It's alright if you've never met Karen Loeffler. Some Alaskans become acquainted with the prominent prosecutor in a federal courtroom, which most of us try and avoid. Chances are you know her face, though, with Loeffler serving as the head of Alaska's federal prosecutor's office and the voice rallying against some of Alaska's most notorious criminals.
She's headed the U.S. Attorney's Office for the District of Alaska since October 2009, managing attorneys and her administrative duties. In that time, convictions were handed down in federal court for:
• Alaska Peacemakers Militia founder Schaeffer Cox, for his involvement in a murder conspiracy plot of law enforcement and judicial officials;
• James Michael Wells, who shot two Coast Guard coworkers in cold blood on a Kodiak Island military base.
When Loeffler isn't putting criminals behind bars with the help of the office's 22 attorneys, she is outside the courtroom doing what many other Alaskans relish. She spends her off time hiking, camping and sea kayaking with friends and family, adhering to a live-hard-play-hard lifestyle many residents aspire to.
She blames her surroundings.
"Like many people who came up here, I fell in love with the state and the endless things to do outside," Loeffler said, sitting in her office at the Fitzgerald Federal Courthouse in downtown Anchorage. "Alaska never ceases to inspire awe in me. It's beautiful. I love Minnesota, but this isn't the Midwest. I rarely go a month here without having some amazing, gorgeous outdoor day."
Just a normal kid
Loeffler was born in New York City, but her family moved to Minneapolis when she was 8.
Her grandfather Louis Loeffler studied law at Georgetown University. Her father, Robert M. Loeffler, went to Harvard Law School. Even with such lawyerly inclinations, Karen's brother Bob Loeffler thinks his sister was "just a normal kid" growing up.
Bob, the former director of the Alaska Department of Natural Resources Division of Mining, Land and Water, said he doesn't know what propelled his sister to the top spot among federal prosecutors in Alaska.
"I don't know … I mean, my dad was a very straightforward individual," he said. "He had a way to simplify complex matters, but I don't know if that made her be a lawyer. Maybe it helps her be a better lawyer. Those traits may have been passed down naturally."
She didn't take to following in her father's footsteps at a young age. For the most part, she gave a lot of attention to sports, he said. "She was a jock."
She honed her skiing skills on the same Minnesota bunny slope that produced Olympic downhill champion Lindsey Vonn. They skied the same 300-foot-vertical-drop hill, "Buck Hill," growing up.
Her athletic interests continued at Dartmouth College, where she raced slalom and giant slalom for four seasons and played on the varsity tennis team. Sports didn't seem like the practical career path, so following her graduation, Loeffler made a pragmatic decision.
"My father was a prominent lawyer, but that was not something that led me into law," she said. "I graduated from college and it was sort of, you know, I didn't want to go to business school. I had to make a living, and I wasn't headed for med school."
Loeffler graduated from Harvard Law School in 1983. She said she found her calling thanks to passionate classmates.
Trying trials
After law school, Loeffler returned to her hometown and began working for the law firm Faegre & Benson, now known as Faegre Baker Daniels. The firm represented plaintiffs harmed by the 1989 Exxon-Valdez oil tanker spill in Prince William Sound.
Loeffler worked in the business litigation section of Faegre & Benson, learning the tools of the trade from, in her words, attorneys much more experienced. She worked on sex discrimination lawsuits and a big copyright infringement case, but she wasn't there long.
She quickly got bogged down in a case and "had no life." She said she needed a break, and Alaska was her first choice for where to find it. She followed her brother to Alaska and visited regularly before making it her home. The siblings would take yearly trips to destinations like Prince William Sound.
Upon arriving in Anchorage, Loeffler landed a job in the oil and gas section of the state's attorney general's office. But during that short stint, she yearned to "try cases," or face alleged criminals in the courtroom.
"I went to the DA's office, which was two floors up from the attorney general's office, and I literally knocked on the door and told them I wanted to try cases," she said. "They had a slot open and hired me. I was thrown into trials, and I was happy just as soon as they did that."
She worked at the Anchorage District Attorney's Office for three years, though half that time was spent working for the federal government. And she fell in love with being a trial prosecutor.
Loeffler doesn't get specific about cases; she said she remembers the trials more than the defendants. One of the first trials she prosecuted involved a serial burglar, she recalled.
"It was a guy with a drug habit," she said. "Not the worst person in the world, but the case just needed to be wrapped up. He was breaking into all sorts of homes … It (the case) was fun."
She liked working with law enforcement officials, she said, because "they're a whole different group of people dedicated to the community and public service."
Case of a lifetime (so far)
Perhaps a higher-ranking government official noticed that can-do attitude, because Loeffler was plucked, along with another state attorney, from her position to help then-U.S. Attorney Michael Spaan prosecute lobbyist Lew Dischner and consultant Carl Mathisen in a North Slope Borough kickback and bribery scandal during the 1980s.
The two men steered contracts to Dischner's acquaintances who ran the H.W. Blackstock Company in Seattle by establishing a firm and demanding hefty kickbacks for Barrow city contracts. An incoming mayor ordered an audit of North Slope Borough finances that resulted in a guilty plea in federal court from ex-Mayor Eugene Brower, who agreed to help the government pursue his former advisers, Dischner and Mathisen.
"It was possible, the (FBI) reported, that Alaska was sitting on the biggest bribery, extortion, and tax evasion case in municipal history," John Strohmeyer wrote in his book "Extreme Conditions."
According to the author, Spaan handed the state prosecutor, now only four years out of college, a pile of affidavits with instructions to read them carefully. The case was now her life, he wrote.
"Loeffler had limited experience as a prosecutor and very little exposure to criminal law," Strohmeyer wrote. "But she did not have to read very deeply into the North Slope file to discover she had been handed an incredible mission. For the next year, she devoted long days, nights, and weekends trying to put together blocks of evidence in a way a jury of ordinary citizens could understand."
Fellow legal professionals said it made Loeffler's career, though she speaks about the experience nonchalantly. She said the "white-collar stuff" interested her, though she enjoyed her time at the District Attorney's Office. Her reasons for sticking with the government gig were, again, pragmatic.
"I calculated I made $8.50 an hour trying the case, and somebody needed to pay me a little more than that," Loeffler said. "I had worked 10 months, seven days a week, and they had an open position. So I took the job."
The trial lasted eight months. Ultimately, it solidified her position in the federal prosecutor's office.
Gaining respect across the aisle
President Barack Obama signed Loeffler's commission on Oct. 16, 2009, elevating her to the top spot after 20 years as an assistant U.S. attorney.
She spends her time trying to make the office run, but a smaller budget, compared to other regional U.S. attorney's offices, allows her to do more oversight and review of cases. Loeffler manages the criminal side -- cases that include meth dealers, environmental violators and greedy businessmen -- and the civil side, which includes "tons" of medical malpractice suits.
She has the ultimate say on such decisions as plea agreements, though she leaves many of those to the civil attorneys who, like her, have decades of experience.
Loeffler's counterpart in the federal public defender's office is Rich Curtner, who is wrapping up his fifth term as head of that office. The two work out problems between the offices, and, more recently, went toe to toe in the James Michael Wells trial. Loeffler decided to join the trial team when a prosecutor retired.
At times during Wells' trial, arguments between the parties got heated. But the arguments never became personal, Curtner said. That's what he admires most about Loeffler.
"Karen's not a political individual. She never tried to use her position, which holds a lot of power, as a stepping stone. That's something I've seen in other offices (nationwide)," Curtner said. "She's a professional prosecutor. She's been in that office all those years, and as the head attorney she really hasn't changed her ways. I think her agenda for the office has been in the interest of law enforcement and the community."
The Coast Guard killings were her first court appearance in quite some time, but she'd already gained the respect of fellow prosecutors during her years in the criminal division.
"A lot of my career has been white-collar financial crimes. But, you know, I tried a homicide, a bank robbery," she said. "It's a small office. I've tried a Jamaican drug gang. I just jumped on things."
Some of her wins were pure luck.
Assistant U.S. Attorney Joe Bottini recalled the Avrum Walter trial in the mid-1990s. Walter was eventually convicted of murdering the postmistress in the Interior village of Ruby during a robbery.
Loeffler was on the scene with U.S. Postal Service investigators and others, as the office's criminal prosecutors sometimes are when law enforcement needs a search warrant at a moment's notice. Investigators had tracked Avrum from the Ruby post office to a location down the Yukon River. He'd been boating up and down the Yukon, committing burglaries.
After the murder, he dropped his makeshift weapon somewhere along the river. Investigators were looking for it. Leaning against a tree and conversing with her crime-fighting partners, Loeffler, with "her toe in the ground," kicked a hard metal object, Bottini said. It was the murder weapon.
"A little unusual to say the least," Bottini said. "Not to make light of that situation, but for a long time, I called her Nancy Drew."
The next act
If a Republican is elected president in 2016, Loeffler will most likely lose her job. The head of the office changes when the party does.
"I promoted myself to job insecurity," she said.
Still, she said she believes in karma, and that her actions have led her life in a positive direction. She didn't know, as a young law graduate, that she would move to Alaska permanently. She didn't know she'd become a criminal prosecutor. She didn't know she'd be the head of the U.S. attorney's office.
"I'm just going to do my job the best I can for as long as it's appropriate for me to be here," she said, adding that Alaska is home and where she plans to stay.
Outside the office, Loeffler has adopted Bob's family as her own. When she's not spoiling her brother's kids, she's caring for her own 4-year-old golden retriever, Grover. Bob said she stops by most mornings on her way to work, as the kids are eating breakfast.
"She's made us her family," Bob Loeffler said, "especially my kids and to some extent my dog."
The siblings don't often discuss work. Loeffler discusses case law, Bob said, and sometimes she may briefly talk about tough cases. Still, he can tell she's passionate about her career. He said she's a prosecutor in her bones.
"I'm not just being idealistic," she allowed. "I've been proud to be part of this office."
Correction: An earlier version of this story said that a conviction had been handed down in the case of confessed serial killer Israel Keyes. Keyes was never actually convicted, as he died prior to trial.