Heather Atherton, Daughter of Veteran Who Has a Personal Mission

Listen: Heather Atherton

As we head towards Veteran's Day, we hear from Rocklin resident Heather Atherton. She has been a public and media relations consultant based in the Sacramento region since 1996.

She tells her story of her father, 2nd Lt Michael Moore, who passed away in 2017 from an Agent Orange related illness. Heather looked into a tragedy that struck other members of his squadron that haunted him until the day he died.

Atherton was hired as West Coast publicist for Heath Hardage Lee’s Narrative Nonfiction book “The League of Wives” in the Fall of 2019. It is the origin story of The League of Wives, the wives of our Vietnam War POWs, who became the unlikely heroines of the POW movement, conservative women, not war protesters, led by Sybil Stockdale. Their influential voices, persistence and willingness to risk everything, including working with the White House to send encrypted messages back and forth with their husbands, were key to the release of the 600+ POWs released in early 1973.

In 2020 I joined forces with the family of one of the missing men, Joseph Matejov. The family has been pushing back on the US government for solid proof they were killed in the shootdown and crash for 50 years including a presentation to government agencies requesting a status change in 2016. We are currently appealing the denial of that status change with new documentation.

Published an op-ed in USA Today which ran in full national print and online on the 50th anniversary of the Baron 52 shootdown, February 5, 2023

Read Atherton's article in USA Today: https://bit.ly/Baron52USAT50thAnniversary

Published op-ed in The Sacramento Bee on Veteran’s Day 2023 about my research on Baron 52 - https://www.sacbee.com/opinion/op-ed/article281524918.html

Co-hosted seven podcasts in Spring of 2023 (around the 50th anniversary) with host John Bear of Stories of Sacrifice podcast about Baron 52 and the research we have done along with family members of Joe Matejov, John Matejov and Mary (Matejov) Salzinger, who was one of the intel crew members whose physical remains have never been found. https://sites.google.com/uspowmiafamilylocating.com/baron52miamysterypodcast

Published an op-ed from the POW/MIA advocacy perspective on Kissinger’s passing and his hand in the Secret War in Laos and the missteps made in negotiating for the men missing in Laos who have not been accounted for on January 30, 2024 - https://www.usatoday.com/story/opinion/voices/2024/01/30/kissinger-protest-memorial-vietnam-war-pow-mia/71782178007/

She recently interviewed the director of the Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency (DPAA), Kelly McKeague, for Legacies of War’s Thip Khao Talk podcast. A release date has not been assigned yet. https://www.legaciesofwar.org/ 

Atherton was invited to attend the dedication of the EC-47 memorial dedication in March 2022 at Goodfellow AFB in Texas which is the training base for the 6994th Security Squadron where the four missing men were based. They have a memorial on-site to the men of the Baron 52.

Heather Atherton is a POW/MIA Advocate and Researcher for Baron 52 and the Matejov Family

Heather has been a public and media relations consultant based in the Sacramento region since 1996. A wife of 25 years and mother of two, she is also proud to be a child of a Vietnam Veteran and aims to help others understand this war that cast such a significant shadow upon our country but is not well explained in history books. Join me on my journey on Instagram @athertonpr or at www.athertonpr.com.

Beyond her career of stoking my passion for storytelling through the media, she discovered an insatiable appetite for research and educating others about the Secret War in Laos about six years ago, not long after her father passed away due to Agent Orange service-connected exposure illness. A pilot who flew secret reconnaissance missions over Laos in 1973, his unit was impacted by one of the most controversial MIA cases, a shootdown near the Ho Chi Minh Trail just a week after the Paris Peace Accords were signed and a week before POWs began to return in Operation Homecoming. After this discovery in her journey to understand the demons that haunted him for decades, she set off on her journey to understand the political significance and impact of that incident. This led her to join the Legacies of War team of advisors.