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Heroes Among Us: Alberto Gomez Found Special Pride For What He Did While Serving With Marines

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SUNRISE (CBSMiami) – Today we introduce you to Alberto Gomez, retired US Marine.

For 25 years he served in the Marine Corps and was part of the elite members of the Marine Corps bomb squad.

Although Gomez spent much of his time searching out and disposing of explosives, his most notable experience with the marines was much more personal than that.

"Our job was to go to these places and look for remains," Gomez said about his military experience. "American human remains that were still missing from these wars.

Some of the locations Alberto was deployed to included Japan and Hawaii but it was North Korea where he met his hardest task, searching for many of his missing brothers in uniform.

Gomez describes the harrowing numbers of US military personnel missing in that region, "In Korea, for example, North Korea, at the time we had an excess of 8000 missing Americans."

Although he knew he was risking his life for those that had already passed, Gomez found an amazing amount of pride in serving the way he did.

"I found it to be a privilege and an honor to be a part of such a unit that would go in and dig up the remains and repatriate them and bring them back home," he said.

And it's something that hits close to home for him as his military pride only continues to grow.

"My proudest achievement is that I have a son that's sort of following in my footsteps, and he's in the marine corps," Gomez said.

Alberto, on behalf of CBS4 and the Florida Panthers we would like to say thank you for your service.

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