No One Stopped To Help Disabled Veteran in Wheelchair After Attempted Robbery?

Cops: Man tries to rob woman in wheelchair with service dog
Orlando Sentinel
Christal Hayes
March 30, 2016

Pawelski told authorities several vehicles passed her during the incident and no one stopped to help. She wheeled herself to a nearby CVS and called her fiancée.

CLERMONT— Sarah Pawelski was already having a bad day.

The 45-year-old's vehicle had broken down along Citrus Tower Boulevard about noon March 22 and she was forced to use her wheelchair to get to the nearest business. That's when things got worse —a man in a car that stopped ostensibly to help attempted to snatch her purse.

Discussing the experience today, Pawelski said she was recently diagnosed with reflex sympathetic dystrophy syndrome, a painful and rare disorder that affected her ability to walk. She said she is also an Army veteran who suffers from severe post-traumatic stress syndrome.

"I don't want to think about it at all. This whole thing has really brought my PTSD to a max and I keep having nightmares and can't sleep because of what this punk decided to do," she said.
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Marine in Famous Photo Survived Even After Being in Bodybag

VALLEY VET STUNNED TO HEAR FROM US MARINE HE THOUGHT WAS DEAD
ABC 30 News
Dale Yurong 
March 29, 2016

Grantham told Action News, "When we got back to triage they actually put me in a body bag."

FRESNO, Calif. (KFSN) -- A retired US Marine from the Valley has been on one final mission - to find a comrade who he thought died by his side.

In an iconic Vietnam War photo taken in February of 1968 Lance Corporal Rick Hill of Coalinga could found at the top right. Laying on his side was a fellow US Marine named Alvin Grantham. Up until a few weeks ago Rick thought Alvin died shortly after the picture was taken but that was not the case.

Hill recalled the most intense firefight of his two tours. He was shot in one leg and took shrapnel in the other. "I was wounded in the battle of Hue during Tet February 68. We were pinned down. We were in trouble."

Rick noticed a tank rolling by.

"They asked me, got room for one more and they always got room for one more and they threw me up on the tank."

The famous picture of wounded US Marines being medevaced on a tank appeared in Life and Time magazine. Rick's mom told him, "That's the only way I knew you were still alive."

Rick tearfully told us, "For 48 years I look at this picture and look at these guys looking back at me and I always figured it's an honor."

Since 1991 Rick and his wife Hayley have lived the quiet life in Coalinga but that all changed a few weeks ago when someone answered a facebook post about the photo.

"He says, hey I'm the guy laying on the tank without a shirt. I look at my wife and go no way. That guy died."

That's what Rick was told but Alvin Grantham of Mobile, Alabama messaged him and wrote, "Lots of people think I didn't make it."
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Bad Reporting on PTSD Service Dogs

Here's some really bad reporting. This is a story about a charity raising money to supply veterans with service dogs.

"We are losing 22 veterans a day to suicide - and that's only with six states that are reporting," says Jolanthe Bassett.

But there's a bright light at the end of the tunnel -- man's best friend. That's where Jolanthe comes in with Guardian Angels Medical Service Dogs.

"We've paired over 150 dogs since 2010, and in that time we haven't had one suicide attempt," she says. She volunteers with Guardian Angels Medical Service Dogs and worked to find Eric his current partner, Sun, after his first dog died tragically.

It isn't 22 a day and the suicide report from the VA was from 21 states, not 6. If folks actually read the report they would know this was limited data and they missed a lot.

The thing about "no attempted suicides" could very well be true however it is important to point out that while PTSD service dogs are very helpful, there have been many veterans with them and they not only attempted suicide, they succeeded.

Also keep in mind that some folks want to imagine these dogs as the "cure" instead of part of the help that is needed. Plus some veterans don't like dogs or can't have them.

For most veterans, even a regular dog is very helpful.  We lost our's last week and we have huge holes in our hearts.  Harry was just a mutt but he gave us a lot of comfort knowing he was always on guard among so many other things. He wasn't just a dog to us, he was part of our family.

Throughout most of our 30+ year marriage we've had dogs, so yesterday we went to meet out new "dogson."  Haven't agreed on a name yet but he sure will have big paws to fill after Harry.

But as you can see, I don't think that will be a problem for this little guy. He isn't even 7 weeks old yet.

Veterans Run 1.500 Miles From Boston to Atlanta

They are running to fund help for PTSD and TBI, which is a good thing. But yet again, they are using "22" as if that is a real number. Will these folks raising awareness ever get the point that it is much more than 'just a number' to use?

PHOTOS: Shepherd's Men run through Lynchburg
The News and Advance

The Shepherd's Men group came through Lynchburg Tuesday, March 28, 2016 as part of a 1,500-mile journey between Boston and Atlanta to raise money for the SHARE Military Initiative, a donor-funded 12-week-program that treats the physical and psychological effects of traumatic brain injury and post traumatic stress disorder.
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Camp Pendleton and Hospital Corpsman Saved Neighbor and Daughter

'She's Family': Sailor Saves Mom, Daughter From Stabbing 
Jennifer Barela and her daughter were attacked viciously by Barela's husband in November
San Diego Miiltary Times
By Brie Stimson and Candice Nguyen 
March 28, 2016

Jaclyn Place, 30, was doing homework in her Oceanside home late one night last November when she heard screams coming from her neighbor’s house.

“The volume was escalating,” Place said. “That’s when I decided to go outside and noticed [my neighbor] was calling for me. As soon as I opened the door I saw her -- then a flash-- it was him running. She was screaming ‘he stabbed me,’ and as she turned I saw blood all the way down her back. I had a fight or flight second, and then went to work.”

Her neighbor, Jennifer Barela, was referring to her husband who had just viciously attacked her with a knife. Place, a lead chief petty officer at Camp Pendleton and hospital corpsman, began assessing Barela’s condition. She also called another neighbor, Staff Sgt. Thomas McDonald with the 13th Marine Expeditionary Unit, instructing him to bring his first aid medical bag.
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VA Claims Examinations Contracted Out For $6.8 Billion

VA Makes Contract Awards Totaling up to $6.8 Billion for Medical Disability Examinations
03/29/2016 11:45 AM EDT

VA Makes Contract Awards Totaling up to $6.8 Billion for Medical Disability Examinations

Provides efficient, streamlined process in support of the MyVA Initiative of Medical

Disability Examinations for Veterans

WASHINGTON – The Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) today announced the award of twelve major contracts that will enhance its ability to deliver timely disability benefits claims decisions to the nation’s Veterans in line with the MyVA initiative. The contracts make up a $6.8 billion enterprise-wide Medical Disability Examination Program under Public Law 104-275, and represent a major step forward in improving the disability examination experience for Veterans.

A unique feature of this multi-contract award will see the consolidation of the contracts under a single program management initiative, with representation in the central management group from both the Veterans Benefits Administration (VBA) and the Veterans Health Administration (VHA). To date, contracts for medical examinations have been managed by both administrations with varying degrees of efficiency and delivery time of exam reports, which are critical to Veterans’ disability determinations supporting their compensation and pension claim.

The new program management and delivery process will also continue to ensure broad national and international coverage of medical examination requirements to meet Veterans’ needs world-wide. Acting Principal Deputy Under Secretary for Benefits, Tom Murphy noted that, “This will be a major accomplishment for Veterans going forward, not only for the efficiencies and additional oversight, but VA can now maximize the capacity of inherent capability and leverage the contract expertise and capacity as needed. The goal will be to reduce the veteran’s wait times for examinations as much as possible thereby providing faster claims decisions and enhancing Veterans’ experience in a positive way.” Contracts were awarded to the following firms:

VetFed Resources, Inc., 2034 Eisenhower Ave., Ste 270, Alexandria, VA - Large Business
Veterans Evaluation Services, Inc., 3000 Richmond Avenue, Ste 540, Houston, TX - Large Business
QTC Medical Services, Inc, 21700 Copley Drive, Ste 200, Diamond Bar, CA - Large Business

The contracts are being awarded for a period of 12 months with four, 12-month options, with an aggregate ceiling of $6.8 billion. The contract will be managed by VA’s Strategic Acquisition Center based in in Frederick, MD.

Mt Warning ‘unfit’ hiker was actually two-tour Afghanistan war hero

Mt Warning ‘unfit’ hiker was actually two-tour Afghanistan war hero who suffers from PTSD
Gold Coast Bulletin
Jack Houghton
March 29, 2016

“Once I hit the top that’s when my PTSD really took over and it took all my strength not to take the easy way out and leave it all ­behind me,” he said.

A HIKER slammed as “unfit” after being winched by helicopter from Mt Warning is a two-tour Afghanistan war hero who says he froze because of a post traumatic stress disorder meltdown.

The 38-year-old, 115kg army veteran, who did two tours for the Australian ­Defence Force in the Middle East, said he was crippled by a wave of “anxiety” when he reached the mountain’s 1159m peak around 4.30pm on Easter Monday.

Rescue crews were called and 20 men were deployed to get Aaron “Dogga” to safety.
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Veteran Takes Lucky Shot Through Pair of Pants

Man shoots at guest, bullet passes through pants
Sheriff: suspect believed victim was intruder
Record Eagle
By Matt Troutman
March 29, 2016

The man served in the military and suffered from post-traumatic stress disorder, Borkovich said. He said authorities will reach out to a local veterans' center to get the suspect help.

TRAVERSE CITY — A Suttons Bay man could face firearms charges after authorities said he drunkenly shot at a partygoer leaving his home.

The bullet passed through the victim's pant leg, leaving him uninjured, said Leelanau County Sheriff Mike Borkovich. He said deputies responded to a call about the shooting early Tuesday, found the suspect — a Suttons Bay man, 27 — and arrested him.

The suspect apparently hosted guests at his home about a half-mile south of Suttons Bay for a night of drinking. Borkovich said the shooting occurred when the suspect thought someone was trying to break into his home.

"It wasn’t an intruder, it was somebody leaving the house," Borkovich said.
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Commemoration Forgotten Obligation

Vietnam Veterans Commemoration Forgotten Obligation
Wounded Times
Kathie Costos
March 28, 2016

Where were you when they came home? Sure the nation wants to make up for the way Vietnam veterans were treated when they came home decades ago, but from what we've shown them, they haven't seen much evidence that we really care now.  

How could they believe they matter at all when all across the nation more and more folks talk about veterans committing suicide and never once bother to mention they are the majority of those suicides?

America wasn't there when they came home from Vietnam because Americans just didn't care to make sure this nation took care of them.

Some say they didn't know what was happening to them and they point to social media being used today to make them aware of the need. They didn't have any of this back then, but just like when all other generations came home before them, the people managed to learn about their needs simply because they wanted to. With Vietnam veterans, they just didn't bother to even wonder.

Today is still not the day that Americans show up.  Sure they are all doing their grand gatherings to commemorate the anniversary of the Vietnam War but when you look up the definition of what that word means you find this.

Simple Definition of commemorate
: to exist or be done in order to remind people of (an important event or person from the past)
: to do something special in order to remember and honor (an important event or person from the past)

If you look on the VA Website for the 50th Anniversary you'll see this interactive map of events.

This is for the Vietnam War timeline As you can see, Americans started dying long before the acknowledged date.

During April 1956, three U.S. Army nurses deploy to Vietnam to help train South Vietnamese military nurses. They are the first U.S. service women to arrive in Vietnam. About 11,000 service women would eventually serve in Vietnam. Eight die while serving their country in Vietnam. Of these eight, seven would be Army nurses.

Seven U.S. Air Force crewmen die when Pathet Lao anti-aircraft artillery shoots off the wing of a military transport aircraft and it crashes on the Plain of Jars in Laos. Major Lawrence Bailey survives and is subsequently captured. Bailey is released on August 15, 1962, and President John F. Kennedy presents him with the first Bronze Star Medal for service in Southeast Asia.

And at the end of the timeline is this,

On 12 May 1975, a Khmer Rouge gunboat seized an American ship, the Mayaguez, in the Gulf of Thailand and detained its crew. Two days later, U.S. Air Force (USAF) helicopters landed Marines of Battalion Landing Team 2/9 (BLT 2/9) on Koh Tang Island off the Cambodian coast where the crew was believed to be held. Marines from Company D, 1st Battalion, 4th Marines boarded the Mayaguez only to find it deserted. The Khmer Rouge released the Mayaguez crew, who were picked up by a U.S. destroyer at sea. On 15 May, with the recovery of the ship and its crew, the Marines withdrew from Koh Tang Island. The American forces sustained total casualties of 15 killed, three missing in action (later declared dead), 49 wounded and 23 Airmen (18 security police and five aircrew) killed when their CH-53 crashed while deploying. Enemy casualties were unknown. Lieutenant Richard Vandegeer, USAF, whose name is the last one on the Vietnam Veterans Wall, was killed on Koh Tang Island. This concluded the combat involvement of the U.S. military forces after two decades in Southeast Asia.

But when reporters said that Afghanistan was the longest war, most Americans simply accepted it and never thought twice about what that claim did to those who served all those years in Vietnam.

Just as today, most Americans accept that there are "22 veterans a day" committing suicide even though the report from the Department of Veterans Affairs states clearly "To date, data from twenty-one (21) states have been cleaned and entered into a single integrated file containing information on more than 147,000 suicides and 27,062 reported Veterans." on page 11. On page 14 there is this,

However, misclassification was considerably higher among validated Veterans with 11% of true Veterans classified as non-Veterans on the death certificate. Only 2% of true non-Veterans were misclassified as Veterans on the death certificate. The ability of death certificates to fully capture female Veterans was particularly low; only 67% of true female Veterans were identified. Younger or unmarried Veterans and those with lower levels of education were also more likely to be missed on the death certificate. This decreased sensitivity in specific subgroups can affect both suicide surveillance and research efforts that utilize Veteran status on the death certificate. From a surveillance standpoint, the rate of Veteran suicides will be underestimated in these groups.

Followed by page 15 with this,

Currently available data include information on suicide mortality among the population of residents in 21 states. Veteran status in each of these areas is determined by a single question asking about history of U.S. military service. Information about history of military service is routinely obtained from family members and collected by funeral home staff and has not been validated using information from the DoD or VA. Further, Veteran status was not collected by each state during each year of the project period.

But that must have just been too much to read as well. After all, why bother to read a report with so much detail when it is so much easier to just quote a number that was easy to remember? The fact is, Vietnam veterans are the majority of the suicides that are not "22 a day" because their generation is also the majority of veterans.

The VA study found that the percentage of older veterans with a history of VA healthcare who committed suicide actually was higher than that of veterans not associated with VA care. Veterans over the age of 50 who had entered the VA healthcare system made up about 78 percent of the total number of veterans who committed suicide - 9 percentage points higher than the general pool.

So where are you now? Are they really important enough to matter to you? Do they deserve your attention and time to actually read the reports? Do you care enough to make sure the rest of the country learns the truth about what we've been putting them through while still ignoring their suffering?

If you really value Vietnam veterans then learn the truth and then live up to what they've been fighting for all these years, that no generation of veterans will ever be left behind again.

Navy SEAL Rear Adm. Brian Losey Forced to Retire?

Navy SEAL admiral’s rare, public punishment
Withdrawal of SEAL leader’s promotion is unusual step after prestigious career
The San Diego Union Tribune
By Jeanette Steele
March 25, 2016

Rear Adm. Brian Losey, commander of Naval Special Warfare Command, speaks at the La Posta Assaults and Tactical Weapons Training Complex in Campo on Sept. 25, 2014. MC1 Marc Rockwell-Pate

The career death of Rear Adm. Brian Losey, the Navy SEAL leader being forced to retire after his promotion was blocked in the Senate, marks the most public punishment ever at the top rank of the elite SEALs, who are known for running below the radar with their combat missions and internal business.

Even more tension between Congress and the SEALs may be looming. Rep. Duncan Hunter, R-Alpine, said this week that he will oppose the nomination of Losey’s replacement, Rear Adm. Tim Szymanski.

Hunter told The San Diego Union-Tribune that he has concerns about the incoming SEAL commander’s past performance on contracting, training and acquisitions. He didn’t elaborate on the alleged problems.

Szymanski couldn’t be reached for comment Friday.
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