After wrapping up his
in November, President Obama was escorted by his Secret Service detail through a cordoned VIP section near the foot of the stage. Scanning the small crowd, his face lit up with delight as he moved over to a young woman and pulled her into a heartfelt embrace.
A news photographer captured the moment. Minutes later, the Anchorage Daily News website posted an image of "the hug," along with a request in the form of a headline: "Asking readers: Do you know the woman with President Obama?"
Depicted from behind, the mystery woman's face was obscured. Yet anyone within earshot picked up a clue to her identity: "Emily!" the president exclaimed. "What are you doing in Alaska?"
Emily Bokar can't recall exactly what she answered, but she remembers thinking, "Living my dream. Just like you."
Bokar, 28, first set foot in Alaska in summer 2008 as the state's new media director for the Obama campaign, after working for more than four years as one of his key aides. Arriving here was like that old John Denver song: coming home to a place she'd never been before. "It was love at first sight - or first moose sighting," Bokar says. "Alaska opened my eyes to a place where I could be happy and strike a balance between work and the rest of life."
Despite putting in long hours, with no weekends off, Bokar took advantage of the midnight sun in June by hiking near Flattop at least every other day. She once saw a wolverine - a rarity for even longtime Alaskans. "When I was in Illinois, camping and hiking were limited to yearly vacations," she says. "In D.C., I was able to go hiking maybe on weekends. In Alaska, it became a part of my everyday life. Once you experience that, it's hard to be happy anywhere else."
Bokar started doing solo overnight trips in the Chugach Range, including an ill-fated attempt to go off-trail and find Hidden Lake during one of the coldest, rainiest summers on record.
"I only had my lower 48, summer sleeping bag," she says. "I was cold, scary cold. But it put me even more firmly in touch with one of the aspects of Alaska that draws me here, which is that you have to be self-sufficient. You just can't do everything here like the rest of the country. I love the ingenuity that comes with being an Alaskan. People make things work with what they have, and that fosters creativity and an openness to new ideas that's uniquely Alaskan."
Bokar grew up in Batavia, Ill., a far western suburb of Chicago. She graduated from Bentley College, outside of Boston, with a degree in public policy and social change with a concentration in new media technology.
After volunteering for Obama's 2004 senatorial campaign, she was hired to be then-Sen. Obama's senior scheduler, first at his Illinois office and then in Washington.
"My desk was right outside his office. Our most valuable asset was his time, and I worked with senior staff to make sure it was used most effectively," she says. "By the time I left for the (presidential) campaign, we were getting over 500 invitations each week, so there was a lot of prioritizing and letting people down gently."
No one let Bokar down gently when it came time for her to leave Alaska in 2008. Early on the morning of Aug. 29, her phone rang. "My mom was calling, forgetting the time difference, to say wasn't it exciting that (then-Gov. Sarah Palin) was McCain's VP pick. I instantly started crying. Not because I thought it hurt our chances for the presidency, but because I knew right at that moment that the campaign was going to need my help more in another state."
That state turned out to be Nevada, where Bokar served as new media senior advisor for the remainder of the campaign. Before she left for Nevada, though, she got her Alaska driver's license. "I was determined to come back."
After Nevada, Bokar accepted a short-term position on the presidential transition team in the nation's capital. Less than a month after her former boss was inaugurated, though, she turned down D.C. job opportunities and kept her promise to herself by returning to Alaska. Since then she's launched her own consulting business, New Trail Media, and - how Alaskan is this? - has become romantically involved with a guy who works on the North Slope.
"I still get excited by every moose I see, so I consider myself to be an Alaskan in training," she says. "Once I get this winter under my belt I'll feel like the real deal. But I'm looking forward to a lifetime spent exploring Alaska. Five years ago if you'd told me that I'd personally know the president of the United States, I would have been pretty amazed. But I'm even more amazed to find myself living in Alaska, starting my own business and in love with a man that works on the North Slope. It's not the life I imagined. It's better."
And that, Mr. President, is what Emily is doing in Alaska.