Owner-operator of "Riley's Dream," a small B&B kind of place on the southeastern shore of Medillo Grande.

Emma inherited the property from her late father, Cap'n Roy Riley, whom she barely knew, because, as her long-suffering mother put it, "He's just a G-D sailor!"

As a child, Emma was always brighter than her surroundings. Her mother's cycle of beauty parlor, bowling alley and Tuesday and Thursday bridge with the other wives meant Emma was a Navy brat on her own. And she made good use of the time.

She graduated from UC Berkeley when she was twenty and was a year and a half into a biz-school management program before she let herself be hired away by Silicon Valley to help it peddle its wares.

Emma did that for ten years and made a pile of money. But it wasn't enough. It was turning into just numbers on a screen. Solving problems meant less than making quota.

When she learned that her father had willed her his property on Poco Cabesa, she looked around at her high-pressure life in a dynamic industry that still had its own versions of the "glass ceiling" and said to hell with it.

Emma tried to work with FTEA&S but she (and her desired clientele) couldn't handle Jack Waller's lackadaisical approach to customer service and schedules.

That meant her small resort had few guests and that cost her money. But Jack's unique weltanschaung also insults her sense of order and progress.

Being a friend of Jack Waller does nothing for Hank Campbell's reputation in Emma's book, but she holds out the hope that his arrival will have a steadying influence on Jack -- Following the Equator Air & Sea, ramshackle as it is, is the only seaplane operation serving (or interested in) Poco Cabesa (the condition of the local air field discourages landing on terra firma).

An efficient and intelligent businesswoman, Emma is entrepreneurial capitalism with a conscience, aggressive and self-confident, an unabashed ParrotHead and the best person to make "Riley's Dream" a success . . . all in all a together woman.

But... she has a thing about being left-handed.

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