In Washington: Missionary

There were recruiters in Walla Walla, Wash., more than a century ago, long before it was Walla Walla. Missionaries, determined to sell the local heathens on Christianity, were the first white settlers between the Snake River and the Blue Mountains. Their mission, however, was a mixed success: after eleven years, the Indians massacred them. Soon the U.S. Cavalry came, built a fort and won the peace.

Fort Walla Walla is no more. A monument has replaced the doomed mission. But in the Eastgate Plaza shopping mall, just catercorner from Walla Walla's only De Lorean Motor Car dealership, the Army has stationed its missionary. Sergeant First Class Patrick Yasenak is a recruiter, and he has done very well. In fact, the Pentagon brass have made it official that he is exemplary, perhaps the best among their 4,797 Regular Army proselytizers: a few weeks ago, in a ceremony at his Eastgate Plaza office on a sunny day as crisp as cold soda, Recruiter of the Year Pat Yasenak had a Meritorious Service Medal pinned to his chest.

Yasenak, 33, looks like the kind of neighborhood soldier Norman Rockwell painted. Although he is a former drill sergeant, as a recruiter he thinks it best not to insist or shove. Rather, his specialty is a kind of sober sweet talk about experience and cash bonuses and duty. Last year he persuaded 47 men and women to join the Army and Army Reserve, more than half again as many as his quota. "No," he corrects with deadpan good humor, "we don't have quotas. We have missions." Over four years, he figures, he has signed up enough people to fill an infantry company. A smart company too: five of Yasenak's privates were college graduates, and his recruits tend to score better on their military entrance exams than the Army demands. But his new medal and his prize, a week for two in Hawaii, are not simply rewards for high body counts. After all, recruiters elsewhere have signed up many more. Army review boards in three cities probed and quizzed him about everything from nerve gas to NATO politics, and they decided that he was a great guy, their apotheosis. "I was shocked," Yasenak says.

His manner most of the time tends toward the bashful, tensed but not combative. He cannot afford to come on too strong. Many of his 60 working hours a week have been spent on the telephone trying to engage strangers—mumbly, uncertain teen-agers—in serious conversations about their lives. He has called hundreds of high school seniors in his two-county district, most of them WaHi Blue Devils.

Sometimes they phone him, unsolicited. One morning late in March, his first call comes in before 9. "Army opportunities, Sergeant Yasenak. May I help you?" A young woman, looking for the number of the Navy recruiter. "Sure, sure, no problem." The next one, a bona fide Army prospect, is guided to the office by way of a teen-age landmark, Taco Time, about 150 yds. away. When Yasenak gets a local collect call, a regular thing, he looks knowing and amused: the Washington State Penitentiary is in Walla Walla, and inmates must reverse all phone charges. "The guy said, Take me, I'm yours!' " He will not.