DECATUR, Texas — Inside the evidence room at the Wise County Sheriff's Office, you'll find the usual.
"It's just packed full of stuff," said Sheriff Lane Akin. "Oftentimes it's weapons, knives, guns."
But sometimes, just sometimes, you find something that takes your breath away.
At the sheriff's direction, Sgt. Paige Dobyns recently was clearing out that evidence room when she had one of those moments.
"I was like guys, this says World War II medals on it," she recalled. "I pull out the Purple Heart and the Bronze Star and I was like, oh my gosh!"
It was a little blue bag with seven military medals inside. Sheriff's records show they were likely stolen, seized in a 2014 felony narcotics investigation.
"These things were literally earned with blood, sweat, and tears," said Sheriff Akin," and to be traded for drugs is so senseless to me."
It was senseless to Sgt. Dobyns, too. She made it her mission to return the medals to the rightful recipient.
"I called our Veterans Affairs office and I said, 'Hey, you guys have got to help me,'" Dobyns said.
There was a name inscribed on the Bronze Star and Purple Heart medals: Homer Stanger.
Research showed he was an Army veteran from Illinois who served in the South Pacific.
Blake Walls and Laura Clark, who work for the Wise County Veteran Affairs Office, said markings on the medals showed he'd actually won even more.
"A true World War II hero with three Bronze Stars, two Purple Hearts and a myriad of his campaign medals," Walls said.
"There’s not many people that can say they’ve got three Bronze Stars and lived to tell about it," Clark said.
Stanger died nearly 40 years ago, in 1981. But that wasn't the end of this story.
"From Facebook, we were able to find someone who knew someone, and it just started steamrolling from there," Clark said.
It all led to a very surprising phone call.
"Yeah, very!" said Kathy Andersen. "In fact, I thought it was a scam at first."
Andersen, of Roscoe, Illinois, says she's a patriotic woman who never knew her great-uncle Homer Stanger was a war hero.
"I knew he’d been in the service but he was kind of like my dad," she said over a video chat from Illinois Thursday night. "My dad was in Korea and neither one of them talked much about being in the service.
"He served his country and that was it. He just never said anything," Andersen said of Stanger.
It's still a mystery how his medals ended up in Texas.
"It means the world to me that we recognize these folks and we never forget them," the sheriff said.
And those medals will soon be back with family in Illinois, thanks to the efforts of the Wise County Sheriff's Office and Veteran Affairs Office.
"It makes me feel so honored to be able to do that for him, yeah. And for his family," Sgt. Dobyns said.
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