Sara Jane Moore

Moore was born in Charleston, West Virginia, the daughter of Ruth (née Moore) and Olaf Kahn. Her paternal grandparents were German immigrants. Moore had been a nursing school student, Women's Army Corps recruit, and accountant. Divorced five times, she had four children before she turned to revolutionary politics in 1975. Moore comes from a Christian background. She later began practicing Judaism.

Moore had been evaluated by the Secret Service earlier in 1975, but agents decided that she posed no danger to the president. She had been picked up by police on an illegal-handgun charge the day before the Ford incident, but was released. The police confiscated her .44 caliber revolver and 113 rounds of ammunition.

Moore's assassination attempt took place in San Francisco on September 22, 1975, just 17 days after Lynette "Squeaky" Fromme's attempted assassination of Ford. She was standing in the crowd across the street from the St. Francis Hotel, and was about 40 feet (12 m) away from Ford when she fired a single shot at him with a .38 caliber revolver. She was using a gun she bought in haste that same morning and did not know the sights were 15 cm (6 inches) off the point-of-impact at that distance, and she narrowly missed.

In an interview in 2004, former President Ford described Moore as "off her mind" and said that he continued making public appearances, even after two attempts on his life within such a short time, because "a president has to be aggressive, has to meet the people."

On December 31, 2007, at age 77, Moore was slated to be released from prison on parole after serving 32 years of her life sentence. Ford had died from natural causes on December 26, 2006, one year and five days before her release. Moore has stated that she regrets the assassination attempt, saying she was "blinded by her radical political views". Moore was released under a federal law that makes parole mandatory for inmates who have served at least 30 years of a life sentence and have maintained a satisfactory disciplinary record. When asked about her crime in an interview, Moore stated, "I am very glad I did not succeed. I know now that I was wrong to try."

On May 28, 2009, Moore appeared on NBC's Today program, her first television appearance since leaving prison on parole.

A biography of Moore called Taking Aim at the President was published in 2009 by Geri Spieler, a writer who had a correspondence with Moore for 28 years.

Excerpts from an interview with Moore by Latif Nasser appear on an episode of the radio program Radiolab titled "Oliver Sipple", which was released on September 22, 2017. In the interview, Moore discusses the scene from the day she attempted to assassinate President Ford and her perspective of being stopped by Oliver Sipple.

In February 2019, Moore was arrested for violating her parole by failing to tell her parole officer of a trip out of the country.