Last Oct. 12, Melissa Jefferson-Wooden boarded a float, wearing her Olympic 100m bronze medal and 4x100m relay gold medal, for a parade down Front Street.

So often growing up, she gathered there for festivities in Georgetown, a South Carolina seaport between Myrtle Beach and Charleston. Sometimes she took part as a tenor saxophone player with the Carvers Bay High School band.

But on this day, Jefferson-Wooden was the solo star, her stage coming at the end of a 200-plus-vehicle procession on a day named after her.

Once it was all over, she returned to Central Florida, where she now lives and trains, and the tasks at hand: planning her wedding and plotting how to become the world’s fastest woman.

Jefferson-Wooden, 24, placed her 2024 Olympic medals in a box under her TV and closed it. Th

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