Frank Shankwitz
Ep. 20 — A police officer is brought back to life after a near-fatal motorcycle crash and takes on a profound new mission / Frank Shankwitz, Creator and a Co-Founder, Make-A-Wish Foundation. Arizona Highway Patrol Officer Frank Shankwitz was chasing after a drunk driver one day at 85 miles an hour when his motorcycle broadsided a second drunk driver who cut in front of him. His partner could not revive Shankwitz who had suffered grievous injuries and reported him dead at the scene. But an off-duty emergency room nurse driving past the crash performed CPR for four minutes and literally brought Shankwitz back to life. Recovering slowly from his injuries, Shankwitz didn’t fully realize the implications of getting a reprieve from death until his counselor urged him to find deeper meaning. Two years later, when he was asked to cheer up a terminally ill seven-year-old boy who was a huge fan of highway motorcycle squads because of the popular television show CHiPS, Shankwitz found that higher cause. The result was the Make-A-Wish Foundation, which today, forty years after Shankwitz created and co-founded it, has granted more than half a million wishes of children with life-threatening illnesses. After having lived a childhood filled with homelessness and poverty, Shankwitz has created a life for himself that’s rich in meaning by giving sick children around the world a wealth of happiness from their dreams coming true. Transcript Download the PDF Chitra Ragavan: Hello, everyone. I'm Chitra Ragavan, and this is When It Mattered. When It Mattered is a podcast on how leaders deal with and learn from adversity. This episode is brought to you by Goodstory, an advisory firm helping technology startups find their narrative. My guest today is Frank Shankwitz, the creator and a co-founder of the Make-A-Wish Foundation, a global charity that fulfills the wishes of children with life-threatening illnesses. Chitra Ragavan: Shankwitz has taken the lessons learned from his early years of extreme poverty and homelessness and has spent most of his adult life giving back. A US Air Force veteran, Shankwitz served as an Arizona Highway Patrol motorcycle officer and a homicide detective with the Arizona Department of Public Safety. Retiring after 42 years on the force, Shankwitz has received many awards for his work with the Make-A-Wish Foundation, the White House Call to Service award from both President George W. Bush and president Donald J. Trump, and the Making A Difference in The World award from the US Military Academy at West Point, just to name a few. Chitra Ragavan: Mr. Shankwitz, welcome to the podcast. Frank Shankwitz: Thank you. I appreciate the invitation. Chitra Ragavan: Your early years, as I said, were filled with poverty and homelessness and separation from one or other parent. Could you describe what those early years were like? Frank Shankwitz: Interesting, I never thought they were that bad, but Hollywood made a movie about it, so I guess they were. I was born in Chicago, and, at two years old, my mother divorced my father and left. We never knew where, had no idea where she went. In later years, I figured out, because she would never tell me, that she went to Arizona. Ages two to five were just very happy years living with my grandparents, while my dad worked down on weekends, aunts, uncles, cousins, just a lot of fun times. Frank Shankwitz: At five years old, I was in kindergarten on a playground, and a lady grabbed me, dragged me, and she said, "I'm your mother," I have no idea who this lady was, and actually kidnapped me off the playground, screaming and fighting, but when you're five years old and you get a thump on the head, you kind of be quiet, and she said, "We're going to Arizona," but she took a strange route to Arizona, and we ended up what I later learned was Michigan, upper Michigan, Upper Peninsula, and this is a whole different lifestyle.