Vet Says Jail Care Superior to That of VA

Neil Shangold, the disabled Vietnam veteran who barricaded himself on the top floor of the Department of Veterans Affairs building in Mission Valley on Dec. 22, said Monday that a prime benefit of having been arrested is the superior medical care available through the Metropolitan Correctional Center.

“My chief complaint all along was that I had been vastly undercompensated by the VA and did not have enough to live on,” Shangold said after leaving a hearing at the Federal Courthouse downtown. “But mine is more than an issue of compensation. The medical care I received for my knees through the VA was atrocious. One of the benefits of MCC”--and he laughed--”was terrific care.”

Shangold, 41, a Long Island native who lives in Mira Mesa, was released on bail Friday night after friends in San Diego posted the necessary $25,000 in cash. His hearing Monday was little more than a formality; he asked for a change of counsel to Hud Collins, an attorney for Federal Defenders, who is expected to be appointed today. Shangold’s trial date has not been set.

Last month, after employees had been evacuated, Shangold holed up in the 10th-floor offices of the VA building for 12 hours, hurling typewriters, computers and other equipment through a window. Police have accused him of arming himself with a .38-caliber revolver, cutting telephone lines and blocking doors with furniture. Damage was estimated at $9,200. Shangold said Monday that he acted “purely out of frustration and meant no harm to anyone.” He then made an impassioned plea to other veterans who find themselves in a similar state emotionally.

“I want to make that plea to all veterans, who may feel the same frustration, to not do the things that I have been accused of doing,” he said. “It will only hurt at this point. The VA is now on the defensive, and other actions of this type would not advance our cause. So be careful.”

Shangold, a short, wiry man who wears thick, dark glasses, was dressed in a three-piece suit and had on a tie clasp made to resemble a helicopter. He said the public has a mistaken impression that he was wounded in Vietnam. He said he was injured working in supplies on an aircraft carrier.

The injury came, he said vaguely, in a helicopter mishap. Pressed for details, he said the copter was having mechanical difficulty, so he jumped from the cockpit. Asked how far, he said, “About 4 feet, but it really hurt.” Actually, he finally explained, the helicopter was sitting on the aircraft carrier at the time.

But the disability that followed, he said, was as debilitating as a combat wound.

“I wrenched my knee, tearing some of the ligaments, but that’s a diagnosis the VA never made,” he said. “I learned that a long time later from a doctor in the private sector. The VA has been completely inadequate in helping me with my knees.”

Shangold and his family have a history of heart disease. His mother died after a heart attack; he has had two attacks, in addition to triple-bypass surgery. He said both attacks came after his 1971-72 tour of duty in Vietnam, where he served on an aircraft carrier (the Midway). He said he “never saw an Indochinese person” until taking a job at a 7-Eleven convenience store in San Diego a few years back.

He said his Vietnam years “were hardly a heavy combat experience,” but he felt guilty years later “about the wrong we were up to over there” and eventually fell victim to the symptoms of alienation, paranoia and depression that go with post-traumatic stress disorder.

He said he felt as though no one was listening until he occupied the VA building, the details of which he wouldn’t discuss. He said he had written congressmen, to no avail, and petitioned the VA, to no avail. On one occasion, he said, he wrote a letter to President Bush, chastising the VA and getting back a form letter that began, “The President thanks you for your support.”

Shangold said he “long ago came to the conclusion that a veteran wanting decent medical care had better find a doctor in the private sector or be resigned to a life of pain, or at the very least, face that unwieldy bureaucracy every day of your life.”

But Shangold said his biggest beef is what he calls inadequate monthly compensation as a disabled veteran.

He said he gets $128 a month from the VA, even though he can walk only with the use of a cane. His VA income is supplemented with about $500 a month in Social Security disability payments. He said the combined total “is barely enough to live on” and that, when he recently went to work for a medical lab, a job he no longer holds because he was jailed, his Social Security was cut. It has since been restored.

Shangold said jail produced the unexpected dividend of a doctor who knew what his problem was right away.

“I was examined by an orthopedist who quickly realized that the problem in my knees was the soft tissues,” Shangold said. “Without question, he saw that there were fairly acute problems. He immediately switched my anti-inflammatory medication from Motrin to Indocin, which has helped a lot. He was surprised that the VA doctors had failed to diagnose the soft tissue problem and put him on the wrong medication.

“The VA . . . always called it an orthopedic problem, which is just wrong.”

Shangold said that, in 1986, he asked for an increase in disability pay and, after an exhaustive appeals process, was denied the request.

Roni Breite, who has known Shangold for 2 1/2 years, said when she first heard he had occupied the VA building, she was not surprised.

“I was afraid that he’d be involved in some kind of violent standoff, that the police would kill him or something,” Breite said. “I knew Neil wouldn’t hurt anybody because I know Neil. My other reaction was hopeful. I thought, ‘Maybe now, people will start paying attention to the problems of veterans like Neil.’ These are problems of a very serious nature, and all he was saying was, ‘I’m frustrated. I need help.’ ”

Breite put up $4,600 for Shangold’s bail, and another friend of Shangold, Ken Jacoby, donated the money he had been saving to buy a house--$18,400. She said the rest was supplied by two fellow Kiwanians. (Shangold is the head of a local Kiwanis Club chapter.)

Breite said that Shangold is “hardly a crazy man” and that the tragedy of his story is how he resembles thousands of other veterans in the same position.

“He has a lot to contribute to the community--he’s one of the most caring, nurturing, generous, giving and honest people I’ve ever met,” Breite said. “But he, like so many others, can’t contribute if he’s kept from having the proper medical care and not if he can’t survive and ends up being a street person. It’s in the community’s interest and society’s interest to keep people like him healthy. It’s definitely not in society’s interest to tell him he can live on $300 a month and that his knees and his heart are fine, when they’re not. The last he deserves is lies.”