Linda Stocker
D.O.V.E. Fund member

A graduate of the Pacific Coast Banking School, Linda is a native of the Pacific Northwest. She married her high school sweetheart, Gary Stocker, in 1967 just days before the arrival of his draft notice.

In 2003, Linda retired from her 40 year career in bank management and now dedicates her life to caring for her disabled Vietnam Veteran husband and doing volunteer work.

In 2005 Linda and Gary traveled to Vietnam, back to visit where he served with the 101st Airborne 1968-1969. They went in the hopes of shedding what Gary calls his "bad baggage from the war". That trip instilled in them a desire to do more for the people of Vietnam.

Linda served from 2006 to 2009 as Personal Effects Coordinator with another non-profit organization , researching and returning U. S. dog tags retrieved from Vietnam to veterans or their surviving families. She managed over 1700 dog tags and was responsible for return of over 300 of them.

After visiting a Vietnam leper village in 2005, Linda began spreading the word about the need for specialized knit and crocheted leper bandages. As the network of workers grew, she dubbed it the "Bandage Brigade", setting up a blog site from which to recognize and encourage the volunteers. She was seeking new transportation methods for the bandages at about the same time as she returned a dog tag to The D.O.V.E. Fund Trustee, Tom Treece. In 2009, The Bandage Brigade became an official project of The D.O.V.E. Fund.

As of March 2010, The D.O.V.E. Fund Bandage Brigade has been responsible for delivering over 7,000 bandages to leper villages in Vietnam. You can access the Bandage Brigade blog site at http://leprosybandages.blogspot.com/

Linda continues to manage The D.O.V.E. Fund Bandage Brigade and also serves as the chairman of the D.O.V.E. Fund Humanitarian Committee. She and Gary have a daughter and three grandchildren.