This Scout found a lost Eagle medal. Can we help him get it back to its owner?

When a Scout from North Carolina found, among his grandmother’s possessions, an old Eagle Scout medal and six Eagle Palms, his reaction was instant.

“I wish we could return it to its owner,” he told his mom.

Hayden Stanley is a First Class Scout in Troop 334 of Raleigh, N.C. As someone on the trail to Eagle himself, he knows how much work goes into earning the program’s highest rank.

Hayden knew the medal didn’t belong to anyone in his family. And his grandmother died two years ago, so Hayden and his parents aren’t able to ask her how she came in possession of the Scouting artifact.

“I can only speculate,” says Hayden’s dad, Dwight. “In retirement, my parents would often go to auctions in Fayetteville, N.C., and many times they would bring home boxes of random stuff auctioned off as a lot.”

The box itself contains a few more clues as to the owner’s identity. Dwight Stanley reached out to me to see if the Scouting community could help.

Can you help solve this mystery?

The clues

Here’s what we know:

• The Eagle medal was contained in a crusty, burned metal award box. This indicates it survived a fire.
• Two ID cards were stuck under the foam panel of the box. One is a veterans insurance card, and the other is a card for the Employment Security Commission of North Carolina.
• The name on both cards: Kiyoshi E. Howard.
• Mr. Howard’s occupation is listed as “Construction Worker II.”
• No person with the name “Kiyoshi Howard” appears in the National Eagle Scout Association database. This could mean one of two things: One, the record was not properly recorded; or two, the Eagle medal belongs to a friend or family member of Mr. Howard.

Dwight Stanley says he searched the white pages and found a Kiyoshi Howard living in Philadelphia. According to the date of birth listed, this Mr. Howard would’ve been a Scout in the mid-1970s.

“I also looked on Facebook and found another Kiyoshi Howard who also lives in Philadelphia and have reached out to him through his work,” Dwight Stanley says. “I hope to hear from him or the elder Mr. Howard in the next few days.”

Can you help?

In the meantime, if you know who might own this Eagle medal, leave a comment below or email me at [email protected].

I’ll update this post if — or when — the mystery is solved.

This Scout found a lost Eagle medal. Can we help him get it back to its owner?