Growing up, Smykowski was a good-looking guy, his mother said, and he knew it. "He was full of himself," she chuckled. One day in his senior year in high school, at a college and career fair in Mentor, Ohio, Ross watched the erect bearing of two Marine recruiters. "Couldn't you just picture Mark in that uniform," she joked to her husband. By the time they got to the table, he'd signed up.