Her life has been a saga that the Enquirer would love to know about, but to Judi N. it´s all part of the wreckage of the past that she´s still learning to accept after 38 years in Alcoholics Anonymous.

Judi joined the fellowship on March 4, 1970, but like they say, it ain´t over till it´s over. She´d had two marriages by then, and after achieving sobriety, went through four more. At 67, she´s now "joyfully single" and living by herself in Seattle, but that´s not to say that situation will prevail. "A couple of months ago, she says, I fell majorly in lust , but I´ve since fallen out."

Since joining the Seventh Day Adventist Church, Judi has learned that "sex outside of marriage is a sin," but so is eating shellfish, and she still does, so who knows what the future holds?

Judi was led into sobriety by a musician she met while working as a hat check girl. He came down from the bandstand to chat. When a round of drinks arrived, Judi noticed he was having coffee. Through him, she met a woman who also drank coffee instead of booze, and it turned out both of them were in A.A. "My mind was racing," Judi said. "Maybe that was my problem. Maybe I wasn´t crazy after all. It was the first chink in my armor."

Still working the club scene, she met another musician who was also sober. "Those two 12-Stepped me into A.A.," she said. Not immediately, though. Of the latter, she said "I was his playmate for awhile till we drifted apart. Well, not exactly drifted. I realized I had a drinking problem, but he told me to go to hell one night when I got drunk. I went home and crashed on the couch, but when I came to, I called him and said I was ready to get help.

"He found a very conservative, middle class woman to come to see me. She brought me the Big Book and the 12 x 12 and asked me to go to a meeting. I stalled for few days, but I never drank after that. My first meeting was in Medina ´cause she wanted me to see A.A. at its buttoned-down best."

Two weeks later, she was out on her first 12-Step call, on Queen Anne, and took her prospect to Fremont Hall when it was still in Fremont. She became a regular there and came to know many of Seattle´s famous oldtimers like Big Pete, Big Harold and Herb W. "Those were good folks," She also met her third husband there. Judi said. Before long, she was the sandwich maker for the Fremont Tuesday lunch. The fellowship gave her $5 to spend any way she wanted on a crowd that could number from 10 to 30.

Back to the beginning: Judy had a blackout drunk when she was 15. She was "horribly guilty" the next day, and didn´t drink much again till she met a girl from a Catholic girls´ school and discovered, to her great surprise, that there was a lot of drinking at that Catholic girls´ school. "I did my share, more than my share. That´s how I´ve always lived, doing more than my share. But I liked it there. There were no boys to distract us and we wore uniforms so there was no clothing competition. I was happy there even though I felt like I didn´t belong. I don´t remember ever really having any friends, there or anywhere. That hasn´t really changed to this day."

But she was invited to a graduation party, and her dad loaned her the family car. "I got home way late." Question: driving drunk? "Of course. My mother was waiting for me, asleep in my bed. I walked into the dark bedroom, dropped a load of books on my desk and this voice said, ´Turn on the light.´ We went on from there. My mother was only five feet tall, but she was tough as nails."

That wasn´t Judi´s first experience with a vehicle. When she was 14, she "borrowed" a truck, replete with multiple gears and a stick shift, and went to visit her boyfriend. She´d never driven before, but says she got home without mishap that time.

In spite of all, Judi got her diploma in 1958 and enrolled at the University of Washington, where she drank herself out the door in a year. She never went back. While she was there, though, she had the kind of experience with three fraternity boys which today would have landed the boys in jail. "It was unpleasant, but the worst of it was the whole loss of me," Judi said.

Judi was working as a nanny in Wenatchee when she met her first husband. That marriage produced a son and a daughter in the four years it lasted. The couple was living in a mobile home in The Dalles, Oregon, when they played a scene right out of the Old Testament. Judi´s boss sent her husband off to a job in California and she became involved with the boss. Remember David and Bathsheba and her husband Uriah? King David sent the faithful Uriah off to war to be killed. In this case, the husband survived but the marriage didn´t. ."Oh, that was ugly. I knew it was wrong, but what the hell?"

That affair didn´t last. Judi was living the high life in her mobile home. "I was out drinkin´ and dancin´ at a local honkytonk. While I was gone, my son let my daughter out of her crib. She was hardly able to walk, she was so little, but somehow she got outside in the rain and a neighbor called Child Protective Services." As a result, the children were placed in foster homes for awhile, but Judi eventually regained custody.

When Judi´s mother found out what was going on, she brought her daughter and grandchildren back to Seattle.

"I never appreciated my mom, but she was always there for me when I needed her," Judi said.

Back in Seattle, she sought out a mental health counselor who turned out to know nothing about alcoholism, "so that kept me drinking another three years." She went to work as a draftsman, met someone at work, married him a year later, met another married man and got her second divorce.

"Turbulent days, my, my," Judi says now. "I was just being my little floozy self. It´s all I knew how to do. The children were with babysitters. I had no maternal instinct.

"I couldn´t sleep, so I swallowed 29 anti-histamines and two tranquilizers, and ended up in the mental health ward at Group Health. It was frightful. The next day, I was home, but bugs were crawling all over me" [in her imagination.] Then came her encounter with the musician and her finding her way to sobriety. Sobriety also led to her third husband, via Fremont. That lasted two years and resulted in another child, a son.

No. 3 husband was followed by numbers 4 and 5 (the same man), and ultimately by number 6. Of the latter, Judi says "That´s also over. Enough said about that."

With sobriety, Judi has been giving back to A.A. in many ways besides making lunch at Old Fremont. At one point, she started Bare Facts, a clothing optional meeting. She answers phones at the Intergroup office every Tuesday afternoon, and also has a shift on Nightwatch, the program that provides phone coverage from home when the office is closed.

In the midst of all this, she has battled life-threatening illness. It was in 1991. She was living in the country, 25 miles north of Spokane, when she suddenly collapsed. She had suffered a cerebral hemorrhage. She has no memory of what happened after that, but knows she had major surgery to relieve the pressure on her brain and then spent many months in rehabilitation facilities. She´s fine now, but says "I´m not as sharp as I used to be." (There´s no sign of that to the observer.)

Judi´s home group is Boiled Owl, where she goes weekly to reinforce her serenity.

"A.A. is a God-given, marvelous organization. There´s one thing I´ve been able to do consistently in my life, and that´s to stay sober, for 38 years now. Thanks to God and to A.A."

Interviewed and written by Dick S.