The Walking Man of Murphys

Ric Ryan waves to a motorist on California 4. After seeing a documentary about Operation Mend, Ryan would donate a quarter to the charity every time someone waved to him on his walks.   (Gary Friedman / Los Angeles Times)

Ric Ryan is greeted by Aja Verburg in front of the Murphys Hotel. When he began walking, the Vietnam veteran didn’t know he suffered from post-traumatic stress disorder -- or at least didn’t know that was what it was called.  (Gary Friedman / Los Angeles Times)

Ric Ryan hugs his dog Hanes in his home in Murphys, Calif. One day, he just went out walking -- and kept going for 18 miles. When he came home, he lay down on the bed, shaking and crying. But it wasn’t pain or exhaustion, he said. It was release. He began walking every day.   (Gary Friedman / Los Angeles Times)

As the sounds and images of Iraq and Afghanistan played out on TV, Ryan heard of soldiers returning to no jobs and broken families. He began fixating on the bitter homecoming he and other Vietnam-era soldiers had faced. “I wanted these ones coming home to be welcomed. Not treated the way we were,” he said.   (Gary Friedman / Los Angeles Times)

Ric Ryan on one of his long ambulations. He wears braces on both legs and uses a walking stick. Years of playing soccer and marching in the Marines left him, he says, with knees that are down to bone on bone. But he still covers nine miles in two hours.   (Gary Friedman / Los Angeles Times)

Ric Ryan takes every other Tuesday off from walking and drives 35 miles to the veterans clinic in Sonora for treatment of what he now knows is post-traumatic stress disorder.   (Gary Friedman / Los Angeles Times)

Ric Ryan acknowledges a driver on California 4. He thinks it must have been the bank clerks who first asked what he was doing. Word got around. A man stopped and gave him a roll of quarters. People in town started handing him checks made out to Operation Mend for hundreds of dollars.   (Gary Friedman / Los Angeles Times)