How I Turned My Life Around with Dental Technology

Four days after I graduated from high school in 1996, I enlisted in the Marine Corps. I served active duty for four years, then joined the reserves where I was deployed twice to Iraq and involved in active combat. When I left the reserves in 2007, I was suffering from PTSD and had a very difficult time reintegrating into civilian life. I tried going back to my job as a union carpenter but the nail guns sounded like gunfire and triggered panic attacks; I only lasted a week.

For a long time after that, I barely left the house. Then, in 2008, my stepfather, Dr. Kenneth Kmieck, decided to step in: he came over one day and told me I was going to start working for him. He owns Dental Health Services—a Medicaid practice that employs 13 dentists who service 600 nursing homes with mostly removable restorations—as well as Professional Dental Lab which handles all the practice’s work.

The next day, I was at the laboratory being trained on denture...