SANTA BARBARA — Jason Vonstraussenburg worked at UC Santa Barbara for 14 years, a skilled technician who could whip together repairs on complicated pieces of lab equipment when scientists needed them in a hurry.
At 61, he was a genial colleague, a homeowner, an avid metal sculptor, a father, a husband and a registered Republican.
He was everything, police said, except Jason Vonstraussenburg.
He was arrested last week by Santa Barbara County sheriff's deputies, 36 years after he had escaped from a prison camp in Michigan.
Despite a record of nonviolent crimes, he was listed there -- under his real name of Roger Lee Crona -- as one of the state's most-wanted fugitives.
On Tuesday, those who knew him at UC Santa Barbara were stunned.
"I totally couldn't believe it," said project scientist Eileen Hamilton. "He's a normal, nice guy. He's a valuable member of our campus community, and I'm going to miss him."
University officials said the job he held in the biological sciences machine shop required no background check, unlike jobs that involve handling cash, access to student residence halls and tasks in a number of other sensitive areas.
Vonstraussenburg was asked on his 1994 application whether he had been convicted -- under any name -- of misdemeanors or felonies that led to a prison sentence or probation.
"There was nothing in his responses that would have disqualified him from working here," said university spokesman Paul Desruisseaux.
In the machine shop, he was known as a high-tech Mr. Fix-It with a knack for innovation. At one point, he hooked up an alarm system on a laboratory freezer so researchers would know if delicate cells inside were in danger of thawing. Using mostly spare parts, he fashioned a device capable of processing 36 DNA samples at once instead of six.
One of more than 30 fugitives on Michigan's "most-wanted" list, Crona was convicted as a young man of offenses that didn't make the kind of local headlines sparked by his recent arrest.
In 1971, he was on parole after a conviction for receiving stolen property when he was found driving a car with someone else's registration and a license plate that had been altered with a phony number painted on it. His previous offenses included breaking and entering, reckless driving and larceny, said Russ Marlan, a spokesman for the Michigan Department of Corrections.
