Name: David Schoenberg

Age: 65 (born February 4, 1949)

Height: 5'10"

Build: He's in decent shape for an older man, carries a slight paunch and a stoop in his shoulders.

Appearance: [hider= David] [[img=http://media.ny1.com/media/2009/10/2/images/JerryStiller2f2d2c31-e0d2-4686-b4ce-b7a7b7f02640.jpg] [/hider]

Family: His wife Rita passed away from breast cancer two years back. His son Philip (34) lives in New York City, his daughter Evelyn (31) in Des Moines. He does not know what became of them.

Personality: Grumpy, argumentative, the kind of man who turns off the lights on Halloween. Despite his cynicism, however, he's committed to helping other people out however he can (usually with a lot of grumbling). If someone's in trouble, he will immediately step up to the plate while kvetching about "having to do everything around here for you damn kids".

Occupation Before: Retiree, was a jeweler up until his retirement in 2011.

Notable skills: David is a war veteran (see below) and as such has some experience in infantry and hand-to-hand combat, as well as basic first aid. His work as a jeweler has given him experience with tools, especially delicate, small-scale detail work. Something of a polyglot, he speaks English, Hebrew, and Spanish, as well as a smattering of Yiddish. 

Bio:
"Next year in Jerusalem!"

An old phrase, for sure, but one old Solomon Schoenberg lived by. In their upstairs apartment in New York's Upper West Side, David, the youngest of five, heard this phrase dozens of times throughout his childhood. His father, like his father before him, had been born and raised in the United States. But now that Israel was an independent country, what had long since seemed a pipe dream had become a tangible reality. Living in Zion, a lifelong ambition for many of them. All that was needed was for the old man to save enough money for the move, a feat he managed in 1964. And so, at the tender age of fifteen, David was uprooted from his friends and American lifestyle, taken across the sea to Tel Aviv. Strangely, though, he was not terribly upset. The idea of living in the Holy Land was intoxicating, the closest one could get to sitting among the angels.

He was called up for compulsory military service at the age of eighteen, just in time to be sent into the Sinai with thousands of other combat infantrymen when the War of 1967 erupted. A second-line trooper, David saw little in the way of combat, but returned home to be regarded as a hero nonetheless. He began an apprenticeship at his father's jewelry store, learning the trade and serving his required time as a reservist, while still making the time for Talmudic studies.

In 1973, he was called up in the panic following the start of hostilities on Yom Kippur. This time, he was not so lucky as to avoid combat. Instead, his unit was thrown into some of the harshest battles of the war. The hard slog towards the Suez Canal, the fighting at "the Chinese Farm", Ismaila- David was present for the worst of it. He saw friends and comrades cut down by bullets, grenades, bayonets, while he himself remained untouched.

David was a very different man by the end of that October. Returning home, he was once again greeted as a hero, but he didn't particularly feel like one. He couldn't bring himself to touch his Talmud or enter the temple. He couldn't give any real name to what he felt. A crisis of faith, perhaps, mixed with some survivor's guilt. Whatever the case, Israel no longer felt like the right place for him.

And so, he took his savings and back pay and left in 1978. Back to New York to open his own jewelry, not quite renouncing the faith but never again practicing it (though he liberally laced his speech with Yiddish). He married a shiksa woman, had two children, lived as best as he could. A fan of the warmer weather in Florida, he and his wife Rita planned to retire there, buying a condo in a quiet retirement community in Boca Raton. Cancer claimed Rita only a year into their new life in retirement, leaving David alone again, naturally.

Old, jaded, and a little bitter, when the crisis began, David stubbornly refused to follow the emergency protocols dictated by the government. The pessimist in him predicted how completely out of control this was likely to become, and sadly he was proven right. 

Disability/Fear:
David is an older man. While he's still capable of short-term exertion, a prolonged fight, chase, or other physical endeavor is going to seriously exhaust him. He will not recover easily or quickly from injury and is far more susceptible to sickness.

Weapon of Choice:
David prefers to use a [url=http://www.millerrodandgun.com/images/Stevens67E-12ga_132665.jpg]Stevens 67E[/url] pump-action 12 gauge. It holds six rounds, and he has twenty-four rounds of 00 buckshot on his person.

Equipment: Aside from his shotgun and spare rounds, David carries a beat up old canvas backpack. Inside is a Leatherman multitool, a gallon jug of water, six cans of soup, a book of matches, a small gun-cleaning kit, a toothbrush and razor, a change of clothes, a copy of [i]Moby-Dick[/i], and a few family photos. He wears khaki slacks, a robin's-egg blue short sleeved shirt, and some Reebok sneakers.

Of course we had to have a retired person, it's Florida. The sheet's a little light, I know, let me know if changes are needed.