Ann Sandoval wiped away her tears and tightly clasped the silver chain and small metal tag. She turned the tag over and over on Tuesday, stopping to run her fingers over the letters and numbers punched into the tin.

"Everything's home now," Sandoval, 65, said softly, finally fastening the chain around her neck, letting the dog tag rest above her heart.

It was a bittersweet end to an overwhelming loss she has been feeling for nearly 33 years when two Marines came to the door of her modest west Phoenix home and told her the news she feared.

Alfred Moreno Jr., the young man she was raising as her own son, had died from a land mine explosion in Vietnam. She had begged her nephew not to enlist. But the 20-year-old was determined to serve his country. He never made it to age 21, dying just a few months after being sent into the war.

Moreno's body came back to Phoenix with a few of his belongings. But not his dog tags.

On Tuesday, at the same house where Sandoval had greeted the two Marines, she welcomed the woman she called her angel, Martha Roskam, an Illinois Resident. Stepping to Sandoval's side, Roskam pressed Moreno's dog tag into her hands, and the women embraced. "This is a precious gift," Sandoval said later.

"I can't imagine someone being this kind to come all this way to bring me back his tag." The tag's journey home began in August 2001, when Roskam and her husband were on a business trip in Ho Chi Minh City.

"I found this woman selling dog tags on the street. I didn't have any idea they could be real," Roskam explained. She went back to her hotel and told her husband, V.R., a veteran of the Korean War. "He said, 'That's not right that they're being sold. They belong to the families or the veterans who lost them. Get back there and buy them all.' " For $20, Roskam was handed 37 tags. Back in the United States, the couple passed them on to their son, Peter, an Illinois state senator. "We figured he'd be better able to find their owners," V.R. said.

Peter Roskam, 41, wanted to be careful. "I wondered, 'Is this an operation? Are they churning them out in Vietnam?'"

Historian and author Paul Braddock of Pittsburgh collects dog tags and has a hard time finding veterans willing to give them up. He's writing a book on the U.S. Army identification system. "Dog tags are the one thing that is the common denominator for anybody in the military. If I had lost my tags and got them back, it would be like finding myself again."

Peter Roskam said he wasn't about to give up on his quest to find homes for the dog tags. "We knew this was going to be a Herculean task, but we had to get these back to people," he said. "Each one of these tags represents a story of a life." He called his military contacts in Illinois, the National Guard and finally the National Archives' National Personnel Records Center in St. Louis.

"We had put together a spreadsheet of the information, the name on the tag, the blood type, religion and branch of service. I called the director's office and told her this odd story, and she said, 'Senator, give me one of the names.' I could hear her typing it in. She said, 'It's a match. Give me another one. It's a match.' I had my affirmation that these were likely authentic."

Of the 37, Roskam has been able to verify as close as he can that 33 are authentic. It was time to get them back to the families, maybe the soldiers, who had lost them. He hired a private investigator. Registered letters went out across the country, trying to find homes for the dog tags.

Ann Sandoval received one of the letters. "I thought, 'Who is advertising from Illinois?' " She read the letter and the sadness that she had pushed to the back of her mind came flooding back. She thought again of Alfred, the boy with the brilliant smile, the boy who rose at 5 a.m. to walk miles to work in a tortilla factory to help support his family, the boy who became a man as he entered the Marines. "I couldn't believe that they had his dog tag," she said. "I thought it was like in the movies, how they get blown off. I never thought we'd get it back."

But on Tuesday, Martha and V.R. Roskam and their son Peter were standing in her living room, giving her hugs and greeting members of her family.

Moreno's was the first of the 37 they've given back. Today, V.R. Roskam is to return a tag to a veteran living in Los Angeles, now a police officer.

Another soon will be going to the mother of a soldier from Illinois. At Sandoval's home, Martha Roskam reached for a tissue. "I didn't expect this to be so moving."

She listened as Ann Sandoval explained how she and her husband, Robert, had taken in Alfred and seven of his siblings in 1966 when their mother, Ann's sister, had died of double pneumonia. They joined the Sandoval's three other children.

"It was wall-to-wall kids," Ann Sandoval said and laughed. The children had to bathe and eat in shifts.

It was tough on the children, but Moreno tried to keep up his spirits. He had quit high school to work, but the Sandovals pushed him back. "But he wasn't going to stay, he wanted to enlist," Ann Sandoval said. "He said, "I can't think of anything else. I have to go and fight for our country.' This has all been bittersweet, but I'm so happy to have his tag now."