Purple Heart Found Among Housewares Donated To Tucson Goodwill

TUCSON, AZ — There it was, the bronze relief bust of George Washington on a Purple Heart nestled in a purple-lined box that was tucked in a box of housewares donated to a Goodwill store in Tucson. On the back of the prestigious military decoration, as polished as it was on the day it was issued, was a clue: the name of Nick D’Amelio Jr., a Navy seaman second class.

Purple Heart medals, given to soldiers who are injured or killed in action, are as precious as they are beautiful. Almost as old as the country itself, the Purple Heart was instituted by the nation’s first president in 1782 to honor bravery in action during the Revolutionary War. Originally a purple heart-shaped piece of cloth edged in silver braid that was sewn into the soldier’s coat, the Purple Heart was all but forgotten until it was revived on the 200th anniversary of Washington’s birth.

This one shouldn’t be forgotten, the staff at Goodwill Industries of Southern Arizona resolved.

They’re accustomed to finding rare, valuable and odd items among in the bins of donations they sort. “If you can think of it, we’ve probably gotten it here,” Talon Mills, an associate at the Goodwill store on Tucson’s east side told news station KGUN.

“I was going through a box, just like any other day”” Mills told the news outlet of his discovery in mid-June. “And there was that small box right there. I opened it — recognized it right away — knew what it was.”

Surely the Purple Heart had been accidentally donated, Mills thought.

“Did the recipient of the medal give it away?,” Mills told news station KOLD. “Did their family, not knowing it was in the box?”

However the Purple Heart wound up at the Goodwill, it wasn’t put on the store shelves. Mills turned it over to his manager, and they’ve been on a detective mission to return it to D’Amelio’s family.

What they’ve learned is that D’Amelio never came home from World War II. He was reported missing in action when the USS Little was peppered by Japanese machine guns and sank in the shark-infested waters surrounding the Solomon Islands on Sept. 5, 1942, according to military records and online accounts of the World War II attack.

A year after the ship sank, D’Amelio was declared dead and the Purple Heart was later awarded posthumously. He is memorialized in Walls of the Missing at The Manila American Cemetery and Memorial in the Philippines.

“It’s important that we get it to the right family,” Judith Roman Bucasas, director of marketing of Goodwill Industries of Southern Arizona, told CNN. “This guy didn’t get to make it back home.”

The search has turned up some leads, but they’ve fizzled. Bucasas reached out to Purple Hearts Reunited, a nonprofit that works to return lost, stolen or misplaced military medals of valor to veterans and their families, to help find D’Amelio’s family.

What they’ve learned about D’Amelio is that he entered the service in California and had family in New York.

“We know the person did something really heroic, or that person gave the ultimate sacrifice,” Bucasas told KGUN. “And I think being in a military town, it’s important for us to be able to serve our service members in that way, too.”

To help with the search, the Tucson Goodwill store posted a photo of the medals on Facebook and asked for the help of anyone who might know the family.

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