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When she turned 40, Heidi Lagares-Greenblatt of Jefferson Hills created a bucket list that included a dream she had long deferred: competing on the CBS reality hit “Survivor.”

“I’m obsessed with the show, but, at the same time, I was very afraid to try for the show and maybe not get recruited, and then that may make me feel bitter about it, so I never wanted to get into that position,” Lagares-Greenblatt said earlier this month.

But, when she turned 40, she resolved to give it “a shot and not get angry about it, just be proud that I tried to go for it.”

Lagares-Greenblatt, now 43, gets her chance to outwit, outplay and outlast rivals on the 44th season of “Survivor” that kicks off Wednesday with a two-hour premiere (8-10 p.m.) on KDKA-TV.

Due to the pandemic and suspension of “Survivor” production, Lagares- Greenblatt didn’t apply to be on the show until it returned with new episodes in fall 2021. It was her first and only time applying.

“When it goes into commercial, and you get to see or hear Jeff Probst saying, ‘It may be you. Apply!’ I seriously said, ‘He’s talking to my soul, so I’m just gonna do it,’ ” she recalled.

When Lagares-Greenblatt heard back a few months later that “Survivor” casting producers were interested in possibly having her on the show, she thought the email was spam. After confirming the contact was legit and going through months of multiple rounds of interviews, she was on a plane to Fiji, where “Survivor” filmed seasons 43 and 44 back-to-back in summer 2022.

At the time she had to leave for Fiji, Lagares- Greenblatt worked as an engineering manager for U.S. Steel (she now works for HP Inc.). She was able to take a leave of absence without having “to give them a whole lot of details.”

A native of Puerto Rico, Lagares-Greenblatt moved to Pittsburgh from New York about a decade ago to be closer to her husband’s family. She and Michael Greenblatt have two children, ages 8 and 13. They all knew about her “Survivor” adventure.

“The whole bucket list is very much a family bucket list,” she said, explaining that she watches “Survivor” with her oldest daughter. “She was very encouraging. Every year, she will be like, ‘You need to try, mom.’ So she was my partner in crime throughout the whole process. When I got that first email, I couldn’t help but share it with my kids and my husband. I work at home remotely and I’m pretty loud, so they can hear everything I am saying throughout the process.”

Beyond her immediate family, Lagares-Greenblatt kept her in-the-know circle small.

“When I was gone for the show, I kept telling my husband, ‘You should come up with something fun to tell them, like, I’m going in rehab,’ ” she said. “He didn’t really stick with it. So he essentially would say, ‘Oh, she’s on one of those adventure trips that she does.’ ”

As a “Survivor” fan, Lagares-Greenblatt went into the competition with a specific strategy.

“My goal was not to be super-vocal and loud and bubbly the way I typically am on a daily basis, because I knew that I could potentially be on the older side,” she said. “I knew that I had to be a little bit more under the radar from the get-go in order for me to be successful, because typically if you’re a female and you’re on the older side and you’re a mom, you get targeted right away purely because of those facts without them knowing who you truly are or your abilities.”

Lagares-Greenblatt wanted to form a strategic alliance with “someone that was completely different than me. So, if I’m a female, I wanted to pair with a male. If I’m on the older side, maybe someone younger.”

Among legacy “Survivor” contestants, Lagares-Greenblatt admires Sandra Diaz-Twine.

“She’s also originally from Puerto Rico and she’s the only female to win twice,” Lagares-Greenblatt noted. “I always said, ‘If I’m half as good as she is, at least I will win once.’ ”

But Lagares-Greenblatt’s strategy differed in one significant way from Diaz-­Twine’s approach.

“She’s well known for sitting on the side. Whenever the tribes are not balanced, she would not necessarily compete in the challenges,” Lagares-Greenblatt said. “I did not want to do that at all because, at heart, I am all about competition and physical abilities. And the challenges to me just looked so fun, so I just wanted to do them.”

Lagares-Greenblatt said her time spent in Puerto Rico and later in Pittsburgh also helped her prepare for Fiji’s climate.

“Even though I’m from Puerto Rico and I was born and raised in the hot tropical island, which gives me that resistance for the hot tropical islands of Fiji, I’m also used to the cold winters,” she said. “We sleep outdoors (on ‘Survivor’) so it could get pretty chilly, but, in my mind, I always kept thinking, hey, you know what? Living in Pittsburgh will help me for the weather, too, because Pittsburgh weather can be quite erratic sometimes.”

For the season premiere of “Survivor,” Lagares-Greenblatt plans to invite friends and family over to watch the show.

“I’m gonna have some puzzles for people to do. I’m gonna have bugs for people to eat because people think we ate bugs all the time, which is not necessarily true, but I will have those just to have fun with friends and family,” she said. “I’ll prep the house to be the most ‘Survivor’-like place that I could do. I’ll have coconuts, and I’ll have a lot of things that maybe we had on the island.”

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