1999: THE YEAR IN REVIEW

U.S. Army Sgt. Andrew Ramirez was looking forward to taking a shower at the base that night when he and two fellow soldiers were ambushed by Serbian forces as they patrolled the border of Macedonia on March 31.

Their quiet afternoon patrol quickly turned nightmarish. The three servicemen were pulled out of their Humvee and beaten. For the next 32 days, they were held in a Serbian prison. Exhausted and dehydrated, Ramirez thought at times he was going crazy, he would say later.

Back in Ramirez’s East Los Angeles neighborhood, worried friends and family waited for news about the captured soldiers. Yellow ribbons and signs of support lined his father’s street.

After lobbying the Yugoslav government, the Rev. Jesse Jackson and an interfaith delegation secured the soldiers’ release May 2. Ramirez’s relieved mother, Vivian, called it the “best gift” she could have received for Mother’s Day.

Ramirez, 24, returned home a few days later to find a crush of media and supporters waiting for him. Ramirez said he was grateful to be back, but was taken aback by all the attention. “I’m just a guy in the Army who ended up getting caught,” he said later in an interview at his mother’s home in Baldwin Park. “I don’t see myself as a hero.”