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TAMPA - We've all seen video of people caught on tape playing up their injuries and claiming benefits: people walking with a walker, and later walking just fine, or using or a cane where now you see it, now you don't.
But there's nothing funny or phony about the video of Sam McGinnis, a clerk behind the counter at a drug store in Tampa, Florida on November 29, 2008. A camera inside the store shows a holdup.
In the course of the robbery, a man wearing a white clown mask shot Sam McGinnis in the leg after ordering him to open up the cash register.
"I asked please don't hurt me," McGinnis remembered, "Please don't hurt anybody else.
When McGinnis couldn't get the money out of the second register fast enough, the robber took aim a second time.
"The last words I ever heard from this gentleman were, "'F*** you.' and he shot me in the chest."
The man in the mask was never caught. He got away with just $88, but McGinnis paid a much higher price. The bullet, which ripped though his chest and pierced several organs, is still lodged in his back.
The damage has left him in constant pain. Even the simplest tasks are a challenge, and he says the workers' compensation system is compounding his agony.
"The system itself it just beats you down," Sam McGinnis told investigative reporter Doug Smith.
McGinnis hasn't been able to get surgery that his doctors say could ease his pain because so far workers' compensation won't approve it. McGinnis says he had very good private insurance, but because he was hurt at work, he can't use it.
He says workers' comp treats him like almost like a criminal, instead of a crime victim.
"(Workers') comp is a 'mother may I' system," said Attorney Tim Jesaitis, who is an adjunct professor at Stetson University College of Law and also handles workers' comp cases for insurance companies. "Mother may I go to the chiropractor? Mother says no. What do I do?"
Jesaitis says Florida lawmakers reformed the workers' compensation system after so many people abused it, but those changes make it difficult for someone with catastrophic injuries.
One of the rules says an injured worker can change doctors just once. That's to prevent doctor shopping. But Sam McGinnis will need a lifetime of care.
"I think the one time change is a good example of where a limitation applied to a catastrophic case might be unreasonable," said Jesaitis.
Sam McGinnis's father, Gene McGinnis, is out to change the law. He wants a two tier system: one for the average worker hurt on the job and another for people who are catastrophically injured, like his son.
He's started an internet campaign and contacted lawmakers to gather support for Sam's Law. Gene McGinnis has a web site and has also posted a video of the shooting online.
"Wouldn't it be nice to find ten years from now that somebody comes up to him and says, "'you're Sam,'" Gene McGinnis imagines. "'If it wasn't for you I wouldn't have the life that I have because I was so severely injured and I was able to get the help that I needed.'"
But Sam McGinnis hopes a change in the law comes soon enough for him.
"I'm hoping," he says, "that's all I've got -- hope and faith."
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Doug Smith