Native veteran loses fight against VA

[Thunderwolf, MSN, RN]

It seems like a little black cloud forms over the heads of those that fight the bureaucracy. Andy Torres, an Oglala Lakota veteran, discovered that.

Torres served with honor in the United States Army from 1961 to 1964. After his honorable discharge he joined the South Dakota Army National Guard. He served 19 years and was just one year away from the required 20 years in order to retire when his life began to unravel.

That is when the comedy of errors began. While working at his sister's house on his day off from his job, he fell from a porch and badly injured his leg. He reported to the Veteran's Hospital at Fort Meade in Sturgis, SD and underwent arthroscopic surgery. The first operation failed to solve the problem.

At this stage in his life Torres, known to his friends and family as "Buzzy," was a journeyman electrician making a good living. The injury prevented him from working. He again went to the hospital at Ft. Meade for a second operation. That was the final nail in his efforts to move on. The second operation "crippled me for life," he said.

Unable to climb a ladder or work on a scaffold, his lifetime profession as an electrician came to a bitter end. He could not do the PT (Physical Training) exercises expected of all members of the Guard, but he hoped they would waive this portion of his enlistment requirement and allow him to complete his final year in order to retire with a pension.

It was not to be. An officer brought him some legal papers and told him to sign them. It was his discharge from the Guard. The officer said, "It doesn't matter whether you sign them or not because we're going to bounce you anyhow." The doctor at the VA hospital, the one that had performed the operation that crippled him, said, "Get a desk job somewhere."

"All I had was a GED so how could I get a desk job," Torres said. He did the next thing that nearly every military veteran does; he applied to the Veteran's Administration for a disability pension in 1989 and was rejected. He applied again in 1990 only to be rejected again.

He then took his medical records to the Social Security Administration and they approved him for 100 percent disability. Torres still scratches his head over that one. "How could the VA deny my claim and yet the Social Security approve them," he keeps asking himself?

Complete story here:

http://www.indianz.com/News/2009/012789.asp