Laurie Hertzel; Star Tribune Staff Writer -- About volunteers at the World Figure Skating Championships

In his competition tuxedo, glittering gold vest and black ice skates, Sergey Sakhnovsky peeked around the doorway of the Skaters Services room, hoping for a little foundation and maybe some blush.

Liz McPartland and Rachel Pascazio were at his side in an instant, settling him into a chair and tucking a thick white towel around his neck.

He fluttered his fingers at his face, giving the universal sign for "makeup," and Pascazio began browsing through beige bottles until Sakhnovsky said, almost apologetically, "I only have one minute."

One minute! In a blur, both women went at his face with gauze pads and Q-tips, trying for the perfect color in record time.

"Too light," one said. "Too gray," the other said. They settled on Aveda "Wheat," which they both agreed was perfect.

"Cheeks, too? Blush?" Pascazio asked, and Sakhnovsky, who is Russian but skates for Israel, looked confused. "I don't know. I don't understand nothing," he said. He shut his eyes, leaned back in the chair, and gave himself up to their art.

In one minute - or just a shade longer - they were done and he was out of the chair and halfway down the stairs to the ice of Target Center, where he was to skate with his partner, Galit Chait, in compulsory dance.

"Good luck!" Pascazio hollered behind him. "Have a nice time out there!" and, turning to McPartland, added, "OK, this `Wheat' is good!" Repairing tatters

If you were going to be a volunteer at the World Figure Skating Championships, like McPartland and Pascazio, you could do worse than to help out in Skaters Services. Located just across the hall from the dressing rooms, it's a bright and friendly place where skaters can get their hair done (or even highlighted), their makeup refreshed (or applied "from the bottom up," as McPartland said), beads reaffixed, dresses steamed wrinkle-free and just about anything else they need at the last second.

"Mostly, we're supposed to be hair, makeup and costume repair," McPartland said, "but we've been doing everything from remaking sleeves to altering pants."

They both know how important this kind of help is - McPartland, 29, who lives in Bloomington, used to skate with the Ice Capades. Pascazio, 30, skated with Walt Disney World on Ice and now lives in Minnetonka.

On Monday, when things were really hopping, Pascazio sewed pearl beads onto Lithuanian skater Margarita Drobiazko's smoky-gray dress, while McPartland extended the crotch (there's no polite way of saying that) in the puffy-sleeved bodysuit of Drobiazko's partner, Povilas Vanagas.

"We had to get down on the floor and see how much to add," McPartland said. "We had to add this much." And she held her hands a good foot apart.

"He totally dropped his pants," Pascazio said. "But that's OK. We're used to it."

Their room is well-equipped for such emergencies. Lined up along one wall, by two sewing machines, is just about everything a skater might need: safety pins, nail clippers, stretchy flesh-colored mesh (which they used for the bodysuit extension), a fat red tomato bristling with pins, a Baggie full of sequins, a blue-handled screwdriver, a telephone, a lint roller.

Beyond, a long white table is laid out with brand new hairbrushes and ponytail holders and maxi-hold hair spray and pomade, and along the far wall is nearly every hue of makeup Aveda sells.

Skaters don't have to worry about germs - a narrow drawer contains piles of tiny wooden scrapers, which McPartland and Pascazio use to shave the tip off the lipstick after it has been used. "For hygiene," Pascazio explained. "We also use alcohol on the eyebrow pencil so they're, like, safe."

As the women steamed smooth the flame-colored skirt of American skater Elizabeth Punsalan's dress, Sakhnovsky and Chait flashed past on the in-house TV, warming up for the Golden Waltz.

The camera zoomed in on his face. The "Wheat" looked marvelous, but Pascazio pursed her lips. "If he would have had more time, I would have done a little eye concealer and a little lip gloss," she said.

A few seconds later, Drobiazko and Vanagas (or, as McPartland called them, "Crotch Man and Bead Woman") glided past. "Rachel, I fear for that outfit!" McPartland said. "I can't watch! Does it look OK? Does he look like he's in pain?" And then, as the camera zoomed in on a swooping Drobiazko, "Oh, Rachel, good beading! And I mean that!"