Associated Press
By KEVIN FREKING
January 5, 2014
In this Dec. 16, 2013, photo, Army Staff Sgt. Oskar Zepeda poses for a photo at the entrance to a Digital Forensics Lab at an Immigration and Customs Enforcement field office in Seattle, where he is serving a one-year internship. Zepeda, who served nine tours of duty in Iraq and Afghanistan, before being wounded, is part of a 17-member class of veterans deployed to ICE field offices throughout the country to use his newly acquired skills in computer forensics to help capture and prosecute child predators.
Photo: Ted S. Warren, AP
WASHINGTON (AP) — Oskar Zepeda has had pretty much one mission in his life: kill or capture.
After serving nine tours of duty in Iraq and Afghanistan, he now has a new target — child predators.
Zepeda, 29, is part of a 17-member class of veterans trained in computer forensics and sent to Immigration and Customs Enforcement field offices. They aren't paid, and there's no guarantee that they'll have a full-time job when their one-year stint ends.
But the interns are finding the purpose of their new mission outweighs financial considerations.
"I love challenges. And I have a family of my own," said Zepeda, whose military career was cut short by a hand grenade and the 25 operations that followed. "I feel I'm still serving my country and protecting my family at the same time."
For Shannon Krieger, who was in the Army and is now assigned to an ICE office in New Orleans, "This was a new fight I could sink my teeth into. That's what really I was looking for. I wasn't just going to take a job so I can have a paycheck."
Federal officials say a children's lobbying group, PROTECT, pitched the idea of incorporating wounded veterans in the fight against child pornography. ICE Special Agent Patrick Redling said the agency, where veterans account for 30 percent of the workforce, ran with the idea.
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