A word of caution to our friends in the bar business: What looks like a classic damsel in distress may be a roguish scam.

Our tip comes from Scott Hameister, who first noticed our Rogue in late November while he tended the bar at Sammy's on Northwest 23rd Avenue. The woman, whom Hameister describes as a tall drink of water with "Gresham bleach-blonde hair," entered the Northwest Portland pub and approached two waitresses sobbing. She and her boyfriend got in a fight, she said; he hit her and ran out on their tab at a nearby restaurant. After paying the dinner bill, Gresham Girl was now broke and without a ride. Between sobs, she asked for a $25 loan for cab fare.

The waitresses, sympathizing with a gal in trouble, gave her the money and called a cab, holding on to a Social Security card with the name Molli A. Morrissey as collateral. (Our searches failed to turn up any such person locally.) One waitress asked Hameister if he wanted to chip in, but after 10 years in the bar business, he's grown leery of sob stories, so he politely declined. It seems his hunch was right. A short time later, the cabbie returned to the bar complaining that Gresham Girl bailed out after a block, saying she was broke.

That might have been the end of the story if not for Hameister's change of employment. He's now tending bar downtown at Cassidy's, where about a month ago a female waitress approached him and said that a woman had come in crying and.... Hameister finished the story.

They told Gresham Girl to hit the road--without any cab fare. A regular, who had seen her get out of a car full of women, followed her as she left. He says that after our Rogue walked a bit, the girlfriends drove up. Gresham Girl gave them a cheerful wave, got into the car and took off.

Hameister's biggest beef with the scam is not the money. "What I think is particularly heinous," he says, "is she's preying on women's fear of men."