In many ways, Zack wasn’t like most kids growing up; he loved to talk about the things he noticed around his small world, but he wasn’t able to tell anyone about it. Growing up all the way in El Paso, Texas, he had a very rough time making friends at school and other places in general. To be fair, it wasn’t entirely his fault; neither was it his parent’s. Ever since the day he was born, Zack was the victim of bad luck and biology. For nearly sixteen years, Zack lived with a deadly heart disease known as Hypertrophic Cardiomyopathy. Many of the pediatric doctors who saw him at an early age doubted he would make it to high school, let alone actually graduate and go to college.
Surprisingly, he went through most of his childhood without any major issues. He was unable to play sports due to the severity of his condition, but he also wasn’t allowed to simply dive into laziness. He expanded his mind at an early age, mainly falling in love with the stories told in movies.
During his early adolescent years however, that was when things changed. He experienced chest pains that many trips to the emergency room couldn’t solve. Shortly after his thirteenth birthday though, his main cardiologist saw that his heart was slowly starting to harden. If he was left untreated, he would slowly die. Numerous prescribed medications later, the last possible way of saving his life was a heart transplant. That was how, at age fourteen, Zack and his parents uprooted their lives from west Texas all the way to Southern California.