Stuart Ledbetter worked with Heikki for 15 years in a psychiatric unit for teenagers at Primary Children's Medical Center. As a counselor, Heikki had a great rapport with young people. He was calm under stress, not reactive, and great at making the kids feel safe, Ledbetter said.

"Heikki was always going for the underdog," Ledbetter said. "Some of these kids had had pretty tough lives, and Heikki was always their advocate."

He believes he knew Heikki pretty well — about his love of animals, reading, sports trivia, his fair-weather appreciation for athletic teams.

But getting personal information out of Heikki was like squeezing blood from a stone, Ledbetter said. Ask him about a girlfriend or anything private?

"I'll tell you later over a ginger ale," Heikki would always say.

"That guy owes me so many ginger ales," Ledbetter said.

To a person, everyone interviewed for this profile agreed that with Heikki you weren't ever sure if you were getting the whole story.

He was such a joker, such a side-stepper of questions, such an intensely guarded person, that often it wasn't clear what was true and what wasn't. Heikki wasn't a liar exactly; he just had a quirky personality, according to his friends. And they didn't seem to care.

"That was just Heikki," said Dwight Anjewierden, a friend since childhood.

Not only did Heikki withhold personal details of his life, he didn't talk much about his accomplishments either, said his sister, Erja Springman, who lives in Lake Tahoe.

"He never bragged about anything. In fact, it wasn't until he was gone that I really learned how accomplished he was at running," she said. "He was just a very private person."

But as it has turned out, this closed side of his personality has inflamed the mystery surrounding him.

A few months before he left town, Heikki was married. He told only two friends. He moved to Arizona, where his health, finances and safety began their descent.

He was injured, and one of the legs that had carried him thousands of miles became paralyzed. He couldn't work. He couldn't run. It took six months just to walk again.

There were stories about racial harassment because of his marriage to a Mexican woman. He told friends and family members in Nevada, Salt Lake City and Finland he had been repeatedly assaulted. Someone apparently killed his pet birds, laid them out on the bed and left a threatening note nearby.

It is unclear why he was so secretive about his marriage. It is unclear why he never reported any of the incidents to police, described his attacker or pushed them to catch the guy. And, if things were as bad as he said they were, why didn't he move home?

Sorting through all these details and questions left sheriff's department officials in Coconino County, Ariz., perplexed, too.