Expert: Howard Lorenz - 3/2/2010

Question
Ok so my husband was supposed to leave for basic Feb 23rd we are living in Louisiana but his recruiter was in Texas where we used to live and we didn't want to have to worry about transferring all the paperwork so we decided to just keep the one in Texas. Anyway so Fri. night we drive to Texas so that he could see all of his family and friends before he left. Monday morning we go to his recruiters office and he tells us that unless they can get some paper from Liberty county he won't be able to go. Let me explain, when he was in high school he was caught taking a cold medicine by a lunch lady and it got him into a lot of trouble because apparently it's considered a drug and you can't have that at school well he never had to go to court or anything he never got a ticket all he had to do was some kind of counseling. So when they did the FBI check on him it came up as a deferred adjudication for a controlled substance in a drug free zone, but there was no record of it anywhere else so they had to get a statement from Liberty county saying there was no record of it. My husband and his recruiter were able to do this and so my husband went to the hotel and told me to be at MEPS at 10:30 to watch him swear in, Tuesday morning I get up and drive to Houston and get to MEPS and he tells me he is waiting and has been waiting, apparently whatever paperwork they got turned in the day before was last minute and they had to wait for an approval or disapproval.....Then finally the lady calls him back and tells him he will ship out Wednesday to check into the hotel by four o'clock, It was only 12 so my husband got me a hotel room of my own so that we could hang out together before he had to go to his.... we get to the hotel and are just relaxing when he gets a call from his recruiter saying that the paperwork was DISAPPROVED!!!!! So of course were upset, I'm crying and my husband is tearing up, because we had been waiting for 4 months(my husband signed the contract in OCT) for this to happen and then the day before its supposed to everything falls apart!!!!!!!  
We had forgot that MEPS still had all of our birth certificates and stuff so my husband called his recruiter back and he says to go pick it up Wednesday morning and then go by the recruiting office before we head back to Louisiana. Wednesday morning he goes to MEPS and the lady won't give him the paperwork because he's "supposed to ship out today" and so he explains to her what happened and so she calls the ??Brigade?? (not sure) and they say that it was disapproved because they didn't have enough time to look over the paperwork and for him to tell his recruiter to resubmit it and he can still ship out in 2-weeks.....SO my husband calls his recruiter and he says no that it wasn't because they didn't have time it was because the statement they got from Liberty County said he had been counseled. And when we go to the recruiting office my husbands recruiter brings my husband to the marine guys!!!!! I don't know what to do.... We don't want to give up the Army we both have our Hearts set on ARMY and plus according to MEPS he still has a chance!!! What do we do!!!!!!!!!! My husband is more than deserving to  be a part of the US Army. Does he still have a chance?? Is it possible that his recruiter made him look bad by waiting until the last min to get the paperwork in? If we just tried with a different recruiter in Louisiana would we be wasting our time??

Answer
Well that is certainly a mess. Sounds to me like the recruiter was told to drop your husband becasue of the time consuming work it will take.

The first thing that I would do is go back to the Liberty County Procesuters office and have them fix that issue. One its a cold medicing percribed over the counter and not a controlled substance. They can have this completely removed from his record since he was not arrested or charged by the county. What they did is annotate it in his record to reflect that he was counseled about taking medication in a drug free zone. The laws that are written to protect us from the really bad stuff unforunatley can haunt us becasue the law was unclearly written.

Once this is removed to where when they do the FBI check it doesnt show, Make sure that he tells them what happened, Then get a letter from the county that reflects the change in his record. Then find another recruiter in LA near you and try again.

The fact that the Army recruiter passed him to the Marines is just in bad taste. The recruiter has allot of power and could have stood up to his boss and called bull on that one. I would have.

The problem today is that the services can afford to be "PICKY" and are. The recruiters ant having to work as hard to get folks in and they are taking those who pose the least paperwork.