Stuart A. Steinberg

Stu Steinberg was born in 1947 in Washington, D.C. He grew up in suburban Virginia and, after flunking out of college in 1966, enlisted in the Army. He served for five years, four as an Explosive Ordnance Disposal Operator, and spent 18 months in Vietnam in 1968-70. Prior to Vietnam, Stu was at Dugway Proving Grounds, Utah, and was there on March 13, 1968, when a nerve gas test went sideways and sprayed a large sheep ranch, killing everything that walked, crawled, or flew in a 40,000 acre area. After helping clean up the Dugway disaster, Stu volunteered for Vietnam.

After leaving the Army in 1971, he earned a B.A. from Goddard College in 1976, a J.D. from the Franklin Pierce Law Center (now the University of New Hampshire School of Law) in 1980 and an L.L.M. from the Georgetown University Law Center in 1982, where he was a graduate teaching fellow. After practicing law for almost ten years, Stu went back to his first love as a criminal defense investigator and eventually moved to Oregon in 1995 where he specialized in capital murder investigations until retiring in 2003. In 2009-10, Stu went to Afghanistan where he worked for the UN Office on Drugs and Crime as an advisor to the Afghan Border Police where he trained ABP personnel in the conduct of counter-narcotics operations along the border with Iran.

Stu and his wife, Mona, live in the Central Oregon high desert with their horses, dogs, cat and parakeets; their son, Jonas, is an IT engineer in Minneapolis. Stu is the outgoing commander of the Vietnam EOD Veterans Association and a member of the board of the National EOD Association. He has been a service officer for Vietnam Veterans of America since 1978, assisting his fellow veterans with their claims for benefits with the VA. He is a founding member of Central Oregon Veterans Outreach, a nonprofit that assists homeless, disabled and disadvantaged veterans. His decorations include the Bronze Star with "V" Device for heroism, a second Bronze Star and two Army Commendation Medals for meritorious achievement in ground combat operations and the Purple Heart.