The word "cupid" is not usually an apt description of the union leaders who talk tough across bargaining tables. Yet the officers of New York 1L have a tender spot that saved a refugee from war-torn Kosovo from possible deportation and got her together with her childhood sweetheart for a happy ending.

The story, as related by Local 1L Vice Pres. Joe Curto, started with making friends with a waiter at a restaurant near the local office. Sharif Prelvukaj was usually a friendly and cheerful server to diners at the Osso Buco restaurant near Washington Square in downtown Manhattan.

As they got to know one another during lunchtime visits, Sharif told Curto he was an immigrant from Pristina, Kosovo, the capitol city of the province in the former Yugoslavia where Slobodan Milosovec's Serbian army was mounting an ethnic-cleansing campaign to kill off ethnic Albanians, such as Sharif.

One day last winter, the normally outgoing Sharif was not his normal self. He looked sad and worried, Curto remembered. Curto coaxed the story out of Sharif that his childhood sweetheart and fiancee, Florija, had tried to join him and escape the devastation of Kosovo by coming to the United States using papers from a friend who had gotten immigration approval and then changed her mind.

But soon after Florija landed at Fort Dix, N.J., the processing center for Kosovo refugees, immigration officials discovered that she was using the other woman's papers. So, her innocent attempt to join her fiancee could backfire and she could be deported and face other penalties.

Sharif was desolate and asked his friends from the GCIU if they could think of a way to get his fiancee off the hook. Curto and Local Pres. Patrick Lopresti and Secy.-Treas. Anthony Caifano got their heads together and decided to call a good friend of the local, U.S. Sen. Charles E. Schumer (D.-N.Y.). Members of the local worked hard in November 1998 to win the senatorial election for the former Brooklyn congressman. Schumer also has a cousin who is a retired Local 1L member.

The lawmaker passed the problem on to two staffers, Eric Mullen and Anita Cavalino, who intervened with immigration officials. They convinced them that there should be exceptions to the mandatory immigration procedures in special situations and won Florija's release, with permission to live in the United States.

And to make the happy ending complete, the two sweethearts, Florija and Sharif, got married and are living happily in Brooklyn.