“My brain had shut my body down due to the pain and stress I was under … all of this was taking a severe mental health toll on me and on Thursday April 6, I went to my bosses office with a razor blade in my hand and told him I wanted to cut my wrists open because I couldn’t take the pain or mental abuse any longer.”—Excerpt from an email sent by Navy veteran Josh Strawn to Jason Crow’s office that was both received and responded to.

 

Since the beginning of 2023, almost every media outlet in Colorado has done some kind of coverage on the toxic work environment plaguing the Aurora VA Hospital.

From news giants like The Denver Post and various network affiliates to smaller publications like Westword and The Colorado Springs Gazette, everyone has been aghast at the subhuman treatment of the employees of the VA.

Unfortunately for a US Navy veteran kitchen manager named Josh Strawn, years of his life were spent being at the center of this abusive vortex when he worked for the Veteran’s Canteen Services (VCS/the sister company to the Department of Veterans Affairs) at the Aurora VA.

 

The Problems Begin From Moment One—

Beginning his tenure at VCS in 2020, the next three years would see Strawn become the personal mule and scapegoat for the VCS upper management. Yet, like any abusive relationship, it didn’t start out that way. When he began (with Chief of Canteen Operations Forrest Hardy being hired a few months later), he was met with simple ineptitude from his superiors.

“There was almost no leadership or direction going on. If we had a problem, Forrest might try to give some input on how to address it, but honestly, it wasn’t really much going on in the way of leadership with him starting in his new role.”

He said this was a core to Hardy’s managerial style. “That was always the case. I tried to fight to keep my word on things but when I had stuff I needed from Forrest, he wasn’t taking care of it.”

In the case of Strawn, this had a trickle-down effect that made him spend the majority of his time running around fixing problems. He was literally doing the work of three men. It was because of the ineptitude of upper management and his desire to fix everything that Strawn developed a hernia from over-exertion. After he collapsed for the second time in the cafeteria due to extreme pain, he finally took some time off to have surgery to repair the damage.

While Strawn was on leave in the spring/summer of 2023, Forrest hired an interim assistant named Kim Grisby. She would have an immediate impact.

“She became Forrest’s ‘Golden Child’; she could do no wrong. If something happened and it was a screw-up on her end, he found a way to push it off on [another manager] who might not even be responsible for what’s going on.” He would oftentimes find himself serving in this role, causing a further mental decline.

The other thing he noticed upon his return was everything in the kitchen had fallen into disarray. “With me out, there was nobody to keep an eye on things and Forrest liked to put all of his attention to the retail store because he believed that was the most important part of the operation. And so, what happened was people weren’t keeping up on their sanitation standards and he wasn’t staying on top of it by making sure that they were. The quality of the sanitation and all of that led to a decline in not only service but also in the grade that VCS carried for having a decent kitchen while I was there. And, they failed their inspections.”

As a good sailor who spent seven years in the armed forces, he pulled up his big-boy pants and took on a new mission: bringing everything back into tip-top shape, even if it killed him.

 

The Struggle Within That Pushed Strawn To Self-Harm—

Between the way basic training breaks you down mentally, along with almost a decade (2003-2010) of very difficult kitchen services where Strawn was responsible for feeding sailors numbering in the triple- and quadruple-digits, he was diagnosed with PTSD in 2011 after being honorably discharged from the Navy.

This was a fact that both Hardy and Grisby were fully aware of. Not only that, but the numerous banners discussing the importance of mental health and dealing with PTSD that hung about the VA were also a daily reminder that the struggle within is VERY real. Apparently, these warnings were ignored as the working conditions established by Hardy and Grisby were fertile grounds for a sailor to snap.

And that’s just what happened.

“So, I was in my own office at the time, and Forrest had made some bizarre requests. And I was already seeing a couple of catering orders and some other things. I knew the following day he had a trip planned that he was supposed to go to some ribbon-cutting thing at some other VA location, and things were getting stacked up on me. I was worried about the callouts I knew I was going to have because it was coming up on a weekend that was a holiday weekend; also, my birthday fell on that weekend. And I knew Kim wouldn’t help.”

He continued, “And I just kept thinking about this until I grabbed some razor blades that I had for cleaning, [put it to my wrist] and I had gone down to Forrest’s office, where him and another co-worker were there. She wanted to leave, but I said ‘No, you can stay.’ I sat down and said, ‘I cannot handle this pressure anymore. I want to slice my wrists open, I can’t deal with this.’ First off, the co-worker got the razors from me (because I don’t want to hurt a co-worker like that), and then Forrest said, ‘You know, you can’t just do that. We’re going to have to go down and talk to somebody at the ER, see what they think. I wouldn’t be doing my job if I didn’t get you immediate attention for this.’ And so, that’s when we went to the ER.”

Once they arrived at the ER, Hardy’s true colors came to light. “All he did was, he went in there with me as my manager, answering these questions, and then they’re like ‘Well, what do you think?’ And Forrest said, ‘Oh, he’s probably fine, he probably just needs to talk to somebody. I just needed to get him here just to say we did it for work purposes. But, he should be alright.’”

Strawn was released within 24 hours of the episode. The following day, he tried again.

“So, the following day, I dumped bottles of pills out on my desk. But, because it was my 40th birthday, my wife had texted me ‘Happy Birthday,’ and like, right there I said I needed help. She told me to go to the ER and that’s what I did.”

Call it fate, call it serendipity, call it divine intervention; Josh had already started the process of taking his life through an overdose at the exact moment his wife reached out, saving him. It’s clear someone was looking out for Strawn that day.

Sadly, it wasn’t the police officers tasked with keeping everyone at the VA safe.

“I went into the ER and they had me in the observation room. I had a little bit of a mental health trigger. I saw two of the officers who were regulars at the cafeteria (who got breakfast or lunch all the time), standing in the hallway looking at me, just shaking their heads and laughing. That triggered me and I pulled a sheet off the bed and wrapped it around my neck, and I was trying to strangle myself. My case worker came in and told me to stop, and I had a standoff with the police. [I was] ready to do something, and I said to them, ‘What? If you guys were any kind of use, I wouldn’t be in this position to begin with.’ And they said, ‘Come on, you’re not going to choke yourself.’ I said, ‘Watch me’ and yanked on it. They came over and tackled me.”

From there they placed him into isolation—something Strawn says did far more damage than good—and when he was released after observation, he admitted himself to a facility for a step-down program. For the next 12 weeks, Strawn worked on his mental health while a plan was put into place that would ensure his tenure with the VA would quickly end.

 

The Final Straws—

Though Strawn had already figured out that the entire kitchen would be in a nightmarish state upon his return, there were two new elements at play that he didn’t anticipate; mainly that he would be denied the ability to take his mental health medications as needed.

Strawn stated that because of the massive workload upon his return, he wasn’t able to take his medications as prescribed. “I would keep my medication in these little pill planners, the day pill box. I kept them on my desk so I could go down and take my medication with a drink at my desk and sit there and breathe for a second. And sometimes when it got busy, up on the floor, I didn’t have the time to take it when I had it scheduled. And, at the time, I was on a very strict schedule with my mental health medications because they had me on four different kinds because of the suicide attempts. And I can’t afford to miss those—when it’s time to take them, I HAVE to take them.”

At first, Strawn says it started out innocently enough. He’d be performing a task and then pause to go take his meds. If Hardy was around, he would tell Strawn something like “Hey, can you finish this task first before you head out?” This was usually followed by Hardy giving Strawn another task immediately, preventing him from making it to his office on schedule for his dose. Strawn says that eventually Hardy stopped putting up a façade and told him that he “needed to be on the floor between the hours of 11 and 1, no matter what.”

By doing this, Strawn quickly saw his mental health decline more rapidly than before.

The other problem that arose when he returned to the kitchen came in the form of his reasonable accommodation request.

While he was in the step-down program, Strawn filled out all the necessary paperwork to get his reasonable accommodations set up in the kitchen upon his return. When he returned, he quickly found that none of the paperwork had been filed. When he found this out, a meeting was set up with Hardy and HR manager Johnny Caswell.

Both Hardy and Caswell said that there was no way they could give him the medical accommodations he needed, and he would either have to suck it up or quit.

Strawn didn’t want to quit because he had already invested over 10 years of his life in the armed forces—his intention was to get the whole 20 years and retire with a full military pension and benefits. But, he also knew that he couldn’t continue to do the work of three people without (literally) killing himself. He asked if he could put his resume up on the internal job board and move to another department that would be able to accommodate his needs.

Neither Hardy or Caswell wanted to see this happen, so they gave Strawn an ultimatum: he could put up his resume, but if nobody picked it up, then not only would he lose his job, but he would also lose all 10 years of credit he’d built at that point (and yes, from what I understand, they could actually do this).

He reluctantly decided to stay for the time being.

After speaking to other employees who worked there at the time (who choose to remain anonymous at this time), it was clear that Grisby and Hardy wanted Strawn out, but they knew that with his medical conditions, he would be protected … unless they could prove he wasn’t able to do his job. This was the catalyst that got Strawn fired.

When I asked him about the day everything came to a head, he confirmed the story that I’d heard from the employees I talked to. Early in the day, he started getting task after task after task. Between the physical exertion, lack of help, and lack of medications, he snapped.

Said Strawn, “I had gotten a complaint from somebody about the sanitation of the containers for the taco salads. Kim has this way during a conversation of making these little, jabbing remarks, to where she gets you to explode on her. So, I’m trying to explain about the containers and how I was having other issues. And she says ‘You need to calm down.’ And I said, ‘I would if I was able to take my medications on time, but I didn’t have the chance to do that.’ She keeps making other remarks until I blow up. I tell her that this is what happens when you have a mental problem and somebody pushed your wires, and now it’s happening.”

He said the impact was immediate. “I was dizzy from yelling and screaming, and when I went into the [dish room leading to the downstairs kitchen], I felt an elevated level of pain. I leaned onto a cart and pushed it into the wall and it fell over, and I fell down on my ass onto the ground. I was out of breath.”

The employees I spoke to told me they’d heard the police had been called to the kitchen and wanted to know what happened. They stated Grisby told them that her, Hardy, and regional director Dwayne Finklea hatched a plan to test Strawn’s limits and see if he could do all the tasks his doctor said he could, or if he would fail or snap and give them a reason to terminate him. However, instead of giving the tasks one at a time until each was completed, they gave him a week’s worth at once.

Once I heard this, I wanted to ask Hardy about these accusations; I wanted to get his side of the story. So, I emailed him and waited. After a few days, I was sent this statement from the VA’s public relations department:

Strawn was so terrified his outburst would be enough of a justification for Hardy to fire him and take away ALL of his benefits—including the 10 years he spent serving our country—that he resigned shortly after.

 

Enter Representative Jason Crow—

When I told Strawn the whole story, including the information I was given from the other employees I spoke with, he strongly felt his civil rights had been violated. However, he wasn’t exactly sure what to do.

As American citizens, we’ve been told all our lives to contact our local congressional representative if we have a grievance with the government, so I recommended he contact the representative for Aurora; Jason Crow, and his office.

I’ve read enough news articles about the Aurora VA to know that Crow has made the issues there a key component of his administration. For example, on his official House.gov site, he makes it clear that both the quality of healthcare and the pervasive toxic work environment must be stopped.

I figured that since Crow had not only been quoted in the media claiming to want to get to the bottom of the problems at the VA but had also gotten a full investigation of the VA completed by the Office of the Inspector General (OIG), he would be more than willing to help with any advice.

Beginning on September 13th, Strawn and his wife sent the first of two emails (along with a message left at the office) detailing the trauma he experienced at the VA/VCS. Both emails that were sent got responses from Ben Kelsey at Crow’s office. The first reply was sympathetic to the situation and stated that he’d like to hear more about the situation (a meeting). After waiting a week with no follow-up to the meeting request, Strawn left a voice message asking again to schedule a meeting.

After the second email was sent, Kelsey responded again stating that the information about what Strawn experienced would be forwarded to D.C.—though not for actual help, but rather, just for knowledge purposes. Again, like before, there haven’t been any responses or updates to speak of.

When I found out about this, I immediately reached out to Crow’s office for an interview/statement. I wanted to know why Strawn was being ignored. I wanted to know if the emails had been forwarded to Crow. And, given how vocal Crow has been when it comes to finding out what’s really going on at the VA and if the emails weren’t forwarded, why not? I also wanted to know what Crow was going to do with the Aurora VA now that he has heard of these horrors, in conjunction with the completion of the OIG’s report.

As of the date of this publication, there have been no responses to my questions.

 

So, What’s Next?—

Both Hardy and Grisby are still in full control of the VCS. In a twist of fate, shortly after everything happened with Strawn’s breakdown, Hardy was given the Challenge Coin. The Challenge Coin is one of the highest honors that can be bestowed on someone who works for the VA/VCS; it’s usually given to those who exemplify the highest standards.

Because of this honor, along with the lack of actionable plans being put forth by Crow or any other politician associated with Aurora, I don’t see this toxic environment changing anytime soon. Hopefully, enough people with power at the VA/VCS or Colorado government will read Strawn’s story and force change to occur.

If not, don’t be surprised to hear about a veteran working at the VA ending their own life—it seems the system is designed to facilitate that kind of outcome.