Artist’s Quest Pays Off for Dying Veteran : Military: Campaign on behalf of an ill, homeless man comes to a close when fingerprints prove that the transient once served in the Navy. He now is assured of federal medical treatment.

For four months, Charles Keefe waged a lonely campaign to prove that a terminally ill, mentally impaired homeless man was a U.S. veteran. He hunted for clues in musty military publications, badgered the media to run the story and beseeched veterans’ advocates to help set the record straight.

Last week, Keefe’s efforts were at least partially rewarded when local veterans officials confirmed that the man Keefe befriended is indeed a U.S. veteran.

The mystery began to unravel when, at Keefe’s urging, the Department of Military and Veterans Affairs for Los Angeles County sent the transient’s fingerprints to the FBI, which identified him as David Louis Palmer. A subsequent check of military records by veterans officials found that Palmer served in the U.S. Navy for six months--not long, but long enough to qualify for treatment at a VA hospital and burial in a military cemetery.

As of late last week, Palmer was being treated at the VA Hospital in Brentwood, the same facility that discharged him last July after officials said he was a paranoid schizophrenic and not a veteran. Doctors have said Palmer, who is suffering from inoperable lung and brain cancer, has only months to live.

“It has been a four-month battle that has given him his dignity,” said Keefe, a struggling Culver City artist.

Keefe, whose search for Palmer’s identity has become something of an obsession, continues to spin intriguing conspiracy theories about the case. He believes that the tattooed, badly scarred indigent is actually a three-war veteran who began his fighting career as a teen-ager in World War II, fought in Korea and Vietnam, and was stripped of his true identity during a mysterious robbery of his personal papers 20 years ago.

He says Palmer’s real name is actually David Robert Palmer, and that he was probably the target of a benefits scam or some other kind of cover-up.

Robert Archuleta, chairman of the Los Angeles County Veterans Advisory Commission, said the panel will explore those possibilities. But he stressed that in light of Palmer’s deteriorating physical and mental health, the most important thing is that he has been identified as a veteran and now has access to a VA Hospital.

“My concern is not if he won a Bronze Star or a Purple Heart,” Archuleta said. “My concern is that he served this country honorably and that he be given recognition for that service.”

Constrained by the federal Privacy Act, veterans officials can reveal little about Palmer’s record except to confirm that he is a U.S. veteran. Enlistment papers obtained by Keefe and provided to The Times indicate that Palmer was born Jan. 24, 1937, in Cleveland, served in the Marine Corps Reserve in 1955 and early 1956 and transferred to the Naval Reserve on April 16, 1956.

John Paxson, chief of veterans assistance for the Department of Veterans Affairs, declined to discuss Palmer’s service record. But Keefe, who sat in on a recent meeting between Palmer and Paxson, said records retrieved from military archives show that Palmer served for six months in the regular Navy, entitling him to hospital and burial benefits.

Keefe acknowledged that it is not the decorated service record he had hoped would be uncovered.

Nonetheless, it does bring some sense of closure to a quest that began when Keefe was watching a documentary on the Vietnam War and spotted a photograph of a soldier who resembled a confused homeless man in his neighborhood.

Keefe struck up a relationship with the man, who said his name was David Robert Palmer, that he was 68, a native of West Virginia and saw action in World War II, Korea and Vietnam.

Palmer’s story was as fascinating as it was improbable. He told Keefe that all his personal papers were stolen in a 1973 robbery, and that from that point on he had received government checks and other documents made out to “David Louis Palmer,” and bearing a new Social Security number and birth date.

He insisted that he had served in the Marine Corps for 30 years and that the horrible scars on his body were the result of being wounded in battle and tortured as a prisoner of war.

Disoriented and moved easily to anger, Palmer failed to produce names, dates or any other information that might have confirmed that he was who he said he was, but Keefe believed him anyway, and last month took the matter before the Veterans Advisory Commission.

“Mr. Palmer has been imprisoned by these circumstances after he fought for 30 years--so people like you and I could live in peace and freedom,” Keefe wrote. “The irony here is beyond description.”

Keefe remains convinced that Palmer fell prey to a benefits fraud of some sort.

Archuleta, the veterans commissioner, said such a scenario is not unthinkable. “There are people who have made false claims under false pretenses and received benefits,” he said.

For now, however, Palmer must be content with the fact that his service to his country is now undisputed.

“He will be buried along with his brothers,” Keefe said. “It assures he won’t be a John Doe.”