Joy Covey, Top Executive in Amazon.com�s Early Days, Dies at 50

Joy Covey, an executive who joined Amazon.com when it was a new company with big ideas and played a major role in turning those ideas into reality, died on Wednesday after the bicycle she was riding struck a delivery van in a remote stretch of San Mateo County, Calif. She was 50.

The police said that a minivan apparently making deliveries for OnTrac, a shipping service used by Amazon and other online retailers, was turning onto a side road when the accident occurred along Skyline Boulevard. Ms. Covey was pronounced dead at the scene. The van driver was not charged.

As Amazon�s first chief financial officer, Ms. Covey helped take the company public and was an independent-minded advocate for Amazon�s plans to ignore Wall Street and invest for the future. That notion, radical in its day, was the foundation for Amazon�s growth into a $61 billion retailing and entertainment behemoth.

In its early days, Amazon prided itself on its unconventional hires, telling staffing agencies to �send us your freaks.� Ms. Covey did not have a traditional background. She dropped out of high school at 15 and worked as a grocery clerk. She attended Cal State Fresno and later Harvard Law School, where, she said, she did not fit in.

�We�d go to lunch and people would talk about their favorite 17th-century poets, and I�d be thinking, �Could I even name five poets? From any century?� �

But after joining Amazon in late 1996, when its annual revenue was less than $20 million, she thrived. She sold Wall Street the debt that the company needed to expand. The company went public on May 14, 1997, with an initial offering price of $18. Shares this week were selling for more than $312. Her own wealth is estimated at more than $200 million.

Joy Dianne Covey was born on April 25, 1963, in Boston, to Maurice C. Covey, a physician, and the former Joan De Vries, a nurse. She grew up in San Mateo and lived in Woodside, Calif.

As the senior woman in a red-hot Internet company, Ms. Covey drew a great deal of attention, including a profile in Forbes magazine headlined �A Real Amazon.�

She left Amazon in 2000, as the dot-com boom was ending. Survivors include a young son, Tyler.