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In order to
differentiate, all references to the late Mr. Carreon Sr. will be made as Mr.
Carreon and all references to Henry Carreon Jr., the son, will be made as
Henry.
On November 19,
1981, while on an official mission for the United States Department of Labor in
Tamaulipas, Mexico, the chauffer-driven car that Henry Carreon Sr. rode in was
targeted for a game of chicken when another car with its headlights off, drove
head-on toward the embassy car. In an effort to avoid it, the chauffer, as he
remembers, veered to the other side of the road, flipped, and went off the
road.
After the
accident, all identifying material disappeared off Mr. Carreon’s person. The
vehicles in the embassy caravan, filled with men under Mr. Carreon’s
supervision, disappeared too. When Mr. Carreon was able to contact his son,
Henry Carreon Jr., he was at a third-class hotel many miles away and had been
sutured and had his head bandaged by, reportedly, the Red Cross.
Since Mr.
Carreon’s son Henry had many pilot friends (he had studied for a pilot’s
license but was unable to complete the licensing due to the strenuous vision
requirements), Henry called upon one of his pilot friends for help and was able
to fly in the cockpit in the third co-pilot’s seat to retrieve his father. Because
the area was a known danger zone operated by drug cartel, Henry was told to
grab a taxi, go fast, and bring his father back to the airport as soon as he
could. Mr. Carreon could barely move and Henry assisted his father to the plane
so they could fly back to Mexico City.
In Mexico City,
doctors determined that Mr. Carreon’s spine was fractured. A rigorous medical
treatment began and endured 17 years while Mr. Carreon’s wife Alicia took over
every aspect of caring for her medically determined (and governmentally
contested), incapacitated husband, every day of every week, until Mr. Carreon
passed on October 21, 1998.
As Henry explains, the Republic of Mexico was divided at
that time into four parts. Mr. Carreon’s supervision consisted of Puebla, Mexico
City, Tamaulipas, and Guerrero. His duties working for the U.S. Embassy Foreign
Service involved visiting ranches and taking census information. But Tamaulipas
is where the drug cartel heavily deals, and Henry explains that his father was
likely going into ranches that people didn’t want him to go into. When the
accident happened, Henry believes the United States government abandoned Mr.
Carreon.
He believes the accident may not have happened had the
Government not been trying to save a per diem fee. Mr. Carreon, at the age of
60, was, at the time, visiting areas in Tamaulipas when the Embassy called and
asked him to return to base in Puebla, a six-hour drive in dangerous terrain.
That weekend was a holiday in Mexico, which would have meant paying Mr. Carreon
a per diem on top of salary.
Instead of being paid a per diem that day, Mr. Carreon lost
the use of his upper extremities and became permanently disabled. He developed thoracic
kyphosis (hunchback syndrome) and had trouble walking and moving. Henry
believes that his father died with great complications that the injuries
caused, such as respiratory and movement problems.
In 1989, the Government ordered the Carreons to move from
Mexico City to San Antonio, Texas. Alicia continued her business, buying and
selling antiques, while caring for her husband.
While the Embassy and Department of Labor eventually
provided Mr. Carreon with disability compensation every month, it was a long
battle to get the claim. Acting on his father’s behalf, Henry battled with the
federal government in order to get the legal compensation.
But when Henry’s father passed away, Henry then had to fight
on his mother’s behalf for her to receive widow’s benefits. Henry was getting
nowhere fast until he wrote to President Clinton and Clinton’s Secretary of
Labor, Donna Shalala. Within two months, Henry’s mother began receiving her
widow benefits check and was paid retroactively for the period between 1981 and
1999.
It is at this point that one might think the battle had been
won. Not only had the Carreons received disability compensation, but also
Alicia was receiving a widow’s pension. But this money, believes Henry and Mrs.
Carreon, did not compensate for the 17 years that Mrs. Carreon cared solely for
her debilitated husband.
And because the Secretary of Labor cannot be sued,
government employees with grievances must deal with an administrative
compensation system in which there are two processes of action: (1)
Reconsideration and (2) an appeal to the Employees’ Compensation Appeals Board.
If an aggrieved goes through the employees’ compensation appeals board, that
person has only one shot. If you lose, that is it. This is why Henry chose to
file Reconsideration. But a response, an agreement or denial, can take up to 90
days. Henry has now been filing Reconsiderations for 8 years. He has filed some
15 Reconsiderations and has been ruled against in each
Henry hopes to win the USC 81 11 (a), which provides
compensation for the Service of an Attendant, for those who take care of a
federal employee considered fully disabled. The government did not explain that
Mrs. Carreon was eligible for this money (though she had taken care of all
activities of daily living for Mr. Carreon (feeding, dressing, bathing, and
transferring from bed to wheelchair and back), but the government hadn’t
proclaimed disability eligibility either. And filing a claim to the Department
of Labor is so complicated that there are no attorneys that will handle the
case. Ultimately, you can’t sue the government, although Henry tried. He sat in
a small court in Brownsville, Texas; one man against a table full of government
attorneys who listened to his claim before politely explaining that he could
not sue.
Henry first filed for the Service of an Attendant 9 years
ago. He has 9 doctors who have signed affidavits claiming his father was
disabled. The government had one doctor who disagreed, but later wrote a
statement saying that Mr. Carreon “may have suffered some potential loss of use
regarding his upper extremities with regard to his ongoing physical condition
during the relevant time frame.” Still, the government has not conceded.
And anyone who
has attempted to bring a case against a city, a state, or the federal
government knows what an uphill battle it is. It not only takes a toll upon the
family involved, it can devastate those involved and disillusion those who
believe in the concept of “justice.” But Henry pursues. It is without a doubt
that the battle Henry undertakes would be less likely if he were not a licensed
lawyer in Mexico City, even though he does not hold a license in the U.S. The
legal fees of a case like this one would cost the average family hundreds of
thousands of dollars, if not well into the millions. In fact, it is most often
the unfathomable cost of the legal battles that often dissuade people with just
causes. But Henry feels his father dedicated his life to service to the United
States government.
Mr. Carreon’s service with the U.S. government began in 1941
when he enlisted and fought in WWII. In 1944, he was out of the service, and by
1946 Mr. Carreon was working with the Department of Labor. The Department sent him
to Mexico, where Mr. Carreon met his future wife and caretaker, Alicia, whose
family is of Spanish and French descent. Mr. Carreon’s mother was British and
his father was Mexican-American, from Tuscan, Arizona. Henry’s father went to
the state of Dolores hiDalgo, near San Miguel del lehende, in San Luis de la
Paz, Guanajuato, where he went to university and received degrees as a chemical
engineer and pharmacist. Henry was then born in Mexico City, while his father
worked for the Department.
And during Henry’s battle to get what he feels is just
compensation for his mother, he has taken some cheap shots. One response Henry
received intimated that he was simply trying to get the money for himself when
it was said that the government was not “an insurance company for
beneficiaries.”
Some might think that the Carreons have been amply
compensated and that Henry should move on. But, as Henry explains, his mother
has a lot of neck and back problems from carrying his father back from bed and
chair and chair to bed during bathing and dressing over the 17 years that she
single-handedly cared for her crippled husband. Now Mrs. Carreon has her own
ailments and a right to money that will provide her with needed medical
treatment.
“I have to keep fighting this,” Henry says. “I’m not asking
for food stamps or free money, this is money my mother worked for, she worked
her back…it [is the United States government’s] responsibility to support [him
and her]…he was a passenger in the official vehicle…[and] all these things
together make me think and make me fight for this….”
Mr. Carreon, in
the same concern for family regard, now cares for his mother, who is 80, after
she had a schematic stroke 2 ½ years ago. He makes sure that each day she takes
her needed prescriptions on time. And in an effort to continue the legacy of
care that this family provides one another, Henry has turned one room of his
mother’s home into an office, from which he composes and types his numerous
legal documents that he uses to battle the government of this United States.
“I love my mom and dad and I feel bad because they have been
abused…I can promise you. I’m going to win it,” says Henry. And by sheer
tenacity and righteousness, he probably should. But will the government of the
United States agree?
With Henry’s last appeal denied, we will have to see what
Henry’s next step will be.
*Any inaccuracies in this document can be corrected in a
special note in next month’s issue.
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