November 7, 2006, - 3:45 pm
Heroic DHS Employee Inspires Fellow Military Wounded
By Debbie Schlussel
Although this site frequently laments the failures of Homeland Security “leadership,” we celebrate the efforts of hard-working patriotic rank-and-file DHS agents who try to do a good job, despite supervisory desk jockeys with little vision and even fewer brain cells.
That said, every broken clock is right twice a day. And one of those times is the Department of Homeland Security’s welcome back for Alvin Shell, a wounded Army Captain who served in Iraq.
Check out this piece on Shell from the latest “DHS Today” newsletter:
DHS Employee Makes the Transition from Iraq Battlefield to Office of Security
For Alvin Shell, a physical security specialist with the department’s Office of Security, the road to coming to work for DHS went through Iraq. Now, he’s hoping that other veterans of the conflict in Iraq follow his path.
Shell, who served as a Captain military police officer in the U.S. Army, sustained severe injuries while stationed in Iraq in August 2004. Blinded in one eye and burned over 40 percent of his body, he was transported to Brooke Army Medical Center in San Antonio, Texas, where he began his 18-month rehabilitation. While there, he also discovered that he still wanted to serve his country – only this time as a civilian working for DHS.
Through a program sponsored by the Defense Department called Operation Warfighter in which DHS participates, Shell began a detail assignment working at the DHS headquarters Office of Security. He did so well, that after being discharged from the Army, he was offered a permanent position. Last week he represented the Office of Security at an Open House event sponsored by the DHS headquarters Office of Equal Employment Opportunity. At the event, DHS component representatives discussed their hiring needs with disabled veterans and students with disabilities. For him, it was a chance to tell other veterans attending that, “There is light at the end of the tunnel, even though it may be difficult to see after you’ve been injured as I was.”
Inspiring. But does he know that while he was fighting the enemy over there, his new DHS employer is coddling them over here?
DHS Hypocrisy. It’s what’s for dinner.
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