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Carla Singer Hale saw The Tribune's front-page photo of a young girl standing next to Elvis Presley and froze.

"That's Nancy," she said.

The girl in photo was her childhood friend Nancy Hebenstreit, now Nancy Kozikowski.

When Hale read the story, she found it was about how both she and Kozikowski had met and been kissed by Presley when he performed in Albuquerque on April 12, 1956.

She called The Tribune and found out how to reach Kozikowski by phone.

The two had lost touch many years ago. Hale married an Air Force enlisted man and traveled around the world with him for more than 20 years before they settled in Belen in 1981.

Now 64, Hale is a mother and a grandmother. She recently retired from the Belen Schools after driving school buses for more than 23 years.

She said she was expelled from St. Vincent Academy immediately after meeting Presley in 1956 because she had given an interview to The Tribune about being kissed by the singer, a story the school considered bad publicity. She enrolled at Valley High School the next year.

The only time she ever saw Presley was that April night in Albuquerque 51 years ago, but she said that meeting remains one of her favorite memories and she never stopped being his fan.

She was thrilled when her husband, Don, took her to Graceland a couple of years ago.

And she remembers where she was and what she was doing when Presley died on Aug. 16, 1977.

"Both me and my daughter were playing softball at Tyndall Air Force Base, just outside of Panama City (Fla.)," she said. "My husband called us over to the fence and told us Elvis had died. My daughter and me just stood there and cried.

"I never did like the Beatles."