{"id":20638,"date":"2010-09-28T09:07:23","date_gmt":"2010-09-28T13:07:23","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/valorguardians.com\/blog\/?p=20638"},"modified":"2010-09-28T09:07:23","modified_gmt":"2010-09-28T13:07:23","slug":"purple-heart-stolen-from-wwii-vet","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/?p=20638","title":{"rendered":"Purple Heart stolen from WWII vet"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>BooRadley <a href=\"http:\/\/www.morningjournal.com\/articles\/2010\/09\/28\/news\/mj3394027.txt\">sends this article from her hometown<\/a> about Michael Demich, a veteran of World War II who was wounded in France and awarded the Purple Heart. Now decades later, someone broke into his house while he was there and stole that precious memento of his wounds and his subsequent hospitalization.<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>Demich, 89, was sitting in his living room at the back of the house watching television. The back door was open. Sometime between 5:30 and 8:30 p.m on Saturday someone opened the bedroom window and climbed in, locking the bedroom door from inside.<\/p>\n<p>They searched dresser drawers, lifted a 180-pound safe out of the closet, and emptied its contents onto the bed.<\/p>\n<p>The suspects found the purple heart, Demich\u2019s wedding band, coins he collected while serving in Europe, his late wife\u2019s costume jewelry and a bag of quarters and took it all.<\/p>\n<p>The family is left wondering who would want the Purple Heart? What value could it possibly have to whoever took it? Will they ever see it again?<\/p>\n<p>They\u2019re hoping someone will find the medal or that whoever took it will bring it back.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cJust put it in the mailbox,\u201d Demich said.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>There are video interviews with Demich at the link that are heartbreaking. Although the medal can be replaced, the replacement won&#8217;t have the same meaning as the medal he was awarded in his hospital bed.<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>\u201cI will not be bullied out of my home,\u201d he said.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>BooRadley sends this article from her hometown about Michael Demich, a veteran of World War II &hellip; <a title=\"Purple Heart stolen from WWII vet\" class=\"hm-read-more\" href=\"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/?p=20638\"><span class=\"screen-reader-text\">Purple Heart stolen from WWII vet<\/span>Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[130],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-20638","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-real-soldiers"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20638","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\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=20638"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20638\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=20638"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=20638"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=20638"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}