Patty and I were well aware of how lucky we were to be living in San Francisco. We were never going to be anything like those kids who pined away their teens fantasizing about leaving name-your-podunk-town for the big city lights. We could find excitement any time of day, any day of the week. Sometimes excitement would find us, but that was the exception. Besides, the chase was half the fun.
One afternoon in spring, it must have been 1974, Patty and I were dragging ourselves along Chestnut Street. We’d just rolled out of Doggy Diner, and the franks smothered in chili sat like bags of sand in our stomachs. More than one was enough to slow us down. We’d wolfed down three a piece. To our left a shiny stretch limo was cruising in the lane closest to us. A miniature flag attached to the antenna whipped around too fast for me to make out the emblem. Diplomat was my first guess. Then CEO. The windows were tinted black, but was the back one was ajar. A blonde with close set, far off eyes kept rubbernecking to get a look at the people walking by. She didn’t bother to push aside her hair that was whipping up, lashing her cheeks. She turned her eyes from the street to the knob that locked the door, in my memory it all happened in slow motion. I could see her stare at that knob as she drove by as if to signal here was just another way to lock her in. I knew immediately, even in profile, it was Patty Hearst.
Patty was a hometown girl. Still she’d held the entire nation transfixed for three years. The two daily newspapers carried the photograph of her in a black wig and beret, carrying a semi-automatic rifle on the front page.
Her nom de guerre was Tania and although she was kidnapped by the Symbionese Liberation Army (SLA) their message of unity and feminism was what made them so seductive, at least to those to the left of left. They denounced racism and capitalism. That last bit probably might have caused Patty to get a lump in her throat. Her entire family lived a capitalist’s wet dream. Even at ten years old, I was rooting for her. Sure she robbed the Hibernia Bank, and I worried constantly about my meager savings having gone out the door in a black bag. “Your twenty dollars is safe,” my mother assured me. Patty Hearst, at nineteen, was only a few years older than Patty and me. Being scooped up to further a social revolution impressed the two of us to no end. If only we were the grand daughter of William Randolph Hearst, we sighed. It wasn’t until I watched Citizen Kane, based on Hearst’s life, that I realized I should be careful what I wished for.
