Purple Heart mystery leads to search through history for veteran

Sandy Bixler and Juan Lopez didn’t intend to become detectives. But when the two Oklahoma residents found themselves at the center of a mystery, it happened accidentally.

Motivated by a love of knick-knacks and Halloween trinkets, Lopez was rummaging through boxes at an Ada, Oklahoma church’s garage sale September 4. He found a box of Halloween decorations for $5, and he jumped on it.

Excited about his new find, Lopez returned home to examine the contents of the box. At the bottom of the box he discovered a leather-style flip case. Opening the box, he discovered it was full of medals and pins — something he first thought must have been part of a costume.

After close examination, Lopez decided it was of no value.

“I was going to sell it. I didn’t know what it was but it wasn’t something I wanted,” Lopez said.

He returned to Ada Care Center, where he works as a restorative aide, and showed his mystery treasure to Bixler, a 65-year-old Ada resident.

“I was breathless. It was a Purple Heart. I’d never seen one before, but I knew what it was,” Bixler said.

Bixler’s ex-husband was a Marine, and she had been involved with fire and police departments. She knew the case contained an important piece of history.

The duo put on their proverbial thinking caps and decided they needed to find out the story behind the Purple Heart. Bixler consulted with Ada Care Center’s administrator Tami Doepke who encouraged her to do whatever the duo needed to do to find the rightful owner.

Bixler calls to the Department of Defense in Washington, D.C., led her to captain Zachariah Fike, the founder of Purple Hearts Reunited, a nonprofit organization in Vermont that aims to return lost or stolen military medals to veterans or their families.

Fike is an active Guard Reserve captain in the Vermont Army National Guard, and a wounded veteran with 17 years of service, including deployments to Iraq and Afghanistan. He founded the organization in July 2012 and has been able to return more than 150 lost medals, many of them Purple Hearts. He currently has more than 200 open cases.

Using the identification code on the back of the medal, Fike began his search while Bixler and Lopez tracked down the origin of the other items in the case.

A fireman’s badge, a tie tack, a 25-year-service pin for the Wilson, North Carolina, fire department and three name plates for an “F. Hayes” led them to reporter Lisa Batts at the Wilson Times, the newspaper for a community about 40 miles east of the capital city of Raleigh.

“It doesn’t happen often to get a call like this,” Batts said. “It was just out of the blue.”

Batts made inquiries about the name F. Hayes but discovered that he was likely dead along with his family. 

“We wanted to help solve this unusual mystery and document our community’s part in history,” Batts continued. “I’m just very thankful Sandy followed through with reaching out to me.”

Meanwhile, Fike discovered the Purple Heart belonged to Frank Hayes, who was originally from Wilson. Frank married three times but all of his family members are presumed dead, except for a possible granddaughter by marriage.

Some questions remained as to whether Hayes earned the medal during his service in the Vietnam or the Korean wars.

Bixler plans to mail the medal to Fike, who will have it professionally framed and prepared for presentation to a living relative or for permanent display in Wilson. Members of the community have expressed interest in having the medals displayed, preserving the memory of one of their veterans.

Once the mystery is solved, Bixler and Lopez would like to travel to North Carolina to be part of the presentation.

“God, yes. We want to be there,” Bixler said. “We’ve started this investigation. We need to follow it through. If I’m not able to go since I’m disabled, personally, I believe Tami Doepke and Juan should go to represent Ada Care Center.”

Doepke said the adventure has been good for everyone involved.

“It’s the kind of thing you read about,” Doepke said. “For us to experience it ourselves has been really neat.”

Lewis writes for The Ada (Oklahoma) News