ASK A BUSY PERSON

Janet Krawtschenko spends her working hours with adults, helping to arrange their employee benefits and to set up their pension plans.

Away from the office, however, an enormous amount of her free time is devoted to children, as a busy volunteer with so many organizations devoted to young people

Krawtshenko is president of ative Employee Benefit Service Ewing Township firm whose name describes its activities. Predominant among the services it provides, she points out, is the design and administration of retirement plans. "We're smack-dab into our busy season right now," she says. "We administer over 200 plans; we do all the trust accounting, the tax filing, and also the documentation for the new plans we send to the IRS for approval."

With a staff of five, she works from her offices across from the Trenton-Mercer County Airport on Scotch Road in Ewing. She has been involved in this type of work since 1976.

But in discussing her busy, often hectic schedule, she obviously would rather talk about her volunteer work with groups such as the Boys and Girls Club of Trenton. She is vice president of the club and she is looking forward to September when she will take over as its first women president.

A special note of enthusiasm comes into her voice when she speaks of the Boys and Girls Club, whose fundraising activities she has chaired for some time.

"We have a phenomenal club," she says. "It is not just a club where kids go after school and weekends to drop their books and run around and play. We have a computer center. We have a tutoring center. We do the kids' homework with them when they come in after school. The children actually wait in line to use the computers, for they don't have computers at home."

She notes that Fleet Bank provided the funding for the Computers at the club, which is located on Centre Street. "I would encourage anyone to come and visit our club," she says. "It's incredible. It's a learning center. You can't imagine the number of children we have in the club who are on the honor roll at their schools. And I have to say that the Boys and Girls Club takes a great bit of credit for that because we work with them. We have teachers who come in and volunteer time to work with the children, to tutor them. This is all done from the heart by the volunteers."

Krawtschenko for several years has been chairperson of the club's annual Candlelight Ball, a major fund-raiser for the organization, which is coming up in April this year at the Marriott Hotel

"I love doing for the children," she says. "They love us for doing it. Their eyes light up when we walk into the room, because they know we're there for them."

Krawtschenko is vice president of the Trenton Rotary Club, and here again her interest in children has sparked many fund-raising activities. She is chairperson of the annual Steak and Burger Dinner, a joint venture of Rotary and the Boys and Girls Club, and is active in Rotary's annual Performing Arts Contest which provides $10,000 in scholarships each year to students in the county's high schools. "The talent of these young people is overwhelming," she declares.

She is chairperson of Heartwarming, a group which each year provides clothing and a big luncheon for underprivileged children and their families in the area.

"The kids get a big bagful of gifts - sweaters, gloves," she points out. "Everybody wants to give the children toys at Christmastime. But toys won't keep them warm."

She is active, too, on a committee which plans a golf tournament to benefit the Boys and Girls Club each summer. Last year the event raised $35,000. "The tournament at the Olde York Country Club was so successful, and we had so many entries that we had to have a double shotgun start, in the morning and at noon."

Krawtschenko also is on the fundraising committee for CRAVE, the acronym for Cops Racing Against Violence through Education. This involves law enforcement officers who visit schools in the area and encourage young people to work against violence.

"My son, Joe, who is an investigator in the Mercer County sheriff's office, is part of this activity," Krawtschenko says. "They have such a busy schedule it's hard to keep up with them. Joe is a professional motorcycle racer and they get the kids' attention by putting on a motorcycle show. Kids tend to look on police officers as enemies, and CRAVE is trying to show that they are friends."

Krawtschenko also is a member of the Mercer County Economic Development Council, which she describes as an organization working to "bring business into the county and keeping it in the county."

Krawtschenko lives in Ewing with her husband, Walter, who is a property manager for the county. They have a daughter, Yolanda Berkowicz, and a grandson, Jake, 1.

"My daughter is associated with me here in Creative

Employee Benefit Services," she says. "My husband, son

and daughter are involved with me in all my fundraisers.

We are a family of fundraisers."