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Sharon Myers sat in her wheelchair resting next to steep steps in Cusco, Peru. It was October 1999 and she was savoring the crisp high Andean Mountain air and the sound of people chatting in Quechua. She sat near a traditional market where women dressed in pink petticoats sold bright woven fabrics, multicolored corn and bluish plums.

She felt triumphant sitting in Cusco.

After having been paralyzed by polio at the age of 3, Myers was left with a question mark-shaped spine pierced by a metal rod.

"People thought that I'd never leave the mountains of Pulaski, much less travel the world," she said. Myers had overcome countless obstacles to become a world-class Paralympian athlete and pursue her passion for travel, which has taken her to five continents.

All of a sudden, she noticed a cherubic-looking shoeshine boy named Paco. He appeared out of nowhere and began cleaning her wheelchair.

"I was stunned! Angels whispered to my spirit," she wrote about that moment. She remembered something her childhood Sunday school teacher, Preacher Akers, used to say, "Be kind to everyone you meet. You never know when you might be in the midst of an angel."

Remembering the experience, she said, "Ooh, I get cold chills. I knew there was going to be something really big from this encounter."

Myers, who lives in Troutville, is in the midst of promoting "Paco's Gift," a book she wrote about the meeting. Artist Dell Siler of Southwest Roanoke County provided watercolor paintings to illustrate the book.

Myers is also preparing a compact disc of the book, which is written simultaneously in English and Spanish, and a DVD.

The book tells the story of how a single powerful meeting can change one's life and inspire others.

The book is also a tribute to Peru, its people and the deep friendships Myers has made there. She first went to the country to participate in the 1973 Pan-American Wheelchair Games.

Since then, she had dreamed of returning to help the disabled, many of whom have also been affected by polio and struggle with cobblestone streets, inaccessible bathrooms and poverty. Many also lack wheelchairs. In her travels to Peru, Myers has donated 30 wheelchairs.

"It just gives them hope. When I visited them, they just had no hope. And all for a simple wheelchair," she said as her voice choked up and tears filled her bright blue eyes. "It gives them a reason to get up in the morning."

Myers has been to Peru five times.

In April 1998, she returned with Juan "Pepe" Lopez, a tour operator who invited her to visit Peru's greatest sites and determine how to make them more accessible for the disabled.

On her 51st birthday, she climbed to Machu Picchu, a stunning archaeological site known as the "Lost City of the Incas" because of its remote mountainous location. She also has white-water rafted down the Urubamba River.

When she returned in October 1999, Myers visited Puerto Maldanaldo in the jungle, where she said a paralyzed person had never been before. To do so, she put herself in a LifeSlider stretcher and kept her hands away from fire ants and vipers. "Many times, I placed my life in their hands," she wrote about her companions.

During that trip, she conducted her first basketball clinic and organized Cusco Coraje -- Cusco Courage -- a wheelchair basketball team that began with five players. She also met Paco.

Myers says that before she met Paco, she thought her life's story had been written. Three years beforehand, she had begun writing her autobiography after officially retiring from sports.

Two moments stood out.

The first was when she was 17 years old. She was in a body cast for 13 months, the first of two such experiences. She overheard a doctor say that in 20 years she would be in unbearable pain.

"It was like a near-death experience where you realize the value of your life," she said.

The second was when she was 21 years old. As the captain of the U.S. Women's Paralympic Basketball Team, she traveled to Tel Aviv, Israel, for her first Paralympic Games.

Just two years earlier, she had been a high school senior and was not allowed to participate in physical education.

"There were thousands of people standing and cheering, and my life changed," she said.

In total, Myers has competed in four Paralympic Games, four Pan-American Games and two Stoke Mandeville Wheelchair Games. She has participated in basketball, bowling, swimming, track and field, and table tennis.

Despite all of her success, Myers wrote that in Paco she found "a wounded spirit akin to my own."

Before Christmas 2002, Myers wrote, "I felt myself slipping into the depths of holiday depression." She felt lonely and overwhelmed by holiday shopping. Thoughts of Paco and Peru's neediest weighed on her mind. She wondered, "How could I give more meaningful gifts that mattered?"

During a night of fitful sleep, Myers dreamed of starting a place called House of Cusco Coraje where disabled Peruvians and street children could live, work and enjoy sports. That vision then inspired her to write "Paco's Gift."

The next morning, she called Lopez to share her vision and create a plan to distribute presents in Peru that Christmas. During the conversation, he told her that Cusco Coraje team had grown from five people to 200.

Talking about "Paco's Gift" and the house project, she said, "From Day One, it has been blessed."

Myers received a letter from Pope John Paul II supporting her project just two days before he died on April 2, 2005.

The Peruvian government has donated land for the house Myers hopes to build.

During a recent book reading, Myers said, "Writing a book like this is sort of like giving birth to a baby." You nourish it, hope it does something meaningful and pray that it is well-received, she explained.

"I hope his spirit will speak to the readers like he spoke to me."