When he was only a couple of years old, his parents divorced and he moved with his mother to Durham, North Carolina, to be closer to his relatives.

After graduating, he attended Santa Barbara City College for two years, where he worked as a stripper on the side,[2] until he moved to the Los Angeles area.

[3] Lusth was originally recruited to play Survivor after his friend met a casting agent for the show, and they wanted a "non-stereotypical Latino.

"[2] On Survivor: Cook Islands, Lusth was originally a member of the Aitutaki (Aitu) tribe, which represented Latinos.

In Episode Two, he suggested the tribe throw the immunity challenge so they could vote out the weak link, Billy Garcia.

Yet he was not part of the dominating alliance of Yul Kwon, Candice Woodcock, Becky Lee, and Jonathan Penner, and Lusth lost his original tribemate, Mansilla.

Lusth, along with the rest of the tribe except Jessica "Flicka" Smith, denounced "Plan Voodoo" and voted out Cao Boi Bui.

Lusth played a large part in the next three straight wins and the Rarotonga (Raro) tribe saw their numbers dwindle.

The mutiny sealed Lusth in his alliance with Oakley, Kwon, and Lee, and the Aitu Four dominated subsequent challenges.

Lusth gained the votes of Raro members Shallow, Gonzalez, Jenny Guzon-Bae and Rebecca Borman.

The two went on to join forces with James Clement, Kimmel's ally from China, and Parvati Shallow, Lusth's fellow contestant on Cook Islands.

The tribe began to lose in immunity challenges and subsequently voted off the Fans: Joel Anderson, Chet Welch, and Tracy Hughes-Wolf; during this time, Penner, now a member of Airai, was evacuated and Kathy Sleckman quit.

Having aligned herself with Fans Natalie Bolton and Alexis Jones while on Airai, she found herself in trouble when Fields approached her with a plan to blindside Lusth.

He also confessed his love for Kimmel, for whom he cast his vote to win, saying she deserved the money a million times more than Shallow.

He and Kimmel were still together as of the reunion show, but he revealed in an interview that they had separated before he returned for Season 23, Survivor: South Pacific.

He was randomly assigned to the Savaii tribe, where he quickly formed a core alliance with Keith Tollefson and Jim Rice, with Whitney Duncan and Elyse Umemoto being the extra members.

[5] The plan worked, but at the first post-merge Tribal Council Cochran betrayed his own tribe and joined with Upolu in voting out Tollefson, followed by Lusth and his other former tribemates, one by one.

Back on Redemption Island, Lusth defeated Tollefson, Rice, Dawn Meehan, Duncan, Cochran, Edna Ma, and Brandon Hantz to stay in the game.

However, in the next challenge Lusth was defeated by Sophie Clarke at a puzzle game and became the last person voted off to become the final member of the jury.

Lusth was also the last member of the original Savaii tribe and set a Survivor record in being voted out three times in one season.

On Day 16, Lusth attended his first Tribal Council, where he joined the majority in voting out two-time winner Sandra Diaz-Twine.