Jacobsen Homecoming: Private, Quiet

David P. Jacobsen is coming home to Southern California today. But while friends and strangers wait to celebrate, the former hostage has planned a private homecoming, his family said Saturday.

Eric Jacobsen, David’s elder son, said his father and the immediate family, who were reunited with him overseas, will return this morning in a private plane offered anonymously.

“This is just quiet time with my family,” David Jacobsen said.

On Saturday, the family spent a quiet morning sightseeing and returned for a late lunch at the Jefferson Hotel near downtown Washington, where he had met with President Reagan on Friday.

The elder Jacobsen, a Huntington Beach resident, reiterated that he would not speak to the news media for at least “several days. There will be time for that later.”

In Orange County, Jacobsen’s former neighbors, friends--and even people who have never met the man who spent 17 months as a hostage in Lebanon--are ready to throw him a party, or two or three, as soon as he gives the word.

“We’re ready to have a potluck anytime,” said Lorrie Vallercamp, 54, whose family lived next to the Jacobsens in Huntington Beach for 23 years.

It could be awhile however, before Jacobsen, who may be staying with son Eric in Huntington Beach, will be ready for the block party with his old friends.

Today’s homecoming is “going to be a low-key thing,” said Ted Forbes, Jacobsen’s brother-in-law, from his home in Altadena. The time and place of arrival, he said, remain a secret.

However, an Orange County-wide celebration is planned for Friday afternoon outside the Westminster Civic Center. That party will be thrown by the Hy-lond Convalescent Hospital in Westminster, which “adopted” Jacobsen and the other American hostages.