Arrow-right Camera
The Spokesman-Review Newspaper
Spokane, Washington  Est. May 19, 1883

Locals abuzz over candidate’s Idaho roots

Palin was born in Sandpoint and attended both NIC, UI

Staff reports

She was born in Sandpoint in 1964, became a high school basketball whiz in Alaska and attended North Idaho College in Coeur d’Alene before graduating from the University of Idaho in Moscow in the 1980s.

On Friday, Sarah Louise Heath Palin – the governor of Alaska – became John McCain’s surprise vice presidential pick.

It’s only the second time in history that a former Pacific Northwest resident has made a presidential ticket. Charles McNary, of Oregon, was Republican Wendell Wilkie’s running mate in 1940.

If elected, Palin would be the first Northwest resident to serve as vice president or president.

The 44-year-old vice president pick – the first woman on a GOP presidential ticket – didn’t leave a lot of footprints in the Inland Northwest before returning to Alaska, where she was elected mayor of Wasilla before becoming the youngest governor in that state’s history in December 2006.

“Like most people, I was a bit surprised,” said her former high school basketball coach, Don Teeguarden, who now lives north of Spokane in Addy, Wash.

He recalled her playing point guard in a 1982 girls state championship team from Wasilla, where he was coach.

“She was a starting player … a good leader, a good competitor,” Teeguarden said. “She was a real integral part of the success of that team.”

Sarah Heath, as he knew her in high school, “had some leadership ability but when a kid is in high school, you don’t ever really look at that person and say, ‘Wow, that might be the first woman president of the United States or whatever.’ I don’t think anybody really thinks in those terms at that time.”

He described Palin as “very intelligent and strong-willed and competitive, which are qualities which help you in just about anything.”

Palin was born in Sandpoint on Feb. 11, 1964.

Her father, Chuck Heath, grew up in nearby Hope, Idaho. He graduated from Sandpoint High School in 1956 and returned to teach there in the early 1960s. When she was just 3 months old, Palin’s parents moved to Skagway, Alaska.

Bill Adams, 69, of Sandpoint, taught and coached with Chuck Heath for two years at Sandpoint’s ninth-grade center. Heath and Adams hunted and fished together. Their wives bowled together once a week.

“He took me under his wing,” Adams recalled Friday. “I was a town kid from Montana. He said, ‘We’re going to teach you the Idaho way.’ ”

“Then the call of the wild got to him,” Adams said of Heath.

The Heath family settled in Wasilla, about 40 miles from Anchorage. A handful of other Sandpoint families eventually followed the Heaths to Alaska, Adams said, because Chuck Heath was so enthusiastic about his new home on return visits to Sandpoint.

“We were going to follow them,” Adams said, “but I wasn’t quite as free-spirited.” Palin returned to Idaho for her college years.

She attended North Idaho College for two semesters in 1983 before transferring to the University of Idaho, where she graduated in 1987 with a journalism degree.

“North Idaho College is excited to see one of its own alumna achieve such a substantial honor by being selected as the Republican vice presidential candidate,” college President Priscilla Bell said Friday. “Palin has achieved great success in her life and political career, and we’re certainly proud of her accomplishments since getting her start at NIC.”

University of Idaho officials scrambled on Friday to find folks who knew Sarah Louise Heath when she attended the Moscow school.

“There’s nobody currently on faculty who remembers,” said Idaho’s journalism and mass media director Kenton Bird. He added that the school has even checked with emeritus professors without luck.

The university’s yearbook, “The Gem,” appears to have only one reference to Palin in the time she was enrolled, from fall 1984 through the spring of 1987. It’s her senior photo. The registrar’s office reported she earned a journalism degree with a specialty in broadcast news.

The campus directories during the period say Palin lived in Theophilius Tower in 1984-’85 and 1986-’87. The 1985-’86 directory has no listing for her. University officials said that federal law prevented them from confirming if she took classes that year.

Despite the lack of information about Palin, administrators gushed about the alumna. Bird said McCain’s choice proves the old university motto: “From here you can go anywhere.”

Chris Murray, vice president of university advancement, used the institution’s current motto – a legacy of leading – in his praise for the pick. “This is a wonderful affirmation of the University of Idaho,” he said.

While buzz was high among administrators, many students were more low-key about the choice.

Tyler Jack, a freshman from Shelley, Idaho, lives in the same 9th-floor room where Palin lived as a senior.

Answering his door, he said heard about her choice when checking the Internet earlier Friday, but he didn’t think much about it.

“It’s kinda cool. A future vice president could have lived in this room,” said Jack, who said he hasn’t decided whom he’ll vote for in November. “That’s weird to think.”

Laurel Griffeath, who was president of the Univerity of Idaho College Republicans in 2005, said the choice could make a difference in her vote.

Griffeath said she doesn’t support McCain and was considering voting for Libertarian Bob Barr. She said she has followed Palin’s work the last few months since finding out that she is an Idaho alumna and is impressed with her record of reform.

“This is the first time I have seen a running mate change my interest,” Griffeath said. “I need to determine how much of a role she’ll take in the presidency and whether or not it will make up for the shortcomings of John McCain.”

Sandpoint Mayor Gretchen Hellar noted that Palin’s meteoric political career started as a city council member and mayor of a small town in Alaska.

“Maybe I’m destined for vice presidential nominee,” Hellar quipped Friday

Hellar said she hasn’t really heard very many people in Sandpoint talking about Palin. “No one really knows anything about her. …I can’t really tell you where she stands on issues. I know she’s conservative.

“Spending three months in one place is about the briefest you can spend.”

Palin’s former baby sitter, Sandpoint resident Susie Puckett, said Friday she plans to vote the McCain-Palin ticket.

Puckett was in junior high when she babysat Palin and her two older siblings, and she has followed Palin’s career. She keeps in touch with Chuck and Sally Heath, who sent her snapshots and articles from Palin’s gubernatorial campaign.

“It didn’t surprise me that she was asked to be vice president,” Puckett said. “She’s a fresh face in the political arena.”

Post Falls resident Jackie McAvoy met Palin at McAvoy’s grandson’s graduation in Wasilla. “She knew I was from Idaho. She said she’d been through Post Falls and at the end of the conversation, she said, ‘Go Idaho!’ ”

McAvoy’s grandson, 19-year-old John Bates, is friends with the Palins’ son Track. The young men enlisted in the Army together and are headed out for Iraq soon. Palin was “educated in Idaho. I just think it’s awesome,” McAvoy said. “I have great respect for her, especially for her decision to keep her child,” she said, referring to Palin’s youngest son, who was born with Down syndrome.

U.S. Rep. Cathy McMorris Rodgers, R-Wash., issued a statement praising McCain’s selection as “a bold and exciting pick.”

“Sarah Palin brings to the Republican ticket a unique and important perspective that is grounded in her role as a wife, mother of five, governor and someone who isn’t afraid to shake up the status quo,” McMorris Rodgers said in her statement, which mentioned that she, like Palin has a young son who has Down syndrome.

The two haven’t met, but after Palin’s son was born, McMorris Rodgers sent her a letter offering to provide any kind of support or assistance needed. It wasn’t an offer of political help, spokesman Destry Henderson said, but one mother offering another mother help with any resources she needed.

If anyone were to question whether Palin could handle the jobs of vice president and mother of a child with Down syndrome, McMorris Rodgers would likely reply that her situation is no different than any other working mother or father: “You take it day by day, and some days are better than others.”

Staff writers Becky Kramer, Jonathan Brunt, Bill Morlin, Jim Camden and Dick Haugen contributed to this report.