URBANA – What started as an online conversation between a teen-age girl and a parolee has morphed into felony charges against a Mahomet man for trying to have sex with the child.

Champaign County State's Attorney Julia Rietz said Calvin Rexroad, 38, of the 300 block of Prairieview Road, was arrested Wednesday night near the Victoria's Secret store at the Market Place Mall in Champaign, where Rexroad thought he was about to meet a 13-year-old girl.

On Thursday, he was criminally charged with two counts of indecent solicitation of a child for propositioning the girl and one count of traveling to meet a minor.

The traveling charge is the first of its kind to be filed in Champaign County under a law that became effective Jan. 1, Rietz said.

All the charges are Class 3 felonies, punishable upon conviction by penalties ranging from probation to two to 10 years in prison.

Rexroad is on parole now, having been released from prison in August after serving about half of a 25-year prison term he received in January 1997 for aggravated arson. He pleaded guilty to setting fire to an ex-girlfriend's car; the fire spread to and heavily damaged the Rantoul mobile home where she was sleeping with her two children. They escaped.

Rietz said the more recent case came to the attention of the 13-year-old Champaign girl's father in mid-December, when he checked her online activity and learned she was communicating with Rexroad. She told him she met Rexroad at a friend's house.

The father, 37, took away his daughter's cell phone, computer and letters, containing Rexroad's name and return address, that he had sent her.

Learning that Rexroad was on parole, the father contacted Rexroad's parole officer, who ordered Rexroad to stop seeing or contacting the girl.

On Dec. 30, Rietz said, the father was returning to his west Champaign home when he saw an adult man walk away from his front door and get in a car. He recorded the license plate number of the car, which police later learned was Rexroad's.

Taped to his front door was an envelope addressed to his daughter from Rexroad, Rietz said.

"In the letter, Rexroad offers to buy her a cell phone so they can continue to talk and says 'My heart belongs to you,'" Rietz said.

The father called Champaign police, who also contacted Rexroad and told him to quit communicating with the girl. The father also gave police his daughter's user names and passwords for social networking sites.

On Jan. 2, Rietz said, detectives logged on to the girl's myYearbook account and found that Rexroad had sent her messages on Jan. 1 calling her "sexy girl" and telling her he would be at the Champaign Public Library soon and that she should stay on her computer.

Detectives continued communicating with Rexroad as though they were the girl and on Tuesday, Detective Robb Morris, again using the girl's user name and password on the myYearbook site, had a "sexually explicit conversation" with Rexroad. Rietz said Rexroad solicited the girl to perform sexual conduct and sexual penetration that would constitute the offense of aggravated criminal sexual abuse.

On Wednesday, posing again as the girl, Morris got on the Web site and arranged to meet Rexroad at the Champaign shopping mall.

"At 7:10 p.m., Rexroad arrived at Victoria's Secret, walked back and forth in front of the store repeatedly, then sat down at a table outside the store. Detectives placed him under arrest," Rietz said.

Rietz said the father told police when he went online to check his daughter's communications, he "found out a lot of things he wasn't aware of."

"I would strongly encourage parents to regularly check their children's Internet pages and monitor their communications. I do," Rietz said of her relationship with her own 13-year-old daughter.

Judge Richard Klaus set Rexroad's bond at $100,000, appointed the public defender's office to represent him, and ordered him to be back in court Feb. 10.