Covering the news events that gripped America over the past 60 years ensures that today’s news will — with growing frequency — touch many of those memories. Like, for example, the current misadventures of a lady named Sara Jane Olson with the California penal system, which released her last week two years ahead of schedule because of a clerical error, then had to rearrest her as she was getting on a plane for a homecoming in Minnesota.
When Sara Jane first came to my attention in 1975, her name was Kathleen Soliah, and she was wanted by police when evidence at the scene connected her with a bank robbery in northern California in which a customer was killed. The heist was carried out by a ragtag passel of revolutionaries called the Symbionese Liberation Army, of which Soliah was a member. So was Patty Hearst — then calling herself Tania — who allegedly drove the getaway car. She was my connection with these events. I was the only reporter allowed inside the Hearst family during the months that Patty’s kidnapping, and apparent conversion to the SLA was far and away the biggest running story in the land.
