Although her two young children -- 4-year-old Bing and 8-year-old Hudson -- and her career as an architect occupy most of her time, Tami Paumier is still reminded every once in awhile of her former life as a world-class swimmer.

When she and her husband, Glen, were dining with friends on New Year's Eve, for example, Glen brought up the fact that Tami won a gold medal at the Pan American Games.

"Everybody at the table -- these are people we know -- said, 'Wow! Really? I didn't know that'," Paumier said.

Paumier now lives in Denver, has her own architectural firm and is a hockey mom, but there was a time when she was known as one of the best young breaststrokers in the world.

The image is still a memorable one. On July 5, 1979, Paumier -- then a 15-year-old Wilde Lake High School sophomore -- got off a plane from Puerto Rico after having won a Pan Am Games gold medal two days earlier. Not only did Paumier win gold, she beat legendary Tracy Caulkins -- an eventual three-time Olympic gold medalist and world record holder -- to do it.

The look on Paumier's face as a crowd of Columbia Aquatics swimmers and parents cheered for her in the Baltimore airport was not one of pride or elation, but of someone who wanted to go run and hide.

"She was shy, just embarrassed," said Patrick Smith, her coach at the time.

Smith remembers Paumier apologizing to Caulkins after the race.

"Tracy was her role model at the time," he said. "I think she felt sorry for her."

Looking back, Paumier realizes that she shouldn't have apologized.

"It must have been a bit of a relief to have somebody (beat her)," Paumier said. "For me the climb was really fun, getting there. Actually being there was really hard. I didn't really have it quite enough together to hold that. Because once you're up there, you're the target."

Paumier would have been the breaststroker that everyone was trying to beat at the 1980 Olympics in Moscow, but she never got a chance, because of the U.S. boycott that year.

"She would have made that team," Smith said. "She was ranked third in the world at the time."

Not having the chance to compete at the highest level, and to see her endless training pay off with a trip to the Olympics, still bothers Paumier.

"I think it's a shame that politics and sports get involved. (The Olympics) is a great opportunity for people to come together from all different walks of life and compete," Paumier said. "I really was disgusted about it."

Paumier took the rest of the year off from swimming.

"I worked at Rehoboth (beach) with a girlfriend from high school ... I ran a lot that summer, I stayed fit but I didn't swim at all and it was just great to just be having fun and being independent right before I went to college. I loved it."

In a way, Cy Paumier thought that the boycott gave his daughter a chance to reconsider her priorities in life.

"We thought she was relieved to not have the pressure," he said. "She was thrilled that she was no longer tied to swimming twice a day."

Paumier had a swimming scholarship lined up at the University of Michigan, and although she had success in college, she never again found the passion for the sport that she had when she was chasing Olympic glory. By the time the 1984 Los Angeles Olympics came around, she was completely out of the pool. Instead she became immersed in architecture, following in the footsteps of her father who moved to Columbia as one of the founding urban planners for The Rouse Co.

"There are all kinds of great opportunities out there in the world that I wanted to explore. It was funny moving on because when you swim at that level so much of your identity gets caught up and there's a whole process you have to go through to let go of that and move on," Paumier said. "Forever I would have these dreams about swimming, right into my 30s ... it was so funny, competing and sometimes winning."

For almost 30 years, Paumier's Pan Am gold medal sat in a box in the basement of her parents' Columbia home.

On a recent trip back to visit her ailing mother, who died Jan. 26 from cancer, Paumier finally found it.

"She came up the stairs with it around her neck. She was like a kid," said her father. "She said, 'I want to show it to my kids!' "

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