ABOUT US
We're Burnpit360 advocates who became friends while campaigning
for the PACT Act on behalf of Warfighters and their families.
KIMBERLY HUGHES
KIMBERLY HUGHES, a native of Chicago, is the mother of two and the widow of Army Major Gary Hughes, who passed away in the prime of his life.
When Gary fell ill, Kim found herself in a whirlpool of struggles that she would have to battle: losing a business, filing for bankruptcy, and proving her husband was a victim of toxic air exposure. She soon discovered Burn Pits 360, where she found hope, and reached out to founders Rosie and LeRoy Torres.
Eventually, her family left the only place they had ever called home and moved south. She began traveling, sharing her story, and empowering others. Along the way, she met Kevin Hensley, Gina Cancelino, and Tim Hauser. Together they helped make history.
Even though cancer stole Gary's life, Kimberly became resilient—not only for her own family but ultimately for many others.
Now that the PACT Act is law, Kim advocates for veterans, their families, and survivors. She continues to advocate for the implementation of the PACT Act, encourages early onset testing, and shares information that will spare others from the painful experiences that she and her family had to suffer.
KEVIN HENSLEY
KEVIN HENSLEY operates from a highly developed sense of justice. But on deployment, Kevin had to let one big transgression go. The burn pits right beside where he slept and worked were making him sick. Back home, Kevin paid daily for his exposure to the pits. Breathing and swallowing became difficult.
Towards the end of his twenty years of service, his situation became dire. Tests revealed hundreds of polyps in his airways and damage to his lungs. As Kevin’s health worsened, his debt mounted when treatment remained uncovered. He learned to keep massive notebooks of every test result and procedure to litigate for his treatment with a VA that seemed determined not to acknowledge the source of his illness.
With the passage of the PACT Act, Kevin will finally be able to put those notebooks away and receive treatment without losing anything more. He can continue to help other veterans keep government representatives from breaking protocol. After all, enforcing regulations is what he does.
TIM HAUSER
TIM HAUSER was a high school student who liked photography, art, track, and cross country. Growing up in Ohio, Tim biked to nearby Lake Erie with his friends or went there with his family. He enjoyed spending time outdoors swimming, running, fishing, or lining up a shot with his camera. When he joined the service, he took every opportunity to find some fun or adventure.
But when he got home from months of deployment abroad, he couldn't even run a mile before the lack of air made him stop. A biopsy back home revealed that, after just a few months of toxic smoke exposure, the bottom of his lungs had turned hard and diseased, a change that it would take decades of hard chain-smoking to approximate.
Tim spoke for decades to other veteran patients in waiting rooms, doctors in the VA, and people close to him about what the burn pit smoke had done to his lungs and health.
With the passage of the PACT Act, Tim wants to help homeless veterans find medical care and a path back to stability. Having come near to homelessness himself because of his health, he wants to serve those less lucky than him.
GINA CANCELINO
GINA CANCELINO'S husband Joseph was a Marine who spent his entire six-month deployment in Iraq, sleeping adjacent to both a jet fuel ignited burn pit of refuse and barrels filled with burning human waste coated in lye and also ignited by jet fuel. Fourteen years after returning home, Joseph was diagnosed with a rare, aggressive form of cancer: cancer he would die from two and half years later because of his exposure to toxins from burn pits. At no time during or after his deployment was he ever notified of the potential damage to his health those burn pits could cause. No one advised early testing and intervention, something that might have saved Joseph’s life,
Following the loss of her husband and the realization that other veterans and their families could be devastated like her own, she began advocating for the PACT Act. Her ability to passionately yet articulately express her grief, sadness, and frustration over the lack of resources being applied to this growing tragedy led her to Burn Pits 360 and a new type of family. Little did she know that her advocacy and support as well as her voice at press conferences, on CNN, on radio and in newspaper interviews would be returned to her and her daughters through their deep and lasting relationships with other advocates.
Now that the PACT Act is law, Gina and her two daughters will receive the service-connected death benefits that Joseph earned: benefits they had been denied. Gina is also focusing on the PACT Act implementation and education within the veteran and survivor communities with the hope that this knowledge will lead to early detection for some and closure for others. She is determined to spread the importance of screenings and early detection so that our veterans can have the opportunity at life that Joe was denied.