The two robust young women with friendly faces went to the same middle school in Hampden and laughingly refer to their friendship in Baltimore's workaday world as "life without parole."

They make minimum wage working the night shift in the same Subway sandwich shop on 28th and Sisson streets, a short walk from their homes. Neither has a car. One dreams of becoming a nurse. The other is a married mother of two who would love to model for Gothic Beauty magazine. At work, both wear ponytails and purple uniform shirts.

But as Marty Ruby, 25, and Holly Thompson, 21, go about their lives in the Remington streets - taking the Shuttlebug bus or carousing in Long John's Pub - they are not ordinary people anymore. They are the most publicized witnesses to come face-to-face with one of the most notorious criminal suspects of the new century.

"I'm not just a Subway employee anymore," says Ruby. "I'm the sniper see-er."

Now, total strangers honk their horns or ask in store aisles for more impressions of the tall, polite stranger who walked in one October night while Ruby and Thompson were alone on the job. Seventeen days later, they were to learn the man, wearing shorts and a T-shirt, was John Allen Muhammad, the man linked to 14 killings across the country and accused of wreaking terror around the nation's capital in a sniper's rampage.

This pair of home-grown Baltimoreans are regularly recognized around their part of town: on the bus that shuttles to Hampden's Chestnut Street, its post office and the main "Avenue" on West 36th Street; the Safeway on 25th and North Charles streets; and in the parking lot or on the sidewalk at the busy corner where they work.

Ruby and Thompson have found themselves cast as the leading ladies of Remington - and national media stars. CNN, CBS Evening News, The New York Times, The Washington Post, 20/20, Dateline and People magazine all conducted national news interviews. Nightline, the ABC News program, came to call Wednesday. Close to home, local news reporters vied for a few minutes of on-camera time.

In each interview, the two have recounted the meeting in straightforward language: how Muhammad, appearing tired and hungry but still maintaining a military poise, asked whether they were still serving food. When told they were closed for the night, he returned to his blue Chevrolet Caprice in the parking lot, only to emerge moments later as they took out the trash.

Muhammad stepped out of his car, smiled, and said in a voice that was clearly not from Baltimore, "I hope I didn't scare you."

Once the sniper arrests were made, an agent for the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms visited Ruby and Thompson at their homes to have them identify Muhammad in a photo lineup, and even he remarked about their chance meeting.

"How does it feel to stare death in the face and walk away?" the two women remember the agent asking.

Even as they ride the wave of media stardom, Ruby and Thompson come across as authentic Baltimoreans whose clear, straight talk strikes a chord with countless people eager to know something specific about the serial-killing suspects' everyday life.

One woman came up to Thompson to tell her that she was somehow comforted by her reassuring presence. Throughout it all, the two have tried to provide a factual, firsthand account for an anxious public.

Still, there's nothing like 15 minutes of fame.

"It was life-changing," Thompson said. "I love the attention, I'm not going to lie."

During a recent game of hangman, the phrase Ruby playfully chose for Thompson to guess referred to their surreal status: "serial sniper stars." It is a wild and improbable journey especially for Thompson, the younger one who in her everyday life does not have a telephone.

Their well-observed account of a meeting with Muhammad before his arrest has been entirely confirmed by law enforcement. The two were the first to provide a detailed account of the cluttered condition of the inside of Muhammad's car, where investigators believe the suspect had been living. They also gave the public the first accounting of a mysterious item that Muhammad is believed to have carried with him - a laptop computer, from which Thompson had seen a blue light emanating on the night she saw him.

A few hours after Thompson and Ruby closed up shop and went home, a Baltimore police officer woke up Muhammad as he slept in his car outside the Subway and ran his license plate number through a national computer check. The hour was just after midnight Oct. 8. Again, the facts fit their memories. Thompson and Ruby said he told them he was hungry and tired and asked whether he could rest there.

Eventually, the chilling reality started to sink in, that the well-spoken stranger might have easily ended their lives then and there. It was the same day that, 12 hours earlier, a schoolboy had been shot in Bowie.

Ruby and Thompson are still trying to reconcile their recollections of Muhammad with the long trail of blood and murder left by the sniper shootings.

"Like I told the ATF man, I don't have anything against him [Muhammad]. He didn't do any harm to me," Ruby said. "He stood like a gentleman, walked like a gentleman, talked like a gentleman."

Their encounter with Muhammad gives an unvarnished glimpse into a working-class enclave, a close-knit community where a wayfarer stands out.

Not to be confused with nearby Hampden, known as a "Hon" headquarters and a colorful backdrop for Baltimore filmmaker John Waters, Remington is full of people who have jobs but not health insurance, people who talk of graduating from "Mervo" (short for Mergenthaler Vocational-Technical High School) and people who know the landscape of modest rowhouses as well as they know their own addresses.

Some, like Ruby, have never lived anywhere else and are surrounded by a network of extended family ties.

There are exceptions. "I'm originally from Curtis Bay," the exuberant Thompson says. "But I grew up in Remington."

Thompson is married to someone she had a crush on in seventh grade, Alvin Thompson, who came courting several years later, when she was working at a 7-Eleven. She suggested that he walk her home, and four months later, they were married.

Her husband recently got a better-paying job as a janitor for Calvert Florist, where he works for $8 an hour, but the best thing is that it comes with benefits - a big cushion when there are two young ones to raise.

Ruby's long-term goal is to be a nurse. For now, she takes care of a 2-year-old niece, Katie, who lives with her. She lives with her mother, Linda Holmes, who works the day shift at the Donut Connection, which is just a counter away from the Subway at the same Mobil Station. Her sister Holly Holmes, 18, worked at the Mobil the night that Muhammad appeared - she rang up his purchase of chips, a brownie and a Coke - but has since quit.

Ruby said she almost reached a point of media saturation the Saturday after the suspects were arrested. From 9 a.m. to 3 p.m. she gave interviews, she said, and then turned to Thompson and said, "It's all yours."

"Then I got home and 20/20 is calling me," Ruby said. She did not bother to change or brush her hair for every interview, while Thompson seized the chance to get, as she put it, "all decked out" for the world to see some flair. For the 20/20 appearance, she wore a look that she described as "bracelets, jewelry, collar, full Goth."

All the requests became "overwhelming," Ruby said. "I will say, reporters work hard for their stories."

Things began to return to normal for Ruby when she would not wake up early, at 7:30 a.m., just to watch herself on television. Then the day came when she did a CBS Evening News interview, and that night, she did not stay home to watch herself as she appeared to millions of American households.

"I went to Wal-Mart instead on the light rail, bought some slippers and started a Christmas layaway," Ruby said.

A fleeting brush with death followed by an intense media glare might be just about over. But some part of the strange beat goes on in their lives. Customers and friends tease them and remark on the reward money they missed for the capture of the sniper.

"All I'd need is 60 grand for a house and a car," Thompson said. "The rest I'd give to the victims' families."