Petaluma Marine comes home

A young hero came home Monday -- true to plan -- on his own two feet.

Marine Cpl. Steven Kiernan, 21 of Petaluma, recipient of the Purple Heart, was walking on two gleaming prosthetic legs and using just one cane.

It was his first trip home since losing both legs after he was wounded in an explosion in Fallujah on May 4. He had been deployed to Iraq only three weeks before.

For the past five months, Kiernan has lived at the National Naval Medical Center in Maryland and the Walter Reed Army Medical Center in Washington, D.C., where his rehabilitation is expected to continue for another year.

What's on his list of things to do on his 10-day visit home?

"Oh man, I just want to relax. See my friends. Go to Cattlemens and In-N-Out, which they don't have on the East Coast. Every time I come home, we go to Pier 39, so I hope we can do that, too," he said.

Kiernan's therapists have described his recovery as unusually fast, and June 19 marked the day he first walked on his new feet.

Since then, he has entered a recumbent bike race in New York City, played in a golf tournament and went camping on horseback. He recently traveled to Puerto Rico, where he became a certified scuba diver.

His first stop in Petaluma on Monday was Raintree Car Wash, the site of a summertime Wounded Warriors benefit and a donation point for a Bank of Marin trust account set up by the car wash's owners, Jan Frym and her husband, Dave Cormier, a former Marine.

The plan was to swing by to thank the couple for what they had done. They handed Kiernan more checks.

"This is totally unnecessary," he said before thanking the couple, exchanging handshakes and hugs.

"These young men, who go off and fight for our freedoms, they make sacrifices for us," Jan Frym said. "In Petaluma, people feel strongly about supporting our military. There were people, coming in day after day to buy things and drop money in the bucket."

Kiernan joined the Marines when he was 17, and his request to wear his dress uniform to his 2005 Petaluma High School graduation launched community debate.

Since being wounded, he has been deluged with offers of money, thanks, handshakes and hugs.

"He received so much mail from home, and he was shocked that so many people cared about him. He doesn't like the attention in one way, but he understands that people really do care," Frym said.

If receiving a big check within minutes of rolling into town felt unusual, his second day might feel downright surreal. A private, invitation-only luncheon will be held in his honor at Camelbak, a Petaluma company that provides hydration equipment to the military and athletes.

Company executives made a special trip to Walter Reed to bring him a box full of goodies and have kept in touch ever since.

"Steven Kiernan really represents a lot to us. He's our son, our brother and our neighbor. We want to honor him because it's just the right thing to do," said Jeremy Galten, director of engineering at Camelbak.

You can reach Staff Writer Rayne Wolfe at 521-5240 or rayne.wolfe@pressdemocrat.com.