Collateral damage

She could hide, but she couldn't run:

SANTEE, Calif. - Marie Walsh kept a low profile for 32 years, trying to escape her past life as Susan LeFevre.

She raised three children with her husband of 23 years, Alan, who never knew she was using an assumed identity. Authorities wanted her for escaping from a Detroit prison a year into a maximum 20-year sentence on heroin charges.

Now, LeFevre, 53, is in jail awaiting extradition from California to Michigan on an escape warrant.

When a member of the nutty plant-a-bomb-to-get-their-attention crowd is apprehended after 30 years of assuming a new identity, the stories always quote neighbors and "new family" members as being shocked. This is such a good person. We didn't have a clue. Shouldn't the productive and exemplary life since the bad old days count for something? My reaction is usually, well, so what? Go back and do the time for the crime.

Reports like this make me rethink the issue a little. Both sides are spinning the story so madly -- she says she was just a casual user who was with the wrong people at the wrong time, but authorities say she was a major player -- that it's hard to tell so far exactly what the truth is. But the point is that she was 19, and in the drug world. That wouldn't have made her stand out much in the 1970s, would it?

And she has let a quiet life and raised three children, whose lives will also be turned inside-out by this. Yeah, I know. She broke the law and escaped from prison. This never-ending drug war that can't be won just gets to me. Why don't we simply declare "mission accomplished" and all go home?