YUBA CITY (KRON/KTXL) — Nearly 200,000 people returned home after the threat of flooding around Lake Oroville had forced them to evacuate.
But a handful of people returned to find their houses had been burglarized. One of those people — a U.S. Army veteran.
He had more than two dozen of his medals stolen, medals that were supposed to remain a secret until he died.
The man is opening up about a difficult part of his life in an attempt to get those medals back.
For nearly a half-century, Mike Pomeroy kept the records and memories of his service locked inside a black case, tucked away in the back of his closet.
“Spent 48 years with PTSD and not going to it, trying to keep it hidden, but it still, on the other hand, it’s something you didn’t want to lose,” Pomeroy said.
“Well, to tell you the truth, I only knew that my husband was a highly-decorated war veteran because he had been so private,” Pomeroy’s wife Gaylene said.
Covered in dust, the battered box sat unopened until this week when thieves broke into his Yuba City home and found the shrouded stash.
Now, against his will, the truth is pouring out.
“A lot of things went on and you try to bury it, and that’s it, but the medals were to be passed down to my family, and then they could sort out what grandpa did or what grandpa didn’t do,” Pomeroy said.
Gone are two dozen medals, given for heroism and valor from when Pomeroy served as a medic in Vietnam from 1967 to 1968.
“I don’t know why someone would want to take that from somebody, take a part of their life away,” Gaylene said.
The stories, too painful to discuss, are still here in Pomeroy’s mind and officially documented, but it’s the decorations he wants back.
“They were really a traumatic part of my life, and I know I didn’t stand around to get them,” Pomeroy said.
Pomeroy doesn’t care about most of the possessions the thieves stole and doesn’t expect to get them back.
“I don’t care about the money,” Pomeroy said.
But there are things he did as a young man, lives saved embodied in those missing medals.
“They were irreplaceable, and they were meant to be passed on,” Pomeroy said.
Despite the pain they cause him, it’s a part of his life he wants back.
“A few precious things that you just don’t want to lose,” Pomeroy said.