he profile of the young woman emerges as if in silhouette.

Kobe Bryant’s accuser remains anonymous, her identity protected as an alleged sexual assault victim, her voice not heard to tell her side of the story. Details of her life, coming from friends and police reports and cast in the half-light of reflected celebrity, create an enigmatic image.

Some see the slender 19-year-old with shoulder-length blond hair and a sweet smile as energetic, upbeat and confident — a peppy cheerleader and spirited singer in school shows who had aspirations of stardom.

Others in this middle-class, Rocky Mountain town of 3,500 — where bored teens hang out at the Texaco station, then drive off to party through the night in the hills — describe her as a showoff, “a total starve for attention,” as one ex-boyfriend put it.

“It doesn’t matter if [the attention] was good or bad,” Josh Putnam said. “It was always good to her.”

Friends call her honest, trustworthy and strong, “one of the toughest people I know,” according to Luke Bray, a 21-year-old construction worker whose wife has known her since second grade.

“She can’t believe the things that people in her own town are saying about her,” he said. “She’s going to be a victim a second time, a third time, a fourth time, every day for the rest of her life. But she knows the truth and can handle it.”

Yet several former friends doubt her allegations against Bryant, saying she is impulsive, vindictive and emotionally fragile.

Her freshman year at the University of Northern Colorado in Greeley, a farm community 60 miles north of Denver, was interrupted Feb. 25 when she was rushed to a hospital by ambulance. Campus police chief Terry Urista said his office received a call about 9 p.m. that night regarding a woman in a dormitory room.

“An officer determined she was a danger to herself,” Urista said, identifying the woman by name but refusing to characterize the episode as a suicide attempt. “It’s classified as a mental health issue,” he said.

Lindsey McKinney, who lived at the woman’s family house this spring before the two had a falling out, said her former friend tried to kill herself at school by overdosing on sleeping pills, and overdosed again at home in May, little more than a month before she alleged Bryant assaulted her.

The woman was distraught over a breakup with her boyfriend and the recent death of a girlfriend in a car accident, McKinney said.

The contrast between the gregarious, seemingly happy image so many friends have of the woman and the histrionic, troubled side others describe is stark and hard to reconcile.

She is less visible these days, her friends say, staying home most of the time, unless she drives to meetings at her attorney’s office in nearby Avon. She still visits friends, but has been warned by authorities not to talk anymore about the case.

Sex assault victims often worry about being blamed, said Krista Flannigan, an attorney and victim advocate working for the district attorney in the Bryant case.

“Fear, anxiety, some form of guilt, sadness, anger, vulnerability — those come and go,” Flannigan said. “Some are more intense than others, depending on what their past life experiences have been, what their current support systems are, what their past support systems have been.”

A high-profile case, she said, affects the victim and her community with greater intensity.

“I correlate it to throwing a pebble into a pond and then you have a ripple effect,” Flannigan said. “When something’s high-profile, your ripples get bigger and bigger and bigger. The higher profile it is, the greater the potential victim base.”

In this case, the ripples are reaching far beyond the woman’s family — her retired father and mother and two brothers. They are touching virtually everyone in this tiny town, down the valley from resort-rich Vail.

What everyone agrees on is that she had a passion and talent for singing. She wrote songs and kept telling people she would be famous someday.