VANDENBERG AIR FORCE BASE - A Vandenberg Airforce Base Airman received a piece of family history today. Sergeant Jason Riggs was given his great-uncle's World War II dog tags. Someone in France found the property in their attic years ago, and that's where the search began.
Getting the old WWII tags to Sgt. Riggs was not an easy task. But Riggs says he's glad they came to him, as it opens up some knowledge about his mother's side of the family, which he says he didn't know too much about growing up.
"At first we were like, is this true?", says Riggs.
Riggs says his brother received a facebook message one day. The message said that WWII dog tags had been found that belonged to Riggs' great-uncle.
"We wanted to make sure it was one of our family members before we say 'yeah, it's ours'," says Riggs.
The message came from Daniel Potter, who lives in Lancaster, California. Potter received the dog tags from a friend in Normandy, France 2 years ago. He used the name on the dog tags, James Courtney, to do ancestry searches online...to no avail.
"For a while I thought it was going to be an impossible journey, that we were not going to be able to locate the right person," says Potter.
Riggs' great-uncle was a part of the D-Day invasion at Normandy in 1944. Riggs says he doesn't know much about his great-uncle, who was on his mother's side of the family.
"It's a piece of the puzzle, you know what I mean," says Riggs. "And who knows what we can find out from here now, getting these."
Nearly 6,000 miles away, Riggs is appreciative of those in France who made the effort to send the historic dog tags home.
"They send it this way, all the way from Normandy. It's a big deal," says Riggs. "It's priceless. I cant thank them enough."
Riggs says he will hang on to the dog tags and pass them down as a family heirloom.
