Help Wanted

By Kathleen Adams, Melissa August, AnnMarie Bonardi, Randy Hartwell, Ellin Martens, Lisa McLaughlin, Joseph Pierro, Sora Song and Joel Stein

FROM RICHES With 80% of San Francisco's dotcoms facing extinction, the streets are strewn with jobless techies. Gone are the benefits, the lavish perks and all that money. But also left behind are the endless workdays and job stress.

TO RAGS Into the breach: the Peace Corps, which has been trolling this wasteland with ads in a San Francisco weekly reading, "Dot-Com, Dot-Gone? Now it's time to Network with the real world: Peace Corps." Though it seems like a curious population to target, applications in the area to join the corps have doubled.