Luck comes in odd places.

A For 19-year-old Alexandra Harrill, it came through her mother, Mary Harrill, who works for an employment center called Superjobs in Cincinnati.

Alexandra is a high school graduate whose dream is to earn her living dancing. Her story almost parallels the 1983 movie “Flashdance,” but Alexandra isn't an exotic dancer.

She danced ballet with the Exhale Dance Tribe, a contemporary dance troupe in Cincinnati, for three years. That is her passion. However, she found that earning enough money dancing to make a living is a reality that few people can live.

So, she quit the dance troupe to search for a “real” job, but didn't have any luck, and that's when her mother stepped in.

Mary Harrill told her daughter about a 3-week welding class that could get her started as a welder.

“I thought, ‘you've got to be kidding me!’” Alexandra Harrill said.

“But, nothing else was happening so I said, ‘Okay, sign me up.’ I bought my steel-toed boots and welding hood. I thought it was a complete joke.

“I'm sitting here in class with all these grown men who couldn't figure out what a 19-year-old girl was doing in a welding class,” she said.

Despite her — and her classmates' — doubts, Harrill finished the course and got a job at BAE Systems, a manufacturing company in suburban Fairfield, Ohio, that makes armored vehicles for the U.S. military. It's not exactly the dream job she'd imagined for herself, but the pay is great.

She works third shift, from 8 p.m. until 6 a.m., and wears oversized welding gear rather than dancing togs. She has been burned a few times and, she said, she comes home tired and dirty.

Harrill got her welding training at the Elite Welding Academy in Fairfield, a school that trains a lot of welders for manufacturing companies in the region, including BAE.

On its website (www.eliteweldingacademy.com) the technical school poses the age-old question: “Tired of dead-end jobs?”

Besides the short course that Harrill took, the two-year-old school offers a six month course to train certified welders, and has a variety of classes in structural and pipe welding and manufacturing welding. In fact, the school opened just to train pipe welders, but has expanded to attract people to welding and to train welders for a variety of jobs, including industrial and commercial construction.

The U.S. Bureau of Labor notes that the average welder in the workforce today is 54 years old, and many of them will be retiring in the next few years.

By 2010, there will be a shortage of 250,000 welding professionals. With the average national wage for pipe welders at $21.56/hr., it should be a no-brainer. Yet sometimes it takes some prodding.

Bob Reeves, vice president of operations at the Elite Welding Academy, said the welding industry is tapped out when it comes to trained employees.

“We're spending a lot of time talking to high school students to get them interested. Basically, we're a staffing company that trains welders,” Reeves said.

His school now offers a 90-day program called Elite Craft Support that is designed to can train welders and other people for various skilled trades.

On of its focuses is training people to help BAE meet its needs for welders. The company employs between nearly 700 welders, including 60 who have gone through Elite Welding Academy and 20 others who were attending classes in early May.

“The big story is that we're doing the community a favor,” said Reeves. “We're taking people making minimum wage and training them, and putting them into jobs paying $15 to $16 an hour in four weeks. What Alexandra did for us was let women know that this trade is open to them as well.”

Alexandra Harrill is one of the 60 welders trained at the school who now at work at BAE.

Reeves said that four or five women now enter his school's welding program each month.

Besides the good pay, Harrill said she finds the job extremely interesting.

Although she majored in dance in high school, she minored in chemistry and took advanced classes.

“A lot of that applies to welding technology. I find working with metals intriguing,” she said.

Being a woman in what is typically a man's world isn't without its challenges.

“When I first got into welding I didn't see many women and I was a little concerned. The men were doubtful at first that I was serious, and working around men has its good and bad points,” Harrill said.