West Chicago native helps bust urban legend for 'Mythbusters'

The daughter of a deputy fire chief, West Chicago native Heidi Lakics might have been apprehensive about going on a television show that routinely blows up stuff for fun.

But when producers from The Discovery Channel's "Mythbusters" program asked Lakics, an arborist, to appear on an episode where a myth about frozen pine trees exploding was going to be explored, she didn't hesitate.

"I kind of jumped at the opportunity," said Lakics, who works at Friends of the Urban Forest in San Francisco. "I was also the only one in the office that wanted to be on camera."

But producers had ulterior motives for contacting Lakics' organization and using her to help debunk the myth. (Spoiler alert! Frozen pine trees don't explode.)

"They didn't want people to get mad at them for exploding trees," she said, "so they donated more money for us to plant more trees."

So far, she claims she hasn't had any angry calls from upset tree-huggers, even though the crew sent one pine tree through a chipper, doused another with liquid nitrogen and exploded a third one just for kicks. The episode titled "Hurricane Windows" originally aired Nov. 4, but the Discovery Channel is re-airing it at 7 p.m. Wednesday.

Lakics assured the producers the trees wouldn't explode when frozen and wasn't scared that she'd be proven wrong when she accompanied cast members Tory Belleci, Kari Byron and Grant Imahara to the show's proving grounds in Alameda, Calif.

"I thought there might be some cracking and dropping limbs, but I knew it wasn't going to explode," she said. "Most trees, especially the ones in Arctic temperatures, have space in their cellular structure to allow expansion when water inside turns to ice."

Lakics raved about the experience and her time spent hanging out with the three cast members.

"They're totally rad people," she said. "They came over and said hello and were telling me stories about things they'd done out there. Kari was super pregnant at the time, so I was thinking maybe I could stand in for her in future episodes, but they didn't ask."

In return for her help, the program donated enough money to allow Lakics' group to plant five fruit trees in a community garden in San Francisco.

"This garden needed some extra help and since we can't plant fruit trees in the parkway, the garden was a perfect fit to benefit," she said.

Her father, West Chicago Fire District Deputy Chief Steve Lakics, wasn't upset that his daughter was blowing up trees on TV despite her safety-conscious upbringing.

"This is a totally impartial statement," Steve Lakics joked, "but I would have liked to have seen her on there for the whole hour."

Because Heidi doesn't have cable at her apartment in San Francisco, she hosted a pre-party at her place. Then she and her pals headed to a nearby bar to watch the episode, while she endured some good-natured teasing about her performance.

"Everyone was having a good time," she said.

The younger Lakics is a 2000 graduate of Community High School in West Chicago and went on to receive a degree in environmental science from Humboldt State University in Northern California. She said she'd go back on the show in a heartbeat if the producers called again.

"My friends and I," she admitted, "were trying to think up other tree myths we could give to them so I could do the show again."

<div class="infoBox"> <h1>More Coverage</h1> <div class="infoBoxContent"> <div class="infoArea"> <h2>Related links</h2> <ul class="moreWeb"> <li><a href="http://dsc.discovery.com/fansites/mythbusters/mythbusters.html">Discovery Channel's 'Mythbusters' site</a></li> </ul> </div> </div> </div>