OPPORTUNITY KNOCKS

"Opportunity" wasn't the word Laurette Koellner would have used at the time. Her father, a newly retired New York City firefighter, had decided to uproot his family and move south while Koellner was in the middle of her senior year at high school and dating her husband-to-be. The move also would mean leaving her hometown of Brooklyn, filled with family and long-time friends. Where was this place in Florida anyway, called ...

... Merritt Island: Home of Cape Canaveral Air Force Station and Kennedy Space Center; hard by Patrick Air Force Base and the launch operations of major aerospace contractors Boeing, Lockheed, and McDonnell Douglas.

After finishing high school in Florida, Koellner worked at secretarial jobs, steadily moving up to a Legal Secretary position. Always interested in business and management, she attended college at night to earn a Bachelor of Science degree in Business Management.

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Power to the pitcher

After playing organized baseball since he was 5 years old, Frank Ruscin will get a second chance to fulfill a childhood dream when he takes the field as a pitcher for the first Greek Olympic baseball team in the 2004 Summer Games.

As the host nation, Greece can enter a team in any sport without prequalification. So, Major League Baseball's Baltimore Orioles and the Greek government teamed up to create the Hellenic Amateur Baseball Federation to help establish baseball in the country and assemble a team for the Olympics.

Ruscin, a right-handed power pitcher and avionics engineer on the V-22 program at Boeing Integrated Defense Systems in Philadelphia, was among 45 players chosen from more than 800 international athletes who auditioned for the team. Since most Greek baseball players have not yet honed the skills needed to field a competitive team, the Greek government and the International Olympic Committee opened the tryouts to anyone of Greek descent who had at least one grandparent born in Greece.

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Mystery's his game

By day, Gregg Olsen is a hardworking writer for Shared Services Writing & Editing Resources. In his off hours, Olsen is a New York Times best-selling author of true-crime books.

Last month, St. Martin's Press reprinted Olsen's first paperback, Abandoned Prayers, and it appeared seventh on the best-sellers list.

With this second printing, there are about a half-million copies of Abandoned Prayers in print. The 400-page book was originally published in 1990 and sold extremely well at that time, Olsen said. Renewed interest brought about the second printing this year—and a surprise national bestseller.

The book details the 1985 death of 9-year-old Danny Stutzman and the arrest and conviction of his Amish father, Eli Stutzman.

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