how to send additional emails, help!

In some of our business processes, we need to send email to selected team members to inform them about work they may need to review. when a new workitem is submitted, and when a state change occurs and an approval is required. not all the users are or need to be be approvers.

RTC will only send to users in the Approvers list on approvals..  we need a different set of users..

so, I thought, heck, I can write an extension for these projects, and let them customize  wen to send these notifications, and invoke the 4.0 mail service

boooo.. the mail service isn't exposed..

any other suggestions?

if I could support this little function, I could shut down a separate app server AND provide better integration, usability and reporting for these teams.. (as this new workitem links to Defects)

Sam