He has five children. The oldest — Ambra and Heath — are 24 and 21, respectively. The other three children — Danielle, 14; Tommy, 12; and Annie, 9 — were adopted as so-called drug babies — babies born to drug-addicted mothers who have addictions themselves. It took months to wean them from their addictions.

Danielle faces another challenge — depression. On one occasion she was found holding a knife, threatening to kill herself. Shurtleff grabbed the blade and told her he would not let go. He was still holding onto the blade when police arrived and restrained her.

"She knew she couldn't do anything without cutting me, and I knew she wouldn't do that," says Shurtleff, who was cut, but not seriously.

His experiences with Danielle, he says, have forged a strong bond and softened him in many ways. "She's a good little companion and friend," says Shurtleff. "She's doing better."

He recalls that after she ran away on one occasion, he caught up with her in a parking lot and ordered her into the car. She defied him. He grabbed her and forced her into the car.

"I soon learned that's not the way you dealt with her," he says. "She didn't have control over this. I've changed in a lot of ways. I was a law-and-order guy, like my dad. I believed in obedience and rules. But maybe I've become less judgmental and more willing to look at all sides of an issue, trying to understand another point of view and empathize with them."

Danielle tends to be defensive of people on the periphery — the tattooed, the pierced, the different — and that has rubbed off on her dad. She knows what it's like to feel isolated. She has changed schools three times to escape the cruelty of classmates who know about her problems.

"When someone has diabetes or cancer, people rally around you," says Shurtleff. "They shave their heads, things like that. But when you have a mental illness — do you know what they said to her? 'What are you going to do, kill yourself?' I've learned to be more tolerant of people, especially people who might be hurting.

"The Republicans were mad at me over my stance on Amendment 3. I support traditional marriage and define marriages as a man and a woman, but the second part of that amendment was mean-spirited and hurtful. It wouldn't allow basic rights for gay couples — visitation, remains, funeral plans, financial matters.

"They wrote them out of the Constitution, which meant they couldn't go to the Legislature with an issue. I talked to a gay man who had just lost his partner to AIDS. His partner's family kicked him out, had him escorted out of the hospital and got a restraining order. These are real people."