A 75-year-old Army veteran and lifelong outdoorsman, Michael Sharkey spent years hiking, fishing, and skiing. More recently, he has taken up trap shooting, and he recently earned a silver medal at the Huntsman World Senior Games, hitting 80 out of 100 clay targets. Michael is also an avid gravel and road cyclist, traveling across the country and even Europe to compete. He finds cycling to be more than a sport; it is also therapeutic for his back.

Through reinvention, marriage, and curiosity, Michael has embraced a life full of adventure, from skiing three times a week to learning trap shooting from world-class instructors. Retired after years as ski patrol, a carpenter, and a watchmaker, he continues to challenge himself, stay active, and share his love of adventure with his wife.

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Rocky Jackson has always enjoyed staying active. He was an employment labor attorney for 43 years, and at age 19, he was drafted by the Cleveland Indians in 1969 out of Yakima Valley Community College, which he jokes makes him the oldest living holdout of the team now called the Cleveland Guardians. He spent his college years playing against future MLB greats, collecting enough road-trip stories to fill a book.

Since age 35, Rocky has played tennis on and off, and now in retirement, he is on the courts several times a week, even playing singles for the sheer joy of long rallies and movement. Rocky is an avid golfer who has played around the world with his wife, braving everything from beach courses to 105-degree summers. He strongly believes in cross-training workouts and is adding lap swimming into the mix. After double hip replacements in 2020, Rocky came back stronger, and at 75, he’s still playing singles tennis and living by the beliefs that “The universe always says yes” and “You have to use it or lose it.”

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Vera Koo is a first-generation Chinese American woman whose life reads like an adventure in courage and reinvention. She is a 79-year-old wife, mother of three and grandmother of six, author, entrepreneur, and retired professional athlete who broke barriers in action pistol shooting. Through her adulthood, she has enjoyed a variety of outdoor activities, including snow and water skiing, equestrian, windsurfing, and rucking and camping. Action pistol shooting is where she really excelled: Vera has been the national and world titleholder in the sport and won the Bianchi Cup women’s championship eight times. She now competes in shotgun sports, specifically in sporting clay shooting, at the Huntsman World Senior Games.

Vera’s memoirs, “The Most Unlikely Champion” and “Wisdom and Things: Essays from an Unlikely Champion,” share her remarkable journey from China and Hong Kong to the U.S., her family’s entrepreneurial success, and the resilience that carried her through loss, faith, and unexpected triumph. Vera continues to mentor others with the hope that we all discover the “unlikely champion” within ourselves.

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