This is a link to the article that appeared in Friday's paper about my mom: http://ireader.olivesoftware.com/Olive/iReader/TCH/SharedArticle.ashx?document=TCH%5C2016%5C05%5C13&article=Ar00100

Officially, Alice Shaw was soccer star Hope Solo’s grandmother. In reality, the long-time Richland resident was ”grandma” to the entire U.S. Women’s World Cup champion team.

Shaw died Thursday morning at a Richland care center. She was 88.

A family member said Shaw had been in declining health following hip replacement surgery about six months ago. She died just hours after visiting with family members.

Solo remembered her grandmother in a Facebook post Thursday.

“Her belief in me and her faith carried me through many tough days,” Solo wrote. “She was Team USA’s biggest fan, the (Seattle) Reign’s biggest fan, and of course, my biggest fan. Her one-of-a-kind personality certainly will be missed.”

Shaw’s enthusiasm for family, sports and people in general was legendary, family members said.

If a relative had a game, she was there. It didn’t matter if it was one of Solo’s Olympic soccer matches or a great-grandson’s T-ball game.

She also was devoted to her church, Central United Protestant Church, and to her students. She was a hearing and speech pathologist for the Prosser School District, until retiring in 1988.

Judy Burnett, her daughter and Solo’s mother, said her mother was a constant cheerleader for her, her siblings and their 12 children.

“She is the No. 1 fan for sports. For the entire family,” she said Thursday.

Solo’s soccer career raised Shaw’s profile beyond the intimate circle of family and friends. She traveled the world following Solo’s storied soccer career, earning the informal title of “grandmother” of U.S. women’s soccer.

She was there in person when the team competed in the 2008 Beijing Olympics and she was there in spirit when it won the gold four years later in London. Solo gave that medal to her grandmother.

During the Beijing trip, Burnett and her mother made the long and sometimes arduous climb up the Great Wall of China. Shaw made it to the top of the long walk, aided by a cane that doubled as a resting stool.

“She could have sold a million of those up there,” Burnett recalled.

Jeff Morrow, retired sports editor for the Tri-City Herald, said Shaw made it her mission to keep her granddaughter’s name in her hometown paper, even if it meant highlighting obscure matches not reported by The Associated Press.

“If (the U.S.) team was playing a friendly match with someone somewhere in Europe and we didn’t get it in the paper, she would call me,” he said. “She would say, ‘What about Hope?’ ”

In a serendipitous turn, Solo’s soccer career helped turn Shaw into a late-life film star.

Shaw was in Vancouver, B.C., to watch the U.S. women compete for a spot in the 2012 London Olympics when she caught the attention of film director Colin Cunningham.

Cunningham was making a short film for the Bravo cable network about an aspiring soccer star who had to overcome conflict with his “scary” neighbor.

He later told the Herald that he had dreamed of casting Helen Mirren, the Academy Award winning actress, for the neighbor role in Goal! He abandoned that plan when he met Shaw, who was staying in the same hotel.

He filmed the neighbor scenes in a three-hour stretch — in the backyard of Shaw’s Richland home. She was 85 at the time.

Shaw was a natural in front of the camera, Cunningham told the Herald.

“She’s so incredibly filled with life,” he told the Herald in 2012. “She’s got such presence. She’s got a wonderful look. It’s a visual medium — it’s not radio — and we needed someone who could be feared and totally sweet all at the same time.”

She took another star turn in 2015, when FOX Sports arranged for mothers and grandmothers of the U.S. team to surprise the players following a Mother’s Day victory over Ireland. Shaw and Burnett were part of the entourage.

Shaw was born Alice Miernicki in San Diego and grew up in Duluth, Minn., before returning to the Los Angeles area. She graduated from California State University at Northridge.

She met her future husband, Pressley Franklin “Pete” Shaw, in Long Beach, Calif., in 1946 and they married in 1949. They lived in California for 20 years before moving to Richland in 1969. Pete Shaw worked as a nuclear engineer for a variety of Hanford-related contractors. She became a speech pathologist after one of her children was born with a cleft palate.

The couple raised four children and fostered disabled children. Pete Shaw died Dec. 17, 2011, after 62 years of marriage.

Shaw is survived by her children, Kathleen Stevens, Judy Burnett, Frank Shaw Jr. and Susan Karnesky, and 12 grandchildren.