The High Price of Disability in Today's Navy

The High Price of Disability in Today’s Navy

By MIKE DOWNEY

Dec. 17, 1999 12 AM PT

A little more than a week has passed since a helicopter with 18 military troops aboard plunged into the Pacific Ocean, just off San Diego’s shore. Rescue workers were able to pull 11 Marines to safety within minutes of the crash, while ships and divers searched long into the night for bodies missing at sea.

As he followed news reports of the accident, John Serralles could empathize in a way few others could. He lives daily with reminders of the risks of military flying, like every morning in his Redondo Beach apartment when he awakes with another twinge of pain from the 16-inch metal rod in his leg, or whenever he tries and fails to flex four of the fingers on his right hand.

It was on Oct. 13, 1992, that a Navy helicopter co-piloted by Serralles crashed in the polar whiteness of Antarctica. Of a crew of five, three were killed. The survivors were Serralles and the pilot, who were found hours later by a search party that had to crawl through hurricane-force winds and blinding snow.

Serralles today is a substitute schoolteacher. He takes classes at UCLA in pursuit of a teaching certificate, and at 35 is still seeking to carve out a new life after having his career as an aviator cut short in the blink of an eye.

All in all, he believes that he has accepted his situation and coped pretty well. Or at least he did until a letter from the Navy came a few weeks ago, telling Serralles that he’s not nearly as bad off as he thought he was.

To look at him, one wouldn’t guess at a glance that John Serralles once lay in intensive care with broken ribs, a broken nose, a broken leg, a shattered knee, a dislocated hip, a fractured spine, a concussion, internal injuries and severe frostbite of both his face and hands.

His scars aren’t visible. He looks as fit as that 5-foot-8, 145-pound lieutenant who took off in an Iroquois helicopter seven years ago, carrying crewmen and civilians to an Antarctic research station being used by the National Science Foundation.

“I always wanted to be a pilot,” Serralles says. “I can’t remember ever wanting to do anything else.”

His father also served in the Navy, then had a distinguished 25-year career as a New York City police officer.

John Serralles Jr. joined the service in 1987. At aviator candidate school in Pensacola, Fla., he remembers, “It was right out of ‘An Officer and a Gentleman.’ They were the best days of my life, even though some of those days felt like the worst. The people there were the best I’ve ever met.”

And flight school?

“The best way to describe flight school,” he says, “was that it’s like taking your driver’s license test at 16 years old, but taking it every day for two years.”

Although he never flew jets, Serralles spent seven years as a Navy aviator. Shortly before his last assignment, his squadron won a commendation for logging 27,000 accident-free flying hours.

Thirteen days after arriving in Antarctica, his helicopter was approximately 25 miles from its destination when the weather changed suddenly. Flying at low altitude in subzero temperatures and snow, Serralles admits that the pilots erred, underestimating the severity of the weather.

They hit a glacier.

Killed in the crash were two New Zealanders being taken to the research station and a 35-year-old Navy petty officer.

“I lost three people that day, one a very close friend,” Serralles says.

After months in hospitals, Lt. Serralles was ruled unfit for duty and honorably discharged in 1994. He was rated “50% disabled” by the Navy, which entitled him to a $900 monthly disability pension, plus $400 a month from the Veterans Administration.

However, following a mandatory five-year reevaluation, Serralles recently was informed by the Navy that he is now considered only “10% disabled,” and his monthly stipend is to be reduced accordingly.

Serralles looks at the paperwork and tries to understand the logic. Even the examining medical officer at Camp Pendleton states that the patient “is essentially unchanged” from his previous physical exam.

“I am not some veteran trying to milk the government,” Serralles says. “Yet our government now says the injuries I incurred will not affect my quality of life as I move into my later years.”

Back when he was an officer and a gentleman, he took pride in the way the Navy took care of its own.

“This is not,” he says now, “in the spirit of the country and service I almost gave my life for.”

Mike Downey’s column appears Sundays, Wednesdays and Fridays. Write to him at Times Mirror Square, Los Angeles 90053. E-mail: [email protected]