WASILLA, Alaska  For five years, Diane Osborne, a hairdresser, helped young women in this city as they vied for crowns in pageants, but the one she was sponsoring this time, in 1984, struck her as unlikely. Sarah Heath, at 20, was so soft-spoken, so unobtrusive, so agreeable as to seem void of the urgent quest for attention that Ms. Osborne had recognized in others.

“I kind of worried about how she would do up there on stage,” Ms. Osborne said. “You have to have a certain go-get-’em to get up there and stand up for yourself, and she came across as such a shy, sweet girl.”

As it turned out, Ms. Heath  now Gov. Sarah Palin, the Republican vice-presidential nominee  surprised Ms. Osborne, who waited nervously backstage in an Anchorage auditorium, by confidently answering questions from judges, circling in a red bathing suit, and capturing second runner-up in the Miss Alaska pageant that June.

Many who knew Ms. Palin in her formative years have been likewise confounded by her journey from this isolated city, fewer than 10,000 people nestled in an Alaskan valley, to a national political stage. To them, the Sarah Palin who, at 44, bursts onto the stage at rallies  confident, feisty, piercing in her attacks  sounds nothing like the younger woman they recall.