Capture a Relief for Family : Ordeal: Kim Springer’s relatives, who had been staying outside of Orange County for safety reasons, were elated to hear her stalker was behind bars.

For Kim Springer’s family, the 36 hours that Mark Richard Hilbun remained at large were filled with anxiety and fear.

All that changed Saturday morning when the man who had long harassed the 29-year-old postal worker with threatening notes and telephone calls was finally behind bars.

“They caught the turkey!” an elated Sam Springer yelled across the street to a neighbor as he returned to his home several hours after learning that his daughter’s stalker had been captured.

Later, as he sat at his kitchen table with a cigarette and a can of soda, Springer added: “We’re all so relieved. You better believe it. My mother-in-law came running down the hall this morning yelling, ‘They caught him! They caught him!’ ”

For their own protection, the 57-year-old United Parcel Service driver and his family had been staying with relatives outside Orange County since Thursday, the day Hilbun allegedly killed two people and wounded others in a bloody series of attacks.

The suspected gunman had reportedly gone to the Dana Point post office looking for Springer, his former co-worker who was on her first day back after a two-week stress leave because of the harassment. Springer hid under a desk and wasn’t hit by gunfire.

Afterward, Sam Springer rushed to the Dana Point post office to comfort his oldest daughter amid what he described as “quite a messy scene.” He said that was the last time he saw her before she was taken into protective custody.

“I still don’t know when I’m going to be able to talk to her,” Springer said. “But when I do see her, the first thing I’m going to do is give her a big hug.”

Since Thursday, the family’s contact with Kim has been minimal. She made a few brief telephone calls to family members, but was not able to say much. She was unavailable for comment Saturday and it was unclear whether she had returned to her home.

However, she phoned her family after Hilbun was captured.

“She was happy when she called this morning,” according to her father.

Kim’s 27-year-old sister, Cynthia Springer, also expressed relief Saturday.

“We’re very glad he’s caught and hopefully he’ll be behind bars forever,” she said.

The family wasn’t aware of the severity of Hilbun’s harassment of Kim until she arrived at their home May 1 in tears.

“She is very independent and strong-willed and she didn’t want to worry the family,” the younger sister said. “She’s been out on her own since she was 18 years old. She didn’t want to have this guy take over her life. She wanted to keep some kind of normalcy. But, in the end, she couldn’t. She just got too scared.”

Her family said Kim Springer’s life in Laguna Beach had been happy until Hilbun’s harassment of her, which began last fall, escalated last month.

“I have a feeling she knew something was going to happen,” her sister said. “She was really afraid of this guy in the last few weeks.”

Family members said Kim enjoyed living in her one-bedroom apartment only blocks from the beach with her beloved cats, Pearl and Missy, and was thrilled to have finally landed a permanent postal route in Dana Point after working for some time as a “floater” on various routes.

“She loves where she lives, she loves her job and she likes her life,” Cynthia Springer said. “She’ll bounce back eventually. But it might take awhile.”

The family said Kim had not been staying at her apartment during the weeks she was out on leave and only returned there periodically to retrieve her belongings.

They said that when she returned to work Thursday, she was taken off her regular route and assigned to duties inside the post office for her own protection.

Kim “had gone all the way to the top,” Cynthia Springer said, to see what could be done about Hilbun, but the family refused to comment on how the harassment problem was handled by postal and law enforcement authorities.

“Right now, I’m just glad he’s off the streets,” Sam Springer said.

Besides fearing for their own safety, the family said the intense notoriety of the case has wreaked havoc in what they describe as their “typical middle-class” lives.

“The first time my mother heard Kim’s name on television, she almost fainted,” Cynthia Springer recalled. “Hearing her daughter’s name associated with this Mark Hilbun, this crazy man, made her almost pass out.

“It’s like it’s not real, like it’s a movie. It’s really been a nightmare.”