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PIKEVILLE — Twenty-seven years after buying a POW-MIA bracelet, Kathy Moore came face-to-face Saturday with the Vietnam-era serviceman it honored: former Air Force Lt. Col. James Hiteshew.
Moore said she is acutely aware that the freedoms she and other Americans enjoy were purchased with the sacrifices and bravery of people such as Hiteshew. She bought the bracelet in 1970 when she was a high school freshman in Lenoir.
She had tried to find him for years with no luck. Then she tried the Internet, and found that he lives in Pikeville.
Saturday, Moore journeyed from her Watauga County home to meet Hiteshew and show him the bracelet.
Hiteshew had been shot down near Hanoi, and was released from captivity in March 1973 as the Vietnam war wound down.
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