"Find what you love to do and do it as little as possible."

That's Jan Tiura's mantra about work, for other people as well as her self. Ms. Tiura practices what she preaches. While she's been lead captain of the ex-presidential yacht, Potomac, for more than three years, Tiura has managed the construction of a jewel of a small house, captained a sand dredge with a two-thousand-ton payload, pushed around more than a few hulking ships, and was commissioned to build a tree house (for an adult).

Over the three decades since she resigned from high school, she's been a professional mountaineer, blue-water sailor, commercial photographer, camera-assistant for a documentary film, trek leader and tugboat captain. Tiura considers the conscious choice to leave school and accept the responsibility for her own life and happiness as the most important decision she ever made.

"Since then, things have just fallen into place. I do what grabs me." Her second mantra must be something like, "Why do it if it isn't interesting?"

Last winter, Tiura and Joe Brennan, celebrated their thirtieth anniversary and their daughter, Joan's, eigtheenth birthday. When Tiura told her daughter to have fun and do interesting work, Joan replied, "I know. Do what you love and the money will follow. But why does it have to follow so far behind?"

Jan Tiura is a shero because she follows her joy wherever it may lead her.