Suzie Lefever leaves behind a legacy of good health

Published 1:30 am Sunday, April 12, 2026

By Marieke Danniau

Journal contributor

Following a long, rewarding career and 32 years serving San Juan Island as a physical therapist, Suzie Lefever is retiring. “Everything has a season. Everything has its place in time,” Lefever said. “It’s just time.” Hoping to give her patients enough time to make plans elsewhere or to wrap up care, July 3 will be San Juan Island Physical Therapy’s last day open. Lefever leaves behind her a palpable legacy seen in the health of islanders better off for knowing her.

Though it may not come as a surprise to many of her former patients and those close to her, Lefever already has plenty of plans for her retirement, starting with an informal retirement celebration held on July 19 at Brickworks.

San Juan Island Physical Therapy was started by Karen Lanrose, who then sold the practice to Lefever in 1994. Lefever landed on San Juan Island mostly by happenstance, following her former husband to the island for work, and, when he left, Lefever chose to stay, because, in her words, “Why leave?”

Lefever’s sportiness is what ultimately led her down the path toward physical therapy and island life, starting with playing basketball in West Virginia University’s first women’s basketball team in 1973, to earning a degree in physical education and athletic training. Though at the time, women working in athletic training was still new, and Lefever faced athletes who didn’t want to listen to her. Frustrated with this dynamic, Lefever left to get a master’s, and then moved on to a physical therapy school. While her interest still remained with sports medicine, physical therapy allowed her to see all kinds of patients, from children to Olympic athletes.

Since arriving here, Lefever has worked tirelessly in the community, both at her clinic and outside it. For a number of years, Lefever has done balance classes at the Mullis Center, taking donations for the Center, paying her employees out of pocket and ultimately making nothing for herself. Along with balance classes, Lefever has volunteered her time to assess sports injuries from any student athlete, often for free, and her closing date was partially decided by her desire to be available through the track and field season. As San Juan Island Physical Therapy’s office manager, Cammie Sink, put it, “She lived her job.” However, Lefever never felt like she was going to work in the traditional sense. She got to untangle complicated and interesting puzzles: the biomechanics of bodies and how to make them feel better, and how to work with the individual to make sure they continued their treatment and that the treatment fit their needs. Lefever said, “Yeah, I wake up and say, ‘Who do I get to work with today?’”

Lefever’s ever-active and inquisitive mind is what her office manager credits for the pain relief from a condition that went misdiagnosed for 11 years. “Spondylolisthesis in my lower back. It’s an instability in the spine,” Sink said, and explained that she saw multiple doctors and therapists of all kinds for the pain, but working at Lefever’s practice is ultimately what got her the diagnosis she has now. “My first week at work, she came to me after work one day and said, ‘So tell me about your back,’” Sink said. “She knows how you are before you do, just by powers of observation, and she does it all the time. She never turns it off.”

Fittingly, when Lefever talked of her retirement, she described plans to continue research that she wasn’t able to do while working a full-time job, “There’s just stuff I want to do. Some of it’s still physical therapy oriented, which cracks my brother up. He’s like, you’re not even gonna see people anymore. I said, ‘I know, but I have these burning questions,’ and he just kind of chuckles.” She also has plans to travel and continue hobbies she loves, like boating, zucchini racing and simply enjoying island life. About her life, career and time with San Juan Island Physical Therapy, Lefever said, “No complaints. No regrets. I’d do it all over again.”