Last year, an Illinois couple on a business trip to Ho Chi Minh City, formerly Saigon, bought 37 American GI dog tags for $20 from a street vendor.

At home they turned the tags over to their son, Illinois state Sen. Peter Roskam, who has tried to reunite soldiers with their tags -- the familiar metal identification tags that have hung from the necks of American military since World War I.

One set in the bunch belonged to Dana R. Safford, once a joy-riding Quinsigamond Village juvenile car thief, runaway and trade school dropout before becoming a Marine who by rights should have died in the mud of the rice paddy where he had been wounded one moonless night 32 years ago.

"I have no idea what happened to my tags," Mr. Safford said in a recent telephone interview from his Florida home, "'but getting them back would be like getting a medal."

Much has happened to Mr. Safford since he separated from his tags, most likely at the military hospital where he was airlifted after a bullet ripped through his innards.

He has been a postman, a steelworker, an officer in the steelworkers union local and a bartender, and he earned an associate's degree in engineering. He fathered five children in two marriages, and they have produced six grandchildren.

Last year, he learned that the teen-age sweetheart he broke up with soon after returning home from Vietnam gave birth to his son 30 years ago while married to another man.

"I guess there's quite a lot to this story about a simple pair of found dog tags," he said.

Mr. Safford grew up in Worcester. His father abandoned his mother and younger sister, leaving the family to survive on welfare. One of his earliest memories is hiding under a stairwell at Great Brook Valley with his mother and younger sister, Karen, during the 1953 tornado. "The only bad thing that happened to us was I lost my tricycle," he said.

The family moved several times. In his only clear boyhood memory of his father, the two were watching a war movie and the 8-year-old son praised the courage of what he believed were Army soldiers in the movie. No, his father corrected him, those were Marines.

"That always stayed in the back of my mind," Mr. Safford recalled. "That's why I chose the Marines."

After a largely disinterested pass at the carpentry program at Worcester Vocational High School, then known as Boys Trade, Mr. Safford dropped out and went to work at a box factory.

"I was a juvenile delinquent -- punk trouble," he said of his early adolescence. The delinquency included auto theft. "Not for money, just joy riding," he said. "I always felt guilty about it. I guess I wanted attention. Whatever it was, things were getting out of control."

A fear of permanently going astray led him to the Marine recruiter's office. At age 17, he signed on for a four-year hitch. After his mother and the juvenile courts gave permission, Mr. Safford left for boot camp on Jan. 31, 1968, with the Tet Offensive raging in Vietnam.

"I knew I would be going to Vietnam," he said. "I wanted to go. I was always patriotic, even as a kid."

Mr. Safford soon adjusted to the rigors of training at Parris Island. The physical competition motivated him.

"I wanted to be the fastest, the most daring," he said. "I went in at 168 pounds of no muscle and came out at 184 pounds of all muscle."

He was a gung-ho Marine from the beginning.

"I thought I was invincible, that nothing could harm me," he said.

The Marines delayed shipping him to Vietnam until he turned 18. As it happened, he was chosen for satellite surveillance school in Baltimore at the same time his orders arrived for Vietnam.

"It was a real honor to have been chosen for the school -- there was only three of us -- but I joined the Marines to go to Vietnam. That's what Marines do -- they go to war, not to school."

He came back to Worcester to see his family and girlfriend.

"We had a very nice time, a little party, and then I was gone, 17 hours on an American Airlines flight with a 45-minute stopover in Hawaii. I saw two palm trees. That's the extent of my Hawaiian vacation."

He spent two weeks in language school learning Vietnamese before joining a platoon of Marines and South Vietnamese soldiers in what was known as a Combined Action Program that mixed war with civic improvement in an area around Danang.

The Marines provided on-the-job training in the finer points of ambush, the use of Claymore mines and other patrol maneuvers in four-man "killer teams" comprised of two Marines and two South Vietnamese soldiers.

"Then we'd build a school here and there or dig a well for a village," Mr. Safford said. "It was a Marine Corps PR deal."

On his third day in Vietnam, now Lance Cpl. Safford was taking his first bath in the bush when a firefight broke out between Viet Cong and a killer team about 300 yards away in a rice paddy.

Mr. Safford's first injury, shrapnel to the shoulder, landed him on a hospital ship for four days. "It wasn't much. It only took three stitches to close. They were more concerned about an ear infection I had at the time."

The injury left him feeling mortal, however, he said. "But it didn't stop me from being bold. I was still gung-ho."

After seven months, Mr. Safford became a squad leader replacing a sergeant killed on his third tour of Vietnam.

The killer teams were made up of volunteers. At one point, the level of volunteerism dropped sharply.

"I tried to embarrass them by going out by myself," he said.

He packed himself up with Claymore mines, flares and the Green Eye -- a primitive night vision device the size of an early model video camera. He laid out atop a rice paddy knoll on a beautiful moon-lighted night.

"I was never more scared in Vietnam," he recalled. "I couldn't stop my heart from pounding. I thought, 'This is no game. I'm out here on my own. What a stupid thing this is to do to make a point. It could be the last point I ever make.' "

After about an hour and a half, Mr. Safford decided his point should be well enough taken and he rolled over to begin to make his way back.

"In my peripheral vision I could see something coming toward me. My heart's pounding even faster. I can't tell you how frightened I was until I see that it was a piece of grass I had been laying on coming back at me."

Though he would never do it again, the stunt had its intended effect.

"After that, there was no trouble getting guys to go out with me," Mr. Safford said.

With 13 days left on his tour, and as anxious as any short-timer to get home, Mr. Safford was out with a killer team. The patrol had been delayed until he had briefed his replacement as squad leader.

"We were late getting out. It was darker than I liked, but I was walking point," he said. "I loved to walk point. Hell, if I was going back, I'd do it again." A recent rain had made the going slippery. "We were telegraphing that we were coming, slipping off dikes into the water; splosh, splosh, splosh."

In one of their quiet moments, Mr. Safford heard a click behind him and began to turn around. In a fraction of a second he was blown to the other side of the dike.

"I saw the tracers coming, then there I was, Mr. Invincible, laying in the mud. I wasn't in any pain. I just couldn't breathe very well. I was gasping for air."

He would later find out that the bullet tore through his flak jacket and opened an eight-inch-long hole under his arm pit. The bullet passed through a lung, his spleen and a kidney where it came to rest.

"Half of it's still there in little pieces," he said.

He began to pray for his mother, his sister, his girlfriend and grandparents. But he was still a Marine, still in battle. He tried to reach for his grenades.

"Right then I lost all strength," he said, "and everything suddenly became so incredibly peaceful. I had no worries in the whole world. I felt euphoric. I was looking at myself eight to 10 feet above my body."

Suddenly, a friend from his platoon, a big, muscular man was trying to roll him over.

"We had become good friends, and he was upset," Mr. Safford said. "The corpsman (medic) was right behind him and pulled him off. I'm still looking at this from above, but now the pain is starting to set in. The corpsman is checking me over, and I hear him say, 'Holy shit.' That's not good news."

Mr. Safford was bandaged and carried by poncho to a waiting helicopter.

"With every step they took it was like my whole insides were being torn up, like they were ripping me apart."

The men carried him into the helicopter. From the extent of his injuries, they knew they might never see him again and had trouble saying goodbye.

"They didn't know what to say, so they say something really stupid -- 'Take it easy.' I didn't know what to say, so I say something even stupider. 'I'll take it anyway I can get it.' I was acting brave as hell for them, but once we got in the air I begged for morphine."

After surgery, which included the removal of his spleen, Mr. Safford felt as though his insides had been shredded.

"I still had a hole in my back, and I couldn't bend over to pick up a cigarette butt, but the doctor told me I should be dead, that it was unbelievable I was still alive. I heard that a lot."

Two Marine officers appeared at his mother's Burncoat Street apartment to inform her of his injuries.

"She saw them coming from the upstairs window and thought I was dead," he said. "She ran down the stairs crying, 'Don't tell me, don't tell me.' "

Though the news report at the time attributed a statement to the Marine Corps that Mr. Safford was the victim of friendly fire, he was not told that then and does not now believe it.

"From the bullet remnants they took out of me, I was told it was an AK-47," he said, referring to the Soviet-made weapon used by North Vietnamese regulars and Viet Cong.

Mr. Safford was discharged Aug. 9, 1968.

"I'm almost 6-2, and I came home at 139 pounds, but I'm thinking I'm a war hero," he said. "I've got a great future. Things are going to be nice. I bought a new Merc. Yellow." His girlfriend, he said, was particularly fond of the color.

While Mr. Safford knew there would not be any parades for returning Vietnam soldiers, he was not prepared for the negative reception.

"I thought I had done a good thing fighting for my country," he said, "but everybody thought you were a loser. It just took away all that you thought you accomplished."

Within a few months, he and his girlfriend split up. She married soon after and had a son.

"It happened so fast, I did wonder if the kid could be mine," Mr. Safford admitted. He said his best friend at the time was dating his former girlfriend's cousin and visited her and her husband right after she had the baby.

Mr. Safford said he was assured that the baby wasn't his.

His former girlfriend, he noted, quickly had two daughters who now have six children of their own. A second marriage produced three children, including a son who is a Marine Corps reservist.

Last year, he learned from the woman that her first son also was his son.

"She named him after the guy she married," Mr. Safford said. "He knew it wasn't his son." The son, he added, was told of the situation a year before he was. "I scolded her because I missed 31 years of my son's life, but I hold no animosity."

After growing up in Millbury, the son spent eight years in the Army and now lives with his wife and two children in Monterey, Calif., where he manages a Bed & Bath store. Father and son have not met in person, but talk regularly on the phone and have exchanged photos and video on the computer and talk regularly.

Mr. Safford, who was divorced from his second wife in 1994, sells commercial fire and safety alarms in Central Florida, but is thinking about returning to New England.

"I've been here 12 years now, and Florida is starting to get old," he said.

That his dog tags should show up in the hands of a Vietnamese street vendor more than 30 years after he left the country mystifies Mr. Safford.

"There were two things you never left, your rifle and your dog tags," he said.

He told the Telegram & Gazette on Friday that he has contacted the Illinois state senator and is making arrangements to retrieve his missing tags.

As for his war experience, Mr. Safford said the passing of time has eased his sense of rejection when he came home.

"Vietnam may not have been the politically correct war, but I still have a sense of pride that only someone who has put his life on the line for our country and our way of life can. I'm a living example of the old saying, freedom is not free."