Kent woman hopes to find owner of old Coast Guard dog tag found in yard

KENT, Wash. -- A woman working in her yard found a military dog tag hidden under some brush. Now she wants to find out who it belongs to, and hopes the public can help.

“Kinda curious how it just showed up in our driveway,” Lindsay Young said from her Kent home Monday.

Young was clearing brush on her property Saturday when something caught her eye.

“Like right here. It was just laying like this on the ground,” Young said. “It had mud and stuff on it, so I just picked it up and got it cleaned off.”



The dog tag belongs to a Gary Widener of the U.S. Coast Guard. What Young thought would be an easy return turned out to be a dead end.

“I gave them (Coast Guard) a call and they were like, 'That's weird, we haven't done dog tags in over 30 years,'” Young said. “I said, is there any record of him cause it does have his Social Security number? And they couldn't find him.”

Along with his Social Security number, Widener’s dog tag lists his religion as ‘Baptist’ and his blood type as ‘O Positive’.

“I would not expect someone's dog tag, especially with that type of identification, to be laying around,” Young said. “This isn’t something you hand off to somebody else. It needs to go to the person that served our country.”

Young comes from a military family and understands the importance of what she has in her possession:

“I have a copy of my brother’s dog tags so if anything ever were to happen to him I still have a piece of him.”

The same piece someone else may be missing.

“It's a part of their life and a part of their history and especially if they're not around anymore. That should go back to their family members,” Young said Monday.

“If it was me and it was everything that was left from this part of my life I would want it to go back to my family. I want my kids to know what I did for my country.”

If you know a Gary Widener who served in the Coast Guard, please reach out to us on our Q13 FOX Facebook page.