In light of Remembrance Day, we wanted to share with you a story that happened recently here at A R Richards, where we were able to reunite an ex-military soldier with his medals that had been lost for over 2 years!
As we are keen to reuse and recycle everything that we take in, we have a team who handpick all loads that come into the business’ recycling centre, and when we receive items we believe can be reused, or may be of personal value, we separate them from the waste.
We are currently in the process of reorganising our reuse shed, and during this process, 2 army medals were found. These were brought into our office to research in the hope we could reunite them with the original owner. As the name and dates were read out, a colleague recognised the name and believed they might belong to a friend that had been serving in the army at that time. He was contacted, and confirmed that they were his, and that they had been missing for over two years and he had assumed they were just at home somewhere! We were able to reunite him with his medals, and were lucky to witness his daughter seeing them for the first time.
Laura Worrall, our purchase ledger has written a few words on reuniting the medals, ‘I was searching through some bags and came across the two medals that immediately interested me, my brother and grandfather are ex-military and I know what their medals mean to them, so I knew I had to get these back to their rightful owner. After inspection I noticed the inscription LCP D P Domagalski and military number, when announcing this in the office my colleague Jenny mentioned that her friend’s husband was ex-army with the same name. After a quick text we were able to reunite Dan within 24 hours with his medals in time for Remembrance Day, sometimes these things happen for a reason, we have 20plus staff on this site and it just happened to be us two that found, connected and reunited.’
Dan Domagalski, the medal owner, shared ‘I have been looking for these medals for over two years! I honestly thought they were still in the house somewhere! I was going to reapply for new medals but they wouldn’t have been the same as they wouldn’t have had my names on them, so I am so happy to be reunited with them’. His medals were awarded to him for a tour of Afghanistan September 2012-April 2013, and also for being in service for the Queen’s 2012 Diamond Jubilee.
