When an American was captured fighting for the Taliban in northern Afghanistan in November, the story of 20-year-old John Walker Lindh saturated the news. But the story had special significance for some State College residents.

Walker's father is a Penn State graduate.

"I kept reading the story, and it kept bothering me," Candace Heckard said. "Then I read the address and it hit me."

After reading a magazine article about the man who is now being charged with conspiracy to kill U.S. nationals and providing material support and resources to terrorist organizations, Heckard, The Daily Collegian's business adviser, noticed that the names and the address of Walker's parents sounded familiar.

The parents who are now under the microscope of the American public, Frank R. Lindh and Marilyn Walker, are former residents of the State College area and old friends of Heckard.

According to Diane Ryan, the executive director of the Penn State Alumni Association, Lindh graduated in 1974 with a degree in political science. He has not maintained an active membership with the organization, she said.

The now separated couple, who now live in California's wealthy Marin County, once lived in a rented farm in Spring Mills. "It was real simple," Heckard recalled.

During their time in the area, Lindh worked at On Drugs, a State College volunteer-based drug rehabilitation center. Officials from the center, which has since been renamed Wellspring from On Drugs Inc., said they can not locate any information on Lindh due to the destruction of files from the period of time he was employed there.

During that same time Walker worked at the now defunct record store The Record Bar in the Nittany Mall.

"They were hippies," Heckard said in regards to their lifestyle. "She always wore long skirts, and he had longer hair and a beard."

The hippie stage, at least socially, did not last long. Following the couple's departure from the area, Lindh headed to graduate school.

According to Martindale.com, a Web site that locates lawyers, Lindh earned his masters degree in social work from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in 1980. In 1985, he earned his law degree from Georgetown University, graduating cum laude.

While many Americans might wonder how parents could let their child run off and join an extremist Islamic group, Heckard does not believe that it is the fault of her old acquaintances.

"They were real mild mannered and probably saw his interest as an intellectual pursuit," she said. "They were just really nice people when they were here. They were quiet people that worked and hung out with their friends."