Oct. 15, 2008, the day her son was arrested, was a dark time for Penney Hundley.

Oddly, it also is proving to have been, in its own peculiar way, a bright spot.

We’re getting ahead of ourselves, though.

This story goes back to the early part of the decade. Hundley’s son, Joe Buettgen, was a freshman at Elmhurst High School and wasn’t doing well. His mother feared he was doomed to be a dropout.

Then they moved to Huntington, where Buettgen made a friend whose goal was to graduate from high school and join the Marines. As Buettgen thought about it, it sounded like a worthwhile plan, and it motivated him.

Buettgen, who had practically no credits at the start of his sophomore year, worked hard, managed to graduate, and in 2004 he enlisted in the Marines.

Within a few short months he had finished boot camp and found himself in Iraq, working as a machine gunner.

“The .50-caliber (machine gun) was my life,” Buettgen said. “I’d clean it two times a day. I’d clean it four times a day if it was misting,” and if there was a sandstorm or it was windy and dust and sand were blowing around, “I’d clean it six times,” so he knew that when he left the base on patrol it would work.

There were some intense periods. There were always surprises when they left base – IEDs and other threats, he said.

“There was a long stretch where we were under attack each day, but I can’t say how long it was,” Buettgen said.

Buettgen won’t tell his mother war stories about Iraq, but he has shared some experiences with his uncle, Chuck Jenkins, whom he worked for recently.

“Some of the stuff he told me made my spine curl, and not too much makes my spine curl,” Jenkins said.

Then, in December 2004, while Buettgen was directing traffic into his base in Iraq, it happened.

Buettgen was run over by a Hummer. His mother said she’s been told it wasn’t an accident. Buettgen doesn’t get into that. He says it happened so fast, he doesn’t remember whether he fell or what, but his right foot was crushed. Every bone in his foot was dislocated, he said, and other bones broken.

Military doctors operated on the foot. Today, he can’t bend his toes, which point inward at nearly 45 degrees. It throws off his balance and causes problems with one knee and causes hip and back pain.

Unable to run, unable to take a fitness test, unable to kneel and take a firing position, he was given two choices by the Marines, Buettgen said: Take a desk job or take a medical discharge.

“I was a grunt, and grunts don’t like to sit behind desks,” Buettgen said.

And like that, his career in the Marines came to an end. In no time, he was home.

Buettgen started a new life, but he was different. He’d always taken life in stride, his mother said, but when he came back, he couldn’t handle the least bit of stress.

He found work, first as a temporary worker, but was fired two days before he would have become permanent, his mother said. Then he worked for a neighbor who owned a company but quit because he wasn’t getting enough hours, he said.

Then he got a job driving a truck for a lumber company. He was fired there, too. He said he was told he’d gotten too many customer complaints, but he thinks it was really because he blew up at his boss. He was fired the next day.

And then started a long period of unemployment.

“I’d suggest applying for a job, and he’d fly off the handle,” Hundley said. “He was so depressed. He lost track of time.

“I called counselors at the VA and asked, ‘What’s going on? He can’t function.’ Even friends were saying, ‘He’s sick.’ ”

Buettgen didn’t buy any of it. His marriage had failed. He was unemployed. But he considered himself the same guy he always was, he said.

Dozens of friends urged him to get help, Buettgen said. “But I didn’t want to hear it. That’s the point of PTSD (post-traumatic stress disorder),” he said. “You don’t want to listen. You think you’re the same.”

Then came October 2008. Buettgen broke into a restaurant and stole liquor and cigarettes and broke into a trucking company and stole some tools. He was quickly caught.

“Probably, when I had to go to jail for doing stupid stuff, that’s what opened my eyes,” Buettgen said.

In February 2009, he was sentenced to a year in the Whitley County jail.

Meanwhile, Hundley kept seeking help for her son. She says everyone told her, “If he hurts himself or someone else, we can lock him up,” she says she was told. “It was ridiculous. Only by going to jail could I get someone to listen.”

Hundley finally did find someone to listen, an organization called the Wounded Warrior Project, which helped find Buettgen treatment for PTSD.

After six months in jail for the break-ins, Buettgen was released on house arrest, and a few weeks ago he was given early release so he could be evaluated at a special program for veterans with PTSD at a VA hospital in Battle Creek, Mich.

He was eventually accepted to a six-week residential program. He left for the program on Friday.

Buettgen’s journey is now five years old. It’s regrettable, Hundley said, but going to jail was about the best thing that happened to him.

As for Buettgen, he doesn’t view this as a fresh start. He’s a felon now. “I’m just trying to, kinda like, more trying to improve on my life.”