Family Searching for Missing Iraq Veteran With PTSD

Family hopes missing Iraq War vet will be found safe
KTVU News
By Ken Wayne, Reporter, Anchor

SUNNYVALE, Calif. (KTVU) -- A Sunnyvale family and a national veterans group are trying to find an Iraq War veteran who hasn't been seen since the last week of November.

28-year-old Joseph Weber left his home on November 24th. His family reported him missing two days later.

The family told KTVU he had been under stress recently and they say he's never been the same since he returned from two tours of duty in Iraq. His sister said he had lived with the family while trying to cope with life after serving as a military police officer in Baghdad.

"He never was really able to forgive himself I think. He suffered from post-traumatic stress disorder and it affected almost every aspect of his life after that," Linnea Weber told KTVU.

The Highway Patrol found his car in the Golden Gate Bridge employee parking lot on November 27th.

Sunnyvale Department of Public Safety Captain Jeff Hunter told KTVU that raised concerns about what Weber might have been doing at the bridge.

"At that point we have CHP check surveillance cameras. There are images of him on the bridge with a crowd of people," Hunger said.

While there are no signs he jumped, but no signs he walked off the bridge either.
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Staff Sgt. Adam Jacks Gunnery Sergeant Amputee Finishes Water Survival Training

Marine staff sergeant becomes first amputee to graduate from grueling swim school
DVIDS
Major Eve Baker
December 5, 2014

Maj. Eve Baker
On Nov. 25, Staff Sgt. Adam Jacks became the first amputee to graduate from the Marine Combat Instructor of Water Survival course. Over the three-week course the students swim 59 miles, complete timed drills and swims, and learn rescue techniques. They are now certified as MCIWS instructors and Red Cross lifeguards.

QUANTICO, Va. - The Marine Combat Instructor of Water Survival course is a grueling training evolution that requires Marines to swim a total of 59 miles over three weeks. The course that graduated on Nov. 25 started with nine participants, but only six were able to complete the challenge. One of those six had the deck stacked against him from the beginning but overcame adversity and graduated with his classmates.

Staff Sgt. Adam Jacks, company gunnery sergeant for Headquarters and Service Company at The Basic School, is a motivated, extremely fit, infantry Marine who said he quickly volunteered to attend the course when approached by the chief instructor trainer, Gunnery Sgt. Joseph Marshall. The fact that Jacks’s right leg was amputated at the mid-thigh in 2011 did not faze either Marine.

Jacks, a native of Newark, Ohio, was serving in Afghanistan with 3rd Battalion, 8th Marine Regiment, located in Marine Corps Base Camp Lejeune, North Carolina, when he stepped on a pressure plate on April 3, 2011, and was hit by an improvised explosive device blast. Among other injuries, Jacks suffered a traumatic brain injury and lost 2/3 of his right leg.
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Camp Pendleton Marines Taking Over LA

UPDATE

Dodger Stadium was site of simulated raid by Marines from Camp Pendleton

If Marines deploying next year are ordered to assault an enemy stronghold and capture a high-value target, they can say they practiced at Dodger Stadium.

Dodger Stadium was the site Monday night of a simulated raid by Marines from the Camp Pendleton-based 15th Marine Expeditionary Unit.

A “raid force” of 75 Marines arrived on MV-22B Ospreys and other aircraft from Fort Hunter Liggett near Monterey, Calif., about 170 miles from Chavez Ravine. The aircraft landed in the stadium parking lot and Marines stormed the stadium, primarily through the stadium tunnels.
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Camp Pendleton Marines To Conduct Training In Downtown LA
CBS News
December 5, 2014

LOS ANGELES (CBSLA.com/AP) — Residents in and around downtown Los Angeles could hear helicopters or other military aircraft over the coming days as Marines and sailors from Camp Pendleton train in preparation for a deployment.

The training is part of a two-week military exercise that starts Friday and extends through Dec. 16 and involves about 2,400 members of the 15th Marine Expeditionary Unit, according to the Associated Press.

While residents could see as many as six military helicopters buzzing over the downtown area over the next week, raids being held at several undisclosed locations in the city will be off limits to the public for safety reasons, Capt. Brian Block told the Associated Press.

“It’s not going to look like ‘Apocalypse Now’ by any stretch of the imagination,” Block said. Dozens of Marines will raid buildings and shoot paintballs from modified M-15s as part of the exercise, but no residents live in the spots where the pseudo-combat will take place, according to Block.
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Marine 1st Sgt was "small and kind of wimpy"

Patriot Profiles: ‘You wouldn’t last five minutes in the Marine Corps’ 
First sergeant went from ‘small and wimpy’ to becoming senior enlisted adviser in a supply battalion
Del Mar Times
By Jeanne McKinney
Dec. 4, 2014

USMC 1st Sgt. Christina Grantham at Camp Pendleton. — Jeanne McKinney

This column presents “Patriot Profiles” to provide readers insight into the lives of our country’s heroes.

Although the world may take little note of one Marine, his or her role is no less diminished. Willing to lead and be led, learn, toil — even wash themselves in combat’s blood — each Marine is an integral cog in the human freedom machine.

First Sgt. Christina Ann Grantham had no intention of fitting into that. She was her high school salutatorian, and a local news reporter asked her, “You’re so accomplished — what are you going to do?”

“I’m going to go out and enlist in the Marines,” she said jokingly, because her father was a Marine and she thought that would be funny.

Grantham went on to college to be a teacher. After her first year, she found it boring — not challenging or interesting, and no laughing matter. The mid-’90s Marine Corps advertising campaign worked on her. A knight wielding a sword and a guy climbing a mountain appealed because she saw herself as “small and kind of wimpy.” She thought, “You wouldn’t last five minutes in the Marine Corps.”

“Maybe you can be one of us,” said an ad slogan. She said, “Oh, yeah.”

On Nov. 10, 1997, the Marine Corps’ anniversary, Grantham signed up. Now a first sergeant in Ammunition Company, 1st Supply Battalion, Combat Logistics Regiment 15, Grantham is a senior enlisted adviser to the Company Commander (CO).
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Marine rescued a woman who couldn't swim from flooded van

Marine Recounts Rescuing Woman From Flooded Van
NBC San Diego
By Bridget Naso
December 5, 2014

With only minutes to spare, a brave Marine rescued a woman who can’t swim from her van rapidly filling with flood water.

Lance Corporal Jason Martin, a police officer at the Marine Corps Recruit Depot, had walked outside Gate 4 early Wednesday morning to check the area when he spotted a van trapped by rising water.

Heavy rains and flooding had trapped the vehicle as it drove through an underpass outside the gate.

“The van was submerged, pretty much submerged underwater,” Martin said in an exclusive interview with NBC 7.
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