On February 4, 1974, Patty Hearst, the 19-year-old granddaughter
of newspaper publisher William Randolph Hearst, was kidnapped
from her apartment in Berkeley, California, by three armed men.

Her fiancee, Steven Weed, was beaten and tied up along with a
neighbor who tried to help. Witnesses reported seeing a struggling Hearst being carried away blindfolded, and she was put in the trunk
of a car. Neighbors who came out into the street were forced to take cover after the kidnappers fired their guns to cover their escape.

Three days later, the Symbionese Liberation Army (SLA), a small
U.S. leftist group, announced in a letter to a Berkeley radio station
that it was holding Hearst as a “prisoner of war.” Four days later,
the SLA demanded that the Hearst family give $70 in foodstuffs to
every needy person from Santa Rosa to Los Angeles. This done,
said the SLA, negotiation would begin for the return of Patricia
Hearst.

Patricia Campbell Hearst will turn 70 on February 20th.