Kathy Roehler always wanted to be a professional model, even though she has been unable to walk without crutches since contracting spinal meningitis as an infant. Now 21, the blond, green-eyed accounting clerk from Lambertville, N.J. is well on her way to achieving her dream. Two years ago, while visiting New York City to watch a taping of the David Letter-man show, Roehler was being wheeled around Rockefeller Center when a bushy-haired gentleman breezed past. "Hi, cutie," he said. "What do you need those guys for? I could push you forever." Roehler was shocked to recognize NBC movie critic Gene Shalit, who later helped arrange for her to pose for Seventeen magazine. That was followed by several TV talk-show appearances and a letter of encouragement from her idol, modeling superstar Christie Brinkley. "Kathy," says Brinkley, "has sheer energy and enthusiasm and is the person I would most like to see succeed." Roehler, whose mother and stepfather are both college professors, recently signed with the Mary Ellen White talent agency. A swimmer and weight lifter, Roehler has not given up trying to walk and can now take up to eight steps unassisted. "I used to feel cheated, but I don't anymore," she says. "I know that if I want anything bad enough, I can get it."
David Stewart, a 17-year-old nicknamed the Computer Kid, is giving England's professional horse-racing touts a real run for their money. With the assistance of his Sinclair Spectrum home computer, Stewart has a 66 percent success rate this season forecasting race winners for the Sun, London's largest-selling newspaper, and 10 regional BBC radio stations. "It's the programming that counts," says Stewart, who supplies his computer with vital statistics on 10,000 horses, along with information about jockeys, trainers and track conditions. Growing up in Darlington, England, Stewart often went to the races on weekends with his father, Ken, an engineer, and his mother, Brenda, a housewife. A serious student who is busy preparing for his upcoming university entrance exams when he is not touting horse races, Stewart is still undecided whether he wants to become a scientist or a TV racing journalist. In the meantime, though he has picked winners with odds as high as 33 to 1, Stewart limits himself to an occasional small wager, contentedly banking most of the modest salary he receives for his media tips. Is the computer infallible? "Sometimes the computer and I disagree," he says. "But I would never go against it—at least not in the newspaper or on radio."
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