Robert,
This it really depends on what the relationships are between these tables. One way would be to use a has_many, or has_many :through relationship between users and people... Use :through if you want to add other information to your access table... like this:
class User < ActiveRecord::Base has_many :access has_many :people, :through => :access end
... Then you could get all the people like this:
user = User.find(some_id) @people = user.people
or like:
user = User.find(some_id) @people = user.people.find(:all, :conditions => blah)
Not sure if this is the exact syntax... find more here: http://wiki.rubyonrails.org/rails/pages/ThroughAssociations
It sounds like what you really want is RBAC (Role Based Authentication Control). Have a look at ActiveRBAC: http://active-rbac.rubyforge.org/
Good luck, Peter
