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In , standing in front of various monuments in our nation’s capital, posing with congressional staffers, the constant was a grin-to-grin smile that can’t be faked. It only comes from a deep place of happiness.

The photos were posted on Facebook July 27 and 28 as Sandknop was in the nation’s capital for a whistleblower appreciation luncheon sponsored by the . For Sandknop, it was an opportunity to celebrate some success — to be honored for his courage and persistence — and shake the hands of the investigators and other federal employees who took him seriously and worked to bring justice in his case.

For the professional videographer from Arnold, an Army veteran and former contract employee of the Missouri National Guard, it’s been a long, lonely battle. He was fired from his job in 2014, a week after he filed a complaint with the Guard’s inspector general about bad management practices.

I met him in late 2015. There were no smiles that day. Sandknop was a broken man.

Such is the difficult hill most whistleblowers must climb.

All alone, they find the gumption to report wrongdoing in business or government dealings. They are ostracized, left out in the cold. They lose friends and family. They often find the power of big business or the government used against them. And yet, their courage is so helpful to a nation that rarely stops to so much as give them a thank you.

by a University of Iowa professor seeks to document how important whistleblowers actually are. James Wilde, an assistant professor of accounting, used public records to document that companies positively changed their behavior in financial reporting for up to two years after having been caught in some sort of shenanigans or law breaking by internal whistleblowers.

“Following the allegations, whistleblower firms are significantly more likely to experience a decrease in the incidence of accounting irregularities and a decrease in tax aggressiveness, compared with control firms,� the study concluded.

It should be no surprise, then, that elected officials in both parties in Washington are seeking to strengthen whistleblower protections. Just a couple of days after Sandknop and other important federal whistleblowers were feted for their courageous disclosures, the U.S. Senate that strengthens and reauthorizes the Office of Special Counsel, which investigates federal employees’ claims of whistleblower retaliation. The bill was sponsored by Sen. Claire McCaskill, a Missouri Democrat, as well as Sen. Chuck Grassley, an Iowa Republican.

Grassley and McCaskill were key in applying the pressure that got Sandknop’s case reopened last year. This summer, in a rare finding, the inspector general of the Department of Defense ruled that Sandknop and a colleague, Colby Powell, by the Guard.

McCaskill and Grassley are still awaiting answers from the Missouri Guard as to how they will respond to the inspector general’s finding.

But while the federal government is strengthening whistleblower protections, Missouri is going in the opposite direction.

The same new law signed by Gov. Eric Greitens that has led to the NAACP for the state because of the rollback of employment discrimination protections also weakens protection for state whistleblowers. It’s why state Auditor Nicole Galloway urged the governor to veto the bill in a letter that went unheeded.

“The so-called Whistleblower Protection Act specifically excludes employees of state and local government and public higher education institutions from protection against retaliation for reporting unlawful activity,� Galloway noted. “I fear SB 43 makes it much less likely whistleblowers will come forward to report public misconduct or corruption.�

That means the next time a Michael Sandknop comes along to report misconduct or fraud or waste in Missouri government, the battle might be even more difficult than the one still being waged by a guy who just wanted to tell stories about Missouri soldiers who had come back from war.

He’s smiling now, having been recognized in the halls of American power for taking that very power to task.