MID-HUDSON – Army veteran Sharon Toney-Finch, arrested for Stolen Valor and other federal crimes last week after a Mid-Hudson News investigation exposed her, is a mystery to many people who know her.
One discharge paper makes no mention of her receiving a Purple Heart medal, yet a second one includes that information.
Her allegedly falsified military records further darken the shadow of doubt surrounding her and her claims.
Toney-Finch lived in Monticello, New York when she enlisted in the Army in 2006. She was shipped to basic training at Fort Jackson in Columbia, SC in 2006 and was assigned to the 3rd Infantry Division (3rd ID) as a logistics specialist following boot camp.
Toney-Finch previously told Mid-Hudson News that she was deployed to Iraq for one year in 2008 as part of the Global War on Terror, returning stateside in 2009 and was redeployed back to Iraq that same year.
Mid-Hudson News Reporter Todd Bender was first introduced to her at a veteran event in 2021. Toney-Finch immediately began talking about her YIT Foundation to help veterans.
Over the next year, Bender noted, she was at more and more events in the Hudson Valley. “I would see her at veteran events in Dutchess County, where she was talking it up with staff of MHA Vet2Vet, I would encounter her at political events in Orange County,” he said. “She came out of nowhere and was seemingly everywhere all of a sudden.”
Over several encounters dating back to 2021, Bender and Mid-Hudson News listened as Sharon Toney-Finch claimed to have received the Purple Heart after being wounded in Iraq when a convoy she was riding in was destroyed by an Improvised Explosive Device (IED). The war veteran has even provided a DD 214 indicating she received the Purple Heart. The military discharge document (DD 214) she provided to Mid-Hudson News differs from the DD 214 the United States Army has on file which shows no record of combat injuries or the presentation of a Purple Heart.
The Purple Heart medal is presented to service members who have been wounded or killed as a result of enemy action while serving in the U.S. military, according to the USO.
Army records indicate that Toney-Finch was in Iraq the first time from March 21, 2007, through May 30, 2008. It was her second deployment, she said, when she was injured by the IED. The second deployment, according to the Army DD 214, says she was deployed to Iraq a second time on October 6, 2009.
On March 10, 2010, Toney-Finch said she was serving as a Specialist in the 203rd Brigade Support Battalion, 3rd Brigade, 3rd Infantry Division, when she was wounded in combat. In her Purple Heart Hall of Honor application, Toney-Finch says her convoy was outside of Kalsu, Iraq, saying in part, “Convoy was ambushed I was wounded during the time our vehicle went over an IED. Since then have had 82 surgeries.”
Kalsu is not a village but rather a Forward Operating Base (FOB). Toney-Finch was much more detailed when telling Mid-Hudson News about the attack in a 2022 encounter, despite also claiming not to recall the attack. “Following the initial explosion, my vehicle was destroyed.” She provided heroic details claiming to have pulled three soldiers out of the vehicle before she collapsed into unconsciousness. Toney-Finch recounted not gaining consciousness again until she woke up in Landstuhl Army Hospital in Germany, nearly six months after the attack. When pressed, Toney-Finch claims she had been comatose in a US Army Hospital in Germany for six months and did not recognize her parents when she regained consciousness.
The Army has no record of any such attack on a convoy on that day. If Toney-Finch was injured on March 10, 2010, she would have come out of her coma in September 2010, just one month before her second deployment ended on October 6, 2010. Further information makes the timeline even more suspect.
Toney-Finch claimed that many of her 82 surgeries occurred in Germany to repair her catastrophic skull fractures, substantial neuropathy, a shattered pelvis, a broken right arm, and broken vertebrae. The skull fractures she said, required a metal plate to be surgically implanted to keep her head together physically. Following the initial surgeries, the alleged combat-wounded veteran says she went through additional surgeries in Germany before being shipped stateside to Walter Reed Medical Hospital, six months later.
If Toney-Finch regained consciousness in or around September 2010, and spent six more months in an Army hospital in Germany before being transferred to the military’s Walter Reed Medical Center in Silver Springs, MD., she would not have returned to the United States until approximately March 2011.
To further cloud her questioned military records that the Department of Justice claims she altered, Toney-Finch says she spent more than a year at Walter Reed Hospital with her final rehabilitation taking place at Martin Army Community Hospital at Fort Benning, Georgia. The allegedly wounded veteran says she returned to active duty in 2014 following her tragic ordeal of a six month coma and more than one year of hospitalization, with 82 surgeries to repair her battered body. She allegedly rejoined her unit in Korea, where, despite what she claimed was “unbearable pain,” she became pregnant.
Because of her medical history, she was allegedly ordered on bed rest immediately for the duration of the pregnancy. The bed rest, she claims, was taken away just two weeks later and ordered to participate in her unit’s annual inventory.
On April 23, 2014, she gave birth to her 1.3-pound son, Yerik Israel Toney at the civilian Samsung Hospital. Because of his early arrival, she recounted, he spent seven months in neonatal intensive care until he passed away in November 2014. Toney-Finch claimed that it was an “unimaginable ordeal” being forced to commute back and forth between the military base and the hospital, in a taxi she paid for, with no support of close relatives.
At one point in 2023, Toney-Finch told Mid-Hudson News that the DD 214 the Army has issued is incorrect and the DD 214 she provided a copy of to news outlets is correct. The United States Department of Defense does not alter DD 214 forms. Toney-Finch claims that her DD 214 was updated by the military to indicate she was presented with the Purple Heart, which is not the actual procedure. If a former member of the military, such as Toney-Finch, sees a mistake on their discharge document, they are entitled to call attention to the mistake(s) and if it can be verified, the military will issue an updated document, known as form DD 215.
After being medically retired from the Army, she said, she began the YIT Foundation (her late son’s initials), to raise money to supply military hospitals with machines and supplies necessary to treat premature babies. Her foundation started in 2014 and branched out to helping homeless veterans in Maryland before branching out to offer other services.
A look at the federal charges pertaining to her “Purple Heart” and how Toney-Finch is accused of using the honor for her own benefit will be published on www.midhudsonnews.com in the coming days.
This story is the first in a series of investigative pieces examining Sharon Toney-Finch’s story and her YIT Foundation Charity. It is a compilation of facts collected by Mid-Hudson News staff for more than two years.
