At dawn, one ghastly day in the early 1970s, my family home in Sausalito, California, exploded in flames. My mother ran out the front door, my father escaped through the back door. Not knowing that my father successfully evacu¬ated, my mother reentered the burning house looking for him. That search through the flames severely burned her legs; she spent the next six months at Stanford Hospital, recovering. My father's physical injuries were relatively minor.

I was living about a mile down the hill and, as best I can figure the timeline, driving toward the Golden Gate Bridge as the fire raged, heading to my job as the morning news reporter on radio station KSAN.

The cause of the fire never was in question. Inspectors quickly determined that accelerant was spread across the wooden front porch and lit. But the bla¬tant arson case never was solved. There were no suspects. No other houses in that era were torched in such a manner in Sausalito. Nothing about the gray mid-20th century façade distinguished it to attract random attention: no post¬ers, no flags, no graffiti, no bumper sticker on the car—nothing to trigger the wrath of someone to do harm.

KSAN was well known at the time as an “underground” station. We were famous for our highly opinionated newscasts: overtly against the Vietnam War, for example, and championing the counterculture which we embraced as participants.

As a public figure, I was not afraid about potential risks our newscasts could stimulate, acts performed by listeners who disagreed with us. But I was judi¬cious. In that pre-internet, pre-cell phone era, relative personal anonymity was possible, even for those of us whose names were in the public domain (and I used my real name on the air). My mailing address was a post office box. My telephone number (when phone books often included street addresses) was unlisted.

But I made a mindless and obviously serious error. My surname is not com¬mon. And I often spoke on the radio about living in Sausalito. At the time there were only two listings in the Marin County phone book for Laufer—one was in San Rafael (no relation), and the other was my parents at 164 Spencer Avenue, Sausalito. Artists, they lived a private life with a small circle of friends and no enemies.