TARZANA : Charity Biking Is Child’s Play for Broker, 72

At 72, Joe Walker is now living the childhood he says he never had.

With youthful exuberance, Walker occasionally skis, plays tennis and rides his bike through his lazy Tarzana neighborhood at least two hours a day.

But being a kid isn’t just fun and games for Walker.

Along with three other 70-somethings he met through a personal ad in Senior World magazine, Walker is training to ride his bike some 3,000 miles this July in the 14th Annual Race Across America. His inspiration?

“I read an article last year about a bunch of 60-year-olds from Whittier who completed the race in eight days and 15 hours,” explained Walker. “That’s a record for senior citizens.”

It’s a record Walker and his “70 PLUS TEAM” are aiming to break. He assembled the group, composed of septuagenarians from throughout California, after a months-long recruiting effort to field a team in the race’s Senior Masters Division this year.

The team will take turns riding the 2,904-mile-course from Irvine to Savannah, Ga., and the four men are already training hard.

“I don’t quit,” Walker said.

Such determination came early in Walker’s life. When he was 13, his father died from a little known hereditary genetic disorder called neurofibromatosis, leaving young Joe as “man of the house” for his mother, a younger brother and a 1-year-old sister.

“I grew up quick,” Walker said. “That was in 1936, during the height of the Depression. I’d do whatever I had to do to help my mom take care of our farm and the family.

“I’ve worked hard all my life,” he said. “I didn’t know when to stop.”

Still active as an insurance broker, Walker now mixes work and play in equal proportions. The bike ride, he said, will be both serious and fun.

Through the excursion, Walker hopes to raise funds for the National Neurofibromatosis Foundation and the Shriners Hospitals for Crippled Children. His brother too died of the disease in 1990.

Walker’s fund-raising efforts, he said, have been only partly successful, with $12,000 raised so far for a trip that will cost his group about $30,000. Everything over the $30,000 will go to the two charities.

“It’s a lot of hard work getting everything together,” he said. “But I’m having fun.”