He took King to an Italian restaurant in Walnut Creek. The monster truck’s driver was Ken Retzloff, a semi-retired trailer salesman from the Bay Area. That’s when the driver said, “Well, get in.” ‘Get out!’ A woman in the passenger seat said, “Are you Rick?” On the street outside the BART station, a monster truck revved its engine. As an Orange County Superior Court judge for all these years, dealing with uncertain outcomes had always been his strength. “What the hell is this going to be like?” King remembers thinking. He wanted to invite all their families to travel to Vietnam and stand with him at the spot where they died on the 50th anniversary of that precise moment. He had figured out a way to honor the dead men from Detail Echo. There would be other visits in Atlanta, in Salt Lake City, in Mission Viejo. So, in 2013, Rick King launched this quest to meet all of them. He had traveled there because, along with the anger and the sadness and the WHY ME? that comes with cancer, there was a hole inside him, and he had to fill it by connecting with the sons and daughters, the brothers and sisters of the men who died on that horrible day on Hill 494 near that dusty rock quarry in Vietnam. It was a fit appearance that hid the fact that the prostate cancer had come back. The judge was 66 years old then, thin, athletic, looking younger than his age. The judge walked out of the train station not knowing how he would recognize the man he was looking for.
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