A Santa Fe resident who killed himself last week after he was charged with illegally digging American Indian artifacts on public lands didn't seem to make a living that way.

"He was always in other business situations," said an acquaintance who deals in artifacts. "He never got rich. ... He was never really a very big player. He was such a straight-arrow guy, I mean, that just unnerved him. I doubt he ever got as much as a speeding ticket his entire life."

Steven L. Shrader, 56, recently had been offered a job selling ads for The New Mexican. His most recent job had been as a regional sales manager for an Arizona roofing company.

"I know he had a couple of things that kind of went wrong in his life," said the marking director at SWD Urethane Co. and Arizona Foam & Spray in Mesa, who recalled Shrader as a good salesman who spent his free time looking for artifacts. "He was in midlife and I don't think he ever found a lady that suited him, that worked out."

Shrader, described as "preppy" and "high energy," had lived at an apartment on Camino del Monte Rey in Santa Fe for about a year and briefly had Web site called Southwest Artifacts and Arrowheads through which he hoped to sell artifacts on commission.

Shelly Geyer, a neighbor at the complex, recalled Shrader had moved in and out several times, most recently leaving in April. She said he had a "shelf full of pots from New Mexico pueblos" and was alternately "grumpy and happy."

An Arizona dealer who had known Shrader for almost a decade said he was a "passionate collector of arrowheads and prehistoric ceramics," but dealing was never more than a "minor sideline" for him.

The Santa Fe artifacts dealer, who like the Arizona one asked not to be identified, said he spoke to Shrader about six weeks ago at the Rio Chama Steakhouse.

"He was all excited about some new business venture in the Midwest that he was putting together with other people," he said. But the dealer said he believes Shrader was so short of cash that he offered to broker some prehistoric pots owned by Carl Lavern Crites, 74, and Marie Virginia Crites, 68, of Durango, Colo.

The Crites, along with Shrader, were among 23 people arrested this month on charges of illegally excavating or trafficking in American Indian artifacts protected under federal law — either because they contain restricted animal parts, were looted from graves or are considered sacred by Indian tribes.

The Santa Fe dealer said Shrader recently went "arrowhead hunting" with the Crites in southeastern Utah. When they returned to Durango, he said, the three met with the same anonymous informant who visited collector Forrest Fenn's home in Santa Fe shortly before Bureau of Land Management and FBI agents searched it.

According to the FBI in Salt Lake City, Shrader turned himself in to the FBI in Santa Fe on June 12 and was released June 15 after appearing in U.S. District Court in Albuquerque.

But the Arizona dealer said Shrader initially turned himself into the FBI on June 11, then, after a 30-minute interview, was told he was free to go home. The next day, the dealer said, BLM agents arrested Shrader where he was staying in Santa Fe, handcuffed him and took him to jail, where he spent the weekend.

According to the Santa Fe dealer, after Shrader was released, he was told to report to U.S. District Court in Salt Lake City in a week. Instead, he drove to the northern Illinois town of Shabbona, where his ailing mother lived.

"He literally put what there was of his life in order, sat with his mom for two hours and told her that he was going to commit suicide," the Santa Fe dealer said.

After leaving his mother's house, the dealer said, "he walked to some elementary school and he shot himself twice in the chest. As soon as he left the house, his mother called 911, but they didn't find him for some hours, and when they did find him around 3 o'clock in the morning, he was still alive and they called in a helicopter and he died in the helicopter on the way to the hospital."

Henri Sisneros, a public-defender attorney in Salt Lake City, said he spoke to Shrader on the phone after his arrest, but had not met him.

"I would say what happened was extremely surprising and shocking," he said. "Nothing in our conversation led me to believe (suicide) was even a possibility. He seemed to me prepared to vigorously defend himself. He felt he wasn't guilty of the charges."

Sisneros said the charges against Shrader — trafficking in stolen artifacts, theft of government property and aiding or abetting — each carried maximum charges of up to two or five years in jail. But he said the prosecuting attorney in the case indicated that Shrader was a "peripheral player."

"Nobody wants to be charged with a felony," Sisneros said, "but this is not the most serious charge by any means."

The Arizona dealer said he believes the recent raids not only pushed Shrader "over the edge," but also resulted in the suicide of another defendant, James Redd, a physician in Blanding, Utah.

"Coming in with guns drawn on people who had never even been detained in their lives, much less guilty of anything, coming in with 40 agents blowing through doors, is uncalled for," he said. "And in Steve's case, putting him in jail for the weekend, I'm sure that was planned. I'm sure they knew exactly what they were doing. I'm sure they knew exactly what the impact of that would have been. It's intimidation is what it is."

Staff writer Anne Constable contributed to this report.

Contact Tom Sharpe at 986-3080 or tsharpe@sfnewmexican.com.