I had Lynn Bartels envy. For almost longer than I can remember.

There, I said it. And it’s true.

Lynn died Friday, age 69, after a short battle with glioblastoma. I was just heartsick when that news of her diagnosis came out, knowing that it meant we wouldn’t have long with her.

Back to the envy. Lynn and I first met when she came to the state Capitol for the Rocky Mountain News around 2000. I’d already been covering the Capitol for two years, still a very green, novice reporter, and she came in like she knew everyone. She collected people faster than anyone I had ever seen.

There were only a few women reporters at the time: myself, Sandra Fish of the Boulder Daily Camera and I believe Julia Martinez from the Post was also there then.

It was not a club of sisters. Lynn stood out. She quickly became the reporter everyone went to first.

It was her character, her smile, that legendary laugh and her genuine interest in people that drew people to Lynn like a moth to the flame.

That started my envy, but it also pushed me to watch what she did and how she did it. She told me once the first thing she did every day was to “check the traps,” an expression that meant almost before the computer got turned on, she was out talking to everyone — lobbyists, bipartisan and nonpartisan staff, lawmakers and anyone else who happened to grab her attention — and find out what they were working on.

But it was so much more than that: Lynn’s fascination with people and wanting to know everything about them was addictive.

We were competitors first and colleagues later.

That relationship changed after she went to work for then-Secretary of State Wayne Williams, which was a bit of a shock.

Lynn’s leaving reporting? Say it ain’t so!

It was clear how much respect and trust Wayne had for Lynn over those four years.

Our relationship changed after that, and she became a valuable source, always with her thumb on the heartbeat of whatever was going on in politics.

Her generosity was beyond compare. If I couldn’t find someone’s phone number, Lynn had it. Always.

There was one moment in the 25 years of knowing Lynn that made me laugh. It was when she was working for Wayne, and I was struggling to figure something out on TRACER, the Secretary of State’s campaign finance system.

I called Lynn for help, and she admitted she knew almost nothing about TRACER. She’d never used it, campaign finance had never been her thing. I was dumbfounded. There was one thing in the whole world that I knew that Lynn didn’t?

Trust me. It was maybe the only thing or person in the whole world that I knew that Lynn didn’t.

We grew to be better friends over the past decade. But she never changed a bit — her integrity, her honesty, her ability to stay close to everyone. Is there anyone in Colorado politics who didn’t think of Lynn as their friend?

To see the tributes pouring in from everyone, from the big shots to the small fries, is worth looking for.

The Denver Press Club will hold a memorial service for Lynn. The date is yet to be determined. Lynn was inducted in 2015, not as a political reporter but for her work on the cop beat at the Rocky.

One of the tributes I saw today that just broke me was from Tustin Amole, her predecessor on the cop beat at the Rocky.

“I’ve lost my best friend,” Tustin began. “Lynn Bartels and I first met when she took my job on the night cops desk at the Rocky Mountain News. I returned from a three-month sabbatical in Guatemala, and there she was, sitting at my desk, using my phone, my computer and drinking from my coffee cup. I thanked her profusely. I so wanted off of the night cops beat.”

Only Lynn could pull that off.

I also loved what one of her sisters, Kitty DiMartino, offered for the obituary that ran in the Denver Post today.

“We have lost an outrageous sister, friend, colleague and human,” she said of her older sister. “Lynn was outrageously funny, outrageously loyal and outrageously talented.”

That was perfect. Lynn was outrageous — larger than life, a person of spunk, integrity and compassion. There will never be another like her.

I have a photo at my desk at the Capitol: me, Lynn, Ed Sealover (then with the Denver Business Journal); John Frank, then with the Post (and he looked so young in that photo you might not even recognize him), and Brandon Rittiman, then with 9News. We were sitting at the press table in the state Senate, probably sometime in 2013. I’ve loved that photo for years, showing all the great people who have brought you the goings-on at the Capitol.

I don’t expect my Lynn Bartels envy to go away anytime soon, and I’m happy to hang onto it.

You’ll be missed, my friend.