CHICAGO — The silver POW/MIA bracelet was found tucked away on a lost-and-found shelf in a hotel in York, Maine, and how long it had been there is anyone’s guess.

Hotel worker Carlene LaFleche, who discovered it, noticed an inscription: Patrick R. Curran USMC Laos Sept. 29, 1969.

She became determined to find the story behind Patrick Curran and to find someone to whom the bracelet would have emotional value.

“I felt it shouldn’t be up on that shelf,” LaFleche said. “It should be with someone who was close to the him or to a family member.”

The letters “ILL” also were inscribed on the bracelet, indicating Curran was from Illinois. After an Internet search yielded more information, including that he was from Bensenville, LaFleche posted an entry on the TribLocal website about the bracelet. An assist from the Chicago Tribune helped locate Curran’s brother, Dan, who lives in Amana, Iowa.

LaFleche said she planned to contact Dan Curran, and Curran said he would welcome receiving the bracelet.

The discovery “brings back a whole lot of emotion, candidly,” Dan Curran said. And it brought to light the story of Patrick Curran and his now-deceased mother’s quest to learn what had happened to her son.

Curran was a U.S. Marine Corps bombardier navigator who was reported missing in action in Laos on Sept. 29, 1969. His remains were not identified until more than 30 years later. He is buried at Arlington National Cemetery in Virginia.

Before his remains were discovered, Curran was one of several Americans whose names were inscribed on multiple POW/MIA bracelets, which were first produced in the 1970s as a way to remember prisoners of war and those missing in action. It’s unknown to whom the bracelet found in Maine belonged.

Dan Curran vividly recalls being 18 in 1969 and finding out his brother, nicknamed Corky, had been reported missing in action after his plane went down. “I was home alone,” Dan said. “A Marine jeep pulled up and two officers got out. They wanted to talk to my parents.”

A few days later, Dan recalled, he received a birthday card that had been sent by Patrick from Vietnam. Dan Curran said his brother was married at the time and had a baby daughter whom he never met.

Dan’s mother, Ann, a former school teacher, immersed herself in the effort to find out what had happened to her son and to others who were prisoners of war or missing in action. She became involved in VietNow, a group founded in the 1980s in Rockford with the motto of “Veterans Helping Veterans.”

In June 1996, a crash site was investigated and some human remains and pieces of aircraft were recovered. It was suspected that the wreckage was Curran’s airplane, but it was not confirmed until 1997. His remains were identified in 2000. Sadly, Ann Curran never got the answers she worked so hard to find — she dies in a car wreck two months before they identified the remain.

According to the U.S. Department of Defense’s POW/Missing Personnel office there are still 1,685 people listed as MIA from the Vietnam War. Maj. Carie Parker, public affairs manager for the office, said it’s not unusual for people to inquire what they should do with bracelets they find. The office advises people to write to the casualty office of the respective military branch and ask them to forward the bracelet to the family.

Dan Curran said he is touched to know his mother had such an impact on the veterans.

And, he said, the search to find out what happened to her Corky “was her red badge of courage.”