VIGIL FOR DANNY PEARL FRIENDS FLY TO VALLEY TO AWAIT WORD OF KIDNAPPED JOURNALIST.

Byline: Beth Barrett Staff Writer

ENCINO - With the fate of reporter Danny Pearl uncertain Friday, longtime friends from his years at Birmingham High School flew to the San Fernando Valley to be near his anguished family while others kept in touch by phone or e-mail.

The vigil of worry and prayer intensified when the news media received an e-mail saying the kidnapped Wall Street Journal reporter had been executed by a group linked to al-Qaida in Pakistan, and U.S. envoys in Islamabad received a phone call saying he was being held for a ransom of $2 million and the release of the former Taliban ambassador to Pakistan.

``We're watching and waiting ourselves,'' said Gary Foster, a Dow Jones official, speaking tensely from the Pearls' home, as distraught colleagues kept track of developments from bureaus throughout the world.

A statement released Friday by The Wall Street Journal said, ``We have seen the latest reports and we remain hopeful that they are not true.''

One longtime friend, Daniel Gill, said he flew from San Francisco to the Valley on Thursday night. Even as a deadline set by terrorists for Pearl's execution passed, everyone continued to believe he would be released by those who took him hostage late last month in Karachi, Pakistan.

Other friends from throughout the country said they were in close contact with the family, and some said they anticipated flying to the Valley as well.

Some friends said they were too upset to talk, or feared that any comment might lessen Pearl's chances of release. But others found some relief in sharing their memories of the journalist, who even as a teen-ager struck everyone he met as a remarkable person.

They said Pearl was the teen-ager everyone else wanted to be - the smart, funny kid who was a cultural counterpoint to the mall-hopping, materialistic ``Valley Girl'' world of the 1970s and early '80s.

Pearl was bookish and studious, his pursuits - soccer and instruments like the mandolin - making his popularity all the more unlikely at Birmingham High in Van Nuys, where he graduated with honors in 1981.

But there was something about Pearl, from his sheepish grin and his self- effacing humor to the way papers seemed to fly from his pockets on the way to class, that made him irresistible to classmates, parents and teachers.

``Everybody loves Danny,'' said Gill, a San Francisco lawyer who met Pearl in the fourth grade.

``I think everybody wanted to be like Danny in some way. He seemed to have it all, without standing up and saying, 'I have it all.' We grew up in the late 1970s, at the peak of materialism, Jordache jeans. He was none of that, and he didn't care.''

His popularity came from his warmth and his good will toward others.

``He's a genuine guy ... totally nonthreatening, nonegotistical, not out to be better than anybody,'' Gill added.

Gill, who stayed in touch with Pearl, 38, said part of his boyhood friend's charm was his ability to get out of predicaments. Even as pictures of a kidnapper pointing a gun at Pearl's head flashed around the world and a deadline for his execution passed, Gill said he couldn't imagine Pearl not somehow getting out alive.

``He always seemed to pull it off,'' Gill said. ``I just think he'll tumble out of this smelling like a rose. He always did that.''

Jonathan Lewis, who was in third grade with Pearl at Lanai Road Elementary School in Encino and now is a physicist at Fermi Lab in Batavia, Ill., carries with him a similar view of his friend.

``He was pretty universally liked; he was a really nice guy,'' hesaid.

Caprice Young, another Birmingham High grad from that era who now serves as president of the Los Angeles Unified School District board, remembered Pearl as smart and active in school affairs as well as a bit cynical, ``in a nice way.''

Pearl was born into an academic family and there was never a question among his friends or teachers that he was brilliant.

Chick Epstein, a golf coach and former football coach at Birmingham High, said Pearl was the rare teen-ager who could have a meaningful conversation with an adult.

Pearl was part of a tightly knit group of young scholars at Birmingham High who typically took Advanced Placement classes, were National Merit finalists and got the top grades.

``There were many more books than there was crystal'' in the Pearls' Encino home, said his high school friend Jonathan Rosenbloom, a probate lawyer in Los Angeles. ``He was a real high achiever, without any arrogance.

``He was one of the best we had to offer. He was a very bright, low-key, friendly, affable guy.''

Rosenbloom, who met Pearl when they were seventh-graders at Portola Junior High School in Tarzana, said the circle of friends went on to high school together with an unspoken sense they were all going someplace - in Pearl's case to Stanford University, where he got a bachelor's degree in communications in 1985.

Rosenbloom, who was the high school newspaper editor, said he doesn't remember Pearl being on the staff but does remember that, like others in the group, he was ``very much up on politics.''

And when the friends were together, going to movies or involved in other typical teen activities, ``the humor flowed freely,'' he added.

A story about Pearl in The Wall Street Journal described how when Pearl was in the paper's Atlanta bureau he got a letter from an angry reader who wrote he must have gotten his ``journalism degree from a cereal box.'' Pearl, the paper said, taped the letter on the wall next to his desk.

``That sounds like Danny,'' Rosenbloom said.

Behind the intellect and fascination with politics lay another side of Pearl, the ``terrific musician'' on the guitar, mandolin, bass amd piano, friends recalled. Pearl and some of his friends would play music together for hours.

``It didn't matter the crowd or the circle,'' Gill said. ``I don't know anyone that disliked Danny.''

CAPTION(S):

2 photos

Photo:

(1 -- color) Kidnapped Wall Street Journal reporter Danny Pearl graduated from Birmingham High School in 1981.

(2) Danny Pearl in 1981 Birmingham High school yearbook.