A Daring Escape : Refugees: A Long Beach woman posed as a Bedouin, bluffed her way past Iraqi troops in the Kuwait desert and crossed into Saudi Arabia.

Mary Rimdzius’ friends in Kuwait had told her for months that Americans should be worrying about Iraq instead of Iran, but the Long Beach woman didn’t believe them.

She had also heard the rumors of 30,000 Iraqi troops in the desert, but they couldn’t be true either, she reasoned.

She even made jokes about the rumored troops, writing her family that those forces “must be nearly fried out there.” And when she dropped a departing friend off at the airport the night of Aug. 1, her friend joked: “If they invade, grab my fur coat.”

The next morning, Iraqi forces were in the streets of the capital.

“It was strange,” Rimdzius, 45, said Wednesday, safely back home after a daring escape across the desert from Kuwait. “A man was cleaning the pool on one side of our building, and we were hearing shooting on the other side.”

Rimdzius’ husband died four years ago, and she went to Kuwait 18 months ago. Her brother, Paul Wilcott, a McDonnell Douglas executive, lived there, and Rimdzius said she joined him for a change of scenery. Wilcott was out of the country when the Iraqis invaded.

She did not want to leave immediately after the invasion, she said, because she loves Kuwait and has many friends there.

But she was soon “praying for the bombing to start. . . . We knew from Day 1 we were hostages and we’d be easy to control.”

When she heard Saddam Hussein’s announcement that Americans were to be rounded up and detained in hotels, she decided it was time to initiate a bold plan.

Last Friday, after she dyed her blonde hair black, she donned the floor-length black chador and veils of a Bedouin woman. But underneath she wore pants and sneakers “in case we had to run.”

She and about 70 others set out in a convoy of 13 vehicles across the desert, she said. Among them was Rimdzius’ friend, Stephanie McGehee, 37, an Associated Press photographer from Leucadia, Calif., who is fluent in several Arabic dialects. McGehee was able to talk the convoy past several Iraqi checkpoints.

Another Californian who escaped Kuwait, Peter Burrell of the Bay Area town of Walnut Creek, was home Wednesday night but his wife said he did not want to comment on the escape. A spokesman for Burrell’s employer said the air-conditioning firm did not want any statement made for fear of endangering employees still in Kuwait.

Soldiers turned Rimdzius’ convoy back when it first tried to drive into the desert from the Kuwaiti capital. They pretended to obey and head back to the city, but after driving a short distance, turned back into the blistering white sands again.

When the convoy passed a cluster of tanks, Rimdzius swallowed her wedding ring. “It was very important to me,” she said. “I didn’t want to lose it.”

They were allowed to pass, but soon came upon another group of tanks, Rimdzius said. “We didn’t know if they’d shoot or smile,” she said.

They didn’t shoot.

After about two hours of grueling driving, the convoy crossed out of Kuwait and reached Khafji, Saudi Arabia, where a fort had been converted into a center for refugees fleeing the Iraqis. They were fed huge platters of rice and lamb, and the Saudis had set up a hospitality tent where the group was given money, Sara Lee cakes and orange juice.

The next day they drove to the tiny Persian Gulf state of Bahrain, where they organized their trips back home.

Rimdzius’ family in Long Beach had anxiously awaited her return for more than a week. A yellow ribbon is still tied to the big pepper tree outside their home.

“I’m just glad she had the sense to get the hell out when she did,” said her father, Cliff Wilcott. “There’s going to be an awful lot of blood shed over there.”

After a family dinner welcoming her back, Rimdzius went home with her daughter, Kim Reuschell, a 27-year-old Long Beach secretary.

WARNING FROM KOVIC: Anti-war activist Ron Kovic called on President Bush to immediately withdraw U.S. troops from the Persian Gulf. B4