Jackie Pochowski before (left) and after her weight loss. Credit: Family photo / Michael Sears

Starting with small steps, Jackie Pochowski has become half the person she used to be, dropping from 400 pounds to about 200.

On Saturday, she plans to climb 1,034 steps straight up Wisconsin's tallest building at the Fight for Air Climb to benefit the American Lung Association.

This affront to gravity was for many years unthinkable for Jackie as she battled asthma and her weight problem.

"I'm going to make it to the top of those stairs," the 51-year-old Watertown woman vowed. "I'm going to do this. If I have to crawl to get to the top, I'm going to make it."

Her added incentive is the memory of her mother, Bernice Pochowski, who died of lung cancer in 2011.

"Man, this lung cancer goes so fast. I really hope they can find something to slow it down. There are so many people that smoked. That was her generation. That's what they all did," she said.

Jackie will join nearly 3,000 other climbers in the stairwells of the U.S. Bank Center downtown. This urban mountain is 47 floors, or 94 flights of stairs. Based on last year's participants and revenue raised, $569,615, the Milwaukee event boasts that it's the largest of the 62 Fight for Air Climbs in the nation.

You can register online until 2 p.m. Friday at fightforairclimb.org, and in person later Friday and on Saturday at the bank building, 777 E. Wisconsin Ave. Every entrant must raise a minimum of $100 in addition to the registration fee.

Milwaukee is only 48 miles from Watertown, but Jackie's journey to this event spans years, starting at age 17 when she became pregnant with her son, Dustin.

"My hormones went wild and I ended up with thyroid disease. My weight just kept coming on and coming on. And I had asthma on top of it, so it made it hard to breathe and I didn't exercise and I had pretty much low self-esteem," she said.

Her weight hovered around 400 for many years. It got to the point where her car's seat belt could not reach around her. But she went about her life, working these past 20 years as a school bus driver in Watertown.

A half dozen years ago, her blood pressure started to spike. It's time for some exercise, her doctor advised. "I said, 'I'm 400 pounds. What do you think I'm going to do?'"

Park just one car length farther from work, she was told. Then make it two car lengths and so on.

"Pretty soon I was parking my car a mile away from work and walking back and forth. My lungs improved and my weight started dropping off and my blood pressure came down," Jackie said.

"I actually found an exercise bike in somebody's garbage and I stopped my car and threw it in the back of the car real quick and took it home and started working out. At first I could hardly pedal it for five minutes. Now I can do an hour, no sweat. It's just very small steps."

She was not a huge eater, she said, but the thyroid condition affected her metabolism. Now she eats smaller portions and has eliminated soda. Her goal is to lose 50 more pounds, though she's understandably happy with her progress.

Jackie first heard about the climb from one of its biggest promoters, Brian Gotter, a meteorologist at Today's TMJ4. She and her mom thought he seemed nice on the air, but there was no way physically they would be able to join him on the 1,000 stairs.

When Bernice died, Jackie redoubled her healthy habits and the weight kept dropping. Her son did the climb last year, but she still wasn't up to the challenge. This is her year.

"I've been going down the basement steps and back up, 100 times down and 100 times back up. It's not exactly the same as going up and up and up. But it's got to be helping those muscles somewhat," she said.

A million small steps have brought Jackie to the edge of this life goal.

"I'm not going to make a fool of myself," she laughed. "I'm going to make it."

Call Jim Stingl at (414) 224-2017 or email at jstingl@journalsentinel.com