Ageless Valerie Ramsey transforms herself from local treasure to national star with an inspiring book.

What’s next?” is Valerie Ramsey’s avowed mantra. She’s certainly lived it. After raising six kids, the Pebble Beach resident promptly parlayed a part-time pro shop job into a climb to the top of the crazy-competitive world of marketing, serving as media and publicity manager for Pebble Beach Resorts for 15 years. At 63, she earned a modeling contract with an agency in San Francisco. Five years later, she hasn’t slowed down, co-authoring a book that has her popping up on national TV shows to talk about it. It would be an impressive set of accomplishments for someone who hadn’t experienced a series of medical setbacks.

“Throughout my life,” Ramsey says, “whenever I’d finish something I’d think, ‘OK,what’s next?!’ ”

This time the answer was Gracefully: Looking and Being Your Best at Any Age, the just-published book that Ramsey and her daughter, Heather Hummel, wrote together. It’s a book designed for women over 50 to enhance their awareness of everything from nutrition to sleep requirements, professional make-up to exercise, all wonderfully interwoven with candid stories from Ramsey’s life. The net effect is to inspire women to embrace their later lives with enthusiasm and purpose.

In preparation for the book’s launch, Ramsey recently appeared on “The Today Show” and “Extra.” Sunday, May 4, Tiffany & Co. in Carmel held an exclusive invitation-only launch party for the book and presented Ramsey with a stunning collar of roped pearls in recognition of her zoom to fame.

At Tiffany’s, Ramsey came dressed exquisitely in a thick, pale cream dressy jacket and tailored skirt half a breath deeper in tone, hemmed below the knee. Her pointed-toed heels were caramel and around her neck she wore Elsa Peretti’s circle of diamonds pendant on a black silk cord from Tiffany’s.

She may look every inch the fashion, TV and print model she is, a glamorous 5-foot-10, super thin, blue-eyed, silver-haired, vibrantly elegant brushstroke of a woman with a Hollywood smile; her photograph on the front of the book could imply she’s just the next lightweight celebrity with a quick-fix self-help book on how to live forever while forever looking too young to buy a beer.

But don’t kid yourself – hers is the presentation of a woman of substance, wisdom, and practicality. Gracefully, meanwhile, is the epitome of the cautionary adage against judging a book by its cover, the conflux of her intellect, experience, generosity and intent, written warmly and organized for ease of reading under the headings, “The Body,” “The Mind” and “The Soul.” Ramsey is sure of herself, devoted to her ideals as related above. She is sophisticated, articulated and personally engaging. Dogmatic she is not.

She reads to me from page six. “My goal is to inspire a younger generation to look forward to all of the years that lie ahead because we never know what life is going to bring – that the best years of life may very well be to come. It’s simply not true that we have to look at retirement as the end – we should continue to challenge ourselves, and look around the corner to see what’s next.”

Ramsay is quick to share credit. “Gracefully was truly a mother-daughter project,” she says. “It was Heather’s idea and she’s the writer in the family.”

“[The book] also includes the expertise of Neil Cavuto, my nutritionist for years, and Drs. Rick and Arlene Noodleman, who helped me when I was diagnosed with uterine cancer.”

McGraw-Hill snapped it up and publicity firms have avidly courted Ramsey. Ramsey has seen how the potency of the book translates on “The Today Show” and “Extra”; now she’s looking forward to an invitation from Oprah, and says she is in talks for her own show.

She’s also beginning a public speaking career. On April 15, she spoke on Capitol Hill to the Sudden Cardiac Arrest Leadership National Medical Association. She is as qualified as it gets to have done so – Ramsey is implanted with a defibrillator to steady her irregular heartbeat. Next Saturday she will be the keynote speaker at Spanish Bay for Go Red for Women, an organization dedicated to women’s heart health.

The many people thrilled with Ramsay’s ongoing successes include her husband Wally, who loves telling people that he sleeps with a model.

GRACEFULLY: LOOKING AND BEING YOUR BEST AT ANY AGE CAN BE PRE-ORDERED AT WWW.AMAZON.COM AND BARNES & NOBLE. ON SATURDAY, JUNE 7, RAMSEY WILL BE AT BORDERS IN SAND CITY FOR A BOOK SIGNING. FOR MORE INFORMATION, VISIT WWW.VALERIERAMSEY.COM.