Wash., Jan. 2 Tina Terada-Santos and Jerry Santos have plenty of reasons to be glad to work at the Microsoft Corporation, chief among them that it was on their very first day of orientation Sept. 5, 2000 that they met, and fell in love. They were married 11 months later.
While the software behemoth's campus here was the setting for their own love story, it is also proving to be a good place for them to hold employment in this turbulent economy. Microsoft's stock was the best performer in 2001 among the 30 companies that make up the Dow Jones industrial average, rising 53 percent to $66.25, after a dismal year in 2000 in which it lost more than 60 percent of its value. The company has huge amounts of cash on hand, new products like the Xbox game system and the Windows XP operating system are selling well, and the company appears to be on the verge of settling a major part of its antitrust battle with the federal government and several states.
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