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A Purple Heart medal was stolen from a Vietnam veteran nearly 40 years ago. He just got it back.
Inspired Life
A Purple Heart medal was stolen from a Vietnam veteran nearly 40 years ago. He just got it back.
By Cathy Free
October 19, 2021 at 6:00 a.m. EDT
The crime happened nearly 40 years ago, but it still stung: Burglars broke into Gus Allbritton’s home one day while he was at work as a sheriff’s deputy, and they stole one of his most treasured possessions.
Every room in Allbritton’s Brooksville, Fla., house was ransacked, and he soon learned that the crooks had helped themselves to many of his things, including several guns and a five-gallon glass water bottle filled with coins, pocket knives and other small valuables.
Included in that bottle was something whose loss hurt the most — one of the three Purple Heart medals he’d been awarded after he was wounded during the Vietnam War.
Allbritton, 71, had given the two other medals to his son and daughter, he said, and he figured the third one would be safe if he dropped it inside the heavy bottle that sat in a corner of his living room.
“When I saw that the water bottle — and everything in it — had been stolen, I figured that was it. I’d never see it again,” Allbritton recalled about the 1983 break-in. “I reported it missing, but I knew the odds were slim to none that I’d ever get it back.”
Thirty-eight years went by. Then Allbritton, who now lives in Dublin, Ga., about 140 miles from Atlanta, found a surprising message waiting for him last month at the Carl Vinson VA Medical Center, where he is a regular volunteer.
“It said that somebody had found my Purple Heart,” said Allbritton. “And there was a phone number in Florida for a man named Jamie Bath.”
{snip}
Have a story for Inspired Life? Here’s how to submit.
A Purple Heart medal was stolen from a Vietnam veteran nearly 40 years ago. He just got it back.
By Cathy Free
October 19, 2021 at 6:00 a.m. EDT
The crime happened nearly 40 years ago, but it still stung: Burglars broke into Gus Allbritton’s home one day while he was at work as a sheriff’s deputy, and they stole one of his most treasured possessions.
Every room in Allbritton’s Brooksville, Fla., house was ransacked, and he soon learned that the crooks had helped themselves to many of his things, including several guns and a five-gallon glass water bottle filled with coins, pocket knives and other small valuables.
Included in that bottle was something whose loss hurt the most — one of the three Purple Heart medals he’d been awarded after he was wounded during the Vietnam War.
Allbritton, 71, had given the two other medals to his son and daughter, he said, and he figured the third one would be safe if he dropped it inside the heavy bottle that sat in a corner of his living room.
“When I saw that the water bottle — and everything in it — had been stolen, I figured that was it. I’d never see it again,” Allbritton recalled about the 1983 break-in. “I reported it missing, but I knew the odds were slim to none that I’d ever get it back.”
Thirty-eight years went by. Then Allbritton, who now lives in Dublin, Ga., about 140 miles from Atlanta, found a surprising message waiting for him last month at the Carl Vinson VA Medical Center, where he is a regular volunteer.
“It said that somebody had found my Purple Heart,” said Allbritton. “And there was a phone number in Florida for a man named Jamie Bath.”
{snip}
Have a story for Inspired Life? Here’s how to submit.