VA Study: Aspirin May Help Prevent Some Cancers

VA study highlights benefits of enhanced aspirin in preventing certain cancers

WASHINGTON — Researchers know of aspirin’s benefits in preventing certain ailments — from cardiovascular disease to most recently colorectal cancer. But while the link to those two conditions was made, researchers also questioned how and if this “wonder drug” could work to ward off other types of cancers. 

Thanks to a team led by Dr. Vinod Vijayan at the DeBakey Veterans Affairs (VA) Medical Center in Houston and Dr. Lenard Lichtenberger of the University of Texas Health Sciences Center, new studies verify their theory of cancer-prevention benefits based on aspirin’s effects on platelets—blood cells that form clots to stop bleeding. The findings appear in the February 2017 issue of Cancer Prevention Research journal.

“Along with clotting, platelets also play a role in forming new blood vessels,” Vijayan said. “That action is normally beneficial, such as when a new clot forms after a wound, and new vessels are needed to redirect blood flow. But the same action can help tumors grow. It’s this process that aspirin can interrupt.”

Their lab tests showed how aspirin blocked the interaction between platelets and cancer cells by shutting down the enzyme COX-1, thereby curbing the number of circulating platelets and their level of activity.

Some of their experiments used regular aspirin from a local drug store. In another phase, the researchers used a special preparation of aspirin combined with phosphatidylcholine, a type of lipid, or fat molecule. The molecule is a main ingredient in soy lecithin. The product, known as Aspirin-PC/PL2200, is designed to ease the gastrointestinal risk associated with standard aspirin.

The enhanced aspirin complex was even stronger against cancer than the regular aspirin. Summarizing their findings, the researchers wrote: “These results suggest that aspirin’s chemopreventive effects may be due, in part, to the drug blocking the proneoplastic [supporting new, abnormal growth, as in cancer] action of platelets and [they support] the potential use of Aspirin-PC/PL2200 as an effective and safer chemopreventive agent for colorectal cancer and possibly other cancers.”

In collaboration with researchers at MD Anderson Cancer Center in Houston, the group said they plan to test the lipid-aspirin complex for safety and efficacy in people at high risk for colorectal cancer. Meanwhile, they said their results, so far, “support the use of low-dose aspirin for chemoprevention.” They added that Aspirin-PC/PL2200 has “similar chemopreventive actions to low-dose aspirin and may be more effective.”

The research study was supported by the National Institutes of Health.  For more information about VA research on cancer, visit www.research.va.gov/topics/cancer.

Lichtenberger is a professor of integrative biology and pharmacology at the University of Texas Health Sciences Center. Vijayan, an expert in platelet biology, is with the Center for Translational Research on Inflammatory Diseases at the DeBakey VA Medical Center. He is also an associate professor at Baylor College of Medicine.

Hundreds Attended Funeral for Amie Muller After Iraq Burn Pits Battle

Hundreds say goodbye to Amie Muller, who sounded alarm over toxic risks for Iraq veterans
Star Tribune
By Mark Brunswick
FEBRUARY 24, 2017

Muller, who died of pancreatic cancer at age 36, worked and lived next to one of the most toxic military burn pits in all of Iraq.

National Guard veteran Amie Muller believed deployments to Iraq caused the cancer that killed her.

She worked and lived next to burn pits that billowed toxic smoke night and day at an air base in northern Iraq. After returning to Minnesota, she began experiencing health problems usually not seen in a woman in her 30s.

Muller died a week ago, nine months after being diagnosed with Stage III pancreatic cancer. On Friday, more than 800 of her friends and family gathered at a memorial service in Woodbury to remember the life of the 36-year-old mother of three. A pastor noted her loss was both painful and seemingly incomprehensible.

“I wish there was a simple way to explain what has happened to Amie. Why Amie is gone,” said Pastor Lisa Renlund. “Life truly isn’t that simple. It can get messy. It can feel complicated. It can seem unfair.”

But others also are remembering Muller’s battle to win recognition from the U.S. government for victims of the burn pits, which have the potential of becoming the Iraq and Afghanistan wars’ equivalent of the Vietnam War’s Agent Orange. It took nearly three decades for the U.S. government to eventually link the defoliant used in Vietnam to cancer.

Muller first told her story in the Star Tribune last year shortly after she was diagnosed.

In 2005 and in 2007, Muller was deployed to Balad, Iraq, with the Minnesota Air National Guard, embedded with a military intelligence squadron. The burn pit near her living quarters there was one of the most notorious of the more than 230 that were constructed at military bases across Iraq and Afghanistan before their use was restricted in 2009. Items ranging from Styrofoam to metals and plastics to electrical equipment to human body parts were incinerated, the flames stoked with jet fuel.
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Soldiers in Afghanistan Send Valentines to 5 Year Old

Soldiers in Afghanistan among hundreds who sent valentines to New Castle boy battling cancer
CBS 4 Indy
BY CBS4 WEB
FEBRUARY 14, 2017

NEW CASTLE, Ind. – A New Castle boy battling brain cancer is feeling the love from people across the world this Valentine’s Day.

The family of 5-year-old Jace Griffin has been encouraging others to send the kindergarten student cards to distract him from his pain.

Jace’s father told CBS4 that the little boy “is doing GREAT!” after receiving over 1,400 valentines. He said they had received some as far away as Japan.

A group of soldiers stationed in Afghanistan even sent the little boy a video message to lift his spirits.
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Fort Campbell Family Welcomed Home 3 of 4 New Babies

3 of Fort Campbell quadruplets released from hospital 
Clarksville Now 
February 8, 2017

NASHVILLE, Tenn. (WKRN) – Three of the quadruplets delivered by the wife of a Fort Campbell soldier are back home following an extended stay at the hospital after their birth. Kayla and Sgt. Charles Gaytan are the proud parents of quadruplets born at the end of 2016 without fertility treatment of any kind. 

Babies Lillian, Victoria and Charles have all returned home. The final quadruplet, Michael, should be released from the hospital on Wednesday or Thursday. Diagnosed with Hodgkin’s Lymphoma last January, Kayla had just finished five months of chemotherapy and was in remission when she learned she was pregnant. read more here

Parris Island Marine Families Question Cause of Cancer in Their Children

Marine family wonders if child's cancer could be linked to Lowcountry military housing
WJCL News
Meghan Schiller
Jan 15, 2017

A Marine wife created a video last week in effort to warn and educate other military families living on or nearby Beaufort's Laurel Bay Housing. The mother, Amanda Whatley, believes there is the potential for those living in the area to develop cancer and other health problems.

A Marine wife created a video last week in effort to warn and educate other military families living on or nearby Beaufort's Laurel Bay Housing. The mother, Amanda Whatley, believes there is the potential for those living in the area to develop cancer and other health problems.

The Lowcountry military housing neighborhood, filled with Marine families stationed at Parris Island or MCAS Beaufort, is now under the national microscope.

The Whatley family lived in Beaufort from July 2007 to November 2010, according to her Youtube video. In the video, Watley talks about her daughter Katie's fight with cancer. She says that Katie is one of 8 children that she knows of that have been diagnosed since living at Laurel Bay.

Whatley recently posted an update to her Youtube post, saying that the number of children with cancer has grown from 8 to 13.
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Laurel Bay Military Housing and Kids with Cancer
Amanda Whatley
Published on Jan 7, 2017

***Edited to add.....The number of children with cancer has grown from 8 to 13 since the video went live. I have also received emails from at least 20 adults who were stationed in Beaufort and then diagnosed with cancer. I expect that number is actually exponentially higher. The only thing I wish I could add to the video is that we are not certain that the oil tanks are the issue. We have asked the Marine Corps to check a list of contaminated areas on Laurel Bay, Parris Island, and MCAS Beaufort. ***

This video is meant to serve as a public service announcement to all families that have been stationed at MCRD Parris Island or MCAS Beaufort and lived in the Laurel Bay military housing community. In the last several years, 8 children (that we know of so far) that lived at Laurel Bay have been diagnosed with cancer. Please share this video with the Marine Corps and Navy families you know that have lived there.

If your child has been diagnosed with cancer and you were stationed in Beaufort, please contact me at courage4katie@gmail.com

Fort Campbell Wife Celebrated Birth of Quads...Battling Cancer

AWESOME UPDATE
CLARKSVILLE, Tenn. (CLARKSVILLENOW) – A GoFundMe campaign for a Fort Campbell soldier and wife with newborn quadruplets has now topped $1 million dollars.



Fort Campbell woman gives birth to quadruplets while battling cancer
WKRN News
Josh Breslow
Published: January 2, 2017

“We know that He’s gotta have a different plan up there for us, and surely everything’s gonna work out in the end,” said Kayla Gaytan.

NASHVILLE, Tenn. (WKRN) – A Fort Campbell soldier and his wife have four tiny reasons to celebrate 2017.

Kayla and Sgt. Charles Gaytan are the proud parents of quadruplets born Friday afternoon at Vanderbilt University Medical Center without fertility treatment of any kind.

“It was exciting. It was nerve-wracking. But to see them when they all came out and to hear them crying, that was really exciting,” Kayla told News 2.

Diagnosed with Hodgkin’s Lymphoma last January, Kayla had just finished five months of chemotherapy and was in remission when she learned she was pregnant.

Already a mother-of-two, the 29-year-old was excited to tell her husband Charles, a Fort Campbell soldier.

“She called me on the phone, and we’re in a Humvee and I kinda couldn’t really hear her,” recalled Charles. “It was truly some of the best news I’ve ever gotten in my life.”
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Vietnam Veteran Went From Hamburger Hill to Facing Homelessness

Veterans in need? They’ve got friends, indeed
East Bay Times
By SAM RICHARDS
PUBLISHED: January 1, 2017

Metsiou served in the Army’s 101st Airborne “for 366 days in 1968 and ’69,” he said. “I’m one of the lucky ones who made it back from Hamburger Hill,” referring to a battle against the North Vietnamese in May 1969 in which 400 Americans died and which drew criticism from some lawmakers for its questionable strategic value. His landlord consented to give him until New Year’s to find a new place to live.

Disabled American Veterans Chapter 154 vice commander Sean Poynter, of Pittsburg, unloads a child’s bicycle at the new home of Vietnam veteran Richard Metsiou, 68, in Antioch on Friday, Dec. 30. Richard Metsiou and his wife, Zitta, were facing eviction from their home in Pittsburg, but with the help of Shelter, Inc. and the Disabled American Veterans Chapter 154, the couple were able to move into a new home in Antioch. They are also raising three adopted grandchildren. (Jose Carlos Fajardo/Bay Area News Group)

ANTIOCH — Finding a place to live can be an expensive challenge in the Bay Area, and for Richard Metsiou, a Vietnam veteran battling cancer and a bad credit score, an almost impossible one.

So when his longtime landlord died and her family chose to sell the Pittsburg house where he and his family have been living, he had to act fast. Metsiou needed a little help from his friends, and he got it.

Some of them were friends he’d never met before.

“A friend of mine came to me and said Richard was in a bind,” said Sean Poynter, of Pittsburg, who knows Metsiou from the Mount Diablo Disabled American Veterans post in Pittsburg, where he is senior vice commander. “I put it out in an email, that a fellow (veteran) needed some help, and all these guys showed up.”

On Friday, eight members of veterans groups from East Contra Costa County, and from Shelter, Inc. of Contra Costa, a nonprofit whose main mission is fighting homelessness, were unloading trailers in front of a house on West 10th Street in Antioch, where Metsiou, his wife, Zitta, and their three adopted grandchildren will soon live.

But before that, Poynter called Shelter, Inc. for help, and it came though big time, he said. The agency helped find an affordable house with an owner who could deal with Metsiou’s credit issues.

“They’ve been absolutely great,” said 68-year-old Metsiou, who is physically weak and also battling post-traumatic stress disorder.
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Neighbors Rush to Help Disabled Veteran Escape Fire

Bed-ridden with cancer, veteran crawls to safety with girlfriend from Springdale fire
WTAE News 4 Pittsburg
Sheldon Ingram
December 30, 2016

SPRINGDALE, Pa.
A fierce and rapid fire tore through a two-story Springdale house on Butler Street, chasing a disabled military veteran and his girlfriend into the street.

Mike Elliot, 65, crawled to safety, though disabled, on oxygen and battling cancer.

Neighbors who rushed to his aid say he was wearing boxer shorts, a T-shirt and no shoes while on his knees in the frigid night air.

"It just tore my heart apart to see this right after Christmas," said Joe Kuchek, a neighbor who gathered blankets to assist Elliot.

He shared the house with his girlfriend, Janis Schweitzer, 69. Both escaped without injury, but the house is destroyed.
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Agent Orange: Florida veteran claims 40-year cover-up by Air Force

Florida veteran claims 40-year cover-up by Air Force
WFLA Staff Reports
Published: December 22, 2016

PINELLAS COUNTY, Fla. (WFLA) — A former U.S. Air Force pilot called it the great betrayal.

Scott Nelms claims a 40-year cover-up by the Air Force may have cost veterans and their families dearly. Nelms said the USAF sprayed significant amounts of the toxic defoliant Agent Orange at bases in Thailand.

The Pinellas County veteran has accused the Department of Veterans Affairs of stonewalling veterans who served in Thailand and ignoring facts about what and when they suffered exposure.

Nelms points to a now-declassified 1973 report that said significant use of defoliants occurred on U.S. bases in Thailand. The Project CHECO Southeast Asia report “Base Defense in Thailand” also stated the defoliants were used inside the perimeter of bases.

Nelms flew about 100 missions out of Thailand, refueling fighter jets and bombers during the Vietnam War. His new mission is getting out the word that U.S. veterans who served in Thailand were exposed to significant amounts of Agent Orange.

Nelms was stationed at U-Tapeo Air Force Base. “I had no idea they were spraying Agent Orange in Thailand,” he said.
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Camp Lejeune Marine Dying For Promised Care Delivery

Sick Marine still waits for the help he was promised
KOMO News
by Tracy Vedder
December 15th 2016

George's scleroderma is one of 15 diseases the Veterans' Administration determined could have been caused by contaminated drinking water at Marine base Camp LeJeune. And Congress passed a law in 2012 so anyone who served there between 1953 and 1987, and who has one of those diseases, is automatically eligible for VA health care.

SEATTLE -- In spite of a personal promise from the secretary of veterans affairs to examine his claim, a local Marine Corps veteran with a fatal disease still waits for help

In October the KOMO Investigators asked Secretary Robert McDonald about Spike George. He's battling a disease the VA already determined is service related. But not only is the VA not paying him disability, it's also stopped answering any calls or questions about his case.

Spike George can't wait much longer. He suffers from scleroderma. It's a progressive disease that makes it difficult to breathe and impossible to eat. He's so weak he can't really walk anymore. George has been in and out of the hospital for successive surgeries and bouts of pneumonia this past year. We had to ask him to drop his normally stoic demeanor to tell us how he's really doing. George admits, the reality is harsh. "There's times that I think how long? How long do I have to put up with this? How long am I going to be here ... suffering?"
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Dying Vietnam Veteran Continues to Fight VA For Benefits

After fighting in Vietnam, he struggles with PTSD, the VA – and a terminal diagnosis
News and Observer
Michael Doyle
November 23, 2016

“I did the very best I could for my country,” Sosa said.

THE APPELLANT RECOUNTED EXCHANGING GUNFIRE WITH THE ENEMY AND THE WOUNDING AND KILLING OF MEMBERS OF HIS UNIT . . . THE APPELLANT ALSO STATED THAT DURING THE AMBUSH HE ‘PRAYED FOR HIS LIFE.’
U.S. Court of Appeals for Veterans Claims Judge Mary J. Schoelen

The Gulfport, Mississippi, resident couldn’t escape them. Shards of what happened in South Vietnam in 1966 burst inside the 78-year-old Army veteran, shredding his peace of mind, he says.

For years, though, Department of Veterans Affairs examiners repeatedly denied Sosa’s claim of suffering from service-connected post-traumatic stress disorder. Inadequate evidence, one examiner said. Too vague, said another. Unsupported by “objective test results,” ruled a third.

Now, a specialized federal court for veterans has given Sosa another fighting chance to obtain the diagnosis he’s been seeking. If he succeeds this time, his VA benefits will increase, as will, perhaps, this terminally ill man’s belief in the system that so far has frustrated him.

“I am sorely disappointed in the VA,” Sosa said in a telephone interview. “They didn’t do nothing for me.”

Time, for Sosa, is getting short.

The retired commercial artist has been diagnosed with terminal cancer. He says doctors have given him just several months to live.

At one point, thinking about a potential increase in VA benefits, he imagined taking a vacation with his wife, Sheryl. Now, having given up morphine because of the hallucinations, he ranks his pain at 8 on a 10-scale, and future planning is stripped to the bone.

“My main concern: not to leave my wife in (bad) financial circumstances,” Sosa said.

Sosa started seeking post-traumatic-stress disability compensation benefits more than a dozen years ago, launching a prolonged process that has since carried him through myriad medical exams, administrative hearings and court proceedings.

“The court notes that (Sosa’s) claim has been pending since 2004 and has been remanded by the board three times for additional development,” Schoelen wrote, adding pointedly that she “regrets that this claim must be remanded to the board but expects that the secretary (of veterans affairs) will handle this claim in an expeditious manner.”

Judge Schoelen, in her 12-page ruling, called that assessment inadequate, in part because it failed to properly consider Sosa’s own account of what he’d experienced. Her decision bounces Sosa’s application back to the Board of Veterans Appeals, where a new review will have to race against Sosa’s decline.
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Florida Marine's Widow Forced to Fight VA After Camp Lejeune

8 INVESTIGATES: Camp Lejeune widow keeps fighting V.A. for her husband and benefits
WFLA 8 News
By Steve Andrews
Published: October 27, 2016

“I’ve lost my husband, I’ve lost my home, I will not lose my dignity.” Tara Craver

AVON PARK, Fla. (WFLA) — Tara Craver of Avon Park is becoming a familiar site at busy intersections outside V.A. facilities. She protests what she believes is unfair V.A. treatment of marines and their families.

“They killed my husband,” said Tara.

Her husband Karle was a marine, stationed at Camp Lejeune in the 70’s. His is one of the many faces of Camp Lejeune, the site of one of the largest mass contaminations in American history. From 1953 to 1987, an estimated 750,000 marines, their families as well as base employees were exposed to cancer causing chemicals in their drinking water.

“They didn’t contaminate themselves, the government did and they kept it hid for two or three decades. They kept it hid,” added Tara.

Doctors diagnosed Karle with esophageal cancer in January 2014. He died 10 weeks later.

Karle passed well before Tara heard that the V.A. rejected his claim that his cancer was connected to Camp Lejeune.
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Burn Pit Marine Abandoned After Burn Pit Exposure

Marine Dies, Family Blames Burn Pit for Terminal Illness
FOX 40 Sacramento
BY SONSEEAHRAY TONSALL
OCTOBER 7, 2016

SACRAMENTO -- What Agent Orange was to Vietnam veterans, some say toxic exposure from burn pits is to those who have fought in Iraq and Afghanistan.

One local family has been told their Marine son will probably not survive the weekend and they believe it's because of a toxic war injury that's turned into a killer here at home.

"He's a hero. He's a fighter," Marty Robinson said of his stepson. "What he has done for this country ... he loved the Marines."

"It just made him feel like he had a purpose and that he was doing something really positive with his life," said mother Karen Robinson.

But the Robinsons, Ricky Wasco's parents, say that positive has turned into the negative that will take him from them, his highschool sweet heart wife and their three little girls.

After a failed bone marrow transplant, the 27-year-old corporal's organs are failing as he faces his last days with acute lymphocytic leukemia.
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Dying Wish of Vietnam Veteran, Fix the VA

Vietnam veteran's dying wish: Improve VA healthcare
Hawaii News Now
By Mileka Lincoln, Reporter
September 14th 2016

Hall was one of more than 4,300 veterans receiving VA care on the Big Island, where there are only four VA doctors.

KALAPANA, BIG ISLAND (HawaiiNewsNow) - Sixty-eight-year-old Roy Hall was holding his wife Edy's hand when he passed away on Saturday.

The combat-wounded Vietnam veteran and forever Marine died exactly one month after he was diagnosed with lung cancer at a Hilo emergency room.

Hall was a long-time U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs patient who claims his VA doctor missed the diagnosis -- and by the time someone else caught it, it was terminal.

Hall was one of more than 4,300 veterans receiving VA care on the Big Island, where there are only four VA doctors.

"I wish I would've gotten killed in Vietnam," Hall said, from his death bed. "Then I wouldn't have to go through this. I f***ing hate it."

In Hall's final days, it was his dying wish to share his story with others in hopes it could lead to improved health care for all service members.

His wife Edy, a veteran herself who served in the Air Force and beat both breast and colon cancer, calls it her husband's final mission.

In August 2014, Roy says he went to the Hilo VA primary care clinic seeking treatment for debilitating back pain.

Over the next two and a half years, Roy and Edy Hall say his physician repeatedly prescribed him pain pills and referred him to his VA psychiatrist for management of his PTSD.

"Eight months ago he started slowing down," Edy Hall said. "The pain was getting worse and worse. He didn't want to go back to the doctor because he kept telling him it was his PTSD or he was surfing too much, instead of even doing just an x-ray. Then he started losing weight like crazy. And then he even said, 'I think I have cancer.'"
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Hawaii News Now - KGMB and KHNL

First responder PTSD similar to combat vets

Finally someone has taken the different types of PTSD seriously! It is what experts I learned from over three decades ago figured out. Combat PTSD is different from others but so is the type first responders have.  Risking your life as a career is a lot different than surviving trauma once in a lifetime.

First responder PTSD similar to combat vets: Report
TORONTO SUN
BY KEVIN CONNOR
FIRST POSTED: TUESDAY, AUGUST 16, 2016

A study of a group of Canadian firefighters showed rates of PTSD of more than 17%.

A separate study of 402 professional firefighters from Germany found that the PTSD rate was at 18%.

While no such study has been done in Toronto, the TPFFA believes the rates of PTSD would be similar.

TORONTO - Toronto’s first responders are experiencing post-traumatic stress disorder at rates comparable to combat veterans, new research shows.

Pulling a child from a car wreck or responding to a house fire with multiple victims is the same as seeing action on a battle ground, a report released Tuesday at the International Association of Fire Fighters conference says.

The report — PTSD and Cancer: Growing Number of Fire Fighters at Risk — says understanding the effects of the hazards is critical to keep first responders safe and on the job.

“Neither of these hidden hazards (PTSD and cancer from exposure to burning toxins) is adequately addressed in current protocols for treatment and remediation,” the study says.
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Veteran Marine Survived Deployments, Cancer And Still Thinks of Others

Former Marine Saves Up to Make Big Gift to Food Bank
Associated Press
by Ben Muir
Jul 25, 2016

Skorna left the Marines in 2011 after four years of active duty, but he said the time he spent in stricken areas fueled his desire to donate.

OLYMPIA, Wash. — The Thurston County Food Bank receives emails from people who want to help every day. Some offer an egg carton or loaf of bread. Others help wash cars or give cash donations, usually $10 to $50. Wealthier local residents sometimes make donations in the range of $1,000 or $2,000, reported The Olympian.

So when Fran Potasnik, a full-time volunteer at the food bank, checked her inbox and found an email from another prospective donor in April, she didn't think much of it.

Until she opened it and read, "Hi my name is John, and I plan on giving $10,000."

John Skorna, 27, vowed to donate the $10,000 to the food bank's summer lunch program. Potasnik told him a gift like that would provide 2,762 lunches — 20 percent of the 10,777 meals distributed to kids every summer.

"I thought, 'OK, what is this guy?'" Potasnik said. "I then forwarded it to the director and said, 'I don't know if this is for real or not.'"

"My first thought was a little bit of skepticism, but not in a negative way," Food Bank Director Robert Coit said. "John's email had a sense of sincerity and passion. Both Fran and I felt there was something about it that seemed real."

Skorna wrote to Coit that he had most of the $10,000, but would need more time to collect the rest. Coit said he understood and reminded him that no matter the amount, any donation is noble and they would be grateful.

"He's the epitome of what a service person looks like," Ravancho said. "He'll do selfless things with integrity, and he doesn't need someone to say thank you. He could have come in here, given the check and left without saying a word to anyone. That would have been enough for him."
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Murder-Suicide Investigation: Police Officer Survived Iraq, Battled Cancer

Waterbury Officer's Death Ruled Suicide; Second Victim Identified
Hartford Courant
Bill Leukhardt
July 22, 2016

Yocher served six years in the U.S. Army, including one tour in Iraq. He then transferred to the Air Force and served a second tour in Iraq. He received honorable discharges from both branches, according to a Dream Foundation release about the September 2015 event.

WATERBURY — A Waterbury police officer who was found dead Wednesday morning outside a slain man's home had committed suicide, state police said Friday.

Hallock Yocher, 37, killed himself in the backyard of 31-33 Marion Ave., state police said.

Authorities on Friday also identified the second victim, James T. Stuart, 39, and said he died from multiple gunshot wounds in his third-floor apartment at 31-33 Marion.

State police are investigating the relationship between Yocher and Stuart. Investigators have not mentioned any suspect in Stuart's murder. Earlier, police called it "an isolated incident" and said there was no threat to the community.

Yocher, a 10-year veteran of the department, had been battling Hodgkin lymphoma, a cancer of part of the immune system. He was on the job despite his illness but off duty at the time of the Marion Avenue incident, police said.

In January 2014, Yocher, his wife and three children went to Walt Disney World, SeaWorld Orlando and Universal Orlando in Florida, a trip paid for by the Dream Foundation, a California nonprofit that helps terminally ill adults fulfill end-of-life dreams.
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Veteran Fighting Cancer Does Not Fight Alone Thanks to Other Veterans

Local Veteran Battling Cancer Surrounded by Love
KCEN
Tiffany Pelt
July 22, 2016

"We just couldn't hear about someone like Bill and not get involved," said John Hoskin, Texas State President of U.S. Veterans MC. "We have that innate sense to support each other. It's engrained in us in the military to take care of your fellow soldier."

Valley Mills - "It's very expensive to die." Veteran Bill Cote says these words through a raspy voice. He is not crying or upset. As a man who was only given six months to a year to live, he is just being honest.

"They caught the cancer too late," he said. "When they took the tumor out they found a bunch more."

Bill, 62, was diagnosed with Thymoma back in December. It's a rare cancer that wrapped itself around his larynx, left lung and all around his chest. It is now stage four and traveling through his lymph nodes.

The cancer wages war on the veteran's body. He gets weak easily, and is no longer able to do much of anything. But on Thursdays, Bill doesn't seem to mind.

"It's something I look forward to every week. Thursdays are on my mind. Up until then it never mattered what day it was," he said with a smile.

On Thursdays, Bill hears the hum of motorcycles pull up to his home. His fellow Patriot Guard Rider, Barry Dahlquist, is always there. Sometimes other Patriot Guard riders join Barry for the visit. And sometimes veterans who are complete strangers show up at his door. They all arrive with warm smile ready to run errands, clean the house, mow the lawn or what ever needs to be done.

"It's a mindset that only veterans recognize," said Bill. "It's a strong community. They look out for each other. You don't have to know someone to care for them."
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Iraq Veteran, National Guardsman and Hawaii Congressman Passed Away

Congressman Mark Takai of Hawaii dies at 49
USA TODAY
Greg Toppo
July 20, 2016

Takai, a lieutenant colonel in the Hawaii National Guard and a veteran of Operation Iraqi Freedom, was first elected to the House in 2014, after serving 20 years in the Hawaii State House.

Mark Takai, right, U.S. Representative elect for Hawaii's 1st Congressional District, addresses and thanks his supporters as his children Kaila, bottom left, Matthew, top left, and his wife Sami, center look on. Takai died Wednesday at 49.

(AP Photo/Eugene Tanner)

U.S. Rep. Mark Takai, a first-term congressman from Hawaii who represented an area near Pearl Harbor for two decades in the Hawaii State House of Representatives, died Wednesday.

He was 49 and had sought treatment for pancreatic cancer last fall.

Takai's death comes less than a year and a half after he rose to his congressional seat — and nine months after he announced that he had been diagnosed with cancer.

His congressional office in Honolulu confirmed that he died at home, “surrounded by family.”

He is survived by his wife, Sami Takai, and two children, Matthew and Kaila.
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Ohio Women Stolen Valor Used Go Fund Me

Mansfield woman claimed she was a military veteran with cancer to solicit GoFundMe donations, prosecutors say
Cleveland.com
By Eric Heisig
June 30, 2016

Donations came from all over the country. The indictment says one person who lived in Adrian, Michigan gave $1,000.

CLEVELAND, Ohio — A Mansfield woman set up a GoFundMe page and claimed that she was a U.S. Marine in need of money for breast cancer treatments, despite the fact that she was never sick and never served in the military, according to a federal indictment.

Joyell "J.D." Riley, 41, was indicted Wednesday by a federal grand jury on a wire-fraud charge. An FBI investigation showed that 32 people sent a total of $3,515 to Riley after she set up the fundraising page in November 2014.

Riley represented herself on the site as a "highly decorated combat veteran" who served as a captain in the U.S. Marine Corps, the indictment says. Prosecutors also say she tried to prove that she was a veteran by using white out to falsify a government form that says she was discharged from active military duty.
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