Angie Prater has fought with the state to receive Line of Duty Act benefits for her family for nearly two years since her husband, Smyth County Sheriff’s Deputy Scott Prater, died.
Deputy Prater began to have gastrointestinal issues a few years ago. His stomach became larger, and his hip began to hurt. His doctor ordered body scans to determine the cause and diagnosed Prater with metastatic gastric cancer. It was in his stomach, his hip and his arm. Prater began chemotherapy and radiation to hold the cancer at bay for as long as possible, though he and his family knew he would likely never recover. He was in the hospital for much of 2023, Angie said.
The treatments appeared to work. Prater got some strength back in October 2023, and in January 2024, he returned to work in the sheriff’s office as a school resource officer. He felt well enough to coach girls softball at Chilhowie High School. But on March 4, he went to the doctor after he felt unwell for a few days and was diagnosed with COVID-19.
“He got COVID at work,” Angie said.
That new diagnosis caused Prater to miss cancer treatments. He began to get increasingly more sick until he was taken to the hospital, where an MRI scan found that the cancer had reached his brain. His doctors juggled radiation treatment and chemotherapy in an attempt to shrink the cancer in his brain and hold off the cancer that plagued the rest of his body.
“He was really, really sick and weak,” Angie said. “He just got sicker and sicker.”
In May 2024, Prater was hospitalized.
“They told us that day that there was nothing else they could do for him,” Angie said. “He just reached for me because he couldn’t really talk well and he just grabbed me and he just held onto me.”
That moment, in the hospital room with Angie and their two daughters, she said that Prater knew it was over.
Prater was 52 years old when he died on May 24, 2024. Two days after he was buried, Angie’s insurance was cut off, she said.
Angie had hoped to maintain the benefits her family had through his job after his death through LODA.
The Line of Duty Act was enacted in 1972 to provide disability, death and health benefits to eligible employees and their family members. Should a law enforcement officer employed by the state, a firefighter or emergency medical services worker become disabled or killed on the job, their family would be able to maintain insurance and other benefits.
Under current law, local law enforcement officers or their families do not have access to LODA benefits. Freshman Del. Mitchell Cornett was motivated by Angie Prater’s struggle, and in his first year in the General Assembly, he had hoped to change the state workers’ compensation statute to allow families like the Praters to access benefits.
No benefits for Prater under Line of Duty Act
Scott Prater had been a narcotics investigator for 20 of the 29 years that he worked for the Smyth County Sheriff’s Office. During that time, he worked with the federal Drug Enforcement Administration to help dismantle methamphetamine labs — a job that Angie and Smyth County Sheriff Chip Schuler believe caused exposure to chemicals that led to Prater’s fatal cancer diagnosis.
“They get special training and equipment from the DEA but they’re exposed,” Shuler said. “He’s exposed for years and years and years to chemicals, sulfuric acid. Just the off gases of methamphetamine labs is toxic in itself and you can equip all you can but you can’t always be 100% safe with this stuff.”
Prater had applied for workers’ compensation when he was sick, but was denied because the state agency did not believe that his cancer diagnosis was work-related, Angie said. Shuler added that he believed if Prater had been able to access workers’ compensation benefits, he would not have gone back to work, where he caught COVID, and his cancer treatment regimen would not have been interrupted by the virus.
Cornett, a Republican from Grayson County, was motivated by Prater’s story to introduce HB 130, a bill that would amend current workers’ compensation statutes to add sheriffs and deputy sheriffs to the cancer presumption. Cornett’s hope for the bill is to include cancers, like Prater’s, that cause death or disability under conditions eligible for workers’ compensation and benefit payouts. Expanding the cancer presumptions to sheriffs and deputy sheriffs would allow eligible individuals to file claims for LODA benefits for these diseases, according to the bill’s fiscal impact statement.
“Sheriffs and deputies face long-term exposure risks through narcotics investigations, evidence handling, and task force work often in unstable environments, sometimes without knowing what they were breathing in or touching at the time,” Cornett said. “This bill doesn’t end with Deputy Prater’s story; it brings attention to the day-to-day realities of sheriff’s work across the commonwealth, especially in rural Virginia. They’re often filling gaps when resources are stretched thin.”
The bill is unlikely to make it to a full House vote this session, after it was effectively set aside by the Appropriations, Compensation and Retirement subcommittee on Monday. Subcommittee Chair Alex Askew, D-Virginia Beach, told Cornett he appreciated the legislation but asked him to rework it and reintroduce it in the 2027 session so that it would not financially burden localities.
Cornett did not respond Tuesday when asked if he planned to reintroduce the legislation next session.
Years of exposure to chemicals
Prater had an infectious laugh and smile, Angie said. He loved his family — Angie and his two adult daughters — children, playing golf and telling stories.
There was no family history of cancer, Angie said.
“He was around this methamphetamine stuff for 15 years, when he first started going into it they didn’t know a lot about meth and they didn’t give them the proper stuff to protect themselves with — maybe just some gloves or something,” she added.
Prater may have felt that the chemicals he encountered were harmful — he would come home from work and immediately stick his clothes in the washing machine, Angie said.
“He didn’t want us to be around that,” she added. “Into the depths of my soul I believe it was the meth labs that gave him this cancer.”
Angie has applied repeatedly for LODA benefits and has been denied repeatedly. Under current law, local law enforcement officers and their families are not eligible for LODA, regardless of their cause of death.
“We’re down to one income, and paying for insurance is ridiculous because insurance is so expensive,” Angie said.
Shuler called the lack of access to LODA benefits for the Prater family “heartbreaking.”
“It’s discouraging really, to her and all of us because we do all we can to try to keep the public safe,” he said.
Angie echoed Shuler and added that she feels like her husband was “just another number.”
“I think he has a right to be on that wall of heroes in Richmond,” she said, referring to the Commonwealth Public Safety Memorial on Capitol Square that lists the names of law enforcement officers who have died in the line of duty.
“You just feel like he was just shunned off because he wasn’t shot with a gun or anything like that. He was killed long and hard but it’s like his life didn’t matter.”
