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Star Flack

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As the meeting concludes, Lee offers up his opinion of Higgins: "Jane doesn't need hip-hop, hip-hop needs Jane. She's the honorary white woman in our group -- a mother and a businesswoman."

The St. Lunatics describe Higgins as a mother, a homegirl, a friend. She describes them as her kids, her boys and, more than anything, her saviors. They peeled her off the mat after life delivered a few sucker punches.

It began the moment Higgins and her family moved from New York to St. Louis in August 1997. The move was supposed to benefit her son, Ian, who had recently been diagnosed with ADHD (attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder). Higgins and her husband, David Price, thought St. Louis would provide a safer, more secure environment. For David, a graduate of Clayton High School, the move was also a welcome homecoming. It wouldn't last long.

Six weeks after the family arrived in St. Louis, David packed his bags for California. In the Big Apple, he'd written material for "Good Morning America," and he found it difficult to get even remotely similar work in the Lou. Frustrated, he moved by himself to Los Angeles to find work in television.

In hindsight Jane Higgins should have seen the divorce coming. For the previous eighteen months, David had been suffering from post-traumatic stress syndrome brought on when a small commuter plane he was aboard crash-landed on a small airstrip in Pennsylvania. Everyone survived, but David could never shake the vision of the plane going down. It wasn't long before Higgins noticed emotional changes in her husband. The man who had once been so jovial and carefree took on a distant, sour air. The only thing they had in common now was Ian.

Higgins doesn't blame David for the end of their marriage, but she was angry they had ever come to St. Louis ("How in the hell did I let him talk me into moving to St. Louis?" she asks). With her husband gone, Higgins didn't know a soul in St. Louis except for David's parents.

Today Higgins' closest friends, outside of her clients, are the middle-aged Jewish mothers she has met through Ian. Although Higgins is Catholic, she is raising Ian according to David's Jewish faith. Higgins credits these friends with much of her success in St. Louis, and over Saturday-morning coffee at Higgins' Clayton apartment, the women return the compliments. To hear them describe Higgins' eight years in St. Louis is not unlike hearing Higgins pitch one of her clients. Multisyllable adjectives are the name of the game: Unbelievable! Incredible! Amazing!

Ava Ehrlich remembers the first time the two were introduced. Higgins had volunteered to coach Ian's first-grade basketball team and left a phone message inviting Ehrlich's son, Max, to join the team.

"She sounded like a cheerleader on speed. I was like, 'Great, I can't wait to meet her.'"

A few weeks later Higgins cast the grim impression of a pallbearer when she confided in Ehrlich that David had moved to California, leaving her unemployed and directionless. She had thought about moving back to New York or even home to her parents in Wisconsin, but she didn't want to uproot Ian from school. The kid had been through enough.

"I told her the best thing would be to stick it out and get a job," says Ehrlich, who put Higgins in touch with a contact she had at the Make-A-Wish Foundation. Within a few weeks Higgins landed a job as community-relations director for the foundation. The job didn't pay much -- $30,000 a year -- but it was a start, and it satisfied her yearning for stability.

Higgins' life has never been simple. The second of eight siblings, she grew up a devout Catholic in the small town of Appleton, Wisconsin. After attending Catholic schools through high school, she moved to Milwaukee where she attended a year of finishing school, an academy dedicated to teaching its pupils how to win husbands. It worked for Higgins: At 22 she married a high school sweetheart from Appleton. After five years together, the couple split up.

Higgins had greater ambitions than could be found in the Midwest. She moved to Los Angeles and landed a job as a production assistant in television. After a few years she moved on to work in international film distribution, a job that would have her shuttling between New York and Los Angeles.

She and David met in "fly-over country" during a holiday party in Little Rock. A friend of a friend invited Higgins to attend the party. She wasn't much interested in the guy, but after he sent her round-trip airline tickets, Higgins thought it rude to decline his offer. The date went as poorly as she had anticipated. When she rebuffed his repeated sexual advances, he left her stranded at the party.

It was then that she met David. A struggling standup comic, David had driven down from St. Louis to perform at the party.

"He had such a warm and beautiful smile," Higgins says. "I just thought he was someone I'd like to get to know."

The two spent the rest of Higgins' stay in Little Rock together. Six months later he moved to Los Angeles to be with her.

David was never much of a comedian, and some say he should have been a straight man -- that Higgins was the true comic. But in her mind David was the cleverest man alive. Within a few months of his move to LA they eloped. Two years later, on February 25, 1991, Ian was born. Higgins calls it the best day of her life.

Higgins has yet to begin dating since her divorce in 1997. David, on the other hand, wasted little time.

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