While in Oregon, he was approached by Rudolph Spreckels, president of the First National Bank, and Fremont Older, editor of the "San Francisco Bulletin", who promised to put up $100,000 to finance an investigation of corrupt city officials, and asked him to come as soon as possible to San Francisco to help investigate and prosecute. Older went to Washington, D. C. and got President Roosevelt to agree to lend special federal prosecutor Heney to the San Francisco District Attorneys office. In April 1906 he was a member of Mayor Schmitz's Committee of Fifty that tried to manage the city during the crisis following the big earthquake and subsequent fire, but the earthquake delayed the graft prosecution for only a short time.