RICHMOND -- The news reached Gov. Tim Kaine's hotel room about 1 a.m. Tokyo time on Tuesday, April 17.

The governor and his wife, Anne Holton, had arrived in Japan just seven hours earlier to begin a two-week business recruitment and trade mission in Asia. The highlight would be a weeklong visit to India, where Kaine planned to lead a delegation of more than 100 Virginia business and government leaders in an effort to strengthen ties with Indian businesses.

But the jarring news, delivered in a phone call by Kaine's chief of staff, abruptly ended the governor's trip and summoned him home to confront the worst crisis of his administration.

Thirteen time zones away, a shooting rampage on the Virginia Tech campus had left 33 people dead, including the gunman. Kaine's office made arrangements to get the governor on the first available flight back to Virginia while also rushing law enforcement personnel and other state resources to Blacksburg.

One day later, the jet-lagged governor was standing before a capacity crowd in Cassell Coliseum offering words of comfort and encouragement to a campus mired in grief. Before leaving Blacksburg the following day, Kaine met with family members of those who died in the shootings, visited the wounded in hospitals and announced plans to appoint a panel of experts that would review all of the circumstances surrounding the Tech tragedy.

"He and his whole administration have done an outstanding job," said Del. Dave Nutter, R-Christiansburg, who works in Tech's economic development office.

Legislators and state officials from both political parties and other observers have commended Kaine's handling of the crisis, from the response by state agencies to the governor's personal interactions with the Tech community.

"I've been impressed with his strength and his leadership in a very, very difficult time," Attorney General Bob McDonnell, a Republican, said of Kaine, a Democrat.

In an interview Thursday in the governor's office, Kaine described the agony of being half a world away when the shootings occurred, the pride he felt in the response of Tech students and the emotion he encountered when he arrived in Blacksburg.

"There is not a playbook for something like this, and particularly when it comes to talking to families about losing their children," Kaine said. "There's nothing you can share but tell them you care, listen to them and shed tears with them. And there was plenty of that."

Kaine said he watched television coverage of the shootings while waiting for his flight out of Japan and felt mixed emotions -- grief over the tragedy, and pride in the way Tech students appeared to be dealing with it.

When he appeared on campus with President Bush the following day, Kaine lauded the students and implored them to preserve "that spirit of community that makes Virginia Tech such a special place."

"How proud we were, even in the midst of a sad day, to see how well you represented yourselves and this university to a worldwide community," he said during the convocation in Cassell Coliseum.

Kaine spoke without notes or a prepared text, though the long flight from Tokyo gave him time to think about what he would say. He said he learned during his tenure as Richmond's mayor, as the city struggled to reduce its homicide rate, that "there isn't anything magic that you can say" in the aftermath of such violence.

"The only magic thing is just to be with people in the moment as they grieve and hopefully help them find some bit of hope in the situation going forward," Kaine said.

Del. Jim Shuler, D-Blacksburg, called Kaine's remarks "eloquent and from the heart."

And, Shuler added, "He didn't just come in, give his remarks and go home. He spent time on campus speaking to students and visiting with victims' families."

Kaine has been supportive of Tech President Charles Steger and other university leaders since the shootings, leaving it to an eight-member independent panel to assess how Tech, law enforcement officials and other agencies handled the shootings. The governor insists the panel won't be looking to assign blame, but will be "honest and unsparing" in its review.

"We owe it to every grieving family to be as scrupulous and objective and independent as we can about this," Kaine said. "My belief is this could have happened on any college campus anywhere. It happened here. But what we owe to those folks is learning every last lesson we can from it."

In the meantime, Kaine said, "I don't think the university needs to feel under a cloud.

"I think the way that community has rallied has been incredible," Kaine said. "The support they've shown for the president and the leadership has been strong."

Former U.S. Secretary of Homeland Security Tom Ridge said he felt "tremendous empathy" for Kaine in the days after the shootings.

Ridge, a Republican, was Pennsylvania's governor on Sept, 11, 2001, when a hijacked airliner crashed near Shanksville, Pa. Two other hijacked planes hit the World Trade Center towers and another slammed into the Pentagon on that day.

"All sorts of emotions ran through my head and heart, and I'm sure the same thing happened to the governor," said Ridge, who agreed to serve on the panel charged with reviewing the shootings.

Kaine's emotions showed publicly in a news conference on the Tech campus one day after the shootings. A reporter asked whether students with concealed carry permits should be allowed to carry guns on campus, an argument some gun-rights advocates were making within hours of the slayings. Kaine condemned those seeking to turn tragedy into a "political hobbyhorse.

"I've got nothing but loathing for them," Kaine said at the time.

Kaine said he had just come from a private meeting in which he, Bush, Steger and their wives had visited with families of the shooting victims. Amid so much grief, the gun-control question got under his skin.

"I could feel myself getting mad," Kaine said. "I started into the answer in a calm way, but I could feel myself getting mad."

Other state political leaders have followed Kaine's lead and said questions about gun laws can be raised later. Kaine said such issues should be debated after an appropriate mourning period and after the panel completes its work.

But he and McDonnell are moving quickly to close a loophole that allowed Tech shooter Seung-Hui Cho to purchase handguns despite a court order requiring him to seek outpatient psychiatric treatment. Kaine said he hopes to announce a solution early this week.

Kaine, who has a few Tech alumni on his staff, said his office will continue helping the university recover from the shootings. But he said he doesn't believe the tragedy will stain the university.

Tech is among a handful of colleges that Kaine's 17-year-old son, Nat, a high school junior, is considering. And the governor described his 14-year-old son, Woody, as a "Tech fanatic" whose bedroom is adorned with Hokie memorabilia. "Maybe I'm naive about this, but I don't think Tech is going to be stigmatized for this," he said. "I've heard an awful lot of people say 'What an amazing community this seems to be.' "

Kaine said the life stories of those who died in the shootings speak volumes about the character and quality of the university.

"If you read the stories about these 32 folks -- the faculty members, these graduate students, these students -- what a tribute to a spectacular institution," he said. "I'd want my kid to go to college with people like that."