Early life and education of Sarah Palin

Palin was born Sarah Louise Heath in Sandpoint, Idaho, the third of four children of Sarah Heath, a school secretary, and Charles R. Heath, a science teacher and track coach.[6] Her family moved to Alaska when she was an infant.As a child, she would sometimes go moose hunting with her father before school, and the family regularly ran 5K and 10K races.

Palin attended Wasilla High School in Wasilla, Alaska, where she was the head of the Fellowship of Christian Athletes chapter at the school, and the point guard and captain of the school's basketball team.She helped the team win the Alaska small-school basketball championship in 1982, hitting a critical free throw in the last seconds of the game, despite having an ankle stress fracture.She earned the nickname "Sarah Barracuda" because of her intense play and was the leader of the team prayer before games.

In 1984, Palin won the Miss Wasilla Pageant, then finished second in the Miss Alaska pageant,at which she won a college scholarship and the "Miss Congeniality" award. Palin admits to smoking marijuana as a youth, during the time when possession was legal in Alaska, though she says she did not enjoy it.

Palin attended Hawaii Pacific College—now Hawaii Pacific University—in Honolulu for a semester in 1982, majoring in Business Administration. She transferred in 1983 to North Idaho College.In 1987,Palin received a Bachelor of Science degree in communications-journalism from the University of Idaho, where she also minored in political science.

In 1988, she worked as a sports reporter for KTUU-TV in Anchorage, Alaska.She also helped in her husband’s family commercial fishing business.Palin also had a 20 percent ownership in an Anchorage car wash business, according to state corporation records filed in 2004. Palin failed to report her stake in the company when running for governor in 2006; in April 2007, the state issued a "certificate of involuntary dissolution" because of the company's failure to file its biennial report and pay state licensing fees.