Blazing a path less traveled.

"IF YOU DO WHAT YOU love, you'll never work a day in your life." So the saying goes, and anyone who has ever loved--or hated--their job can surely attest to its truth.

While no one ever promised that making a living would be fun, exciting or even remotely interesting, the fact is, having a career that you love enhances your life immeasurably. And if what you do also makes for good conversation, you're luckier still.

We found four such fortunate individuals. They each have let their deepest interests guide their careers, in spite of those who might find their choices odd, frivolous or worse. Although two of the four earn six-figure salaries, none of them cites income as a career determinant. Nor status. Nor benefits packages. Nor fancy perks or advancement potential.

Instead, their eyes are firmly fixed on doing what they love, now and always. They also strive to be the best they can be within those roles, embracing their responsibilities with a striking degree of gusto and commitment. In so doing, they transcend "work" and all that such a mundane word implies.

THE GREATEST JOB ON EARTH?

Eric Moore is actually living out the quintessential childhood fantasy of running away to join the circus. "Most people start out in jeans and sneakers and work their way up to a suit and tie," says Moore, captain of the Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Oxygen Skate Team, laughing at his own pithy observation. "I went the opposite route.

That's putting it mildly. When Moore steps into the Hippodrome of the Greatest Show on Earth, he's not even in sneakers, he's on wheels--inline skates to be exact. And he's as comfortable on them as a shark is in the ocean, and about as fearless too.

The one-time stockbroker leads a team of daring athletes who perform the finale for a crowd of 12,000 awe-struck onlookers. They execute aggressive skating stunts that include flips, airborne tricks and launches from heights of 10-15 ft. at speeds that could leave a champion cyclist in the dust--all without a net. In a pinch, the only things that stand between them and potentially serious injury are a helmet and some padding. (In fact, last year, they lost one team member who sustained a torn ligament.)

But the physical risk wasn't what gave Moore pause when a talent coordinator for Ringling Bros. approached him and a friend, Steven O'Donnell, in New York's Central Park two years ago. Nor was it the idea of performing up to three shows a day (including weekends and holidays) in 45 cities. Rather, it was the idea of life in the 127th Edition of Ringling Bros., which requires traveling around the country for a solid 11-month stretch--living, eating and sleeping on a mile-long train (the same one that houses the elephants). However, once Moore checked the train out (". . . a little tight, but it has all the comforts of home," he says.), he and O'Donnell assembled a team and signed a contract, which they renewed late last year. They hit the road again last December.

As it turns out, traveling the country by train is one of the things Moore has liked most about the job. "I've driven from New York to Florida," says the Manhattan native, "but you don't see much on the Interstate. On a train you see everything. It's great! I'm getting paid to travel and skate." But there are drawbacks. "I'm allergic to animals," Moore says, sneezing, as if to make the point. "Having a stuffy nose all the time is definitely what I like least about this job."

Moore, 31, was getting paid to skate even before the circus came calling. After leaving Stony Brook University in early 198G, the former business management major landed a broker's job on Wall Street at Stuart-James Investment Bankers. Black Monday soon followed, and Moore jumped to portfolio management work for a law firm. In 1988, he took up skating as a way to relieve job tension and was immediately hooked.

A gifted and daring athlete, Moore soon became a certified skating instructor and began teaching in Central Park on weekends. That led to a drastic career change. He quit the law firm and started managing the skating departments of several sports equipment shops, giving skating lessons and making freelance appearances skating in films, music videos and commercials for companies such as American Express.

The circus gig, which will pay him more than $40,000 this year, is a plum (and when you factor in free board and the fact that he's single, the money is quite good). So's the attention. "At the end of the act, we do a victory lap where you really get to see the people's faces, and they're smiling and cheering and waving at you and hoping you'll wave back," Moore says. "I get off on that." Who wouldn't?

DEATH BECOMES HER

If Moore's job is death-defying, Dr. Joye Carter's position, as Houston's chief medical examiner, is death-defining.

In its simplest form, Carter's job is to "find the truth" behind a person's death. She goes about it with a passion that comes through in everything she says, as does her reverence for the dead she serves, most of whom, to her dismay, are black.

"I believe that when a person dies, [the] soul separates from [the] body," Carter says, going on to explain how much one can tell about a person's life and health from fingernails and feet. "I give a body its last opportunity to speak for itself." And, when necessary, she serves as its voice, even at the risk of upsetting the living.

As chief medical examiner in Washington, D.C., back in 1996, Carter, who generally supports and encourages organ donorship, caused a stir when she informed government officials that she and her staff would not comply with a law empowering them to harvest people's corneas and heart valves without family consent. "I asked them, would you expect me to take a congressman's loved one's corneas without asking? Never. But it's okay for me to take those of a poor black male without asking or educating his loved ones, right? No, not on my watch." The law was changed.

Carter's career path has included stints as chief resident in pathology at Howard University, a fellow in forensic pathology in Dade County, Florida, and chief physician and forensic pathologist in the U.S. Air Force Medical Corps.

She admits that her comfort with and boundless curiosity about death are a bit odd. "This is not the job my mother would've wanted for me," she says, laughing. But she finds America's cultural attitude about death even stranger than her own. "There's such a taboo in this country about the one thing that everybody, regardless of their race, creed or socioeconomic standing, has to do," she says. "Death is the great equalizer."

Carter, who is 40 and single, got hooked on forensics back in high school when she witnessed her first autopsy. Later, when she studied medicine at Howard University, she never wavered. In fact, she is more uncomfortable with the idea of treating the living because, she says, "I don't like to see people suffer."

As chief medical examiner for Harris County, Texas, Carter oversees about 80 physicians, chemists, lab technicians, investigators and secretaries. With a population of 4 million-plus, hers is the fourth-largest county in the nation, generating about 10,000 cases a year for Carter's office. As the first woman to hold the position (and one of only a handful of African Americans in her field nationwide), she endures more than her share of "Can you handle it?" queries and Quincy (as in the old television series) jokes.

By law, medical examiners investigate unnatural deaths (those stemming from mass disasters, car accidents, violence, etc.) or natural deaths where there was no doctor present (often involving the homeless, or people who expire at work, in transit or at home). Most Harris County cases are resolved rather simply, but about 3,500 a year require an autopsy.

Although Carter still occasionally does that type of hands-on work herself, her time is spent mostly on administrative duties, testifying in criminal cases (as to the official cause of a victim's death), writing and lobbying for changes that grow out of her work. She also teaches at both Howard University and Houston s Baylor College of Medicine. Carter, a vigilant anti-gun lobbyist, is emphatic about her responsibility to use her work to enact positive change for the living. She is quick to note that the information that led to air bags in automobiles grew out of medical examiner's work, as did the child safety warnings that now come on venetian blind cords. "Eventually everyone dies," she says. "We can't prevent that, but we can prevent certain types of death."

She generally works 12-hour days (8 a.m. to 8 p.m.), but keeps her pager on 24-7. She makes about $150,000 a year. "There are doctors who make more, but I have no complaints," she says, adding with a knowing laugh, "You can't take it with you."

THE WRITE STUFF

A typical workday for Tara Centeio is anything but typical for the rest of the world's corporate soldiers. For starters, she gets to wear what she wants, and on casual Fridays that might mean her most comfortable pair of overalls. Her cubicle is stocked, not with bulging files and mind-numbing spreadsheets, but with the music that often serves as her muse: Donny Hathaway, Stevie Wonder and, of course, the Lord of Love Songs, Luther Vandross.

Alone at her desk, she often listens to these mellow giants croon as her mind wanders over a landscape of emotions, memories, sentiments, hopes, and desires. As a writer for Hallmark Cards Inc., she gets paid $30,000-plus while doing this and whatever else inspires her to write the verses that attract the legions of card buyers who "care enough to send the very best."

"I know this sounds corny," she says of her job in what some regard as the Cornball Business, "but it's everything I thought it would be and more. I have a passion, I have a skill, I have a talent and I'm able to get paid doing exactly what I love to do. I feel very blessed."

Sentimental musings aside, there's nothing corny about the size or vitality of the greeting card market. And Hallmark, with net sales of $3.6 billion and more than 20,000 employees worldwide, is the undisputed industry leader, offering Centeio the thrill of having her work on display at up to 40,500 outlets nationwide.

Her portfolio includes wistful expressions written for Hallmark's Between You and Me and Connections lines, as well as this soulful verse, written for Mahogany, the line Hallmark targets to African Americans:

I looked at him and heard

with my heart

words he did not say . . .

He let love's truth fall

from his soul to mine,

and it was soft and beautiful . . .

and it made my spirit fly.

The same words Centeio uses to describe the Mahogany line ("effusive, very warm, very real") could be used to describe Centeio herself. At 23, she virtually bubbles over with enthusiasm for her employer, its products and her personal contributions to the nation's booming card supply. That supply is dictated largely by Hallmark's editors, who send assignments to the writers and artists, who then write prose and create a design to suit the occasion. For example, Centeio may get a request for a Valentine's Day card from a grown son to his mother. She'll then generate as many verses as she's moved to, although she may write between five and 10, and submit just the one or two she deems worthy.

The former Spelman College English major first tried her hand at Hallmark as a summer intern. Her 1996 decision to write cards full time came as a surprise to many of her classmates, since her work on Spelman's literary magazine was limited to art direction.

"I was a closet writer, Centelo confesses. "In college, I sort of felt like if my poetry wasn't of `The Struggle,' it wasn't valid." At Hallmark, where business is about "helping people express their feelings and touch the lives of others" (as stated in the company big), Centeio found plenty of validation, both for her passion and her talent.

LET THERE BE LIGHT. . .

Anyone who has ever attempted to make it in Hollywood knows that your big break could come at any moment, often when you least expect it. Such was the case with Rudolph Hunter, 49, who began making what he refers to as his "annual trek" to his CBS boss' office about 15 years ago, while still a technician working the lighting console for various shows.

"I would go up to his office to discuss my desire to further my lighting career with CBS," Hunter recalls, noting that the network typically promotes from within. "His response was always the same, `We have you in mind, but there's nothing open right now.' And then, when an opening came I would be overlooked." Others would have given up, gotten angry, filed law suits. In fact, some did. But not Hunter.

"I was making a good living in an industry others only dream about," Hunter reflects. "I had a job I liked. I enjoyed being on the set and being a part of the shows. That was a precious thing to me."

Looking at Hunter's history, it's easy to see why. Having tried several careers over the years, he hadn't taken to any like this one. The Houston native dumped his electrical engineering major in 1971 when he heard about an affirmative action program in theater arts at the University of Las Vegas. There, minority students were being taught the basics of direction, lighting and stagecraft while getting paid to learn. Hunter, whose goal was to produce and direct, moved to Los Angeles in 1977, but found few opportunities. Clearly, being black did not help. He tried his hand as a producer, model and fashion designer, but found security and what he thought might be his calling as an entry-level lighting operator at CBS. That was 20 years ago. Soon after, his quest for advancement began.

Three years ago, frustrated, Hunter had decided to pursue other options. Before he could, he was offered a lighting director's job on the network's top soap, The Young and the Restless, and its sibling, The Bold and the Beautiful. His big break had come.

Lighting directors design and set all the lamps, which you don't see on screen, but which make what you do see visible. It is an intricate process that involves understanding the mood of each scene and how to enhance it with lighting, while also making a completely artificial environment (i.e., a huge, dark indoor studio) appear to be something else entirely (say, a sunny park). Occasionally the soaps shoot on location, as The Bold and the Beautiful did last fall in Italy, which involves a whole other set of lighting challenges.

It's Hunter's job to know the quirks and capacities of the myriad lamps at his disposal. He has to be aware of their color, temperature and intensity, and know how to balance these to make people look their most attractive and natural without causing them to sweat to death. The work is intense and the hours are long. But the pay is good. Lighting directors with major studios, such as CBS, make as much as $70,000 base salary, which requisite overtime can boost to $110,000. The money is well earned during 12-hour days, says Hunter, adding, "You're actually making people look good. If you could see some of these [actors] in the morning, you'd realize it's not an easy thing to do."

The best lighting directors have something no amount of training can give. Says Hunter: "You have to have an eye. I always did." Yet, because of his long road to the director's seat, Hunter felt he had something to prove. He did just that in 1997, becoming the first lighting director to be nominated for Emmy awards for two shows simultaneously. He won for his work on The Young and the Restless, and for a moment the spotlight was on him.