A Purple Heart lost nearly 50 years ago belonging to a soldier from the Bronx is returned to his family. NY1's Talia Kaplan tells us about the detective work that got the medal back.

A Bronx man named Bernard McNamara earned a Purple Heart in World War II, but it was lost sometime in the 1960s.

McNamara's family always wondered what happened to it.

Enter Sen. Charles Schumer. "We've solved the mystery of the missing Purple Heart," he said Sunday.

The medal was found on a street in Nyack, Rockland County, more than a dozen years ago.

It was taken to an American Legion post, and Schumer's office was contacted.

The date 1943, and name B.J. McNamara, were engraved on it.

But Schumer said more than a thousand B. J. McNamaras served in World War II.

After lengthy research, a Schumer staffer determined that the medal belonged to a Bernard McNamara, who died in 1975.

"Reuniting B.J. McNamara's Purple Heart with his family is a storybook ending after a long, long search," Schumer said.

McNamara's daughter, Catherine Birong, thinks her mother and her cousins, who lived in Rockland County, played a role in the medal's disappearance. 

"She took the medals out — my dad's medals — and she was pinning them on all the little kids and she told them to go outside and play soldier," Birong said. "I think that was the last time I ever saw those medals."  

Bernard McNamara was wounded by German artillery fire in Italy in 1943, and was taken prisoner the following month. After the war, he worked for Con Ed. 

Some of McNamara's children and grandchildren choked back tears as they held the medal in their hands.

"If you would have told me a week ago today this would have happened, I would have said, 'You are crazy,'" Brian McNamara, Bernard McNamara's son, said while fighting back tears. "This is going to happen. I am amazed, and I am thankful."

"It's very touching, and I am very appreciative of Senator Schumer's efforts, and his staff," Birong said. "They went through a lot to find us."

Birong says the medal will now be on display at her home as a way to honor her father and his dedication to the country.