{"id":170246,"date":"2025-06-07T08:45:15","date_gmt":"2025-06-07T12:45:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/valorguardians.com\/blog\/?p=170246"},"modified":"2025-06-07T08:50:56","modified_gmt":"2025-06-07T12:50:56","slug":"grand-slam-usmc-officer-purple-heart-service-dog","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/?p=170246","title":{"rendered":"Grand Slam &#8211; USMC, Officer, Purple Heart, Service Dog"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-170247 aligncenter\" src=\"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/06\/laggasse-253x300.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"253\" height=\"300\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/06\/laggasse-253x300.jpg 253w, https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/06\/laggasse-280x333.jpg 280w, https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/06\/laggasse.jpg 672w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 253px) 100vw, 253px\" \/><br \/>\nNo, this &#8216;Grand Slam&#8217; is not a Denny&#8217;s breakfast that you order after a night of drinking. It&#8217;s checking all the Stolen Valor boxes.<\/p>\n<p>In what can only be described as the most elaborate game of &#8220;fake it &#8217;til you make it&#8221; gone horribly wrong, 57-year-old Lissa Lagasse of Lowell has been charged with enough crimes to fill a Netflix limited series. This educational con artist allegedly forged a master&#8217;s degree and doctorate from Duke University, claimed to be a Purple Heart-winning Marine combat veteran (spoiler alert: she never served), and somehow convinced multiple Massachusetts school districts to hire her as a health teacher. Her performance was so convincing that she managed to work in Lowell, Worcester, and Haverhill, where she recently taught students about health while apparently having a very unhealthy relationship with the truth.<\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"wp-image-170251 size-medium aligncenter\" src=\"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/06\/laggasse-and-dog-1-300x251.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"300\" height=\"251\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/06\/laggasse-and-dog-1-300x251.jpg 300w, https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/06\/laggasse-and-dog-1-398x333.jpg 398w, https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/06\/laggasse-and-dog-1.jpg 600w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px\" \/><br \/>\nBut wait, there&#8217;s more! Lagasse brought her alleged &#8220;service dog&#8221; from the &#8220;Wounded Warrior Project&#8221; to class, except the dog had no certification, and the Wounded Warrior Project had never heard of her. The furry fraud proceeded to bite a student, who then needed rabies shots \u2013 because nothing says &#8220;health education&#8221; like requiring medical treatment after class. Prosecutors revealed she had previously done time for check theft in the &#8217;90s, making her career pivot to education seem like a natural progression from petty crime to grand academic theater. Now facing charges ranging from stolen valor to being a &#8220;common and notorious thief&#8221; (which sounds like a medieval insult), Lagasse pleaded not guilty and is being held on $25,000 bail with GPS monitoring \u2013 because apparently even her location needs fact-checking at this point.<\/p>\n<blockquote>\n<p class=\"article-headline--title\"><a href=\"https:\/\/www.wcvb.com\/article\/haverhill-massachusetts-teacher-arraigned-false-credential-allegations\/64994735\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\"><strong>Haverhill, Mass., teacher arraigned on stolen valor, false credential allegations, Essex County DA says<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n<p><em>WCVB | Ted Wayman | June 6, 2025<\/em><\/p>\n<p><strong>SALEM, Mass. \u2014<\/strong> A Haverhill teacher was arraigned in court on Friday on multiple charges, including stolen valor, false credentials and reckless endangerment of a child. Lissa Lagasse, 57, of Lowell was arrested Friday morning on multiple charges, including three counts of pretending to hold degrees, identity fraud and reckless endangerment of a child, three counts of procurement fraud, two counts of stolen valor, six counts of uttering at common law and intimidation of a witness, three counts of larceny exceeding $1,200, and being a common and notorious thief in violation of Massachusetts law, the Essex County District Attorney&#8217;s Office announced Friday. Advertisement Prosecutors said Lagasse falsified a master&#8217;s degree and a doctorate from Duke University, as well as her teaching credentials. Additionally, investigators said she claimed to be a two-time wounded combat veteran and a Purple Heart recipient.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>No, this &#8216;Grand Slam&#8217; is not a Denny&#8217;s breakfast that you order after a night of &hellip; <a title=\"Grand Slam &#8211; USMC, Officer, Purple Heart, Service Dog\" class=\"hm-read-more\" href=\"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/?p=170246\"><span class=\"screen-reader-text\">Grand Slam &#8211; USMC, Officer, Purple Heart, Service Dog<\/span>Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":663,"featured_media":170247,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[396,461,408],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-170246","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-marinecorpsposer","category-purple-heart","category-stolen-valor"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/170246","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/663"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=170246"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/170246\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/170247"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=170246"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=170246"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=170246"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}