LETTER PERFECT: A friend had to persuade...

LETTER PERFECT: A friend had to persuade Sharon Sowell, a Fullerton gemologist, to visit a Garden Grove-based group, Assist, that sets up correspondence with Russian families. Sowell began writing to two families; now she’s up to 17--in places like Georgia, Ukraine, Siberia. . . . “I got hooked,” she says. “It’s like getting to travel abroad without paying for it.” The Russians, who all write in English, include engineers, teachers and artists, she says, who are “very much interested in the U.S.”