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Article: Veterans touched by return of dog tags: Couple has spent years trying to get them back to soldiers or their families
- Article from:
- Charleston Daily Mail
- Article date:
- September 1, 2005
- Author:
CopyrightCopyright 2005 Charleston Daily Mail. Provided by ProQuest LLC. (Hide copyright information)
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When Bill Vargas got the phone call from a stranger that one of
his dog tags had turned up on a street vendor's cart in Ho Chi Minh
City, he guessed it was some kind of scam.
He'd lost the metal identification tag in the jungles of Vietnam
during the height of the Vietnam War in the late 1960s. He figured it
was gone forever.
But the 58-year-old plumbing contractor from Placentia, Calif.,
overcame his initial skepticism and agreed to attend a ceremony for
veterans in Santa Ana, Calif., where he met Verilyn and Martha
Roskam, the Illinois couple who found his tag. Looking at the tiny
metal plate he'd carried through two combat tours beginning in 1966,
Vargas realized he'd made the right ...