AZ Woman Found Purple Heart At Thrift Store, Returned It To Vet's Family

An Arizona woman found a Purple Heart at a local thrift store where she works and knew that it must have been important to someone, reported AZ Family.

Teresa Ferrin told CNN, "Every time I've ever seen [medals] in a Goodwill or something I'm like, 'Why is this here? This needs to be with the owner,' "

This particular medal belonged to Erik Karl Blauberg, a veteran who served in the Korean War. Blauberg died in 1988.

Ferrin said she doesn't know who brought the box that contained the Purple Heart along with other medals to the Christian Family thrift store, but she got to work right away trying to find the owner.

She explained, "I looked on the back of the Purple Heart and his name was there."

Ferrin did some detective work on the internet, where she was able to locate his grave in an Arizona cemetery. She said, "They said, 'We can't help you,' but there was a crematorium that was associated with this, so I called them, and that lady was able to give the names of the eight children."

She took to Facebook to find two of his children that had been estranged from their father for years.

Lisa Walker, one of his daughters, said, "I couldn't thank Teresa enough for this."

Though Blauberg had contacted his children more near the end of his life, none of them were able to receive any of his belongings. He had left his possessions to his doctor, which made it hard for the children to get any of them.

Ferrin said, "My father was in Korea the exact same time that their father was in Korea. And my father has passed away, so Lisa was saying it's divine intervention because she finally got something from her father."

Photo: Getty Images