Hearst's Vigil

Heart's Vigil

It was the most unnerving time of a kidnaping--a time of silence. All last week the captors of Patricia Hearst, 20, said nothing of the fate of the girl they had dragged screaming from her apartment in Berkeley, Calif on Feb. 4.

As the vigil went on, the Hearst family and the Hearst Foundation continued to hand out $2 million worth of food to the poor in the San Francisco area in an attempt to meet the original demand of the Symbionese Liberation Army. During the previous week there had been fights and arrests on the food lines when the hastily organized distribution system broke down, but this time the process worked much more smoothly. Long queues of people waited patiently in the cold, windswept rain to collect bags of groceries containing such items as fresh meat, cereal, milk, peanut butter and bread.

One man who sharply objected to the free food program was California's Governor Ronald Reagan, who declared that the people lining up for the packages were "aiding and abetting lawlessness." Said Reagan: "I think it would be great if everyone would refuse to accept that food."

Fresh Food. Trying to keep the operation going, hard-working volunteers ran into a practical problem: finding enough supplies of fresh vegetables and meat that were reasonably priced and still met the high standards set by the S.L.A. Noted A. Ludlow Kramer, the State of Washington official who is directing the effort: "We're going as far as the Midwest and the East Coast to purchase meats."

Still to be settled was the demand by* the abductors that an additional $4 million worth of food must be distributed before Patricia would be freed. The Hearst Corp. (which controls, among other properties, eight newspapers, eleven magazines and three TV stations) agreed to put up the money--but not until the girl was returned. By week's end there was no reply to the counteroffer. Waiting for word, Randolph Hearst, Patricia's father, said: "We're hoping. God knows we're hoping."

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