King was excited by the idea of helping to identify missing sailors. But she didn’t want to work for someone else.

So she downloaded the packet of bidding documents — more than 100 pages — and, with some help from her daughter, submitted her own contract offer. It was scary. She’d never done anything like this before. But she felt as if she had found what she was meant to do.

“Every night when I went to bed, I would say, ‘I’m going to get this contract. I know it. It’s mine,’ ” King said.

And after a wait that seemed to take forever, she won.

King brought an honest, homespun manner to the process. And a compassion for the families she reached.

“People started telling me stories. These were all people — all sons, fathers, brothers,” King said. “For that brother or sister that you call, it may have been 75 years. But it’s like it was yesterday.”

King starts with only basic personnel facts from the Navy. It’s the families who color in the background.

She remembers talking to the brother of one USS Oklahoma sailor who burst into tears as soon as she mentioned the sailor’s name.