The former agent’s case list reads like a Who’s Who of a macabre walk of fame. Among the cases he worked locally were the Nightstalker and Poet investigations and he took key roles in the hunts for the Code Killer, Sunset Strip Strangler and Luther Hatch, who became known after his arrest as the Cemetery Man because of his visits to the graves of his victims.

McCaleb had been a profiler in the unit’s Quantico base for several years. He specialized in West Coast cases and was flown to Los Angeles often to assist local police in investigations. Finally, the unit’s supervisors decided to create a satellite post here and McCaleb was returned to his native Los Angeles to work out of the FBI field office in Westwood. The move put him closer to many of the investigations in which the FBI was called upon for assistance.

Not all of the investigations were successful and eventually the stress took its toll. McCaleb suffered a heart attack while working late one evening in the local field office. He was found by a night janitor, who was credited with saving the agent’s life. Doctors determined McCaleb suffered from advanced cardiomyopathy-a weakening of the heart’s muscles-and placed him on a transplant list. As he waited, he was given a disability retirement by the bureau.

He traded his bureau pager for a hospital pager and on Feb. 9 it sounded; a heart from a donor with matching blood was available. After six hours of surgery at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center, the donor’s heart was beating in McCaleb’s chest.

McCaleb is unsure what he’ll do with his new life-other than go fishing. He has had offers from former agents and police detectives to join them as a private investigator or security consultant. But his focus so far has been on restoring The Following Sea, a twenty-year-old sport-fishing boat he inherited from his father. The boat was left to deteriorate for six years but now has McCaleb’s full-time attention.