Doing this job can make a bear depressed, so I love it when I find a story showing a person doing good things. Zachariah Fike’s unusual hobby has become his passion. He finds old military medals and returns them to the person (or family) that should have them.
His effort to reunite families with lost medals all began with a Christmas gift from his mother — a Purple Heart, found in an antique shop and engraved with the name Corrado A.G. Piccoli. Zac, 31, knows the significance of a Purple Heart — he earned one himself when he was wounded in Afghanistan on Sept. 11, 2010. So when his mother gave him the medal, he knew right away that he had to find the Piccoli family.
The WWII hero was dead, but his family was still around. It took some looking, but eventually Zac found Corrado’s sisters and returned the medal to them. Since then, Zac has found four more medals and returned them all. Now that’s what I call an uplifting story. See? The news isn’t all bad…
Sources: NPR, Story Corps, VPR
