THE BEST
OF YOUR LIFE
INSPIRING PEOPLE
Defending
True
Soldiers
A Vietnam vet and
his wife expose medal-
wearing impostors
Pam Sterner and her husband,
Doug, were living in Colorado in 2004
when she overheard him talking on
the phone to an FBI agent. Doug, a
two-time Bronze Star recipient for his
service during two combat tours in
Vietnam, was six years into compiling
a Hall of Valor—a verified list of the
tens of thousands of Americans who
have received a military award above
the Bronze Star. As Pam homed in on
the conversation, Doug and the G-
man were discussing a brazen case of
stolen valor: A U.S. Army private had
recently bragged to his hometown
newspaper that he’d earned two
Silver Stars, a Distinguished Service
Cross, two Bronze Stars, and a Purple
Heart in Afghanistan, Kuwait, So-
malia, and Iraq—none of which was
true. Because the pretender had not
worn any false decorations, how-
ever—an illegal act—the Army was
powerless to file charges against him.
became the blueprint
for the Stolen Valor
Act (SVA), which
President George W.
Bush signed into law
on December 20,
2006. The act made
it a crime—punishable by up to a year
in prison and/or a fine—to claim,
verbally or in writing, an unearned
military decoration.
Mission accomplished, right?
Not quite.
In the five years since the SVA’s
passage, opponents have attacked
it, arguing that inflating (or outright
fabricating ) one’s military deeds is
free speech—and thus safeguarded by
the Constitution. Some courts have
agreed, and the law may eventually
TRUE METTLE
Doug and Pam
Sterner hope
the Supreme
Court upholds
their Stolen
Valor Act.
wind up before the Supreme Court
for a ruling on its constitutionality.
Doug finds that First Amendment
argument bogus. “Stolen valor isn’t
a crime of lying,” he says; “it’s one of
impersonation. There’s a huge leap
from the harmless ‘That dress makes
you look thin’ to the heinous ‘I was
wounded in Iraq.’ ”
Doug redoubled his efforts in 2005,
when he learned that a poseur had
stolen his best friend Jaime Pacheco’s
1972 Silver Star citation and claimed it
as his own. By 2008, Doug had single-
handedly cataloged 130,000 award-
ees (and digitized nearly 50,000 of
them). That’s when The Military
Times came to his aid with financ-
ing. “Now I have help,” he says. “And
hope.” —Karen Westerberg Reyes
