Walker, once a housewife with seven kids, now the grandmother of 25 and the great-grandmother of four (with two on the way), is the accidental politician (and now the accidental governor) who never saw a political career coming.

"What was I thinking?" she says. "I don't know! Looking back, the ideal was to say you had some grand plan. I didn't."

Her only plan was to keep moving. Along with mothering kids and attending ballgames and dance recitals, she tended to be the one who drove the carpool and served as PTA president. She stayed out of the work force for more than a decade, because, she says, "I felt I needed to be home."

She used to stay up late sewing for her daughters, but sometimes she simply ran out of time. Once she had to staple a gown together to get it ready in time for a school dance. Sometimes she even sewed the neighbor girls' dresses because their mothers were supposedly too busy.

"With seven kids you learn to hit the tops of the icebergs and do things fast," she says.

She eventually took part-time work during the hours her kids were in school, usually related to education. Over the years, she also collected other duties, serving on committees for the Utah Symphony, United Way, Red Cross, the homeless, child care, domestic violence, Ballet West, the budding Sundance Film Festival, Salt Lake Education Foundation, children's health insurance, the Weber State advisory board, Brigham Young University's Marriott School of Management advisory board.

"She was late a few times picking us up with that hectic schedule of hers," says Walker's daughter, Nina Slighting.

Eventually, she added another role to her agenda: student. At nearly 50 years old, with seven kids and a full-time job in the Salt Lake School District, she started her doctoral program, writing her dissertation nightly between the hours of 11 p.m. and 3 a.m.

'Something to be done'

Where does such drive come from?

"I don't know," says Walker's husband, Myron. "I've often wondered about that. Her parents were hard workers."

She was raised on a farm near Ogden, one of five kids born to Thomas and Nina Smith. Education, church, community service and hard work were just part of the routine. Thomas was superintendent of Ogden city schools for 24 years and a stake president for The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints for 30 years who also served on boards for hospitals, the symphony and United Way. Instead of playing golf or fishing, he called his work on the farm his "recreation." The kids worked with him, topping beets, hoeing weeds, planting and picking tomatoes, and baling hay on the 140-acre dairy and beef-cattle farm.

"We grew up where there was always something to be done," says Walker.