southernhybrid
Contributor
https://wapo.st/4qN0TNq
This is an article that anyone can read. It brought tears to my eyes and I wish there was a way to help her out. It's criminal how these people are being treated, not only for being kicked out of the military but many have never received their severance pay.
This is an article that anyone can read. It brought tears to my eyes and I wish there was a way to help her out. It's criminal how these people are being treated, not only for being kicked out of the military but many have never received their severance pay.
Chloe Shapiro is one of a dozen former service members identified by The Washington Post who have waited months for full payments.
By Casey Parks
SEATTLE — By the time Chloe Shapiro reached Seattle, almost nothing remained of the life she’d thought she’d have forever. Her career was over. Her bank account was down to $30, and the only home she had was a two-door Honda Accord.
She’d spent the past few nights sleeping in the driver’s seat outside small-town Walmarts as she traveled the 2,100 miles from Texas. In Seattle, she parked her car and surveyed all she had left. She had folded a few dresses in the front seat. In the back, she’d laid her Texas Army National Guard uniform on top of a crate filled with her father’s Bibles and a DD214 certificate that said she was officially discharged from the military.
In the year and a half since Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth declared he would find all trans troops and kick them out, Shapiro had tried to do everything right. She’d given up the military job she’d held for nearly half her life. She’d filled out the paperwork and turned in her gear — all in exchange for an honorable discharge and the promise of an $86,665.32 severance check.
She was 30, young enough to make something new of her life. She’d planned to leave San Antonio and use the money to start college in the trans-friendly Pacific Northwest. Months had gone by, though, and her severance still hadn’t arrived. She couldn’t start college. She couldn’t even pay rent.
I've only pasted a small amount of the article but his woman was an honored and valued by the military but since she's transgender, the assholes in the administration wanted her out.When the higher-ups moved her to a logistics job overseeing weapons and armored vehicles, Shapiro “took it by the horns and ran with it,” said Sgt. 1st Class Jeremiah Thompson, who met Shapiro in 2018 when they served in the 111th engineer battalion together.
“It’s a stressful position with a high turnover rate, but Shapiro was super dedicated,” Thompson said. “She would do anything she could to figure out a way to take care of her soldiers.”