If life were an orange, Gail Lavielle would've squeezed the juice out of it a long time ago. If she has a bucket list, there probably aren't many things left to cross off. The state representative-(R) for Norwalk and Wilton has done so many things and accomplished so much, it might lead many to say, jokingly, "Enough already!"

"If I'm going to do something, I have very high standards about what doing it well means,"said Lavielle, who was elected to office in 2010. "And if I don't do it to that standard, I can't respect myself. It's very important to me that I meet my own standards for doing something well."

And it seems there is nothing she can't do well. Lavielle has degrees from Cornell, Yale, and UConn, speaks French fluently, and is an accomplished pianist. Oh, yeah, she also wrote a book and was an Opera critic for The Wall Street Journal.

"I've been fortunate in that when I've been interested in something I was able to do it," she said. "When I've found those different things that I was so terribly, terribly interested in, I've done them all the way to the best of my ability."

Lavielle used her ability to become a financial analyst with JP Morgan after graduating from Yale. She met her husband at the Eiffel Tower in Paris, accepting his marriage proposal after eight days and tying the knot just five months later. Lavielle lived in Paris for 14 years and worked in corporate communications before moving to Wilton in 2002. Then after 25 years in finance, marketing, and communications, she received her MBA from UConn and made the decision to get into politics.

"I was not someone who was interested in politics," she said. "I'm interested in public service, I'm interested in government, and I'm interested in the way all those things work. This back and forth of political ideology and doing something on principal, whether it's going to work or not, or whether people want it or not, is not something that interests me."

What really interests Lavielle is helping the people she is representing and being there for them in difficult situations.

"People look to you for something, they're not sure for what," she admitted. "They're looking to you for some type of leadership, but I think they and I would be hard pressed to define it. But when something happens, they want to make sure you're there. We're in a position to help people. When you can, it's amazingly rewarding."