Rick and Cindy Chac will be among 11 teams competing for a $1 million prize in the upcoming season of reality TV series “The Amazing Race.”
The Amazing Race is a reality competition show in which 11, two-person teams race around the globe. The 12-leg race presents physical and mental challenges testing contestants. Teams are required to deduce clues, navigate themselves in foreign areas, interact with locals and and vie for airplane, boat, taxi and other public transportation options on a limited budget provided by the show.
This year The Amazing Race teams take off from Venice Beach, Calif. The Chacs will be competing against 10 other teams including former New York Jets cheerleaders, street dancing brothers, TMZ personalities and dating news reporters.
At the beginning of this year’s series, all 11 teams will travel to their first destination, Rio de Janeiro in Brazil, where they immediately encounter a potentially game-changing fast-forward.
The husband-and-wife Chac team, both of Vietnamese-Chinese extraction, are employed in the medical field. Cindy, 36, is a dentist. Rick, 38, is an OB/GYN. His office is right across the street from Sharp Chula Vista Medical Center.
Rick said being on Reality TV is something he’s always wanted to do — but never expected to get the chance.
“I watched the show for many years, all through school, and I always thought, ‘I could do so much better if I was on the show,’ ” he said adding he finally got the chance after marrying Cindy, who agreed it would be fun to apply to become contestants.
“We sent in a video to the show’s producers talking about our lives and upbringings, saying we were both hard workers and discussing how great we’d be for the show,” Rick said.
Asked why he thought they were selected, Rick said, “The biggest thing was that we weren’t silver spoon-fed. I’m a self-made doctor. She’s a dentist. We both have our practices, and we both still have parents that barely speak any English. We know what it’s like to work hard. And we are both still very humble.”
Rick had an interesting tale to tell about how his family immigrated to the United States following the Vietnam War when he was just a child.
“I came to the United States at age 7 with our refugee family,” he said. “I was one of six children. My parents, who didn’t speak a word of English, got blue-collar jobs. My mom worked in an Asian market. My dad worked construction. I myself bootstrapped from nothing. But I was able to go to college and medical school and become a practicing physician in San Diego.”
Rick Chac also had an interesting story to relate about how he and his wife got together.
“We met online through a dating service,” he said. “I was one week away from finishing up my account and her name popped up. She was actually using the account of her sister, who had already found a mate. We met and hit it off and a year or so later we applied for The Amazing Race.”
Amazing Race contestants are barred from discussing their experience on the reality show until it airs. But Rick said he and Cindy, who are thinking about starting their own family, agreed it would be “a good way to get the travel bug out of our systems while testing how well we work as a team under pressure.”
Risking being cliché, Rick said the contest truly is “amazing.”
“It really was a once-in-a-lifetime experience,” he said. “We got to do things on the race we never would have done.”
Rick added he and Cindy are “very excited about seeing how the show’s producers and editors will piece the story together. We know our side. But the 10 other teams racing against us …”
And what of the prospect of winning the $1 million grand prize?
Admitting that would be great, Rick nonetheless noted, “That is just part of it. The really interesting part was the opportunity to travel around the world. That, in and of itself, was worth more than the grand prize.”
The new season of the 10-time Emmy Award-winning series premieres Friday, Sept. 25 from 8-9 p.m. ET/PT on the CBS Television Network.
