Geehou Goo is 82 years old. She stands 5-foot-1 and weighs, maybe, generously, 90 pounds.

She might weigh more had treatment for cancer not necessitated the removal of half of her stomach, a foot of intestine and half a pancreas.

Goo was told the average life expectancy for those who undergo such radical surgery is two years. She passed that mark 12 years ago.

Goo is, as those around her enthusiastically attest, the toughest, pluckiest little old lady you’d ever hope to meet.

“Sorry I missed your call,” Goo says on the voicemail. “I was in Canada hiking with my sister.”

More specifically, she’ll explain later, she and her sister Pearl, from Chicago, had traveled to Banff National Park, where among other things they completed an 8-mile day hike, uphill, to Lake Louise. The last time they visited the park together, Goo was still recovering from her surgery.

“It’s really nice,” she said.

Goo was born in China, where her Hawaii-born father studied engineering. When the country fell under communist control, Goo’s father took her and one of her brothers first to Hong Kong and then back to Hawaii. Goo’s mother and four other siblings would follow five years later.

The transition was difficult for Goo. Shortly after they arrived, her father was sent to Kula Sanatorium for treatment of tuberculosis, leaving Goo in the care of an aunt. She took a job at a coffee shop at Fort Shafter in hopes that she could improve her dicey English by interacting with customers.

Goo went on to study nursing at the University of Hawaii. After graduation she followed a friend to San Francisco and found work at a hospital. After a few months the two decided to join the Air Force to become flight nurses. But just before she was to enlist, Goo changed her mind and decided instead to follow up on a previous application to Pan American Airlines. She spent the next four years working as a flight attendant.

In 1964 Goo married Shih Hung Goo (they already shared the same last name), an electrical engineer she had met through her brother. Together they raised two sons.

Goo was called back to work at Pan American in 1977. She later returned to UH to earn a certificate in special education, working in the field for the next five years.

She retired in 2002 and spent much of her time baby-sitting her grandchildren.

The cancer diagnosis followed in 2004, leading to surgery at Johns Hopkins in Baltimore, where one of her brothers lives. After two months of recuperation, she returned to Hawaii to begin a regimen of chemotherapy supplemented by herbal treatment and copious amounts of mushroom tea to treat the side effects.

Her grandchildren now grown and her cancer is long in remission, Goo enjoys the sort of active retirement people optimistically imagine but rarely achieve.

She adores her home at Kukui Plaza in the downtown area, which puts her in easy walking distance of Chinatown, where she used to shop for ingredients for her grandkids’ meals; the Nuuanu YMCA, where she works out two to three times per week; and The Queen’s Medical Center and its physicians’ offices, which she visits for regular checkups.

Goo and her siblings, spread out from Hawaii to Chicago, Maryland and Florida, chat often on the phone and, when time and schedules allow, enjoy checking off items on each other’s bucket lists. Over the past several years, they’ve hiked Machu Picchu in Peru, visited the Angkor Wat temple complex in Cambodia and toured national parks on the mainland.

Goo has also completed 12 consecutive Great Aloha Run events, the last couple with her children and grandchildren. She also enjoys regularly scheduled lunches with old classmates and groups of friends from her time at Pan American.

“Life has been good,” Goo said. “I’ve had a really good life.”

Reach Michael Tsai at mtsai@staradvertiser.com.