Who is Yvonne St. Cyr, the Boise Woman Set to Face Trial on Felony Charges for the January 6th Insurrection?

     The Capitol rioters from Idaho certainly haven't been getting off easily. The most memorable is Josiah Colt, the man who hung from the Senate balcony; Colt pleaded guilty to felony obstruction of an official proceeding and will receive a likely sentence of around 41 to 51 months in prison; his co-conspirator Nathaniel DeGrave, of Nevada, pleaded guilty to two felony charges of obstruction of an official proceeding and assaulting law enforcement while another co-conspirator, Ronald Sandlin, of Tennessee, is expected to plead guilty to at least one felony charge in the coming months. Duke Wilson of Idaho was sentenced to 51 months in prison after pleading guilty to assaulting law enforcement and obstructing an official proceeding; he must also spend three years on probation, perform 200 hours of community service, and pay $2,000 in restitution. Pamela Hemphill, who pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor, was sentenced to two months in prison with three years of probation and $500 in restitution. Idaho residents Tyler Tew and Michael Pope also face misdemeanor and felony charges, respectively. 

     None of that seems to faze Yvonne St. Cyr. Of course, I wouldn't expect it to. Her interview with the press lasted just around five minutes, but it contained enough bizarre moments to paint a pretty clear picture of the 53-year-old Boise woman's life. Born in Mountain Home, Idaho, her parents divorced by the time she was five; by seventh grade, she was living by herself; by the end of high school, she had been married, divorced, and had a small child. Isn't Idaho wonderful? St. Cyr enlisted in the U.S. Marine Corps in 1987. St. Cyr wound up serving as a media chief at Camp Foster in Okinawa, Japan, from October 1995 to August 1998; a drill instructor at Parris Island, South Carolina from October 1999 to December 2001; and a public affairs manager from January 2002 to November 2003. 

     While in the academy in South Carolina, she met Troy St. Cyr, six years her junior, with whom she would have a son after marrying Troy in 2001. Troy attended Manchester West High School in Manchester, New Hampshire from 1989 to 1992. Since February 2007, he has worked as a commercial lawn and tree technician, and then a senior lead technician, and then a service manager at the Boise-based company TruGreen, taking a year off between 2013 and 2014 to work as a service manager and horticultural specialist at McKenzie Landscaping; he is also involved in PSIA-AASI, the Professional Ski Instructors of America-American Association of Snowboard Instructors, and he resides in Meridian.

     In her interview leaving court, she stated, "and yes, for all the haters, I was kicked out of the military." That is true; it happened in 2005, when she received a bad conduct discharge for illegal possession and use of narcotic drugs. During her court martial, she became religious: after moving back to Idaho from South Carolina, she became a youth staff volunteer at the Tree City Church of the Nazarene from August 2009 to April 2020. I can only imagine the sort of crazy things this drugged-up conspiracy theorist taught kids who were already unfortunate enough to have their parents drag them to a church. In terms of work, she was an accountant at the Cate Equipment Company from March 2005 to May 2007 before joining her husband in his new job at TruGreen. From April 2007 to January 2018, she worked in various roles at the company, including as a customer service representative, an office manager, and finally a regional administrative supervisor. From January 2018 until August 2020, she was an account manager at PC Maintenance LLC and its holding company; this is the last evidence we have she worked.

     That does make sense: by 2020, St. Cyr had become radicalized by conspiracy theories. It started with a documentary called "Fed Up" about the unethical and undue influence of the sugar industry and its lobbyists in American nutrition policy; earlier in the year, as COVID struck, she decided to go on a diet, and the 5'3" woman lost a considerable amount of weight. Then, at a medical appointment (try to remember, this next part is pretty standard Idaho), she saw a QAnon documentary called "Out of Shadows" playing in a waiting room, watched it like 18 million others, and became a follower of the baseless and debunked conspiracy theory that claims Democrats are Satanistic, cannibalistic pedophiles. Her initial curiosity about government corruption upon seeing "Fed Up" was a good thing. However, as is nature in too many humans, rather than seeking to join the debate around one or more issues in a constructive way or even doing more credible research, she began seeking out YouTube videos that reaffirmed her belief that medicine, religion, government, and every other sort of institution was conspiring against her. In April 2020, she quit her church volunteering; while still religious-- quoting Bible verses virtually nonstop in her interviews, social media posts, and other platforms-- she apparently believed that anything organized was inherently corrupt. How she believed Donald Trump could be any different, especially when he is a man who looks like he has met every single sugar and fast food industry lobbyist at least once in the past month, I have no idea. Degenerates, the type who think it is the government's fault or medicine's fault that their parents divorced, that they got pregnant in high school, and that they have a drug problem, generally tend to gravitate toward Donald Trump and his inane dribbling.

     On her LinkedIn profile, St. Cyr often likes and shares posts appreciating veterans (while still likely voting for both senators from Idaho who voted against a $350 billion bill to help veterans) and spreading the QAnon conspiracy theory, often hinting toward "The Great Awakening" and sharing "Fall Cabal: Parts I-X." That's on top of the normal, gushy posts that middle-age white women feel the need to share for some reason. Yeah, an 18-year-old taking his grandma to prom because she never got to go is sweet, but you sharing it doesn't restore my faith in humanity when you're chewing off a teenage Starbucks employee's head five minutes later, Karen. Or, in this case, Yvonne. She refers to herself as a "goddess at self-exploration and spiritual growth" when listing what she's done for the past two years; in her "about" section, she writes: "53 years in 3D land sleeping through life and not realizing this is all just an illusion. Two years of soul searching and remembering who I am. I am a Light worker and gifted being. I am here to help humanity remember and heal while creating Heaven on Earth. All the darkness is finally being exposed by the light..." She's a sovereign citizen, alright: I am profiling a local Trump supporter in Wisconsin named Ann Retzlaff: she too is a sovereign citizen and she too referred to herself as a light entity in court. Yvonne's curly blonde hair matches her personality; she's the type of person who would have used her own feces as fertilizer in her garden. She believes the "birther" conspiracy theory about Barack Obama, she believes the moon landing is staged, and she also believed and continues to believe that the 2020 election was stolen. St. Cyr takes it a step further and actually believes that Joe Biden isn't in the White House, but merely a stage somewhere else, and that Donald Trump remains the real president of the United States. She posted conspiracy theories ranging from an Ellen t-shirt picture being posted on a certain date to claiming that QAnon was "always right" (so much for that one).

     In October 2020, a neighbor called to complain about loud music blaring on Halloween night. When an officer showed up, she refused to give her name, claiming she is a "sovereign citizen," and then turned the music up louder as the officer walked away. If a black man had refused to give his name to an officer, the cop wouldn't have let him go; he would have called 20 more cops. This privileged white female attended an anti-mask rally in Boise at a hospital, trespassing, pulling her mask down because she "has a right to breathe oxygen" (which demonstrates a belief in disproven anti-mask rhetoric related to carbon dioxide), and being arrested in December 2020 by law enforcement after a hospital worker conducted a citizen's arrest.

     That's the backdrop for what happened on January 6th. In December 2020, after Trump urged his followers to attend the "Stop the Steal" rally on January 6th, St. Cyr and her husband obliged, setting out on New Year's Day on a cross-country trip that took four days. She attended a rally on January 5th before waking up and arriving at five in the morning to hear Trump speak the next day. Like many QAnon followers who weren't there that day, she believed January 6th would see mass arrests of "corrupt" politicians. After seeing Trump speak at the Ellipse, she skipped to the Capitol in her white winter coat. She claimed that she tried to call Troy St. Cyr, who has not been charged for his actions that day, but could not hear him and realized she could make a quiet phone call in the Capitol. She claims she then realized her phone was lost, but, by that time, she had entered the building; according to St. Cyr, the first person she asked about her phone had it and gave it to her, which she cited as evidence that "God put [her] there." She also believed God put her on CNN, going viral for shouting out the window to a mob of rioters out the upper window of an arched door at the Capitol. She streamed numerous videos, some depicting violence, of the chaos that took place around her; she stayed for a total of about two hours.

     The next day, she and Troy went live on Facebook to defend their actions. The federal government didn't see Yvonne St. Cyr's actions the way she did: on February 12th, 2021, a warrant was issued for her arrest, one that was executed in Boise on March 3rd, 2021. She was initially charged with misdemeanor counts of entering a restricted grounds and picketing, parading, or demonstrating in the Capitol building. After spending several days in jail, she was released with restrictions. She continued posting on her husband's Facebook page: most references to QAnon aforementioned actually came in April and May of 2021. She has maintained that the government has been treating her unfairly. On June 16th, 2022, St. Cyr was charged with two more misdemeanor counts related to disorderly conduct and two felony counts of civil disorder and aiding and abetting. If convicted on all six charges, she could face up to 13 years in prison.

     St. Cyr has pleaded not guilty and is apparently not entertaining a plea deal: people who have pleaded guilty to one count of civil disorder have been able to get off with sentences of 30 to 120 days in prison. She is not concerned about jail time, it appears: like many other Capitol insurrectionists, she has gone down a rabbit hole in which she believes her actions obstructing law enforcement and disrupting Congress that day were justified. No trial date has been set; however, as this case follows a pattern of hundreds of others, it is likely that her trial will be set for late summer or early fall; updates will be provided if and when she is convicted and sentenced.