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National Guard Cpl. Joe Raicaldo is home from Iraq with things he didn’t have when he left: an honorable discharge, metal rods and screws up and down his spine, and an arm that moves like a robot’s. He’s also homeless, living in his car. There are at least 600 recent vets who are homeless.
Raicaldo’s story is one that tells how hard it is going to be to weave some of America’s warriors back into the fabric of home.
Copyright 2023 NPR. To see more, visit https://www.npr.org. 9(MDM3NjYwMjA5MDE1MjA1MzQ1NDk1N2ZmZQ004) "Iraq War Vets Return; Some Have No Home 1")
Libby Lewis is an award-winning reporter on the National Desk whose pieces on issues of law, society, criminal justice, the military and social policy can be heard on Morning Edition, All Things Considered, Day to Day, Weekend Edition Saturday, and other NPR shows.
Since 2003 Lewis has been a general assignment reporter at NPR, covering stories on human trafficking, American youths studying Islam, military recruiting, and drug courts.
Lewis has won a number of reporting awards, including the 2005 media award for excellence from the National Association of Drug Court Professionals, which is comprised of judges, lawyers and counselors. She won the 2002 National Media Award from the National Mental Health Association for her NPR series on Russell Weston, the mentally ill man who shot and killed two police officers in the U.S. Capitol. She also won reporting awards from the North Carolina Press Association, North Carolina Bar Association, and Landmark Foundation.
For most of her life Lewis has had a passion for the documentary and for dancing. In her work at Duke University, she produced an oral history documentary of a southern textile worker and she co-wrote part of a radio drama based on an historic 1958 textile strike in Henderson. Lewis danced with the former Chapel Hill Ballet Company and New Performing Dance Company in Durham, N.C. and Wall Street Danceworks in Asheville, N.C.
Lewis spent a summer on an archeological dig of a 17th Century Sioux Indian site in Chatham County, North Carolina. One find: an electric blue trading bead.
She was graduated summa cum laude from the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill with a bachelor's degree in interdisciplinary studies. There, she was inducted into the Order of the Grail-Valkyries, which recognizes university students for excellence in character, leadership, scholarship, and service.
Lewis has a master's degree in history from Duke University, and a master of studies in law from Yale Law School, where she was a Knight Fellow in journalism and a visiting scholar.
