He skipped the chance to be a basketball-star millionaire and never looked back. Instead, he choose to sacrifice for his God, his country, his friends and his family.
But that made Kresimir Cosic, 46, who died last week, among the happiest people I've ever known, even when he suffered from cancer.As Sen. Orrin Hatch, R-Utah, said - giving maybe the highest honor I've seen a politician offer at the death of another - "I never saw Kres without a smile."
That's hard to say about other sports stars and celebrities who spend millions or act outrageously thinking it will make them happy. Cosic found the type of joy through service that money cannot buy, nor can sickness or even death destroy.
My own story of Cosic begins where most others end - after his basketball career, mostly because I didn't meet him until he arrived in Washington as deputy ambassador for Croatia. That's when I wanted to find out how an athlete became an ambassador.
Of course, Cosic was among the greatest of all basketball stars at Brigham Young University and led the former Yugoslavia to many Olympic medals (including a gold in 1980) as a player and a coach.
But Cosic's power in politics (and religion) came because the 6-foot-11 center - who could dribble, pass and score from three-point range as well as a guard - turned down offers from the Los Angeles Lakers and others that would have made him a millionaire.
Cosic said riches weren't as important as his country and helping The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.
He returned to Yugoslavia and almost single-handedly turned it into a basketball powerhouse with world and European championships. He found and developed players such as the Chicago Bulls' Toni Kukoc (a Croat) and the Lakers' Vlade Divac (a Serb).
They would become millionaires, unlike Cosic. That didn't bother him. During an interview at his middle-class home last year, Cosic would not dwell on unfound riches, but instead his eyes twinkled when he told how rewarding it was to coach such players from differing (and now warring) ethnic backgrounds.
He didn't return to Yugoslavia just to build a basketball team. He wanted to build principles of democracy and sought to reconcile ethnic groups of Yugoslavia. Such work would later win him the prestigious Freedom Award.
He also wanted to build up the LDS Church there and at age 23 became the country's presiding elder. He even translated and published The Book of Mormon in Serbo-Croatian and assumed all responsibility for it before the Communist hierarchy.
Cosic's politics and religion were an irritant to Communist leaders - but his popularity and talent on the basketball court made them withhold action against him.
His patriotism showed again when Yugoslavia dissolved into a multisided civil war at the end of communism. At the time, Cosic was coaching a professional team in Greece - and could easily have stayed far from the conflict.
But he contacted leaders of Croatia (whom he knew because he was a sports hero) to volunteer for whatever they needed. Because he had lived in the United States and had contacts with key members of Congress, they sent him to Washington as a deputy ambassador to tell their story.
After a year into his assignment, the cancer was discovered.
Even with it, Cosic looked - as always - for a bright spot. The energy-depleting treatments forced him to stay at home. Instead of complaining, he spoke with a smile about how nice it was to have more time with his wife and three children.
He said it also gave him a chance to work on his family history, which he said he had been too busy for too long to research well.
Even with illness, he seemed to be almost always at the LDS Church's Washington Temple. Some church assignments of my own often took me there, and I always ran into Cosic. I joked that he must live there. He smiled and said he enjoyed the peace he found there - and enjoyed being near a temple, which he lacked for most of his years as a member of the LDS Church.
That's how I will remember Cosic. Always finding a reason to be happy no matter what problems he faced or opportunities he had to skip - even though they were often not only big, but monumental.