Chicago Homeless Air Force Veteran feels love from community

Police Lieutenant Honored For Helping Rebuild Homeless Vet’s Newsstand
CBS Chicago
March 13, 2018

CHICAGO (CBS) — A Chicago police lieutenant was honored Tuesday for helping change the life of a homeless veteran.

The Chicago Police Memorial Foundation named Lt. John Garrido its officer of the month, saying he embodies the oath to serve and protect.

Garrido, a 27-year veteran of the force, was honored for working to help Anthony Johnson, who operates a newsstand at the intersection of Foster, Milwaukee, and Central avenues in Jefferson Park.

The lieutenant saw that the newsstand was run down, and inquired about its operator. That’s when he learned it was run by a homeless Air Force veteran.

Garrido created a Facebook page to reach out to the community to help build a new stand, complete with murals showcasing the neighborhood and the veteran turned newspaper salesman.
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Veterans Living With PTSD React to Pathway Shooting

Yountville Shooting Leaves An Impact On Veterans Living With PTSD
CBS San Francisco
March 12, 2018

SAN JOSE (KPIX 5) – A U.S. veteran killed three staff members at a veterans’ facility in Napa County, raising the question: are veterans with post-traumatic stress disorder getting the help they need when they come home?

The triple homicide happened in Yountville in Napa County on Friday. But on Monday, 100 miles away on the other side of the San Francisco Bay Area, a group session was held for veterans with PTSD in San Jose.

Counselors at the veterans housing facility in San Jose gave extra attention to veteran’s feelings and their fears because the Yountville shootings happened in a very similar setting.

“Our first priority is to make sure that you’re okay,” a counselor asked a room full of veterans. “How many of you were affected this weekend?”

“Did anybody get triggered just by watching it and just by the fear that was going on?” a counselor asked the veterans in San Jose.

One veteran answered: “Yes. I fell into another depression. It triggered me going back 40 years and I have been crying since that time.”

We sat down with U.S. veteran Thomas MacGowan, a Vietnam vet with PTSD, who agreed to talk about his feelings.

“I was scared that it was going to happen here,” MacGowan said. “I felt safe in a sense, but my immediate reaction was: do I want to run or do I want to stay and fight? How’s everybody else doing around here?”
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Asheville Veterans: Is this your car in a book?

When you go to the VA and let a valet park your car, the last thing you think about is, he is going to take pictures of your personal property and put them into a book. Well, that is exactly what happened.

What gave him the right as a VA employee to take thousands of pictures of the inside of your vehicles? Read the story because it shows how he "had to work fast" to not be caught by other employees. AND HE IS ACTUALLY PROUD HE DID IT?

This one has paperwork and a gun on the seat!

The car’s the scar: photographs of US veterans’ interior lives
The Guardian
Sean O'Hagan
March 10, 2018

Casteel worked as a valet parker at the hospital for seven years, during which time he took thousands of photographs of the car interiors using a small camera, working fast so as not to be detected by his fellow workers.

ML Casteel’s images of the clutter in ex-servicemen’s vehicles offer a powerful metaphor for the enduring psychological impact of warfare

‘The car is an enduring symbol of America’: an image from American Interiors by ML Casteel. “When I was growing up in south-west Virginia, it was ingrained in me to thank a veteran if I met one,” says Matthew Casteel, a 37-year-old photographer who works under the name ML Casteel. “That was the norm back then, the understanding that they had made a huge sacrifice for the country. Somewhere along the way, that has changed. Their plight has gotten lost in the bureaucracy of government.”

Casteel’s new book, American Interiors, is a compelling indictment of the way in which US war veterans, the wounded and the war-weary, are often treated on their return to the homeland that demanded that sacrifice of them. What is audacious about Casteel’s approach is that there are no portraits of veterans in the book. Instead, while working as a valet parker at a veteran’s hospital in Asheville, North Carolina, where he now lives, he began surreptitiously shooting the interiors of their cars. The result is a grimly powerful, extended metaphor for the neglect and decay that makes their daily lives at home a dogged extension of their lives at war.
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Reporter took easy way out on Pathway report

Vets seek a path out of the darkness on The Sacramento Bee, Editor’s note: This column was originally published on Feb. 24, 2013 and it is by Foon Rhee, Associated Editor.

"There were a record 349 suicides last year in the active-duty military, many more than were killed fighting in Afghanistan. But the specter of suicide doesn’t end once service members come home. It gets worse."

Really? If this was published in 2013, then the 349 suicides would be about 2012. Where did he get those numbers from? 

This is from the DOD Suicide Report

That equals 525.

Maybe he needed to add to the reports of what happened at Pathway House? Maybe he should have done some checking first, before reposting it.

That is the part that gets to me the most. When you have something as serious as veterans committing suicide and struggling to heal, it should never be something easy to report on.

Vietnam veteran committed suicide in Police parkinglot

Veteran who took own life identified 
Sheridan Press 
March 12, 2018 

"While officers tried talking to Underhill, he took his life with a gunshot to the head..."

SHERIDAN — A local veteran died by suicide Saturday morning in the Sheridan Police Department parking lot after officers attempted talking to him.

According to SPD officials, Mark Underhill, 66, was believed to be a patient of the Sheridan Veterans Affairs Medical Center. 

Underhill called 911 and spoke with dispatchers. 

Underhill made his plans known and told dispatchers he was in the parking lot in front of the police station. 
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