First of 10 profiles of The Enquirer's 1996 Women of the Year.

BY KRISTA RAMSEY
Enquirer contributor

Along with assignments and reminders, there is a small personal note on the chalkboard of Room 7 in Washburn Elementary School downtown:

Thanks for the loan, Mrs. Ach.

Janet Ach has been known for giving, lending, donating, organizing, contributing and volunteering many things. This is the first time she ever loaned out the family barracuda.

It is a stuffed wonder, some 212 feet long, hung in an eye-catching spot above the blackboard. Its presence in this West End school is, like many of Mrs. Ach's contributions, a matter of her being in the right place at the right time to see a need.

Then figuring out an original way to fill it.

''I was on a field trip to the Natural History Museum with the class,'' she explains matter-of-factly, ''and they saw some stuffed fish and were really interested in them. So I said, 'Would you like one for your classroom?' ''

The barracuda came out of the attic. Janet Ach made a very big splash with the sixth-graders.

She is a room mother, tutor and weekly classroom helper at the elementary school. ''She makes stuff make sense to you when you don't really get it,'' says 12-year-old LaShonda Raines, who has worked on place value and improper fractions with Mrs. Ach.

Little does LaShonda know her Monday morning tutor is, in her spare time, a driving force in civic organizations and volunteer boards throughout the city. She not only resurrects neglected barracudas. She raises money, goodwill and community awareness.

For it, she has been named a 1996 Enquirer Woman of the Year.

As co-chair of A Gourmet Sensation - Hospice of Cincinnati's annual fund-raiser - Mrs. Ach raised $92,000. She begged, charmed and cajoled to get the expense side to a new low.

''If you're doing a fund-raiser, your goal should be to spend no money,'' she says, striding familiarly through the Washburn halls. ''I always say that the only thing I have to do now is figure out how to get the U.S. Post Office to donate their part of it.''

She'll take another shot at winning them over in April when she chairs the Cincinnatian of the Year awards dinner for the Juvenile Diabetes Association. And this month, she serves on the host committee for the Leukemia Society's Tribute to Jackie Kennedy.

In between, she'll just continue to work on her four other current boards, volunteering at Washburn and operating Greater Cincinnati's Master Calendar, her own business which co-ordinates civic and charitable events.

Her nearly non-stop activity and three decades of volunteering are a result of what the family knows to be a genetic predisposition: the Helium Hand Reflex.

''When someone asks for help, your hand automatically goes toward the ceiling,'' daughter Pauline Ach writes, in nominating her mother. ''However, for my mom it is more than a reflex. It is a way of life.''

The values of commitment, compassion and hard work came early for Janet Ach, growing up the oldest of four children in a close-knit family that lived in Bond Hill.

She learned early that the perfect combination was liking people and liking fun. She has spent the rest of her life simply expanding the members of her ''family,'' and orchestrating grander and grander opportunities for ''fun.''

At social events, she and her husband, Roger, chairman and CEO of Chicago West Pullman Corp., make a point of sitting with people they don't know. Mrs. Ach took on fund-raisers with Hospice, AIDS Volunteers of Cincinnati and education-related organizations to meet new people.

''I want an elegant, sit-down dinner and great music, but what I really concentrate on is the people,'' she says. ''It's always the people who really drive the things I do for the causes.''

Friends say people - not fund-raising or events-planning - are Janet Ach's specialty.

It is the side of her that does not show up on resumes or lists of gala contributors. Those who know her best say she is an endless source of hand-knit sweaters at the birth of babies, treats for recuperating friends, spontaneous parties at any occasion. She never really has the time for it all, she just makes it.

She admits to an uncanny ability to do multiple tasks at once. When she lived in New York, she was known to knit sweaters while waiting in Manhattan traffic jams. In business, she not only publishes the Greater Cincinnati Master Calendar, she gathers dates, sells ads and updates the mailing list.

At Washburn, she passes out valentine's treats, then locates her own personal classroom file to see what duties she has been assigned for the day.

''It's just that I don't sit well,'' she says later, shaking off any suggestion that she must might be an overachiever. ''My friends say I'm organized, but I don't see it.''

Nearby, LaShonda Raines is not particularly interested in her organizational skills.

''I like her cause she's nice and she listens to you,'' she says. Her eyes move to the chalkboard. ''And she brought in the barracuda.''

WOMEN OF THE YEAR ANNOUNCED March 2, 1997