The Vigils Begin : Parents: Though half a world away, the Mideast crisis has come home to two military families who wait and pray for the return of their loved ones.

Moments after Jimmy Mallett learned his son, Robbie, had been sent to Saudi Arabia with the 82nd Airborne Division, he left his print shop in the middle of the afternoon.

“I hate to say I needed a drink because if I drink, I drink because I want to, not because I need to,” said Mallett, a short, 38-year-old man with a glossy black mustache. “But I have to admit that this particular afternoon I really needed a drink.”

Fortified by two screwdrivers in a dimly lit corner of the Casa Lupe bar in Sylmar, Mallett drove home to his small, pale-green stucco house in San Fernando--still shaken that the son he had reared as a single father was 6,000 miles away in the desert.

Pfc. Robbie Mallett, 20, was home on a month’s leave that included leisurely golf games with his father when Iraq invaded Kuwait on Aug. 2.

The family knew Robbie’s company would be on 24-hour alert when he returned to the Army base at Ft. Bragg, N.C.

But when the orders came Aug. 6, there was no time to call home.

“It happened so fast, by the time my brother heard about it on TV, they were already there,” Mallett said. “We’ve had no communication whatsoever--when you call back to the base, all you get is a recording from the general, which says you will be contacted about your loved ones at a later date.”

For Jean Manier, the low point in the week before her 22-year-old son left for the Mideast was when the U.S. Army instructed him to draft his will.

“He named me as the beneficiary,” she said tearfully.

While her son, Pfc. Steven Lovold , waited to board a transport ship the size of a floating football field, Manier arranged to have his stereo, bicycle and winter clothes sent to their spacious Granada Hills house from Ft. Stewart, Ga.

She called friends and relatives so they would have a chance to contact Steven to say goodby before the 24th Infantry Division embarked on the 7- to 14-day voyage to the Persian Gulf.

And she created a makeshift shrine in the family’s home by placing a Bible and his picture on his extra-long, custom-made bed, “a safe place” where she prays her 6-foot-5 son will return.

At 3 a.m. Aug. 16, the morning Steven left, he called home and talked with his mother and stepfather for about two hours before he had to report to formation.

All too soon for Steven’s mother, the family was rushing through the last I-love-you’s.

“I said, ‘It’s so late, won’t you be tired?’ and he said, ‘Mom, I couldn’t sleep anyway,’ ” she said. “I said, ‘Steven, where will you sleep on the desert?’ and he said, ‘Under my howitzer.”’

After hanging up, Manier was so worn out that she crawled under the covers and spent the entire day in bed, eyes glued to TV news about the crisis.

Jimmy Mallett said he urged Robbie to join the U.S. Army because he thought it would be safer than “having an 18-year-old son right out of high school doing absolutely nothing with the things that go on around here, the drug situation.”

Now Robbie is part of an elite division that an Army spokesman says will be the first to parachute into the front lines to fight if hostilities break out in the Middle East.

The tall, easygoing youth with chiseled cheekbones, strong math skills and a fondness for boogie-boarding has been trained to provide air defense for his unit by operating a shoulder-fired, infrared homing missile.

“The missile leaves a trail that can be sensed immediately by the enemy, so he has to shoot and scoot,” said Maj. Joe Padilla, an Army spokesman.

It’s not exactly what Jimmy Mallett had in mind when he advised Robbie to learn a marketable skill in the military while deciding what to study in college.

Mallett had had sole custody of Robbie and his sister D. De since he was 20 and the two were toddlers, after divorcing their mother. “We grew up together,” he said. “I raised them and they raised me.”

After completing basic training, Robbie announced that instead of learning to fly a helicopter, he was joining the 82nd Airborne, following in the footsteps of his Uncle Mike Mallett, a Los Angeles police officer who spent 19 months in the unit in Vietnam.

“He’s old enough to do what he’s going to do,” his father said. “But I would have liked to see him get some nice training in the military to help him more on the outside . . . there aren’t a whole lot of want-ads for a Stinger missile operator.”

Uncle Mike is also concerned. “I’ve been pacing so much this poor rug is worn out,” he said.

A risk-taker who barreled down the expert slopes even as a beginning skier, Steven Lovold was not ready to settle down to college when he graduated from John F. Kennedy High School in Granada Hills.

But after more than two years in Georgia, the heat and humidity had begun to bother the gregarious bicyclist and weightlifter, his mother said.

Steven stopped taking leave time last Christmas to get an early discharge in time to enroll in winter semester business classes at California State University, Northridge. His parents had hoped he would take a hand this fall in running the family sheet-metal business.

But when tensions began running high in the Mideast earlier this month, the military announced that it was canceling early discharges.

Soon after, Steven called his mother to tell her he had signed up to serve an additional 60 days because he did not want to abandon the men in his mechanized artillery unit, which an Army spokesman said was specially trained to fight in desert conditions.

“He just kept saying” during the telephone conversations the two had at least every other day before Steven left, “not to worry, he would be home by Christmas,” Manier said.

Jimmy Mallett’s blood pressure is up, his 18-year-old daughter D. De cries alone in her room at night and the doctor told his brother, Mike, that his chest pains were caused by anxiety over the situation.

Robbie’s stepmother, Donna, tries to reassure them all.

The standoff in the Mideast is taking a toll on the Mallett family.

“We probably talk about it as much as Pat Boone talks about the Foursquare Church,” Mallett said. “I try not to dwell on it, but I just keep waiting for the guys in the car to knock on the door.”

“Our poor mother--Robbie’s grandmother--is a nervous wreck over this,” Mike Mallett said. “She says it’s like deja vu, like when I was in Vietnam.”

Jimmy Mallett said he tries not to voice his anxieties at work because he is certain his employees get tired of hearing him talk about Robbie.

The tension between parts of the Arab and Western worlds is also manifesting itself in the Glendale industrial park where his print shop is located.

“The only person who told me we shouldn’t be over there was an acquaintance whose office is next to mine and happens to be Iranian, and that didn’t settle real well with me--as a matter of fact, I threw him out of my office,” Jimmy Mallett said. “I’m going to put up an American flag just to upset the hell out of them because I’m upset.

“I know that the price you pay for putting on that uniform can be death, but I’ll be quite honest with you, if my son comes home in a bag, I’ll be very angry.”

Jean Manier has become a news junkie.

Immediately after Steven told her he was being sent to Saudi Arabia, she began paying $20.95 per month for cable TV service at her home and bought a five-inch portable color TV for $160 to keep on top of the file cabinets in her office.

Twice she has taken a day off from her bookkeeping duties at the family’s sheet-metal business and stayed in bed, mesmerized by news reports.

“I’m so stressed I’ll even start talking and forget what I’m saying--it’s so embarrassing,” Manier said. “I wake up in the morning and I’m trembling.

“If it weren’t for my faith in the power of prayer, I’d be in the booby hatch. That’s what keeps me together.”

Manier said she wants to support her son, but she isn’t sure the United States ought to be in the Mideast.

Perhaps the $28 million a day the military effort is costing ought to be spent on developing new sources of energy, she suggests uncertainly.

“I’d live the rest of my life with candles and walk to work rather than jeopardize my son and the other soldiers,” she said. “Our lifestyle just isn’t worth sacrificing their lives.”