Girl power rules. To prove it, Mary Grohosky, a 51-year-old nurse practitioner in Concord, pumps her right fist in the air and slices 30 years off her age in the process.

"Woo, hoo!"

Sometimes girl power is shopping, sometimes a movie. Sometimes it's a play in Boston, or a pedicure in Concord, or a walk in the park or a hike up a trail.

And sometimes it simply means eating cheeseburgers and fries, side by side in a restaurant booth with 17-year-old Jamie McGurk of Pembroke.

Like on this day.

"I'll be at her graduation," Grohosky says, in between bites of a huge cheeseburger she'll never finish. "I'll be at her wedding."

They are two local people with very human needs, each filling a void in the other's life through the Junior/Senior Friends Youth Mentoring Program.

They've been socializing for 10 years now, an unusually long time for a friendship of this type, according to Brooke Noonan, program director for the junior/senior program.

There's the nurse at Concord Hospital, slender with a quick laugh, who never had children, never had the daughter she always wanted.

And there's the student at Pembroke Academy, shy and reserved, who never received the sustained love she wanted from her parents. McGurk doesn't know her father. Never did.

Her mother, Carolyn McGurk, died suddenly from a cerebral hemorrhage in 2001, when Jamie was 7, just after she had enrolled in the program and met Grohosky.

McGurk fights to speak about her mother, wiping tears with a tissue and telling her interviewer that she's okay. She can handle it.

"She was my best friend," McGurk says. "We used to go to Massachusetts every Saturday. We'd go to my nana's house."

It was Carolyn McGurk's idea to enroll her daughter in the program. McGurk, it seems, has found a lifetime friend. And another big sister. And another mother.

"She's very caring," McGurk says, working the fries. "She watches out for me, and we have fun. That's the best thing."

McGurk's force field, the barrier she constructs when meeting someone new, is obvious. Her voice is as soft as her brown eyes and long

lashes, and she sometimes looks down while speaking.

"Her mom told me she doesn't like to take risks," Grohosky says. "She's very shy. She had no father figure."

Carolyn McGurk, a single mom, had three daughters, including Jamie's two half sisters, Jennifer and Jessica Long. They all live in Pembroke, along with Jennifer's two daughters, Kaitlyn, 10, and Alyssa, 6.

Jennifer Long, 30, runs her own cleaning business. She also runs the show at this home of five females.

"We're hanging in there," Long says. "We do the best we can. We've stuck together, and we do things together."

Grohosky provided additional guidance for McGurk - an anchor, a role model, a person who'd listen.

Within a year after they met, Carolyn McGurk suffered a cerebral hemorrhage while talking on the phone.

"She was okay two hours prior to that," Long says.

Long moved back home from Franklin after her mother died.

Meanwhile, the relationship between Grohosky and McGurk was still forming.

Grohosky knew, however, that McGurk could fill a void in her own life. And McGurk could benefit from this educated woman's success, and her strong, nurturing side.

But would McGurk take advantage? Could Grohosky penetrate that force field? Would The Wizard of Oz board game she had given McGurk help?

"I broke through," Grohosky says.

"I trusted her when we started finding out that we had things in common," McGurk says. "Once that happened, I found I liked her."

Grohosky started slowly. Baby steps. They went for ice cream during those early days. Grohosky once hosted a tea party for McGurk. They set the table together and lined it with stuffed animals. Cats and bears mostly. (next page »)