Check-cashing companies say it's a risky business they're in, but they're the only ones crying all the way to the bank. This is a story of people on a financial treadmill that pulls them in reverse faster than they can limp forward.

When Carin and Gene Schmidt left their small hometown in Tennessee last October, family problems had exhausted their savings, and Orlando, rich with jobs, seemed like a good place to start over.

But with no money and nowhere to stay, they wound up at a homeless shelter. Five months later, they're still there, able only to dream of an apartment of their own.

In what must seem like an upside-down world, it was their attempts to cash paychecks and do their banking, as much as anything else, that has kept them there.

Gene, who has suffered from heart trouble and asthma, is studying computer electronics. Carin works nights as a waitress at a cheap-eats restaurant in the tourist district, taking home $169 every two weeks.

That wasn't enough to maintain a bank account. But, when she turned to a check-cashing outlet, the fees started to add up.

The couple had to pay $10 just to open an account with the outlet. Each time she cashed her $169 check, she got back only $164. Those charges may not seem like much, but in a year's time, the fees would amount to nearly two weeks' salary.

Banks, though, generally won't bother with such small fish. Banks, after all, can't legally charge their customers sky-high fees. And these aren't customers likely to build cash-rich accounts or take out profitable loans, on which banks make their money.

Not so the check-cashing stores. In fact, they set up shop in poor neighborhoods for a reason. They can demand outrageous fees from those small fish.

The result is a scandalous, two-tiered financial system - one for the haves, another for the have-nots. And the have-nots, who can afford it the least, wind up paying the most.

Under Florida law, check-cashing businesses can charge 3 percent to cash government checks and 5 percent for business checks.

And the fees skyrocket if the check is a personal one. A handyman who makes $15 doing an odd job for a homeowner would lose a third of his pay to a check-casher.

Yes, the check-cashers respond, but it is a risky business. And they work in rough places, staying open long hours, often seven days a week. Those hardships have the industry crying all the way to the proverbial bank. Life's so tough that check-cashing outlets now number 6,000 throughout the country, with about 340 in Florida.

Where's the outpouring of concern? Where's the champion for the working poor who are being exploited? And why will banks not throw out a lifeline?

Instead, a kind of financial ``red-lining'' has developed, with the poor cut off from the services available to those with money. Perhaps that's not intentional, but it's what results from having to keep money in a bank just to cash a check.

Florida's banks need to come up with an alternative for the poor in their communities - services that help, rather than hurt. The American Association of Retired Persons, many of whose members use check-cashing services, recommends that banks offer more accounts that carry minimal fees and low minimum-balance requirements.

That's happening in some areas of the country. New York and New Jersey have required state-chartered banks to provide such low-cost accounts with low minimum balances, a monthly fee not exceeding $3 and at least eight free transactions monthly.

Or Florida banks could follow the lead of institutions such as Union Bank in Los Angeles. Instead of the 3 percent to 4 percent that check-cashing services charge, the bank set fees in the range of 1.5 percent. The program to convert check-cashing customers into regular customers has worked so well that the bank is expanding it.

Several states also limit check-cashing charges to 1 percent or 2 percent.

Florida should follow suit. Until that happens, a service vacuum will remain, and it will be filled all too eagerly by check-cashing businesses that profit from misfortune.

The immediate need is for Senate President Toni Jennings and House of Representatives Speaker John Thrasher to stop pretending that there is nothing wrong with what is going on. They need to put some distance between themselves and those who would take advantage of Florida's poor. They need to get behind serious reform.

Carin and Gene Schmidt deserve that much.