When Chrissy Lovitt and Emma Nelson went on NBC’s game show "The Wall," they kept an open mind, and the Lahaina community at the forefront. Nelson described it as a win-win.
“You go in like you're not technically losing anything when you go in and you have an opportunity like this," she told HPR. "It's just like you know you can only benefit from it. Like, even if we had lost all the money, like it still would have people talking about Lahaina again and talking about our community.”
Married couple Nelson and Lovitt are the owners of Maui Ocean Adventures. They had just opened their business when the 2023 wildfires destroyed their town — and their boat. As their brand-new charter vessel went up in flames in Lahaina Harbor, they didn’t hesitate to use a smaller boat to rescue dozens of residents who had jumped into the water to flee the fire.
Lovitt said when NBC reached out to her just months after the fire, she wasn’t interested.
“I thought it was like a show that was like an obstacle course, and I was like, I'm not ready to do an obstacle course or anything like that, and I just kind of ignored it, and they kept contacting us,” she said.
Producers urged them to take a chance, saying it could change their lives. They were still hesitant.
“Initially just like, ‘We can't do this, we just can't.’ I mean, we were just traumatized, after the fire, like so many people were. It's like your head doesn't go into being on a show,” recalled Lovitt. “But the way that they just approached it, they were really gentle about it, and it definitely made us feel comfortable.”
They also wanted to ensure the show portrayed the wildfire with care.
“We were just really cautious on just approaching it from the right angle,” she added. “And they did just a phenomenal job, I thought. Because we don't want people to forget about what happened in Lahaina.”
The couple said they felt like “fish out of water” going from being on the boat to a reality game show and being on stage.
“We just went in with humility and gratitude, and just keeping an open mind and just you just got to go with the flow,” said Lovitt.
“It actually translates very well to working on the boat,” added Nelson with a laugh. “So that was the one part where we were like, ‘Oh yeah, we know this. We can do this.’”
Afterwards, Lovitt and Nelson weren’t even sure if or when their episode would air. But two years after they filmed, it aired on the national network last week.
Contestants on "The Wall" compete in pairs and answer quiz questions. With each correct answer, a green ball drops and lands on a variable dollar amount that adds to their winning total. A wrong answer, and a red ball drops to subtract from the total. During the competition, one contestant goes into an isolation room to answer questions and doesn’t know the team’s total winnings before choosing between a guaranteed amount or risking it all to accept whatever total has been earned during the show.
Lovitt was in the isolation chamber. Nelson said her wife had Lahaina at the forefront of her decision to take a risk on winning bigger.
“She was definitely talking a lot about how we could make the biggest impact on the community,” Nelson explained.
And that risk paid off. When Lovitt returned to the stage, Nelson told her they’d won $1.1 million.
“We've had just like pits in our stomach, not sleeping, and we were so stressed out,” Lovitt said of their life since the fire. “And to come to that point of knowing, like, okay, we will be able to pay our fire debt down, and we are able to have this opportunity to help people — it was one of the greatest feelings I think I've ever had.”
After the fire, they had scraped together enough money to buy a new boat and reopened Maui Ocean Adventures at the end of 2024.
Since then, their business has offered free whale watching trips to fire survivors, and they want to do more.
“We're in current discussions of what we can do to help the community,” Lovitt said.
While their prize money will take the edge off their financial stress, Lovitt said their daily routine has remained the same.
“We still work every single day. I still have holes in my shoes, and life hasn't changed. We're still just busting butt to keep the business going,” she said.
