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Total personnel costs - including travel, benefits and board member expenses - proposed by LOVE Social Services in paperwork for the five grants through the Department of Housing and Urban Development and the Department of Justice accounted for about $1.2 million of the $2.9 million awarded to the agency for the 2001-2007 period the grants were intended to cover.

Chris Hayes was the highest paid employee at the nonprofit center, which also employed a student services coordinator and administrative assistant. Members of the LOVE Social Services board of directors, which at various times included Jim Hayes; his daughter, LaNene Scott; and Chris Hayes' nephew, Don Thomas, were not paid but did make several trips to cities throughout the Lower 48 and paid for through the federal grant funds.

The Hayeses, Scott and Thomas were the four founding incorporators of LOVE Social Services and all signed state incorporation papers on Sept. 17, 2000. Most of the travel budget, which included air fare, hotel, meals and transportation, was to be used for travel by board members and Chris Hayes, though mentors and tutors were sometimes listed as joining them. Training was listed as the purpose of nearly all of the travel.

An undated memo to Hayes from the Office of the Comptroller in the Office of Justice Programs provided a breakdown of how much the department had authorized be spent in each of a variety of categories, among them $121,457 for travel, $790,726 for personnel, $86,668 for benefits.

The center's director, Hayes, is budgeted for several trips in the Justice Department grant applications: The first grant, in 2002, includes trips to San Francisco, Seattle, Juneau and two each to Anchorage and Washington, D.C.; the second grant includes travel to Los Angeles, Juneau, and an unnamed location in Oregon, three trips to Anchorage and two trips to Washington, D.C.; the third Justice Department grant details travel for the director to Los Angeles, Juneau, Washington, D.C., and twice to Anchorage.

The training and travel budget is listed as $30,000 for the 2001 HUD grant, with the application noting that the money was for the training and travel of board members. It makes no reference to Chris Hayes, who was the center's director but not a board member. No travel is proposed in the 2005 grant that LOVE Social Services obtained from HUD at the direction of Congress. The public record offers only a partial picture of what travel may actually have occurred, however. The Form 990 that tax-exempt organizations such as LOVE Social Services must file each year require the reporting of travel expenses. The IRS only has records of LOVE Social Services for 2003 and 2004, with the 2003 filing showing $21,575 on travel and the 2004 filing reporting $21,593 for travel.