She noticed it as soon as she walked into her son's school to speak to his kindergarten class earlier this week. Moving down the hall toward the classroom, people were suddenly freezing in place and just silently staring at her.

Not the kids. Teachers. Grown adults. People she'd talked to many times before but who were now seemingly in awe.

After spending nearly two weeks playing in front of crowds so loud they could have drowned out an airplane taking off in the middle of an AC/DC concert, it was now the opposite end of the noise spectrum that caught her attention. And she wasn't even wearing her gold medal. That was tucked safely in her purse.

The moment was a reminder to her that when you win a gold medal in hockey for Canada, in Canada, you walk on a pedestal whether you intend to or not.

"It's funny to watch adults because they're like little kids," Becky Kellar says.

She means it as an endearment. The four-time Olympic medallist in women's hockey from Burlington says she's always a little surprised by the impact her success -- and her medals -- have on people. The excitement they get by somehow feeling a part of it through proximity to someone who was part of it. This victory, in particular.

As we all know, Vancouver was wild. Even though the team had previously played in front of full houses in rinks across Canada, Kellar says nothing had fully prepared them for what they experienced when they walked out of the tunnel and onto the ice at Canada Hockey Place for their first game against Slovakia.

"It was just unbelievable," the 35-year-old says. "The crowds were insane. They were the loudest crowds I'd ever played in front of."

It was so crazy that even a veteran of three previous Olympics, eight world championships and innumerable international tournaments, who thought she'd seen it all and was preparing for the most serious moment of her hockey life, couldn't hold back a goofy grin.

You know the rest of the story. Kellar and her teammates smoked the field and knocked off the Americans in the gold medal game. It was a perfect ending to a nearly perfect Team Canada career for the mother of two.

She's going to finish this season with the Burlington Barracudas of the Canadian Women's Hockey League and take the summer to weigh her options for the future. She might play another year in that league. She might join a men's league. The only thing she's decided is she won't be playing under the interlocking rings again.

"I know I'm not going to do another Olympics," she says. "I'm pretty sure Russia isn't going to match this so it's a good way to end."

Not that her decision has made things any slower for her. Since winning her latest gold, life has predictably been a bit of a whirlwind. Mainly in giving her a chance to share her prize with so many people, including those folks at school. Other schools, too. And last night she was honoured before the Burlington Cougars' playoff game, getting the kind of public acclaim legends receive. Yet she never knows what the reaction's going to be from person to person.

"Some people get quite emotional," she says. "I've seen people cry."

While she's reluctant to let people wear her medals -- only Stanley Cup winners are allowed to lift the mug overhead so perhaps only those who won the medals should be wearing them, anyway -- she's happy to allow people to hold them and have a quiet moment with her bauble of gold and their imagination.

Of course, in that moment they visualize only the glory, never the blood and the sweat that went into making it happen. The endless training. The 60 games, including 40 against boys' teams. The sacrifice and time away from family. The silly criticism of a well-earned party on the ice.

But it's all worth it. She now has a complete set of Olympic medals: one from every Games in which women's hockey has been involved. Silver in Nagano. Gold in Salt Lake City, Turin and Vancouver. And a place carved out for herself among the best female hockey players this country has ever produced.

Running through the resume, you start to wonder if there's anyone who's more charmed than she.

"I don't know," she laughs. "I've had a good run."