With loving thoughts and heartfelt sympathy to the family and friends of Luis Carlos Montalván who was a dear friend to many of our Paws therapy team members. In loving memory, we are sharing the New York Times obituary….

Luis Carlos Montalván, Advocate for Soldiers With PTSD, Dies at 43
By JONAH ENGEL BROMWICHDEC. 7, 2016
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Luis Carlos Montalván, an Iraq war veteran and best-selling author who toured the country with his service dog, Tuesday, as an advocate for soldiers with post-traumatic stress disorder, died on Friday in El Paso. He was 43.

He was found dead in his hotel room. Mr. Montalván’s father, George, said the city’s medical examiner had told him that his son had serious heart problems. “The first thought that we had was that maybe he took his own life,” he said, adding that he now doubted that was the case.

The medical examiner’s office said it would take several weeks to determine a cause of death.

Mr. Montalván served two tours of duty in Iraq and was awarded a Purple Heart and two Bronze Stars. He suffered from post-traumatic stress disorder, or PTSD.

“This guy who had run missions in Iraq as an Army captain was literally unable to leave his apartment” because of his PTSD, said Ellis Henican, who collaborated with Mr. Montalván on a forthcoming book, “Tuesday’s Promise.”

Mr. Montalván’s life changed when he was introduced to Tuesday, a golden retriever, in 2008. The dog became his “conduit to other people, his charm magnet,” Mr. Henican said.

Mr. Montalván went on to earn a master’s degree in journalism from Columbia University, walking through the halls with Tuesday by his side, Mr. Henican said. Mr. Montalván wrote a book about the experience, “Until Tuesday” (2011), with Bret Witter, and began to travel the country, becoming a prominent advocate for veterans and for the use of service dogs.

Luis Carlos Montalván was born in Washington on April 13, 1973, and raised in Potomac, Md.

He joined the Army when he was 17, something “he was absolutely determined” to do, his father said. But he was miserable and was discharged, his father said. Nonetheless, he was in the Reserve Officers’ Training Corps while at the University of Maryland and was deployed to Iraq in 2003 after completing officer training.

Mr. Montalván “was wounded mentally and physically from his time in Iraq,” his father said, adding that while “Tuesday helped him cope,” he remained in pain.

His right leg was amputated above the knee in early 2016, and he described his difficulties on a webpage on which he raised money for a procedure called osseointegration, which fuses a titanium rod directly into the bone to attach to a prosthesis. “Even with a hardened warrior ethos,” he wrote, “the pain associated with amputation is sometimes unbearable.”

Besides his father, he is survived by his mother, Patricia; a brother, Jorge; and a sister, Maria Cristina Montalván Rieppi.

Before going to El Paso, Mr. Montalván left his dog with a family in New York, Mr. Henican said.

Mr. Montalván’s first book described Tuesday’s transformative effect.

“Before Tuesday, I caught glimpses of snipers on rooftops,” he wrote. “Before Tuesday, I spent more than an hour in my apartment working up the courage to walk half a block to the liquor store.” Tuesday, he added, “is my barrier against crowds, my distraction from anxiety and my assistant in everyday tasks.”