PALMER — Law enforcement in the Mat-Su Valley has been mourning the loss of one of its own this week after Assistant District Attorney Suzanne Powell died of heart failure Monday.

Powell was 41.

For more than five years, Powell served under Palmer District Attorney Roman Kalytiak. “She loved working here in the Palmer District Attorney’s Office and she just thought the world of Roman,” said her colleague, Assistant District Attorney Rachel Gernat.

Gernat said Powell had been out of the office and in the hospital for a couple weeks before she died. But even lying in her hospital bed, Gernat said Powell’s dedication showed through as they spoke on the phone.

“She was still lying there post-surgery wanting to know what was going on,” Gernat said.

Gernat said the mood around the office has been somber. The loss has hit her particularly hard as, for a number of years, Gernat and Powell were the only female prosecutors in Palmer and they shared that bond.

Richard Payne worked with Powell for five years before he left to enter private practice. Payne describe Powell as a dedicated, extremely hard-working prosecutor. She won the statewide honor of Prosecutor of the Year for 2007.

Payne said Powell didn’t often attend events with colleagues outside of work. She had a family — a husband, an identical twin sister and two daughters, all of whom she leaves behind — to whom she was very dedicated.

“People just saw a raging bull of a prosecutor, but I always knew there was a much more tender side of her,” Payne said.

Powell signed on to the Palmer District Attorney’s Office about six months after he did, Payne said.

They started out doing misdemeanor cases together back when misdemeanor attorneys split the caseload by each choosing a segment of the alphabet. At times, a third attorney doing misdemeanors would complain about the workload, Payne said.

“Suzanne would say, ‘Give me another letter.’ And I’d say, ‘Yeah, give me another letter,’” he said.

Palmer Police Detective Sgt. Kelly Turney said Powell was the prosecutor in three of the four trials he’s had since he came to Palmer.

In each case, he said, Powell won a conviction. In one, the defendant, Kevin Stock, was charged with assault with a deadly weapon. His attorney argued that the weapon — an orthopedic boot cast — was not, in fact, deadly. Powell, Turney recalled, set out to dispute that in her closing arguments.

“She picks up the boot cast and says, ‘How can this not be a deadly weapon?’ And she smashes the boot cast into the witness box and it puts a big dent in the wood,” Turney said, adding that the dent is still there.

One case in particular stands out for Turney. John Bo Phillips was on trial for a slew of charges relating to identity theft up and down the Railbelt.

Turney said it could turn out that Phillips was the biggest case of his career as a detective. He was lucky to have Powell, he said. She pulled out a conviction on every count.

Payne recalled a time after he and Powell had moved up the ladder and were trying felony cases. Payne had two big trials and thought he had enough time to do both. One was a double homicide in which Christopher Kevan was eventually convicted and sentenced to 198 years in prison for strangling his girlfriend and their son.

Payne said the defense attorneys likely thought the other one was a slam-dunk. Joseph O’Brien was charged with criminally negligent homicide for hitting a snowmachiner with his truck.

When both were set for trial for the same week, Payne all of a sudden didn’t have as much time as he expected. He had to give the O’Brien case to another prosecutor.

“Suzanne, without a heartbeat in between, stepped up,” Payne said. “She was the only one. And the reason why is that everyone thought it was a loser; it was a really tough case.”

In the end, O’Brien was convicted. Powell had pulled it out, with only a weekend to prepare, Payne said.

Jon-Marc Petersen, Payne’s partner in private practice and also a former prosecutor, said that when he came up from the Lower 48 to work in Palmer, Powell was assigned as his mentor. He couldn’t have asked for a better one.

“She never said, ‘I don’t have time for you’ or, ‘Hey, that’s a stupid question, you’re an idiot,’” Petersen said.

He said he was worried when he left the District Attorney’s Office that his relationship with Powell might turn frosty. Powell, he said, was a dyed-in-the-wool prosecutor.

“I thought, ‘If there’s one person that’s going to hate me when I’m gone it’s Suzanne.’ But I could still joke around with her, still talk to her,” Petersen said.

At court, he said they’d talk cordially — until the hearing started, “And then she’d go on record and just slam me.”

Payne said he never got the chance to face Powell in any significant way in court. He was looking forward to it, he said, and so, he heard, was Powell.

Kalytiak told Payne recently that Powell had, partly in jest, told him, “The first trial with Payne is mine.”

Contact Andrew Wellner at andrew.wellner@frontiersman.com or 352-2270.