- May 2, 2024
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When Timothy Stanford looked outside his house Oct. 4 to see that the yard sign commemorating his son Lukas Stanford, a fallen Army sergeant, had been stolen on the fifth anniversary of his death, he couldn’t believe it.
“It was just a blow to us,” he said. “Who would do something like that?”
But two weeks later, he had a happier surprise when the James Walters, the sheriff's deputy he’d told of the theft, showed up with a replica he’d had made himself.
“I was speechless,” Stanford said. “As a family with a fallen soldier, you do feel a bit forgotten sometimes. But when somebody like Walters shows up and does something like this — it just meant the world to us.”
The U.S. Southern Command presented the Stanford family with the sign last Memorial Day during a ceremony at its South Florida headquarters.
After it disappeared, Timothy Stanford and his wife Carmen Stanford contacted the Flagler County Sheriff’s Office.
Walters scoured the neighborhood looking for it, even checking local dumpsters, Stanford said.
Now, the new sign is in its spot beneath the family’s window, Stanford said, and his 5-year-old daughter smiled when she came home from school and saw it.
“It’s just important to us that it’s back in its place,” he said.
