Roger Stockham called Imperial Beach home until about a month ago. Arrested last Monday for allegedly trying to blow up a large mosque near Detroit, he has a checkered past fraught with mental health issues, attempted bombings and terrorist acts, according to newspaper reports.

Most recently, local VFW member Pam Miller filed a restraining order against Stockham in December 2010.

A veteran of the Vietnam War, Stockham said he flew helicopter missions for the U.S. Army in his biography on vfwpost5477.com. The biography was recently removed from local post's website.

Miller could not be reached for comment before this story was published but Donnie Pitts, a member of the local VFW for more than a decade, said the restraining order was due to Stockham harassing Miller for having an African-American boyfriend, post commander Michael Smith, whom Stockham supposedly also threatened.

According to the Reno Gazette Journal, in 1985, Stockham was arrested and later convicted for throwing a pipebomb in a trashcan at Reno's Cannon International Airport.

During the federal court trial, Stockham said he regularly communicates with extraterrestrials, and psychiatrists testified that he believed he was Christ.

In 1981, he escaped from a mental hospital, and turned himself in four months later. In 1983, he was released from a state mental hospital after a prosecutor said he hadn’t done anything “crazy” in awhile, the paper's archives show.

A few years before that, he kidnapped his son from a foster home in Santa Barbara, flew a plane towards LAX with a gun and bombs and demanded he be supplied with a plane to fly to Iran, according to the Reno Gazette Journal. He crashed the plane but no one was injured.

The Gazette Journal also reported that, in 1977, Stockham took his psychiatrist hostage in Century City, CA, again with bombs and guns, but surrendered after a standoff with police.

Over the years, he also threatened to kill presidents Jimmy Carter and George W. Bush, the newspaper reports.

Stockham's neighbors said last fall that he was stabbed in his apartment on Seventh Street and that his demeanor changed after that incident. It is not known who inflicted the wound or whether it was self-inflicted.

Click here to see video of his neighbors recounting their association with him.

Stockham spent time in the hospital then left Imperial Beach about a month ago before police in Dearborn, MI, arrested him on Jan. 24 in the parking lot of the Islamic Center of America, one of the largest mosques in the United States.

Police reportedly found Stockham wearing a black ski mask and with class C fireworks and M-80s in his car.

The 63-year-old is charged with attempting to commit a terrorist act. His bail is set at $500,000, and he is scheduled to appear in court Friday.

Robert Abel contributed to this report.