in people, in the people who are serving, and in the fact that there is an outreach at all.

Giving Sight to the Blind

Ric Hansen:Ric Hansen here.

We're hearing the amazing life story of the original Evening Magazine host, Penny LeGate.

What you're talking about is being the hands and feet of Jesus.

Those people that you talk about have been — and that's kind of how I am seeing where you're at.

That's how you want to express your faith in Jesus: through doing stuff, being actively involved and doing His work for Him out in the community.

The polio thing is legendary.

You've been to I don't know how many countries, but many, many countries, helping in that regard — raising money, raising awareness, being on the ground with these folks who are working to eradicate polio.

Some people think polio is gone, but it's not gone.

It's thanks to you and others that it's pretty much getting there, but it's not gone.

And then there was the story of you and a doctor from the Tri-Cities, Washington, who gave sight to the blind.

I mean, talk about an act of Jesus.

Tell me about that.

Penny LeGate:Oh my gosh, Ric.

This was one of the most stunning humanitarian experiences I've had.

It was in a town called Dembidolo, which is on the border of Sudan. It's in Ethiopia, and it's a very impoverished area.

For some reason, nobody really knows why, Ethiopia has a higher rate of blindness than any other country in the world.

People who are blind in Ethiopia — it's very difficult just to survive in Ethiopia anyway.

But if you're blind, you're really at the mercy of having somebody in the family take care of you.

So what happens is not only does a blind person suffer, but the grandchild, perhaps, whose life is completely relegated to taking the hand of a grandfather and leading them everywhere through their lives.

Two people are really highly affected by blindness in Ethiopia.

Anyway, this doctor from the Tri-Cities — I'd heard of his trip.

Through another guy that I knew, who I loved and is now deceased, God bless him, I was connected to him through Rotary.

I'm not a Rotarian, but I've done a lot of Rotary projects around the world.

I found out he takes teams of people over to Ethiopia every year and does cataract surgeries.

So I said, “Let's go. I want to go. I want to go.”

I went and videotaped how he selects the people.

You cannot believe it, Ric.

When they find out that an eye doctor is coming to possibly bring sight, you cannot believe the thousands of people.

I just get goosebumps thinking about that.

Thousands of villagers walk three or four days, hoping, hoping, hoping they'll be chosen.

Some of them, of course, aren't suffering from cataracts.

They have other issues that he can't fix, so it's heartbreaking to watch him say through an interpreter, “I can't. I can't fix you.”

But anyway, he gets this cattle line going.

When he starts to operate, they scrub down a school that's made out of cinder blocks, and they get an operating room ready to go.

They bring these people in one by one by one by one.

They've been screened and pre-screened.

He literally shoots them in the eyeball with a needle to numb up their eye.

While that's going on, another one gets in the chair and he does the cataract surgery.

It's like bang, bang, bang.

He does hundreds of them in just a matter of a few days.

Then this is what's really dramatic.

They all have to come back for their follow-up.

Their eyes are patched over.

They come in, he removes the bandages, and they fall on their knees.

They're crying and holding their heads and weeping and praising God and praising Jesus, just overcome with that gift of sight.

It's just — I don't know.

I don't even have words for how emotional it is to watch these people regain sight after perhaps being blind all their lives, some of them.

What an experience.

I just can't...

Where is the gift here?

For them or for me?

I mean, I think, like, I'm...

Ric Hansen:I mean, to do something like that...

Are those videos available anywhere, as far as you know?

Penny LeGate:Yeah. I'll have to find where we'll find a link for you to find those videos.

Ric Hansen:Oh, that would be great. That would be absolutely great.

Penny LeGate:Yeah. Incredible.

The Mera Project

Ric Hansen:All of these things that you've done, Penny, and been exposed to and been a part of, kind of tell the story of not just what you've done, but really who you are.

But probably the most powerful project, mission, in your life has been your Mera Project.

And that touches everyone in their heart.

If you could just help us with the story of your daughter, Mera, and her struggles, and then what the Mera Project is all about.

Penny LeGate:Yeah. Thank you for asking about it.

I had — I have two daughters.

I don't say past tense. I had two daughters.

I have two daughters.

My eldest daughter is now 33. Her name is Molly. She's a very successful environmental scientist.

My second daughter came along three years after her.

Her name was Mera.

Great life growing up.

We lacked for nothing.

We had a happy marriage, a nice home. We got to travel.

They had plenty of food. They got to take ballet lessons or softball, whatever they wanted to do.

We had a really great life.

But somewhere as Mera went through puberty, she started to develop a lot of anxiety and depression.

As a parent, you don't know if that's just the angst of going through puberty and all the things that kids go through anymore — the bullying and being left out.

We were trying to weather that with her as we would any teenager.

It just progressed.

We had a psychologist working with her to try to counsel her, but she was just so full of angst all the time.

I think she was highly, highly sensitive.

She carried all the sorrows of the world in her heart.

She was one of those people.

If a girlfriend of hers was sick or had a boyfriend problem, she'd say, “Oh Mom, I'm really worried about Susan.”

I'd say, “Honey, I appreciate the fact that you care about her and that you're trying to help her. But you can't angst over it and worry about it and make it your whole life.”

I'd say, “Give it the energy you need for a while and then compartmentalize it like a train. You got it over here, and then maybe you can get back to your schoolwork or whatever, to other parts of your life.”

And she said, “Mom, I can't. I can't do that.”

As her life progressed, she turned to drugs and alcohol to ease her pain.

She went from alcohol and pot, the typical gateway drugs, to huffing.

I don't know if you know what huffing is — where you suck on compressed air that you use to clean computer keys and stuff.

That's very dangerous. You can die instantly from that.

Then to pills.

She was diagnosed with ADHD, and so we tried to help with that.

We had all kinds of doctors and everybody working with her to try to make her happy, and we just couldn't.

It eventually went to a cocaine addiction.

We sent her off to three months of treatment at a lockdown facility in Arizona.

By the way, in the state of Washington, children who are age 14 are allowed to walk away from treatment.

Ric Hansen:Really?

Penny LeGate:Yeah. They can just walk away.

We knew she wouldn't stay, so we sent her to Arizona for three months.

She came back and she was a little better, but she still wasn't — she was still in total denial about the severity of her problem.

She rapidly escalated to OxyContin, then heroin, and then injecting heroin.

As her illness progressed, she came fully to the point where she recognized it.

She said, “Mom, I'm a drug addict.”

Those are her words.

I don't like to use those words, but she would say that.

She went into treatment again on her own accord and was sober and in recovery for almost a year.

She came home to live with me because she had been living with her boyfriend.

She's now just 19 and was holding down a job, doing pretty well, talking about going to college.

She'd graduated from high school on time, kind of miraculously, considering all the issues she had and the schools she'd missed.

She was in an AA program, Alcoholics Anonymous.

She liked that program rather than Narcotics Anonymous, and was working her 12-step program very diligently and trying to get better.

She relapsed one night, went out and bought heroin, overdosed and died.

Ric Hansen:Oh, man.

During all of this time, I'm guessing you were praying like nobody's prayed before.

Penny LeGate:I prayed and prayed and prayed for her.

I prayed and prayed for me to know what to do, how to help her.

Were there things I hadn't thought of?

Clearly, there was a lot I've learned about addiction since her death.

I thought I knew a lot about it before.

I trusted that she was in Jesus' arms and that He had her.

There was some relief in that, I guess.

Some joy in that, actually.

That she was no longer suffering.

I felt it very strongly that she was at peace.

It's like she was telling me, “Mom, I'm okay. I'm okay.”

That was in 2012.

I get messages from her a lot.

And I know there's an afterlife, and I know that she's in a good place.

I wish she hadn't gone so quickly.

I wish there was more I could have done to make her life tolerable, I guess.

But we're all on our own path here, aren't we?

As much as we'd like to think we control our children, we don't.

We give birth to them, we diaper them, we feed them, we send them to certain schools, introduce them to sports or whatever.

Then they grow up, they have their own lives, they make their own choices.

Ric Hansen:And how has Molly handled it through all of this?

Because it's got to be tragic for her as well.

Penny LeGate:Yes.

I think Molly had so many things that she wished she'd done differently, too.

She and Mera would get at each other.

But I think she's made peace with herself finally.

I think Mera actually came to her in what I call a breakthrough dream.

I've had people from the other side break through twice.

Not Mera, but I think Molly did shortly after she died.

Mera was sitting on the end of her bed, just looking at her kind of curiously.

Molly said, “Mera, what are you doing?”

And she said, “I had no idea you loved me this much.”

So I think Molly has learned that we say, “I love you.”

We don't end up in an argument and hang up the phone and let that go.

Those kinds of things.

Molly's coping well.

She's a person who holds all of her cards very close to her vest.

She's learning, too.

She said she's had some good therapy as well.

Turning Grief into Service

Ric Hansen:That's what I admire so much.

One of the many things that I admire about you is that you've chosen not to keep it buried.

You've actually used it as an opportunity to make a difference in the area where Mera struggled.

That is, in essence, what the Mera Project is all about, right?

Penny LeGate:That's right. Exactly right.

Shortly after Mera died, we had a lot of donations for some sort of memorial.

I just kept telling people, “I don't know what I'm going to do.”

I didn't know if I was going to build a well in Africa and name it after her.

I didn't know.

Then I decided to start the Mera Project to lift up other kids like Mera who are troubled, who are struggling.

It doesn't necessarily mean with drugs.

In her little alternative high school, where she eventually graduated, there were kids who didn't have parents at all.

There were kids who were immigrants and couldn't speak English and couldn't really survive well in a major high-school setting.

There were kids who had a child at home while trying to get through high school.

So we provided scholarships for these kids to a program where they could work in community service for a summer.

They could earn money and learn how to show up, because a lot of these kids didn't have any sort of structure at home.

They earned a summer job that paid them well, and they learned responsibility.

We had bus cards for them if they didn't have a car, bought phones for them.

It was pretty successful.

It was hard, though.

I realized after a couple of years that it was really hard to manage other children who don't have structure.

We'd been successful, but I thought, “Let's take this and really go head-to-head with the heroin problem.”

I started to read about various police departments across the country carrying Narcan.

I found out the Seattle Police Department was not equipped.

This was back in 2014 or so, 2015.

I started having meetings with the Seattle Police Department and saying, “We want to buy Narcan for your police officers to carry.”

I worked my way up the ladder until I got to Kathleen O'Toole, who was the chief.

I said, “We want to buy Narcan for your police officers to carry.”

And she goes, “Let's do it.”

It was just that simple with her.

Everybody was saying, “Well, we need to talk it over with the fire department because it's kind of their jurisdiction, and we don't want them to feel like we're always stepping on their toes.”

The fire department was on board.

Everybody got on board.

We bought all the Narcan kits, and I went to the training of the first group of bike officers who were going to carry Narcan.

The bike officers patrolled downtown Seattle, Pioneer Square — some of the hardest-hit areas for people with addiction — and also the University District.

I stood up and said, “Thank you so much for being willing to carry this and to be willing to use it.”

I said, “I know that a lot of you probably aren't very happy about it because I know that addiction is a big problem for you on the streets.”

People who are addicted steal, litter alleyways and sidewalks with needles.

Some are homeless or have mental-health issues, too.

I said, “I know that a lot of what you have to do is deal with people who are suffering from addiction, and it's daunting. It's not fun, I'm sure.”

“But the next time you see a child, a young woman lying on a bench out of it, just remember it could be your child, or it could be your mom, or it could be your sister.”

It affects everybody.

That was my main message.

After the Narcan project, I just wanted to destigmatize addiction.

I wanted to not make it a blame game.

Mera used to say, “Mom, we're not throwaway people.”

And they're not.

These are all people who, for whatever reason, have become addicted to something that they can't control anymore.

They could be victims of abuse.

A lot of them are.

A lot of them are homeless.

A lot of them have mental-health issues.

And who are we to judge?

Here we are, being Christ-like, right?

Ric Hansen:Yeah.

Penny LeGate:Christ did not judge people.

You cannot judge them.

You don't know their stories.

Ric Hansen:Everybody is so quick to be the judge, and yet we're not designed to be the judge at all.

Penny LeGate:Exactly.

The Mera Project Today

Ric Hansen:So is the Mera Project continuing on in that regard?

Is it still raising funds and providing Narcan to police officers?

Is that going on as of today?

Penny LeGate:Yeah.

The Mera Project still has money in the bank.

After — maybe in 2016 or 2017, perhaps 2018 — I have a hard time remembering all the dates.

My therapist, who I've been with for years and years, said, “I think you need a break.”

She said, “Every time you go out and speak, you rip the scab off.”

She said, “I just think you need to take some time off.”

So I have.

I still have this money in the bank.

I have some projects in mind to possibly use it on.

Narcan is now available over the counter, so anybody can buy it.

I'd recommend that everybody carry it.

All schools should have it.

I still will go and talk to kids or certain programs if I'm asked, but since I'm not in that mainstream anymore, it's quieted down.

I'll get back to it.

But right now I'm just taking a break.

Ric Hansen:And I kind of apologize a little bit for ripping the scab off today, but I really do appreciate you taking the time.

Penny LeGate:You know what?

The scab's going to come off whether you rip it or not.

I mean, it's just the nature of losing a child.

And that leads me to one of my reconnections with Christ.

“Help Me, Jesus”

After losing Mera, I also lost my job, and my marriage had just ended.

I had moved from my home to a small apartment, which was fine.

All these things were parsed out in the divorce.

It was not an acrimonious divorce.

I'd lost my daughter, and I was just reeling.

I didn't know what to do with my life.

On top of that, I ended up meeting a person I thought was my dream man, and he was a sociopath.

He was a sociopath and led me down this road where I was suicidal.

Ric Hansen:Wow. Man, oh man.

Penny LeGate:I just had to stop the pain.

I understand now people who feel this way.

I used to think, “Oh, that's so selfish. How could you kill yourself? There's people who need you,” or whatever.

I will never stand in judgment.

There were some dark, dark winter days.

I thought about suicide, and I thought about my other daughter.

I thought, “I can't do that. I just can't. I can't cause her more pain.”

But I was in the darkest, saddest, most bereft place of my life.

I weighed about 90 pounds.

I'd lost a whole bunch of weight.

I fell on the ground in the fetal position, and I just called out:

“Help me, Jesus. Help me.”

And I distinctly felt a presence with me.

The way I remember it is like a hand on the shoulder.

And the message was:

“I can't fix it, but you're not alone.”

Ric Hansen:Oh, man.

Oh my goodness.

Wow.

Penny LeGate:And that was enough.

That was enough to get me back on my feet and keep going.

Since that moment, as I said earlier, I'd kind of fallen away and it wasn't a part of my life that much.

But I pray every day.

I look for God in everything.

I try to live the most God-like life I can — the most Jesus-like — with compassion and tolerance.

I'm like any other human being.

I judge people.

I fail miserably.

But I just keep trying.

A New Chapter

Ric Hansen:Yeah.

Well, life is in a better place now for sure, for you, right?

Penny LeGate:Yes.

Ric Hansen:You're relaxing for one thing.

The last couple of times I've talked to you, you're going to the Galápagos Islands.

Penny LeGate:Yes, yes.

Ric Hansen:I don't know much about the Galápagos Islands, but it sounds like paradise to me.

It sounds like I can envision this jungly island in the middle of the ocean.

Penny LeGate:Yeah. Big bucket-list place for me.

I love nature, and that's where I feel closest to God — when I'm in nature.

As soon as I step outside, I find everything singing and blooming and shouting, “Hallelujah!”

Being in the Galápagos and seeing Mother Nature at work in all her divine and beautiful ways was just fantastic.

Yes, I'm in a very good place now.

I feel like my daughter's in a good place.

I'm married to a wonderful man, and we have a wonderful life together.

So, yeah, life goes on.

Ric Hansen:This has been such an inspiration for me, and I know it will be for our audience.

To find out more about you and your career, and especially to find out about this amazing journey with Jesus and your love of God, has just been really inspiring, is all I can say.

Thank you.

Penny LeGate:Thanks, Ric.

Thank you. It's good to see you, and you're such a great person.

And thank you for doing this wonderful podcast.

Ric Hansen:All righty.

Talk to you soon.

Penny LeGate:Okay, sweetie.

Ric Hansen:Well, as always, thank you so much for spending your time with us on Amazing Greats.

I hope you'll share this one with your family and your friends, and maybe even pop it up on your Facebook or Twitter.

That'd be great, and I'd appreciate it.

Thanks so much.

Until next time, God bless.