U.S. Sen. Kay Hagan dates her own start in political life to when she was a girl and helped her uncle, Lawton Chiles, post bumper stickers on his supporters’ cars.

Chiles was a state lawmaker in Florida who ran for U.S. Senate in 1970, when Hagan was 17, by hiking 1,033 miles across the state that year, shaking hands all the way.

“Walkin’ Lawton” Chiles went on to serve 18 years in the Senate and two terms as governor of Florida. While he was in the Senate, Hagan was an intern operating the elevators that took senators to and from the chamber.

Hagan was born in Shelby and raised in Lakeland, Fla., where her father, Joe Ruthven, a real estate developer, was once mayor. She graduated from the Wake Forest University School of Law in 1978. It was there that she met her future husband, Chip Hagan, who came from a prominent Greensboro family.

In Greensboro, she worked for North Carolina National Bank for 10 years, becoming a vice president in the estates and trust division. She left the bank to spend more time with her three children and became more involved in community and charity issues and with the Guilford County Democratic Party.

Former Gov. Jim Hunt made her his Guilford County campaign manager in 1992 and 1996, and in 1998, he urged her to run for the state Senate. With Hunt’s support and counseling from her uncle, she ran against a Republican incumbent and won.

During 10 years in the legislature, she rose to become one of three chairs of the powerful Appropriations/Base Budget Committee.

Again with support from Hunt, Hagan ran for the U.S. Senate in 2008 against Republican Sen. Elizabeth Dole. She won by a surprising margin, 53 percent to 44 percent.

Roll Call recently ranked her No. 41 on its 2014 list of the 50 richest members of Congress, listing her net worth at $9.12 million. Much of that wealth can be attributed to family ties. Her father made his money investing in warehouses and industrial parks and, according to Roll Call, Hagan also invests in real estate. Her most valuable asset is a stake in a commercial warehouse that she received as a gift from her father a couple of years ago.

In addition, her husband, a lawyer, owns more than $1 million in bank stocks, according to Roll Call.