When teenager Jorjan Fox left Melbourne Beach for good, midway through her senior year in December 1985, she had no idea where she was going. Well, to New York City, for sure, but beyond that, it was a shot in the dark.

The resume was modest. She had taken modeling classes as a kid, done a little drama work in high school, and she’d had a couple of brief glimpses of gore as an emergency-room volunteer. She couldn’t hack math and science. Maybe she’d be a rock star; she liked to play guitar. Anyhow, Fox left Brevard to chase big dreams in the big city.

Eighteen years later, the trail in the rear-view is bright and clear. Culture vultures know her as Dr. Maggie Doyle on “ER,” Secret Service agent Gina Toscano on “The West Wing” and, more recently, forensics analyst Sara Sidle on CBS’ brainy/macabre hit series “CSI,” which just completed its third season. She had a cameo as a lesbian in the ground-breaking “Ellen” coming-out episode, and students of the arcane will remember her as the murder victim in Chris Nolan’s nightmarish 2000 film “Memento.”

It’s a long way from Melbourne, but by phone from her home outside Los Angeles, Jorja Fox (she dropped the “n” at the beginning of her acting career) has fond memories of her formative years. She was only 3 when her mom and dad - Canadian immigrants Mark and Marilyn Fox - relocated to Brevard in 1972 from her birthplace in New York City. Dad sold paper products. “Mom’s dream was to live by the beach somewhere,” Fox says.

Fox attended Gemini Elementary, Holy Trinity Episcopal Academy, Hoover Junior High and Melbourne High during her 13 years here. She was also a candy striper at Holmes Regional Medical Center, and her brother Jeff, 12 years her senior, was once a member of the Melbourne Beach Volunteer Fire Department.

Marilyn Fox died from cancer in 1996, and Mark Fox now lives in South Florida. Her only connections to Brevard these days are those occasional Mel-Hi alums who migrate into the California entertainment industry. For instance, she recently ran into MHS grad Kevin Green, a producer for the CBS reality serial, “Survivor.” The two used to ride the school bus together.

If minor, even capricious, decisions assume huge proportions with perspective, then Fox’s half-hearted impulse to enter a fashion show at Melbourne Square mall in 1984 probably qualifies as one of the earliest connected dots on the road to Hollywood. Looking back on it, the 34-year-old, former punk-culture devotee can only chuckle. “Winning that contest,” she says, “was the fluke of the year.”

In several magazine articles supplied by a Los Angeles publicity agency, Fox stated that anger was one her easiest emotions to access for a role. Indeed, when she attended Mel-Hi, her attitude caught the attention of English and drama teacher Leslie Gabe. Gabe went on to cast Fox in two starkly contrasting productions: the romantic comedy “Pillow Talk” and “Juvie,” a bleak drama about life in a juvenile detention center.

" ‘Pillow Talk’ didn’t seem like a natural fit for her," says Gabe, who worked Fox into the lead character played by Doris Day in the 1959 film. “The only other role she’d played was in ‘Juvie,’ and the lead was a girl who was dark and angry. That was the persona Jorjan liked to project until you got to know her better. She had an aura about her, a little bit of a wall that kept people at a distance.”

To this day, Fox - who says she’d never make a good crime-scene investigator in real life because of her squeamishness - isn’t sure where that edge came from.

“I was in trouble a lot in high school, but it wasn’t anything serious,” she recalls. “Things like walking around with headphones on, which was against the rules. I didn’t understand why. Maybe it was just being in a small town. There are a lot more ways to push the envelope in a small town.”

Fox calls Gabe “a fantastic teacher” and credits her for introducing her to the stage. In fact, the “Pillow Talk” experience landed Fox in a “limited distribution” film comedy called “Tierra Tango” some years back when the casting director turned out to be an avid Doris Day fan.

Today, in the lull between startup production on the fourth season of “CSI” in July and the release of an indie film entitled “Down With the Joneses” (in which she plays “a desperate, angry, used-up wife”), Fox works on plays with a group of friends calling themselves Honeypot Productions.

There’s not much of a window to work with. “CSI” didn’t finish taping its third season until April.

And lately, there’s a notion to master surfing, which is something she didn’t do much of when she was living on the Space Coast. Maybe that’s part of the reason why Fox - a pale, dark-haired kid who decided to compete in modeling against the more conventional, blond, tanned, surfer-girl types - regards what happened at the Melbourne mall all those years ago as something of a watershed event.

Now a serious vegetarian, Jorja Fox says she was “obese” in the seventh grade, and decided to change her look when she developed a crush on an older guy. She dropped the weight and got lean, but never fully bought into conforming to anyone else’s expectations.

“I’ll never forget when we were doing ‘Pillow Talk.’ It was the first time anyone had seen Jorjan out of character, so to speak,” Gabe says. “She was wearing a dress and makeup and heels and everybody said, ‘My god - you look so pretty!’ "

So it was almost on a dare that she bowed to a friend’s insistence and signed up for the mall competition. There were “at least 200 people there, maybe more,” Fox says. “I really didn’t do anything to prepare. I was wearing shorts and a tank top.”

It went pretty quickly. She spoke to a couple of judges and did a turn. And she won first place in a field of stereotypes. The reward was a free photo portfolio, plus an opportunity to train at the Elite agency in New York City. But Fox didn’t beat a path to the airport.

“I actually sat on that thing for about a year, because I wasn’t sure it was something I really wanted to do. I waited until the following summer to go to New York, and I was up there on my own. I loved it,” she says. “After that summer, it was really hard to go back (to Melbourne Beach).”

When her parents decided to return to New York in 1985, Fox eagerly followed them, even though it left her a semester short of graduating with her class at Mel-Hi. She went on to study at the Lee Strasberg Theatre Institute, where she found her calling.

She broke through nationally in 1993 with cop drama “Missing Persons,” starring Daniel Travanti. The show was short-lived, but she made her mark. By 2001, TV Guide was naming her as one of the “51 Hottest Stars on TV.”

“Jorjan was very, very smart,” Gabe says. “I could see her being a success in whatever she dedicated herself to doing. But I think of all the very talented and dedicated people who’ve come through (Mel-Hi) and tried tomake it (in show biz). The odds are so against them. Sometimes I almost think you need something more. It’s as if the stars have to be aligned for things to go so well.”

For now, the erstwhile high-school rebel is apparently comfortable with her place in the galaxy. She shares workout tips with Fitness and Self, confides makeup secrets with In Style, and vamps in photo spreads for Stuff, which calls her “TV’s Sexiest Scientist.”

Yet, when asked how she’d advise kids to work through image problems through those jittery teenage years, Fox retains a soft spot for the misfits.

“At the end of the day, it’s really important for you to follow your own heart about what you’re really interested in,” she says. “Kids feel so much pressure to fit it, but it’s important to understand that the things about you that don’t fit in are what’s really going to set you apart. It’s what makes you special. Be yourself. People will notice. And they’ll remember.”

Jorja’s journey

Films

“Down with the Joneses” (to be released this year)

“Forever Fabulous” (2000)

“Memento” (2000)

“The Hungry Bachelors Club” (1999)

“How to Make the Cruelest Month” (1998)

“Velocity Trap” (1997)

“The Jerky Boys” (1995)

“Dead Funny” (1994)

“Dead Drunk” (1992)

“Happy Hell Night” (1992)

Television

“CSI: Crime Scene Investigation” (2000-present)

“The West Wing” (1999)

“Alchemy” (1997)

“House of Frankenstein 1997”

“ER” (1994)

“Missing Persons” (1993)

“Summer Stories: The Mall” (1992)