‘Just a grocery guy’: How panic and loss turned Tom Hornacek into a relentless evangelist

Michigan men’s ministry leader traces panic attacks at Mass, the night he lost his wife. and a specific nudge that keeps sending him back into the fight

A longtime grocery man from northern Michigan has spent the last 20 years learning that heaven is real, suffering can remake a life, and God is a far better planner than he is.

After panic attacks at Mass, a dramatic deliverance, his wife’s sudden death, and a second marriage that felt more like a quiet prophecy than an accident, Tom Hornacek has become the kind of man who walks into prisons, parishes, and pledge drives convinced that God will show up if he just says yes.

Today he’s the guy leading men’s groups, stocking conference bags with Heroic Men cards, asking servers for their prayer intentions, and teaching men that if they don’t have a prayer life, nothing changes. Under it all is one simple conviction: don’t wait for God to wipe your slate clean—love your wife, fight for your kids, and be the spark that ignites the blaze right now.

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‘If we don’t change men, we don’t change the culture’

When Tom Hornacek talks about men’s ministry, he gets practical fast.

“I’ve been involved in men’s ministry for a number of years,” he said. “I know when I first got involved it changed my life, and I know that if we don’t change men, we don’t change the culture, and we don’t change society.”

Hornacek lives in East Tawas, Michigan, in the northern lower peninsula, in the Diocese of Gaylord. He does community outreach for Ave Maria Radio and has been helping at men’s conferences for years.

“If there’s a men’s conference going on in any of the dioceses we’re in, I’m there,” he said.

At his home parish, he runs a men’s group and has helped organize conferences. His parish has its first-ever evangelization team, and he is trying, as he puts it, “to create some change there.”

“I just know that if we don’t have any impact on men, we don’t change society,” he said. “Because most men don’t realize they wake up in battle every day — the world, the flesh and the devil. And until they do and start to develop a prayer life, nothing changes. It didn’t in my life.”

That line — “it didn’t in my life” — is where his story turns.

Sacramentalized but not catechized

More than 20 years ago, Hornacek was married to his high school sweetheart, Karen. They had been married 27 years. They had two daughters. He was in the family grocery business with his brother and had, as he remembers it, “life was good.”

“My oldest daughter, Mindy, was born deaf, so that kind of put a kink in our perfect plan,” he said. “But we got very involved in her education so she could lip read and speak and sign. And I was in the grocery business with my brother — family business. Had been in it since I was five years old. Life was good.”

He had entered the Catholic Church when he married Karen.

“I came into the Catholic Church when my wife and I got married,” he said. “I’d been going to Mass with her and I was Methodist. My parents didn’t care if I became Catholic. They just wanted me going to church. So I came into the Church the night before we got married and I was sacramentalized, but I wasn’t catechized.”

For decades, he assumed that was enough.

“I thought I was a good Catholic,” he said. “From the time I first came into the Church I hadn’t been to confession in 27 years, because, you know, me and Jesus were buds. It was never talked about at Mass. I can just tell him I’m sorry and I’ll do better next time.”

He didn’t have a real prayer life.

“I didn’t pray much unless I needed something,” he said. “Certainly didn’t pray the rosary — that’s just for older ladies — or the chaplet. I didn’t know the Ten Commandments. And when I thought I was a good Catholic, from a lot of the standards from the men that I knew in my parish, I was just like them.”

There were other compromises.

“Let’s just mix in a little pornography. There’s nothing wrong with that. It just gets the motor running,” he said, recalling the way he used to think. “Now, I thought I was a good Catholic.”

Looking back, he sees himself in the Book of Revelation.

“In reality, I was Revelation chapter 3 verse 15,” he said. “‘You are neither cold nor hot. How I wish you were cold or hot. But because you are lukewarm, I will vomit you out of my mouth.’ I was on the highway to hell, drinking the cocktail of life that I mixed.”

The panic in the pew

The turning point began in a pew at St. Anne’s Church in Linwood, Michigan.

His brother had hosted a barbecue for store managers. “Of course we had a lot of beer and it was a great time,” Hornacek said.

The next morning, the family went to the 8 a.m. Mass offered for his father-in-law, who had died of cancer the year before.

“We get up early to get to Mass for eight o’clock, walk into the church,” he said. “And I do not feel good. I am hungover and did not feel good. Self-inflicted. We get in, I get on the kneeler, and then it began.”

“My heart started to race. I got really hot. My heart’s just pounding. And then in my head I started hearing, ‘Tom, why do you feel like that? You don’t need to feel like that. Just get up and walk out. Just get up and walk out. Why do you feel like that?’”

He heard it over and over again.

“For the first time in my life, I started praying,” he said. “You know why? Because if I get up and walk out, the whole family says, ‘What happened to Tom?’ ‘Oh, he had too much to drink last night.’ The only thing that kept me in that pew was my pride. But I prayed and I prayed. And a couple of times I felt like I was going to black out, and I got through it.”

Embarrassed, he decided not to tell his wife. “I’ll never do that again. That was so stupid,” he remembers thinking.

The following weekend, he went back to Mass. This time, he hadn’t had anything to drink.

“Got in the kneeler and it started again,” he said. “Heart started racing, felt really hot, and the voices in my head.”

Now he told himself it was a panic attack.

“At this point, that’s when the whole panic attack thing was coming out,” he said. “And so I’m like, I got this. It’s a panic attack. I’m a man. I got this. I can get through this.”

But it kept happening.

“Week after week after week, I’m not kidding you,” he said.

About four weeks in, he was in the front of the church, in a suit and tie, serving as confirmation sponsor for his nephew.

“This time he threw it all at me,” Hornacek said. “My heart was racing. I felt like I was 110 degrees and I was going to black out. And in my head, I didn’t voice it, but in my head I simply said, ‘Lord Jesus Christ, you free me from this affliction and I will serve you forever.’”

What happened next marked him for life.

“I got hit with a cold blast of Arctic air from the top of my head to my feet,” he said. “I was literally chilled and it was gone. And he revealed to me who had been speaking to me — the enemy — and I was free for the first time in my life.”

He told his wife what had been happening. Soon he was volunteering.

“They needed Eucharistic ministers. I volunteered,” he said. “They needed lectors. I became a lector. Then they needed someone on the RCIA team.”

When a sister at the parish asked him to help with RCIA, he protested that he didn’t know anything.

“She said, ‘Don’t worry, we need a man on the team, we’ll teach you,’” he recalled.

He began going to RCIA every week, all year long.

“It wasn’t just the fall through the spring,” he said. “It was all year, and I’m learning.”

Around the same time, something else changed on his car radio.

“In the midst of all this, I tuned in my favorite sports talk radio station in Saginaw, 1440 AM, you know, just to catch up on the Detroit Tigers stuff,” he said. “And all of a sudden, it’s Ave Maria Catholic Radio. And I’m like, Catholic radio? What’s this? I didn’t even know it existed.”

He started listening.

“I couldn’t listen to anything else,” he said. “Every time I tuned in, I learned all these things I’d never heard of. Now, I’m not telling any guy I’m listening to Catholic radio. No way. But I couldn’t listen to anything else.”

“All of a sudden, all these things are opening up to me,” he said. “I had no clue about my Catholic faith.”

A cardiac arrest at the table

As he was learning, his family life moved into a new season. Both daughters were in college. Mindy, his deaf daughter, was preparing to graduate and get married.

“Which we weren’t even sure she could graduate from college, but she was, and she was getting married the next spring,” he said.

On Aug. 16, 22 years ago, they were hosting a small barbecue at home. His mom and dad were there, along with his mother-in-law. He pushed hard for his brother and sister-in-law to come, though his wife wasn’t eager to invite them.

“She really didn’t want them and I don’t know why, but I really insisted they come,” he said.

They did.

“I was out barbecuing and when I brought the food in, put it on the table, my wife came in carrying a plate and we’re all at the table together — my parents, her mom, my brother and sister-in-law — and my wife collapsed in full cardiac arrest,” he said. “She had perfect health. She had no health problems, no cholesterol, nothing.”

The brother and sister-in-law he had insisted on inviting were both trained EMTs.

“They started CPR. She came back around right away, got to the hospital,” he said.

Doctors eventually diagnosed a cardiovascular spasm.

“It’s when an artery on the heart just clenches shut,” he said. “She had no cholesterol, no blockages in any arteries. Cardiovascular spasm can happen anywhere in the body, but it just clenches up. They still don’t know why it happens.”

Doctors put in a stent. She nearly died on the table.

“They said, we almost lost her when we were doing the catheterization,” he recalled.

She spent a week in the hospital. He never left her side.

“I had them bring my work up there. I wasn’t leaving her side,” he said.

When she came home, things looked hopeful.

“Cardiologists even said the damage that was done to her heart should heal and she’d be okay,” he said.

But about three and a half weeks later, she was still struggling to sleep. She had fractured her tailbone when she fell.

“So I said, hey, why don’t you call the doctor and see if you can go to the chiropractor,” he said. “Maybe you’re just out of alignment.”

He was out of town at a business meeting when he called home and heard his father’s voice on the line.

“I thought I just got the wrong number,” he said. “I said, ‘Dad, I’m sorry.’ He said, ‘No, Tom, there’s something wrong with Karen. The ambulance is picking her up.’”

Later he learned how his parents knew to go to the house.

“My mom was prompted repeatedly to call Karen — ‘call Karen, call Karen,’” he said. “She called her and she was talking to her and she stopped talking. And so they went out to the house and she was sitting in the chair and simply passed out and they couldn’t wake her up.”

Karen had the beginning of a brain aneurysm.

At the hospital, a Christian physician showed him the scan. She had a massive leak. Emergency surgery was the only option, and the odds were low.

“While she was in surgery, we’re all praying in the waiting room,” he said. “At one point, my mom and my daughter Sarah and myself came together, the three of us, and all three of us said, ‘Wow, something good just happened.’ We all felt it. Us three felt it. Something good. We were very encouraged.”

But after the crucial hours passed, the news was devastating.

“There was no brain activity. The machines were keeping her alive,” he said.

He and his daughters spoke to Gift of Life about organ and tissue donation. Their parish priest, who had given Karen the anointing of the sick before surgery, was there with them.

At her bedside, Hornacek began to feel a physical pain he did not understand.

“I had this pain in my heart that I couldn’t describe,” he said. “It wasn’t a heart attack and I didn’t ask for help, but it was the most excruciating thing that I’ve ever had in my life.”

Years later, during prayer on a Good Friday, he believes he understood it.

“I found out what it was 10 years later on Good Friday,” he said. “I was praying and the Lord said, ‘I pierced your heart, Tom — the sword of sorrow.’”

“That equipped me for everything that took place after that,” he said. “Her funeral, everything.”

Karen died. They donated skin, corneas and other tissue.

“My daughters knew that she would want to do that,” he said.

‘Those hearts started lighting the room up’

In the days after the funeral, a book arrived from Gift of Life. It was called The Next Place.

“It’s simply beautiful artwork and it’s really about heaven, but it couldn’t say heaven because it couldn’t be religious,” he said.

He and his daughters would stay up late looking at the pictures and reminiscing. One night, after they went to bed, he stayed up with the book.

“It was about 1:30 in the morning and I grabbed that book,” he said. “I got in bed and I start to look at the book and I got about a third of the way in. And I look at this page and it’s got little red hearts running through the blue clouds and it said, ‘Though I will know the joy of solitude, I will never be alone.’”

“The minute I read the last word, those little hearts started lighting the room up, like a heart beating with light,” he said. “A light, an eternal light I could not describe.”

His first instinct was to question his own sanity.

“At this point, you’re not really experiencing this, Tom,” he told himself. “You haven’t slept, you haven’t eaten, you’re not in your right mind.”

He shut the book and went to get his younger daughter, Sarah.

“She says, ‘What’s going on?’ I said, ‘Come here a minute,’” he recalled. “We went in, I got in bed, I handed her the book. I said, ‘Tell me what you see.’ She opened it up, we both saw it. Then my oldest daughter, Mindy — we went and got her. She came in. We all three saw it.”

They walked through the house turning off lights.

“We went around the house, we turned every light off — it lit the whole house up,” he said.

He remembers asking his daughters a question.

“I told my daughters, ‘Why did God do this for us? People lose people all the time and they don’t even get a sign. Why did he do this for us?’” he said.

The next morning he called the Gift of Life staffer they had worked with.

“She said, ‘Tom, I’ve never heard a story like yours, but I hear a lot of death stories and I absolutely believe everything you saw,’” he said.

Thinking it might be some kind of trick printing, he called the book’s illustrator.

“They said, no, there’s nothing in there,” he said.

About a month later, on a hard day, he took the book out again.

“It was still light out and I went out in our family room and I opened it up and it happened again,” he said.

“I never opened the book again,” he added. “I just never opened it again. Why God allowed me that grace? I don’t know.”

Out of that loss and those consolations, he drew a warning for other husbands and fathers.

“Don’t wait until the Lord cleans the slate,” he said. “When you wake up and roll over and there’s nobody there, it’s just you and Jesus. Don’t wait for that point. Love the person you’re with — your wife, your family — and serve them. Don’t wait.”

“I think the Lord knew what it was gonna take for me to become who he wanted me to be,” he said.

A mother’s prayer and a second marriage

After Karen’s death, Hornacek kept asking God what to do next.

“At that point I’m like, what do you want, Lord? Do you want me to be a priest? What do you want? I really didn’t know,” he said.

At the same time, he found himself drawn into another local struggle.

“Our high school was right behind our grocery store in Pinconning, Michigan,” he said. “They had failed 14 bond proposals. They had all kinds of fire code problems. They needed money for a complete renovation. Couldn’t pass a bond.”

He started going to meetings.

“At the meeting, there was a lady there and she was a secretary at the elementary that I did Junior Achievement in,” he said. “She was the high school volleyball coach. I had a daughter in school. Anyway, she started, she was going to those meetings too.”

Her name was Marion. Her story was marked by grief and betrayal.

“Her husband owned a big business in town. They had two children,” he said. “Their two-year-old son was diagnosed with cancer, and a few months later, he passed. And during that whole time, her husband had been having an affair. And after he passed and they buried him, he cleaned out their accounts and left.”

“She hadn’t dated anybody for six years,” he said.

After one meeting, the two talked for more than an hour.

“She stood outside my car window and we talked for like over an hour,” he said. “She’s telling me all about her son Jared, and I’m telling her all about my wife Karen, and they grew up in the farming community, so they knew each other.”

“That night, I was like, what are you doing, Lord?” he said.

He went to his parish priest to sort out the turmoil.

“I said, ‘Father Tom, I feel bad, but I feel good. I don’t know how to deal with this. I think I’m falling in love with somebody. And it’s only been a few months since she passed,’” he recalled.

“The priest said, ‘Well, Tom, your marriage must have been so good that you just want to love and care for somebody in the covenant of marriage again,’” Hornacek said.

Not long after, he drove his parents’ van down to their place in Florida, planning to fly back after helping them settle in. One night, after his father went to bed, he brought it up to his mother.

“I knew I could always talk to my mom,” he said. “I said, ‘Mom, I got something to talk to you about.’ She said, ‘What?’ I said, ‘I don’t know how to say this.’ ‘Just tell me, you can talk to me about anything.’ I said, ‘Mom, I think I’m in love with Marion LeFave.’”

“My mom goes, ‘Oh my gosh. You gotta be kidding me. You don’t know the weight you just lifted,’” he said.

Marion lived just four houses down from his parents in Florida.

“I said, ‘Mom, what do you mean?’” he recalled. “She said, ‘Tom, all the way home from Karen’s funeral, I had my eyes closed and I was praying, “Lord, what’s Tom going to do now? What’s Tom going to do now? What’s Tom going to do now?” And she said, Tom, when we turned the corner, I looked up at Marion LeFave’s house, and he very clearly said, “He will marry her.”’”

“I just said, ‘What?’” he said. “She said, ‘Yeah, I didn’t tell anybody because I couldn’t believe what I heard. And you just lifted that weight.’”

Hornacek remembers joking, “Well, I don’t think she’s got a chance then.”

He calls it “another revelation,” another sign of “such a good Father.”

“The more we trust him, the more we turn to him in sorrow and grief and in joy and just follow him,” he said.

“Marion and I ended up getting married,” he said. “We’ve been married now 20 years.”

From grocery aisles to radio studios and prison cellblocks

Out of those years of loss and rebuilding, Hornacek’s sense of mission expanded.

“From all of that, I became the president of Baraga Catholic Radio,” he said. “I served there for six years. I didn’t know what I was doing, but I hired two consultants. We were able to turn it around.”

He began volunteering at Ave Maria Radio pledge drives two or three times a year. He got involved with Renewal Ministries and started going on mission trips.

“I do mission work with Renewal Ministries,” he said. “I volunteer with Heroic Men, men’s conferences and men’s ministry in the parish. And I can’t imagine what my life would have been like if I wouldn’t have endured the things that I did but turned to Jesus.”

“After he freed me, it changed everything,” he said. “And you know, that’s available to anybody.”

He has gone on mission trips to Africa, Papua New Guinea and the Caribbean.

“I’ve been to Africa one time, I’m going again next month, and I’ve been to Papua New Guinea last year on a mission trip with Renewal Ministries,” he said.

Part of a second trip took him to the island of St. Lucia.

“We’d go into the cellblocks in the only prison on the island — Bordelais prison,” he said.

The night before they were to go into the prison for the first time, he woke with a clear sense of what was coming.

“I heard the Spirit say, ‘You’re gonna walk through that gate and John’s gonna say, you’re leading today, Tom,’” he said.

“Thank you, Jesus,” he added. “I got out my New Testament, my small one, I started marking Scripture verses.”

The next day, they walked through the prison gate.

“John turned to me and said, ‘Tom, you’re gonna lead today,’” he said.

“If I would have not been prepared, that would have been tough,” he said. “But he prepared me. We have such a good Father.”

“When you step out in faith on a mission trip — ‘I’m not equipped to go on a mission trip’ — he gives you everything you need,” he said. “Just because you said yes, and you prepare and pray for people there and love them there, you’ll see things happen you can’t imagine.”

Prayer, promptings and ‘practical evangelization’

Today, Hornacek’s daily life is full of small, deliberate practices.

“I just urge men: start a prayer life. Learn the Ten Commandments,” he said. “I know it sounds simple, but I didn’t know. And until you start a prayer life, nothing changes.”

His go-to prayer is simple.

“Hail Mary,” he said.

He leans on the Memorare as well.

“Anytime a thought comes into your mind that isn’t pure, ‘Go to hell, Satan,’” he said. “Speak it in your head. I do it all day long. He’s always trying to throw stuff up and see what’ll stick to the wall. Just a Memorare. I’ve seen so many things from a Memorare. Results.”

He mentioned a story about Mother Teresa praying the Memorare.

“Pray it eight times,” he said. “And then when you get it answered, pray another eight times or nine times to give thanks.”

He also turns often to the saints — and to those he believes are on their way.

“I am now praying for a number of saints. They’re not saints yet. They’re venerable or blessed,” he said. “And then I’m asking for their intercession.”

He has a special devotion to Venerable Frederick Baraga, the 19th-century “snowshoe priest” and first bishop of Marquette.

“You read about all of these people and they just never stopped,” he said. “They just got up and went to work every day.”

“Like Mother Teresa — her prayer life was very dry,” he added. “We’re not always going to get love and attention from God. We’re going to have dry periods. But just stay faithful. He’s going to use all of that.”

“I’m just a grocery guy,” he said. “What am I doing going to Africa or Papua New Guinea? You kidding me?”

“So if you’re listening right now, you have no idea what God has in store for you,” he added. “Just talk to him. Just start to develop a relationship with him. I talk to him all day long.”

He urges men to talk to their guardian angels too.

“If you don’t start talking to your guardian angel, you need assistance in a job, you’ll get it,” he said.

He gave one small example from his life on the bay.

“I’m putting my dock in — we live on the bay, I’m very blessed — and it’s rough and I can’t get that last bolt in, and I ask for his assistance, boom, it’s right in,” he said. “I’ve been saved from things. The more you believe, the more you will see and trust.”

He sees all of it — from a note on a restaurant table to a prayer in a prison cell — as evangelization.

“In our men’s group this morning, we’re watching the Father Larry series. The guys love it,” he said. “And I’ve got them to all put the app on their phone.”

At the restaurant where the group eats, the waitresses know what to expect.

“All the waitresses at Big Boy know when they bring our food, we’re going to say, ‘What do you need prayers for?’” he said.

“This morning, another waitress came over and said, ‘Tom, I need prayers for my sister. She thinks she might have bone cancer,’” he said.

He leaves prayer cards and small notes with a simple image of Jesus.

“I call it practical evangelization,” he said. “There’s lots of little things you can do that will affect people in a way you can’t imagine.”

He ties it to a line from Luke’s Gospel that he often uses when he speaks.

“Whenever I do a talk on my story of deliverance — and ‘Heaven is real’ is a good word — I like to end with Luke chapter 12 verse 49,” he said. “‘I’ve come to set the earth on fire. I wish it were already blazing.’ Be the spark that ignites the blaze.”

“You can do it just by praying with somebody, asking for prayers,” he said.

‘Heaven is a million times better’

Hornacek’s story keeps circling back to heaven.

“Heaven is real,” he said. “And every pinprick of heavenly light that my daughters and I experienced — your very best day on earth, the day you get married, the day your first child is born, the day the doctor says you’re cancer free — heaven is a million times better.”

“I would sell everything right now and go if I could,” he said. “I just know that. You know when you know it because you know it.”

Until that day, he sees his task as simple, if not easy.

“I’m just a sinner amongst sinners, but I’m trying to get better every day,” he said. “And that’s all we can do.”