Here is another example of the callous treatment veterans face everyday all over the country, and how elected officials who claim to be on their side disgrace and mockingly treat us as expendables.

The other day the NVF received a call from Senior Master Sgt. Noel Sepulveda, an Air Force veteran and hero at the Pentagon terrorist attack site. He called to ask if there was anything the NVF could do to help him get his VA claim expedited and possibly help him get a clerical error on his pension paperwork corrected. The NVF takes hundreds of calls a month like this, so we asked the typical questions. At the time we had not heard of SMSGT Sepulveda, and I could tell in his voice it was difficult for this humble man to tell us his story. By the end of the call we could not believe what we were hearing. Even though we hear stories similar to this all day, the extent of the disrespect given to this hero made our jaws drop.

We found out that SMSGT Sepulveda received the Airman´s Medal (the highest honor given to Air Force service members) and a Purple Heart for his courageous acts on 9/11. Yet he cannot get a disability rating from the VA, nor can he get a typo fixed. SMSGT was given a pension based on 7 years in service, which comes out to around $1400 a month. His total time in service is actually 39 years, 28 years active duty and 11 years Reserve, which entitles SMSGT Sepulveda to about $3556 a month. We also found out that SMSGT Sepulveda originally started his claim process in December 2006, almost one year ago.

The first thing we did was search for the representative of Florida’s 5th district where SMSGT Sepulveda currently resides. This district is represented by Rep. Ginny Brown-Waite (R), and after visiting her website where she boasts about all she does for veterans including how she helped push through the bill to decrease claim wait times, we thought it would be easy to get this issue resolved.

We contacted the congresswoman’s office by phone and spoke with Janice. Without even looking into the claim Janice was kind enough to tell us there was nothing her office could do to help except call the VA every 60 days to check on his claim. After hearing this we moved on to what seemed to be a cut-and-dry issue of the typo, again, we were not disappointed; we were told that they did not have time to look into this case. HUH!!! Apparently her office is too busy writing about how she helps veterans to actually help any.

If anyone in Florida’s 5th district (or anywhere in the country) reads this and would like to do something please call the congresswoman’s office and ask why they are not doing what they said they would!

We need to open our eyes and see that ALL of our representatives do not have the best interest of the veteran in mind, because if even one of them did Heroes like SMSGT Noel Sepulveda would never spend one second on the phone asking for help correcting a typo. Our elected officials have betrayed veterans by allowing the VA to continue to deny or improperly rate disabilities, making the war at home so much harder to fight. Each day more and more of our brothers and sisters lose this fight while lawmakers literally lie, cheat, and steal.