NEXT YEAR, THE TANGO? AT 103, EVERYBODY'S SWEETIE TAKES UP YOGA.

Byline: DENNIS McCARTHY 

NORTH HOLLYWOOD - So what do you give a woman for her 103rd birthday? How about some yoga lessons?

That's what Emalyn Schabo got for hers. She's a feisty, irascible North Hollywood woman who has somehow convinced Father Time and Mother Nature to look the other way.

At 103, she's got all her own teeth, doesn't need glasses to read the newspaper, including the stock pages, and has a memory and wit as sharp as a tack.

About her only physical concession to old age is her hearing. She needs a hearing aid.

Up until about six months ago, she also needed a walker to get around, but yoga took care of that, she says. She threw away the walker a few months ago, and all she uses now is a cane.

At this rate, she figures she'll be ready for tango lessons when her 104th birthday rolls around this October.

``Why not?'' Emalyn says, laughing at the actuarial charts. ``I feel great. I just hope the stock market picks up, and my Dodgers have a good season, that's all.''

You get the idea? The woman's making a mockery of old age. She's AARP's worst nightmare.

Let me give you another example. A few years back, when she was a spring chicken of 98, some guy the cops were chasing for robbery broke into Emalyn's North Hollywood home to hide out for a while.

``I heard a noise in the kitchen, and when I walked in he was standing there,'' Emalyn said Wednesday, finishing up a half spiral twist with her yoga instructor, Ulla Anneli.

``He threw me on the ground, then sat on me. I told him, 'Don't kill me. I'm too old to die.'

``The next thing I know, he's laughing,'' Emalyn said. ``When he got ready to leave, he stopped at the door and said, 'You're a sweet lady. You need any money?'

``I told him no. He blew me a kiss and ran away. I haven't seen him since.''

Nothing her mother does - nothing at all - surprises Emalyn's daughter, Kathleen Falk, 70. ``Mom didn't retire or stop driving until she was 100,'' Falk said.

``She's always been that way - feisty, funny and full of life,'' she said. ``Everyone likes my mom, even robbers.''

Maybe it has something to do with that pioneer spirit she exudes from the life she led before most of us were even a twinkle in our parents' eyes.

Emalyn was a young, single South Dakota schoolmarm riding to her Aberdeen schoolhouse every morning in a horse and buggy - unless it was snowing, and then she took a sleigh.

``I'd get to the one-room schoolhouse early to stoke the fire so it wouldn't be too cold inside when kids arrived,'' she said. ``I taught all eight grades in that one room.''

She finally tired of farm life and moved to live with a sister in St. Louis, get married, and learn a new profession - hairdresser.

``In 1945, after Dad died of cancer, we loaded up our old Plymouth and headed west,'' said Falk, who was 15 at the time. ``We came straight to North Hollywood, where Mom had a girlfriend she knew.

``Mom worked in some beauty shops to support us, then she opened her own beauty shop in a room in our house,'' Falk said. ``She worked up until she was 100. That's when her last customer died.''

And now, at 103, she's into yoga. Once a week for an hour, yoga instructor Anneli, who runs the Lifestyle Renaissance Yoga Studio in Studio City, comes to Emalyn's home to teach her deep breathing and stretching exercises, and give her a massage.

``When I heard she was over 100, I thought I'd probably have to work with her while she was lying in bed, but she was waiting for me standing at the door, ready to go,'' Anneli said, laughing.

``She is just an incredible woman who has discovered the fountain of youth inside her. She has no arthritis, no cracking sounds in her bones when we work her arms and legs.

``She's just so limber, and has a natural ability to relax and breathe deeply, which is rare,'' Anneli said.

Granted, odds are Emalyn will never be able to pull off the lotus position, but don't tell her that.

If you can get a robber to offer you some of the loot, and have him blow you a kiss while he's heading out the door, anything's possible.

``You come back next year, I'll be as good as she is,'' Emalyn said, mimicking one of Anneli's stretches and laughing.

Life's good. She's still kicking, and another baseball season is just around the corner. What could be better?

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Photo:

(color) To keep healthy at 103, Emalyn Schabo, left, does yoga with instructor and registered nurse Ulla Anneli at Schabo's home in North Hollywood.

Charlotte Schmid-Maybach/Staff Photographer