First, I should say I've never met Jodie Allen Patton. I wish I could tell you from first hand experience, but I'm forced to let Forbes Magazine speak for me...

The person who handled the Sperry Peninsula transaction for Allen is his youngest sister, 37-year-old Jody, on whom a good deal of the Camp Nor'wester rage is now focused. Vice chairman of Allen's Vulcan Northwest investment company, Jody Patton overees her brother's real estate and charitable projects.

Gatekeeper to the Allen billions, she is also something of a mystery in Seattle. She graduated in the first coed class of Seattle's Lakeside School in 1975, mojored in drama at Whitman College in Walla Walla, Wash. and worked in the Seattle arts community. More recently she has supervised her brother's $60 million Experience Music Project (dedicated to musicians from the Northwest), scheduled to open in 1999; given $5 million for the Faye Allen Center for Visual Arts at the Univertiy of Washington and $10 million for a University of Washington library, in memory of Jody and Paul's father, Kenneth Allen; and handled Sperry Peninsula.

Former Lakeside classmates describe Jody Pattton as "nice," "quiet" and "unassuming." But a growing number of detractors complain&emdash;not for attribution, of course&emdash;that the financial resources she wields have gone straight to her ego. "She plays her power to the hilt," says one member of the Seattle arts community. "She has so much money that she can behave appallingly&emdash;and she does."

"The paradise that become a quagmire,"
by Stephen S. Johnson,
Forbes 400,
Forbes Magazine,
October 14, 1996