WWII medals found in laundry room returned to soldier’s family

Rocco DiNobile, manager of a West Hollywood apartment building, recently discovered a box of WWII medals and other mementos hidden in a laundry-room locker.

"The fifth one I opened, had all these letters in it. And staring me in the face was a Purple Heart," DiNobile told CBS Los Angeles.

DiNobile contacted Purple Hearts Reunited founder Zachariah Fike, who helped track down the medal recipient's family.

"I try to honour the veterans," Fike told KABC. "I go through a local congress man and get all the other awards that he would have been entitled to and I get them framed professionally for the families. In this case, he'll get a professionally framed set of medals that he was entitled to for his service in the war."

The eight medals, including a Purple Heart and Silver Star, were delivered to Hyla Merin, the daughter of Second Lieutenant Hyman Markel, in a short ceremony at her home in Westlake Village.

Markel was killed in battle in May, 1945. His wife was seven months pregnant with Hyla at the time.

"The accounts suggest that he was out on patrol and he got ambushed and he charged ahead and basically took out a machine gun position to save the rest of his guys," Fike, whose organization has returned about two dozen medals, told the Associated Press. "For that, he paid the ultimate sacrifice."

Merin's mother lived in the apartment building where the medals were found from 1960 to 1975. One aunt of Merin's lived there until 2005, another until 2009.

"This is kind of tears of love and joy," Merin said. "It was a part of me. I've always known he was a wonderful person."

Merin told the Associated Press that her mother rarely spoke of Markel.

"It was a very difficult topic for her. When my father died, she was seven months pregnant with me," Merin said.

"We had a few pictures, not many, a few pictures in the house up," she told KABC. "My mother was kind of stoic. It was hard for her always to talk about it. A lot of what I know I know from my aunts and other family members who would tell me stories."

Merin's mother heard of the manager's discovery of the Purple Heart, but didn't live to see it. She died on February 1st, at the age of 94.

"It's such an honour to do this in his memory," Merin said at the ceremony. "I was named after him that's how my name Hyla comes from Hyman which was his name."