Hoping for Sgt. Maupin

Remember him? Please keep Sgt. Maupin and his family in your prayers.

AP: Mother of Missing Soldier Maintains Hope---

BATAVIA, Ohio - Nearly 30,000 pictures of Matt Maupin are circulating around Iraq, a loving effort by his parents to locate the only U.S. soldier still listed as missing since his capture two years ago.

Carolyn Maupin steadfastly hopes that someday, someone will recognize Matt, and he will come home.

She refuses to consider the alternative.

"I honestly thought he'd be back by now," she said. "I didn't think it would take this long.

Pictures of Matt are placed inside the boxes of goodies sent to troops in Iraq by the Maupins' Yellow Ribbon Support Center — a storefront operation near the Sam's Club where Matt used to work.

"We put 10 pictures inside each box with a little note asking them to please help us find him, and also thanking them for defending our freedom," Maupin said.

Sgt. Keith Matthew Maupin is known as Matt because Keith is also his father's name. He was a 20-year-old private first class in the Army Reserves when he was captured April 9, 2004, when his fuel convoy, part of the 724th Transportation Co., was ambushed west of Baghdad.

A week later, Arab television network Al-Jazeera aired a videotape showing Maupin sitting on the floor surrounded by five masked men holding automatic rifles.

That June, Al-Jazeera aired another tape purporting to show a U.S. soldier being shot. But the dark, grainy tape showed only the back of the victim's head and did not show the actual shooting.

The Army ruled it was inconclusive whether the soldier in the second tape was Maupin, and he has been promoted twice since his capture.

After a routine review a year ago, the adjutant general approved an Army board's recommendation to continue Maupin's status as "missing-captured." That has not changed, and there are no plans for another review, said Maj. Nathan Banks, an Army spokesman in Washington.

I hope we are able to find Sgt. Maupin. We shouldn't leave any man behind. Keep them in your prayers.

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