A Goodwill in Arizona is looking for a veteran’s family after finding a Purple Heart in a box of donations.
Goodwill Industries of Southern Arizona posted on Facebook on Monday to ask followers to help find “the family of this hero.”
The medal engraved “Nick D’Amelio, Jr.” and “S2C, USN” was found in June at a center in Tucson in a box of housewares.
{mosads}”It’s important that we get it to the right family,” Judith Roman Bucasas, director of marketing of Goodwill Industries of Southern Arizona, told CNN. “This guy didn’t get to make it back home.”
Roman Bucasas told CNN the medal was likely donated by mistake and Goodwill is teaming up with Purple Hearts Reunited, a nonprofit that returns lost or stolen medals to veterans and families, to track down the rightful owners.
The Purple Heart is awarded to service members wounded or killed in war.
D’Amelio was a seaman serving in the in World War II, according to military records. He went missing in action when USS Little sank in the Solomon Islands on Sept. 5, 1942, CNN reports.
He was declared dead a year later and is memorialized in the Walls of the Missing in Manila American Cemetery in the Philippines.