When A Soldier Brings War Back Home

When A Soldier Brings War Back Home

Filed by KOSU News in US News.
May 30, 2011
This Memorial Day, we remember our fallen soldiers. Many have died in combat, but increasingly, for off-duty members of the National Guard and Army Reserves, soldiers are dying by their own hands. Nationally, the number of those who’ve committed suicide has nearly doubled from 80 in 2009 to 145 last year.

On the track team of Philadelphia’s Thomas Edison High School, Jadira Angulo was fast. But not as fast as Ivan Lopez, her teammate.

“I was always right behind him; [I'd] never catch up,” Angulo says. “One day I was weightlifting, and I just started looking at him and this attraction just came over me.”

Angulo flips through a scrapbook that records the couple’s romance: prom, graduation, marriage and the birth of their first child, Maya.

In December 2007, Lopez deployed to Afghanistan. Sgt. Jose Matos says even there, his best friend kept running.

“We’re running on this asphalt, and it’s probably like 102 or 103 degrees. So he would finish his run, come get the other soldiers and bring ‘em back in. He’d be like, ‘Come on stay with me! You can do it! You can do it!’ That’s the type of soldier he was,” he says.

Depression Sets In

After Lopez returned home in November 2008, he found a job at Amtrak. He drank more and was quick to lose his temper.
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When A Soldier Brings War Back Home