A Mission Hills man is on a decades-long mission to track down the families of three Vietnam War soldiers, armed only with a trio of engraved St. Christopher medals he carried home from Saigon. Antonio Palma has spent years trying to return the medals to their rightful owners, believing each once belonged to a young American serviceman sent off to war with a piece of home hanging around his neck.
According to 10News, Palma purchased the medals in Vietnam and says their coloring suggests they were produced sometime in the 1960s or 1970s. Each one is engraved with a name, a short personal message, and a date — details Palma believes point back to specific soldiers and the loved ones who sent them off. One medal bears the name Dennis along with the message “Love Vicky” and the date 12-05-1969. A second reads “Bob, my thoughts are with you” and carries the name Betty, spelled B-E-T-T-E. A third is inscribed simply “Dave Sharon.”
Palma has flagged one date in particular — 05-12-1969 — as significant, telling 10News it corresponds to what he described as a major date in the Vietnam War. He has also pointed to a broader troop movement and shift in Saigon during the conflict as context for how these medals may have ended up separated from their owners, according to his account to the station.
A Search Rooted in a Childhood Loss
Palma's fascination with St. Christopher medals began after his own childhood First Communion medal was stolen during a surfing outing, according to the San Diego Reader. Determined to replace it, he bought a new one while traveling in Saigon in 1996, despite having no personal military background himself. That trip set off a lifelong habit of collecting the devotional medals, and over time, of trying to reconnect them with the families of the men who once wore them.
St. Christopher — the Catholic patron saint of safe travel — was one of the most widely carried religious symbols among young American soldiers during the Vietnam War, per the same account. Troops often wore the medals beneath their combat uniforms as personal protection charms and keepsakes from people back home. Chaplains distributed them too; Navy Chaplain and Medal of Honor recipient Lt. Vincent R. Capodanno, known as the Grunt Padre, handed out St. Christopher medals to frontline Marines to comfort them before he was killed in action in South Vietnam in September 1967, according to Set On Shrine. The Catholic Church removed St. Christopher from its universal liturgical calendar during Vatican II reforms in 1969 due to limited historical documentation, though it never revoked his sainthood, according to the Los Angeles Times — a timeline that overlaps directly with the 1969 dates etched into Palma's medals.
A Track Record of One Successful Reunion
This is not Palma's first attempt at this kind of search. In 1996, he purchased a silver medal in Ho Chi Minh City inscribed “To Butch. Love Frances. Dec. 25, 1967,” which was later confirmed to belong to Army Special Forces Maj. Donald Gene “Butch” Carr. Carr had been missing in action from 1971 until his remains were accounted for in 2015 and buried in 2018, per the San Diego Reader. Palma spent nearly two decades tracing military leads before he was able to return that medal to Maj. Carr's extended family, and 10News reports he reunited a St. Christopher medal with the family of a missing Vietnam War soldier back in 2012 as well.
Now Palma is hoping to repeat that outcome three more times. He suspects the soldiers tied to these medals may no longer be alive, but he still hopes their loved ones are. “Every hero deserves to find his way home,” Palma told 10News, adding that returning the medals has become his purpose. He is specifically seeking a retired Vietnam veteran who works as a military forensic genealogist to help him track down the families, and he considers the medals themselves priceless.
The Science Behind Identifying the Missing
Formal identification of missing service members typically relies on far more than an engraved name. The Armed Forces DNA Identification Laboratory uses forensic genealogy and Family Reference Samples collected from living relatives, drawing on mitochondrial DNA for maternal lineages, Y-chromosome DNA for paternal lineages, and nuclear DNA for immediate family verification, according to the U.S. Department of Defense. Families seeking military records on missing Vietnam War personnel can also request an unclassified Individual Deceased Personnel File through Service Casualty Offices, which contains casualty reports, crash maps, eyewitness statements, and inventories of recovered personal effects, per Project Recover.
The scale of the challenge Palma is chipping away at is enormous. As of 2026, the Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency reports that 1,566 American service members remain unaccounted for from the Vietnam War, while 1,067 missing personnel have been recovered and identified since the conflict ended, according to the Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency. In fiscal year 2025, the agency identified 231 unaccounted-for service members from past conflicts overall, including eight from the Vietnam War, surpassing its congressionally mandated annual goal of 200 identifications. Despite budget adjustments and logistical constraints in Southeast Asia this year, defense officials have reaffirmed to MIA families that Vietnam War recovery operations remain the agency's highest operational priority.
For now, Palma is relying on a much more local kind of outreach. Anyone who recognizes the names Dennis, Bette, Bob, Dave, or Sharon — or who has any information tying those names to a Vietnam War-era serviceman — is asked to contact ABC 10News, which first reported on Palma's search.
