Marine killed in Vietnam 40 years ago gets a final salute

Over the years, Yolanda's siblings and her late mother would tell her stories about Luis, which included the nickname he gave her.

"I didn't remember who used to call me rag doll," she said, "and it was him."

The day the family learned that Luis had been killed, a relative came to Yolanda's school to pick her up and on the way home tried to explain death.

The 19-year-old Marine was on a rescue mission on June 6, 1968, when his helicopter was hit by enemy fire and crashed. Lance Cpl. Luis Palacios was one of four passengers on the downed aircraft presumed dead but whose bodies were not found.

Then, in early September, Yolanda's family received the news they had been waiting for for 40 years: a U.S. search team had found some of Luis' remains. He was identified through a DNA sample that Yolanda had given to the Joint POW/MIA Accounting Command more than a decade earlier.

Last week, Luis' remains were returned to California.

On Thursday, his family held a viewing at a funeral home in Bellflower. Yolanda, 51, walked slowly toward the open casket, partially draped by a U.S. flag. Inside lay a dress-blue Marine uniform and black rosary beads. Yolanda placed her hand on the gold buttons of the suit coat, decorated with four medals, including the Purple Heart and Vietnam Service Medal.

Underneath was all that remained of her brother: a tooth and an arm bone.

Earlier in the day, Yolanda held the bone that had been placed in a sealed plastic bag. She kissed it and told her brother she loved him.

"I definitely wanted to see the remains," she said. "I wanted to hold them. I wanted to say goodbye, because that's Luis."

Since his death, the lives of his nine brothers and sisters have moved on. They had children and grandchildren of their own. They mourned the deaths of their parents.

But their memories of Luis, who grew up in South Los Angeles, remained frozen in the '60s. They recalled a shy, teenage boy with a baby face and dark eyes who was eager to join the Marines because a brother and a brother-in-law already had enlisted.

"Mom, if you only understood I need to do this for myself," Martha Chavez, his oldest step-sister, remembered him pleading with their mother.