Mariah's Challenge

Our Community is Our Strength: Mariah Daye McCarthy
Mariah’s Challenge (2021)

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Most of Butte is familiar with Mariah McCarthy and the McCarthy family who created the service organization and scholarship awards program associated with Mariah’s challenge.

Mariah’s life ended way to quickly at age 14 on October 28, 2007, especially, for her dad Leo, her mom Janice, and her sister Jenna who were left behind.

Mariah was known as a happy, joyful young lady, and her family wishes for her memory to stay alive in the hearts of others through knowing her story, hoping that her story can create permanent change in individuals that need that change in their lives.

The McCarthy Family does not want another needless life to be lost to drunk driving and this motivates their cause of maintaining the Mariah’s Challenge Organization. As early as Mariah’s funeral, Leo challenged Butte residents and young people to put a stop to drunk driving and underage drinking.  

“In 2017, Leo issued a challenge to young people to be the first generation of Butte Youth not to drink underage. If they committed themselves to this challenge through high school, they would be rewarded with a $1,000.00 scholarship distributed within two semesters at an academic college, trade school college, nursing college, or military service organization, and a special ceremony is performed when the students receive the awards. Students can sign the contract and accept the challenge at any time beginning with grade school through High School.”

This challenge was the beginning of a movement that brough Mariah’s spirit to life. McCarthy says that Mariah’s spirit often visits him through songs, nature, experiences, and through the service of other people. 

To date, Mariah’s Challenge has given $400,000.00 in the form of 400 scholarships to 400 students in Montana. In this rewarding process, parents must be involved. Leo believes when we sit around the table as a family, change can take place. Communication with our children is the key.

An accepted challenge must be signed by the student and parent. The challenge is for the duration of four years of High School, a 500-word essay must be turned in, and parents and children must be interviewed. Not all students succeed after participating in this challenge, and McCarthy says that he respects the students who try and who are honest about their failings. He encourages them to keep trying.

McCarthy believes that awareness in any movement is important and when combined with the power of positivity while acting with integrity, honesty, and character, huge changes in the community and the participating individual begins to be apparent.

McCarthy chooses to focus on Mariah’s life, not her death, and giving back to the community helps that choice become a reality. He believes we must lose ourselves in service, so he and his family decided to build a legacy of love, instead of a having a memorial of misery.

McCarthy says, “There is no book of instructions on how to build a legacy of love, but there was a small opportunity for us to take Mariah’s life and use it to do good, and our family, with the help and encouragement of friends, family, and the community made a conscious choice to take that opportunity.

You must fall on Faith and talk about the experience. This helps in the healing process. You’re not dealing with the experience if you have excuses and shouldn’t allow yourself to deal with it alone. I never asked God why He took Mariah and left two other girls alive. I am not so special that tragedy can’t happen to me. It can happen to anyone.

When a tragedy like this happens, we must look at our own reflection in the mirror and decide how to act on the tragedy. If one person is changed from Mariah’s Challenge, her death will have changed generations, and all the work that has gone into this organization will have been worth it, if even just one generation has been changed.

We had to have faith in Butte and Butte came through. We didn’t think this was going to be so successful. We couldn’t have made it through this time and this process without friends, family, and the Montana community on our side, supporting us along the way or without Mariah supporting us along the way.”

McCarthy has presented Mariah’s Challenge and the spirit of change at 14 Montana High Schools, a New York Grade School, and in Nashville Tennessee.

McCarthy was nominated by his daughter, Jenna, for the 2012 Top Ten CNN Heroes. He made the top 10, and the money that he received was used to build up the scholarship program.

This year, the Mariah’s Challenge scholarships were awarded to 16 Butte High Students, 3 Butte Central students, and 1 Billings Senior Student.

Mariah was also an organ doner, donating 13 usable organs to people who needed them. She has helped improve, and in some cases, saved 13 other lives because of her life on this earth. Her family sometimes will receive letters of thanks for her donations. Even in death Mariah helped others.

I like that the McCarthy’s allow Mariah to help them by believing she is still alive in the process of making a lasting and influential change. 

Many times, we think and feel that death is the end of life, but we can make the spirits of our loved ones alive in us. We can keep their memory alive by allowing them to continue to influence our life on this earth. We are still connected, whether in life or in death, if we have the faith to believe and the eyes to see.

 

Things we can do to help Mariah’s Challenge grow.

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Hold fundraisers.

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Place a Mariah’s Challenge Jar at our place of businesses and churches. Three Bears and Murdoch’s are currently the only places of business that have pennies for Mariah’s Challenge.

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You can -purchase shirts, pins, and medallions. The scholarships are not based on good grades.

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Every year East Middle School has a Mariah’s Walk as part of their character Counts Program.

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Montana license plates can be purchased to support Mariah’s Challenge.

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You can purchase a medallion or pin (seen in the pictures).

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“Mariah’s Challenge is an official registered charity on AmazonSmile. AmazonSmile is the charitable arm of Amazon.com and donates a percentage of your purchases directly to the charity of your choice at no cost to you. to do so, go to www.smile.amazon.com It’s the same experience and products as the regular Amazon - to search and select the Mariah Daye McCarthy Scholarship Foundation as your charity of choice. Once that is established, bookmark Smile. Make sure you’re making purchases on Amazon Smile to make the beneficial and automatic donation directly to Mariah’s Challenge.”

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Cities and towns all over Montana donate to Mariah’s Challenge and so do other states. You can too 😊