ANGIE MILES: In November 2000, Samuel Harris went to state prison, sentenced to 60 years.

Some of that time he had already served while awaiting trial.

ANGIE MILES: It was for a crime committed the year before in November 1999, in Suffolk.

ANGIE MILES: Harris says he directed the man to get on the floor and the woman to hand over her car keys.

Those instructions would later mean abduction and carjacking charges.

Although, he says he told the couple he didn't intend to hurt anyone.

TRACY EURE: You remember, he's 15 here?

ANN DAVIS: Yeah, yeah.

ANGIE MILES: Samuel Harris' family wants the world to meet a very different man than the one who went on a breaking and entering spree in 1999.

A man they adore to this day.

ANN DAVIS: Samuel Harris is my cousin.

Him and I, we're two months apart.

From kindergarten to the fifth grade we were in the same class.

Him and I have been inseparable all our lives.

PAMELA COPELAND: Samuel Harris is my baby brother.

He's always been mischievous, but always very curious.

VIRGINIA LEIGH MIZELL WHITE: And but, he was just as sweet as he could be.

PAMELA COPELAND: When he joined the Army, oh, my God, he loved it.

And I can remember him coming to my house and, you know, he was just excited.

ANN DAVIS: Of course, adulthood changes things somewhat, you know, as we get older, but our hearts never separated.

ANGIE MILES: Harris says that given his love for sports, he considered a career as an agent, but ultimately, he followed the lead of his stepfather.

ANGIE MILES: And a cousin had served, as well.

PAMELA COPELAND: Alfonso, Sam looked up to him.

He respected him.

And listening to stories of their experiences, drew him to serve in the military.

And he's always admired our stepdad.

His name for him was Big Dave, my Dave.

So, he decides to follow in the footsteps of his stepdad and his cousin.

ANGIE MILES: It was 1987 when Harris began his military career with plans to serve for two decades and then retire comfortably.

But just a few years later, he was back in Suffolk and behaving like a different person.

PAMELA COPELAND: There was an incident where I had just bought a brand, new car and I let him drive it, and he totaled it.

He wrapped it around a telephone pole.

We had to rush to Norfolk General and it was terrible.

He would always say, "I hate alcohol."

And to find out that, you know, alcohol had played a part in it, that was, you know, it was scary.

We began to see the downward spiral in his life, you know, and it went from the alcohol to drugs and doing anything and everything.

He, you know, to support his habit.

So yeah, he was not the same.

ANGIE MILES: Sister Tracy, remembers him knocking on her door in the middle of the night, in the dead of winter.

TRACY EURE: And I had told him, I said, 'You can't stay here.'

I said, 'Because I don't want to wake up and all my stuff is gone.'

You know, so that was the hardest thing to do, to turn him down.

And when he left, I got on the phone and I called my dad and I was crying.

I was like, 'Dad, I was like, please find him.

Please get him somewhere to stay.

It is so cold.'

I said, 'But, I can't let him stay here.'

ANN DAVIS: About maybe a month or so, before the incident happened that led him to prison, he came over to my house.

I hardly recognized him, you know, the person that was standing at the door.

I remember asking him, 'Have you eaten?

And do you need to go somewhere or anything?'

And he said, "No," he said, "I'm fine."

And I knew he wanted to, you know, I didn't know what to say to him and, you know, to reach him.

And, he didn't know what to say to me.

But he was screaming for help.

He was, he wanted help.

ANGIE MILES: What led Harris to drugs in prison, what leads many veterans along this same path is the focal point of the Operation Phoenix Veterans Group at Lawrenceville Correctional Center.

ANGIE MILES: Harris says, for him, the trouble started in August 1988, when he nearly drowned at the bottom of a swimming pool during an Army training exercise.

PAMELA COPELAND: That was very scary.

He was unresponsive and they had told me to prepare my parents to fly to Alaska to be with him But, thank God, you know, he pulled through and after a few weeks in the hospital, they flew him home.

ANGIE MILES: For his first few years back in Suffolk, Harris became one of the most successful car salesmen in the area.

But increasingly, he turned to drugs for his unaddressed, mental health issues.

He says it was 2014 when VA representatives came to him in prison.

And 2015, when he was finally diagnosed with PTSD, stemming from that training accident in 1988.

ANGIE MILES: Harris says, better support is needed as service members are making the initial transition to civilian life.

He adds that, behind the prison walls, there are veterans who are suffering, coping with how their military service changed them and hoping that the country that they chose to serve won't forget them, will consider the full extent of what they have sacrificed.