diff --git a/llama.cpp b/llama.cpp
index bb5d35af8..889269161 100644
--- a/llama.cpp
+++ b/llama.cpp
@@ -2242,23 +2242,23 @@ static void llm_load_vocab(
 
     // special tokens
     {
-        const std::vector<std::tuple<enum llm_kv, int32_t *>> special_token_types = {
-            { LLM_KV_TOKENIZER_BOS_ID, &vocab.special_bos_id },
-            { LLM_KV_TOKENIZER_EOS_ID, &vocab.special_eos_id },
-            { LLM_KV_TOKENIZER_UNK_ID, &vocab.special_unk_id },
-            { LLM_KV_TOKENIZER_SEP_ID, &vocab.special_sep_id },
-            { LLM_KV_TOKENIZER_PAD_ID, &vocab.special_pad_id },
+        const std::vector<std::tuple<enum llm_kv, int32_t &>> special_token_types = {
+            { LLM_KV_TOKENIZER_BOS_ID, vocab.special_bos_id },
+            { LLM_KV_TOKENIZER_EOS_ID, vocab.special_eos_id },
+            { LLM_KV_TOKENIZER_UNK_ID, vocab.special_unk_id },
+            { LLM_KV_TOKENIZER_SEP_ID, vocab.special_sep_id },
+            { LLM_KV_TOKENIZER_PAD_ID, vocab.special_pad_id },
         };
-        for (auto & it : special_token_types ) {
-            int32_t id = -1;
-            const std::string kstr = kv(std::get<0>(it));
+        for (const auto & it : special_token_types ) {
+            const std::string key = kv(std::get<0>(it));
+            int32_t & id = std::get<1>(it), old_id = id;
 
-            GGUF_GET_KEY(ctx, id, gguf_get_val_u32, GGUF_TYPE_UINT32, false, kstr);
+            GGUF_GET_KEY(ctx, id, gguf_get_val_u32, GGUF_TYPE_UINT32, false, key);
             if (id != -1 && (id < 0 || size_t(id) >= vocab.id_to_token.size())) {
-                LLAMA_LOG_WARN("%s: bad special token value %d for key '%s' -- ignoring\n", __func__, id, kstr.c_str());
-                continue;
+                LLAMA_LOG_WARN("%s: bad special token: '%s' = %d, using default id %d\n",
+                    __func__, key.c_str(), id, old_id);
+                id = old_id;
             }
-            *(std::get<1>(it)) = id;
         }
     }