How three batttle-tested veterans declared war on coronavirus
They are all battle-tested, war veterans who thought their fighting days were behind them. Then, COPID-19 attacked the country, and they found themselves on the frontlines again, this time as civilians.
Jim Cragg, 50, a 1988 grad of El Camino Real High School in Woodland Hills. He served in an Army Special Ops unit in Afghanistan, and returned home in 1997 to open a sewing company called S.O. Tech — Special Operations Technologies — making protective military gear.
He had seen enough war and talked to enough combat medics to know what it’s like jumping out of a helicopter on a hillside in Afghanistan with dirt blowing all over themselves and the wounded, and 120 degree heat cooking their IV bags.
“I came home criticizing the medical equipment we had, and I knew I could do a better job giving our special forces and medics the protection they needed,” he says.
Eleven patents later, most of them for military medical equipment, Cragg’s done exactly that. Now, he’s doing the same for our first responders at home. The Los Angeles Sheriff’s Department recently ordered 7,500 of his protective masks for its deputies.
Kurt Hiete, 79, a Vietnam Navy fast boat officer right out of “Apocalypse Now.” He came home from war, got a job as a CPA, then bought a Budget Rent A Car franchise in Westwood that he built up to 13 franchises and a lot of money.
He spends his days now handing out Cragg’s special protective masks to elderly veterans, their wives and widows at no cost. At 79, he’s in that vulnerable age group himself, and shouldn’t be out there, but this war is just too important to win for him to be sitting on the sidelines, he says.
Peng Vang, 34, infantry veteran of Operation Iraqi Freedom, who came home, went to nursing school, and got a job in 2016 at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center. Last month, he volunteered to be moved to the COVID-19 unit.
“As a veteran, I’m not about to shirk my duty now,” he says. “None of us are.”
Three friends, members of American Legion Ronald Reagan Palisades Post 283, sitting around after a meeting in late March talking about COVID-19 coming to California.
“Peng starts talking about the fears his fellow nurses and doctors are having of running out of protective masks,” Cragg says. “I’m used to hearing from Green Beret Special Forces medics who are describing their deployments in Afghanistan, in Central Africa, Columbia, and here I’m talking to a guy who’s being deployed in Beverly Hills.
“I had military uniform material made for use in the wet Vietnam jungles, ribstock cotton, that dried fast and was very durable. I didn’t want to make a standard throwaway mask. I wanted something a nurse or doctor could wear for an 8-hour shift, just like a soldier in combat.
“It had to be comfortable to the face and not threatening to look at. I didn’t want a patient to be scared looking up at a caregiver or police officer looking like a bandit.
“Everyday, I get a call from Kurt saying he needs more masks. I tell him you’re an elderly gentleman, you’re not supposed to be out and about doing this.”
Hiete says he’ll take his chances. The last time he went to war he was sitting in a Vietnamese junk boat outfitted by the Navy with a powerful diesel engine and 50-caliber machine guns – chasing gun runners up the Mekong River trying to resupply the Viet Cong.
Three battle-tested, war veterans who thought their fighting days were behind them returning to duty as civilians to help protect the people protecting us on the frontlines of the COVID-19 war.
Dennis McCarthy’s column runs on Sunday. He can be reached at dmccarthynews@gmail.com.