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Life Brightens for Vet Who Took Over VA Building : Coping: His disability benefits have increased, but rebellious veteran says he is not proud of what he had to do to rectify inequity.

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TIMES STAFF WRITER

Seven months after he was sentenced on a felony conviction for barricading himself in a federal building and hurling office equipment out of a window, disabled Vietnam veteran Neil Shangold says his life is now much better.

His veteran’s disability benefits have more than doubled, and he now gets treated with respect when he walks into the Department of Veterans Affairs building to file a claim or into the VA Hospital for medical attention, he says.

Although the 42-year-old Shangold is grateful that the VA has addressed his demand for increased disability benefits, he doesn’t want anyone else to use the method he did to settle disputes with the VA.

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“One thing I am insistent on, and have been insistent on since the beginning, is that what I did I’m not particularly proud of,” he said. “It was something I had to do and should not be repeated by anybody.”

Paradoxically, he is steadfast in his belief that, without his unusual protest, nothing would have changed for him.

“Give me the same set of circumstances, and I would have done exactly the same thing,” he said. “I had no other alternative. I had exhausted all of my legal alternatives.”

Shangold said his failure to make ends meet on $679 a month--of which $138 came from the VA and the balance from Social Security and his job as a temporary office worker--and his inability over several years to get anyone at the VA or in government to listen to his appeals for a disability increase led him to his dramatic appeal.

At 3:15 p.m. on Dec. 21, 1989, Shangold entered the Veterans Affairs building in Mission Valley, went to the 10th floor regional director’s office and ordered the staff to leave.

Police said he cut telephone lines, blocked doors with furniture, and, during a 12-hour standoff, broke two windows and threw about $10,000 worth of computer equipment, typewriters and telephones out of them. Pictures of the flying equipment were prominently displayed on the evening television news and in local newspapers.

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“I was scared,” Shangold said recently of the incident. “I was in a situation at the time where I was living on $679 a month, and I knew that the job that I held was coming to an end.”

There was never any money left during the last week of every month, so he managed on a small can of food, usually tuna fish, each day, he said.

During the episode, Shangold carried a written explanation for his actions, a five-page letter of complaints demanding that the VA address a number of veterans rights issues. He also carried a loaded .38-caliber handgun.

The first chamber of the revolver was not loaded, he said, so no one would have been injured if it went off accidentally.

Several times while interviewed for this story he stressed the “control” aspect of the incident--that he never intended to harm anyone and sought only limited property damage.

Not everyone, though, sees the episode as a controlled protest. To them, it was nothing but a crime.

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“He threatened a group of employees because he had a gun up there,” said Patrick Shelley, a Veteran Services Officer at the VA’s regional office in Mission Valley.

Shelley said it was only luck that prevented one employee from getting hurt when he was hit with debris from the shattered equipment. Others, he noted, were also traumatized because they were kept from going home to their families until late because police detained them for their own safety.

“With that in mind, Mr. Shangold is not the most popular name among those employees in the building,” he said.

A number of citizens wrote letters denouncing his crime to local papers and, Shangold concedes, he was “lambasted” by several callers on a radio talk show shortly after he was released on bail in January, 1990.

Shangold spent 15 days in the Metropolitan Correctional Center before his friends and supporters raised his bail. Last August, he was sentenced to six months in a community treatment center, psychiatric counseling, three years probation and 750 hours of community service in lieu of restitution of the government equipment he destroyed.

As he did before the incident, Shangold works two days each week as a volunteer docent for the Aerospace Museum, which conforms to the community service requirement of his sentence.

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Shelley said it was the judicial system’s job, not his, to say whether the sentence was fair, but said he didn’t think it would encourage other veterans to repeat Shangold’s crime.

Shangold said he understands the furor his defiant act raised, the subsequent angry letters to newspaper editors and angry calls received while he was interviewed on a local radio talk show. One caller said Shangold should not be compensated because his military injuries were not suffered during combat.

“That disturbs me,” Shangold said. “Both of these injuries occurred while I was performing my duties as a hospital corpsman.”

Shangold said he tore ligaments in his right knee while assisting men trapped in the boiler room of the aircraft carrier Midway in San Diego, and did the same to his left knee while jumping from a helicopter on to the flight deck of the ship.

He wears a heavy metal brace and uses a cane much of the time. He suffered two heart attacks after his tour in Vietnam, and, in 1980, underwent a triple vessel heart bypass.

Shangold said he takes 15 pills a day for his heart condition and another eight painkillers and anti-inflammatory pills each day for his knees.

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A VA hospital spokesman declined to discuss Shangold’s injuries and treatment without a signed release from Shangold.

Despite the uproar, Shangold’s actions also drew a great deal of support, much of which came from veterans who, like Shangold, were appalled by VA red tape, long waits at the VA hospital, the lack of continuity of physicians handling their injuries.

“Thousands of veterans have been denied medical treatment by the VA and live on the streets of San Diego,” said veteran Ron Hinton shortly after Shangold’s protest.

Responds Robert Stevens, a spokesman for the VA Hospital in La Jolla, “We do see a problem sometimes of long waits, and there is a staffing shortage--a shortage of money to have the staffing we’d like to.”

The long waits apply to follow-up visits only, not emergency care, Stevens said.

Unable to work more than his community service hours, Shangold spends much of his time writing a screenplay in the small study of a friend’s home in Mira Mesa, where he also lives.

Much of the Shangold’s legal defense and VA appeals were supplied free by attorney Hud Collins, himself a Vietnam War veteran and a major in the Army reserves.

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Collins said he has worked with Shangold since the night Shangold took over the administration building.

“I personally saw a Vietnam veteran who was in a position of potentially ending someone’s life--his or someone else’s,” Collins said. “I intervened and have been with him ever since.”

With Collins’ help, Shangold had his VA designation changed from 20% to 60% disabled. The change also led to an increase in VA monthly payments from $138 to $470.

Combined with the $577 he receives each month from Social Security, the former Navy medic now receives about $1,047 a month, an improvement on the $679 he attempted to live on two years ago.

“At this particular point, I’m just making ends meet,” he said. “There’s a lot of past neglected things to do to catch up on.”

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