Stephen Oliver’s Mile High Karate®
The Complete History of Mile High Karate
1983–Present
From one school in Lakewood, Colorado, to a multi-school organization, a NASKA World Tour tournament, franchised schools across North America and beyond, and more than 1,000 Black Belts.
Lakewood, Colorado43 yearsMileHighKarate.com
Who founded Mile High Karate, and when?
Mile High Karate was founded by Stephen Oliver in Lakewood, Colorado, on August 6, 1983, with $10,000. The first school passed 150 students in its first 90 days. Mile High Karate reached five schools within 18 months and six within 36 months, has promoted more than 1,000 Black Belts, ages 5 to 76, and still teaches Colorado families today at Mile High Karate Thornton.
Mile High Karate did not begin as a new name on a neighborhood karate school. It grew out of an instructional lineage that runs back to Grand Master Jhoon Rhee, the Korean Tae Kwon Do pioneer widely called the Father of American Tae Kwon Do, and out of fourteen years that its founder had already spent training, teaching and managing schools inside the Jhoon Rhee system before he ever reached Colorado.
What Stephen Oliver built in Denver was an organization rather than a single studio: a standardized curriculum, a way of turning students into instructors and instructors into managers, and the business systems needed to run several schools at once. Over the next four decades Mile High Karate ran one of the NASKA World Tour’s western tournaments, the Mile High Karate Classic; licensed and franchised schools across the United States, Canada, New Zealand and Australia; and produced the experience its founder later taught to other school owners.
This page is the canonical history of Mile High Karate. It separates what surviving documents record from what comes from participants’ memories, and it says where the record is still incomplete. Each claim carries a label:
Documented a surviving Mile High Karate document, dated publication or press item Independent a third-party record Oliver’s account Stephen Oliver’s own recollection or statement
| Organization | Mile High Karate (Stephen Oliver’s Mile High Karate®) |
|---|---|
| Founded | August 6, 1983 |
| Founder | Grand Master Stephen Oliver, MBA, 10th Degree Black Belt |
| First school | Lakewood, Colorado (Kipling and Jewell) |
| Starting capital | $10,000 |
| Lineage | Grand Master Jhoon Rhee, Jhoon Rhee Institute of Tae Kwon Do |
| Style | American Freestyle, from Jhoon Rhee Tae Kwon Do |
| Early growth | 150+ students in 90 days; 5 schools in 18 months; 6 in 36 months |
| By the founder’s 25th birthday | 2,500+ active students; over $1,700,000 annual revenue (about $5,200,000 today) |
| Black Belts | More than 1,000, ages 5 to 76; about 48 months to Black Belt |
| Tournament | Mile High Karate Classic, Denver, 1989–1999, NASKA World Tour |
| First franchisee | Robert Lewis, August 1998 |
| International franchising | From 2000 |
| Chief of Instruction | Grand Master Jeff Smith, 10th Degree Black Belt |
| Today | Mile High Karate Thornton, 3979 E 120th Ave, Thornton, CO 80233 |
Before Mile High Karate: Tulsa to Washington
Stephen Oliver began training in martial arts in 1969 in Tulsa, Oklahoma, at the Jhoon Rhee Institute’s Tulsa branch. His instructors were Bob Olinghouse and Gran Moulder, Black Belts teaching for the Jhoon Rhee Institute; a 1999 Mile High Karate biography also names David Harrelson. Documented
He began teaching in 1974 and opened his own school, under Jhoon Rhee, in 1975, at age 15. While in Tulsa he also trained in Kenpo karate, Goju Ryu and judo. Documented
In 1976 he travelled to Washington, D.C., to train at the Jhoon Rhee Institute headquarters, alongside Jeff Smith, Larry Carnahan, John Chung and other Jhoon Rhee Institute Black Belts. The same summer, according to his own recollection, he spent an afternoon training with Bill “Superfoot” Wallace at the Tennessee Karate Institute in Memphis. Oliver’s account
In 1978 he returned to Washington for the summer to train with Jeff Smith, then the PKA World Light-Heavyweight Champion, and tested for his Black Belt before Jhoon Rhee and the Institute’s Black Belt staff, a board that included Charlie Lee, John Chung, Jeff Smith and Michael Coles. Grand Master Jhoon Rhee awarded him his 1st Degree Black Belt in August 1978. Mile High Karate’s 1999 and 2007 materials both record that he passed with “one of the highest scores ever given” on the Black Belt exam. Documented
From 1978 to 1980 he attended the University of Tulsa as a University Scholar and National Merit Finalist. In 1980 he moved to Washington to study at Georgetown University and to work full time for the Jhoon Rhee Institute, first as a head instructor and then as a branch manager. He graduated cum laude from Georgetown in 1982 with an A.B. in International Economics. Documented
By the time he left Washington he had trained under three Jhoon Rhee Institute instructors, run his own school, taught and managed schools inside the Jhoon Rhee Institute in Washington, and earned a university degree in economics. Those three strands, teaching, management and business, became the design of Mile High Karate.
Both photographs were published in the 2007 Mile High Karate welcome booklet, preserved in the archive.
- 1969Begins training, Jhoon Rhee Institute, Tulsa
- 1974Begins teaching
- 1975Opens his own school, at 15
- 1976Trains at Jhoon Rhee headquarters, Washington
- 19781st Degree Black Belt from Jhoon Rhee
- 1980Head instructor, then branch manager, Jhoon Rhee Institute
- 1982Georgetown University, cum laude
The Jhoon Rhee lineage behind Mile High Karate
Mile High Karate’s instruction descends from Grand Master Jhoon Rhee, who began teaching in Texas in 1956, the first Korean instructor to teach Korean martial arts professionally in the United States, and who founded the Jhoon Rhee Institute of Tae Kwon Do in Washington, D.C., in 1962. Documented
Jhoon Rhee’s own teacher was Won Kook Lee, of the Chung Do Kwan in Seoul. Rhee first called his art Tang Soo Do and karate; after 1957, when the South Korean government adopted the name Tae Kwon Do for Korean styles, he and others in America took up that term. His first two American Black Belts, Allen Steen and Pat Burleson, became the leading instructors of the Texas–Oklahoma region, and their schools produced Pat Worley, Jeff Smith, Larry Carnahan, Gran Moulder and Bob Olinghouse.
That is why a boy in Tulsa in 1969 and a champion in Washington in the 1970s belong to the same family tree. Moulder and Olinghouse taught Stephen Oliver. Jeff Smith became Jhoon Rhee’s best-known fighter. Larry Carnahan later became the first president of NASKA, the circuit on which the Mile High Karate Classic would run.
The relationship between Stephen Oliver and Jeff Smith is not a simple teacher-and-student line, and Mile High Karate does not present it as one. They trained together at Jhoon Rhee headquarters in 1976 and 1978, and Smith sat on the Black Belt board that tested Oliver. Jhoon Rhee awarded Oliver his 1st Degree and his ranks through 6th Degree. Decades later, Smith promoted Oliver to 7th Degree (2001), 8th Degree (2006, with Grand Master Joe Corley), 9th Degree (2015, with Bill Wallace, Pat Burleson and Joe Corley) and 10th Degree (April 2026). Documented
Through Jhoon Rhee’s friendship with Bruce Lee from the mid-1960s, and the sport and full-contact champions who came out of the Jhoon Rhee Institute, the style moved toward what Mile High Karate calls American Freestyle. Rhee also developed padded sparring equipment in the early 1970s and created musical forms. The lineage was not only on paper: Grand Master Jhoon Rhee himself taught classes at Mile High Karate, including at the Arvada school. Documented The full account is on The Jhoon Rhee lineage behind Mile High Karate.
The founding: Lakewood, Colorado
With Jhoon Rhee’s blessing and support, Stephen Oliver moved from Washington to Denver and opened the first Mile High Karate school in Lakewood, Colorado, on August 6, 1983. Documented
He started with $10,000, money borrowed from his parents and supplemented with credit cards. Oliver’s account The school was at Kipling Street and Jewell Avenue in Lakewood; Mile High Karate’s own 1983 brochure, “The Master Program,” gives the address as 10815-G West Jewell, Lakewood, CO 80226, and a later Better Business Bureau listing records the same address. Documented
The Lakewood school passed 150 students within its first 90 days. The 2007 Mile High Karate welcome booklet records it plainly: “In 1983, within just three months of founding Mile High Karate, the Lakewood (Denver, Colorado area) school grew to over 150 students.” Documented
The idea was never only to teach classes
From the start, Oliver designed Mile High Karate to be run by more than one person. The first school was also the first training ground: for a standardized curriculum that any qualified instructor could teach, for student-instructors who would grow into the next school’s staff, and for the enrollment, retention and management routines that would let him open more locations without being in every room.
That sequence, curriculum to instructor development to management to multi-school operation, is the thread that runs through the rest of this history. It explains how five schools opened in eighteen months, why Mile High Karate could later license and franchise its name, and why its founder was being asked by other school owners how he did it before the organization was two years old.
The 1983 flying side kick photograph
In the fall of 1983 Stephen Oliver was photographed executing a flying side kick at the Lakewood school. That photograph became the basis for a line drawing that circulated through Educational Funding Company materials and was later adopted in other martial arts settings, including school logos and patches. Oliver’s account Mile High Karate does not claim that later users commissioned the image from him. It is looking for early copies of the drawing, and for EFC materials that carry it, to document the chain from photograph to drawing to wider use.
The first six Mile High Karate schools
Mile High Karate opened five schools within 18 months of its founding and six within 36 months, all in the Denver–Boulder area. Documented
The order and locations below come from Stephen Oliver’s own record of the organization’s first years. Contemporary opening documents, advertisements or telephone listings for each school are still being gathered, so the list is labelled accordingly. Oliver’s account
- 1
Lakewood
Kipling and Jewell. The original Mile High Karate school, opened August 6, 1983. A later listing gives 10815 W. Jewell, Suite G.
- 2
Arvada: Ralston and Ward
The first Arvada school, near Ralston Road and Ward Road.
- 3
Arvada: Indian Tree
Indian Tree Shopping Center, 7705 Wadsworth Boulevard, Arvada. Recorded as a separate third school, not a relocation of the second.
- 4
Aurora
1750 S. Buckley Road, in the Buckley and Mexico area.
- 5
Arapahoe Village
5050 E. Arapahoe Road, now in Centennial, near Arapahoe and Holly.
- 6
Boulder
28th Street and Arapahoe Avenue. The sixth early location.
Historical research note: when did the sixth school open?
Five schools were open within about 18 months, and the sixth, in Boulder, within 36 months of the founding. One later account gave 30 months for the sixth school; Stephen Oliver has confirmed that 36 months is correct.
Surviving advertising corroborates the early map. A Rocky Mountain News advertisement of July 26, 1987, lists five Mile High Karate schools: 28th and Arapahoe in Boulder, Kipling and Jewell in Lakewood, 77th and Wadsworth in Arvada, Arapahoe and Glencoe in Englewood, and Buckley and Mexico in Aurora. Documented
Six schools in three years, opened by a founder in his early twenties with $10,000 of starting capital, is the fact on which most of Mile High Karate’s later reputation rests. It was possible because each new school was staffed from the previous ones. Students who had come up through the Lakewood curriculum became assistant instructors, then instructors, then the people who opened and ran the next location. Oliver’s account
How Mile High Karate grew
By Stephen Oliver’s 25th birthday Mile High Karate had more than 2,500 active students and more than $1,700,000 in annual revenue, approximately $5,200,000 in today’s dollars. Oliver’s account The organization then passed 3,500 students across its six locations. That was not its ceiling: Mile High Karate kept growing, and from 1998 it added franchised schools in other states and, from 2000, other countries.
An older 1999 Mile High Karate biography describes five schools and 1,500 active students at the eighteen-month mark. The two figures describe different moments, eighteen months after the founding and the founder’s 25th birthday, and both are consistent with the growth that followed.
Mile High Karate has promoted more than 1,000 Black Belts, the youngest 5 years old and the oldest 76. Its 1999 and 2007 materials both record that figure, and it is still used today. Documented The typical path to Black Belt takes about 48 months of consistent training, and the enrollment questions in the 2007 welcome booklet told every family so before they signed up: “It can take about 48 months to achieve black belt.”
By the late 1980s the organization was running quarterly intramural tournaments for roughly 500 to 800 of its own students, a scale that rivaled many open competitions. The Thornton school alone has since hosted well over 120 intramural tournaments. Documented
How the Mile High Karate curriculum developed
Mile High Karate teaches American Freestyle, a style that developed from Jhoon Rhee Tae Kwon Do. Its curriculum has three foundations inherited from Jhoon Rhee: practical self-defense without impractical tradition, personal development through self-esteem, goal setting and discipline, and artistic content through forms. Documented
The curriculum developed in stages. The eras below describe what Mile High Karate’s own materials say it taught and when those elements appear. They do not establish that every licensed or franchised school delivered every element in the same way.
The Jhoon Rhee system
Korean kicking, basics and sparring from the Jhoon Rhee Institute, including padded safety equipment of the kind Rhee developed in the early 1970s so that students could spar realistically without injuring one another.
The traditional forms
Jhoon Rhee’s own schools gradually dropped the traditional hyungs. Mile High Karate reinstated them, from Chon-Ji through Choong-Moo below Black Belt, “for both artistic and historic reasons,” as its 1999 history puts it.
American Freestyle
Through Jhoon Rhee’s friendship with Bruce Lee and the champions of the Jhoon Rhee Institute, the art became more practical and more athletic. Mile High Karate’s materials describe the result as American Freestyle and compare it with Jeet Kune Do.
Master Club and leadership levels
At advanced levels the curriculum adds Filipino weaponry, traditional Okinawan weapons (Ko-Budo), modern boxing and kickboxing basics, and grappling from jujitsu and judo.
The nine qualities of a Black Belt
Personal development was built into the belt system itself. Mile High Karate’s nine qualities of a Black Belt are drawn from Denis Waitley’s The Psychology of Winning: Positive Self-Awareness, Positive Self-Esteem, Positive Self-Control, Positive Self-Motivation, Positive Self-Expectancy, Positive Self-Image, Positive Self-Direction, Positive Self-Discipline and Positive Self-Projection. Waitley’s tenth quality, Positive Self-Dimension, is not one of the nine.
Traditional philosophy
Throughout, the curriculum reinforces “the traditional philosophies of honesty, courtesy, integrity, perseverance and self-control,” in the words of the 2007 welcome booklet.
The 2007 booklet sums up the approach: Mile High Karate kept the traditional content while “accelerating the personal development aspects of the program,” and its founder continued to expand the curriculum “to keep it at state-of-the-art levels.” Documented
Building Successful Kids™
Building Successful Kids is Mile High Karate’s character-development and leadership program for children and families. Its surviving materials show a structured curriculum, not general encouragement: character lessons built into the belt system, and forms that tie promotion to a child’s behavior at home and at school. Documented
Promotion tied to school and home
Mile High Karate required children to earn their belts outside the dojo as well as inside it. Before testing, every young student had to bring copies of school grades, a completed parent/teacher intent-to-promote form and an exam qualification form. The booklet explains that these requirements “support our focus on academic excellence as well as contribute to the family and the community.”
Two take-home tools made the character lessons concrete. The Kids’ Self-Discipline Sheet asked children to record things they did at home or school without being told; ten lines earned an instructor check and thirty earned a discipline award at the next graduation. The weekly Job List tracked a child’s room, self-care, schoolwork and family responsibilities, and was signed off by a parent.
Every child’s long-term goal was the Black Belt, which the program used to teach short-term, intermediate and long-term goal setting. Parents in the 2007 booklet credit the program with better grades, better focus and more responsibility at home. Documented
“Write down something you did around the house or at school that you did not have to be told to do by your parents or teachers.”
Text from the 2007 Mile High Karate welcome booklet.
Leadership, instructors and the Black Belt pipeline
Mile High Karate’s growth depended on producing its own instructors. Its leadership program was designed to move advanced students from learners to communicators, mentors, teachers and, eventually, instructors and school managers. Oliver’s account
The leadership curriculum covered communication, public speaking, teamwork, mentoring and teaching. Instructor training used role-playing, written scripts, demonstrations, observation of experienced teachers, supervised practice classes and performance statistics, so that a new instructor could be coached on measurable results rather than impressions.
The model is still visible today. At Mile High Karate Thornton, well over 30 percent of active students are Black Belts, a proportion the school calls “the Leadership Factory.” Black Belt candidates complete informal, formal and written tests and finish with a three-day testing retreat in Breckenridge, Colorado. Documented
Extraordinary Teaching
The teaching methods refined inside Mile High Karate were later written down. Grand Master Jeff Smith and Stephen Oliver are co-authors of Extraordinary Teaching, and Mile High Karate’s franchise program of the mid-2000s trained new owners and instructors through intensive “bootcamps,” weekly instructor and Black Belt training classes in many regions, and monthly instructor teleseminars with Grand Master Smith and the organization’s Senior Master Instructors. Documented
Some of the people who came through that pipeline went on to national results of their own. Harrison Snider earned his Black Belt under Stephen Oliver, competed on the NASKA circuit, became a Mile High Karate instructor, trained with Mike Chaturantabut and became a WKC world champion.
Mile High Karate in Colorado schools and the community
Since 1983 Mile High Karate instructors have worked with educators across Colorado, including Cherry Creek, Douglas County, Jefferson County, Adams County, Boulder County and Denver Public Schools, through character-education programs, PE and gym-teacher programs, school carnivals, career days, fundraisers and teacher training. Documented
Mile High Karate’s 1999 and 2007 materials state that its staff had volunteered in hundreds of area schools and that its schools raised more than $100,000 a year for local elementary schools. Documented Today the Thornton school runs before- and after-school enrichment programs in the Jefferson, Adams and Brighton school districts, with funds raised returned to the schools.
Kick Drugs Out of America
Mile High Karate was a leading supporter of Chuck Norris’s Kick Drugs Out of America program. Its schools raised more than $50,000 for the program, and through the Educational Funding Company’s efforts Stephen Oliver helped raise more than $500,000 for it. Chuck Norris visited the Arvada Mile High Karate school on his national tour for the film Sidekicks; Oliver later trained with Norris at his ranch in Texas and helped coordinate his work with the Educational Funding Company. Documented
Chuck Norris’s own T.E.A.M. News recorded the partnership. Its December 1997 issue reported the Educational Funding Company’s third annual convention, held in Orlando, Florida, on November 22–23, 1997, before more than 1,000 martial artists. EFC Chairman Nicholas Cokinos presented Kick Drugs Out of America Chairman Chuck Norris with a check for $130,972, and the newsletter singled out Stephen Oliver (spelled “Steven”) among EFC’s members for contributing $15,000. Independent
In the news, 2002–2007
Mile High Karate’s surviving press page records a run of local and national coverage: an August 2002 kick-a-thon benefiting Colorado fire relief; a 14-year-old Mile High Karate brown belt who fended off a threat, in the Rocky Mountain News in April 2006; a class teaching airline passengers self-defense, covered in the Rocky Mountain News and in Salt Lake City in August 2006; students who helped grant an ailing Utah girl’s Disney wish, in The Salt Lake Tribune; “From Cerebral Palsy to Black Belt” in Tae Kwon Do Times; and “A Symbol of Hope” by Karen Eden in Black Belt magazine. The original clippings are listed in the archive. Documented
The Children’s Hospital Foundation was another long-running cause, and a Mile High Karate school in Dunkirk, Maryland, raised $500 for Children’s Hospital in 2006.
The Mile High Karate Classic and NASKA
In 1989 Stephen Oliver founded the Mile High Karate Classic, a national open tournament in Denver that held NASKA World Tour status, the highest designation in North American sport karate, every year from 1989 to 1999. Documented
The Classic drew competitors from all 50 states, Canada, Mexico, Guatemala and Haiti. Its first grand champions were Charlie Lee in forms and Steve “Nasty” Anderson in sparring. Over the decade its fields included Christine Bannon-Rodrigues, Chris Casamassa, Kevin Thompson, Mike Chaturantabut, Jon Valera, Hakim Alston and Garry Waugh, and its night finals tracked the sport’s move from classic point fighting to the extreme and musical forms of the late 1990s.
The first Classics were held at the DoubleTree Hotel Denver, 3203 Quebec Street. When the tournament outgrew the space it moved downtown to the Adam’s Mark Hotel, 1550 Court Place, at the eastern end of the 16th Street Mall, and one year the finals moved to the Paramount Theatre, a couple of blocks away. Friday nights brought seminars, including sparring taught by Grand Master Jeff Smith and forms taught by World Forms Champion Charlie Lee.
Over the same eleven years Oliver served on NASKA’s Board of Directors and executive committee and as its National Sanctioning Director, responsible for rating World Tour and national tournaments. Black & Blue Productions filmed the 1997 Classic, and those clips are still online.
The Classic ended after 1999. In Oliver’s own account it was profitable at its peak, netting $30,000 to $50,000, but not worth the time, travel and opportunity cost of staying on the circuit. Oliver’s account
Licensing, franchising and expansion
Mile High Karate moved through several ownership models: company-operated schools, then independently owned schools licensed to use its name and system, then franchises beginning with its first franchisee in August 1998, international franchising from 2000, and a national franchise and regional-developer program by 2006–2007. Documented
- 1983Company-operated model: the Lakewood school and the first Denver-area locations.
- 1980s–1990sMulti-school operation with managers developed from within. By 1999 the website stated that all locations were “independently owned and operated by Colorado corporations that are licensees of Stephen Oliver’s Mile High Karate, Inc.”
- August 1998Robert Lewis joins as Mile High Karate’s first franchisee. In the 2007 welcome booklet he wrote: “I joined the Mile High Karate organization as their first Franchisee in August of 1998, and have never regretted the decision.”
- 2000Mile High Karate begins franchising internationally. A Canadian website, MileHighKarate.ca, appears in its materials, and schools later open in New Zealand and Australia.
- Early 2000sExisting independent martial arts schools convert to Mile High Karate. The 2007 booklet notes that some of “the top martial arts schools in North America” were asking to join.
- May 2002Parker and Thornton are announced as the newest Colorado locations.
- 2006–2007A national franchise program recruits new owners through MileHighFranchise.com, with a “Master Franchise” and Regional Developer role for well-capitalized operators to find, train and support franchisees in their area.
What a Mile High Karate franchisee received
The 2007 franchise section of the welcome booklet lists the support system in detail, and it reads as an inventory of what Mile High Karate had learned running its own schools: an intensive new-owner bootcamp with operations manuals and video and audio training; weekly school-operator and instructor meetings in many regions; weekly Black Belt and instructor classes; monthly instructor teleseminars with Grand Master Jeff Smith and the Senior Master Instructors; and marketing and sales bootcamps twice a year. Documented
Behind the classroom sat the business system: regional, national and international advertising; public relations; a 24/7 live-answer call center for prospect calls; a toll-free number that routed callers to the nearest school; prospect websites at FreeKarate.com and SuccessfulKids.com; automated follow-up by phone, email and mail; student billing and payment follow-up; automated birthday, “We Missed You in Class” and “Pass-A-Friend” cards; and complete accounting, from P&L and balance sheet to payroll and taxes.
Who became an owner
The booklet describes the typical new owner as an individual or family, often with their own children as Mile High Karate students, who wanted to leave another career and become educators. Owners were not required to be Black Belts; the bootcamp trained them in both martial arts and school operations, and Mile High Karate either certified them as teachers or helped them find Black Belt staff. Daphne and Larry Bowser, franchisees, wrote that opening their school “was a family decision” and “the most rewarding career move we have ever made.” Documented
Franchisees also received international rank recognition, annual Black Belt retreat weekends for their students, regional intramural tournaments and participation in Building Successful Kids. The Mile High Karate name was, by the booklet’s account, a federally registered trademark in the United States and Canada.
Where Mile High Karate has taught
Mile High Karate’s own materials name schools in more than fifteen U.S. states and in New Zealand and Australia. These are historical locations. Except for Thornton, none of them is a current Mile High Karate school, and most were independently owned and operated by licensees or franchisees. Documented
Colorado
Lakewood (Kipling and Jewell), Arvada, Aurora, Arapahoe Village (Centennial), Boulder, Westminster (11225 Decatur Street), Thornton (3977–3979 E. 120th Avenue), Parker (Parker Pavilions, 11153 S. Parker Road) and South Jefferson County (5005 S. Kipling, Littleton), with other Mile High Karate materials also naming Englewood, Lafayette, Denver and Highland.
The national school locator
A Mile High Karate school locator preserved from the franchise era lists schools in Mobile, Alabama; Tucson, Arizona; Los Banos, Monrovia, Manhattan Beach, Madera and Fresno, California; Bear and Middletown, Delaware; Orange City and three Miami-area locations, Florida; Douglasville, Georgia; Dodge City, Kansas; Shreveport, Louisiana; Dunkirk, Maryland; Salem, New Hampshire; Centerville, Ohio; Erie, Pennsylvania; Mission, Texas; and Sterling, Virginia. Press coverage from 2006 adds Utah.
International
The same locator lists Tauranga, New Zealand, and West Burleigh, Queensland, Australia, and Mile High Karate’s 2007 materials carry a Canadian website. Families from the Tauranga school are among those quoted on Mile High Karate’s reviews and testimonials page.
Research note: dates for each location
The locator is undated and records a single moment. Opening and closing dates for individual schools are still being documented, and Mile High Karate does not count projected franchise territories as schools. If you trained at a former location and have records or photographs, please get in touch.
Why this matters
A national map of schools built from one Lakewood location is the clearest evidence that the Mile High Karate system could be taught to other owners. It is also the direct background to the next chapter.
Teaching other school owners
Stephen Oliver has coached martial arts school owners since 1985, while Mile High Karate was still opening its first six locations. That work grew out of running Mile High Karate, and it continues today through a separate organization, Martial Arts Wealth Mastery. Documented
In 1985, according to his own account, Mile High Karate became the first “Success Story” feature in Century Martial Arts’ client newsletter, with a follow-up the next year on the organization’s expansion. Oliver’s account In April 1987 he became one of the nine members of the original Board of Directors of the Educational Funding Company (EFC), the billing and school-services company used by martial arts schools across North America. He served on that board until 2001 and became EFC’s leading keynote speaker and seminar leader, teaching school operations and teaching methods to owners across North America. Documented
Over the same period he was recognized by the U.S. Martial Arts Association as its number-one multi-school operator and inducted into its Hall of Fame in 2000, and named one of the top 200 school operators by Andrews International, according to Mile High Karate’s 2007 materials. In 1992 he completed an Executive MBA through the Executive Program at the Daniels College of Business, University of Denver, and he later served on the university’s Entrepreneurship and Venture Management Board. Documented
In 1999 he wrote Extraordinary Marketing. In 2000 he formally founded his coaching organization as Stephen Oliver’s Inner Circle, later rebranded Martial Arts Wealth Mastery: one continuous body of work that began in 1985. In 2007 he acquired NAPMA, the National Association of Professional Martial Artists, and became Publisher of Martial Arts Professional magazine. He is CEO and Chairman of NAPMA. Documented
- 1985Begins coaching other school owners
- 1987Original EFC Board of Directors (April)
- 1989NASKA Board and National Sanctioning Director
- 1992Executive MBA, University of Denver
- 1999Extraordinary Marketing
- 2000Stephen Oliver’s Inner Circle, later Martial Arts Wealth Mastery
- 2007Acquires NAPMA; Publisher, Martial Arts Professional
The fuller account of this part of his career is on StephenCOliver.com and in the founder biography.
Grand Master Jeff Smith and Mile High Karate
Grand Master Jeff Smith, 10th Degree Black Belt, is Mile High Karate’s Chief of Instruction, responsible for instructor training, Black Belt testing and development, and curriculum oversight. Documented
Smith won the Professional Karate Association World Light-Heavyweight Championship on September 14, 1974, at the Los Angeles Sports Arena, and on October 1, 1975, defeated Karriem Allah at the Capital Centre near Washington on the closed-circuit card for Ali–Frazier, the “Thrilla in Manila.” He coached the World Champion United States Karate Team, is a member of the Black Belt Hall of Fame and was the first recipient of the Bruce Lee Award.
His connection to Stephen Oliver runs back to the Jhoon Rhee Institute in 1976. His formal leadership role at Mile High Karate came decades later. The 2007 welcome booklet identified him as Mile High Karate’s Chief Operations Officer and Chief of Instruction, and its franchise program carried his name in monthly instructor teleseminars. He promoted Oliver to 7th Degree in 2001 and to 8th Degree in 2006; the photograph of that 2006 promotion appeared in the booklet. In April 2026 Smith promoted Oliver to 10th Degree Black Belt, and in August 2026 Oliver was inducted into the Official Taekwondo Hall of Fame (Lifetime Achievement). Documented
More on Grand Master Smith: Grand Master Jeff Smith.
Still teaching Colorado families
Mile High Karate still operates in Colorado. Its school is Mile High Karate Thornton, 3979 E 120th Ave, Thornton, CO 80233, (303) 280-1839, owned and operated by Amanda and Stephen Christensen.
Thornton was announced as one of Mile High Karate’s newest locations in May 2002, and the Christensens have led Mile High Karate in the Thornton and Westminster area since 2003. The school teaches preschool martial arts, karate for kids, teens, adults and families, and bully prevention, and serves Thornton, Northglenn, Brighton, Westminster and the north Denver metro.
The organization’s older systems are still in daily use there: the Black Belt as each child’s long-term goal, about 48 months to reach it, a Black Belt testing retreat in Breckenridge, intramural tournaments, school partnerships, and a student body in which well over 30 percent of active students are Black Belts. Grand Master Stephen Oliver remains Founder and CEO of Mile High Karate, and Grand Master Jeff Smith remains its Chief of Instruction. Families describe the experience in more than 300 reviews and testimonials on the Mile High Karate reviews page.
Mile High Karate in print: advertisements over the years
Mile High Karate’s own advertising is one of the best surviving records of where its schools were and when. These brochures, newspaper advertisements and flyers run from the first Lakewood brochure of 1983 to the FreeKarate.com era of the early 2000s. Documented
Read in order, they trace the organization’s growth: five Denver-area schools by 1987; new “super schools” in Aurora in 1990 and in Denver’s Cherry Creek/Glendale area in August 1993; the 10 Year Anniversary in September 1993; Highlands Ranch in the mid-1990s; and, by the early 2000s, independently owned Colorado schools from Lakewood to Thornton and Boulder, a franchise offer and a weekly Mile High Karate television show. The same themes appear throughout: confidence, discipline, better grades, family programs and the Black Belt as each child’s goal. Offers and prices shown are historical. Click any image to enlarge it.
Have a Mile High Karate advertisement, flyer or Yellow Pages listing not shown here? Please call (303) 280-1839 so it can be added to the archive.
Mile High Karate, 1969–2026
- 1956Jhoon Rhee begins teaching Korean martial arts professionally in Texas
- 1962Jhoon Rhee founds the Jhoon Rhee Institute of Tae Kwon Do in Washington, D.C.
- 1969Stephen Oliver begins training at the Jhoon Rhee Institute branch in Tulsa, Oklahoma, under Bob Olinghouse and Gran Moulder
- 1974Oliver begins teaching
- 1975Oliver opens his own school, under Jhoon Rhee, at age 15
- 1976Trains at Jhoon Rhee Institute headquarters with Jeff Smith, Larry Carnahan and John Chung
- August 19781st Degree Black Belt from Grand Master Jhoon Rhee, Washington, D.C.
- 1978–1980University of Tulsa, University Scholar and National Merit Finalist
- 1980–1982Head instructor, then branch manager, Jhoon Rhee Institute, while at Georgetown University
- 1982A.B. cum laude, International Economics, Georgetown University
- May 1983Mile High Karate incorporated
- August 6, 1983First day of operations: Mile High Karate opens in Lakewood, Colorado, with $10,000; 150+ students in 90 days
- By February 1985Five Mile High Karate schools, within 18 months of the founding
- Founder’s 25th birthday2,500+ active students and more than $1,700,000 in annual revenue
- 1985Oliver begins coaching other martial arts school owners
- By August 1986Six schools, within 36 months of the founding; the organization later passes 3,500 students
- April 1987Oliver joins the original Board of Directors of the Educational Funding Company (served until 2001)
- Late 1980sQuarterly intramural tournaments for 500 to 800 Mile High Karate students
- 1989First Mile High Karate Classic, with NASKA World Tour status; Oliver joins NASKA’s Board as National Sanctioning Director
- March 7, 1992Mile High Karate Classic, NASKA “AAA” Circuit, Denver
- 1992Oliver completes his Executive MBA, Daniels College of Business, University of Denver
- March 12, 1994Mile High Karate Classic, NASKA “AAA” Circuit, Denver
- 1994Jhoon Rhee promotes Oliver to 6th Degree Black Belt
- 1997Black & Blue Productions films the Classic’s eliminations and night finals
- August 1998Robert Lewis becomes Mile High Karate’s first franchisee
- 1999The last Mile High Karate Classic; Mile High Karate’s first website launches; Oliver writes Extraordinary Marketing
- 2000International franchising begins; Oliver founds Stephen Oliver’s Inner Circle, later Martial Arts Wealth Mastery; U.S. Martial Arts Association Hall of Fame
- 2001Jeff Smith promotes Oliver to 7th Degree; Oliver leaves the EFC board
- May 2002Parker and Thornton announced as the newest Mile High Karate locations
- 2003Amanda and Stephen Christensen begin leading Mile High Karate in Thornton and Westminster; “Secrets of the Last Samurai” reaches 19,732 Colorado elementary students
- 2006Jeff Smith and Joe Corley promote Oliver to 8th Degree; Mile High Karate schools in Black Belt, Tae Kwon Do Times, the Rocky Mountain News and The Salt Lake Tribune
- 2006–2007National franchise and regional-developer program; the 2007 welcome booklet
- 2007Oliver acquires NAPMA and becomes Publisher of Martial Arts Professional magazine
- 2015Oliver promoted to 9th Degree by Jeff Smith, Bill Wallace, Pat Burleson and Joe Corley
- April 2026Jeff Smith promotes Oliver to 10th Degree Black Belt
- August 15, 2026Oliver inducted into the Official Taekwondo Hall of Fame, Lifetime Achievement, Jersey City
- 202643 years of Mile High Karate in Colorado; the Thornton school continues
What Mile High Karate developed, adapted and expanded
Mile High Karate does not claim to have invented every practice it used. The table below separates what it developed from what it adapted or expanded, and it uses “first” only where a document supports it.
| Practice | How Mile High Karate’s role is best described |
|---|---|
| Restoring the traditional forms to a Jhoon Rhee curriculum | Adapted. Jhoon Rhee’s own schools had dropped the traditional hyungs; Mile High Karate reinstated them. |
| Character curriculum tied to rank (the nine qualities of a Black Belt) | Developed and expanded from Jhoon Rhee’s personal-development emphasis into the Building Successful Kids program. |
| Promotion tied to school grades and parent/teacher sign-off | Documented early use in Mile High Karate’s own testing requirements. |
| Developing instructors and managers from within to open new schools | Developed as the operating model behind six schools in 36 months. |
| Intramural tournaments at open-tournament scale | Expanded: 500 to 800 students a quarter by the late 1980s; well over 120 at Thornton. |
| A franchised martial arts school system with centralized billing, accounting, call center and follow-up | Developed for Mile High Karate franchisees, documented in 2007. |
| Teaching these systems to other school owners | Later taught by Stephen Oliver from 1985, through EFC and then Martial Arts Wealth Mastery. |
Historical research notes
Where the record is incomplete or sources disagree, Mile High Karate says so. These are the questions raised in researching this history, with the answer used on this site. Items marked settled have been confirmed by Stephen Oliver.
Five schools within about 18 months and six within 36 months. One later account said 30 months for the sixth; Stephen Oliver confirms 36.
Mile High Karate was incorporated in May 1983, which is the May 1, 1983, start date shown on its Better Business Bureau listing. August 6, 1983, was its first day of operations, the opening of the Lakewood school, and is the founding date used on this site.
Mile High Karate’s 1983 brochure confirms the first school at Kipling and Jewell, 10815-G West Jewell, Lakewood; the Better Business Bureau listing records the same address. See the advertisement archive.
A 1999 biography gives 1,500 students at eighteen months; later records give 2,500+ by the founder’s 25th birthday and then 3,500+. These describe different moments and are not in conflict.
There are nine, as the 1999 history says: nine of the ten qualities in Denis Waitley’s The Psychology of Winning, all except Positive Self-Dimension. The 2007 booklet’s reference to “eight success skills and attitudes” is superseded.
Promoted in 2015 by Jeff Smith, Bill Wallace, Pat Burleson and Joe Corley.
Thornton was announced as a new location in May 2002; the Christensens have led it since 2003. Both dates are correct for what they describe.
Mile High Karate documents from 1999 to 2007 show the ranks held then (for example, Oliver as 8th Degree in the 2007 booklet). They are preserved unchanged in the archive; current ranks are on this page.
Frequently asked questions about Mile High Karate’s history
- Who founded Mile High Karate?Stephen Oliver founded Mile High Karate in Lakewood, Colorado, on August 6, 1983. He is now Grand Master Stephen Oliver, a 10th Degree Black Belt, and remains its Founder and CEO.
- When was Mile High Karate founded?August 6, 1983, in Lakewood, Colorado. The first school passed 150 students in its first 90 days.
- Where was the first Mile High Karate school?In Lakewood, Colorado, at Kipling Street and Jewell Avenue, west of Denver.
- How many schools did Mile High Karate open at first?Five within 18 months of its founding and six within 36 months, in Lakewood, Arvada (two), Aurora, Arapahoe Village and Boulder.
- Who taught Stephen Oliver martial arts?He began in 1969 in Tulsa, Oklahoma, under Jhoon Rhee Institute Black Belts Bob Olinghouse and Gran Moulder, trained at Jhoon Rhee headquarters in Washington in 1976 and 1978, and received his 1st Degree Black Belt from Grand Master Jhoon Rhee in August 1978. Jhoon Rhee awarded his ranks through 6th Degree; Grand Master Jeff Smith promoted him from 7th through 10th Degree.
- What martial art does Mile High Karate teach?American Freestyle, which developed from Jhoon Rhee Tae Kwon Do. It combines Korean kicking, the traditional forms, practical self-defense and a character-development curriculum, with weapons, boxing, kickboxing and grappling at advanced levels.
- Who is Jeff Smith?Grand Master Jeff Smith is a 10th Degree Black Belt, the 1974 PKA World Light-Heavyweight Champion and Mile High Karate’s Chief of Instruction, responsible for instructor training, Black Belt testing and curriculum.
- What was the Mile High Karate Classic?A national open tournament Stephen Oliver founded and promoted in Denver from 1989 to 1999. It held NASKA World Tour status every year and drew competitors from all 50 states, Canada, Mexico, Guatemala and Haiti.
- How many Black Belts has Mile High Karate promoted?More than 1,000, ranging in age from 5 to 76. The typical path to Black Belt takes about 48 months.
- Did Mile High Karate franchise its schools?Yes. Its first franchisee, Robert Lewis, joined in August 1998, international franchising began in 2000, and by 2006–2007 it ran a national franchise and regional-developer program. Schools operated in more than fifteen U.S. states and in New Zealand and Australia.
- Is Mile High Karate still operating?Yes. Mile High Karate Thornton, 3979 E 120th Ave, Thornton, CO 80233, (303) 280-1839, is owned and operated by Amanda and Stephen Christensen.
- Is Martial Arts Wealth Mastery part of Mile High Karate?No. They are separate organizations. Mile High Karate is the martial arts school organization Stephen Oliver founded in 1983. Martial Arts Wealth Mastery is his coaching and consulting organization for martial arts school owners, BJJ academies and MMA gyms, founded in 2000 as Stephen Oliver’s Inner Circle.
Sources
Documented Mile High Karate records
- Welcome to Mile High Karate, new-student and franchise booklet, January 2007 (archive)
- “The History and Evolution of our Martial Arts Style,” Mile High Karate website, 1999
- “Background Information,” Mile High Karate website, 1999–2006
- Stephen Oliver biography, Mile High Karate founding members page, 1999–2006
- Mile High Karate school locator, franchise era
- “Mile High Karate in the News,” press page, 2002–2007
Independent Third-party records
- Better Business Bureau: Mile High Karate, Lakewood
- U.S. trademark filings: MILE HIGH KARATE and STEPHEN OLIVER’S MILE HIGH KARATE (Justia)
- Black Belt, Tae Kwon Do Times, Rocky Mountain News, The Salt Lake Tribune, 2006–2007 (listed in the archive)
- Black & Blue Productions, 1997 Mile High Karate Classic video
Oliver’s account and related writing
- Stephen Oliver’s Mile High Karate Background Information, Martial Arts Professional
- Stephen Oliver’s NASKA Decade: The Mile High Karate Classic, 1989–1999, Martial Arts Professional (Stephen Oliver is the magazine’s publisher)
- Stephen Oliver, “Martial Arts Tournaments and Other Diversions From a Business Perspective,” 2001
- StephenCOliver.com, full biography
Related pages
Historical research last reviewed: September 2026.
Mile High Karate Thornton
Forty-three years after the first class in Lakewood, Mile High Karate still teaches children, adults and families in Colorado.
(303) 280-18393979 E 120th Ave, Thornton, CO 80233
© 1983–2026 Mile High Karate, LLC and Stephen Oliver – All Rights Reserved. Mile High Karate® is owned by Mile High Karate, LLC, Stephen Oliver – Founder, CEO.
The Black Belt Retreat
Since the mid-1980s, Mile High Karate Black Belt testing has ended with a retreat in the Colorado mountains, first semi-annual and later annual, held at SilverCreek and later in Keystone, Breckenridge and Estes Park. Read The Mile High Karate Black Belt Retreat for its history, locations and guests, including Grand Master Jhoon Rhee, Bill “Superfoot” Wallace and Joe Lewis. Every year since 1990, new Black Belts have then received their belts on stage at the Black Belt Extravaganza, Mile High Karate’s annual graduation show and awards night.
The Intramural Tournaments
Since 1985, Mile High Karate has held its own in-house Intramural Tournaments, required on the path to Black Belt and the forerunner of the Mile High Karate Classic. By the late 1980s they drew 500 to 800 students a quarter, and the 125th was held on September 26, 2026. Read Mile High Karate Intramural Tournaments, 1985–Present for the full history.