VETERANS' MEDALS MERIT MORE RESPECT.

Byline: DENNIS McCARTHY

``It feels like grave robbing to me.''

- Brad Fagerstrom, commander of Audie Murphy Chapter 1898 of the Military Order of the Purple Heart.

The World War I medals 2nd Lt. Armond Hankin earned by giving up his life went on sale on the Internet last week. Opening bid was $224.99. They sold Sunday for $602.

Hankin was killed in action, along with most of his Air Force squadron, on a bombing raid to destroy oil and industrial sites in Germany on June 20, 1944.

The medals were bought from an estate sale - one KIA Purple Heart and one Air Medal, both in mint condition, the online ad says. VISA/MasterCard accepted.

Brad Fagerstrom, Larry Bowman and a handful of other vets at American Legion Post 308 in Reseda have a look on their faces that isn't hard to read as they check out Internet postings of military service medals for sale.

The ads make them sick - and angry.

``Reading this list is painful,'' Fagerstrom said Tuesday as he scanned page after page of more than 1,000 medals with soldiers' names on them, sold at auction over the Internet recently for as little as $35 to as much as $1,500.

``How buying someone else's bravery is going to make these people somehow different . . .,'' the twice wounded Vietnam veteran and Purple Heart recipient said, his voice trailing off in anger.

``Where's the morality of it?'' Bowman asked. ``These guys did a lot for this country, and to have their medals sold off like baseball cards just is not right.''

The men all agreed. This was like grave robbing.

That's exactly how it feels to learn people are making a nice little profit off the bravery and sacrifices of the servicemen and -women who earned those medals.

Repeated calls Wednesday to Floyd, Johnson & Paine Inc., the Chicago- based company offering more than 1,000 military medals for sale over the Internet last month, went unanswered.

These vets know nothing can be done to stop war veterans who have fallen on hard times from selling off their awards in a pawnshop or executors of veterans' estates from making the medals available for sale along with other personal possessions.

But there is something, finally, being done about another way military service medals have found their way into the open market - through inactive safe deposit boxes that banks turn over to states.

``These men came from an era when the safe deposit box was the safest place around,'' Fagerstrom says. ``You put your deed, your life insurance policy and your medals in it.''

By law, the state keeps the contents of the unclaimed boxes for a couple of years, then they are sold at auction. The money goes into the state's general fund.

According to Tom Marshall of the California State Controller's Office, there are 5.2 million unclaimed accounts in the state waiting for their rightful owners. The cash value is $2.6 billion, he said.

If you want to see whether the state owes you any of this money, log on to the state controller's Web site at www.sco.ca.gov and enter your name.

It was Marshall's boss, State Controller Kathleen Connell, who balked earlier this year at selling the contents in 29 of the more than 2,000 inactive safe deposit boxes up for grabs in the state's annual unclaimed property auction.

In those boxes were 88 military honors, including six Purple Hearts, a Bronze Star and a distinguished service medal.

``Those medals should only belong to the men and women who earned them, or their immediate families,'' Connell said.

``It's not right for states to sell these symbols of honor as though they were mere trinkets in a garage sale.''

Under legislation sponsored by Connell, California became the first state to outlaw the sale or auction of military medals and honors from the state's unclaimed property.

From now on, all medals found in those unclaimed safety deposit boxes will be placed in the California National Guard's State Military Museum for display, while volunteers from the museum search tax and property records for the families of the medal recipients.

On Tuesday, at the Reseda American Legion Hall, U.S. Rep. Brad Sherman took the first step toward making this a national issue.

``The federal government issues these medals on behalf of our nation to honor the extraordinary acts of bravery by the men and women who have served with distinction in our military services,'' Sherman said.

``The government should also have the obligation to protect these honors from being demeaned.''

Under the Military Medals Preservation Act that Sherman says he will introduce in Congress, all abandoned military decorations will be returned to and preserved by the secretary of defense, or by the National Guard in those states that follow California in protecting those medals.

Also, the legislation would exempt military medals from bankruptcy proceedings.

It's a start, the men over at Post 308 say.

They realize the vast majority of military medals being sold on the open market come from estate sales - from families that don't know what to do with grandpa's medals after he dies, so they just include them with all his other memorabilia, Fagerstrom says.

Greg Tracy, office manager of the California State Military Museum in Old Town, Sacramento, [phone], said Wednesday that his museum would be more than happy to accept the medals for display.

Beats the hell out of selling them to strangers.

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Photo:

War veteran Brad Fagerstrom, holding his own Purple Heart, feels strongly about strangers making a profit from military service medals.

Tina Burch/Staff Photographer