is running for president. Over the following years, Hinckley trailed Foster around the country, going so far as to enroll in a writing course at Yale University in 1980 after reading in People magazine that she was a student there. He wrote numerous letters and notes to her in late 1980. He called her twice and refused to give up when she indicated that she was not interested in him. Hinckley was convinced that he would be Foster's equal if he became a national figure. He decided to emulate Bickle and began stalking President Jimmy Carter. He was surprised at how easy it was to get close to the president—he was only a foot away at one event—but was arrested in October 1980 at Nashville International Airport and fined for illegal possession of a firearm. Carter had made a campaign stop there, but the FBI did not connect this arrest to the president and did not notify the Secret Service. His parents briefly placed him under the care of a psychiatrist. Hinckley turned his attention to Ronald Reagan, whose election, he told his parents, would be good for the country. He wrote three or four more notes to Foster in early March 1981. Foster gave these notes to a Yale dean, who gave them to the Yale police department, who sought but failed to track Hinckley down. Assassination attempt On March 21, 1981, new president Ronald Reagan (who took office on January 20, 1981) and his wife Nancy visited Ford's Theatre in Washington, D.C. for a fundraising event. Reagan recalled, Speaking engagement at the Washington Hilton Hotel On March 28, Hinckley arrived in Washington, D.C. by bus and checked into the Park Central Hotel. He originally intended to continue on to New Haven in another attempt to infatuate Foster. He noticed Reagan's schedule that was published in The Washington Star and decided it was time to act. Hinckley knew that he might be killed during the assassination attempt, and he wrote but did not mail a letter to Foster about two hours prior to his attempt on the president's life. In the letter, he said that he hoped to impress her with the magnitude of his action and that he would "abandon the idea of getting Reagan in a second if I could only win your heart and live out the rest of my life with you." On March 30,