Katie Spotz found herself alone in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean, candy bar stash dwindling, and tired from the 1,500 miles she’d already rowed.

And she still had another 1,500 left.

“So I told myself I’m not going to do it,” she said to bleachers full of Todd Beamer High School students on Monday. “I’m not going to row 3,000 miles, but what I will do is row one mile 3,000 times.”

It was that perspective that catapulted Spotz to break the world record as the youngest person to ever row across the Atlantic ocean 70 days after she set out in January 2010.

But her journey was met with more struggles than the looming prospect of more rowing. Spotz faced giant waves that caused her to reroute her rowing, she encountered an unidentified boat she originally thought might be pirates and uncertainty of what would come. The whole time the now 27-year-old was completely alone and had no assistance whatsoever.

“Reaching land was one of the most surreal experiences I have ever had,” she said. “I felt like I was winning an Emmy, completing a marathon and being released out of solitary confinement all at once.”

People were dumbfounded.

“I talked to Katie Couric, Anderson Cooper, Diane Sawyer, NPR, among others,” Spotz recalled. “I was even selected as Glamor Magazine’s woman of the year and meeting people like Oprah, Fergie, Jennifer Lopez and Julia Roberts. It was completely over the top but they all kept asking the same exact question: Why?”

Spotz told them all the same answer: Because 1 billion people on our planet don’t have clean water and someone had to do something.

Spotz didn’t stop at rowing, she trained for a bicycle-led Race Across America where she hoped to break another world record of two bicyclists completing the 3,000-mile trek in seven days. She was ready, she had moved to California and had been practicing enough to complete 375 miles in 24 hours by herself.

But a week before her race, she fell off her bike and broke her pelvis, one of the hardest bones to break in the body. She wouldn’t be able to walk for two or three months, let alone ride.

Spotz still made it across the country in seven days but with the help of her friends and a hand-powered bike.

Spotz has also completed an Ironman triathlon, an ultra-marathon in Australia, and a 325-mile river swim and run across deserts.

“By now, you’ve recognized these adventures have a bigger purpose behind them,” she said. “I’ll never forget when I was sitting in class and my teacher mentioned the wars of the future would be on water. I didn’t understand, I felt like my teacher just told me the wars of the future would be fought over air.”

Through her extreme endurance challenges, Spotz has raised more than $150,000 for clean water and is now working with H2O for Life, an organization that provides service-learning to schools and youth groups to raise awareness about the water crisis.

Spotz said she took a trip to Kenya and learned that many people have to walk four hours a day to wait in line for eight hours to get water. They then make another four-mile journey back with sometimes 40 pounds of dirty water on their back.

She said because of this time consuming task, children cannot attend school and the problem continues.

Spotz challenged Todd Beamer students to make a difference in their own way — whether it be endurance challenges or not — because every little bit helps.

“I think it’s amazing what she did and at such a young age,” said Eliannie Emcalada, a senior at Todd Beamer High School. “Sometimes when we’re young, we can’t do much because there’s so many things stopping us but then seeing her story, how she started something so small — one mile a day to rowing across the Atlantic — is amazing and very impressive. A goal, not exactly like that, but someday I would like to do something as impactful as she did.”

Emcalada said she’d like to continue what she started last year — help developing nations build schools so more children and girls, specifically, can grow up and have an education and opportunities we have in the U.S.

The 18-year-old did this last summer when she went on the districtwide nine-day trip to Ecuador.

A select group of high school students across the Federal Way school district went to Ecuador last summer to help build schools and experience the culture. The schools will host a second trip this summer as well (Feb. 9 is the application deadline).

Whitney Lane, also a senior at Todd Beamer who visited Ecuador, said Spotz’s speech inspired her and “enforced the fact that we can all individually offer something and when you’re really passionate about a cause, you can take the talent you have and make something better.”

She said Spotz’s endurance challenges gave her an idea for an upcoming fundraiser — a 5k color run.

Todd Beamer High School teacher Sue Bergman coordinated with Spotz and H2O for Life because the issues tie in with her Current World Problems, Inspiring Youth class. The class for seniors is meant to encourage students to take action and help others in their community and around the world.

“It was a good match for what we’re already doing here in Federal Way and at Todd Beamer,” Bergman said, noting the district’s global initiative.

Bergman’s class has helped with the We Scare Hunger food drive, a clothing drive during the holidays and a partnership with Grace Community Church to hand out greeting cards to people in nursing homes.

In class, she’s had speakers come in and teach students about bio filters and what they’re doing with different communities to develop clean water.

“This next semester, they’re going to be taking more action on a global basis to connect with the community in Ecuador and get them facilitated to coming up with some kind of action plan to send money to Ecuador and help that community.”

She said while there are no concrete plans, the class will be doing something to raise money so that they can help the Ecuador community with their clean water and education system.

Spotz is currently touring across the country in an effort to raise $250,000 for water projects and inspire 30,000 students in 50 schools.

For more information about clean water, visit www.h2oforlifeschools.org.