12597200-mmmain.jpg

Gov. John Kitzhaber and Cylvia Hayes, Bhutan bound when the going was still good.

(Michael Lloyd)

Over the Easter weekend, I spent six hours with Cylvia Hayes.

More than enough.

I didn't wade through each of her 94,000 emails, just a thousand or so. More than enough to understand how driven she was. How pampered. How cosmopolitan. How stupidly lucky.

Time and again as the emails flew by, I wondered: Why wasn't that enough? What was she chasing that she didn't have?

With the boyfriend or without him, Hayes was forever on the move. She parachuted into Bhutan. She spent seven days in Brazil, reveling in Rio, Belem and Santarem. The woman who, at 29, arranged a sham green-card marriage because she was so hard up for cash, was suddenly holding court in San Diego and Vermont, and bragging of "a very productive trade mission in China, Hong Kong and Japan."

Even though she had very little to say - and became increasingly impatient when her talking points weren't delivered in time - Hayes was actually asked to deliver commencement speeches.

Why wasn't that enough?

She had hand maidens and chauffeurs. She used the staff -- especially Mary Rowinski, her scheduler, and Jan Murdock, the governor's executive assistant -- as dog-sitters, errand runners, speech writers, airline up-graders, and her personal search engines.

Hayes wasn't big on Google. She unloaded on staff because she was too lazy or too "insanely" busy to find a bar at Bridgeport Village or Sen. Betsy Johnson's email address.

She couldn't locate a map of China: "Can you do some quick research to see how far this is from Bejing and (sic) Shanghi?" But each time she made another ridiculous request, someone was available to do her bidding.

Why wasn't that enough?

Then, of course, there's John Kitzhaber. Our former governor. Her gateway to everyone she'd never met and everything she'd never done. He was cool. He was attentive and deferential. He spoke in complex sentences. He was devoted to keeping Hayes "in the loop."

And he was oblivious, or stupidly cavalier, about where her ambition and arrogance might take them, other than Bhutan. He didn't resent that she was coddled. He accorded her "First Lady" status without requiring a promenade past the altar.

Yet that wasn't sufficient for Hayes. It wasn't adequate attention. Ample celebrity. A big enough piece of the pie.

In December 2012, Hayes wrote to Otto Scharmer, a senior lecturer at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the co-founder of the Presencing Institute.

She spoke about her "speaking gig" in the nation's capitol and the upcoming sustainability tour through Brazil, and she signed off with this:

"Life is awesome."

What else did she want? What more would anyone need?

-- Steve Duin

sduin@oregonian.com

503-221-8597; @SteveDuin