understood they had a difficult job, but she felt their delivery was cold and rehearsed.
“Then they get up and leave,” she recalled. “You’re in absolute, absolute devastation and shock. You don’t really know what they just said.”
Shortly thereafter, a casualty advisor showed up with a thick stack of documents that Cindy had to fill out. It took until late in the evening. “And you don’t sleep because you’re just entering into the worst nightmare of your life,” she said.
Gradually, she summoned the strength to ask how to deal with her son’s remains and assemble a memorial for him. They held a service in Wisconsin, and later a second one in California. A handful of servicemen came by, some from Adam’s unit, and paid their respects. Much of that period remains a blur to Cindy.
Adam’s fellow unit members were also stunned by the news of his death. They remembered his high energy and his enthusiasm for the Army, and would never expect that his life would end so tragically back in the States. There was disbelief, followed by questions about what had happened. Roy sought out answers at Adam’s funeral to clarify what exactly had occurred at Fort Wainwright. Until that time, they only had murky details about Adam’s death.
“We were under the impression it was a self-inflicted gunshot [or] accidental death,” said Roy. “I had to be prepared to find out as much as I could before [Cindy] did.”
Roy approached Richard Boone, one of Adam’s friends from Fort Wainwright. Boone, too, was a sergeant, and a loyal soldier. He wanted to be faithful to his friend’s family by helping answer their questions, but there was an open investigation into Adam’s death, so Boone told Roy that he couldn’t discuss what went on in Alaska. Roy pressed on.
“I’m not here to crucify anyone,” he told Boone. “See that lady?” said Roy, pointing to Cindy. “I gotta get through this with her. I need to be prepared. I just need to know what happened.”
It turned out that Cindy and Roy had mistakenly believed that Adam had shot himself. It was difficult for Boone to describe what had happened: Adam was found in bed with a plastic bag twisted over his head, and beside him sat a can of Dust-Off (compressed gas used for cleaning electronics).
Roy took a deep breath. Oh crap. We’re in for a long haul, he said to himself. He saw Adam’s father, grandmother, and friends, and he felt he couldn’t—and shouldn’t—divulge what he learned, fearing it would only traumatize them further.
“I wish I didn’t know,” said Roy. “It was like the devil dropped something on me. I knew his mom. She was going to want to know who was responsible and why. To watch her ask questions when I could have answered them …” Roy’s eyes watered and his voice trailed off as he remembered that time.
The Iraq war exacted a heavy toll on its veterans. Many turned to substance abuse, and suicides gradually mounted.3 The numbers of soldiers diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) steadily climbed.4
And, as with Vietnam veterans, soldiers who return with PTSD can also transfer some of their distress onto their families.5 Cindy and Roy Chavez were no different.
“We’re human beings, and we find ways to numb ourselves,” said Roy. He later told me how he and Cindy tried to blunt their pain with alcohol after Adam died. But Cindy’s intake turned toxic. According to Roy, she landed in the hospital for twenty-seven days because of “a broken heart and alcohol.”
“It was a scary time. A scary time,” said Roy. “You sit there and go, ‘Oh the war’s going to take another person—my wife. And I’m going to be all alone.’ ”
Cindy ultimately recovered from her stay in the hospital, and her sharp decline from depression and alcohol became a stiff wake-up call for her and Roy. Afterwards, they agreed to swear off drinking from that point on. Cindy even pursued grief counseling in Tehachapi and felt it helped her better cope with the extreme pain she felt. But she couldn’t put aside her questions about the circumstances of her son’s death.
“It became her quest to find out,” said Roy.
“You just want to know why is your child dead,” Cindy said. “I know there’s more to this story, I just don’t know how to get it. And I’m not going to give up until I find out. I’m afraid as the years go by it will all disappear.”
One of Adam’s Army buddies from Iraq, Tony Sandoval, was also searching for answers to his friend’s death. He faithfully called Cindy, and the friendship he had shared with Adam soon extended to his mother.
“I hope I can be instrumental in finding out what happened, because he was a brother of mine and such a good friend,” said Sandoval. “She’ll be a lifelong friend,” he said, referring to Cindy. “She knows that my mind holds a treasure for her in memories of him.”
Cindy met some of the other soldiers who served with Adam, and through them she learned what many veterans were coping with. The military prescribed Paxil and Valium for them (anti-depression and antianxiety medications, respectively), but Cindy felt they never received enough treatment for what they endured in Iraq. She noticed Adam’s friends were frequently getting drunk and getting into fights. They had difficulty focusing on their work and maintaining lasting relationships.
“This is not just about Adam. This is about all of these kids that are in serious trouble,” Cindy said. “I want to be a voice to say that these kids are not getting their medical treatments.”
Cindy felt that such “serious trouble” wasn’t just a result of the difficulties that veterans had faced coming home.
“I just know that something happened in Iraq,” she said. “I want to know exactly what screwed all these kids up in Iraq.”
During the time that Cindy first sought answers, she and Roy received from Fort Wainwright a videotape of the memorial service that the Army put together for Adam in 2004. There were grainy images of a military gathering in a packed auditorium.
“We gather here today to remember Sergeant Adam Gray and bring closure to his death,” began an officer. Minutes later, the same officer described how many on the base thought Adam had committed suicide. Roy and Cindy were taken aback.
What gave him the right to say that? they asked.
Was it, in fact, a suicide? True, he had acute PTSD, but his family believed his condition had been stabilizing. Or did he inadvertently kill himself using improvised recreational drugs? The military assumed it was the latter. Investigators said Adam accidentally killed himself when he inhaled the fumes from the Dust-Off. Others, including Cindy, weren’t so sure. She felt it didn’t add up.
“It was a blow. How can you talk to your kid one night and the next day they tell you your boy is dead?” said Roy, explaining the continued confusion over Adam’s death. “It doesn’t make sense.”
Tony Sandoval agreed. He also puzzled over the military’s response.
“Now if somebody should come back and say, ‘It’s true, it’s positive, he committed suicide,’ then there’s still another big fight,” said Sandoval. “Why? Why did he have to do that? Nobody was there to help him. It doesn’t just happen. How come somebody didn’t notice this?”
Six months after uniformed officers came to their house with news about Adam, Cindy was finally able to start probing
