Mindfulness at Work: 7 Places Where Employees Benefit from Meditation

Mindfulness, the practice of being awake to the present moment, is now in vogue in American workplaces as varied as Google, Goldman Sachs, Aetna and General Mills. Backed by scientific research of the cognitive benefits of ancient Buddhist meditation, corporate types thinking of productivity and the bottom line quickly trained their workers how to focus using mindfulness. Outside of finance, tech and manufacturing industries, NationSwell found seven more workplaces where you find employees reaping the benefits of meditating on a regular basis.

1. Concert Hall

Where: Tempe, Ariz.
After studying mindfulness for four decades, Ellen Langer, a professor of psychology at Harvard, is renowned as the field’s mother. Her concept of mindfulness differs from the common practice, in that she believes no meditation is necessary to change the brain’s chemistry; instead, she achieves mindfulness by existing in a state of “actively noticing new things,” she tells NationSwell.
As part of her research, she once split the Arizona State University Symphony Orchestra into two groups and instructed each to play a piece of music by Johannes Brahms, which she recorded. Langer asked the first group to remember their best performance of the familiar piece and try their best to replicate it. She told the other group of musicians to vary the classical piece with subtle riffs that only they would recognize. Langer taped both performances and played them side-by-side for an audience. Overwhelmingly, listeners preferred the second one. To Langer, it seemed that the more choices we make deliberately — in a word, mindfully — as opposed to the mindless repetition, the better our end-product will be. The most important implication for Langer came later, when she was writing up the study: In America, she says, we so often prize a “strong leader to tell people what to do,” but as the orchestra’s performance proves, when an individual takes the lead instead of doing what someone instructs her to do, a superior result is the likely outcome.

2. Primary School

Where: East Village, New York City
“The research is pretty conclusive: when kids feel better, they learn better. One precedes the other,” declares Alan Brown, a consultant with Mindful Schools where he offers mindfulness training to the private school’s freshman and sophomores. Brown incorporated a serious practice into his life at a week-long silent retreat, after “jumping out of my skin, reading the toilet paper, doing anything but to be with your own thoughts and with yourself.” He now teaches kids how to be attuned to themselves and recognize feelings that may be subconsciously guiding their lives, like when they’re hyped up with sugar or are stressed out about a test. (Solutions: spending a moment in a designated corner calming down, breathing through a freakout to restore higher cognitive functions.)
As someone in the caregiving profession, Brown reminds himself and his fellow teachers they need to adopt mindfulness practices as well. With them, “the way I interact with others comes from a place of much greater compassion for the kids: clearly this young person, who is not a fully-formed, self-regulating adult, is probably trying their best and probably has some really significant hurdles outside the classroom. I’m not going to let that get to me.” If teachers expect similarly enlightened behavior from their kids, Brown adds, they have to know, “You can’t teach what you don’t have in your own body” and better embrace a meditative practice to see the results at every desk.

The UMass Mindfulness in Medicine program teaches the benefits of meditation to their staff members.

3. Hospital

Where: Shrewsbury, Mass.
Modern mindfulness was formalized in 1979 at the University of Massachusetts Medical School, where Jon Kabat-Zinn created an eight-week meditation routine to reduce stress for the hospital’s chronically ill patients that’s now replicated worldwide. Back on the medical campus where it all started, a new mindfulness program is being offered this summer for the people on the other side of treatment: the physicians, nurse practitioners and care managers.
The Mindfulness in Medicine program works to combat the frequent feeling of dissatisfaction about a lack of patient interaction among doctors. Instructor Carl Fulwiler gives lectures about the clinical research on meditation’s benefits, teaches 90-minute workshops for busy staffers and leads full-blown courses for a dedicated few. His teachings focus on how to avoid burnout with strategic pauses; by taking a breath immediately prior to seeing a patient, doctors can focus solely on the interaction. “Often they’re thinking about what’s the next thing they have to do or the documentation. They’re not even hearing a lot of what the patient is saying,” Fulwiler observes. With mindfulness, they can see what “might be contributing to a bad encounter, what’s preventing us from being empathetic, compassionate and more efficient in our style of communication?” The whole interaction may be over in three minutes, but having that time be meaningful is vital for helping the healers themselves feel the rewards of a demanding job.

4. Government

Where: Washington, D.C.
Change rarely comes to our nation’s capital, but that’s okay in Rep. Tim Ryan’s mind. A meditative practice equipped him to deal with legislative gridlock and partisan bickering. The seven-term Democrat representing northeastern Ohio practices mindfulness in a half lotus position for roughly 40 minutes daily — a regimen he began after attending one of Kabat-Zinn’s retreats in 2008, after which he gained “a whole new way of relating with what was going on in the world,” Ryan tells The Atlantic. “And like any good thing that a congressman finds — a new technology, a new policy idea — immediately I said, ‘How do we get this out?’” Ryan first wrote the book “A Mindful Nation,” exploring the ways mindfulness is being implemented across America, and today, in sessions of the House Appropriations Committee on which he sits, the representative advocates for more funds to be deployed to teach meditation tactics. The money may not be forthcoming just yet, but that hasn’t stopped mindfulness from gaining more new converts like Ryan every day.

5. Police Department

Where: Hillsboro, Ore.
Last month, Americans watched videos of officer-involved shootings in Baton Rouge, La.; St. Paul, Minn; and North Miami, and they read about the five cops who died in a sniper attack in Dallas. While those crises were deeply felt by civilians nationwide, they were only a glimpse of what cops encounter regularly. “Law enforcement is a profession that is deeply impacted by trauma. On a daily basis, we bump up against human suffering,” says Lt. Richard Goerling, head of Hillsboro Police Department’s investigative division and a faculty member at Pacific University. “It doesn’t take very long for police officers’ well-being to erode dramatically,” he adds, ticking off studies that track early mortality and cardiovascular issues among public safety professionals.
Through the organization Mindful Badge, Goerling teaches several police departments in the Portland area and in Northern California how mindfulness can better cops’ performance: sharpening their attention to life-or-death details, cultivating empathy and compassion that’s crucial for stops and searches and building resilience before encountering trauma. The theory goes that once an officer receives mental training, he can sense when a stressor in his environment is activating his flight-or-flight reactions and then check those instincts. “If a police officer is in their own crisis,” Goerling suggests, “they’re not going to meet that person in a way that’s totally effective.” The lieutenant is aware mindfulness isn’t a cure-all for “a landscape of suffering,” but he believes it’s a first step to changing a “broken” police culture that takes its officers’ health for granted.

6. Athletic Competition

Where: San Diego, Calif.
BMX bikers may not seem like a group that’s primed for meditation, but when an elite biker stuttered with anxiety at the starting line, his coach James Herrera looked into any way to solve the problem of managing stress before a high-stakes event. Herrera soon got in touch with the Center for Mindfulness at the University of California, San Diego, and he signed up his seven-man team for a small study into the effects of meditation on “very healthy guys who are at the top of their sport,” lead author Lori Haase tells NationSwell. Over seven weeks, the bikers practiced a normal mindfulness routine, but with extra impediments like having their hands submerged in a bucket of icy water to teach them to feel the sensation of pain, rather than reacting to it cognitively. As the weeks went on, their bodies seemed to prepare for a physical shock, without an accompanying psychological panic. In other words, participants’ bodies were so amped up and hyperaware that they didn’t need to react as strongly to the stressor itself compared to an average person. The study didn’t test whether it made them faster on the course, but it seemed to suggest that reaction times could be sped up by using mindfulness to slow down.

7. Military

Where: Honolulu, Hawaii
Like cops, members of the military have much to gain from situational awareness. A couple seconds’ of lead-time for a soldier to notice someone in a bulky jacket running into a public square could prevent a suicide bomb from taking out dozens of civilians and comrades abroad. But that’s not all mindfulness is good for in a service member’s line of duty.
Before soldiers even leave home, they must deal with leaving family and putting other aspects of their lives on hold. To prepare soldiers for deployment, University of Miami neuroscientist Amishi Jha offered mindfulness trainings at an Army outpost on Oahu to soldiers heading to Afghanistan. To fit the program into an already crowded training regimen, Jha drastically cut down the standard 40-hour model to an eight-hour practice scattered throughout eight weeks. Despite the stress of leaving that could sap the mind’s attention and working memory — “everything they need to do the job well when they’re there,” Jha notes — the mindfulness trainings prevented their minds from wandering. Tentative research Jha’s still conducting suggests those benefits persist post-deployment. Her session was just like boot camp, Jha found, only for the brain.

MORE: How Meditation Is Bringing Calm to San Francisco’s Toughest Schools

Telepresence Robots Break Down Barriers for Those with Physical Disabilities

Ron Carrico began Kavita Krishnaswamy’s private tour of the San Diego Air & Space Museum near a replica of Charles Lindbergh’s Spirit of St. Louis, describing the torturous 33-hour flight across the Atlantic in such a way that isn’t printed in history books. As the two made their way through the facility, Krishnaswamy, a doctoral candidate in computer science, waved hello to fellow patrons and paused to see the planes hanging from the ceiling. The only thing atypical about her visit was that she wasn’t technically at the museum, which is located in Balboa Park, Calif. Extraordinarily, she was more than 2,600 miles away sitting in front of a computer in Baltimore County, Md, controlling a five-foot-tall, roving BeamPro robot equipped with a wide-angle camera and a 20-inch screen that projected her face at eye level.
Originally built to automate industry, to ease business interactions for remote employees or to simply entertain, robotic technologies are taking on a significantly nobler purpose: assisting those with disabilities in their day-to-day lives. Text-to-speech capabilities on iPhones allow the blind to read anything online. Doctors and therapists use robots to make virtual rounds to patients who cannot physically leave their homes. And at the San Diego Air & Space Museum, which received a $25,000 grant from the NBCUniversal Foundation, people with severe disabilities can use innovative “telepresence” BeamPro devices to partake in a historical and cultural adventure they’d never be able to experience otherwise.
APPLY: The San Diego Air & Space Museum is an NBCUniversal Foundation 21st Century Solutions grant winner. Apply to the 2016 program today.
The museum keeps two robots charged at all times, ready to give BEAM tours to those who can’t make it to Southern California. Katrina Pescador, the museum’s archival director, saw the robotic technology’s potential after the manufacturer held a conference nearby, quickly signing up to offer virtual museum tours to people who are hospitalized or mobility challenged. “I want people to have the freedom to experience the world and not be locked up some place,” says Pescador, whose daughter has a disability. “But it’s also important that people in the world see other people with disabilities. All of us need to be interacting together.”
The device provides those with physical disabilities a unique opportunity to explore the world in a way that clicking through images on Google never can. The BeamPro allowed Krishnaswamy, who has spinal muscular atrophy, to enjoy a rare experience of free movement. “It gave me an immersive experience like I was physically there,” she recalls. “I could move around. I had the ability to turn. I could see people and interact with people,” she adds. “Just moving around on my own without any limitation and seeing somebody eye-to-eye: that’s really a new experience.”
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Pushing application of the technology even further, Carrico’s colleague Ross Davis is attempting to use the BeamPro for virtual school field trips. Davis, the museum’s education resources coordinator, believes it’s the ideal way for budget-conscious schools to engage students. Educators can log on and within seconds, get kids excited about the physics involved in getting 1,500-pound object soaring through the air. “We want to make it easy. We like easy,” Davis, a blunt former Navy pilot, says. (Offering top students a chance to command a robot is a sure-fire way to motivate a group of kids, he adds.) Even better is a virtual field trip’s ability to host low-income children. “We want to bring in the [kids] who wouldn’t get to visit, whose parents are too busy and don’t have time or money to buy tickets,” Davis says.
The school tours are still a project in process. Davis has tried at least three times to connect with one classroom, but the San Diego public school system has a firewall he hasn’t yet been able to circumvent. Once that basic connectivity issue is fixed, Davis has big plans: He envisions integrating 3-D diagrams, YouTube clips and sound bites into his guided tour to bring some of the aircraft hanging in the museum roaring into motion. From there, he’ll offer telepresence tours to anyone in the nation — enabling those with limited financial resources to have the same learning opportunities as their wealthier counterparts.
If the school visits work as well as Krishnaswamy’s tour, the program will be a success. Months later, she still raves that, “It was one of the best experiences I’ve ever had.” A graduate student at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County, Krishnaswamy studies how technology can assist others with disabilities like herself. The BeamPro is a prime example of what she wants to develop: a device that let her experience life in a different way.
As Krishnaswamy viewed the exhibits with Carrico, she thought about how quickly technology advances. In 1903, the Wright Brothers could barely keep a plane off the ground for more than a few seconds. Fast forward to 1969 when men rocketed into space and landed on the Moon. In a way, it’s fitting that Krishnaswamy is using a robot to experience the history of progress on display. In comparison to how fast she can jet into the museum from across the country, a trans-Atlantic flight feels like no big deal. If Lindbergh could see the BeamPro today, surely he would feel a twinge of jealousy.
The San Diego Air & Space Museum is a recipient of last year’s 21st Century Solutions grant powered by the NBCUniversal Foundation, in partnership with the NBCUniversal Owned Television Stations. The grant celebrates nonprofits that are embracing innovative solutions to advance community-based programs in the areas of civic engagement, education, environment, jobs and economic empowerment, media, and technology for good. Apply here for a chance to be one of the 2016 winners!
 

The Counterintuitive Solution to California’s Drought Crisis

As drought lowered reservoirs and scorched front lawns, California residents looked longingly to the great body of water at the continent’s edge: the Pacific Ocean, tantalizingly close but undrinkable. At least, until recently.

This December, Poseidon Water, a Boston-based infrastructure developer, opened the world’s largest desalination plant in Carlsbad, Calif., a coastal city just north of San Diego. Seventeen years in the making, the new facility removes the salt and purifies 50 million gallons of ocean water every day. At the moment, the technology is expensive — nearly double the price of importing water from outside the county — but Poseidon’s executives believe that extreme weather events and population booms in the future will make water scarcer and, by extension, drive up the price.

“Seawater desalination is the only water supply in the county that’s drought-proof,” says Jessica Jones, spokesperson for Poseidon. “It’s not dependent on snowpack or rainfall.”

Reverse osmosis membranes, inside the Carlsbad Desalination Plant.

A water source like it has been a dream of humankind’s since ancient times, when marooned sailors first tried to remove the salt from seawater by catching the steam rising from boiling pots. In the 1960s, scientists hit upon a way to extract pure water molecules from a tainted source. Using reverse osmosis, the briny water (already treated to remove algae and silt) flows through pipes equipped with a porous membrane, its holes barely one-millionth the diameter of a human hair, Jones explains. At extremely high pressures, the water molecules pass through these microscopic holes, but salt ones are too large to fit. Jones compares the process to trying to fit a baseball into a tennis ball can.

The process works so effectively that Poseidon is in the final stages of obtaining permits to open a similar plant in Orange County’s Huntington Beach. Environmentalists have voiced concerns about damage to sea life sucked in by the facility, but to offset any loss of marine life, Poseidon is restoring wetlands south of San Diego to be a bird and fish habitat.

Could Poseidon’s executives be correct in their belief that technology like this will be the only way to prepare for a harsher, dryer world that’s rapidly approaching?

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Making the Invisible Wounds of War Visible

How do you treat an illness that you can’t see?
The U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs estimates that 11 percent of soldiers who served in Afghanistan and 20 percent of veterans of the Iraq war come home with PTSD. This ailment, which some refer to as an invisible war wound, has been linked to grave problems, including veteran homelessness and suicide. But now, testing is underway using new technologies that just might enable doctors to see the impact of both PTSD and Traumatic Brain Injury.
In San Diego, the Veterans Research Alliance raised $30,000 to fund a study by the V.A. using the magnetic encephalograph and high-definition fiber tractograph (two devices that allow researchers to view and record electromagnetic waves in the brain), something that has never before been possible.
Gery Schulteis of VA Healthcare Systems tells ABC 10 News, “With a traumatic brain injury, there may be gaps in the neurological connections in the brain. These devices may be able to detect that and in turn help lead to new treatments.”
Steve Lewandowski of Veterans Research Alliance adds, “Before, people were calling this an invisible injury. After this moment, it will no longer be invisible.”
The study is starting small, involving 10 special warfare veterans. Schulteis says, “We’re still going to be a ways away from having a new treatment, but hopefully this will be the gateway to a much larger study.”
With PTSD afflicting 7.7 million American adults, according to the National Institutes of Health, any breakthrough in its treatment would be welcome.
MORE: Meet the Marine Turned Doctor Helping Veterans Overcome PTSD

Are Storage Units the Key to Reducing Homelessness?

Anyone that has moved can attest to the difficulty of moving your possessions from one place to another. But for the homeless, not only is hauling around their stuff a physical challenge, but also a blow to any sense of stability or dignity.
This was poignantly illuminated in 2009 when a group of San Diego homeless lost everything while attending a church event when the Environmental Services Department collected and destroyed their belongings.
The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) chapter of San Diego filed a lawsuit on behalf of the homeless shortly after, which led to the city’s solution to provide a place for those without homes to safely store their possessions.
The Transitional Storage Center now provides more than 350 bins — each providing up to 96 gallons of space — for the city’s homeless, according City Lab. The program, which is run by service group the Girls Think Tank, is supervised by two full-time employees, enabling individuals to store or check on their belongings during the morning and evening.
“When you’re literally homeless, you’re like a turtle that carries everything on his or her back,” says Michael Stoops, director of community organizing for the National Coalition for the Homeless. “Which can be problematic if you’re walking long distances or trying to work. There’s always the danger of things being lost, stolen, or thrown away by police officers.”
San Diego’s move follows in the footsteps of Los Angeles’s Central City East Association Check-in Center, which also provides storage units for homeless. While the concept is by no means a solution to ending homelessness, it can help people avoid living on the streets long-term.

“Having a storage space can help someone get out of homelessness,” Stoops tells City Lab. “A lot of shelters will have no storage space whatsoever. You sleep on top of your stuff, you put it under the cot, you have to take it with you the next day.”

Indeed, having a space to store belongings helps alleviate some of the stress on the homeless to carry their stuff in order to be mobile. Keepsakes and personal documents or sleeping bags and clothing can be cumbersome to tote around, making it difficult for the homeless to move around. That could mean missing a job interview or medical appointment or making frequent use of public washrooms.

Storage units — while simple in concept — do pose some challenges. Primarily, funding them can be tricky. San Diego’s operational costs are anywhere between $80,000 and $100,000 annually, City Lab reports. And finding a location isn’t easy, either. San Diego’s program has moved twice since the city agreed to the space in the lawsuit agreement, currently residing in a San Diego Housing Commission parking lot.

Supervising these facilities is also a problem, Stoops adds.

“If people have access to storage units at all hours of day and night, then you need video surveillance or security personnel” on site, according to Stoops. “You can’t be doing drugs, alcohol, prostitution [in a storage-unit building]. You need to think of all those things. You need to be clear about what items are allowed to be stored.”

Still, if more cities found ways to convert abandon lots or shipping containers into spaces for the homeless, perhaps it could help ease an already harrowing situation. Storage units may be a small step, but the concept could be a stable step in the right direction.

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Transitioning to Civilian Life Can Be Difficult. So Microsoft Trains Marines in IT Before They Hit the Job Market

When military members leave the service, many struggle to find a job — often having to study for a new degree or certification in order to qualify for a position, all the while not being able to rely on consistent income.
To help solve this problem before it even arises, Microsoft is working with Marines at Camp Pendleton in California (and two other U.S. military bases), offering a 16-week certification program in Information Technology to soldiers planning to leave the service in the near future.
Sergeant Taylor Harris, one of the participants in the Microsoft Systems and Software Academy, told Bob Lawrence of ABC 10 News, “It’s great to be able to do this while we are transitioning because we still get a stable paycheck because we’re on active duty.”
Although none of the veterans are guaranteed a job with Microsoft, part of the academy is an interview training session that helps many of them secure an IT position. And at the end of the course, each of them is flown to Redmond, Washington to interview with the tech giant. Navy veteran Sean Kelley, Microsoft’s Senior Staffing Director of Cloud and Enterprise Group, told Lawrence, “70 percent of those who go through the program are working in the tech industry.”
In January, Kelley testified before Congress about what Microsoft has learned from its veteran recruiting efforts, and how the company believes that training veterans in IT can help solve the industry’s problem with finding enough people with technical skills to hire.
“Economic projections point to a need for approximately one million more STEM professionals than the United States will produce at the current rate over the next decade,” he told the House Committee on Veterans’ Affairs. “The United States graduates about 300,000 bachelor and associate degrees in STEM fields annually. Fewer than 40 percent who enter college intending a major in a STEM field complete a STEM degree. It is clear that many people, including veterans, lack the technology skills and industry certifications employers look for to fill the tens of thousands of available IT jobs across a broad range of industries. Eight years ago when we started exploring how Microsoft could be helpful to our transitioning veterans, we were surprised to learn there were very few opportunities for veterans to acquire these in-demand skills.”
Classes like this one are helping many veterans find not only a job, but a high-paying and satisfying career. Tuition for the class costs about $3,000 on Camp Pendleton, compared to $10,000 to $20,000 for a similar certification course off base. Corporal Joseph Priest told Lawrence, “As soon as I heard about this opportunity, I jumped on it…you put a little bit aside for tuition costs, and might get a job that lands you between 60 to 80k. I think it’s worth it.”
MORE: Here’s A New Website Bringing Unemployed Veterans and Understaffed Tech Companies Together
 

To Increase Government Transparency, San Diego Joins the Open Data Movement

Help Wanted: A chief data officer.
Employer: The California city of San Diego.
Earlier this month, the City Council’s Economic Development and Intergovernmental Relations Committee (ED&IR) approved an open data policy, which means the city will release its data sets, making them free and accessible and begin coordinating open data efforts between departments. To help facilitate this, they’re needing a chief data officer to help hit the ground running.
“It’s time for San Diego to join the open data movement — to get data out of silos at City Hall and realize its potential to spur economic development, improve municipal operations, and enhance public participation in government,” said Councilman Mark Kersey, Vice Chair of the ED&IR Committee.
The policy needs full City Council approval before officials expect it to go into effect no later than October 1 of this calendar year. The San Diego City Council first approved a resolution to create an open data policy in December 2013, when the ED&IR committee began seeking more public input to finalize a draft.
The new policy was presented by San Diego’s Open Data Advisory Group, which includes members of San Deigo’s tech industry. It’s also endorsed by San Francisco-based open data group Code for America, as well as the local advocacy group Open San Diego.
First on the list is to hire a chief data officer and modernize the municipal website, according to San Diego 6.
San Diego is one of dozens of cities across the country marching toward government transparency and connecting with the local tech sector to update the often-antiquated processes of municipality. Earlier this year, Indiana Gov. Mike Pence issued an executive order to create the Management and Performance Hub (MPH) to coordinate data across the state while Chicago’s Department of Innovation and Technology (DoIT) has focused on open data through its massive online data portal. Meanwhile Boston and New York have implemented data dashboards, providing real-time reports on everything from crime to education statistics to help local leaders in governing. 
Though creating a policy is just the first step, San Diego’s role is an integral part of a national movement that will reshape how think about government and policy.
MORE: Why Local Governments Are Becoming More Data-Driven

This Veteran is Building Better Futures for Other Service Members

It takes someone special to have not only a vision, but be able to implement it, too. And that’s exactly what Patrick Clark has done.
When Clark retired from the Marines, he struggled for a while to determine what he would do for the rest of his life. He found his calling by starting a home renovation company — REIG Construction — in San Diego. Now that he’s found success in his civilian life, he wants to help other veterans through a program his company is launching called Operation: Renovation.
Clark told Bob Lawrence of ABC 10 that when he left the military in 2005, he wasn’t sure what to do next. “It’s the great unknown, [that question of] what are you going to do out there is looming. There were times when I contemplated going back to where I grew up.” He ended up staying in southern California and co-founding the construction company that buys dilapidated homes and renovates them. REIG Construction now employ 43 workers, including several other veterans. After just three years in business, Clark and the others in REIG are ready to give back.
Ryan Yahner, a Marine sergeant who served three tours of combat duty before receiving a Purple Heart and being medically discharged, volunteers with REIG and is overseeing Operation: Renovation. “It gives me a chance to help another Marine out, like I used to do for so many years. So it kind of gives me that pride back.”
REIG Construction is inviting active duty military and veterans to apply by July 31 for the chance to receive a complimentary home renovation, which will be completed by Veterans Day 2014. According to REIG’s website, “Our goal with Operation: Renovation is to celebrate, honor, and change the life of one local military family in need through a passionate and purposed home renovation.”
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When a Veteran’s Wheels Stopped Turning, These Police Officers Got Him Moving Again

Pushing a non-functioning 300-pound motorized scooter an entire mile doesn’t sound like the easiest task. In fact, it sounds downright quite difficult.
Yet that’s just what some San Diego police officers did Memorial Day weekend.
Officers Eric Cooper and Milo Shields were out on patrol Sunday afternoon when they spotted a man on a scooter that had stopped working.
The stranded scooter driver, 67-year-old Gilbert Larocque, is a veteran disabled from injuries he sustained in combat as a door gunner in the Army during Vietnam. As a result, he relies on the vehicle to get wherever he needs to go.
Once the officers determined the scooter’s battery was dead, they considered driving Larocque to his home in the Hickman Field Trailer Park a mile away — but then he’d be stuck without his wheels.
So the officers decided to push Larocque home on his scooter, as you see in this video. “We thought it was going to be like pushing a shopping cart, but we were fighting against the transmission the whole time,” Cooper told Lyndsay Winkley of U-T San Diego.
“Being a veteran myself, I was gracious for his service to our country. The least I could do was push him,” Shields told Monica Garske of NBC San Diego.
“We think about veterans one day a year. We should think about them more,” Shields said.
Still, the officers are confident that it doesn’t take a cop to help out a citizen. “I have no doubt that other citizens of San Diego would have stepped in and done it if we had not,” Cooper said.

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Does Military Jargon Prevent Vets From Landing Jobs?

MP. XO. AIT. This list could go on and on.
Military communications are often full of “alphabet soup” — choked with so many acronyms that it’s virtually impossible for someone who hasn’t served in one of the branches of service to understand what’s being said. In San Diego, the unemployment rate among veterans stands at a disappointing 10 percent, and representatives of Easter Seals Southern California wonder if part of the problem has to do with vets failing to translate the military jargon on their resumes into concepts that potential employers understand. 
Amita Sharma of KBPS interviewed John Funk, the director of military and veterans services for Easter Seals Southern California, about their WorkFirst Military & Family program to help vets find a good job in part by learning civilian-speak. He said, “The military speaks a different and unique language, full of acronyms. Part of the challenge with the transition of veterans is to get them to speak that language so that people can understand it.” On their resumes, vets should include “not just the direct job that they may have had while they were in the military, but they can also translate the soft skills that were associated with that — how they’re very goal-oriented, their leadership, their teamwork capability, their results-oriented approach to getting the job done.”
Funk says that Easter Seals also works with employers, advising them, “Don’t hire a veteran just because he’s a veteran. Hire a veteran because he has these great strong attributes he can bring to your organization.”
Every veteran who enters the WorkFirst Military & Family Program meets individually with Easter Seals volunteer and employees, who help them to define career goals and job-related skills. Then, vets receive assistance crafting a story about their work experience and their goals for the future using language that an employer will understand — both on their resumes and in job interviews. From there, job-seeking veterans are connected with employers.
For Tim Crisp, a Marine Corps veteran working with Funk, the help has been invaluable. He told Sharma, “John [Funk] gives me that customized experience, working with me to narrow down my focus to help me be more goal-oriented toward doing something that’s going to really fit for me…as a mentor and a coach, his experience helping others…has been very helpful.”
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