Nearly nine years after she was arrested and six years after she went to prison, Sara Jane Olson will once again call St. Paul home.

Olson, who pleaded guilty to a failed plot to kill Los Angeles police officers and to her role in a deadly bank robbery, was released from the Central California Women's Facility in Chowchilla on Monday and is expected to arrive in the Twin Cities by today. A young man who answered the phone at the family home in St. Paul early Friday evening said the family would have no comment.

Olson is scheduled to report to a Ramsey County parole officer on Monday, said Chris Crutchfield, deputy director of community relations for the county's corrections division.

Upon learning of her release, the union that represents Los Angeles police officers issued a statement expressing its disappointment. "She needs to serve her full time in prison for these crimes and does not deserve time off for working in prison," said Tim Sands, president of the Los Angeles Police Protective League.

Friends and supporters of Olson in the Twin Cities, however, applauded her release.

Olson was given permission on Wednesday to return to St. Paul by the Minnesota Department of Corrections, a department spokeswoman said. Ramsey County community corrections also approved her transfer to Minnesota, and California authorities notified the county that she had been given permission to leave California on Friday, with arrival no later than today.

"She does want to return to Minnesota," said her attorney, David Nickerson, of San Rafael, Calif., in an interview Friday.

Olson was a member of the radical Symbionese Liberation Army, a tiny urban guerrilla group that achieved notoriety for the kidnapping of newspaper heiress Patty Hearst.

Olson was wanted for participating in a 1975 bank robbery, in which another SLA member killed a customer, as well as for the plot to kill officers by blowing up two Los Angeles police cars.

Olson grew up as Kathleen Soliah, living in Barnesville, Minn., until her family moved to California when she was 8. She went underground for more than 20 years and was arrested in 1999 in St. Paul, where she had been living under her new name with her husband, Dr. Fred Peterson, an emergency-room physician, and three daughters.

She pleaded guilty to second-degree murder and served two concurrent six-year sentences for the bank shooting near Sacramento and the plot to kill police officers.

Bill Sessa, a spokesman for the California Department of Corrections, said that Olson earned time off her sentence for good behavior and "wasn't treated any differently than anybody else."

Olson will be on parole for one year, not three as earlier news reports said, according to John Menke, assistant director of the adult services division of Ramsey County community corrections.

Olson had been staying with family members in Lancaster, Calif., this week and could not be reached for comment on Friday. A woman who identified herself as Olson's mother said Friday that Olson and her husband had left the Lancaster house and would not be returning.

Shari Burt, communications director for the Minnesota Department of Corrections, said that on March 6, under an interstate pact, California requested that Minnesota accept parole supervision for Olson.

She met the eligibility requirement, which is that she had a resident family living in the state, making it mandatory that Minnesota allow her to live here unless there's overwhelming reason not to, Burt said.

Ramsey County agreed to take charge of her parole, known in Minnesota as supervised release, said Menke.

Nickerson said that Monday was Olson's normal release date. She was serving what is known as a "determinant sentence," he said, which carries a precise release date that does not require approval from a parole board.

Olson's sentence was extended by two years in 2004, and that extension is still on appeal to the California Supreme Court, Nickerson said. If the court overturns the extension, it would mean that her parole would end immediately rather than in a year, he said.

"I am really for this family," said former state legislator Andy Dawkins, a family friend.

"They are such great kids, those daughters, and she has got an ever-loving husband who has stuck by her," said Dawkins, a lawyer and a part-time child support magistrate in Hennepin County. "My hope is that she gets back to Minnesota because I miss her, too.

"She has done her time. I hope she is accepted back in the community she left as the person we knew, which was Sara, not Kathleen Soliah."

Said theater director Wendy Knox, "I am glad she's out. She's done six years, and I was very happy to read she is being released."

Knox directed Olson in Macbeth at Park Square Theater in St. Paul 16 years ago and became a family friend. "I am surprised she got out," she said. "I didn't know it was coming. ... I knew they made numerous attempts to get her out and had numerous setbacks."

Mary Ellen Kaluza was part of the local defense committee that helped raise funds for Olson's attorneys. "I am very, very happy," said Kaluza. "I am relieved. I am thrilled that her family can be reunited and get on with their lives."

Although some have stood by her, others have condemned her.

She was serving a concurrent six-year sentence in the shooting death of bank customer Myrna Opsahl during the California robbery.

Opsahl's son, Jon Opsahl, said Olson was walking free four years earlier than he expected.

"She's out of prison too soon by far," Opsahl told the Sacramento Bee. "It's another in a series of slaps in the face of victims by the justice system."

Peter Erlinder, a professor of law at William Mitchell College of Law who supported Olson after her arrest, said, "I don't think she was a great danger to begin with, and I don't think she is a great danger now. Her case was a replay of the political battles of the 1960s and 1970s, and the antiwar movement and her conviction was a reflection of those times."

Crutchfield, of Ramsey County corrections, said he did not yet know the conditions of Olson's parole. "We will enforce California's conditions, and depending on what they are, we may have additional conditions."

Menke said he wanted Olson to be a constructive member of the community. He added, "This probably is about as good as it gets. She has the potential for good community support systems"

The Los Angeles Times and Star Tribune staff researcher John Wareham contributed to this report.

Randy Furst • 612-673-7382