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"I was very down on myself," she remembers. "Money was tight, and I felt like an ugly duckling. I thought nobody liked me, that nobody could like me."

When Krabacher was 17, a photographer she knew suggested snapping some shots of her in a bathing suit for submission to Playboy. "The photographer had fallen on hard times and begged me to let him take the pictures," she says. "I just couldn't let him down. I guess Hef loved them because the next thing I know I'm flying out to California and being treated like a star. I started thinking of the money and how good it felt to have people tell me I was pretty. I was hooked."

On her way to the Playboy mansion, Krabacher, who had been reared in a churchgoing family and had at least a passing acquaintance with heavenly matters, made a pact with herself. She would use any fame and fortune that came her way to do good. "I was going to be God's best little servant."

Things didn't quite turn out that way.

"There are two types of girls who end up at Playboy," she says. "Ones like me, who are from small towns and quiet backgrounds, as naïve as can be. Then there are the savvy girls who know exactly what they want and how to get it. Of course, the savvy ones never get more innocent, but the innocent ones sure get awfully savvy. Behavior that you used to think was completely unacceptable suddenly becomes acceptable. I drew a line in the sand, and then found myself constantly erasing it and redrawing it."

In her mind, one of those lines delineated nudity from pornography. "I think most people understand the difference," she says. "It has a lot to do with body language and posing." Despite initial intentions to "keep it clean," a desire to please the people who were being so nice to her prevailed. "I wound up making pornography."

Which made the people even nicer. Limos, clothing, parties, wining, dining, promises of fame, fortune, the moon. "It all goes right to your head. Nobody can be around that kind of attention, that kind of abundance and not be changed by it."

She concedes having witnessed everything from date rape to physical abuse. "Girls get injured when they live in a world that revolves around superficial beauty," she says. "I think the reason some of them get into lesbianism—-and I'd thought about it myself—-is that women are safe. When you're a Playboy model, so many men gawk at you and hit on you and lie to you and tell you anything to satisfy their own fantasies, their own lust, you become very distrustful. You become very wary."

Seeming to follow some invisible script for Playboy models, along with the public appearances, photo shoots, and countless movie and television auditions, Krabacher chalked up a failed marriage. Handling her divorce was Aspen attorney Joe Krabacher, whom she ultimately married in 1988. "He was the first man in my life who cared about all of me, inside and out," she says. Away from the Playboy lifestyle and having found true love, she recommitted herself to Jesus Christ and helped bring Joe into the fold.

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