FRIENDSHIP, LOVE BLOSSOM ON INTERNET

Larry Reiminger quit his Cape Girardeau banking job and will move halfway across the country after being reunited with his lost love of 25 years ago. David Roll sold his business in Australia and traveled halfway across the world to meet a new friend face-to-face.

Both credit the Internet with blossoming love and friendship. While stories of lies, deception and danger concerning the Internet abound, sometimes cyberstories have happy endings.

Reiminger's love story is an example. As marketing director for South East Missouri Bank, Reiminger got lots of e-mail messages across the Internet. Most were from people with banking questions. When a name from Reiminger's past showed up on his screen Jan. 20, he didn't make any connection.

But Mary Turner had spent months contemplating whether to try to find Reiminger 25 years after their romance ended. In the end, she typed his name into an Internet search engine that helps locate people's mailing addresses, telephone numbers and e-mail addresses.

She found his address and sent off a message asking if he was the same Larry Reiminger from 1970 in Los Angeles. He was.

In 1970, Reiminger left behind London and a woman he thought he loved named Natasha and moved to LA to pursue a journalism career. He ended up selling shoes at JCPenney's during the Christmas rush, where he met her, Mary, a 19-year-old college sophomore who was also selling shoes. She was engaged to Bryan, but fell in love with Reiminger.

"We just clicked," he said. She broke off the engagement and she and Reiminger were inseparable for two months. But Reiminger decided to go back to college to earn teaching credentials. He left Mary behind, returned to Cape Girardeau, and enrolled at Southeast Missouri State University.

"We were so incredibly miserable apart that I convinced her to come back to Missouri and enroll at SEMO State with me," Reiminger said.

He was scheduled to fly to LA and help her drive back to Missouri.

But then the plot thickened. Natasha, the woman from London, planned a trip to the states to meet Reiminger. She was arriving the same day he was supposed to fly to LA.

"I called Mary and said we'd never forgive ourselves if we allowed the Tash issue to remain unresolved," Reiminger said. "I hoped she'd understand and find someone else to help her drive cross country."

Then Mary dropped her own bombshell. Bryan, the ex-fiance, was back in the picture. The love triangle raged in full force until Larry issued an ultimatum. Mary picked Bryan and they were married in 1973.

"Over the years I told the Mary/Larry/Bryan/Tash story dozens of times," Reiminger said. "Little did I know then the story was far from over."

Over the years he often thought of Mary. Songs reminded him of her. She wrote him once. He called her once. Then on Jan. 20, Reiminger checked his e-mail, and there was the message from Mary. For a month they e-mailed five or six times a day. They talked by telephone and then agreed to meet in person in Seattle.

After a successful reunion, Reiminger spent two weeks in Mary's new hometown of Eugene, Ore. They fell in love all over again.

He quit his banking job and plans to move to the West Coast in June. They don't plan to marry right away, opting instead to get to know each other. But Reiminger says marriage is inevitable.

"All these years she was the one who had the hold on me. She was the one who got away," Reiminger said. "This proves that dreams can come true."

He said reaction to his story runs the gamut from romantics who encourage him not to let her get away again to those who think he is nuts to move 2,000 miles away for love.

David Roll has gotten the same range of responses. His best friends in Australia thought he was nuts to travel 12,000 miles to Missouri for a chance at love with a woman he met in an Internet chat room.

He sold his beach-front business, put his belongings into storage and boarded a plane to meet Stacy Brockmeier of Festus.

"I decided to cut my losses, call it a day and have myself a holiday," he said. The two have spent the holiday traveling, including several trips to Cape Girardeau.

His friends tried to talk him out of it. Her friends worried that he would be some sort of criminal stalker. But their online friendship endured a real-life meeting.

"I knew if I didn't go I would always wonder what might have happened," Roll said. "How are you going to know if you don't go?"

Brockmeier said: "I always thought it was a dream. I didn't let myself believe it would come true. But here he is."

Brockmeier just got her passport, and in a few months she plans a holiday down under.

Will their cyber-friendship blossom into love? After exchanging glances, the two agreed that they don't want to rush into anything, but romance is a possibility.

Roll and Brockmeier admit meeting in a chat room is risky. One of the attractions of online chat rooms is anonymity. Participants carry on conversations by typing on their computers. A person could pretend to be almost anyone.

"All the dangers that exist in real life exist online," Brockmeier said. "People have to be street smart online too, or you can get into trouble."

She added that parents should closely monitor what their children are doing online because predators are out there.

But stories can end happily. The couple first met online six months ago. They talked about work and how their days went. "After awhile you get to know someone's personality," Roll said. "You can tell how they are feeling or what kind of day they've had just by the way they type."

As their friendship grew, they began exchanging e-mail letters several times a day. They exchanged photographs and started making plans for their real-life encounter.

"Once I made up my mind, I was ready to go," Roll said.

Brockmeier, on the other hand, wasn't really convinced that Roll would show up until he arrived at the St. Louis airport. For safety and moral support, her father came with her for the airport meeting. "A few minutes before his plane landed, I chickened out," she said."I would have left if dad hadn't been there." She stayed.

The two recognized each other at once from their photographs and after a few awkward moments their online friendship surfaced.

During the monthlong visit, Brockmeier and Roll have traveled to Texas and Illinois to meet other online friends. "They have been just exactly what we expected," Brockmeier said. "It's been a lot of fun."

And none of it would have been possible without the Internet. Reiminger never would have accidentally bumped into his long-lost love living in Eugene, Ore., and Roll never would have met Brockmeier halfway across the world without computer communication.