WASHINGTON – Jessica Swan’s daughter Mackenzie was her “miracle baby.”
She was kind, smart and always wanted to be a scientist – even correcting her mother on the statements of various dinosaurs in primary school. She grew up to be an artist and athlete, with a love for the Alaskan mountains where she grew up. In high school, she joined the Reserve Officer Training Corps, or ROTC, and enjoyed it so much that she continued her commitment to college.
But during a development trip for Air Force cadets in June 2022, Mackenzie hopped into a Humvee with fellow cadets. The vehicle, which was exceeding the speed limit by someone who did not have the training to operate it, turned and overturned. “In principle, [they] said, ‘Go have fun,'” her mother said.
Mackenzie, then 20 years old, was murdered. An Air Force report issued after the accident found multiple violations of protocol. Idaho authorities filed charges against the driver, but they were dismissed in November; the case is on appeal.
“You’re living every parent’s worst nightmare,” Swan recently recalled in an interview with NBC News, with a photo of her daughter in military fatigues hanging on the wall over her shoulder. “And then there is enormous financial pressure.”
Families of active-duty members lost in the line of duty receive a death benefit, which includes a $100,000 “gratuity” and insurance. But family members of ROTC cadets, like Swan, are not eligible. That includes the families of service members participating in the Delayed Entry Program, in which individuals enter as inactive reservists and commit to reporting for basic training at a specified future date, while being encouraged to talk to their recruiters in the meantime. train.
For Swan, funeral expenses, months of missed work as a teacher and traveling between Alaska, where she lives, and Idaho, where Mackenzie was killed, have emptied her bank account. On the first anniversary of her daughter’s death, she packed up the house she rented in Alaska — the last place Mackenzie called home — after being evicted.
Having an Army death benefit “would have eliminated that financial burden because it quickly became a logistical nightmare,” Swan said. “Support would have meant I could have kept the house when they put the house we were renting on the market. I could have kept the last place she lived. Our memories in that house.”
Manny Vega has made it his job to find and reach families like Swan’s because he knows all too well the feeling of “yelling into the wind” for support and finding too little.
Vega’s 21-year-old son, Patrick, himself a Marine veteran from a long line of veterans, always dreamed of donning a uniform. Just days after completing basic training, he became ill. Less than two weeks after the start of training camp, he was dead.
Vega and his family blame poor medical care and the “coldness” of military culture for failing to get him the care he needed for complications from a cold. They said Patrick had been “left in the care of young, inexperienced, scared recruits.” before his death. The Naval Criminal Investigative Services ruled Patrick’s death as natural and said he had a history of sepsis and autoimmune diseases, a conclusion his family disputes.
“For me as a veteran with a disability who wears a medal that says ‘heroism,’ to have the Marine Corps fail my son – because they did that, they failed my son – and to abandon his family, I am very conflicted. Vega told NBC News. “It’s very painful. … Just the coldness of the culture is what was really disturbing.”
Patrick died during boot camp, putting him on active duty and thus eligible for death benefits. But the questions and lessons surrounding his death spurred Vega to turn his grief into action: starting an advocacy group called Save Our Servicemembers, lobbying lawmakers for policy changes, and finding and supporting other families who suffered similar losses.
The old Navy motto “leave no one behind” animates Vega’s plea.
“As a grieving family, you’re shouting into the wind,” Vega said. “I mean, you’re out there and on Capitol Hill… you could yell at all these members and they’ll nod their heads and everything, but unless you don’t yell, you speak and ask for specific things of the right member, it never goes anywhere.”
To make sure his plea went somewhere, Vega called a friend from his boot camp days: Rep. Salud Carbajal, D-California. Carbajal, in turn, found bipartisan agreement with Rep. Michael WaltzR-Fla., On a bill to strengthen access to expanded military death benefits for families of ROTC cadets and delayed-entry soldiers.
Part of that bill is included in the Fiscal Year 2025 National Defense Authorization Act, an annual military legislative package that is considered must-pass. The NDAA includes their legislation that would extend benefits such as death gratuities and accident assistance to families of ROTC cadets killed during official training events. That bill passed the committee Wednesday, with an amendment sponsored by Carbajal that would also expand access to Servicemember’s Group Life Insurance to third- and fourth-year ROTC cadets and soldiers with delayed entry into the program. More than a dozen Democrats and Republicans ultimately signed the amendment. The bill will then go to the House of Representatives.
The issue is personal for Carbajal and Waltz. “He was in the ROTC program at one time, too,” Carbajal said, pointing to Waltz. “I participated in the Delayed Entry Program. We know personally what these gaps could mean in terms of not providing services to the families of service members killed in the line of duty and … what it does to their families.”
Waltz agreed, citing an ongoing recruitment and retention crisis in the military as further reason to act. The realization can be a shock to families, Waltz said: “Oh, wait a minute, my son or daughter is about to jump out of planes, but they’re not getting the benefits that every other military member gets? ”
Both members agreed that these types of policies are easier to implement when lawmakers share the experience of having served. Waltz cited a mentality of “serving a cause bigger than ourselves,” and Carbajal called it an opportunity to “do the right thing” and “put country before parties and politics.”
As for what it would feel like to call his old friend Vega and tell him they made it happen? “It will be very meaningful,” Carbajal said.
And for Swan, who is still fighting for her daughter Mackenzie, a policy change could be a ray of hope, however small.
“I’ll feel like she didn’t die in vain if it helps someone else,” she said.
This article was originally published on NBCNews.com
