Letting go doesn’t have to mean giving up. IN fact, the act of releasing oftentimes produces the result we strive too hard to achieve. That’s the life lesson learned quite indelibly by Sunset Beach’s Tracy Lindsey Melchior (Tess Marin) over the past couple of years. Not too long ago, this natural beauty with the decidedly non-showbiz disposition was so disenchanted with her acting career that she was ready to return to college to complete her psychology degree.

“It was apparent to me that being in the business was becoming too much of a struggle,” explains the low-key actress. “I felt like I was sacrificing my personal happiness to continue being in it. I decided to let it go for a little while and not obsess about it. I opened myself up to anything, and I just prayed on everything.”

With the benefit of hindsight, Melchior can today discern that she never actually decided to quit acting. “I didn’t call my agent and manager and say, ‘Never call me again. I don’t want to act.’ I was just opening the doors to wherever life led me. I started focusing on other things and filling my time with productive chores. I started to be more selective about the calls I would go on. The most powerful word in this town is no.”

Wouldn’t you know that almost as soon as she moved from Los Angeles to the more subdued San Bernardino County – where she could spend more time with her then-fiancee, an LAPD SWAT-team member (the two married this past March) and her beloved horse, Bulldozer – her career took a turn for the better. First, she won a role in a movie starring Ice-T, a project she decided to pass on. That turned out to be a propitious move. “Ice-T was the one who recorded all those cop-hater songs way back when. That was a bad affiliation for me (her father is a retired cop who lives in Florida). Also, if I had done the movie, I w3ouldn’t have been able to go to my screen test for this role on Sunset. Can you believe that?”

It’s not as if Melchior was a total neophyte hunting desperately for her first substantial acting gig. She had put in a brief stint as Venorica Landers on The Young and The Restless, which was preceded by a number of guess-starring roles on nightime and syndicated series (My So-Called Life, Weird Science, Silk Stalkings, Hercules: The Legendary Journeys) and TV-movies (Search and Rescue). She also studied acting seriously for the first time at the Larry Moss Studio in L.A., which she believes helped her immeasurably. “I look back on the guest-starring parts I got, which came about before I really studied, and I did OK. But I wasn’t able to make choices and make myself interesting by adding different colors and nuances. I learned to do that in classes.”

By the time Melchior tested for Sunset, she was ready to fly. “If you’ve prepared well, you’re confident,” she says. “That was one advantage that I had. I knew I had done my work beforehand, and I knew that it was good. Also, my way of thinking at that time was that I didn’t need this job anymore. I wanted it, but if it wasn’t meant to be, it wasn’t meant to be. I wasn’t desperate when I entered the room. I figured, this is me. If it’s what you want, great. If it wasn’t, that’s fine too.”

In addition to a professional slump, Melchior suffered through a personal crisis as well. Or as she puts it, “I went through some things personally that didn’t allow me to strive in my career, and then when I wanted to get back into it my career kind of passed me by and I lost momentum.” One of those “things” was the breakup of her first marriage, an experience that, she says taught her the meaning and importance of letting go. “He just needed to move on, for whatever reasons. That’s when I learned the difference between quitting and letting go. So I let it go. How can you not believe in God when you let go and have faith that he’ll work everything out? My whole life has been amazing ever since.”

Coming out the other end of what she dubs “my dark year” enabled Melchior to find and latch onto a spiritual foundation. “I don’t like talking about it a lot,” she says, “because I don’t know whether it turns people on or off, but I am a Christian. I think that it’s given me peace and security. When you’re not worrying about everything all the time, then you can let go and trust that things will work out how they’re supposed to.”

Although she swore “I would never marry again,” all Melchior can say today is, “Never say never again, right?” The way she sees it, “Rob was whom I was supposed to be with. That’s clear to me. I felt from the beginning that I knew Rob forever. I said to myself, ‘Oh, there you are,’” The two met thanks to their mutual enjoyment of country music. “I like going dancing at country-western bars,” she says. “The wife of a very good friend of Rob’s was working at this bar, and he was there hanging out with his friend. It was an instant thing for me, and for him, too, he finally admitted.”

They were going to simply run off and get married, but “we figured our moms would kill us. Next thing we knew we had invited 65 people, but we still decided to go to Las Vegas. Everyone knew we were going there. It was nice. We got married at the Bellagio, which is just beautiful. There’s a nice little chapel on the grounds, then afterward we bought dinner for everyone at the Harley-Davidson Café. It was fun.”

Never comfortable living in L.A. and being part of what she calls a pretentious lifestyle, Melchior and her husband reside quite contentedly 45 minutes and a world away from their respective job locations. “We moved out here to a nice little town with bridle paths for horses. The commute to work isn’t that horrendous. I can focus on the day ahead.”

As for the worries that go along with being a policeman’s wife – and a SWAT-team member at that – Melchior’s main concern is the violence sometimes directed toward cops. “There’s a lot of anger out here toward police officers right now,” she says. “We had a cop in Lake Forest who had pulled up to a convenience store recently and was blown away by a guy who didn’t like cops. That kind of thing terrifies me. I believe Rob can handle himself in a given situation, but when it’s just a blatant attack like that, that’s what scares me.”

Not surprisingly, Melchior is an active member of the Citizens Advisory Board of the American Police Hall of Fame, a charity close to her heart that helps the families of fallen officers. “They approached me, even before I met Rob,” says Melchior. “This was a few years ago, when I was just doing guest-starring roles on various shows. We conduct toy drives at Christmas and help children with college costs, things like that. Anything we can do to help support those families, we do.”

Melchior’s background, personality and preferred lifestyle all seem at odds with her choice to become a professional pretender. How did it happen? Born in Florida, she moved to her grandparents’ house in Colorado at the age of 5, when her parents’ marriage broke up. Shortly thereafter, her mom met and married her stepfather, who was a local TV personality and anchorman. “He hosted a show called A.M. Colorado, and he’d interview different celebrities,” Melchior recalls. “I was already doing some theater in school at the time. I had switched schools and needed an elective course, so I ended up in a drama class. So between my stepdad’s career and my liking drama, I felt intrigued by the life and fell into it.” After briefly attending Colorado State University, Melchior moved to Southern California to pursue acting work.

One constant in her itinerant life has been horses. “My mom is a horse fanatic,” says the actress, who herself competed on the Class A Arabian Horse Show circuit when she was younger. “She got my stepfather involved and talked him into buying a ranch. Now I’m trying to talk Rob into buying me a ranch!” Once she adjusts to her new work schedule and lifestyle, she plans on competing again. “That’s what I was driving toward when I got the job.”

Meanwhile, she is enjoying every minute of her time at Sunset. In fact, the only aspect of the job she finds problematic is portraying a character who essentially is an enigma. “What’s hard about playing Tess is that she is a mystery woman,” Melchior says. “She is to me, too. That can be advantageous also, because I can make more choices. Those choices can be wrong, of course, because I don’t know where she’s heading anymore than anyone else. It’s a challenge. What I do like about her is that she has temperament. Tess is not a victim. I’ve played a lot of damsel-in-distress roles, but Tess has strong intentions. Tess makes some pretty radical decisions, so she’s more impulsive than I am. Maybe there’s some of my younger side in her, that sort of ‘I don’t care, it’s what I want” attitude that is so immature. There’s a part of me that was like that when I was growing up.”

That’s surely not the case anymore. Melchior is all grown-up now, graced with wisdom and maturity that belie her years. She’s taken some stumbles and hard knocks; you could even say she’s fallen off the proverbial horse. But she’s climbed back on and cantered her way back to the favored path. All things considered, what she takes the most pride in these days is the healthy and thriving bonds she’s cemented with the people who mean the most to her.

“Relationships are the most important thing to me, and at this point in my life those relationships are deep and honest. I have a lot of people, including my two older sisters (Robin and Christine), who are telling me they’re proud of the person I’ve become. I feel completely accountable for myself. I guess it’s just clarity. Going through my dark year, I went through counseling and gained spirituality. I found myself. I know who I am, and I like who I am. I’ve never been happier. I have more peace in my hear than ever before.”