Deputy Fixes Dozens Of Torn-Down American Flags During Blizzard

ARAPAHOE COUNTY, CO — Dozens of American flags, put up by students to honor veterans, were torn off their poles during a blizzard in Colorado. Some flags were hanging upside down, and others were buried in the snow. Despite deadly temperatures, near-zero visibility and whipping winds, an Arapahoe County deputy refused to leave the flags in such a state.

One by one, he began repairing them, and continued even when it felt too cold go on.

More than four decades ago, his father showed the same resolve — he risked his life to save a young girl during the Vietnam War.

Fred Sadler, a combat medic, was being held prisoner with other U.S. soldiers in a camp that was destroyed in an air raid. He and his comrades, who had been brutally tortured and starved, finally had a chance to escape — their cell was damaged.

They began running towards the jungle, which was only thirty yards away.

But Sadler saw a young Vietnamese girl who was wounded by shrapnel. She was lying in the mud, crying. The mud had turned red with her blood.

The medic knew that if he stopped to help her, he would likely be tortured and killed. He looked back at the forest line — it was so close. He just had to run. His fellow soldiers had already escaped.

But he stopped and began treating the girl's wounds. The enemy soldiers regrouped and surrounded him, but let him continue dressing the girl's wounds while a rifle was pressed to his back.

Sadler learned that the girl was the daughter of the camp's commanding officer, who decided to let the medic live. The officer gave him boots, food and water, and Sadler was pointed toward the jungle and told to run.

Sadler believed that helping others was the American way of life. Even though he grew up in poverty, he saw hope in the American flag, even during the devastation of the Vietnam War. And the combat medic tried to offer that hope to others, even when they lay dying.

"I promised my mom I wouldn't die in Vietnam, please ... please don't let me die here," one young soldier begged the medic after a deadly attack.

Sadler could see his own uniform through the soldier's gravely wounded torso, and knew the young man would die within minutes. This was the soldier they used to tease —he looked so young that they would jokingly ask him if he lied about his age to get into the army.

"You won't die here, I promise," Sadler told the soldier, while holding him and comforting him.

In a letter later penned to the soldier's mother, Sadler explained that in his heart, he didn't feel that the young man had died in Vietnam — he died embraced in the arms of a fellow American, someone who cared about him and fought for him.

When Sadler arrived back home in the United States, war protesters spat on him. They told him he was a monster.

While the atrocities against the Vietnamese were undeniable, the protesters didn't know Sadler's story, they just saw images in the news and decided he was the enemy. They didn't know he risked his life to save countless people, including a young Vietnamese girl.

But Sadler never stopped believing that the American flag represented something pure and good, even though he spent the rest of his life suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder, and chemical exposure that would ultimately kill him.

After two decades in the military, Sadler retired as a highly decorated master sergeant. He got married and had children.

Every Christmas and Thanksgiving, he invited someone to the table who had nowhere else to go. Sometimes it was a fellow veteran, other times it was just someone who had nowhere else to spend the holiday.

But Sadler's health deteriorated. He had been exposed to Agent Orange, which would change his life. The herbicide and defoliant chemical, used by the U.S. military in tactical warfare, caused countless birth deformities, illnesses and deaths in Vietnam. Many American veterans were also exposed to the deadly chemical.

Sadler's children were born with Agent Orange-related problems. One of his sons required facial surgery, and his other son, Ben, suffered vision and lung problems — he will never have the same lung capacity as others.

Sadler was diagnosed with cancer, which was caused by the Agent Orange exposure.

He died, leaving his family in poverty.

Deputy Ben Sadler parked his car in a safe turnoff after his shift was over and flicked his lights on. He tried to rig the flags back up with spare boot string and tape, but the winds were too strong, and he knew the flags would come down again.

But he couldn't leave them like that. Grandview High School students had put the 40 flags up to honor veterans like his dad.

So he drove home and picked up his tools, and went back out into the storm.

He worked for another hour in the frigid wind and snow, securing the flags with pliers and zip ties. He ignored how cold he felt.

"If our soldiers can suffer the atrocities of war to keep our flag flying I can stand in the snow to do the same," the deputy said. "My father and many other soldiers sacrificed greatly for this country. To his death he believed this country to be worth it."

When his father died, Ben Sadler was only 14 years old. His mother was so impoverished that she wasn't able to keep the family together. The teen was worried about being a burden to her and others, so he told everyone he found a place to live. But really, he was homeless, and lived in his car. He eventually found a room in what he describes as a "crack shack" — a building he rented alongside crack addicts. He became a troublemaker, and had run-ins with the law.

When he was still a teenager, his friend found out that he had nowhere to spend Christmas, and she invited him over to her home. Her father reminded the teen so much of his own dad, whom he missed dearly.

After dinner, his friend's mother gave him a piece of apple pie to take home. He came back Christmas night to find his roommates sleeping in the living room after doing crack, and he carried his piece of pie into his room. He sat on his mattress, which came from an old baby's crib, and held the slice of pie. To him, the slice was precious — just like the flag, it was a symbol of hope.

He eventually met police school officers who knew about his father's death, and they offered the teen support. He started focusing on his studies and the officers secretly collected money to pay for his college entry fees. Their kind acts inspired him to want to be a cop. Like his father, he wanted to help others.

Ben Sadler never forgot the family that took him in on Christmas Day, and continued to visit them on holidays until he married his college sweetheart.

When a parent drove by the school and saw the deputy fixing the broken flags during the blizzard, she was touched, and sent a letter to the Arapahoe County Sheriff's Office, which posted the story on social media.

Soon, thousands of people from around the country were applauding his kind act. But he kept trying to re-direct the appreciation to his father and other veterans.

"If I am ever half the man my father was, I will be a better man than most," the deputy said. "Vietnam veterans were not appreciated in their time. Soldiers like my father loved our country even when it didn't love them."

Grandview High School thanked the deputy with a school shirt and hat, and the Cherry Creek School District honored him with a Hero Award earlier this month.

"Our flag is so much more than 13 stripes and 50 stars," the deputy said. "Hundreds of thousands of soldiers have bled, sacrificed and died to protect everything our flag stands for. Either this country is worth that sacrifice or it is not ... I believe it is."