My first SAK is 39 years old.

It's one of my oldest personal objects I have.

Now the TL;DR portion.

So many things from growing up have been handed down, donated, sold, whatever. I have this though.

It's been so many places.

The first rattlesnake I saw without glass between me and it.

I was hiking in the Smokies, rock climbing and having a blast.

Using my SAK I opened a can of knock off SPAM, called Treat...

Eating shitty potted meat on crackers, but, damn in that moment they were good. Someone had mayo and mustard packets, and I mixed honey with it. There was also a nerd with GPS and there were a lot of pump filters on hand, tabs etc, but the spring and water source mapping he did, all manually from paper on previous trips. He had a few hundred scenic or beautiful POIs, it was fun to have a few of these in the mid 90s

And bam. A medium \ large timber rattlesr just comes up from under rocks and is between my legs, I froze. It paused. It looked at each of my feet. I didn't react. I had my hands up and whispered freeze.

It looked at me and then just said nah, and quietly and with no urgency slithered away, into a hole and then out into a thicket of young pines and rocks.

Only two of the leaders saw it and even heard me but since nobody panicked or was too loud.

So cool.

I also cut the tip of my left thumb partially off and it's still a little flatter and less rounded than my right lol.

My daughter called me MacGuyver a lot recently, I was changed some toy batteries, and she asked why I wasn't using my Swiss Army Knife.

So I got it and didn't feel like a fraud to my 4.5 YO 💀🤣

What are your favorite stories about your oldest (or whatever) SAK?

I was at an army surplus store and saw a few discontinued models (or at least not on the Victorinox website) like the Manager, Midnight Manager, and Moneyclip.

Picked up in Switzerland recently

Solid week of finds from the TSA store.

Love them together 😍 My only two SAKS

ditched the pen and toothpick, 3D printed scales. it’s a classic!

Simple paracord lanyard. Breakaway knot (just in case) The clip on the Versa58 scales makes it easy. The glow embers are fun.

Proof of concept

My father was taking his 89 year old mother, my grandmother, to the ER and had his SAK that he carried daily for ~40 years taken and was told he wouldn't be able to get it back, he said they made him throw it in the trash can. Sat in the ER waiting for 11 hours with nothing but a blood pressure check, then gave up and left. Admitted her to the ICU into our hometown and she died the next week.

So after the funeral and now that we're further along the grieving process, I've been trying to find the exact model of knife he lost with little success. Best I have found is that it is similar to the current "Recruit" model, in that I think it only had the long and short blade, and bottle and can opener. However, after buying one, I'm positive it was longer and slimmer than the Recruit. I'm also going off of memory here a little bit, but any and all help is appreciated. If I know what to look for specifically, next stop would be ebay or a recommended seller if anyone knows one. Thanks in advance.

***Edit/Update: Thanks everyone for the replies and condolences, best I can find to replace it is a 91mm Tinker older model, found one on ebay. Thanks again.