They Serve Those Who Served Their Country

A former soldier who wants to go to college but is unsure how to get certified for education benefits. A sailor whose transition paperwork went missing and is now two months behind on her rent. A veteran who has just rented an apartment for his family and needs everything to furnish it.

The U.S. military is perhaps the most powerful organization in the history of the world. But a good chunk of the work of transitioning its veterans into life back home is done by grassroots workers and volunteers such as Bob and Ethel Gilmore and Mike Martin of Castro Valley, Todd Steffan of Livermore and Mike Conklin of San Ramon.

They work one-on-one with men and women who served. Many are Vietnam veterans who want the younger generation’s return to civilian life to be better than the hatred they faced when they came home from that unpopular war. They see their volunteerism as a matter of national security, and they challenge everyone, not just people with military ties, to participate.

 “Remember, it’s a volunteer service, so if we don’t let it be known that people who served will be taken care of and valued, we won’t have volunteers, and we will have to impose a draft,” said Martin, who is with the Castro Valley, California, Veterans of Foreign Wars. Castro Valley’s American Legion Post649.org and the Vietnam Veterans of Diablo Valley helped establish the Veterans First Resource Center at Las Positas College in Livermore and is helping it to expand.

“The military is in our national DNA,” said Conklin, whose group, the Sentinels of Freedom, works intensively with injured Iraq/Afghanistan veterans to give them “life-changing opportunities” in the civilian world.

“Not all veterans coming back require help at all,” Conklin said. “Some have skill sets that are readily needed by corporations.” Other veterans seek direction.

Making the difficult transition

“There’s a transition period where you just want to relax. Then you realize you’ve got to do something,” said Marine veteran William Pittman of Livermore. After leaving the service in November 2009, he worked in France on a farm, vacationed with friends in Greece, visited Ireland, then started taking classes last semester at Las Positas College. 

“We’re given a weeklong transition program at the end of the service where they tell you about educational benefits, medical benefits, how to get them,” Pittman said. “Sometimes it clicks, but it’s a lot to absorb, and once you’re out the door, you can’t go back,” he said. The Veterans Survival Guide (www.nvlsp.org/) is more than 600 pages long.

A volunteer who can help veterans navigate the bureaucracy once they’ve decompressed from the service and started to figure out what they want to do is invaluable, Pittman said. “If I had any advice to give someone coming back, I’d say they need to get in touch with the VA, with VFW. They need to find that community."

Conklin added, “Sometimes it’s as simple as sitting down with them and getting a cup of coffee and asking them, “What do you need?"

Some needs, of course, are obvious.

Reunited families need a place to call home

 “Servicemembers send their children back home with their parents when they go overseas. When the family gets back together, they often have nothing,” Bob Gilmore said. Among many other initiatives, he and his wife wrangle community donations to help veterans furnish their homes.

The Gilmores have made nine trips to Lodi and Stockton, where many veterans find affordable housing, bringing furniture and household items donated by Castro Valley families. 

 on the Boulevard gives the Gilmores rent-free space for a shipping container full of donated goods, including furniture, housewares and bicycles for servicemembers’ children. A sympathetic World War II vet rents them additional space at a big discount.

The Gilmores have a long list of people who would like to get rid of surplus household goods. The supply line has bottlenecked, though, because the Gilmores have no one with a truck large enough to haul the donations to Lodi, where a woman who inherited a small apartment building has dedicated it to housing veterans.

The Gilmores desperately need a volunteer driver with a bobtail rig or big rig to haul donations to the veterans’ apartments, to make way for new donations. They also could use more free or low-cost storage space.

The Gilmores also help veterans in crisis whose names they get from the Veterans Administration in Palo Alto. “One sailor’s transfer papers from active-duty to reserve went awry. She had found Christmas-season work, but was laid off when the holidays were over,” Bob said. She fell behind on rent, and she and her two small children were in danger of being evicted from their Castro Valley apartment.

“She didn’t know what to do, so as a last resort she called the VA,” Bob said. Working with Castro Valley service groups such as the Elks and Moose, the Gilmores raised $1,500 to help cover the sailor’s rent and utilities.  (Unable to find full-time work, the woman has re-enlisted, sent her kids to relatives and is about to start her Seabee training in Mississippi).

The decision to treat PTSD

Many veterans must contend with post-traumatic stress disorder in response to combat. A 2009 Stanford study found PTSD rates among returning 9/11-era vets as high as 35 percent. 

"I make a blanket statement: Everyone who goes over to Afghanistan or Iraq is going to come home with PSTD because of the exposure to IEDs (improvised explosive devices) and the kind of combat that’s going on there as opposed to other wars," Martin said. "The only question is the degree. It’s highly treatable, but they have to know they can get the help.”

He and other local volunteers recommend counseling at the VA in Livermore and Palo Alto and especially at the VA's Concord Veterans Center. 

"Many of the guys who are open to that kind of thing go there," Martin said. "I’ve been through there."

He is dismissive of veterans who say they don't want to see a therapist. "We are usually pretty crass about it, and we usually say BS. Unless you’ve done it, and know there is no benefit, you really don’t know anything about it. Because I’m so involved, it pisses me off when people say there is no help available."

Other veterans are ready to jump back into civilian life but need help with the paperwork. 

Navigating educational options

Air Force veteran Ryan Arrigo knew he wanted to go to college but found the bureaucracy daunting. There are five kinds of veterans’ educational benefits, and it’s not easy to know which is most appropriate. Arrigo landed at Las Positas, whose Veterans First Resource Center started out as a financial-aid outreach but went much further.

 “I’d go around to get info from colleges and was discouraged by the paperwork,” Arrigo said. “They’d give me a form to fill out and send me home. I’d put it off.  Todd Steffan would sit down with me and make sure I filled it out correctly.”

“We needed to go beyond certifying benefits,” said Steffan, coordinator at the center in Las Positas’ Building 1000. “Student veterans needed help not just with paperwork but support, help on what to study, a place to be among other veterans.”

For Arrigo, it was important to have people “who understand military life and have connections with people who get it.” At Las Positas, where he is now president of the student veterans organization, he can benefit from — and point others to — an informal network of guidance counselors and other staff who are veterans.

Veterans get first priority for Las Positas registration (though they can’t bump non-veterans from a class). They can borrow laptops and receive $500 book loans, payable when GI educational funds kick in.

The school’s annual Operation Gateway, July 20-22 this year, is a three-day outreach and information program for all veterans, especially new returning servicemembers. VA and financial aid counselors attend, as well as personnel from the Concord Veterans Center and other groups. The Knights of Columbus throws a free barbecue. There’s a special incentive: Veterans new to higher education who enroll at least three-quarters time after attending the workshop receive a $500 book stipend, Steffan said.

Las Positas’ efforts are paying off: Steffan said 350 veterans are enrolled, 200 of whom served recently, judging from the kind of benefits they receive. This is triple the enrollment of 18 months ago.

“I used to X-ray planes,” said Arrigo, who is headed for a career in radiology. “Now I’m going to X-ray people.”

A good place to gather and be understood

Las Positas' veterans' center is enlarging over the summer. It soon will have a lounge and expanded services, including tutoring from a Vietnam vet and retired English teacher. The staff will bring in employer recruiters and workshops, and will have a computer and printer that students can use for free.

Sentinels of Freedom started in 1998 when business and civic leaders in San Ramon gathered the town's military-bound young people and gave them a luncheon. "We told them when they came back we would not forget them," Conklin said.

He soon found that some veterans come back with formidable challenges, and learned to step up. 

High hurdles for the wounded and injured

"When you step forward to work with the wounded and injured, it is a whole different ballgame," Conklin said. "The hurdles are much higher for them. The community can say, 'It is now time to help them.' Business owners and city officials, public safety workers had a power that they didn’t realize they had to do the right thing."

Sentinels of Freedom provides intensive mentoring, financial help, job placement and guidance to veterans rated with at least a 60 percent disability. The program is highly selective: Conklin said participants must be "severely injured, but motivated and with a positive attitude." The help is called a "scholarship,” though not all Sentinels attend school. 

Nationwide, SoF chapters have mentored 66 veterans, eight in Danville and San Ramon. Veterans have been placed in jobs at Chevron, UPS, Lawrence Livermore Lab and the city of Pleasanton.

"We were an advocate," Conklin said. "We walked the Sentinels into the door and asked, 'Would you please invest in your company by hiring one of these individuals?' Even if you can just help one person, it’s a huge community builder. We do it one person at a time."