Mike and Gaylene Pomeroy needed every second of the head start they got.

They live in Yuba City, Calif., and on Sunday they were among the nearly 200,000 people who fled the Oroville Dam spillway emergency. Their son-in-law is a police officer in neighboringMarysville, so he called them a half-hour before officers went through neighborhoods with bullhorns.

The Pomeroys are both in their 60s. Mike has post-traumatic stress disorder. His wife uses a walker to get around on good days and a wheelchair on bad ones. They spent a half-hour rushing togather their medicine, their clothes and their dog. Then they got into their car and drove 90 miles to a niece's house.

The next day, a son checking on their home delivered good news and bad: Their house was still dry, but it had been hit by burglars.

They also made their way to the back of the couple's bedroom closet, where a suitcase contained Mike Pomeroy's war medals, commendation papers and bittersweet memories.

Mike Pomeroy spent the late 1960s in Vietnam, his wife said. He was an Army helicopter medic, dropping into combat zones to do what he could for the wounded.

He left the Army with a Purple Heart, a Bronze Star Medal and several pieces of mortar shrapnel that doctors couldn't remove from his arm.

Gaylene Pomeroy said her husband wanted to pass the medals down to their grandchildren, hoping they'd illuminate a part of their grandfather's life that he had trouble articulating.

"Almost everything you can replace. There's things you can't. And that's what really, really gets to you," he said.

To read the complete article, see:
A Vietnam vet fledthe Oroville Dam. While he was gone, burglars stole his war medals.(www.washingtonpost.com/news/checkpoint/wp/2017/02/18/a-vietnam-vet-fled-the-oroville-dam-while-he-was-gone-burglars-stole-his-war-medals/?utm_term=.1c9e1492fcd4)