When Chasten Whitfield was in fifth grade, her younger brother developed tumors throughout his body. Fortunately, her brother’s tumors were benign, but Whitfield felt a strong desire to make a difference.
“I started raising money for St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital,” says Whitfield, who is now 25. “I would have garage sales, and we sold oranges from my friend’s orange grove out of the back of my dad’s truck.”
She raised so much money that they were able to keep a boy with a brain tumor who was about the same age as her brother on a ventilator. She didn’t know it at the time, but she had found her calling, and her drive to help others never dissipated — it grew stronger.
Whitfield lives in Cortez, Florida, a fishing village on the Gulf Coast between Tampa and Sarasota. “I started fishing in middle school,” she says. “I was a cheerleader at the time, and all my friends were cheerleaders. I wasn’t the best cheerleader, and my mom suggested I try fishing just to see how I like it.” (Whitfield’s mom taught her entire family how to fish, including Whitfield’s dad.)
Whitfield took her mother’s advice and entered a local tournament with two other girls. “Somehow we won,” Whitfield says, “and we decided to give the money back to the tournament charity because we figured the charity needed it more than us.”
When she turned 18, Whitfield got her captain’s license and officially created a nonprofit organization called Chastenation. “I started teaching kids how to fish,” she says. “I was teaching a fishing camp on Anna Maria Island on one of the local piers, and a little boy rolled up in a wheelchair. He was 4 or 5 years old and had spina bifida. He was the only kid on that pier catching fish, and he was the only one in a wheelchair. Obviously, the fish don’t care what you look like.”
Whitfield took a liking to the boy, whose name was Easton. “We called him the snapper master,” she says. “He’d never been in a boat before because of his wheelchair. I found a boat that could accommodate his chair, and I took him out. That was July Fourth 2016, and I’ve never looked back.”
Whitfield says she has since worked with more than 200 kids of varying abilities. “I learn more from them than they learn from me,” she says. “I just teach them how to throw a little fish in front of a big fish — they teach me about life.”
Through the power of social media and a television show Whitfield launched, Their Life, My Lens, she is able to get her message across to a wide audience. “The slogan for my show is, ‘We show the abilities, not the disabilities, through the sport of fishing.’ You might have a disease or a diagnosis, and the doctors are saying, ‘You can’t, you can’t, you can’t.’ But when they jump on the boat, it’s like, hey, you can reel that fish in as hard as you want, as fast as you want or as slow as you want, because all you’ve got to do is reel.”
On the show, which is going into its fifth season on Outdoor America, Whitfield takes guests around her local waters. They fish near shore for redfish and seatrout or head out into the Gulf to catch grouper and mangrove snapper. “Last season, we also went down to the Florida Keys, and we got to do some shark fishing. We caught some big barracudas, and we saw some tarpon,” she says.
After the shows are edited, Whitfield invites her young guests to a private watch party so each kid can see his or her episode before it airs. “The kids love watching themselves on TV,” she says. “Their confidence after catching a fish is pretty dang high, but when they see themselves on TV, they’re like, yeah that was me. I totally did that! I love it.”
You can see the joy and emotion on Whitfield’s face in each episode. She is spreading what she calls “saltwater therapy” to kids and families who are battling things far greater than a fish.
“We are proud to be the broadcast home for Chasten’s program,” says Jamie Wilkinson, executive vice president of Outdoor America. “Fishing is the backdrop, but the heart of this family-friendly, inspirational show lies in telling the stories of everyday people overcoming adversity. It’s a program for outdoor lovers and fans of real-life resilience.”
