Where the heiress robbed a bank
In the 1970s, the Outer Sunset District was an increasingly Asian suburb far removed from downtown. On the corner of Noriega and 22nd Avenue stands what was then a branch of the Hibernia Savings & Loan. At 10am on April 15, 1974, several members of a Marxist-inspired radical group known as the Symbionese Liberation Army (SLA) burst into the bank. While several revolutionaries gathered cash from the tellers, a young woman wearing a tilted beret and carrying an M-1 carbine shouted instructions to customers. A security camera caught an iconic photo of Patty Hearst, the granddaughter of publishing baron William Randolph Hearst. Coincidentally, one of Patty’s close friends growing up was a daughter in the Tobin family, which founded the Hibernia Bank.
Ms. Hearst had been kidnapped nine weeks earlier, shortly before her 20th birthday, taken from a Berkeley apartment that she shared with her then fiancé. The next month during a botched theft in a Los Angeles sporting goods store, Ms. Hearst seemed to have completely shed her bourgeois upbringing and joined the SLA in earnest. She fired several shots to help her comrades escape; they were later tracked down and killed in one of the biggest shootouts in California history. A year later, Hearst served as the getaway driver in another bank robbery. One customer was shot to death. The following September, “Tanya,” her nom de guerre, was arrested in San Francisco, and when asked her profession replied, “urban guerilla.”
Info
Address 1450 Noriega Street, San Francisco, CA, 94122 | Public Transport Bus: 16X, 71, 71L (22nd Ave & Noriega St stop) | Tip You can find inexpensive and tasty dim sum just down the block at New Hing Lung at 1556 Noriega Street.
She was eventually tried for the Hibernia holdup, and, despite overwhelming evidence that she suffered from Stockholm syndrome, was found guilty of conspiracy and served 21 months in prison after her sentence was commuted. Eventually, President Clinton gave her a presidential pardon. Today, the former Hibernia branch on Noriega Street houses a medical services company and a Bank of America cash machine.
Back
To the online map