A tattoo of an angel illustrates his right leg. A devil decorates his left.

But a trail of deceit has stamped Richard Glen Strandlof with another indelible mark: fake military hero who misled veterans, politicians and voters. Many had bought into the story of Rick Duncan, the wounded soldier rallying opposition to the Iraq war and support for struggling vets.

Like the contradictory body art, Strandlof’s story winds between malicious deception and actual good works. And it muddies the issue of whether his offense was simply that he fooled the people he purported to champion or that he broke the law.

He awaits arraignment in the El Paso County Criminal Justice Center in Colorado Springs on a misdemeanor traffic charge after his arrest May 12. And while the FBI is investigating possible fraud, no charges have been filed.

Strandlof, 32, spared no detail in his alleged resume: Annapolis graduate. Marine captain. Survivor of the Sept. 11, 2001, attack on the Pentagon. Wounded three-tour veteran of the Iraq war. An American hero who, in his next act, would stand up for his band of military brothers on whatever stage was set before him — from the Capitol steps in Denver to the campaign stump.

He backed mostly Democratic candidates sympathetic to his anti-war views in the run-up to the 2008 election. Beyond politics, he worked on behalf of homeless veterans in Colorado Springs, an effort that earned him widespread respect.

But revelation of his charade last month ignited the military blogosphere — some of the more charitable critics have suggested his deployment to a combat zone — and prompted speculation on just how he could pull it off.

The deception was elaborate, cunningly conceived and boldly executed — from his command of military vernacular down to details like the bumper sticker on his car.

“Got DD214?” it said, playing off the popular “Got milk?” ad campaign in what amounted to an inside military joke. The bumper sticker referred to the official form issued on a soldier’s release from active duty.

“I admit that not everything I said was as factual as I wish it had been,” Strandlof told 9News on Thursday in the only interview he has granted so far.

He said he constructed his military persona based on real and fictional accounts gleaned from reading materials and movies. He also claimed that schizophrenia and bipolar disorder have affected his recollection of events over the past few years.

“When I talked with people about my passion about vets’ issues,” he said, “I believed that was the truth.”

Army Spec. Garett Reppenhagen met the man he knew as Duncan at a veterans gathering two years ago in Colorado Springs. He remembers him as “spastic, a lot of energy, all over the place, an excitable person.”

That night, Duncan related how he’d been wounded by an improvised explosive device during his second tour in Iraq. He told others how the explosion had caused a severe brain injury — a circumstance that seemed to explain his twitchy mannerisms and sometimes erratic behavior.

It never occurred to Reppenhagen, an infantry sniper who actually did a tour in Iraq, to dig deeper. Vets don’t press other vets for combat details like that.

“You sort of feel like a jerk by even doubting someone,” he said.

Besides, Duncan’s intentions seemed straightforward. He sent care packages to troops in Iraq. He stood up for homeless veterans in Colorado Springs. He advanced his anti-war politics by connecting with like-minded candidates.

He even launched his own organization, the Colorado Veterans Alliance, which he said represented 32,000 veterans on a massive mailing list — though the only visible members seemed to be a cadre of local vets.

He certainly talked the talk. Duncan mingled easily in the military milieu. And in some ways, he walked the walk.

“It seems like his heart was in the right place,” said Reppenhagen, 33. “He was a really hard worker. He did a lot of good by raising a lot of awareness, but then you find out that he’s a fraud.”

Strandlof’s unmasking began early last month and resulted in his arrest soon afterward in Denver on a traffic warrant from El Paso County. According to one of the vets who first suspected the ruse, an FBI agent asked whether he was Strandlof or Duncan.

“Both,” he replied.

Reppenhagen considered him a friend, a brother in arms. Then, he saw that bond torn by the worst kind of betrayal.

And yet.

“I can’t say I hate Rick Duncan for what he did,” Reppenhagen said. “But I certainly never want to talk to him again.”

The well-told combat tale, delivered by an accomplished liar, has become almost cliche. It has been known to yield any number of perks: a job, a date, a fundraising boost, a political leg up — even a free parking place via Purple Heart license plates. It can conceal character defects or even criminal histories.

“It’s a great way to deflect criticism — ‘I was a war hero for my country. How can you not like me?’ ” explained Loren Pankratz, a professor of clinical psychology at the Oregon Health & Science University in Portland, who testifies in court cases involving military imposters or veterans who inflate their records.

Still, in that pantheon of anti-heroes, Strandlof isn’t even exceptional.

“There are many, many worse cases than this,” said Doug Sterner, the Colorado Springs man who has cataloged hundreds of military fakes on his Home of Heroes website. “These imposters are all over the place. But when I look at Strandlof’s case, I am thankful to him because he put this problem under the spotlight.”

“He had such potential”

Robert William Strandlof of Spokane Valley, Wash., hasn’t seen his great-nephew since he left his Montana home as a teenager and never came back. But the family still speaks about Rick Strandlof.

Though he never finished high school, the boy loved to read and had a “tremendous hunger for knowledge,” recalled Robert Strandlof, who served as a Marine and whose brother, Richard — grandfather of Rick — served in the Air Force.

“He had such potential, and he was such a smart kid,” said Robert Strandlof. “He went out on his own and never really kept in touch. I understand he lived under all kind of lies. You can’t do that because sooner or later your lies always catch up to you.”

When Rick Strandlof first hit the criminal-justice radar screen in 1997, it was under the name Richard Glenn Pierson, doing five years on forgery and bad-check charges in Montana. But even at age 20, he showed a brazen inclination to take on the system.

Acting as his own attorney, he sued the correctional facility’s food service for $10 million because it served him saccharine, a known carcinogen, in his fruit drink.

That same year, he also sued Cascade County regional jail administrators, claiming the jail’s ban on hard- core pornography violated his constitutional rights. That lawsuit also demanded that he get his job back in the jail’s law library.

Cascade County Sheriff John Strandell told a reporter at the Great Falls Tribune in March 1999 that Strandlof was fired from the library because he was using the jail’s computers and law books to pose as a lawyer.

By late 2005, Strandlof was living in Incline Village, on the north shore of Nevada’s Lake Tahoe. He formed a foundation that promised to return open-wheel racing to the streets of Reno while also supporting programs for local children and the poor.

On Dec. 31, 2005, according to Reno Magazine, he held an auction that netted $25,000 for his Reno-Tahoe Grand Prix Foundation. In early 2006, Strandlof told Nevada Appeal newspaper columnist Roger Diez that he had secured $3 million from a “venture capital group in the Silicon Valley” to fund the purse for the race he planned over the July 4 weekend in 2009.

Months later, Diez acknowledged in a column that he probably had been duped by Strandlof. The race website was down. Strandlof’s phone was disconnected.

“After that disappearing act he pulled, I figured there was something not on the up-and-up about the guy,” Diez said. “Until that point, I had no reason to not take him at his word.”

Yet Strandlof, it seems, had merely shifted gears and settled into anti-war politics.

Activist Rich Haber, who helped organize the Reno chapter of the anti-Bush organization World Can’t Wait, said Strandlof appeared at about three rallies.

Back then, there was no mention of a war record or combat injuries. Strandlof simply struck Haber as a young and energetic man spouting a general displeasure with the current political climate.

“He just impressed me as a young guy who was fed up with the way things were going and wanted change,” Haber said.

Change came, all right.

Strandlof sat down and sighed heavily when two Reno police officers confronted him in the early-morning hours of April 21, 2005, about a stolen gold Ford Explorer.

Officers found the sport utility vehicle near Strandlof’s apartment, full of personal items: a T.J. Maxx card, deodorant, photos, clothing, compact discs and employment papers bearing his name.

Strandlof called his roommate, Jeremy Weed — a man he listed as next of kin in police documents. Weed would later move with him to Colorado, where Strandlof identified him to acquaintances as his boyfriend until a recent breakup.

“My vehicle is not my vehicle,” Strandlof told Weed, according to the incident report.

In fact, it was a stolen rental car that Strandlof told officers he had used on behalf of a political group to drive local voters to the polls.

Later, he told a Washoe County district judge that he’d struggled with mental-health problems and had sought treatment as a teenager, according to the district attorney’s office. He requested his case be heard in the county’s Mental Health Court, whose records are sealed.

Strandlof spent nine months in county jail for possession of a stolen vehicle. District court documents show he was required to take medication and read a book on bipolar disorder as part of his 15-month probation.

“Fobbit” stories convincing

By 2007, Strandlof had surfaced in Colorado as an energetic force for veterans rights, along with a stance against the Iraq war consistent with his days in Nevada.

When he launched his Colorado Veterans Alliance, local veteran Daniel Warvi agreed to serve on the board.

Warvi said he was taken in by what he called Strandlof’s “Fobbit” war stories — the often-mocking nickname for the servicemen and women who are hunkered down in a war zone’s Forward Operating Bases, called FOBs, while others are risking their necks.

“Rick had always claimed that he was a logistics officer,” Warvi said in an interview last month. “So, a lot of it was him complaining, ‘Well, yeah, all I did was deliver mail and food.’ ”

But he spoke just as vividly about the day he claimed he was injured by an explosion. Warvi suspects that Strandlof turned to the Internet to pad out his stories with convincing details.

“Up until recently, guys could literally go on patrol, get into a firefight or get into combat, and that night they could hop on MySpace or Facebook and blog about it,” he said. “He mined all the information he needed to fabricate his persona.”

Army Spec. Mark Wilkerson cut Strandlof a lot of slack for his supposed disabilities. He first heard him speak, eloquently but with a pronounced stutter, at a barbecue held by some people with Iraq Veterans Against the War.

“He said he was 100 percent disabled, that’s why he’s a little off, that’s why he was a little unusual,” said Wilkerson, who now lives in Colorado Springs. “I was naive, we all were, but he was just so convincing in the way he would speak about his experiences.”

Wilkerson said Strandlof would disappear for weeks at a time, saying he was getting treatments at the Veterans Affairs hospital in Denver.

When Wilkerson invited Strandlof to join Iraq Veterans Against the War, he balked — possibly because he knew the group checks DD214 forms to authenticate service. He declined to join officially, saying he preferred to work with the group “under the radar” so he could maintain relationships with conservative elected officials.

During a protest in October 2007, a Marine colonel stopped Strandlof and challenged his authenticity — a common occurrence during veterans’ anti-war protests in a military stronghold like Colorado Springs. But Strandlof answered the Marine’s questions to his satisfaction.

“He would tell people stories about Iraq and he would cry; those emotions he was able to conjure up were amazing,” said Wilkerson, 25, now a student at Pikes Peak Community College.

Colorado Springs veteran Mike Flaherty said he grew suspicious of the man he knew as Rick Duncan when Duncan stayed at his house for six weeks at the end of 2008.

Duncan had always seemed overly eager to discuss his war wounds and his post-traumatic stress disorder, but his behavior as a roommate strained belief.

Flaherty recalled coming home late at night from his job waiting tables and finding Duncan asleep in the living room. Stirred from his slumber, he would begin whimpering, as if in the throes of night terrors.

Flaherty didn’t buy it.

Duncan skipped out on his $300 share of the rent and vanished without warning at the end of December or early January.

Hal Bidlack, a retired Air Force officer who ran unsuccessfully for Congress last year, said Strandlof had “little things that boosted his credibility” — like the “Got DD214?” bumper sticker.

“It’s only a joke to veterans,” Bidlack said. “He certainly studied a great deal. He found he liked a community. He just hadn’t earned the right to be in it.”

Strandlof campaigned with Bidlack as he traveled the 5th Congressional District. He stood by him as Bidlack recalled his experience at the Pentagon on 9/11. Strandlof had also said he was in the Pentagon for a meeting that day.

Bidlack worked in the triage area and suffered nightmares afterward, and he doesn’t speak publicly about the details. But on the campaign trail, when people asked, he would offer that he saw the worst in people and the best in people all at once that day.

Last year, Strandlof held a remembrance for 9/11 victims. Recounting his own supposed experience in the Pentagon that day, he spoke tearfully about the “duality of that day, the good and the bad that I saw that day are forever etched in my mind.”

For Bidlack, the remarks had a familiar ring — one that now appears consistent with Strandlof’s tactic of parroting the real-life experiences of others.

“It was changed a bit,” Bidlack said. “He would listen carefully and then tell stories back. It’s just a shame. It sounds trite, but he used his talents for evil.”

But it wasn’t just those convincing details that won people over. It was his apparent commitment to veterans causes.

Robert Moran, whose The Street Church in Colorado Springs works with the poor and homeless, found an ally in Strandlof.

While Moran’s approach to advocacy was “sitting down and talking,” with city leaders, Strandlof pursued legal action, challenging the city’s support of sweeps that dismantled homeless camps.

“He definitely showed a real passion for people on the streets, veterans and nonveterans,” said Moran, who served 22 years in the Army. “We saw Rick as someone who had compassion. People would call him and ask about where and how to get help for mental issues, and he had the answers.”

For Moran, deciding on whether Strandlof was “good or bad in the end” depends on unanswered questions about funds he may have collected in the name of veterans.

“If he did do something illegal, it may be that it wasn’t intentional — it may be that he just isn’t healthy,” Moran said. “What do you do with a Rick Duncan? Do you pray for him and hope he gets some help? In the short time he spent advocating for the homeless, he did some good, but the jury is still out for the long term impact, right?”

A betrayal revealed

When the truth finally emerged, it happened quickly.

Near the end of April, Strandlof — in the persona of Rick Duncan — called a Fort Carson legislative liaison to say he was working for Sen. Mark Udall, D-Colo., and wanted to set up a meeting at the Army base. The liaison then called Udall’s office seeking verification.

Udall’s staffers said Duncan didn’t work for them. On May 1, they met with Dan Warvi, on the board of the Colorado Veterans Alliance, to express their concern.

Warvi had become exasperated with Duncan’s inability to provide the details necessary to move the organization toward legal nonprofit designation. He’d never doubted his claims about military service — but the call from Udall’s office prompted him to take a closer look at Rick Duncan’s record.

“That was the tipoff that said, ‘Hey, we need to start digging,’ ” Warvi said. “It just started to fall apart pretty quickly.”

The dominoes tumble

Duncan’s facade began to collapse within hours.

Warvi phoned the public affairs officer at Annapolis and learned that the last naval officer by the name of Rick Duncan graduated in 1948 — almost 30 years before Strandlof was born. He checked with the Colorado secretary of state’s office and learned that the Colorado Veterans Alliance name already had been registered to a man no one had heard of — Rick Strandlof.

Later inquiries turned up mounting evidence that Strandlof and Duncan were, in fact, the same person. Board members learned about the ill-fated Grand Prix event in Reno. They contacted a Nevada-based member of World Can’t Wait, asked some questions about Strandlof’s demeanor, and heard the man describe Rick Duncan in precise detail.

“Finally, we found the court documents in Reno,” Warvi said of the papers that put Strandlof in Nevada instead of Iraq.

“And that basically destroyed Rick’s entire timeline.”

And yet, in his interview with 9News, Strandlof stayed true to the Rick Duncan persona, voicing regret not so much for any perceived fabrications but for his shortcomings in advancing veterans’ issues.

“I believe that people who defended a nation’s ideals,” he said, “should have ideal treatment from a nation.”

Editor’s Note:This article story was reported by Denver Post staff writers Jason Blevins, Jessica Fender, Nancy Lofholm, Barry Osborne and Allison Sherry of The Denver Post, and by Lance Benzel and Carlyn Mitchell of The Gazette in Colorado Springs. It was written by Kevin Simpson of The Denver Post.

Stolen Valor

• Pat Putnam, who died in 2005, was a well-known boxing writer and “Korean War hero.” He purported to have been a war captive for 17 months and to have earned four Purple Hearts and a Navy Cross. The Boxing Writers Association of America established the Putnam Award in his honor for “perseverance in the face of adversity.” One of these awards went to his friend, Muhammad Ali.

However, Putnam never served in the military. He received his “war wounds” when his vehicle collided with a telephone pole while he was driving drunk.

• As chairman of the Mashpee Wampanoag Tribe in Massachusetts, Glenn Marshall was in the federal spotlight. He was introduced as “a hero of the Battle of Khe Sahn” when he tried to push through the building of a $1 billion casino. Marshall said he had survived the siege of Khe Sahn during the Vietnam War in 1968.

The truth was that Marshall was a senior in high school during the siege. He served two years in the Marines but was not at Khe Sahn. Marshall apologized for lying about his military record. He was forced to step down as tribal chairman when a 1981 rape conviction also came to light.

• In 2008 the U.S. House of Representatives voted to name a Las Vegas post office after Irving Joseph Schwartz, a local advocate for veterans and an officer in the Military Order of the Purple Heart. He told people he also had received the Bronze Star, the Silver Star and several other medals for parachuting into Normandy, France, days before the Allied invasion began June 6, 1944.

When local reporters found that he did not arrive in Normandy until six months after the invasion, Schwartz admitted fabricating the story. The legislation naming the new post office Private First Class Irving Joseph Schwartz Post Office was rescinded.

• Mark Mulcahy, a.k.a. David Keith Anderson, of New Castle stole a veteran’s identity for 24 years to get free health care from Veterans Affairs.

He also embellished the real veteran’s record. Mulcahy was president of a Garfield County Veterans of Foreign Wars post. He was arrested last year on charges of identity theft and forgery after his wife alerted authorities.

• The California Department of Veterans Affairs honored Eric Piotrowski this spring with a Silver Star for his actions 16 years earlier during Operation Desert Storm. A Navy secretary praised Piotrowski for putting himself in harm’s way to help tank units move forward in Kuwait.

Piotrowski, then an officer with the California Exposition & State Fair Police Department, was later arrested for violating the federal Stolen Valor Act. Authorities found Piotrowski did not see military action during Desert Storm and purchased war medals and a citation on eBay.