John Brecher / NBC News

Salvador Rances, Iraq War veteran, works as a regulations analyst at the New York Stock Exchange.

A veteran-employment slump dubbed “a national disgrace” in March has veered from pontification and promises to a true hiring push as 117,000 ex-members of the U.S. military and their spouses gained work during the past year, according to a report published Monday.

Those filled jobs were spread among 185 companies that earned spots on the 2014 ranking of America’s most “military-friendly employers,” as assessed and compiled by Victory Media and released to NBC News.

“These are the folks that have built the right programs to recruit transitioning service members and their spouses,” said Sean Collins, vice president of Victory Media and a former U.S. Navy pilot. “The hiring done by our (listed) companies very likely covers vast preponderance of the folks hired from the military community. These are not pledges. These companies are providing solutions.”

The annual list, to be published in the December edition of G.I. Jobs magazine, is led for the second consecutive year by San Antonio-based USAA, a financial-services outfit created in 1922 by Army officers as a mutual insurance company. Other companies grabbing top-10 spots include Verizon Communications, Booz Allen Hamilton, Union Pacific Railroad and AlliedBarton Security Services. The rankings are calculated and weighted based on surveys completed by the businesses. Results are checked by Ernst & Young LLP.

Competition to find a foothold in the top 100 was more fierce than in past years — a sign of the heightened investment employers are injecting into snapping up younger veterans, Collins said. He points out that 85 companies didn’t make the top-100 cut yet still have military-jobs programs that Victory Media found worthy of special mention — up from 54 such also-rans on the 2013 list.

Salvador Rances

One veteran who embodies the trend lines is Salvador Rances, an ex-combat engineer who served in Iraq from 2003 to 2004. After exiting the Army in 2005, he worked in construction and waited tables while hunting for his career break. He attended networking and resume-writing workshops offered by Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America (IAVA), an advocacy group.

On Sept. 3, Rances finally went professional, starting as a regulations analyst at the New York Stock Exchange. 

"There’s a lot of emphasis on hiring the veterans. That's a good thing. But still a lot could be done," said Rances, 34.

"My brother, Ernesto (Rances), is an Iraq (Army) veteran and, just like me (previously), he has a back-up job as a security guard. He’s been trying to get another job for the last two, three years," Salvador Rances said. "The opportunities are there. It’s just a matter of helping veterans take their (military-duty) descriptions and bridging them to the job they want. It’s not easy but it’s possible." 

The military's Afghanistan pullout in 2014, coupled with the larger downsizing of U.S. armed forces, will keep the veteran-job market "tumultuous" for another decade, said Paul Rieckhoff, chief executive officer and founder of IAVA. He called the latest unemployment rate for post-9/11 veterans - 10.1 percent - "too high." 

"Yes, the landscape has changed. If you don’t have a veterans-employment program, you are now the exception," Rieckhoff said. "We’ve seen some industry leaders drive this (issue) to the front of the queue," citing Google, Cisco Systems and LinkedIn plus the White House "Joining Forces" initiative.

"Over time, companies will realize hiring veterans is not a charitable move, it’s a business-development investment. These folks are hardwired to do well in business," Rieckhoff said. "Employers have to understand a veteran is not just your next security guard. A veteran could be your next Mark Zuckerberg."

Salvador Rances

An employee at an Oregon animal sanctuary was killed when she alone in a wildcat cage, the organization said Sunday.

Renee Radziwon-Chapman, 36, of Portland, Ore., had been the head keeper at WildCat Haven Sanctuary for nearly a decade before she was killed Saturday evening.

"Right now, our thoughts and prayers are with the family of our dear colleague and friend who we have so sadly lost," said WildCat Haven Executive Director Cheryl Tuller in a statement. "We are devastated by this loss."

The sanctuary, which rescues captive-born wild cats, has stringent safety measures for employees and volunteers, according to the statement.

Sanctuary officials believe that at the time of the fatal attack Radziwon-Chapman was alone at the sanctuary and alone in the enclosure with cats.

"The sanctuary's handbook specifies that "two qualified staff members shall work together during the lock out of dangerous animals. Once the animals are locked out, one staff member can safely enter the enclosure to clean or make repairs. Two qualified staff members shall be available when releasing animals from lockout areas," the statement said.

Officials said they are still investigating the incident.

At the time of the attack, no cat had escaped from the enclosures, which are surrounded on all sides by 14-foot tall walls of six-gauge wire and are safeguarded by secure ceilings, lockout area and double-door entries, according to the statement. Larger enclosures are also surrounded by four-foot concrete walkways.

“The enclosures exceed what is required by the U.S Department of Agriculture, which inspects the facility yearly,” the statement said.

Sheriff's Sgt. Robert Wurpes told the Associated Press on Saturday that the animal was locked in a cage after the attack.

Radziwon-Chapman was remembered by a colleague as a seasoned worker with an affinity for animals who may have just mysteriously slipped up.

"Her relationship with the cats was amazing," Jim Caliva, a WildCat Haven Sanctuary board member, told The Oregonian newspaper. "She knew exactly what she was doing, but apparently there was a mistake. I don't know what it could be."

The sanctuary is located in the suburb of Sherwood, just outside the city of Portland.

Flashbacks and post-traumatic stress from combat were trapping one Ohio female veteran in her home.

Judy Sallerson, whose Army unit was hit by a series of  mortar attacks in Iraq, had been sent to Walter Reed Medical Center outside Washington  in 2010 where she recovered for two years. For nearly a year of that time she didn't do much at all and stayed inside, she said.

But with the help of a therapist, Sallerson finally started to venture out and even signed up to be a mentor in a local court.

 “I felt like I couldn’t go anywhere because I was afraid someone would see and judge me,” said Sallerson.

Then, a friend invited her to play golf in a veterans group. That’s when she met former professional golfer Renee Powell, who formed the first female chapter of a PGA Foundation program called H.O.P.E. (Helping our Patriots Everywhere) to teach veterans the game.

Powell brought the women together at her home course, Clearview Golf Club, in East Canton, Ohio.

They started learning the basics, how to hold the club and hit the ball. But mostly, the women were talking and helping each other out.

“I can tell you I was pretty miserable — depressed — really searching for somebody. Searching for something," Sallerson said. “I think I’d still be searching. This really brought me out of my shell.”

When the prescribed five weeks of golf instruction were over, the women decided to keep their group together. And now Clearview Hope continues as a support group for female combat veterans.

Every week when the weather is warm, the woman — who served in conflicts including Vietnam, Iraq and Afghanistan — grab their golf clubs and hit the links for relaxation, fellowship and support.

 “I think there needs to be more support for women veterans,” Sallerson said. “This is the only program that I know of – that’s for women.”

Some only recently returned from combat and find the serene green of the course a pleasant change.

“Golf is so therapeutic ... but very calm, very therapeutic — you're out with nature,” Powell said.

Powell’s father was a World War II veteran who started the Clearview Course in 1946 when he came home from Europe. Bill Powell, according to the PGA of America, is the only African-American to build, own and operate a golf course in the United States.

“He's the one that taught me the game of golf,” Powell said. “So I'm able to teach them and he would've been proud of every one of the women.”

When teaching golf to the veterans, Powell emphasizes though it can be frustrating, it’s a game of patience.

“Golf is just kinda like life,” said Christina Turner, another Iraq veteran and member of the group. “When you’re on, you’re absolutely on ... and then you’ll feel like you’re doing the exact same thing you did when you hit the last ball and it goes nowhere.”

“You have to be very patient. You have to be very understanding. You have to step back and understand the grand scheme of things...” Turner said.

Related:

• Back to battlegrounds: Some veterans seek peace by returning to places of war
• Dogs help stressed U.S. military veterans cope with civilian life
• Financial strain pushes many veterans to the breaking point

Richard Drew / AP file

U.S. District Court Judge Shira Scheindlin is interviewed in her federal court chambers in New York in May.

A lawyer for the federal judge ousted from all cases involving New York City Police Department's controversial stop-and-frisk tactic is sharply criticizing the city's move to have her orders thrown out.

The attorney on Sunday called New York City's request to the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals to vacate U.S. District Judge Shira Scheindlin's orders — which mandated major changes to the hot-button policy — "character assassination."

Scheindlin had ruled Aug. 12 that NYPD's stop-and-frisk tactic amounted to "indirect racial profiling" and as implemented violates the constitutional rights of blacks and Hispanics — groups that make up 80 percent of the police stops. She cited the Fourth Amendment protection against unreasonable search and the 14th Amendment guarantee of equal protection under the law.

She appointed an outside lawyer to oversee changes to the program and ordered a test in which officers would wear cameras in one precinct in each of New York’s five boroughs to record their encounters with civilians.

But an appeals court delayed the judge's orders and pulled her off all relevant cases on Oct. 31, ruling she compromised the appearance of impartiality by encouraging a class-action lawsuit over the stop-and-frisk tactic and by giving media interviews in which she answered critics of her ruling.

“Upon review of the record in these cases, we conclude that the District Judge ran afoul of the Code of Conduct for United States Judges, Canon 2 ('A judge should avoid impropriety and the appearance of  impropriety in all activities.'),” the appeals court wrote. (Read the order here.)

City lawyers, in their request Saturday, said Scheindlin’s conduct offered, at minimum, justification to question her legal impartiality and, at maximum, a violation of the city’s due process rights, according to The Associated Press.

But Scheindlin's attorney, Burt Neuborne, told AP on Sunday that the city's motion is a bid to change the panel's ruling.

"At worst, the panel accused the judge of conduct that might cause the appearance of lack of neutrality," Neuborne said in a statement provided to the wire service. "The panel did not even suggest that the district judge was actually biased."

The appeals court order leveled harsh criticism at Scheindlin.

It concluded that she improperly told lawyers involved in a similar lawsuit: "[I]f you got proof of inappropriate racial profiling in a good constitutional case, why don't you bring a lawsuit? ... [W]hat I am trying to say, I am sure I am going to get in trouble for saying it, for $65 you can bring that lawsuit." 

The appeals court also said she improperly made comments in three interviews responding to criticism of her ruling in the stop-and-frisk case.

She told the Associated Press, speaking of the city government, "I know I'm not their favorite judge."

She also told the New York Law Journal that many judges are reluctant to issue controversial rulings: "They are fearful or they want a promotion or whatever it is."

Scheindlin also provided statements to The New Yorker magazine, which published a profile of her in May.

The Oct. 31 order also took the highly unusual step of assigning the case to a different district court judge while the appeals court decides on the next move. 

Jonathan Dienst, Pete Williams and Jeff Black of NBC News, as well as the Associated Press, contributed to this report.

Related:

Appeals court halts reform of NYPD's controversial stop-and-frisk policy

Bloomberg lashes out at judge’s ruling that NYPD tactic amounts to racial profiling

Courtesy of Alex Munoz

Former U.S. Army infantryman Alex Munoz, who served in Iraq in 2007 and 2008, visits a religious shrine earlier this year in Lalish, a mountain valley in northern Iraq.

Traces of old battlefields seem forever wedged inside the minds of many combat veterans: friends killed, wounds sustained, deaths inflicted. But scores of ex-service members are willingly returning to old combat sites, some seeking their own tranquility – some just hoping to savor peace after the dust has long settled.

From Germany to Vietnam to Iraq and other lands of past U.S. wars, American veterans like 96-year-old James “Maggie” Megellas have stepped back in time by heading back in person, rekindling harsh memories but re-connecting with – now – welcoming locals.

“I crossed the Waal River again where I recall one of my boats being sunk by an enemy shell. I lost half my men,” said Megellas, a retired officer in the 82^nd Airborne Division, referencing his company’s famous, 1944 daylight traverse of the Dutch waterway while under German fire. He was invited by officials in the Netherlands to visit after publishing his 2003 book "All the Way to Berlin." 

“Some things are indelible, stamped on you as you live your life, and you take them to your grave. I had a whole lot of them. So I never had any desire to go back. But after I wrote the book, it was cathartic, so to speak. I was able to go there,” said Megellas. Following an overture from the German government, he also flew back to Germany, where in 1945 his unit helped secure the surrender of Berlin.

For some veterans of the Vietnam War, the compulsion to again view that country helps fuel a Tuscon, Ariz.-based nonprofit called Tours of Peace, which escorts groups of about 10 veterans and their family members to Vietnam for two-week "healing visits" once or twice per year. The cost is about $3,500 for each person, covering all travel expenses, according to the organization's website. 

"Many cannot imagine why Vietnam veterans want to return to a country that brings up so many memories and images of war. However, seeing Vietnam as it is now, meeting people who survived the war, and those who grew up in the post war years, gives veterans the opportunity to bring closure to their Vietnam war experience," reads a passage on the group's website. 

"The trip has an emotional component which is addressed daily in a group meeting or on an as-needed basis," said Jess DeVaney, a Vietnam veteran who operates Tours of Peace. Last week, he was preparing to depart for another excursion. For first-timers, who are taken by bus to re-visit "places of personal meaning" and to conduct humanitarian projects, "the emphasis is reframing the old military experience with Vietnam as it is today."

That same sentiment – how life can thrive after war – is coloring the current Iraq stay of Alex Munoz, a former Army infantryman who was deployed to that country from September 2007 to November 2008, and to Afghanistan for almost all of 2010.

Munoz, 33, is temporarily staying in a region of northern Iraq as part of a joint project between the Center for Global Affairs at New York University and Iraq's University of Duhok (UoD) with the intent "to build the capacity of UoD's Center for Peace and Conflict Resolution Studies."

"I can honestly say I've never been anywhere so welcoming to Americans as I've felt here. The Kurds I've met have been especially grateful to Americans for the support given to them," Munoz said via email, acknowledging he is "a long way from where I served in Iraq." 

That area of the country, he added, "is extremely safe, with street crime virtually unknown (shop vendors often just cover their stalls with blankets and leave for the night and money exchangers have left me standing in front of large piles of cash unattended while they made small talk with friends). I've eaten more than my share of free meals here, enjoyed the occasional free taxi. 

"While things are not perfect here, their lives are better and improving — and these things wouldn't have been possible without U.S. assistance," Munoz wrote. "And in that sense, it is gratifying and humbling to be here and to be reminded of that."

While trips back to old lands of violence may not be mentally healthy for all combat veterans, such ventures do seem to be on the rise, said Dr. Sydney Savion, a Texas-based behavioral scientist and Air Force veteran.

"Many find it inconceivable that a veteran – now a civilian – would want to return to a country that conjures up memories of war. But many simply yearn to make peace with perhaps an unfathomable sense of loss," Savion said. "... The demand for the experience appears to speak for itself. 

"Revisiting these sites is not without risk. Because clearly facing such harsh memories could evoke positive feelings for some and for others it may conjure up those memories that can cause negative feelings. Not everyone is going to respond to the trip in the same way," she added. 

Not all health professionals endorse those types of cleansing journeys. But according to Savion, some research has shown that "direct therapeutic exposure to the source of the trauma has been very effective in ... reducing intrusive memories." Veterans who want to go back to find fresh answers should first begin an internal rejuvenation process to deal with any old nightmares, she said. 

"It is important that veterans take the first step as healers of themselves," Savion said, "in order to restore peace and bring about healing within."

Related:

• Starbucks to recruit 10,000 veterans, spouses
• Military foundation steps up to cover 'disgusting' delay in payments for families of fallen
• Operation Homefront fires co-founder after records show $36K discrepancy in goods meant for military families

Bob Levey / AP

Family and friends console each other outside of a house in a suburb of Houston where two teenagers were shot and killed Saturday night, and 19 were injured.

Two people were killed and 19 were injured during a shooting late Saturday night at a house party in a suburb of Houston, Texas police said.

On Sunday, Harris County police were searching for two male suspects who opened around 11 p.m. inside a house where more than 100 "young adults" were gathered for a birthday party, said Harris County Sheriff Adrian Garcia.

An 18-year-old man and a 16-year-old girl were killed in the chaos, and those who were injured were sent to five different area hospitals, said the sheriff's office in a statement. 

Garcia said that most victims suffered gun wounds, but the frenzied exodus also left some party-goers with sprained ankles and one with a broken leg. He said that some victims attempted to jump out of second-floor windows in attempts to escape. 

None of the victims who are still hospitalized have life-threatening injuries, Garcia said on Sunday afternoon, but two are in critical condition. 

Anita Hassan / Houston Chronicle via AP

An unidentified parent waits on a child at the scene of a suburban Houston shooting late Saturday night. Two people have been killed and at least 22 others hurt when gunfire rang out at a large house party, according to authorities.

Harris County investigators are searching for two African American males, ages 17 and 22. 

"Potential witnesses and victims were scattered" because a flood of people fled the house and ran in different directions, Harris County Deputy Thomas Gilliland told NBC affiliate KPRC Houston. 

During what Garcia called a “birthday party gone wild,” one of the suspects fired a “celebratory” shot, leading the other suspect to react by firing into the crowd. Eyewitnesses reported 10 gunshots in total, he said. 

While Garcia said the suspects may be affiliated with local gangs, police “have no evidence that there was any one-on-one confrontation.”

Garcia said narcotics were not involved, investigators did not find an “inordinate amount of alcohol,” and the 18-year-old birthday girl’s mother was home.

However, Garcia said the party was promoted widely over social media and as a result of the huge turnout, guests were patted down at the door. Still, the assailants could have easily entered through the backyard, he said.

“You’re saying to the social media world, I don’t know who you are but you’re invited,” said Garcia. 

According to KPRC, the victims range in age from 14 to 22 years old. The two teens who were killed were both students at Cyprus Springs High School.