Hiding in Plain Sight

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The 52-year-old guerrilla lived with her husband the doctor in a $264,000 five-bedroom, four-bath home in St. Paul, Minn., surrounded by neighbors who included doctors, bankers, a stockbroker and Republicans of all types. She grew hostas and geraniums and ran a mean marathon. Though she may have once consorted with bank robbers and bombmakers, the soccer mom of three girls was now a gun-control advocate and found time to narrate Christmas pageants, feed the homeless and read to the blind. In this life and on the local stage, where she most recently starred in a one-act drama called Tall Tales, she was known as Sara Jane Olson--her maiden name, she said. But last week, as she was driving her Plymouth minivan to teach English as a second language, FBI agents arrested her on 24-year-old California charges. They called her Kathleen Ann Soliah. She never denied they had the right person. All she asked for was a lawyer.

The arrest brings with it a history lesson and a trip through radical America. In February 1974, a handful of urban guerrillas calling themselves the Symbionese Liberation Army kidnapped publishing heiress Patricia Hearst in Berkeley, Calif. Two months into her abduction, Hearst became the armed S.L.A. operative "Tanya" whose image was captured by security cameras at bank heists. In May 1974, the S.L.A. was decimated after a cataclysmic shoot-out with the Los Angeles police. At about this time, police say, Soliah, actress, part-time waitress and best friend of a slain S.L.A. member, joined the movement after surviving guerrillas reluctantly approached her and her boyfriend Jim Kilgore for help. As Hearst later wrote, "She had been considered too flaky to be trusted." But Soliah joined "enthusiastically." As did her sister Josephine and brother Steve, who briefly became Hearst's boyfriend. In August 1975, Soliah allegedly planted pipe bombs underneath two L.A.P.D.. vehicles, which were found before they detonated. The next month, Hearst was arrested and gave up evidence against the remaining guerrillas before being sentenced to seven years. (She claimed the S.L.A. had brainwashed her, and served two years before President Carter commuted her term.) Soliah and Kilgore remained at large.

Her parents say that 10 years ago the FBI told them it was no longer pursuing Soliah. But California still wanted her. The recent dip in crime allowed the L.A.P.D.. to reassign officers to unsolved cases, and Lieut. Tom King, 50, whose father Mervin had led the firefight against the S.L.A., took a fresh look at Soliah's and Kilgore's. His men got a federal jury to indict her for "unlawful flight to avoid prosecution." That warrant brought the FBI back in. Last month the bureau posted a $20,000 reward and asked the syndicated TV show America's Most Wanted to feature Soliah and Kilgore, who is wanted for "possession of an unregistered explosive device." Calls to the show's hot line led the FBI and the police to Soliah.