A veteran's service in Panama isn't covered by the VA. There are hundreds like him.

A veteran's service in Panama isn't covered by the VA. There are hundreds like him.

Steven Price grew up in Panama and enlisted in the U.S. Army in 1981. For his first base, he “signed up to go back home,” volunteering for duty at the Panama Canal Zone, where more than 10,000 soldiers were stationed in the 1980s. He spent three and a half years in Panama, first as a radio operator and then as a linguist, deploying to Honduras and El Salvador. He was, he remembers, constantly amid toxic pesticides. To control insects, it the poi…