Any guest staying in the Sheraton Four Seasons Greensboro in late mid-October likely saw a small, compact man in a cream-colored cowboy hat, riding bulls.

Right there in the hotel, the gentleman with a warm, ever-present smile and gleam in his sparkling eyes was deep in concentration, trying to make the 8.

The effervescent cowboy was “riding” couches and chairs, his creased Wranglers spread wide as if a strong bovine were underneath. His left hand was balled in a tight fist above his lap, holding an imaginary rope he’d just carefully wrapped, free arm in the air, demonstrating to fans the proper technique for syncing in balanced rhythm to dance with a potentially deadly beast 15 times his size.

“I don’t think anybody in the PBR has gotten on more bulls all season long than I did here this weekend,” said Charles Sampson, the Jackie Robinson of PBR, with a hearty laugh.

“I see this as my job. I love doing it. I promote the PBR, help kids, and try to win fans over, one at a time.”

PBR’s legendary, cheerful, compelling, wisecracking, indefatigable, one-man “Be Cowboy” promotional machine was in Greensboro to lead a seminar for local youth, teaching deserving kids about the sport of professional bull riding.

This was the 10th PBR youth seminar this season, hosting hundreds of deserving youth 10 to 18 years old at PBR events.

Sampson wasn’t shilling fandom. His mission is more important. He speaks about life.

And if anyone deserves to counsel youth about how to make it in a perplexing often upside-down world, it’s an eternally optimistic kid from Watts who set his mind on a goal, tried his guts out and went on the become one of the all-time greats.

“It takes a lot of courage to be a bull rider... and you’re going to be seeing a lot of courage tonight,” Simpson told the youth attending the Wrangler Long Live Cowboys Unleash The Beast event. “And it takes courage, preparation and hard work to be successful at whatever you want to do.”

Sampson admitted to the crowd that there’s no fright quite like being in the bucking chute sitting on top of a quivering bull about to explode.

“Yeah, there’s fear and nervousness,” he said. “But there’s fear and nervousness in a lot of things we all deal with. When I’m in that chute, the fear and nervousness tells me I can do this. Because this is what I do. They didn’t pull me out of the audience. I trained for this. I dreamed of this. It took me years to get to this moment. And when they call your name, you better be ready.”

The Los Angeles native explained to the kids that they can be cowboys, too.

“Cowboys can come from anywhere,” he said. “You don’t need the hat or belt buckle. You just need courage and determination and above all, friendship.”

There’s a good chance Sampson’s message can impress a youngster who might be scared or confused, because it comes from the world’s most unlikely championship bull rider.

The young man from Watts was crowned the world’s best in 1982, becoming the first black cowboy ever to capture perhaps the most difficult and punishing title in sports.

Growing up in a tough urban neighborhood, Sampson may not have shared the same background and pedigree as other bull riders, but he did have one thing in common with them, the burning desire to want one thing in life more than anything else: to ride bulls.

“I just loved the horses and ponies as a kid and that helped me stay out of trouble and find a healthy passion,” he said. “I wasn’t big enough to play football and I wasn’t smart enough to be a doctor. I just wanted to be a bull rider.”

In addition to bull riding, Sampson would rope and become and all-around rodeo athlete as well, earning a scholarship at Central Arizona College. (In fact, at 62, he is still roping).

As a kid, he loved hanging out at the stables near his home and going to the horse auctions, sometimes staying until 2 a.m.

With friends, he’d take the hay out of a stack, carve out a virtual castle and sleep there.

“We didn’t go camping,” he said. “This was our camping, peaceful and beautiful.”

Sampson lived near the railroad tracks off the freeway about a mile from the stables. It wasn’t a very long walk, but the young boy didn’t want to miss one minute of time working at those stables. He’d often jump on a freight train to get to the horses.

Sometimes a slow-moving train would become a fast-moving train.

“That’s when you knew you’d have to jump off. Get off, or you have no idea where that train would wind up,” said Simpson with a twinkle in the eye that radiated all weekend.

Heading for the stables, past the lingering street gangs and picking up speed, the boy known as “Pee Wee” would have to leap from the train.

Even if an athlete can accomplish one of the hardest feats in sports – staying on a bull for eight seconds – he has to get off the bull. Those train dismounts were suitable training for the career Sampson would embark on, the only one he’d ever wanted, as a professional bull rider.

Sampson had his supporters, but some in an insular sport tried to discourage him. He wasn’t from a ranching background. He didn’t have a recognizable family name. He had no rodeo connections.

Pee Wee listened to the supporters and tuned out everyone else. He would simply enter one rodeo at a time and often win.

Sunday afternoon in Greensboro, Sampson watched two-time World Champion J. B. Mauney get on a bull with a broken fibula. Holding a day sheet as he kept score, Sampson nodded and smiled, for back in the day, nobody cowboyed up more than the kid from Watts, tough as John Wayne’s boots, breaking fingers, nearly his entire face, his leg (four times) and his sternum.

In fact, he probably should have been killed in Sydney, Iowa, in 1979 before the invention of the protective rider vest. Sampson was hung up, dragged into the well and stepped on. The force of the bull broke a rib right into his lung.

He would win big events in places like the Houston Astrodome, but Sampson’s successful exits from the bull came at the highest rate in his championship 1982 PRCA season, beating even the great Don Gay.

He’d appear on the TODAY show with Bryant Gumbel. He took a private meeting at the White House with President Reagan. There were the ads for Coors beer (to promote inner-city programs and scholarships) and for Timex, sporting a watch with a cowhide strap.

“Timex knew I kept getting beaten up to the gills,” Sampson said. “I took a licking and kept on ticking.”

Took a licking is an understatement for the cowboy with more plates in his body than your grandmother has in her cupboard.

Charles Sampson, Rodeo Hall of Fame and PBR Ring of Honor member, remains grateful to a sport that provided these opportunities.

And now, he is paying it forward.

Inspiring young people who don’t realize that the PBR event they are about to witness would not have been possible without trailblazing pioneers such as himself is a duty that brings Sampson great joy.

In giving back, he gets as much as he gives.

He knows the power of real encouragement when others are putting up barriers. He’s there to help young people to see what’s possible.

Taking a look at five-foot four-inch Sampson, and then those snot-slinging, muscle-quivering bovine beasts that he conquered, and any kid will realize anything is possible when you put head and heart into it.

For living legend Charles Sampson, the pleasure in serving as a great PBR ambassador, telling his story and maybe changing a life or two on a Saturday afternoon is all his.

Because how many of us can legitimately claim “I was first.”