DATE: Friday, July 11, 1997                 TAG: 9707090155

SECTION: CHESAPEAKE CLIPPER      PAGE: 02   EDITION: FINAL 

SOURCE: Liz Szabo 

                                            LENGTH:   87 lines

TOWN TALK

Maybe this case won't be so tough to crack after all.

Someone vandalized a car June 22 in the 400 block of Fairfield Drive, in the Butts Road borough, Chesapeake police said.

So what did they steal? A Ford windshield, 25 compact discs . . . one bottle of Calvin Klein cologne and two bottles of Ralph Lauren cologne.

The suspect: one mighty fine smelling crook. A dog-gone crime

Good thing they had a guard dog.

In another burglary, someone broke into a home in the 600 block of Broadwindsor Crescent in Greenbrier and stole a necklace, a revolver - and the dog. Putting on the Ritz

She's got webbed feet, a bill and two fuzzy-feathered wings. But she'd rather chase cars, bury bones and wag her tail.

She's a duckling named - prepare yourself for a groan - Ritz Quacker. And she adopted Tim Young, 19, of Great Bridge, after he found her while doing landscaping work at Military Circle Mall. The baby duck, who was wandering around a flower bed alone, apparently became attached to Young.

The next thing Young's mother Donna knew, she was hearing the oldest song in the book: ``But Mom, she just followed me home.''

She was no fowl weather friend, either. Ritzy quickly became enamored of Young's dog - so much that the family feared she was imprinting on the dog as a mother substitute. Soon she was following the dog everywhere he went.

``She was becoming more like a dog than a duck,'' Donna Young said. ``They took her to a pond and she didn't know what to make of a duck trying to be friendly with her. She wasn't becoming a duck, she was becoming a person or a dog.''

The Youngs did the only thing they could - give little Ritz away to an expert wildlife rehabilitator.

Ritz is now living on a pond in Chesapeake with those of her own kind. Country music conversion

It's been a busy year for the Young family.

After being befriended by a duck, their 25-year-old daughter Kerry - who sometime ago flew the coop to get married and move to Dallas - has won a role in a country music video. Careful viewers will spot Kerry Young Rohr in singer Kevin Sharp's new video, ``She's Sure Taking It Well,'' from his compact disc, ``The Measure of a Man,'' mother Donna Young said.

Rohr, an inspiring model, was picked by Sharp himself to act in the video. He selected her photo out of a stack of pictures of models.

Now the Youngs are new-found country music fans. Not to mention fans of Sharp.

``We met him, and he's really nice,'' Donna Young said. ``He's very down to earth.''

As for his music?

``We weren't big country music fans before, but we've started to listen to it now,'' Donna Young said. A sea of troubles

There are days when Bob Steele is glad he has a desk job.

Steele, the vice president of finances of the Cousteau Society, whose U.S. headquarters are located in Greenbrier, never went on a deep-sea mission with the late Jacques-Yves Cousteau, who died in Paris last month at age 87.

But Steele remembers many close calls with the late captain.

Cousteau once decided that he wanted to sail a small wind ship - no more than a souped-up catamaran - across the Atlantic. He left the details to Steele.

``I want to sail this across the Atlantic,'' Steele remembers Cousteau saying. ``Fix it so I can do it.''

The boat was named the Moulin a Vent, French for windmill, because of its high-tech ``turbo sail.''

But the Moulin a Vent ran into trouble in Bermuda. A storm came up and pulled the turbo sail right out of the boat. Cousteau noticed that the sail was becoming uprooted minutes before it collapsed.

But Cousteau did not want to give up the turbo sail - he hoped to re-fasten it to the boat.

``I remember a frantic call from Bermuda for a welder the next day,'' Steele said. ``He called saying, `We're out here in the middle of the Atlantic with a big hole in the deck, and it's raining. Could you please send Calypso to come find us?''

But Calypso, Cousteau's famous exploring ship, was itself under repairs in Norfolk harbor - not the ideal condition for staging an ocean rescue, Steele said.

``We didn't know who would be towing whom by the time they got back,'' Steele said.

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