Young Woman

THIS was supposed to be a simple column about a worthwhile county effort to spread the word of health prevention in Anne Arundel churches. But its never that simple when you visit a church on a brilliant Sunday morning. You may get more than you expect. Health prevention was present, as advertised, at Wayman Good Hope African Methodist Episcopal Church. Ill get to that in a moment. But physical health wasnt the only thing in the church bulletin. The service also delivered medicine for the mind -- not to mention the soul.

M y little girl was born within a week of Christmas and, believe you me, conceiving one to hatch on target like that is no simple task. It takes planning and biotechnology, and the male is force-fed raw oysters, and the female must hang upside down in a dark room for hours. I was 55 at the time and remember it well. This bonus baby was the last grandchild in my family, a last attempt to breed some frivolity and high-spiritedness into our somber Anglo line, and we seem to have succeeded.

Anne Arundel County and Baltimore police began a door-to-door search yesterday for the woman they believe was the last person to see a 26-year-old Glen Burnie pharmacist before she was abducted and killed last week. Police say they believe the woman -- who called 911 in Glen Burnie but did not identify herself -- saw Yvette A. Beakes being attacked by four young men who rammed into the young woman's car with a van Aug. 8 as she returned to her townhouse. Beakes was carjacked and held hostage as the men used her automated teller machine card at banks in the Baltimore area.

I WENT to a television station intending to sell something. It was a book, if you must know. "Take him to makeup," commanded a young woman. Her manner made it clear she wanted nothing to do with me, or my book, until I had been taken to makeup.It was another young woman who took me there. This one seemed to be an apprentice, one of those poor young college graduates who, having left their parents bankrupted by tuition, must start at the bottom by taking people like me to makeup.We arrived at makeup without incident.

"IJUST WANT to get money. That's all. I don't even know what I want to be, I just want to get money.''The young woman, a student in Diane Young's African-American studies class at Patterson High School, was responding to my request that the students tell me what they want to be doing five years from now.I had hoped to get them to open up and reveal their true aspirations.Instead I mostly got the same responses some of them have, like a reflex, been giving to that question since first grade -- nurse, lawyer, policeman.

Returning to her native Afghanistan, says Fahima Vorgetts, is "frustrating, heartbreaking and overwhelming." Yet last weekend, she embarked on another monthlong journey taking her from her blue-shingled house in Arnold in Anne Arundel County to Kabul, the ancient capital city, and the surrounding countryside. In recent years, she has made it her mission to build schools for girls in the scarred land she left as a political exile nearly 30 years ago. Vorgetts' activism is born out of tragedy.

For years, my colleague Dan Rodricks has entertained us with columns entitled "Guilty - but mostly stupid." They're tales of criminals who just don't get it, like the bank robber who scribbles a holdup note on the back of his business card. Today I offer my own tale of criminal stupidity in the digital age - and the power that access to information holds to save us from terrible mistakes.

WASHINGTON -- With a newly tinted blond mane, an extra coat of lip gloss and an attitude that said anything but "I'm sorry," Linda R. Tripp burst back on the public scene yesterday in a campaign designed to recast her image into something other than the woman America loves to loathe.Just as America was beginning to forget her, on the very day the Senate was formally closing the scandal she helped deliver, Tripp took her case to the people. The woman whose secret taping of Monica Lewinsky led to 13 months of political upheaval culminating in President Clinton's impeachment trial vowed yesterday that she would do it all over again.

When my daughter was completing her drivers' education course, I asked if the instructors had taught the students to change a tire or recognize trouble under the hood. She said, yes, and I said, good. "Now forget everything you learned because I never want you to use any of that stuff," I said. "If a tire blows or the engine smokes, I want you to get safely to the side of the road, lock your doors, turn on your flashers and call your Daddy, your brother, your Uncle Steve or the police.

She has no name. She's known only as 05-730560. "This is everything we've got," said Anne Arundel County Police Detective John Gajda, plunking down a plastic box that holds folders of what's known about the young woman with reddish brown hair — which isn't much — and her investigation. Gajda keeps the box at his desk in Crownsville, 17 miles from where children found her decomposing body at the northern tip of the county five and a half years ago. The woman's remains are kept in the Office of the Chief Medical Examiner in Baltimore.