The hot-blooded, married Southern belle at the heart of the American Red Cross sex scandal is pregnant – and shocked neighbors in her close-knit Gulf Coast town are dying to know: Who’s the daddy?
Paige Roberts, a fetching brunette with an eye for dapper older men, cost silver-fox Red Cross President Mark Everson his job last week after news of their scandalous affair surfaced, sources at the relief agency said.
Now, Roberts, 37, who is still executive director of the Southeast Mississippi Chapter of the American Red Cross, is sporting a baby bump.
She and Everson presumably met less than six months ago, when he took over as head of the charity organization. Both are married, and both have two kids.
“I’m shocked” about the affair, said Rebecca Powers, anchorwoman for WLOX, the local ABC affiliate in Biloxi, Gulfport and Pascagoula, Miss., where Roberts once worked.
“They have two small babies,” Powers said of Roberts and her husband, Gary, 58, a prominent divorce lawyer and city judge. “They tried for years to have children. It was a blessing.”
It’s unclear how Everson, 53, and Paige Roberts met. Everson, the former chief of the Internal Revenue Service, had visited the Hurricane Katrina-ravaged Gulf Coast during his brief tenure at the Red Cross. He and Roberts also both traveled to San Bernardino, Calif., in response to the wildfires in late October.
Since news of their affair broke, Roberts has been gone with the wind all week from her home in Pascagoula.
Last week, she told The Post via cellphone: “I’m not going to answer questions about my private life now. I’m not going to comment on this. It is unfortunate, the entire situation. That’s it.”
Roberts was in Washington, DC, last week for an American Red Cross conference, according Barbara Dumas, chairwoman of the Pascagoula chapter.
Neither Everson nor his high-powered lawyer wife, Nanette – once President Bush’s chief ethics counsel – returned calls for comment. Everson resigned over the affair Tuesday.
Gary Roberts, a judge in Gautier, Miss., did not return calls for comment.
At the Roberts’ family home, a sprawling, contemporary ranch with a commanding view of Mississippi Sound, a man who identified himself as the “grandfather” and wielding an ax handle told a Post reporter to “get off the property.”
Family spokeswoman Kiki McLean, a former aide to Tipper and Al Gore, said the Robertses would not discuss the affair.
The local daily, The Mississippi Press, first tied Roberts to the sex scandal after The Post ran an article describing her.
When that paper asked Gary for comment he said, “You will have to ask her about it.”
Louise Roberts, a neighbor of no relation, predicted that church-going folk in Pascagoula will likely forgive Paige Roberts, especially in light of the work she did after Katrina devastated the town.
“She’s been doing an excellent job since the storm. She’s helped people find shelter, food and clothing,” Louise Roberts said. “People are shocked. This is a little town. We don’t have things happen like this here.”
Still, another woman who asked her name not be used and had known the Robertses for years, said the couple’s marriage seemed troubled. She said the two separated briefly within months of being married.
She said Gary Roberts was infamous for telling his divorce clients, “I don’t do emotion,” and would forbid them to cry in his office.
Despite the whispering, the Robertses were well-liked and active in the First Presbyterian Church in Pascagoula, as well as the local Rotary Club, said those who know the couple.
Even as her own waterfront dream home was destroyed by Katrina, Paige Roberts put the safety of her neighbors first, they said. She stayed behind to manage the shelter while her husband took their two sons – now ages 6 and 2 – to Texas in the storm’s aftermath.
Michele Turk, a journalist who wrote a chapter on Roberts’ response to Katrina in her book on the American Red Cross, “Blood, Sweat and Tears,” said the shapely administrator and her husband are “pillars of the community” in Pascagoula.
Additional reporting by Geoff Earle