The calls came in every so often.

"Hello, honey," she'd say to me in her signature greeting. "There's somebody I want you to meet."

The caller, of course, was Jean Runyon, the inimitable PR woman, doing what she did best: making connections.

Runyon, who passed away Saturday at the age of 82, was the self-styled queen of networking, creating the personal and professional links that made things happen in Sacramento.

She did it most effectively in the 1970s and '80s, helping organize the "kitchen cabinet" that essentially ran Sacramento. Its members included then-Mayor Burnett Miller, the late Bee top executives Eleanor and C.K. McClatchy and the late Gordon Schaber of McGeorge School of Law.

For years, she acted as Sacramento's business ambassador, welcoming new arrivals to town, introducing them to fellow decision makers and spreading the social glue that contributed to the capital city's small-town charm.

I'll be forever grateful that – as a newcomer to column writing almost a decade ago – I became one of her "projects." She arranged multiple breakfasts and lunches designed to hook me up with locals who were "doing important things," as she put it.

But Jean was much more than a facilitator. She was a game changer.

She had incredible intelligence, sometimes overlooked by people who only saw her amiability or only heard her distinctive Carol Channing-like voice.

"Jean had a mind like a steel trap. She was an early version of Wikipedia," says Sac State communications professor Barbara O'Connor, recalling Runyon's encyclopedic knowledge on numerous subjects.

The Midwest native accumulated a wide circle of friends, for what O'Connor calls the purest of reasons: She simply liked people.

She also possessed dead-on political instincts.

When Runyon took on a cause, she employed all those assets and usually won.

Land-use attorney Gregory Thatch recalls working with her years ago to promote housing and retail development in Natomas, which was then mostly farmland.

It wasn't a very popular notion – until Runyon arranged dozens of meetings with media people, local officials and developers.

"She turned everybody around," Thatch says.

Often overlooked was Runyon's generous spirit. She routinely worked behind the scenes to help friends' causes, without ever seeking credit.

"It was always about taking care of her 'peeps,' " O'Connor says.

Among her "peeps" were dozens of struggling artists, whose works Jean collected prodigiously and displayed in her home and office.

Estelle Saltzman, who joined Runyon in 1976 to found their pioneering PR agency, tells of attending an art auction to bid on a painting that she and Jean had agreed to try to buy for their office.

Saltzman soon found herself in a heated bidding war – against Runyon.

"I said, 'Jean, what are you doing?' " Saltzman recalls. "And she said, 'Well, you have to support the arts.' "

In the past two days, I've been thinking a lot about Jean Runyon, wondering just what it was that made her such a force of nature.

Her smarts? Her political instincts? Her generosity? Certainly, all were factors.

But I think Greg Thatch captures it best when he describes Runyon as – above all – just a genuinely nice person.

"You always felt good around her," he says, "and she made you think you were her best friend."

In Sacramento, there's no one left quite like her.

Reach Bob Shallit at (916) 321-1049. Back columns: www.sacbee.com/shallit.