As a boy, Shurtleff was passionate about history, books and the military. He joined a military book club at 12 and dreamed of attending West Point. He awaited the arrival of the bookmobile in his Sandy neighborhood the way most kids looked for the ice cream truck.

No one would have described him as bookish, though. At 6-foot-4, one inch under his current height, he was a center on the basketball team and an offensive tackle (and team captain) on the football team at Brighton High School. During his senior season, an opponent delivered an illegal block into the back of his legs, tearing the knee's anterior cruciate ligament, or ACL. He put off surgery, strapped on a brace and managed to finish the season.

It wasn't until years later, after tearing the medial collateral ligament — the MCL — and the ACL, that he underwent the first of three surgeries to repair the knee. While running for attorney general, he was eating Motrin to stave off knee pain; after taking office he underwent knee replacement surgery. The surgery was successful enough that he was able to sky-dive as part of a fund-raising event for Boy Scouts, but since then he has injured the right knee in a game of beach volleyball and faces more surgery.

After graduating from high school, Shurtleff was nominated to West Point, but he scrapped his plans to attend the academy because, at the time, the Army wouldn't accommodate a church mission first. He served an LDS mission to Peru and took an undergrad degree from Brigham Young University and a law degree from the University of Utah. Then he was lured into the Navy by the promise that he could try cases in court immediately.

After serving in the Navy's Judge Advocate General Corps (JAG), for five years, he worked in private practice in California for four years and then returned to Utah to serve as assistant attorney general and eventually deputy Salt Lake County attorney and commissioner before winning the state attorney general's job.

"I love elected office and the law, and AG was the perfect combination of that," he says.

Shurtleff packs a gun. He has a concealed weapons permit, and the pistol is always with him, either holstered on his side or placed in his briefcase.

"I hate it," he says. "It's an awesome responsibility to carry a gun or to think you might have to use it and make sure it's secure. I've got a gun safe."

He carries it to protect himself and his family. At the height of the hate-crimes controversy, he received threats on his life.

Police learned that a white Aryan-nation group had sent an order to an ex-con to firebomb Shurtleff's house.

"They caught the guy who had the note," says Shurtleff. "Stupid criminals. He had a sawed-off shotgun but no bomb."