Sorry for the long delay, lots of family stuff going on. Cutting to the chase, she LIVES again!!!
Because of space constraints and the fact that I could not see the cam alignment marks I ended up pulling the motor. Following the manual it wasn't that bad but did take about 3 hours. Once the motor was out access to the cams is straight forward, nothing to get in the way. I replaced all of the valve shims and checked that they were in spec. I ended up getting a manual cam tensioner because I could not re-compress the new automatic one I got. Played with it for a couple of hours and could not get it to compress. I could easily recompress the old one, which the guts look identical as far as I could tell, but the new one would not compress. Once she was together I spun the crank a lot adjusting the tensioner and rechecking the valve clearance. With that satisfied I put all the covers back on and spent a day putting the motor back in and triple checking all the bits and pieces to get her to the point that I could try to turn her over. To my surprise, she fired up after about 15 seconds of cranking. I then took her out on progressively longer rides starting with just around the block. I was really waiting for something to break or fall off or leak or you know... bad stuff. Again to my surprise, none of that happened. I then proceeded to ride her to work (64 miles round trip) for three days. She sat for the weekend and back to work for another two days. Still no leaks or bad stuff. The really brave part came in the form of a 1500 mile trip to North Carolina and back. All is good now and she purr's like a new S10. Bonus, I now get 45mpg!!!
In the final analysis, it appears that the automatic cam chain tensioner lost tension just enough for the intake cam to jump a tooth. It did this over time four times until she would no longer be persuaded to start. Yes, it is possible I would have seen the jump had I re-shimed the valves sooner but in the end it probably would have been the same result.
Thanks for all the help and advice from everyone. Now let the beatings begin!!