As things return to normal in California after last Tuesday's earthquake, some University alumni in the San Francisco area are hard pressed to forget the incident.

"Almost the first thing you say to somebody you haven't seen is, 'How did you do, what happened?,'" said Terry Rizzo, a 1968 graduate and outgoing president of the Penn State Silicon Valley Alumni Association who lives in Saratoga, about five miles from the earthquake's epicenter.

Greg James, a 1980 graduate who lives and works about 15 miles from the epicenter in the Mountainview area, said, "That's all anyone's been talking about in the past week."

James was at his job at Ford-Aerospace when the earthquake hit.

"I was working on a spreadsheet and things started shaking and the first thing I started to do was try to save my work," he said. "Then it started shaking so violently that I just got under my desk as fast as I could and tried to save me instead of my stupid work."

James said although the earthquake lasted only 15 seconds, it felt like forever.

"The building was just shaking back and forth and at one point it got really scary because the building went one way and it didn't feel like it would come back," he said. "And I was under the desk and yelled, 'Come on back, come on back!'"

At James' home, the extent of damage was broken glass and pottery.

Fritz Knipe, a 1960 graduate, tells a different story.

"The epicenter for this quake was about a quarter mile from my home," he said.

Knipe was preparing to leave after visiting his brother when the earthquake occurred. Los Gatos, an area just below his home in Santa Cruz, turned out to be one of the hardest hit.

Knipe immediately headed home but was forced to use back roads because his main route home, U.S. Highway 17, was closed by heavy rock slides.

"I was fortunate enough to line up behind a Caterpillar tractor and a skip-loader," he said, "and they were pulling huge boulders off the road and pushing them off the side down into the creek bed down below ... So a trip that normally takes 40 minutes took four hours."

Five neighbors on Knipe's block have found their homes uninhabitable.

"We are extremely lucky, we had no structural damage, but my home is very well built," he said.

Knipe entered his house to find his power out and his rooms in disarray.

The contents of his refrigerator and freezer littered the floor.

"It was quite a scene," he said. "It was like someone had taken your crystal and dishes and other breakables and put them in a Cuisinart. It was just a mass of broken glass and pottery."

Knipe said fissures -- open cracks in the earth -- formed about 25 yards from his home.

Terry Rizzo was preparing to leave Apple Computers' parking lot in San Francisco when the earthquake struck. As she drove to her home in Saratoga, about five miles from the epicenter, she began to see evidence of the earthquake's damage.

"Every single traffic light was out, the electricity went down," she said. "On the way home, I had the radio on and was trying to pick up the World Series and they were reporting what they were hearing from people who called in."

As Rizzo listened, rumors of the Bay Bridge collapse came over the radio.

"That's when it began to get real serious," she said. "And I started getting frantic because of my son, who is 16. He was home and I was real worried -- at that point I tried to get home as fast as I could."

As she got closer to home, Rizzo saw many houses in flames and firefighters trying to put the fires out.

"I felt much better when I found out it wasn't my house (that was burning)," she said.

Rizzo's son, who had been watching the World Series at the time of the earthquake, had managed to get into an open doorway -- one of the best places to be when an earthquake occurs -- and remained safe.

Faced with the possibility of more earthquakes and the inevitable aftershocks that follow, Rizzo, James and Knipe said they would not move.

"That's a chance you take in living here," Rizzo said.

James said, "I think a week later things are rather calm. I don't plan on moving."

Knipe said, "This is a magnificent area, there's beautiful scenery, we're surrounded by redwoods and about 1,800 feet of elevation -- it's just a beautiful place to live."