John Wessels commutes to his Washington, D.C., office on a bicycle. For his lunch hours, he laces up his running shoes for treks around the monuments and, if it's hot out, right through the sprinklers on the National Mall. Afterwards, he changes in the locker room and returns to his desk job in the Office of Management and Budget. At quitting time, he is on his bike once again, beating the rush-hour congestion.

It's obvious that training is his priority. So, for the George H.W. Bush Inauguration in 1989, Wessels (HS'84, HNZ'85) decides it's a good time to escape the crowds and take a ski trip to Colorado. When he returns to the nation's capital, he can't stop thinking about Colorado's open space. He yearns for more land, better trails. He's been running since he was 8 or so and was an All-American for the Tartans. Now, in his 20s, he still thinks he can be an Olympic athlete. But if he's going to qualify as a marathoner for Team USA, he has to train more. Not married, no children, and no mortgages, he quits his job and heads west.

He finds work in Boulder, but-more importantly-he regularly runs along the trails in the endless forests. He comes close to qualifying for the 1992 Olympic trials in the marathon but has to be satisfied with being sixth in the world in the duathlon- the run-and-bike event-which unfortunately for him isn't an Olympic event.

Today, Wessels has a wife, mortgage, and two children. But he still runs, often to and from work in the national parks, which has been his office since he joined the National Park Service in 2000. Recently, he became director of the Intermountain Region, which serves 42 million visitors annually and includes more than 10 million acres in parklands, spanning eight states from Montana to Texas.
-Elizabeth Shestak (HS'03)