‘The star-making machinery is just a little too dangerous.’

At the opening ceremony of the Los Angeles Summer Olympics, supermarket checker Vicki McClure brought 92,000 people in the Coliseum to their feet, joining her in singing “Reach Out and Touch Somebody’s Hand.”

McClure, now 34, won’t be at the opening of the Olympics in Seoul this month. Instead, she will be watching on television. She hasn’t found fame and fortune, but she says she doesn’t mind.

Her stirring performance four years ago, part of the $5-million extravaganza with 10,000 dancers, marchers, singers and musicians, athletes from 140 nations, 2,500 pigeons and 84 pianos, was seen by television viewers around the world. Originally , McClure, a checker at the Hughes Market in Canoga Park, was just the rehearsal stand-in for Diana Ross when Olympics officials were considering having a star sing at the opening. But she was chosen for the real thing because as an unknown, she reflected the youth and amateur image that organizers hoped to project for the games.

McClure sang a message of community and equality.

Today, she’s still working at Hughes. From her Santa Monica apartment, with ocean view, piano and tapes of Aretha Franklin, Bobby McFerrin, Eric Clapton and Ernestine Anderson, she recalls that for her, the Olympics reaffirmed that “we have to raise our consciousness, become selfless, look to wisdom” instead of being “addicted to money and fame.”

“Reach out and dig deep down in your pocket, ‘cause money is the answer to all our problems,” she starts to sing. “Sorry, it’s not the answer.” Though she had been singing since age 2 and was a featured soloist with the L.A. Jazz Choir at the time of the Olympics, she had “always been shy of the music business. I love music, but I do not love the business. I’m not real competitive.”

The Olympics brought occasions to “work with giants in the (music) industry.” She performed with the Boston Pops, in a 1984 Variety Club International Tribute to comedienne Lucille Ball, and at celebrity fund-raisers for the American Cancer Society, United Negro College Fund and United Way.

But she hasn’t become a giant, nor does she really want to. “The star-making machinery is just a little too dangerous,” she says.

Among the stars, she says, “I see a lot of drug addicts, confused people, people who’re hounded by the media, people that have bodyguards around them. To me, that’s not a happy life.”

McClure performs two to six times a month, solo at weddings, parties and civic events, with a pianist and bass guitarist at a Los Angeles club, and in Daddy’s Money, a trio she says sings “Pointer’s Sisters, Manhattan Transfer, jazzy, blue-eyed soul.” Since 1984, she estimates, she’s sung “Reach Out” more than 100 times, at everything from corporate banquets to a Girl Scouts jubilee. “I’m an all-around utility singer,” the smoky-voiced McClure says.

Projects in the works include writing lyrics for the German progressive rock group Tangerine Dream, harmonizing with an Argentine guitarist, teaching singing to children and recording.

McClure says she’s happy. And if paparazzi don’t have a place in her happy life, Hughes Market does.

Checking groceries 16 to 20 hours a week “is very comforting.”

“I see the same people, I wait on the same neighbors,” says the 10-year employee of the supermarket. “It’s like ‘Petticoat Junction.’ There’s something to be said for small-town consciousness.”

Four years from now, she says, she’ll be happy doing the same things, singing, teaching, writing music “and getting better.”

She compares herself to the lesser-known half of the songwriting team of Bernie Taupin and Elton John. “Bernie received lots of monetary benefits and respect, and was well-integrated into his musical community, but he didn’t have to be the clown,” she says. “Having to be the clown is like being on the front line.”

Which would she rather be? She laughs, hesitates, and says softly, “I’d rather be Bernie.”