A home health care aide in Port St. Lucie is accused of stealing property from four patients, including a former serviceman’s Purple Heart, and attempting to pawn it.<\/p>\n
Detectives said last month they obtained warrants for the arrest of 22-year-old Vanessa Smith.<\/p>\n
Sgt. Keith Boham said they began to investigate when one of the victims, identified as Dorothy Huddleston, received a credit card bill from JCPenney for charges that she did not make.<\/p>\n
Police said Smith was hired through Veterans Affairs to assist in the care of the victim’s husband, Don Huddleston, a Vietnam War veteran and former Marine.<\/p>\n
After Dorothy noticed the fraudulent charges, investigators said she found other items that were missing including her husband’s Purple Heart Medal, gold chain and a “Semper Fi” gold charm.<\/p>\n
“I’m a trusting person. I never thought someone would come into my house and steal from me,” Dorothy Huddleston said.<\/p>\n
Detectives were able to recover most of the jewelry at a local pawn store, however, the Purple Heart Medal is still unaccounted for.<\/p>\n
Police said Smith tried to sell the Purple Heart, but the pawn store would not accept it.<\/p>\n
“Sadly, since the theft of the Purple Heart, the victim has since passed away,” Asst. Chief Richard Del Toro said in a written statement. “We are hopeful that Smith still has the Purple Heart in her possession so that we may return to the victim’s family.”<\/p>\n
Those close to Don said he was humble and spoke of not deserving the multiple medals he earned.<\/p>\n
Port St. Lucie police said this case is a reminder to be careful who you allow into your home.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
Thanks Captain<\/del> Assistant Chief Obvious. It’s nice that the VA is now bringing their usual quality service to the home.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"ninja sends in this sad story. WPTV reports; A home health care aide in Port St. … Home health aide in Port St. Lucie faces multiple charges after Purple Heart stolen from veteran<\/span>Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":664,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[213,460,226],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-115499","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-your-tax-dollars-at-work","category-ninja","category-veterans-in-the-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/115499","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/664"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=115499"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/115499\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":115502,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/115499\/revisions\/115502"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=115499"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=115499"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=115499"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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