Swimmer's Olympic medals missing

Swimmer's Olympic medals missing By Tom Orsborn - Express-News Josh Davis never thought it was a big deal that he rarely bothered to lock his minivan while chauffeuring his five children to various activities. “It’s just kids’ stuff inside,” Davis said. “It’s a typical family minivan with crap in it. We figure no one wants to go through our crap. There’s nothing of value.” That wasn’t true Saturday, though. In addition to all the dirty shoes, stale Cheerios and week-old chicken nuggets scattered about, Davis said, the minivan’s contents that day included four of his five Olympic swimming medals. Now they’re missing while the Cheerios remain. On Monday, Davis called police to report someone had taken items from his vehicle, including the four medals — three golds he won in relay events at the 1996 Games in Atlanta and one of the two relay silver medals he won at the 2000 Games in Sydney, Australia. Davis, 36, told police he’d just flown to San Antonio from a youth swimming clinic in St. Louis and went directly from the airport to watch three of his children play in a basketball game at Cornerstone Christian Schools on the North Side. He left the medals in his 2002 Dodge minivan, which has a door with a broken lock. It wasn’t unusual for Davis to travel with the medals. He uses them as motivational tools when speaking to young swimmers at clinics around the country. But instead of transporting them in a locked suitcase, Davis said he typically carries the medals in a gray sock he keeps in his roll-away travel bag. Davis, a Churchill High School graduate who was inducted into the San Antonio Sports Hall of Fame last year, won the golds for the 800-meter freestyle relay, the 400 freestyle relay and the 400 medley relay. In Sydney, he won the silvers for the 800 and 400 freestyle relays. “There’s no way I’m 100 percent certain they were stolen,” Davis said Tuesday. “They could have fallen out of my travel bag. But I had them Saturday morning when I got on the plane in St. Louis and they weren’t there when I unpacked my bags at home Saturday night.” This isn’t the first time one of Davis’ medals has turned up missing. He said he lost a silver medal about a year and a half ago, and he never has recovered it. The ones that were lost — or stolen — Saturday were in his unzipped travel bag along with “a wad of cash.” “The strange thing is, the money wasn’t taken,” Davis said. Davis said he’s certain he returned to San Antonio with the medals because airport security footage obtained by police in St. Louis show him taking them out for inspection and placing them back into the travel bag. “The detective in St. Louis said they saw me putting the sock with the medals back into the bag,” Davis said. “They either fell out of my bag somehow or were taken out of the bag. ... If they were taken, I think it happened when I was in the gym cheering on the kids.” A spokesperson for the United States Olympic Committee said replacement medals are available, but Davis hopes to recover the originals. He’s offering a reward of a “couple of thousand bucks” for the return of the medals to the office of his attorney, Arden Specia, at 419 S. Presa St. “Josh is a very forgiving person,” Specia said. “He’s not vindictive at all.” Specia said there will be no questions asked if the medals are returned. “They represent a lifetime of hard work, so they are basically priceless to me,” Davis said. “But I’m one of the few Olympians who pass them around with audiences. I love sharing them with the kids. They are symbolic of what a kid can do when they work hard and put their mind to it. I use them as a prop to show what can happen if you work hard. If I can do it, you can do it. “I feel bad because I love showing them to the kids. I’ve been on the road with some of those medals for 13 years and probably a couple of thousand kids have held them.” Anyone with information is asked to e-mail tips to findgoldmedals@yahoo.com. Staff Writer Brian Chasnoff contributed to this report. www.mysanantonio.com/.../Davis_Olympic_medals_stolen.html