Douglas County Sheriff Honors 81-Year-Old Leo Hrdlicka as Honorary Deputy

Leo Hrdlicka is 18 years old. He has spent the last six decades refusing to accept that his brother, Air Force Col. David Hrdlicka, is dead.

The scene starts in Douglas County, where Sheriff Darren Weekly recently pinned a medal on Leo’s chest. It was a quiet moment, the kind that happens in a sheriff’s office with the AC humming and the fluorescent lights buzzing. But the weight of that recognition wasn’t just for Leo’s time as a deputy. It was for the man he’s been chasing since 1965.

David Hrdlicka was shot down over Laos. He parachuted to safety. Then he vanished.

That was nearly a generation before the first buses rolled off the tarmac at Kennedy Airport in 1973. Operation Homecoming brought 591 American prisoners of war back to the States. David wasn’t on that list. He wasn’t on any list.

“I thought the government was doing all they could to do it,” Leo said. “I just put my trust in the government.”

That trust eroded. It didn’t disappear overnight, but it cracked under the weight of silence. Leo didn’t just wait. He flew a POW banner across the country. He stood on the White House lawn in 1993, holding a sign that read “Just bring them home.” He traveled to Southeast Asia, chasing down audio recordings of David’s voice from captivity, begging to be returned.

“He was just one heck of a guy,” Leo said. “He was my idol.”

Now, the National League of POW/MIA Families estimates more than 1,500 Americans remain unaccounted for from the Vietnam War. That’s not a rounding error. That’s a generation’s worth of fathers, sons, and brothers still sitting in a jungle that never stopped growing.

Sheriff Darren Weekly called it a testament to toughness. He named Leo an honorary deputy. It’s a nice gesture. It fits the narrative of local officials honoring local heroes. But let’s look at the logistics. A flag flies above a sheriff’s office. A medal gets pinned. The story gets told on local news. And then? The search continues.

Leo isn’t asking for a parade. He’s asking for a body. Or at least, proof of life.

“You can’t put it down,” Leo said. “Even if he was back, you had his body and you buried him, it’d still be the loss, and you never forget that, but to know he’s still alive? And a lot of them are alive. Not just him.”

There’s a specific kind of exhaustion that comes with this kind of waiting. It’s not the frantic energy of a crisis; it’s the slow burn of a decades-long vigil. Leo is 81. His knees probably ache when he walks. His hearing isn’t what it was. But he’s still holding the line.

The government says it’s working. The accounting agencies dig. The satellites scan. The audio tapes are analyzed. But for Leo, the gap between “working” and “found” is still too wide.

“I can only hope for the other families,” he said. “David, I’ll always hope that he’s gonna come home. Till the day I die.”

That’s the bottom line. Sixty years. One brother. And a community that honors the effort, even if it can’t fix the outcome.