Dave DeSoucy, a deputy sheriff from San Bernardino, Calif., came to the Salt Lake Olympics as a security volunteer, but he also hopes to solve a mystery related to his combat friend James Michael Holmes' death in 1968. (Elizabeth Neff/The Salt Lake Tribune)

    Before the Olympics end, security volunteer Dave DeSoucy hopes to give a special gift to the family of a friend who died in his arms 33 years ago in Vietnam.

    But DeSoucy, a deputy sheriff from California, says he needs help solving the Utah piece of a puzzle that began in 1968, with the death of paratrooper James Michael Holmes of Mississippi.

    DeSoucy, 53, wants to locate a Utahn who served with him and Holmes and was there when Holmes died. He says the soldier, Michael Christiansen -- he is not sure of the spelling -- might have Holmes' Zippo lighter, along with memories to share with Holmes' family.

    The lighter, like many during the Vietnam era, was engraved with Holmes' full name and a U.S. Army parachute emblem. Holmes' family has none of his personal items, and DeSoucy hopes he and Christiansen might be able to return the lighter to them.

    Christiansen took the lighter after Holmes died, which DeSoucy says he recalls as if it were yesterday. Hostile fire had been exchanged for days at Firebase Tomahawk in the northern part of South Vietnam. DeSoucy's 101st Airborne platoon was trying to take a hill that would give them a key position on a ridge line when they came under fire.

    "[Holmes] was our point man, and he took a shot in the torso," said DeSoucy, who served as a medic. "He went into shock and he died. I had seen hundreds of casualties and dead, but this was the first personal friend I knew and lost, and I've lived with that memory for 33 years."

    Although DeSoucy said he has checked with law enforcement friends in Utah, he does not know where Christiansen might be or even if he is still alive. DeSoucy, who is working long hours directing traffic at the intersection of 400 West and 200 South during the Games, is hoping publicity might generate a lead.

    If DeSoucy can find Christiansen and the lighter, he says, it would complete an unusual circle of events that led him to contact a member of Holmes' family last month.

    DeSoucy says he had always wanted to contact Holmes' next of kin to tell them how the 21-year-old had died. He knew they did not get a letter from a commanding officer like some other families, but he had no idea how to contact them.

    "To me, it seems like such a natural thing to wonder about a relative who was killed in combat," DeSoucy said.

    When DeSoucy went online to renew his membership in the Alpha Avengers Association, a veterans group, he was startled to find images of Holmes staring back at him. The photos were accompanied by a request from Holmes' niece, a 29-year-old school teacher in Kokomo, Miss., for any information about her uncle.

    DeSoucy contacted her just as he was preparing to leave for the Games.

    "It was very emotional speaking to her," he said. "You get to know the guys in your platoon like brothers and he was a guy you could count on."

    For Trudi Evans, the death of her uncle had always been somewhat of a mystery. "My mother and grandmother have always been real emotional about it, and we never really could discuss it growing up," Evans said.

    But as she decided to put together a scrapbook for her mother, who is Holmes' sister, Evans said she began looking online for anyone that knew her uncle.

    She heard from DeSoucy one month after she had posted the pictures.

    Holmes' family had received only a notice of his death and never knew the exact circumstances surrounding it, Evans said. From a previous telegram, they had thought his body was recovered only after he had been missing in action for a time, she said.

    Evans has named her now 5-year-old son, Michael, after her uncle and her husband, who is also named Michael.

    "When you have an aunt or an uncle that has done something like this, you think a lot of them," she said.

    If DeSoucy can locate the lighter, Evans said she plans to give it to her mother. But even without the lighter, the family is glad to have learned more about the death from DeSoucy.

    "To find out he was there with him when he died was amazing," she said. "We appreciate what he's done already."

    Evans' mother, Sandy Sartin, 55, was especially close to her brother growing up in Darbun, Miss. Their father, a World War II veteran, died when the two were just four and five years old. Holmes had served in the Merchant Marine before he was drafted, she said.

    "The only thing I received was a telegram that he was missing, and then that they had found the body," said Sartin.

    The family has medals that Holmes was awarded posthumously, including a Purple Heart, but no other mementoes, Sartin said.

    "Before he left, he had insinuated that he wouldn't be coming home," she said. "It would be wonderful for me to talk to someone that was close to him over there, someone that knew his feelings."