BROKEN WINGS

"I feel that Mr. [Scott Boothe] is just out to get Mr. Coots," [Tom Odell] says during an audio recording made by Coots, which Odell agrees to on the recording. "I think there's certain people the organization has come after, and Mr. Coots happens to be one." [Richard Merril...

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Bibliographic Details
Published inSalt Lake City Weekly Vol. 31; no. 9
Main Author Dark, Stephen
Format Newspaper Article
LanguageEnglish
Published Salt Lake City, Utah Copperfield Publishing, Inc 10.07.2014
Subjects
Coots, Michael
Mental health
Military bases
Personal profiles
Social life & customs
Suicides & suicide attempts
Salt Lake City Utah
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Summary:"I feel that Mr. [Scott Boothe] is just out to get Mr. Coots," [Tom Odell] says during an audio recording made by Coots, which Odell agrees to on the recording. "I think there's certain people the organization has come after, and Mr. Coots happens to be one." [Richard Merrill] told the Equal Opportunity investigator that the clock on Coots' employment worsened the mechanic's stress. Merrill wanted to keep Coots on his team. "He was a good mechanic and a good person," Merrill told the investigator. "He is smart and I know that as soon as he was through the stress stuff, he would pop right back." While Coots' friend [Frank Crofts] was able to retire, Coots and so many others of the 15,000-plus labor force at Hill stay on because they have no choice. Saddled with mortgages and debts and unlikely to easily find work in a region where their current employer is the major player, many, Coots says, are simply driven to despair. "I feel trapped, I feel so trapped," he says. "You're at their mercy. This is not a land of opportunity, there is not work out there. These people have bought homes, they have debt, they figured they'd be here the rest of their lives."