Joann Adobato Adams was never one to keep secrets from her family.

But her four-year stint with the Central Intelligence Agency was something she never disclosed until 40 years after the fact. And even then, she was vague enough that her brothers knew very little about the work she did for the agency.

Mrs. Adams, who always considered Pittsburgh her home despite decades of travel around America and the world, died of ovarian cancer Saturday. She was 66 and had lived in Greenfield.

While working for the CIA and later the U.S. Foreign Service, Mrs. Adams traveled to Algeria, the Ivory Coast and Toga -- all before the age of 30. She was a traveler at heart but held her family dear, recalled her brother, Richard Adobato, 53, of Connellsville.

"My sister," Mr. Adobato said, "did it all. She lived life to the fullest, she loved to travel."

Mr. Adobato, who was in elementary school when Mrs. Adams was working abroad for the U.S. government, cherished the notes and postcards his older sister would send back to their Dickerson Run home in Fayette County.

"As a kid, I remember her sending me things from the different places [she visited]," he said. "I would bring them to school and I'd put a map up and I would show where the picture was from. It was wonderful."

Mrs. Adams graduated from Dunbar Township High School in 1959 and Robert Morris Business School in 1960. Afterward, she went to Washington, D.C., to work for the CIA.

In Washington, Mrs. Adams found a lifelong friend in Joyce Jaqua. The two twenty-somethings lived together there, and when Ms. Jaqua moved to San Diego in 1965, Mrs. Adams followed not long after. She lived in San Diego for 30 years, and married the late Lee Adams in that city.

Mrs. Adams and Ms. Jaqua shared a love for travel. They spent many weeks traversing Europe or driving across the United States.

"Our road trips together were the most fun we shared," said Ms. Jaqua, 67. "We did a lot of laughing."

And 50 years of travel yielded many photographs.

"It's better to tell the story of my sister's life in pictures," Mr. Adobato said. "We could fill a pickup truck with her pictures.

"There were a couple trips she still wanted to take. She wanted to walk the Great Wall of China and see Mount Rushmore. Otherwise, she had pretty much crisscrossed this country."

In 1998, Mrs. Adams moved back to Pittsburgh and took a job in the payroll department at PPG Industries. She retired in 2003, but continued to do volunteer work with the Pittsburgh History & Landmarks Foundation and Ten Thousand Villages, an organization that sells fair-trade jewelry and home decor items from countries in Latin America, Africa and Asia.

Mrs. Adams never had children. In addition to her brother, she is survived by two other brothers, Vincent Adobato, 67, of Wilmington, N.C., and Martin Adobato, 64, of Everson, Fayette County.

A Mass will be celebrated at 10 a.m. Saturday at St. Rita Church in Connellsville.