Veteran Salute: Serving in the military and local police

Reenlisting following a national tragedy, Army Sergeant Michael Cruse served however he could across the country and abroad during his 21 years of service.

Cruse joined the service in his junior year of high school. He was motivated by an unusual source, his history class.

“When you go through high school obviously you study a lot of history,” Cruse said. “A lot of our history unfortunately focuses on people that have been oppressed. Looking at that, like World War II with the holocaust and everything, and coming from a nontraditional family, a single parent family, I understood what oppression could look like. I wanted to be a part of relieving that, or serving to prevent that.”