GIRL SCOUTS HONOR FIVE LOCAL WOMEN

The Girl Scouts of Otahki Council, along with corporate sponsor St. Francis Medical Center, will present the 2001 Women's Impact Award to five recipients at a breakfast Saturday.

The event will be at Robert A. Dempster Hall on the campus of Southeast Missouri State University. Featured speaker Linda Bird served as director of the Vanderbilt University Career Center before opening her Nashville career-consulting firm. She is co-author of "Smart Start" and a recipient of the Woman of the Year Award from the Business and Professional Women of Nashville.

The Impact Award celebrates the effect women have on their communities through professional and volunteer efforts.

The recipients are:

* Tamara Zellars Buck, a Charleston native, graduated from Southeast Missouri State University with a bachelor's degree in mass communications with a journalism option. She currently serves as a graduate assistant at the university, where she teaches a writing course while pursuing a master's degree in public administration.

Since October 1996, Buck has been affiliated with the Southeast Missourian, where she is a reporter.

Buck is a steward and choir director at Perry Chapel AME Church in Charleston. She is married to Patrick Buck Sr. and has two sons.

* Rebecca McDowell Cook graduated from the University of Missouri in Columbia with a bachelor's degree in political science followed by a law degree from the university's School of Law.

Cook became the first Cape Girardeau native in statewide office in Missouri in 100 years when she became Missouri's 36th secretary of state in 1994. As secretary of state through January 2001, Cook's priorities included increasing voter participation and increasing education efforts to reduce the potential for investment fraud.

She lives in Cape Girardeau, where she is active in her church, First Presbyterian.

She is married to John L. Cook and has two children.

* Mary Kasten graduated from Southeast Missouri State University with a bachelor's degree in education and pursued additional studies at the University of Pittsburgh in Pennsylvania.

Kasten was elected to the Missouri House of Representatives in 1982, where she served on various committees and sub-committees.

She is married to Dr. Melvin Kasten. They are parents of three children, grandparents of nine and attend St. Andrew Lutheran Church.

* Jean Bell Mosley graduated valedictorian from Doe Run High School in Missouri and received her bachelor's degree in education from Southeast Missouri State University.

In 1947, Mosley sold her first story to Women's Day magazine. Several hundred short stories and articles have been printed in national magazines, and she has written four books. She has written a weekly column for the Southeast Missourian for 46 years. She is an active member of Centenary United Methodist Church in Cape Girardeau.

Mosley was married to the late Edward Price Mosley. She has one son and three grandchildren.

* Judge Marybelle Mueller graduated from DePauw University and from the University of Missouri Law School with a juris doctorate degree. She is a member of the New Mexico, Missouri and Cape Girardeau County bar associations, as well as the Missouri Judicial Conference.

Mueller, an associate circuit judge for over 27 years, started her career as a judge in 1955 as the first female judge in the state of Missouri.

A Jackson native, she is an active member of New McKendree United Methodist Church.

Mueller was married to the late Paul A. Mueller Jr. She has five children and five grandchildren.