VCU student from Wasilla enjoying Palin’s run for VP

RICHMOND — You betcha, Dustin du Bois plans to vote for Sarah Palin.

He’s from Wasilla, Alaska, just like the Republican vice presidential nominee. It’s a small enough place that everybody runs into everybody around town.

But don’t expect him to go around saying “you betcha” while he studies for a master’s degree in the Sports Center at Virginia Commonwealth University.

“Guys don’t say that,” du Bois said when he sat down to talk about his hometown and his hometown candidate. “It’s, ‘yeah, whatever.’ We don’t have a ‘you betcha,’ or a ‘don’t cha know.’ That’s more the women’s terms. That’s what my mom says.”

DuBois, 23, was born and raised in Wasilla, a town of about 7,000 people about an hour from Anchorage. His mother teaches physical education in elementary school. His older brother just graduated from the University of Alaska at Fairbanks.

The younger du Bois looked for a warmer place to go to college, and Virginia was it. He got his undergraduate degree at Lynchburg College before coming to VCU.

When GOP presidential nominee John McCain picked Palin as his running mate, du Bois was in his first week of classes in Richmond.

“I was in the bookstore buying books,” he said. “One of my friends from Lynchburg sent me a text message, ‘Wow your governor is hot. She’s getting my vote.’

“It didn’t click to me what was going on. Then I started getting more and more text messages. So, I finally called my mom. She said, ‘You have no idea what it’s like. People are going crazy right now.’ “

DuBois, who played soccer and basketball in high school, knows the Palins through sports. In high school, he kept score when Todd Palin played basketball in a recreational league. Last spring, he officiated a Wasilla High School basketball game in which daughter Willow Palin played.

“To this day, it’s hard to explain what it’s like,” he said, to have a person he knows in the national spotlight. “This is someone I just saw at her daughter’s basketball game with her newborn, and now she’s on national TV with Secret Service surrounding her and her family.”

He likes Sarah Palin, he said, because “she relates well to the people. She’s friendly. She’s easy to talk to. I think she holds her word that, when she says something, she’s going to get it done.”

As for whether Palin has enough experience to be president, he said, “it kind of depends on who you ask, Democrat or Republican.”

The candidacy has been a plus, no matter what happens, he said.

“It’s still a fun experience for the valley, the Wasilla area. Even if she loses and comes back, everyone is still going to praise her in town as Wasilla’s daughter.

“She’ll be the same person when she comes home as when she left. That’s just kind of how she is.”

Katherine Calos is a staff writer at the Richmond Times-Dispatch.