With the death of Gerald Ford has come renewed interest in the various events in his life, including (for SFist's purposes, anyways) Sara Jane Moore's attempt to assassinate him in San Francisco on September 22, 1975 outside the St. Francis Hotel.

It was 17 days after Squeaky Fromme the Manson follower had tried and failed to kill Ford in Sacramento, and Moore was a mentally unstable leftist active with the Symbionese Liberation Army (the ones who kidnapped Patty Hearst), until the SLA learned that she had become an FBI informant. It's said that she tried to kill Ford in an attempt to get back in their good graces.

Ford was saved by a bystander named Oliver Sipple, a disabled former Marine living in the Mission (and who was later outed as gay by Herb Caen in the Chronicle). Sipple noticed the gun in Moore's hand and deflected her arm as she fired. Moore fired twice and missed Ford entirely, but one bullet ricocheted off a wall and ended up hitting a cab driver. Donald Rumsfeld, who was there in his capacity as Ford's chief of staff, was unhurt as well.

Would-be assassin Sara Jane Moore on her way to federal court.

Moore is serving a life sentence in the federal prison in Dublin (where Josh Wolf is), and is currently 76 years old. In an interview with KGO news, she expressed regret for her actions and said she was blinded by her radical leftist views at the time. "I am very glad I did not succeed. I know now that I was wrong to try." (Compare this with her statements at the time, that, "I do regret that I didn't succeed, and allow the winds of change to start.... I did it to create chaos.")

Moore's still applying for parole (saying it was her first offense), enjoys needlework, and says she didn't get to watch Ford's funeral on the prison TV because no one else wanted to watch it. She's also a minor, bumbling character in Stephen Sondheim's Assassins musical.