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thedrifter
11-27-05, 11:51 AM
A lifelong lawman: FBI agent Thomas Padden arrested Patricia Hearst in 1975
Gary Klien

IN THE 1960s, an FBI agent named Thomas Padden and his partner were driving through San Francisco when a bulletin came over the police radio. An ex-con had just struck his parole officer in the head with an ax and was running through the city's Tenderloin's District with the officer's gun.

The FBI agents happened to be driving in the Tenderloin and spotted the fleeing suspect, so they stopped the car, collared the parolee in a corner and turned him over the city police.

Unbeknownst to the agents, a certain high-ranking FBI official - Mark Felt, later to become the infamous Watergate tipster "Deep Throat" - was in San Francisco that day and learned of the Tenderloin arrest. Padden and his partner, Monte Hall, were called into their supervisor's office, where Felt was waiting to present them with a merit award for their efforts.

A photograph of Padden, Felt and Hall still sits among the family photos in Padden's living room in Marinwood, where he has lived the past 45 years. And while Deep Throat's face might seem incongruous in a collection of family pictures, it makes perfect sense for Padden, for whom law enforcement has been a lifelong devotion.

At 80 years old, Padden still heads off to work every day at the San Francisco District Attorney's Office, where he has been an investigator for the past 18 years. His tenure there follows five years as a private bank investigator, 30 years with the FBI - during which he arrested the fugitive heiress Patty Hearst - and four years as a police officer. He even likes to read crime novels and watch TV cop shows.

"I can't knock (criminals) because they've given me a living all these years," he says.

Padden was born to Irish immigrants in Portland, Ore., and graduated from Jefferson High School in the city. He says he wanted to be a policeman at an early age, even though no one in his family was in law enforcement.

"I was in grade school writing a paper about it," he says.

After high school, Padden enlisted in the Marines for three years and fought at Iwo Jima in 1945. His job was to lay telephone lines so the forward teams could phone in bombing targets.

More than 6,000 Marines were killed at Iwo Jima - about a third of the Marines killed during all of World War II - plus about 22,000 Japanese soldiers.

"It was a horrible battle," Padden says. "There were a lot of guys killed. I was fortunate. I walked off the island in one piece. Life was awful cheap, on both sides."

Padden returned to Portland after the war, attended the University of Portland and then took the test to join the Portland Police Bureau. He was hired as a patrolman in 1946.

In December 1950, he was hired by the FBI, a job that would take him to assignments in Texas, Philadelphia and finally, in 1953, San Francisco. He lived in San Francisco for seven years before moving to his current home in Marinwood, where he and his wife, Pat, raised three children.

At the FBI, Padden was not bogged down in misdemeanor cases. He was assigned to kidnappings, bank robberies, fugitives, extortion cases and other major crimes.

"It was exhilarating," says his longtime partner, Hall, an 84-year-old Walnut Creek resident. "Not every day. Some days were boring, but you never knew when you got up in the morning what kind of day it was going to be. That's what made it exciting."

Padden's greatest coup may have been the arrest of Hearst, the newspaper heiress who joined the revolutionary Symbionese Liberation Army in 1974, and Wendy Yoshimura, a reputed SLA operative.

The SLA kidnapped Hearst in Berkeley and forced her wealthy parents to donate millions to the poor in exchange for her release. But then Hearst joined the cabal and helped the revolutionaries rob banks throughout California. One SLA robbery in Sacramento resulted in the death of a bystander in 1975, although Hearst was not implicated in that heist.

In September 1975, the FBI, which had been trying to find Hearst for more than a year, developed information that she and several other SLA fugitives might be staying in San Francisco. On Sept. 18, after a lengthy surveillance operation, Padden and several agents arrested SLA members Bill and Emily Harris while the couple was jogging on Precita Street.

Padden led several agents to an apartment on Morse Street where Hearst and Yoshimura were believed to be hiding. Padden and another agent crept up the stairs to the second-floor apartment, where Padden looked through a window and saw Hearst and Yoshimura sitting at the kitchen table.

Hearst jumped up and ran into another room. Padden says he pointed his gun at Yoshimura and yelled, to Hearst, "Freeze, or I'm going to blow her head off!"

Hearst gave up and both women were arrested, and investigators seized a trove of weapons from the apartment.

"It was a good arrest," Padden says. "It was all over the country she was being sought."

Jason Moulton, a former FBI agent who worked with Padden on the case, says Padden had a fierce work ethic and a network of local police connections he could draw upon.

"We were averaging anywhere from 400 to 700 bank robberies a year in our division, which was basically the San Francisco Bay Area. It was a very violent time," says Moulton, 58, now Safeway's director of security in Seattle. "Tom was involved in every big case. He was the go-to guy for all the big cases. He just knew how to handle them.

"He's like Joe Friday - 'Just gimme the facts.'"

Padden loved the FBI, but in 1980 he departed reluctantly after reaching mandatory retirement age. Then he spent several years working as an internal fraud investigator for Crocker National Bank - and later Wells Fargo when Wells Fargo bought Crocker - before joining the San Francisco District Attorney's Office in 1987.

"He was a dream to work with," says Joe Fazio, 51, of Terra Linda, a former DA's investigator in San Francisco. "I've been in law enforcement for 30 years and I've had a couple of mentors, and Tom was at the top of the list."

Fazio, now an investigator for the Marin County Department of Health and Human Services, carpooled to San Francisco with Padden for many years. Fazio says it was more than a year before Padden mentioned he was involved in Hearst's arrest.

"You had to pry it out of him," Fazio says. "I just think it's a product of his generation - those guys did what had to be done and never talked about it."

Padden could have retired years ago, but he says he enjoys the work and likes to keep active. His wife died in 2001 after 51 years of marriage, and now he lives alone with his wife's cat, Mia.

Padden's assignment at the DA's office is investigating welfare fraud cases.

"It's like shoveling sand at the ocean," he says. "It'll be there eternally, I think."

Ellie