Handicapped Actress’ Star Rises With Role in TV Series

Eighteen-year-old Karen Rauch of Rolling Hills Estates is a study in perpetual motion.

Besides her volunteer work at a thrift shop, her part-time job at a clothing store, her vocational training classes, her academic classes, her boyfriends and her budding modeling career, she found time last month to complete her first professional acting role.

Rauch, who has cerebral palsy, has never let her muscle problems and mild mental retardation get in her way.

In fact, her disability made it possible for her to land a co-starring part on an episode of ABC’s new series, “Life Goes On,” an hourlong show starring Chris Burke as Corky Thacher, a boy with Down’s syndrome trying to make his way through the trials of growing up.

A pretty, gregarious girl, Rauch said being selected to play Lisa Galloway, Corky’s first love, has been a dream come true.

“I’ve always wanted to be on a TV show,” she said. “I like this job.”

Rauch said she learned her basic acting creed--”Just be yourself”--at a Harbor College drama workshop called More Opportunities for the Developmentally Disabled.

One of the program’s instructors, television producer Joel Rice, described Rauch as “among the more sophisticated in the group,” a quick-witted girl with an imaginative bent that wins over her audience.

“She is tremendously poised and unabashedly outgoing and very, very real,” Rice said.

When Rice heard that the producers of “Life Goes On” were looking for someone to play Corky’s girlfriend, he rounded up 10 of the workshop’s best actresses and took them to Warner Bros. for an audition.

Ultimately, Rauch competed with 30 other young women for the part.

“I knew I’d get it,” she said confidently.

The show’s casting director, Dee Dee Bradley, readily agreed.

“She was lovely and warm and the producer fell in love with her,” Bradley said.

Winning the part put a temporary halt to her regular whirlwind circuit from her retail merchandising classes at the Southern California Regional Occupational Center, her special education classes at South High School and her part-time job at the Marshall’s store in the Old Towne Mall.

For two weeks, she arrived at her dressing room by 6:30 a.m. each day, where she found a personal hairstylist, wardrobe specialist and makeup artist waiting for her.

Her favorite moment, she said, was the scene in which she and Burke are supposed to kiss for the first time.

“They told us to go to this hallway and they made us kiss 15 times to make it right for the show,” she said, smiling shyly.

Her mother, Barbara Rauch, said Karen and Burke had become so comfortable with one another by the time that scene was shot that directors had to put sandbags on the floor between them to remind them to make their motions a little more tentative.

Rauch’s “Life Goes On” episode will air Sunday at 7 p.m., but she makes her television debut tonight at 7 p.m. on Channel 4’s “Entertainment Tonight,” which is doing a preview of the show.

If fans react well to Rauch as Corky’s girlfriend, she may be included in future episodes next season, producers have told the family.

Barbara Rauch said the experience has been a benefit for her daughter and for other disabled children.

“It is wonderful that they are letting handicapped people play these handicapped parts,” she said. “I really didn’t believe it was happening at first . . . but I’m certainly glad it did.”