Dropping down into Angela Ruggiero’s life is like falling into a whirlwind. Something is happening every minute.

At one time the best defenseman in women’s hockey, the 2004 Harvard graduate is a four-time Olympian and a four-time world champion who piled up enough athletic accomplishments in her 16-year career to stock the shelves of an entire team. Ruggiero was 15 when she joined the US team, and an 18-year-old high school senior when the US won gold in Nagano; she played 256 games for the US, more than any player in the sport’s history. Now 33 and retired from hockey, she’s back at Harvard, studying for her master’s at the business school. The California native considers Boston home.