Sarah Palin is the former governor of Alaska and a candidate for Vice President of the United States on the 2008 Republican ticket. Her net worth is estimated to be at $12 million. She was born as Sarah Louise Heath on February 11, 1964, in Sandpoint, Idaho.

At the age of three months, she moved to Alaska when her parents came to teach school in Skagway in southeast Alaska. Sarah Palin's father, Charles, was a Science teacher and track coach. Her mother, Sally, was a school secretary. Palin grew up in the small town of Wasilla, about 40 miles north of Anchorage. In 1982, she played on Wasilla High School's state champion girls' basketball team, picking up the nickname "Sarah Barracuda" for her intense playing style. An outdoors enthusiast, Palin grew up as an avid hunter and a lifetime member of the National Rifle Association, eating moose hamburgers and riding snowmobiles.

Palin was born in Sandpoint, Idaho, but moved to Wasilla, Alaska as an infant and still considers it her home. In 1984, she won the Miss Wasilla Pageant and went on to win third place and the Miss Congeniality award in the competition for Miss Alaska. At the same time, she attended college in Hawaii, Idaho, and Alaska, eventually earning her bachelor’s in communications from the University of Idaho. In 1992, Palin won a spot on the Wasilla City Council; in 1996, she became mayor, and in 2006, she became the youngest person and the first woman to be elected Governor of Alaska.

In 2008, she was catapulted into the national political spotlight when presidential hopeful John McCain chose her as his running mate; McCain and Palin lost, but Palin retained her status as one of the most talked-about personalities in politics. In 2009, Palin surprised the political community by announcing that she would not seek gubernatorial re-election in 2010, and resigned the governorship of Alaska with eighteen months left in her term. Shortly afterwards, Harper Collins published Palin’s autobiography Going Rogue: An American Life, which sold over a million copies within two weeks of hitting shelves, one of only four political memoirs to do so, and Palin signed a multi-year contract (minus financial details) with FOX News. Palin has been married to oilfield manager and commercial fisherman Todd Palin since 1988, and the pair have five children.

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