The most decorated Scout in the Boy Scouts of America may not be in the U.S. at all. Meet Austin Koslow from Far East Council Asia East District Troop 16, based in Tokyo.
Koslow has not only earned every single one of the 137 merit badges the Boy Scouts has to offer, but also seven silver and one gold Eagle Palms — the maximum number of the awards attainable after becoming an Eagle Scout. It's a feat that used to be a mathematical impossibility, until a recent controversial BSA rule change threw open the door. Koslow, it seems, just so happened to be the first Scout to step through it.
While you might imagine Koslow as a single-minded devotee to Scouting from the crib, he was in fact was a slow burner. Growing up in Tokyo as the son of American and Japanese parents working in recruitment, Koslow started as a Cub Scout, the first rung of the ladder in U.S. Scouting, which is open to boys from kindergarten to fifth grade, or 10 years old, but "wasn't super into it," he says.