The woman appointed by Gov. Tina Kotek to fill the vacant secretary of state position after the former secretary stepped down in May is a John Day native and the author of a recent series of mystery novels set in Grant County.

As Oregon’s secretary of state, LaVonne Griffin-Valade and her team oversee state elections, the registration of new businesses, the Oregon State Archives and performance audits of state agencies. Griffin-Valade said she would remain in the post until the end of 2024, filling out the remainder of the term of the former secretary, Shemia Fagan, who resigned in May after a conflict-of-interest scandal.

Under the Oregon Constitution, the secretary of state automatically becomes governor if the person elected to that office is unable to complete his or her term. However, because Griffin-Valade was appointed rather than elected, she is disqualified from the line of succession. Next up would be Tobias Read, the state treasurer, followed by Senate President Rob Wagner and House Speaker Dan Rayfield.

Griffin-Valade, who now resides in Portland, was pulled out of retirement to be secretary of state after having served as auditor of the city of Portland, an elected office she held from 2009 to 2014.

“It’s interestingly similar to what I did as elected auditor for the city of Portland,” she said. “This is much more complicated and there are many more steps, but I’m more than relatively familiar with auditing and elections. I have a much larger staff because I’m covering the state.”

After her government service as auditor for Portland, Griffin-Valade pursued a master of fine arts degree in fiction writing from Portland State University, graduating in 2017.

She began her career working as an administrative assistant in the Crook County Juvenile Department.

As a divorced, single mother, she later moved with her two children to Monmouth, where she attended Western Oregon University and earned a bachelor’s degree in humanities.

Griffin-Valade has worked as an elementary school teacher and mentored homeless and runaway youth in Marion County. She also worked in Washington County, working with teens aging out of foster care. She raised four children with her second husband, Tom, to whom she’s been married for the past 41 years.

Griffin-Valade was diagnosed with breast cancer in the mid-1990s and underwent months of treatment at Oregon Health & Science University until the disease went into remission.

Griffin-Valade also served with the Northwest Regional Educational Laboratory as a trainer in educational equity for educators throughout the Northwest and islands in the Pacific, including Guam, Saipan and American Samoa.

While serving in that position, she earned a master of public administration degree from Portland State University. Later, she became an auditor with the Multnomah County Auditor’s Office in Portland in 1998, and was elected Multnomah County auditor in 2006.

Griffin-Valade was born in John Day in 1953 and grew up in a farmhouse between Mt. Vernon and Dayville. The family later moved to John Day.

“When I was really young, I loved roaming the hills behind our house,” she said. “First we lived out in the country between Dayville and Mt. Vernon, then we moved to John Day when I was going into the fourth grade.”

The Oregon secretary of state said she went to school at Dayville Elementary through third grade, then John Day Elementary, Grant Union High School and Dayville High School in her senior year.

“I actually got married between my junior and senior year in high school for the first time, and I ended up going back to Dayville and graduated from Dayville High School,” she said.

Griffin-Valade said she began writing her crime novels while earning her MFA degree. The books, which center on an Oregon State Police sergeant named Maggie Blackthorne who returns home to the John Day Valley after an absence of 20 years, are set in various locales around Grant County and the surrounding region.

“It has forests. It has river valleys. It has the Painted Hills. It has the (John Day) Fossil Beds. It has those beautiful Blue Mountains,” she said. “It’s an exquisite physical place to recreate.”

“Dead Point” and “Murderers Creek” were published in 2021, followed by “Desolation Ridge” in 2022 and “Poison Spring” this year. The latest novel’s synopsis on Amazon describes the investigation of the death of a beloved Grant County rancher who “seems to have been killed by a local with a grudge.”

“If you read all four of the books, there are quirky people,” she said. “And some of the quirkier characters are from memory. You live in small towns and not only do you encounter quirky people, but you might be related to them.”

She said there’s a lot of herself in the Blackthorne character. Shannon Baker, author of the Kate Fox series of novels, described Blackthorne as “tough as leather, determined, and smart.”

“I just invented Maggie and I wanted her to be a police officer and I wanted to her to be in charge,” Griffin-Valade said. “Most OSP stations have a sergeant in charge, and her buddy Hollis (Jones) worked with her in Burns in the fiction. It just became a natural story to me because I lived in the countryside. I love Maggie. I adore Hollis. Over the years, I became really fond of these folks and found them to be smart and kind and witty and profane.”

While the secretary of state’s job is often a springboard for higher office, Griffin-Valade said she has no plans to run in an election to continue in the post after her term is completed at the end of 2024. Instead, she plans to return to writing novels.

“I’m going to go back to writing the Maggie Blackthorne series,” she said. “I started two when I got the call (to be secretary of state). One was a Maggie Blackthorne novel, and the other is set in New Mexico with another completely different cast of characters.”

Griffin-Valade said she also plans to do more traveling as she and her husband are still in good health.

“I agreed to finish out the term of the former secretary for a couple of reasons,” she said. “One was because I had some experience as an elected official. Multnomah County is the largest county (by population) and Portland is the largest city, and I just felt when I got the call from the governor, I couldn’t say no because I feel very strongly about making sure the Secretary of State’s Office is on great footing when I leave.”