Long before Riverlights became the community we know today, Mike Elliott and his partner, Chris, were already imagining a life here.

They first visited in 2016, before anything had been built. In fact, the couple signed a contract that would have made them the owners of the very first home in Riverlights. There was just one problem: Mike wasn’t quite ready to retire.

Thankfully, the builder agreed to release them from the contract. A year later, when retirement finally arrived, Mike and Chris returned to the community that had captured their attention from the beginning and built the home they live in today.

For Mike, move-in day remains one of his favorite Riverlights memories, the moment a long-held retirement dream became real. Today, he says it’s the simple things he appreciates: the restaurants, the sunrises and sunsets, and perhaps most importantly, the people who have turned a neighborhood into a community.

“Riverlights has become a very special place in my life,” Mike says. “It is more than where I live—it is a community where I have found friendship, connection, and a sense of peace.”

That sense of connection seems fitting for someone whose life has taken him through many different places, roles and chapters before bringing him here.

Mike graduated from Shaw University in Raleigh with a Bachelor of Science in Business Administration before earning a Master of Public Administration from Golden Gate University in San Francisco. His professional life would ultimately become one centered largely around service.

He first served two years in the United States Air Force as an airman and medical records technician in the Medical Service Corps. He later transferred to the Army, receiving a direct commission into the Army Medical Service Corps as a patient administration officer. In that role, he deployed to the Persian Gulf in support of Desert Shield and Desert Storm.

After leaving the Army, Mike continued serving through the federal government for another 22 years, first as a health benefits adviser for the Department of Defense TRICARE program and later as a public affairs specialist for the Office of the Army Surgeon General.

Retirement, however, hasn’t meant standing still.

Around Riverlights, Mike is an active member of F3 Cape Fear, which holds more than 34 free, peer-led workouts across 21 locations each week throughout the greater Wilmington area. Mike participates in two groups that meet right here in Riverlights: the Lightkeepers, which meet Tuesdays from 7:00–7:45 a.m., and the Lightseekers, a walk and ruck group that meets Fridays from 7:00–7:45 a.m. Both gather in the parking lot of the Riverlights Lake House.

He also supports several North Carolina charities, including Vigilant Hope, Habitat for Humanity and public broadcasting.

And some of his contributions to neighborhood life are a little less formal.

During his first Halloween in Riverlights, Mike set out adult beverages for parents walking the neighborhood with their trick-or-treaters. What began as a one-time gesture has since become a tradition, one Mike says both he and his neighbors look forward to each year.

At home, Mike and Chris also share life with two chocolate Miniature Schnauzers, each with a name that carries a story. Ten-year-old Buster Brown was named for the shoe brand Mike wore as a child. Cholly Brown takes his name from Charles “Cholly” Atkins, the famed dancer and choreographer who worked with Motown performers including the Supremes and the Temptations.

There is another story Mike has been carrying much longer.

His first memoir, Golden Boy, began as an attempt to tell the story of his life. Somewhere in the process, however, writing became something more.

“What I didn’t expect was that writing it would help me understand my life,” he says.

For years, Mike says, he believed much of what he experienced growing up was simply normal. Only later did he begin looking back at his childhood differently, recognizing how trauma, family, loss, love, brotherhood, military service, relationships and his own choices had shaped the person he became.

The memoir’s title reaches all the way back to that childhood.

Golden Boy was what Mike was called as a child, the boy who, from the outside, appeared to have everything together. Beneath that exterior, though, was a child experiencing things he didn’t yet have the words to explain.

Writing the book became, in part, the process of finally finding those words.

One realization in particular came to define the experience for him: “My life has always been moving between resurrection and revelation.”

The resurrection, he explains, was surviving, getting back up and continuing forward. The revelation came later, through writing, when he allowed himself to look back and understand what those experiences meant.

It is a deeply personal story, but Mike hopes readers won’t see Golden Boy as his story alone. He hopes those who have survived something quietly, searched for peace or questioned whether it was too late to become the person they were meant to be might recognize something of themselves within its pages.

His message is ultimately one of possibility: the past may shape a life, but it does not have to determine how that life’s story ends.

“As a child, I lost my voice,” Mike says. “Golden Boy is the journey to find it again.”

On Sunday, November 1, from 4–6 p.m., Mike will celebrate Golden Boy with a book signing at The Getaway Cafe in Riverlights, but he’s chosen to make the afternoon about more than selling books.

Instead, Mike will give a complimentary copy of Golden Boy to the first 30 attendees who request one. In lieu of payment, guests will be invited to make a voluntary donation to the Carousel Child Advocacy Center, a Wilmington organization that supports healing, promotes justice and fosters resilience for children who have experienced physical or sexual abuse while strengthening the community through education, prevention and advocacy.

Once the complimentary copies are gone, attendees who would still like the memoir will be able to use links provided at the event to order Kindle, paperback or hardcover editions through Amazon.

There is something especially meaningful about connecting Golden Boy, a memoir rooted in finding the words for childhood experiences once carried in silence, with an organization dedicated to helping children heal and find support.

And perhaps that is an appropriate next chapter for a story Mike originally began simply because he wanted to tell his own.

He hopes his Riverlights neighbors take something else from the fact that he wrote his first memoir at this stage of life: there is no expiration date on beginning again.

“There are dreams we sometimes put away because we think their time has passed,” he says. “I have learned that it is never too late to begin something new, tell your story, pursue a dream, or discover something about yourself that you didn’t understand before.”

After a life that has included military service, a long federal career, retirement, a new home and now becoming an author, Mike is grateful this particular chapter is unfolding in Riverlights.

“I am grateful that this chapter of my life is being written here in Riverlights, surrounded by a community that I am proud to call home.”

And if Golden Boy encourages even one of his neighbors to think about the story of their own life, and perhaps finally do something they have always wanted to do, Mike says sharing his story will have meant even more.