As an infant, she lived in a house behind the Safeway in Sandpoint, Idaho. As a young adult, she returned to the Inland Northwest to attend college at North Idaho Junior College and the University of Idaho. As a 44-year-old mother of five, Sarah Palin soon could be a heartbeat away from the presidency of the United States.

“Holy cow. I’m just kind of speechless on the whole thing,” said her father, Chuck Heath, who grew up in Hope, Idaho, and taught school in Sandpoint.

Yes, Palin’s journey is unbelievable and part of the reason is its brevity. From basketball player, to beauty queen, to part-time TV broadcaster, to small-town mayor, to two-year governor of Alaska, to vice presidential counterpart to Democrat Joe Biden, who joined the U.S. Senate when Palin was a third-grader.

Holy cow is right.

So how did she do it? Well, look for any rapidly rising star in politics and you’ll usually find someone who has the communication skills to connect with average citizens and the courage to work outside the established system. That is certainly the case with Palin, who oozes authenticity as she discusses the day-to-day challenges facing families. She can name the kind of car she drives because she drives it all the time. Upon taking office, she ordered the sale of the personal aircraft that traditionally carried Alaskan governors around the state. She also jettisoned her security detail and insists on driving a young daughter to school.

In April she gave birth to her fifth child, who has Down syndrome. In two weeks, a son who is in the Army will be deployed to Iraq. She can speak in very real terms about the kinds of challenges posed by those emotional experiences.

When she was most recently pregnant, she said: “I’m confident that a woman can work and think and carry a baby all at the same time.”

That sentiment runs counter to the tradition of women taking timeouts in their careers to have children. Instead, Palin’s career has accelerated ever since she announced she was pregnant. Plus, she has done so in a political party that has held tighter to the traditional roles for women.

Then again, Palin didn’t take the traditional route to the top. She bucked the system in challenging a three-term mayor and won. She criticized the unethical practices of long-standing Republican figures in her state, which gave her the political power to face down a formidable Republican and Democrat and win the governor’s race.

The nickname Sarah Barracuda comes from her high school basketball career, and she will need every bit of that tenacity in the next 65 days as the press digs into her background and the Democrats highlight perceived failings. She will also need to withstand an ethics investigation into whether she wrongly used her power to dump a public safety commissioner who refused to fire a trooper who was once her brother-in-law.

But we pause – if just for a moment – to marvel at this development and repeat:

Holy cow!