It was a long journey from the streets of California to her current position as an assistant professor at UAS.

“I was a half-breed, illegitimate daughter of a unmarried, single, full-blooded Tlingit woman,” Hayes said. “We lived in the village, we were poor, it was territorial Alaska. There was segregation.”

 Hayes’ mother had relocated to California when Hayes was 15-years-old. “Not a day went by when I didn’t want to come home,” Hayes said. “When I turned 40, I said ‘let me go home or let me die facing north,’ and I came back home. I had always wanted to come back home because it felt like this (Juneau) is where I belonged.”

 Hayes’ book, Blonde Indian, chronicles her journey and detailing the obstacles she was faced with and overcame. “It wasn’t expected for unkempt little native girls in dirty socks and wrinkled skirts to have ability. It was just so unexpected that it wasn’t recognized,” Hayes said.

 Homeless because of poor choices she made in her life, which ultimately led to upheaval, Hayes embarked from San Francisco and began her long journey home. She left behind her three sons and her mother, the only family she had. “It was really difficult for me to make that choice to come home leaving everyone I loved behind,” Hayes said.

 “After I got a bank roll together, I put my dog in my old station wagon and we drove to Eureka,” Hayes said.

 Hayes spent the winter in Eureka, long-lining for albacore to scrape together enough cash for the next leg of her journey. Living out of her car, Hayes found meals where she could.

From Eureka, Hayes drove to Seattle, where she stayed homeless.

 In May, Hayes abandoned her station wagon and boarded a ferry, destine for Ketchikan. She was returning back to Alaska, but her journey was far from over.

 “It took eight months to get from San Francisco to Ketchikan and a little over three years to get from Ketchikan to Juneau,” Hayes said. During that time, Hayes worked for a couple months at the Ketchikan Indian Corporation before she got a job in the court system.

 Returning to Juneau, Hayes found a happiness within the landscape and atmosphere of Juneau that she had sought since she left and slowly began taking steps to achieve goals she had set for herself long ago, such as attending college and graduating with a degree.

 “Once I came back, I didn’t all the sudden start making good choices,” Hayes said. “It took me a long time to figure out what it was to be me and along the way, I kept making the same mistakes over again.”

 At the age of 50, Hayes enrolled at UAS as a freshman, accepted into the two-year paralegal program at the school. After two years of school, Hayes switched into the Bachelor of Liberal Arts program..”

 “I started taking creative writing classes. I had been writing throughout the years,” Hayes said. “But when I went up to Anchorage to do my MFA (Master of Fine Arts) and began assembling them into a book-like thesis, that’s when I caught a glimpse of the possibility of writing a book.” The book came out in September.

Blonde Indian is based on the thesis Hayes was required to write for her MFA in Creative Writing and Literary Art. Hayes submitted the manuscript into a contest.

 “I was very excited when the University of Arizona press e-mailed me an offer of contract,” Hayes said. “I was a little surprised in how much work was still involved and it was like a year and a half between the (book) contract offer and the actual book coming out. I’ve been gratified at the recognition that it’s gotten”

 Graduating from UAA in 2003, Hayes was hired to UAS as adjunct professor that same year and the following year was given an appointment contract for three years.