It had been nearly a decade since Smuckers the golden lab helped discover a treasure in her backyard.
Owner Steve Jankousky was filling up a hole that Smuckers had dug up, when he spotted something shiny.
It was a Purple Heart. It was in good condition and on the back it read, “Corporal Richmond Litman.”
Jankousky and his partner Tom Unterwagner didn’t know how to get the medal back to Cpl. Litman’s family, until they heard about an organization called Purple Hearts Reunited.
“We see this all the time. It’s a mystery,” Captain Zachariah Fike told 9 News. “Every medal has its own journey and who knows how that medal got into the ground.”
Fike founded Purple Hearts Reunited to simply bring lost military medals back to veterans or their families. They currently have 300 medals of all variations for which they are trying to locate owners.
According to Fike’s research, Cpl. Litman used to live near the home where Smuckers dug up the medal. His research also found that Litman was a soldier who served in the Korean War, which is where he received his Purple Heart.
“For them there’s no backstory, there’s no picture. They’re essentially forgotten,” said Capt. Fike. “And through telling their stories and doing this foundation, in our own way, we are bringing them back to life again.”
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