Twenty-seven years ago I promised a convicted felon that I would guard his art collection until his son took it for her.

This collection is not a small set of prints or photographs. The collection includes seven oil paintings, some the size of a door. There are Georgia O’Keefe-type wall-sized blooms that burst into red and orange magnificence.

The most interesting piece is a United Press International photo of Jackie Kennedy walking on the beach in Hyannis Port, MA, taken in 1972. On the back of the frame is the press photographer’s original handwritten report.

How this photo got into the hands of a potential presidential assassin is curious? I wish I knew. The story of the Jackie photo and the story of many other pieces in the art collection are still unknown to me.

The story of how I became the “guardian of art” began on October 15, 1975. I received a handwritten note from Sara Jane Moore, the woman who shot Pres. Gerald Ford, missing his head by six inches.

She invited me to visit her in prison. The note was sent to me through the Los Angeles News Journal, where I worked. She read an article I had written about a class action lawsuit against the Sybil Brand Institute, the Los Angeles County women’s jail.

Before her assassination attempt, Sara Jane lived in Danville before moving to San Francisco. During those years she had bought a series of paintings by unknown artists. When she was arrested, Greg Dunning, who lived down the street from her in the Mission District, salvaged some of her art before her entire apartment was ransacked when news of her arrest broke.

Dunning wrote to Sara Jane in prison about the art she had saved.

In a letter to Sara Jane seven years later, Dunning said that it was expensive and difficult to maintain the collection carefully and properly, and that he could no longer afford those costs. He proposed to sell the collection and give the proceeds to his son Frederic.

Sara Jane was outraged that Dunning was liquidating her collection and called a lawyer to start a “grand theft” lawsuit against Dunning because, she said, Dunning would not give up her art. Dunning was furious at the accusation. He said that was the thanks he received for going into debt taking care of his art for seven years. He wrote that she valued his art more than she valued “the human life you tried to shoot.”

In September 1982, Sara Jane called me in Pollock Pines, California, 150 miles east of San Francisco in the Sierra Nevada mountains. She asked me if I’d mind saving some art for her, just until her son Frederic was old enough to take it away. She said that this art collection was all she had left. She added that if she was ever released, she would get it back. I agreed and became the new custodian of art.

Frederic was nine years old when Sara Jane went to prison in 1975 and turned 21 in 1987. I asked if Frederic had my contact information and if he knew when he might want to pick up the collection.

I asked her again in 1988 and again in 1989. It was always the same answer from her: she waved her hand as if brushing away an imaginary fly and declared that Frederic had told her that he was too busy, or that he hadn’t. I don’t have room but would pick it up once she moved into a larger space. I offered to call him for her, but she insisted that she didn’t want me to be bothered.

Finally, we just don’t talk about it anymore.

In 1991 I moved to Washington, DC bringing the collection with me. I put it away, as the job I moved for disappeared with rising unemployment. I barely got by with a part-time administrative assistant job at a small public relations firm. It was all he could get and he was happy to have some income.

My dreams of being a political reporter on the streets of the nation’s capital were pulverized with every step to and from the Metro for my administrative work.

Things did not improve quickly. It was another two years before I regained my previous level of professionalism, but the intervening years were brutal.

I was able to move up to a better position at the local trade weekly. I took the job after repeated attempts to land an assistant editor-in-chief position at the Washington Post, resulting in an exasperated response that they were laying people off. I did not know that?

The $50 a month to store the art collection was a barrier to going to the dentist or getting my car fixed. However, he did not know what to do with the art. I came to the same conclusion and realization that Greg Dunning had: sell it and give the money to his son.

I wrote to Sara Jane, as Greg Dunning had done, and explained my circumstances. Her response was different in that she did not threaten to sue me. However, I was reprimanded for keeping it in storage instead of hanging the oils above my doors and the flowers on my ceiling.

Somehow I managed to keep the art in storage, not lose my teeth, and fixed my car.

On December 31, 2007, Sara Jane Moore was released from prison after 32 years. I was sure that my years as an “art keeper” would soon be over, but I waited in vain like a deserted lover. He never wrote and never called.

I tried to find her, but I ran up against the US World Commission. They would not act as a “middle man” and were not understanding.

Storage payments continued.

When I finally heard from the errant owner, it was through my book publisher, Palgrave Macmillan. Sara Jane called my publisher to let her know that she wanted her art back, but she didn’t leave any contact information.

Again, it left me floating in the San Francisco fog without a horn. Speechless.

I sought legal advice as there had to be a solution now that she was free and had her own storage room. He was mad to find her and force her to get the art back from her. But, I was frustrated again. I learned that my legal obligation was not on my side. I couldn’t get rid of it until she gave him fair warning to get it back.

How do you make a request to someone you can’t find?

Finally, I am released from my self-imposed obligation. I got an email from your new attorney two months ago. He told me that unless he promptly returned his art, which is rightfully his property, he said, he was authorized to sue me.

It is very comforting to know that there is consistency in this world.