Veterans disappointed after Vet Center memorial vandalized, dog tags taken

“Some of the guys, this is all they have, and this hurts really deep,” said Bill Allen, a Vietnam veteran who participates in a weekly support system called Muddy Boots.

Some 30 dog tags hanging from the memorial at 13109 Mirabeau Parkway were taken at about 2 a.m. Feb. 10. Only the chains stayed, said David Baird, the director of the Spokane Vet Center.

“I was spit on when I cam back from Vietnam,” said Tom Evans, another Vietnam veteran with Muddy Boots. “It took me back to that.”

Baird said the dog tags are inexpensive aluminum “wafers” that don’t consist of any important info on them.

“I can’t imagine all of them put together would equal a dollar,” he said.

The robber likewise took gas heating systems, parts of an upright heating system, a wheel barrow from the Heroes Garden that is preserved by Gold Star households, and the license plates from cars parked in the center car park, Baird said.

The Spokane County Sheriff’s Office approximated the losses at about $750.

“I don’t understand why someone could be that hateful to go onto veterans’ property and do that,” Evans said. “What are the dog tags to them?”

The memorial consists of the tail rotor of a “Cobra” attack helicopter utilized in Vietnam, in addition to 3 metal panels that were utilized to hold the dog tags.

“It was created for Vietnam veterans to do that, but they, as a group, opened it and invited other veterans to hang their dog tags as well,” Baird said.

Many of the dog tags were reproductions that just consisted of the veteran’s name, branch of service and the dispute they served in, Baird said.

“Almost all of them were duplicates we created, and of course we didn’t have any of that super private information on there,” he said.

Veterans of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan started to include their own dog tags, along with a 90-year-old Korean War veteran who left his last set of initial dog tags on the memorial, Baird said.

Only one set of tags was left after the theft.

Veterans who take a trip to the Vietnam Veterans Memorial in Washington, D.C., described as “the Wall,” frequently can’t discover the names of their fallen associates since they don’t understand their complete names, Baird said. The dog tags at the Spokane Vet Center enabled them to memorialize them with simply a label, he said.

“Our friends, when they died, we kind of locked them up inside of us,” said Allen, who served in a Marine Corps reconnaissance battalion as a radio operator in Vietnam. “You had to numb yourself.”

Baird said there were strategies to include a bronze POW/MIA table to the memorial, however he said he’s reassessing that now.

“I’m concerned that that would get lifted, too,” he said.

Surveillance video footage at the Spokane Vet Center caught a bachelor on video. Baird believes the robber was trying to collect scrap metal, based upon the other products that were taken.

He does not believe the theft was an attack particularly versus veterans, however the event is not the very first of its kind, he said.

Burglars have actually struck the Spokane Vet Center in the past, taking umbrellas from the garden, sawing off catalytic converters from the cars that come from the center and even draining pipes fuel from the cars’ gas tanks, according to Baird.

“We’ve been here for 10 years and it has stepped up in the last two years,” Baird said.

The Spokane Vet Center was initially established in 1982 as the Vietnam Veteran Center by veterans of the Vietnam War, however later on broadened to consist of all veterans.

“Our main service is we work with combat veterans and their family members and helping them to readjust to civilian life after war,” said Baird, who retired from the Navy in 2009 after a profession serving on submarines and as a Seabee.

Evans said Muddy Boots fulfills every Friday.

“We’re all combat vets. Some were in tanks, some were in helicopters. One of our guys was a pilot,” said Evans, who was prepared into an attack helicopter system in 1968. “All of us getting together are able to talk about our experiences and how time kind of screws us up a bit. This group allows us to be grounded.”

Allen said the group is “like a family.”

The center likewise supplies family therapy, couples treatment and even treatment for veterans who have actually experienced sexual injury, Baird said. The center likewise will host yoga classes, tai chi and Native American sweat lodges, he said.

It’s among the busiest veterinarian centers in the nation and is on track to serve 20,000 experienced consultations this year, he said. But the center will be even busier changing the taken tags.

The Spokane Vet Center prepares to double the variety of dog tags at the memorial throughout its yearly Welcome Home Vietnam Veterans Day, that includes a barbecue, hung on March 31.

With help from a neighboring Army hiring center, veterans will have the ability to print out their dog tags on a device throughout the occasion. The brand-new tags will then be more safely connected to the memorial.

Those who cannot go to personally can connect to the Spokane Vet Center to be consisted of in the memorial, (509) 444-8387.

Family members of veterans who have actually passed away can likewise take part, Baird said.

“We’d love to get their dog tag hanging for them,” he said.