St. George » Sixteen years ago, Utah's U.S. attorney touted his prosecution of David Lane Woolsey as part of a crackdown on looters at sensitive archaeological sites.

On Tuesday, President Bush pardoned the St. George man.

"I couldn't hardly believe it," said David Woolsey, 42, on Tuesday night from the outskirts of Big Piney, Wyo., where he is working on a natural gas well. "I didn't think it would happen ... that the president would sign my pardon. I figured if it was going to happen it would have to be right now. I feel privileged."

Woolsey received the news in a telephone call from his wife, Nadine.

"I'm thrilled and so happy I'm in shock," said Nadine Woolsey. "He's a man of few words, but said he thought it was 'awesome' and he was grateful."

Woolsey said the pardon means he will have his civil liberties restored. He had to forfeit them when he pleaded guilty to the felony he thought was going to haunt him the rest of his life.

"Now I can vote again and hunt and when I apply for a job not be discriminated against," he said.

Woolsey has always liked to hunt, but the felony conviction restricted him from owning guns, Nadine Woolsey explained. "He couldn't hunt with our son growing up in a small town, so he's excited he can do that now," she said.

Woolsey, then 25, and Jim Barney, then 32, were the first defendants in Utah to be convicted of felony-level charges under the 1979 U.S. Archaeological Resources Protection Act.

The men were digging with a shovel and a hoe in 3-foot-deep holes on May 25, 1991, when six Salt Lake City hikers happened on them near Boulder Creek in Garfield County, prosecutors said.

The hikers, suspicious, continued on their trail and discovered the men's ATVs. They photographed the vehicles' registrations, and from there, federal agents tracked down the men.

They each pleaded guilty to one count of aiding and abetting a violation of the archaeological protection act. In October 1992, U. S. District Judge J. Thomas Greene placed them on probation and ordered them to perform 100 hours of community service.

He did not order a fine nor restitution for the $6,650 damage that prosecutors said was done at the site, located on federal land.

"There was no evidence of repeated acts over a period of time,'' Greene said, adding, "There was evidence that the damage that was done was not done entirely by these defendants.''

Then-U.S. Attorney David Jordan acknowledged: "I would not characterize these defendants as hardened criminals.''

Wayne Dance, a retired assistant U.S. attorney who prosecuted the men and other archeological protection cases for 17 years in Utah, said the case was a good illustration of how increasing public awareness has helped battle such offenses.

More than half of the successful prosecutions he handled began with a tip from the public, he said.

"I would like to think our prosecutions had a very positive influence on public education because federal officials pursued these as serious crimes," Dance said.

David Woolsey said he did not realize at the time he was doing anything wrong when he collected the artifacts.

"Where I grew up [in Escalante] everybody did it," he said. "It wasn't until after and I looked at the big picture that I realized I had done something wrong."

Nadine Woolsey said her husband had been seeking a pardon for more than two years but was told by officials, including Sen. Orrin Hatch's staff, that the chances were slim, she said.

The couple's 19-year-old daughter, Jodi, said federal authorities, including the FBI, had been talking to the family recently. They learned of the pardon when their phone rang at about 7 a.m. Tuesday.

"When my mom heard, she came screaming in my room and we were both crying," said Jodi Woolsey. "It's been a long process and I'm glad it's over."

The Woolseys' son, Brandon, 21, is serving a mission for The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in England. "We're going to tell him on Christmas Day," Nadine Woolsey said.

She thanked Bush, calling him "a wonderful and awesome man."

Woolsey is the second man with a Utah connection given a presidential pardon this year. Carl H. Hachmeister, formerly of Ogden, was pardoned in March for an insurance fraud conspiracy. He had pleaded guilty in Utah to having three accomplices steal his Freightliner tractor in Mississippi in 1983 so he could collect insurance on it.

He was sentenced in January 1985 to a suspended two-year prison term and placed on three years of probation. According to The Associated Press. Hachmeister, now 71, lives in Denton, Texas, and owns a tiling business.