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Jacob D.B. Sherman once was an eco-saboteur whose firebombings on behalf of the Earth Liberation Front shook the Portland area. Now he's a key official in a sustainability program at Portland State University.

(PSU/Emily Garrick-Steenson)

The

U.S.

government filed papers this week to garnish the wages of a Portland State University sustainability official to make him pay more in restitution for his youthful role in a pair of eco-anarchist firebombings.

Jacob

D.B.

Sherman, a 33-year-old husband and father of two, has distinguished himself as a scholar at

PSU.

He holds a master's degree and was

.

But long before that, Sherman went underground as an eco-saboteur for the Earth Liberation Front.

Radical environmentalist Tre Arrow used his cell phone to speak to news media from a narrow ledge of the U.S. Forest Service building in Portland during a 2000 protest. He took over the ledge to call a halt to logging of ancient trees in Eagle Creek.

On Easter Sunday 2001, he and the famously barefoot environmental radical Tre Arrow, a one-time congressional candidate, set fire to three concrete trucks at Portland's Ross Island Sand & Gravel as a protest against what they viewed as the company's despoiling of the natural world. The arson caused $210,000 damage.

Sherman was 19.

The two men later joined forces with two other underground saboteurs, planting gallon milk jugs filled with gasoline under log trucks and a front-end loader at Ray A. Schoppert Logging near Estacada. That arson caused $50,000 damage.

Sherman later confided to a girlfriend that he had helped set fire to some logging trucks and that the

FBI

was tailing him. When she mentioned that her dad was a deputy state fire marshal, he warned her not to tell him. But she did.

At the age of 20, Sherman was arrested, later convicted, and served nearly three years in federal prison. He got out in 2006, returned to college, earned a Bachelor of Arts degree at

PSU

in 2010 and two years later earned his Master's of Science degree in Leadership and Sustainability Education.

Early last year, he was named the Institute for Sustainable Solutions coordinator of sustainability curriculum.

A federal judge ordered Sherman and his three coconspirators to pay a minimum monthly payment of $50 in restitution for the damages they caused at the two Oregon businesses. Sherman's end of the restitution was $55,100, and he still owes $43,804.

But earlier this week, Assistant

U.S.

Attorney

filed a writ of garnishment against Sherman and named

PSU

as the garnishee. Sherman was given 10 days to respond.

"I've been paying my restitution and am committed to paying my restitution," Sherman told The Oregonian/OregonLive on Friday. "It's unfortunate the government has taken this step. I've been told that two codefendants are delinquent."

Earlier this year, the Portland Tribune carried a feature story about Sherman's transformation from a long-haired vegan, bumbling eco-arsonist bent on sabotaging corporations to a meat eating, marathon running family man who works within the system.

As it happens, one of Sherman's victims was Tribune owner Robert B. Pamplin Jr., who also heads the corporation that owns Ross Island Sand & Gravel.

Sherman explained that he has a family now, student loan debts, and has dutifully made the minimum $50-a-month restitution payments. He said he would pay more if he could afford to.

"I'm definitely not living the high life," he said.

-- Bryan Denson

503-294-7614; @Bryan_Denson