FOLEY WATCH

WASHINGTON, Oct. 1 — In the hierarchy of Congress, the high school students who serve as Congressional pages fall somewhere near the bottom, seemingly invisible as they scurry through the hallways of the Capitol ferrying messages to powerful lawmakers who often fail to give them a second glance.

In that rarefied world, Representative Mark Foley, the silver-haired Republican from Florida, stood out.

He took pains to befriend the 16- and 17-year-old aides, several former pages said in interviews on Sunday. He chatted with them on the House floor, they said, sent handwritten notes and urged them to keep in touch when they left Washington for their hometowns.

“You didn’t have a lot of interaction with the members because most of them treated you like a kid, but he was pretty friendly,” Ashley Gallo, a 21-year-old former page who is now a senior at Western Michigan University, said of Mr. Foley.

“He would talk to people,” said Ms. Gallo, who was a page in the fall of 2001 and said she knew several pages who were friendly with Mr. Foley.

“He would say, ‘Here’s my e-mail address if you want to keep in touch.’ I don’t think anyone thought anything of it. They saw him as a mentor or a reference.”

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