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The People Walker will take you on a walk, for a fee
BY RACHEL BELLE, KIRO Radio, Ron and Don Show Reporter
September 16, 2016 @ 12:01 pm


People have no problem paying someone to come to their house and walk their dog, so why not pay someone to come over and walk you? Hollywood’s Chuck McCarthy was looking for a way to make some cash between acting gigs, so he created The People Walker.

“I walk people,” Chuck said, while on a walk in his neighborhood. “I go to their house or I meet them in a park, or where ever they want to meet that doesn’t seem crazy or dangerous, and I go for a walk with them.”

He charges $7 a mile, and discusses the length of the walk before they get moving so there are no surprises.

“Some people think that’s kind of a crazy thing but I chose that number because most people can walk three miles in an hour,” he said. “So around an hourly rate of $21 an hour.”

The people walker

Many years ago, Chuck started a website called Ideas By Chuck.

“I would just give away my ideas on there,” he said. “I didn’t want to be that guy at the bus stop pointing to a car with a solar panel on top of it and saying, ‘I came up with that idea!’ I started trying to actually do my ideas and this is one of the ideas I might have written up on there. I just followed up and did it.”

So why would someone hire Chuck to walk them?

“Some of them just need the motivation to get out of the house to get a little bit more active. Some people just don’t like walking alone. Other people might be a little scared to walk alone at night, but that’s the time they have that they can do it.”

I asked Chuck if the walks become therapy sessions, a chance for someone to talk out their problems with a stranger. He said, no.

“They’re conversations,” he said. “They’re not confessions or deep, breakthrough moments. But a lot of times, just being able to chat or vent or something as stupid as the traffic or the weather, can really make people feel better. You can go on Twitter and say, ‘Traffic was terrible! Some guy almost hit me!’ and maybe nobody responds to you. That’s not going to make you feel better. It makes you feel worse.”

He says it’s just as much about the exercise as it is the company.

“A lot of people don’t like to walk alone, a lot of people don’t even really like to be alone,” he said. “There was a study that 20 years ago, 20 percent of people said they’re lonely and now 40 percent of people say they’re lonely. It’s definitely about just getting out, being more active and having somebody with you there to do that.”

Chuck prefers to do the walks close to his neighborhood, so if someone farther away puts in a request to be walked, he might connect them with a walker he’s added to his network.

He hopes to develop a The People Walker app soon to make it easier to connect.