Meet Lee Bailey

He owns 60 pair of Air Jordan basketball shoes and is a Seahawk fanatic.

He cans also bench press 350 pounds.

Not bad for a guy 56 years old.

Lee lives in SeaTac and has been a member of Highline Athletic Club for 15 years.

He works out three to four times a week to stay in shape and looks like he could hold your Volkswagen up while you changed your tire.

Born and raised in rough-and-tumble public housing in Indianapolis, he was a foster child and vowed he could overcome his circumstances and came west to do it.

He has been a youth counselor for 20 years and now works in security for Hazen High in Renton.

He admits to being in a gang when he was a teenager and got into some scrapes but made it out of that atmosphere when he came west. Two of his best high school buddies didn't. Driving west they were hopped up on marijuana and missed a curve in the Rockies and wiped out.

His eyes teared up when he recalled that.

He is a firm exponent of the Running Start program for high school students. His stepson, a student at Mt. Rainier High, was dragging his heels with little interest in school till his Mom and Dad got him into the Highline Community College program. It worked and so did he.

From Highline he advanced to Evergreen State where he got a Bachelor's degree. From there he enrolled in Columbia University and got his Master's in English literature.

Lee himself has a B.A. in education from Indiana U.

Meet the Barretts

of SeaTac

She is Barb and he is Jerry. I spotted him on his bike in front of Ivar's in Burien. He had just arrived after leaving Kent where he went to join a bike club on a nippy Saturday morning, and of 100 members he was the only one to show up.

Barb drove over to join him for lunch.

He called himself a computer nerd but this former math whiz from Texas Tech put in 33 years at Boeing till he retired at age 56.

The two met at a Parents without Partners dance and when she found he could dance and he found she had a bike that was all it took. She later admitted it was her boy's bike.

Now 69, he is in recovery mode from a new artificial knee six months ago, but he is anything but a rocking chair case.

He says his body is laden with arthritis but the knee operation by Doctor Lombardi at Highline Medical Center not only allows him to ride his commuter bike rain or shine, he also plays volleyball five days a week at the Tukwila Senior Citizens court.

Barb is a fair weather biker but they bike together on many an outing.

She even bought herself a bike of her own.