Elsie Seetoo, living at Collington, received the Congressional Gold Medal.  The ceremony January 29, 2019, was the first in an effort to honor approximately 20,000 Chinese-American veterans who served in the U.S. military in World War II.

Seetoo was the highest ranked and oldest among the group on Tuesday. During her service, she trained Chinese soldiers as medical orderlies and in 1944 she joined the U.S. Army Nurse Corps as a first lieutenant. She celebrated her 100th birthday last September.

“I’ll wear it when I go out,” Seetoo said about her Congressional Gold Medal. “Or maybe, just to impress the other folks that live in the retirement community, I would just wear it once.”