While Strobel was still at Drury, she and her grandfather auditioned for a new television show called The Amazing Race, which debuted in 2001. One year later, Strobel received a call from TV producer Mark Burnett, asking her to join the cast of another reality series, Survivor. Ultimately, she accepted a spot on , the sixth season of Survivor. At the start of Survivor: The Amazon, Strobel was placed on Jaburu, an all-female tribe. Early on, she formed an alliance with tribemates Jenna Morasca and Shawna Mitchell. On Day 21, during an immunity challenge that tested the castaways' endurance, she and Morasca offered to strip if host Jeff Probst would offer them peanut butter and chocolate. Moments later, Probst offered everyone still in the challenge Oreo cookies and peanut butter as an incentive to drop out of the challenge; Strobel and Morasca immediately dropped out, took off their clothes, and accepted the food offering. On Day 33, Strobel was on the chopping block, but Morasca, who had immunity, gave the immunity necklace to Strobel, keeping her safe from the vote; Christy Smith was voted out instead. On Day 36, after Matthew von Ertfelda on immunity, Morasca was on the verge of quitting, after a fire burned down the entire camp a few days earlier. As a result, Strobel was willing to let her ally Morasca get voted out, as it would help Strobel's own chances of winning, but the men chose to eliminate Strobel instead, making her the fifth member of the jury. Strobel finished the game in fifth place and, at Final Tribal Council, voted for Morasca to win, which she did by a 6–1 vote. After the season wrapped, Strobel was temporarily paralyzed due to a spider bite she had gotten during her time on Survivor, and she suffered from kidney failure due to parasites contracted during the series' production. To help pay off the medical bills, she accepted an invitation to pose for Playboy, alongside Morasca. The two of them appeared in the August 2003 issue.
Personal life
In 2004, Strobel was invited to throw out the ceremonial first pitch at a home baseball game for the Clearwater Threshers, the Philadelphia Phillies' Class A-Advanced affiliate in Clearwater, Florida. There, she met one of the Threshers' pitchers, a young prospect named Cole Hamels. When he asked her out on a date, she said yes, on the condition that she meet him in her hometown of Springfield, Missouri. He eventually traveled to Springfield to meet up with her, and the two began dating. Strobel and Hamels married on December 31, 2006, in Springfield. They went on to have four children: son Caleb, son Braxton, daughter Reeve, and daughter Mackenzie. In 2009, Cole and Heidi Hamels started the Hamels Foundation, a charity dedicated to improving education in the Philadelphia area as well as the nations of Malawi, Thailand, and Turkmenistan. During one of their visits to Africa, they met young Reeve, then an orphan living in Ethiopia, and decided to adopt her. In 2012, the couple built a home on the shore of Table Rock Lake in Branson, Missouri. They lived there until 2017, when they decided to donate the property to Camp Barnabas, a non-profit camp for people with special needs and chronic illnesses.
