Thirty seconds after meeting Richard Stayskal, I came to the conclusion that I liked the man.

Thirty seconds after that, I came to the conclusion that Richard Stayskal liked me, too.

Big and tall and movie-star handsome, one easily detects kindness in Stayskal’s eyes. His smile is comforting, and his demeanor is affable. He seems the type with whom you could strike up a conversation while you’re in line at a deli counter.

There’s probably one more thing you should know about this 43-year-old former U.S. Marine and current U.S. Army master sergeant.

Richard Stayskal is dying.

You should be angry about that. In fact, you should be outraged.

To be sure, all of us will meet the same fate someday, but most of us have the presumption of many more “somedays.” Richard Stayskal does not. He knows that he will die sooner, rather than later.

“It’s not a matter of if, but when,” said Stayskal, who was in Turlock last week to speak about the Sgt. First Class Richard Stayskal Military Medical Accountability Act — federal legislation passed in his name with the help of Jackie Speier, a former Democratic member of Congress who now sits on the San Mateo County Board of Supervisors.

In July of 2017, Stayskal was diagnosed by a civilian doctor with advanced Stage 3 lung cancer, learning only then that his military hospital had failed to recognize the early-stage tumor in his right lung six months earlier. Six months later, he was told there was no hope.

“I was talking to my civilian doctor one day and he said, ‘I’m a doctor, and I’m not for suing, but you should be suing the pants of somebody for this, because this is bad,’” said Stayskal, who was initially told he had pneumonia.

However, due to a 1950 Supreme Court ruling known as the Feres Doctrine, the government is not liable for injuries that “arise out of or are in the course of activity incident to service.”

In other words, active service members and veterans can’t sue Uncle Sam.

That didn’t sit well with Stayskal, who earned a Purple Heart and Bronze Star serving his country in Iraq. Just shy of his 23rd birthday in 2004, the then-Marine corporal had his lung punctured by a sniper’s round during a battle in Ramadi.

Stayskal was honorably discharged from the Marines in 2005, but joined the Army a year later. In 2017, when he needed a chest scan in preparation for dive school, his cancer was misdiagnosed.

It was the military’s nearly complete disregard for his condition that led him to become something of amateur politician, meeting with Capitol Hill legislators who weren’t that sympathetic to his cause, either.

Stayskal was undeterred.

“If they don’t care, how do I make them care?” said Stayskal, a native of San Jose who now resides in North Carolina. “I started reading, I started studying, I started asking people questions, I started Googling ‘How does D.C. work?’ It just took a lot of time and lot of research and I didn’t have anything to lose at the time.”

Two years later, legislation was passed, and Stayskal explains the new law like this: 

“In short, if you’re in the service, and within three years of the incident, you can file an admin claim with the branch of service through the (Department of Defense),” Stayskal said. “So, you find yourself an attorney, they do all the legal research and then they submit the claim to DOD, but through the exact branch you’re serving in. Then they make a judgment call on whether you deserve compensation for the malpractice.”

The sad irony is that Stayskal’s claim was denied. 

According to a story in the Washington Post, the Army Claims Service wrote in 2022 that “the experts have determined that had MSG Stayskal’s cancer been diagnosed anytime between January 27 and June 27, 2017, his treatment and prognosis would have been essentially the same.”

Still, Stayskal continues to fight. He and his wife, Megan, have high-school-aged daughters — Addisyn, 17, and Carly, 15.

“I had to look at my kids and they didn’t quite understand (in 2017),” Stayskal remembered. “I worried what will they think when they're older. Not that I worried they’d think I was a failure, but was I teaching them, ‘Eh, let’s just let this one go and move on’ or is the whole country founded on the principle that somebody at some point said, ‘This isn’t right. What am I going to do?’ So, do I want to just sit here and pass away, or do something with the time I’ve got?”

Part of that time was spent in Turlock last week, a stop-over on his way to Veterans Day festivities in Patterson. He was hosted by Turlock resident and retired U.S. Army Staff Sgt. Kelley Coelho for an evening at Dust Bowl Brewing Co., where he talked to other veterans and service members about their struggles and concerns.

“If they have any type of case that they’re struggling with internally, we’re going to help to try to spearhead that and find a solution for the service members and veterans,” said Coelho, now the CEO of B and C Investigations. “I met Richard through my advocating in Washington D.C. … We wanted to find other avenues to bring in key individuals that have a lot of pull, and they’re right here in our back yard in Stanislaus County.”

As the evening wound down, Stayskal shook hands and casually chatted with other service members and veterans, sharing his story and listening to theirs. Every once in a while, he turned away from his guests and coughed gently.

“I’m not sick,” he assured me, perhaps thinking I might fear catching a cold — or worse.

As I prepared to leave the gathering, I shook Stayskal’s hand, looked him in the eye and said sincerely, “I’m glad to have met you, Richard. I hope to see you again.” 

“Me, too,” he said.

Deep down, we both seemed to sense that it’s unlikely our paths will ever cross again. But deeper down, for some reason, I don’t doubt they will.