Long before he arrived in Iraq, Luke Cassidy gave his heart and soul to his country as a Marine and police officer.
Surrendering part of his left leg later didn't seem like much of a sacrifice, the Plum man said.
Nine days after arriving in Al Ramadi in 2004, an improvised explosive device detonated beneath the vehicle Cassidy was driving. The explosion broke his legs, shattered his heels and tore off the big toe of his right foot. An insurgent also shot him in the right calf, he said.
"Ten to 15 days later, after about 10 surgeries, the doctors gave me a choice," said Cassidy, 33, who received an honorable discharge as a Marine Corps Reserve staff sergeant. "I could either have my left leg below my knee amputated, or I could keep it and continue fighting infections, have it 3 inches shorter than my other leg and limp the rest of my life. It was not a hard decision."
Cassidy, a graduate of Gannon University in Erie and a police officer in Virginia for 11 years, wanted to make sure he could get a job once he recovered. He wanted to run. He has accomplished both.
He joined the police department of the Department of Veterans Affairs in Pittsburgh less than a year ago. And he can run an eight-minute mile.
"I'm a little slower than I was," said Cassidy, who could run a seven-minute mile before being wounded. "But I've never been a sprinter, so that wasn't a big deal."
Retired Marine Lt. Col. Oliver North thought so much of Cassidy's story that North featured him last month on his Fox News Channel show, "War Stories." But Cassidy hasn't seen it yet. He was working when it aired and said he simply hasn't gotten around to it.
"I'm a fourth-generation Purple Heart recipient, so we're used to getting enemy fire," Cassidy said. "I had been through a lot of combat situations before Iraq, so I had no illusions about what I did for a living."
Cassidy served in Bosnia and Kosovo as a Marine civil affairs specialist as part of his 11 years with the Corps.
His wife, Kimberly, 35, a soon-to-be major in the Army Reserve, isn't angry either.
"When we saw others at (Walter Reed Medical Center in Washington) much worse, we realized we were pretty fortunate," she said. "We could have another child. His face wasn't destroyed. His skin wasn't burned. My husband would always say, 'If this is all I have to do for my country, this isn't bad.' "
In fact, she said, her husband has never acted depressed about the injury, at least in front of her.
"Every day Luke woke up with a smile," she said. "He hid the down moments from me. We laugh about it sometimes. One time he called down from upstairs, 'Honey, have you seen my leg?' I was like, 'How can you lose your leg?' "
Their three children, Christopher, 9, Brendan, 5, and Meghan, 2, play with their dad's prosthetics and take turns trying to put them on their feet, Kimberly Cassidy said.
That type of attitude didn't surprise Mike Mazik, 42, a police officer for Fairfax County in Virginia, where he worked with Cassidy for nearly a decade.
"No matter what came his way, he's just kept on working right through it," said Mazik, who served as Cassidy's field-training officer.
"The very first day he was with me, Luke's foot slipped off the brake and hit a lady at a red light," Mazik said. "There was no damage, but I asked him what was going on with him. Turns out he'd just spent the entire weekend with the Marines and was working on zero hours of sleep. But he never complained about it."
Lt. Col. John Church, 44, was in another vehicle of the same convoy that insurgents attacked that day in Iraq. He has known Cassidy since 2001, and recalled "how calm and serene he was when he got his foot blown off."
"That's part of who he is," said Church, who was among the first to reach Cassidy when he was wounded. "He's a very self-actualized individual. Of all young people, he's probably one of the best able to emotionally, spiritually and intellectually accept what happened to him and move beyond it. Luke Cassidy is a great American."
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