Forgotten Heroes: A Vietnam veteran’s battle with the VA

After fighting for our nation, many veterans start a new battle, fighting for their benefits.

Here’s the story of how it took one local Vietnam veteran nearly 20 years and several health conditions before he was granted 100% disability compensation from the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs.

George Zepeda was born and raised in Watts, Calif.

In 1962, as a 17-year-old Mexican-American growing up in Watts, Zepeda saw the Marine Corps as a fresh start.

“I said I want to go in there, it’s going to be good for me and I’ll get out of these streets and make something of myself,” said Zepeda.

These were the sentiments of many young Black and Latino men coming up in the age of the Vietnam War.

At the time, Zepeda said the nation was in a state of racial tension, “I was out of boot camp when they killed President Kennedy. Then, later on, Martin Luther King. But there was a lot of racial tension and a lot of chaos. They didn’t like blacks and they didn’t like Mexicans.”

The military, however, was viewed as a fraternity that supposedly put race aside.

So Zepeda decided to go into combat in a country now described as having a beautiful landscape, but in the 1960s, Vietnam was a land of horror.

Zepeda remembers, “There’s a lot of fear. I was scared out of my mind a lot of times. I mean really scared.”

He said the only way to overcome that fear was thinking, “You’re a Marine and you’re gung-ho. You’re only there for one thing, and that’s to fight and to accomplish your mission.”

After serving three tours in Vietnam, being shot in the face, and wounded, Zepeda returned home expecting to be treated like a hero. Instead, he said the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) showed him no support.

“The VA didn’t promise me nothing. I didn’t even know about the VA. And they should’ve told me. You get out of the Marine Corps, nobody tells you about the VA,” he said.

Sadly, this story is all too common amongst Vietnam veterans.

A federal government agency that’s supposed to support veterans in their time after service, made the process of obtaining benefits and support another battle in and of itself.

Zepeda has had Parkinson’s, diabetes, neuropathy, a seizure, a bad back, and PTSD; plus being shot in the face and wounded, all conditions related to his service in the Marine Corps.

Yet, after nearly 20 years of navigating through the strenuous benefit claims process and being denied several times, Zepeda was finally granted 100% disability compensation in 2019.

According to the VA’s website, the average number of days to complete a single disability-related claim is over 111 days.

Zepeda recalls, “They’ll send you a letter saying your case is being reviewed…but it could take forever.”

He said the longest amount of time it took for one of his claims to be reviewed was over a year.

But that’s only half the battle.

Zepeda told us the biggest thing is having to prove it to the VA.

The VA requires veterans to gather evidence and provide documents to support their disability claim.

It’s almost like a lawsuit where the veterans are representing themselves.

Dr. Ashley Hart is a licensed clinical psychologist in Yuma, who previously worked for the VA for almost 20 years, and now has his own independent practice.

Dr. Hart says, “That’s the hurdle many veterans have to go through. Every time I saw a patient, I had to write notes and chart. I’ve had my diagnosis in the electronic records but I was not allowed to pull those electronic records and hand that to the veteran so that they could prosecute their own claim. Sometimes veterans need to use independent historians to go and find their military records.”

That’s where the dilemma lies.

Veterans have to pay out of pocket to see an independent provider to receive a diagnosis and retrieve their records.

This raises the question, who’s less likely to be able to afford such services?

Typically veterans of color, the Blacks and Latinos.

Dr. Hart agreed with that conclusion.

In George Zepeda’s experience, one of the most difficult disability claims to prove has been PTSD.

He believes many doctors fail to accurately diagnose veterans.

Senior Social Worker at the Yuma VA Clinic, Sherry Walker, explained the PTSD evaluation process.

“We have a checklist that we ask individuals coming into the clinic about their symptoms from that checklist (PCL-5 checklist). Then from talking to the veteran and getting his or her story, we make a diagnosis,” Walker said.

Walker believes some veterans, even being in a combat zone, mentally reset.

Therefore, the veteran’s disability claim would be denied and the veteran could opt to pay to visit another civilian specialist in hopes of being diagnosed.

But Zepeda questions the doctor’s level of understanding veterans asking, “Have they been in combat? No. Do they know what combat feels like? Do they know what goes on in your mind at night during combat when you hear your fellow Marines moaning and groaning because they’ve been wounded?”

Walker said doctors indeed can understand veterans’ emotions without having to have experienced combat.

It’s this continuous sense of disconnect between veterans, the VA, and even the doctors, that deters vets from proceeding with the claims process.

Dr. Hart said it’s a shame and these roadblocks are not good for the veteran or the community.

Veterans go in harm’s way for our nation, putting their lives on the line, and come home to still deal with burden after burden.

The only reason Zepeda continued his 20-year long fight to receive 100% of his benefit compensations was because of his wife.

She’s been by his side for 54 years.

“If I died today, she’d be out of my benefit check from the VA, she’d be out of the retirement check from being retired in the military service, and she’d only get so much of my social security check. She’s at the age where she can’t just go back to work because she’s ill too. She’s had two battles with cancer. So, if I died before her, she’s not going to have too much. So you’ve got to think, when you have these benefits, they’re really helping you out,” said Zepeda.

Both Zepeda and Dr. Hart believe the VA benefit claims process must be streamlined, which is a legislation issue that needs to addressed by Congress.

However, they’re tired of hearing promises, with nothing being delivered.

Leaving war heroes to be forgotten.