"There is no question about it," says Sharon Larson, second counselor in the LDS Church's Young Women general presidency and another of Dew's close friends. "I have traveled with her to Africa, Southeast Asia, Japan and Korea, and truly everywhere we've gone people just come up to her. They tell her, 'You speak to my soul. You are so real.' And she is. She has her own following, independent of her calling."

Dew, whose appeal is such that the Republican Party tried to convince her to run for political office this fall, is a beacon for Mormons who are living the unexpected life, the life that didn't turn out as they had planned and hoped, the life that was prescribed for them by their church.

As Julie Dockstader Heaps, a staff writer for the LDS Church News, puts it, "She doesn't have the 'Molly Mormon' life story where everything is choreographed — get married, raise kids, husband becomes stake president by 35. She's a very real person and people can relate to her. Because most people out there aren't living that kind of life."

She has become a favorite speaker in LDS circles because of her vulnerability, honesty, hard-won wisdom and willingness to share so much of her life at the pulpit. "She has gotten so much mileage out of bad hair, her height, her weight," says Watson. "She's not afraid to poke fun at herself. That's classic Dew."

Dew has mined her past for lessons learned and future sermons, although there is one painful chapter of her life she hasn't shared with the public: A double betrayal and a missed chance at marriage that proved to be both.

But let's not get ahead of ourselves. Let's back up and tell this story the way she would do it in one of her popular sermons — through a few key events in her life and what they taught her.

Hoops Dew

To this day it bothers her. It is one of her biggest regrets. It is a gaping hole in her life left by her one true love.

Basketball.

She wanted to be a college basketball player. Perhaps there was no place, besides a chapel, that she was more comfortable or confident than on a basketball court. There, the girl who longed to be petite and pretty discovered her size was no longer a curse, but a blessing. She was a star player in basketball-crazy Kansas at a tiny high school in Ulysses (population 4,000), averaging 23 points and 17 rebounds a game. She had a hook shot, a post-up move, a jump shot, and she could move under the basket to get free for shots.

"With all the modesty I can muster, I was good," she says. "I haven't seen many girls who could play basketball at that age who were as good as I was."

But this was in the late '60s and '70s, when there were few opportunities for girls to play college basketball. She chose to attend BYU and planned to try out for the school's basketball team.