Thirty federal agents simultaneously served three search warrants Tuesday at the Fairbanks home of former city Mayor Jim Hayes, at the church where he serves as pastor and at the nearby nonprofit social services center run by his wife.

The agents were looking for evidence that Hayes and others associated with the church and LOVE Social Services Center Inc. misused federal grant money, two sources familiar with the warrants confirmed.

LOVE Social Services Center has received $2.9 million in federal grants since Hayes and others formed the tax-exempt organization in 2000. The grants came at the direction of Sen. Ted Stevens, R-Alaska.

Chris Hayes, the former mayor's wife, is the center's executive director, and her salary has been paid from the grants, according to documents obtained by the Fairbanks Daily News-Miner over the past year from the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development and the Department of Justice. The documents were obtained through the federal Freedom of Information Act.

The federal funds were also used in part by the nonprofit to buy a former church building from Lily of the Valley Church of God in Christ, where Jim Hayes is pastor, according to the documents.

FBI Agent Eric Gonzalez in Anchorage confirmed Thursday that agents searched the Hayes home, located in Doyon Estates, the social service center and the church, which is near the center on Barnette Street in South Fairbanks.

Assistant U.S. Attorney Jim Goeke in Anchorage would not say what agents were seeking.

"At this point, I can't. Not enough is in the public record," Goeke said. "I can't even confirm that there's an investigation."

Two others, who asked not to be identified but are familiar with the warrants, said agents were looking for financial improprieties involving the grants. Some of the agents who were in Fairbanks on Tuesday work for the Department of Housing and Urban Development and the Department of Justice, according to one of the sources. The FBI and the Internal Revenue Service also were involved.

Calls to Jim and Chris Hayes were not returned Thursday. Members of the LOVE Social Services board of directors, which includes Jim Hayes, declined to comment or could not be reached for comment.

Stevens spokeswoman Courtney Boone said the FBI had not contacted the senator's office about any investigation or the search warrants. She offered no comment.

"It's a matter for the Department of Justice," she said.

LOVE Social Services operates tutoring programs in the South Fairbanks center and at the state's youth jail, according to material it has supplied the federal government over the years. It also runs a summer camp and maintains a computer lab at the center, according to a recent summary provided to the Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention Office of the Justice Department.

The group has no connection to Love INC., a Fairbanks group founded in 1985 that coordinates donations and volunteers from local churches.

LOVE Social Services was formed on Sept. 17, 2000, just a month before Stevens added a $1 million earmark to the next fiscal year's federal spending bill for HUD to benefit the new organization and issued a news release announcing the existence of the funding along with money for other Alaska projects. His news release noted that LOVE Social Services "provides services for disadvantaged youth and other programs."

In an application to obtain the money, LOVE Social Services said part would be used to buy the old Lily of the Valley Church building. The application states that LOVE Social Services would spend $375,000 to buy the building and $150,000 to renovate it.

Six months earlier, the Lily of the Valley Church had also secured a $625,000 loan from Mt. McKinley Bank to partially cover the cost of building a new church across the street, according to the state Recorder's Office. Two modifications increased the loan to $910,000 by October 2001. The city building permit for the new church, issued in August 2001, estimated its value at $2.1 million. It is not known whether any of the federal grant money was ultimately used to help pay for the new church.

After the first $1 million from HUD in 2001, the next three grants came from the Department of Justice, totaling $1.7 million over three years. In fiscal 2005, which ended in October, Stevens earmarked $175,000 through HUD.

Fiscal 2006 appropriation bills, the last of which passed Congress in late December, contain no earmarks for LOVE Social Services. Boone said money was tighter this year.

Jim and Chris Hayes are both prominent, longtime Fairbanksans.

Jim Hayes grew up in South Fairbanks a few blocks from where the nonprofit sits today and has spent much of his life in public service as a teacher and politician. Hayes worked as an investigator for the state attorney general's office in Fairbanks for many years.

Gov. Frank Murkowski appointed Jim Hayes in January 2003 to a University of Alaska Board of Regents term that ends in 2011. He served as Fairbanks mayor from 1992 to 2001, following terms on both the Fairbanks City Council and the Fairbanks North Star Borough School District Board of Education.

Chris Hayes has owned a fashion boutique and worked in the school superintendent's office. In May 2005 she was one of four recipients of the Farthest North Girl Scout Council Women of Distinction award, in part because of her role in founding LOVE Social Services.

She is the daughter of LeeRoy and Mazie Parham, who founded Lily of the Valley Church in 1965.

LOVE Social Services drew on Lily of the Valley church members and the Hayes family for its officers when it incorporated in 2000, according to state records. The Hayes' daughter, LeNene Scott, was an original incorporator. Fellow founders Don Thomas and Joe Thomas are deacons at the church.

Jim Hayes met Catherine Stevens, the senator's wife when he worked in the attorney general's office. She also worked for a time as an attorney for the state.

"She has known him much longer than I have," Sen. Ted Stevens said in an October 2004 interview.

Stevens hired the Hayes' son, James, in his Fairbanks office and then encouraged him to come to Washington in 1999 to work as an aide while going to law school. The younger Hayes earned his law degree and now works as an aide to Sen. Thad Cochran, D-Miss., who took over the Senate Appropriations Committee chairmanship when Stevens stepped down a year ago.

When James Hayes first arrived in Washington, he lived at the Stevens' house for awhile, as have many of Stevens' aides.

"Our families have been very close," Stevens said in 2004.

Stevens said the elder Jim Hayes came to him with the idea for LOVE Social Services.

"He had an idea to develop a center to assist some in the black community, and I helped get some money to do that," Stevens said.

"That is not a personal thing, it's part of the black community and I've worked for the black community in Fairbanks for a long time. I've always had a couple members of the black community of Alaska on my staff because I think, you know, they're a significant part of our state."

In the 2004 interview, Stevens dismissed the potential appearance of a conflict of interest in directing money to a project created by a friend whose son also works on his staff.

"There's nothing personal in it," he said. "They don't get any personal gain out of it. It's part of a cultural, social thing in the area. I don't see anything wrong with that."

Boone said the younger Hayes was never involved in the LOVE Social Services project while he worked for Stevens because staff members do not work on items that might benefit family members.

Such items aren't unusual, she said, because Stevens often hires Alaskans as aides.

"Sen. Stevens does like to hire Alaskans because we do understand the issues that Alaskans face," Boone said.

Washington, D.C., reporter Sam Bishop  -  Assistant Managing Editor Rod Boyce   -   recallrecall.com