I can say from experience with several vets that it is damned near impossible to get the DoD or VA to help with lost papers. Literally starting a Congressional investigation is sometimes the only way.
This young man will have several paychecks under his belt before he gets his DD13 or DD214. It is a true nightmare dealing with these bureaucracies. Maybe the publicity will help expedite ..
I was a Finance Clerk (73-C) many years ago. Knowing the importance of paperwork, my DD-214 was copied into county records, plus the original and multiple notarized copies are in my fire resistant safe. I have every single LES from my 20+ years in the military. I do need to file my retirement papers with the courthouse along with my NGB-22, but that’s not really a big deal as long as the DD-214 is there.
If there’s no paper, it doesn’t exist.
During the early ‘90s, I helped an old man to get a replacement for an award that he had lost. It wasn’t the kind of award that one could buy in a store. It took about six months back then, if I remember correctly. It turned out that he had earned a silver star for real, and he received the replacement.
For myself, it hasn’t been important. We who were reserve component soldiers only received a DD214 for the short time that we were in initial training (only 13 weeks in my case), and quite a few employers didn’t like the Guard or male clerks anyway (crippled in the knees at times from training injuries). And yeah, I was once where Johnny’s been among civilians. Field hygiene and going without sleep can be advantageous if not practiced too long.
[Having been trained to do without sleep can stick with a man for a long time, though.]
I work as anyone else does and long ago learned to avoid mentioning prior military service at work. Let the fakes continue telling their war stories and preaching their anti-defense (fake PTSD), pro-drug-legalization sermons. They’re locally popular—some even in management—and cannot be corrected without reprisals from others manipulated by them (re. the long wait from records to expose pretenders). There are many of them out here.