CarrieJean
Yazel

When the Los Gatos High School newspaper asked students where they wanted to be in ten years, Carrie Jean Yazel, class of '88, answered, "In the pages of Playboy." Seven years ahead of schedule, Miss May comes to us as a wish fulfilled. Since prom night, she has moved from Northern California to San Diego, worked as a model, fallen in and out of love and dazzled the registrar at the local junior college. "I keep changing majors," she says with a giggle. "First it was hotel management, then catering. Then, well, there was my FBI thing," Carrie grins. "I always thought it would be so cool to go undercover and find out all this stuff about perfect strangers!" She has another passion, too: "I loooove to read." This semester, school assignments have drawn her into books on philosophy, sociology and ("Yuck!") algebra. Private moments find her curled up in a big black chair in her living room, deep into Dickens or Hardy while Beatles tunes play softly in the background. In fact, her Beatlemania ("I could listen to them twenty-four hours a day") doesn't always seem so fab to her beau, a 32-year-old film student and aspiring screenwriter. "He likes classical music, and I haven't quite acquired the taste," she admits. "We're always switching back and forth between radio stations." With the home fires smoldering nicely, Carrie has been pondering her future. Yes, she still models and, yes, she has thought about acting, "but that doesn't really excite me much. There was a joke when I was growing up - everyone in my family would say, `Oh, Carrie - you'll just get married, have kids and be a mommy!" And the thing is, they were probably right!" Sunny Southern California suits this homemaker-to-be just fine for now, but Carrie sees herself planting roots in a calmer clime - Seattle, maybe, or Spokane. "I'd like to have a bunch of kids and a big house somewhere we could spread out, somewhere the seasons change." Carrie's love of the Pacific Northwest harks back to a childhood spent there. Her drive to raise kids may reflect a desire to be just like her folks; this is a young girl who says her parents are "cool. They're down-to-earth, have-a-good-time people. They party more than I do." She gave Mom and Dad a customized version of her centerfold - with Miss May making a goofy face just for them. And while that was a kick, Carrie takes her new role seriously. "Being in Playboy - it's really the ultimate compliment." She remembers with perfect clarity the moment she learned tat her schoolgirl dream was coming true. Soon after test-posing for us, she was visiting - who else? - her parents, who were entertaining some friends at a rented beach house in San Diego. "My dad was in the kitchen, making margaritas," she says. "The phone rang. I answered . . . and about a second later, I was jumping up and down, yelling, `I got it, I got it!' We all had margaritas to celebrate."