Friends: VP choice has 'very strong' values
— -- Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin, barely a year into her term, received a harrowing call in December from the physician reviewing her prenatal tests. The doctor asked her to come in for a talk.
Palin, who already had developed a reputation for directness, instead took the news over the phone, learning that her fifth child, Trig, had Down syndrome.
"I've never had problems with my other pregnancies, so I was shocked," Palin told the Anchorage Daily News in May. "It took a while to open up the book that the doctor gave me about children with Down syndrome."
She said there was never any doubt she would have her son, who was born in April.
Friends said Palin's resolve during the subsequent doctor visits, medical tests and Trig's birth offers insight into a woman who lived her principles and treasured her family as she faced one of her most difficult personal challenges.
"She's very, very strong in her values," said Curt Menard, mayor of Matanuska-Susitna Borough, who said he has known Palin since she was 3. "I don't think there was ever a question that they were going to have the baby."
Presumptive Republican presidential nominee John McCain introduced Palin, 44, as his running mate Friday. She is her party's first female candidate for vice president.
McCain met Palin at the National Governors Association meeting in Washington in February and came away "extraordinarily impressed," according to a statement from McCain's campaign. On Thursday, McCain invited her to become his running mate.
Palin, the daughter of a teacher and a school secretary, is a former point guard who took her high school basketball team to the state championships in 1982. She won her first race for City Council of Wasilla in 1992 by casting herself as "a new face." McCain and other supporters sounded a similar refrain Friday, playing up the fresh voice she could bring to the presidential race.
Democrats, including presidential nominee Barack Obama's campaign spokesman Bill Burton, questioned her relative inexperience, but Palin has beat back similar criticism before. In 1996, at 32, she was elected mayor of Wasilla, a city of 9,780 located about 40 miles north of Anchorage. She ousted a three-term incumbent for the position and focused her tenure on reducing taxes.
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