The 'View' from the top

Sherri Shepherd has heard the same question for most of her career.

She heard it when she got a recurring role on CBS-TV's "Everybody Loves Raymond." She heard it when she starred in "Less Than Perfect" on ABC.

And she most certainly heard it last month when she joined that controversial ABC daytime chatfest, "The View."

"People ask me why I'm on all these white people shows," Shepherd says, laughing. "I tell them it's because I've been around white people all my life."

She's not exaggerating. At age 11, Shepherd and her family moved from the city's South Side to Hoffman Estates. Her father took two jobs -- one at a local hospital and another at a Sambo's restaurant -- to pay for his family's new home.

The suburban migration served as a turning point in Shepherd's life, helping to sharpen both her outrageous sense of humor and her survival skills.

"I've always made people laugh as a way of fitting in," she says. "To get along with people, I use my sense of humor."

Shepherd shared her memories of a Hoffman Estates childhood after a recent episode of "The View." During the conversation, she is funny, friendly and extremely apologetic about being late for the interview.

She had taped two shows that day and spent nearly an hour after the program signing autographs and posing for pictures with audience members. Once voted the girl most likely to meet Michael Jackson by her high school classmates (she hasn't yet, though she once attended a party at Jacko's Neverland Ranch), Shepherd understands and appreciates fans' devotion.

"I had to make sure everyone in the audience was taken care of," she says. "People are so excited to get some time with you, you don't want to turn anyone away."

Shepherd became a full-time host on "The View" in September, a move that surprised no one who followed the show during the past year. On her first official day, the producers ran a brief biography of the comedian, focusing heavily on her Hoffman Estates upbringing.

She spoke openly about how her family's relocation colored her world in both real and symbolic ways. The Shepherds moved to a cozy home on Frederick Lane in January 1977, the same week that "Roots" was mesmerizing an entire nation on television.

"We moved in the same day that Kunta Kinte got his foot cut off," she says. "Everyone asked me if I had a cousin named Toby (Kunta Kinte's slave name). That was the question of the day for the little black girl."

When Shepherd enrolled at Churchill Elementary, she says there were only three black people in the school: Shepherd, her younger sister and the janitor. She says she made friends with the kids who also were different from the others, whether it was because they had braces, were overweight or practiced a non-Christian religion.

"There was a group of little misfits, and I hung out with them," she says. "And we had a lot of fun."

Shepherd also attended Eisenhower Junior High and Hoffman Estates High School. As a teenager, she worked in Sears' catalog department at Woodfield Shopping Center and established friendships with people with whom she still socializes.

More than 20 years later, her favorite childhood memories involve walking home from school with her neighborhood pals in Highlands subdivision.

"We had not a care in the world," she says. "That was just the happiest time for me."

Shepherd's happy life was uprooted a few years later when her parents divorced and she moved to Los Angeles with her mother. Though she graduated from another high school, she still considers Hoffman Estates High her alma mater. She has returned for several reunions and has a profile on classmates.com, where she frequently posts inquiries about replacing her lost yearbook.

She also has used the Internet site to reconnect with several friends she lost touch with after moving to L.A. She sent e-mails to long- lost pals -- many of whom had already seen her on television and were surprised she would remember them.

"I don't think any of it has gone to her head," says high school pal Michelle Sulek, who now lives in Crystal Lake. "She is still just so funny and still such a wonderful person."

Shepherd has kept in touch with old friends via e-mail, reunions and occasional trips back to Chicago. The close-knit group -- along with the legal secretaries she worked with in Los Angeles before getting her big break -- help keep the comedian grounded as her star continues to rise.

They are the people, Shepherd says, who remember when she considered the all-you-can-eat shrimp, salad and garlic bread dinner at Sizzler a big night out.

"These are people who keep things real for you," she says.

And keeping things real is important for Shepherd, "The View's" least politically motivated and most affable co-host. She's also the only panelist not from the East Coast, so she prides herself in bringing a Midwestern sensibility to the famed Hot Topics table.

She reminds herself of her suburban beginnings when she's doing A-list things such as appearing in People Magazine, visiting on "The Tonight Show with Jay Leno," or rubbing elbows with Michael Douglas. She doesn't let any of it get to her head, even when actor Jimmy Smits is kissing and hugging her on national television.

"That is not the real world," she says. "Jimmy Smits was rubbing my back. That does not happen in the real world!"

The real world can often be an enigma on "The View," a show which often sees its Hot Topics segments spiral into YouTube fodder. Shepherd was a guest host during the program's most infamous hour, the day when then-moderator Rosie O'Donnell and co-host Elisabeth Hasselbeck engaged in a highly emotional, highly personal shouting match about the Iraq war.

Just a short time earlier, Shepherd says she had told the show's producers that she would consider joining the program full time. As she listened to the two snipe at each other, she wondered what exactly she had gotten herself into.

"I thought, 'What have I done? These people is crazy,' " Shepherd says.

Shepherd, however, found herself in a similar on-air predicament when she defended her views on creationism. In the middle of the impassioned discussion, Shepherd -- who was raised a Jehovah Witness and now describes herself as a born-again Christian -- was asked if she believed the world was flat. A flustered Shepherd answered that she didn't know.

The comment made her the butt of jokes on celebrity blogs and late-night television. The Township High School District 211 product says she was flustered during the segment and has known since she was old enough to hold a book that the Earth is round.

"I've never had to defend my faith or spirituality on TV before," she says. "I'm learning."

Shepherd credits co-host Whoopi Goldberg with teaching her to develop a tougher skin. She also has stopped looking at the blogs and entertainment Web sites that breathlessly follow the women of "The View."

Not that she has much time for Internet surfing these days anyway. In between her TV gig and raising her young son, Shepherd is acclimating herself to New York and her newfound stardom.

Her hectic lifestyle hasn't eclipsed her old friendships, though. She still finds time to send e-mails, asking for updates on her friends' families and giving them the latest on hers.

The only difference is her high school buddies now occasionally ask her to send autographed photos for their own friends and co-workers. Shepherd always complies.

"It's not like she has a Hollywood side and she has a girl from Illinois side," Sulek says. "She's the same person she has always been. She's just someone from Hoffman who made it."