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About Us
OUR MISSION
Healing Heroes Foundation brings first responders, military members, veterans, and their families together to build meaningful connection, strengthen health and well-being, and ensure no one has to navigate life's challenges alone.
Hockey will always be part of who we are.
Healing Heroes was shaped by a first responder hockey community centered on shared experience, competition, camaraderie, and giving back. What we experienced on the ice showed us something much bigger: bringing people together creates opportunities for relationships that can last far beyond the rink.
Today, we're building on that foundation to create a year-round network of connection, support, and opportunities for first responders, military members, veterans, and their families to prioritize their health and well-being.
Hockey brought us together. Connection showed us what was possible.
OUR VISION
We envision a future where service and sacrifice do not come at the expense of well-being.
A future where first responders, military members, veterans, and their families are empowered to prioritize their health and well-being.
Where conversations about caring for ourselves and one another are simply part of everyday life.
Where meaningful connection, peer support, and trusted resources are within reach long before they're needed most.
People grow healthier and wiser throughout their years of service. Relationships and families grow stronger alongside them. And communities become places where reaching out for support is met with care, connection, and a willingness to help.
A future where fewer people suffer alone, fewer lives are lost to suicide, and each generation leaves the next healthier than the one before it.
WHAT GUIDES US
The way we build community matters just as much as the work we do within it.
COMMUNITY
Creating a place where those who serve and their families know they belong.
CONNECTION
Building meaningful relationships that make it easier to reach out, stay connected, and support one another.
CAMARADERIE
Strengthening the bonds formed through shared experience, mutual understanding, and showing up for one another.
Together, they create something every person deserves:
a community where you don't have to face life's challenges alone.
OUR STORY
What began as one hockey game grew into something much bigger.
2016 • WHERE IT BEGAN
Healing Heroes Foundation began in 2016 as the Hero's Cup Foundation, founded by Mike and Caiti Matros. What started as a single hockey game to raise funds for the Last Call Foundation soon revealed the power of bringing the first responder and military communities together around a shared purpose.
The following year, the Hero's Cup hockey tournament was created to promote fitness, build camaraderie, and raise funds for first responder and military charities. In 2018, a partnership with the Boston Bruins Foundation gave rise to the BFit Heroes Cup, which grew to become the country's largest first responder and military hockey tournament.
THE EARLY YEARS OF THE HERO'S CUP
A COMMUNITY GROWING BEYOND THE RINK
BUT THE IMPACT WAS ALWAYS BIGGER THAN HOCKEY.
THE NEXT CHAPTER
After the Matros family hosted their final tournament in 2023, EJ and Jaime Nicholas took on leadership of the organization. The Hero's Cup Foundation entered a new chapter—evolving into Healing Heroes Foundation and expanding its focus beyond the rink to support the health and well-being of first responders, military members, veterans, and their families.
The name has changed. The community has grown.
The purpose that brought us together continues.
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