There is no higher honor the Coast Guard Auxiliary can present to one of its members than the Auxiliary Distinguished Service Medal, or ADSM. Established to recognize Auxiliarists whose meritorious service is both exceptional and beneficial to the entire Auxiliary, the ADSM is an award of such prestige that is awarded only by the Commandant of the Coast Guard, a distinction shared by just one other decoration—the Legion of Merit—issued by the Auxiliary.
Like the Distinguished Service awards for Coast Guard and other branches of the Armed Forces of the United States, the eligibility criteria for the ADSM mandating that the recipient’s performance must have had a positive and measurable impact on the entire organization means it is almost exclusively awarded to elected and appointed officers. This stricture does not, however, mean that the award is limited only to officers, merely that they are in positions of authority in which their actions are more likely to reach the standards for the awards as spelled out in the Auxiliary manual.
But just because an Auxiliarist’s actions or service had a service-wide impact is not along enough to justify awarding the ADSM. The regulations make it clear that it must have resulted from exceptional performance of duty which is clearly much higher than is reasonably expected and which sets the recipient apart from his or her counterparts.
Although uncommon, it is possible for an Auxiliarist to be awarded the ADSM more than once. A large gold star is worn to denote each subsequent instance of receiving the honor, and a large silver star is worn in place of five gold stars in the very rare instance of an Auxiliarist receiving the ADSM six times.