Severely burned JTAC continues his recovery

[unhappycamper]

Tech. Sgt. Israel Del Toro is shown at left in December 2006, a year after being burned by a roadside bomb in Afghanistan and at right, after 96 surgeries, giving a presentation this month at the National Museum of the U.S. Air Force.


Severely burned JTAC continues his recovery
By Patrick Winn - Staff writer
Posted : Tuesday Apr 22, 2008 17:33:09 EDT

A message to President Bush: There is an extremely courageous joint terminal attack controller in Texas who really, really wants to meet you.

This time, he promises, he’ll remember it.

Tech. Sgt. Israel Del Toro, one of the Air Force’s most severely injured airmen, continues to recover from the roadside bomb blast in Afghanistan that melted his features and sent him limping into a nearby creek.

That was Dec. 4, 2005. In the weeks that followed, as Del Toro lay comatose in a San Antonio burn ward, the president found time to visit the unconscious airman and whisper a blessing the JTAC never heard.

Today, 96 surgeries later, Del Toro is slowly improving. But the question that worried him last summer, when Air Force Times profiled the airman in a cover story, remains unanswered: Will the Air Force grant him his biggest wish — to somehow stay in the service?


Rest of article at: http://www.airforcetimes.com/news/2008/04/airforce_del_toro_042008/

[midnight]

1. Where this man gets the ability to smile is truely a miracle.

I wish this brave the opportunity to continue to do what he wants to do-stay in the service.