Sporting a mint sweater set and flower-print skirt, Cindy McCain leans in behind Deiner Tinoco, a 6th grader from Colombia working in the computer lab at Little Havana's José Martí Park.

''That's a coral snake, right? We have those in Arizona. That's how I know,'' McCain softly tells the boy, not bothering to project for the benefit of the few journalists invited to witness her Monday visit to the after-school program run by Amigos for Kids through a public-private partnership.

Tinoco tells McCain he's doing research for a science project, but he doesn't seem keyed up about this special attention from a potential first lady touring classrooms as if she were a confident but mild-mannered elementary-school teacher who has been in the trenches for years. In a sense, she has been.

''OK, Trouble, what's up?'' McCain, long blonde hair pinned back and pearls ringing her thin neck, says to a boy who raises his hand to ask a question later in the afternoon.

``Will you ever come back here?''

''If you'll have me,'' she says with a warm smile.

The Arizona heiress with seven homes has traveled the globe for years doing humanitarian work, mostly aiding children and quietly donating plenty of money from a fortune estimated at $100 million. She may be the wife of a senator and presidential candidate, but from the time John McCain was elected to Congress in 1982, she has preferred to keep out of the political limelight. Spending time with kids -- her four and the countless others with whom she has connected in orphanages and medical facilities -- is how she feels most at ease.

As the campaign has heated up, McCain, 54, whom friends characterize as ''shy'' and ''reserved,'' has gone into hyper-guarded mode, tirelessly stumping for her husband (they met at a party in Hawaii when she was 24 and he was 42 and in a shaky marriage), but saying no to many media interviews.

The woman whose father built a fortune from the ground up with a beer distributorship and whose mother instilled proper Southern ways is worn out by impolite journalists.

As a public figure whose profile could climb even more dramatically in a few weeks, McCain would do well to toughen up. But it's obvious she values old-school decorum. She has perfect posture, a polite manner, a certain poise when she refuses to go beyond the surface in answers to even the most softball questions.

If her husband is elected president, will McCain be OK with moving to the city she has avoided for so long? ''I would be happy to,'' she says, even though she once refused to live in Washington and instead raised her children, mostly by herself, in Phoenix, her home town. ''And it was the right thing to do,'' she says. ``Washington for many reasons is not the greatest place to raise a family, particularly doing what we were doing. It was much harder for my husband, because he was the one who had to commute home every weekend.''

FOUR CHILDREN

The McCains' children are Meghan, 23; Jack, 22; Jimmy, 20; and Bridget, 17. By now, the story of how the couple came to adopt their youngest is well known, told at the Republican National Convention and in every media profile:

Cindy was visiting Mother Teresa's orphanage in Bangladesh and wound up returning home with two baby girls who needed immediate medical attention. By the time her plane landed, she had decided they would keep the one who had a cleft palate and required a series of surgeries. The other child was adopted by John McCain aide Wes Gullett and his former wife, Pam Petersen.

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