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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Tag: Veterans
Meet A Disabled Veteran Jump Starting Soldiers’ Cars — and Their Lives
A little help can go a long way for those in need — especially if they’re veterans struggling to find jobs and readjust to civilian life.
Which is exactly why North Dakota Air Force veteran Larry Mendivil is offering free car repairs to any soldier who needs them. Mendivil knows his way around a socket wrench — he served as a senior airman with the 319th Aircraft Maintenance Squadron at Grand Forks Air Force Base in North Dakota, and now he’s applying the fix-it skills he developed there to four-wheeled vehicles.
Last year, he started the Miracles for Vets out of his home’s garage. The nonprofit raises money to fund car repairs and collects donated parts and tools, while several professional car mechanics offer their time and skills to make repairs.
What inspired Mendivil to help other vets? He suffered a disability related to a refueling accident, so after he returned from Iraq in 2007 unable to reenlist, he set out to help other service members — following the Air Force motto of “Service Before Self.” “Even as a disabled veteran everyone has a chance to make a difference,” Mendivil told Xavier Navarro of 319th Air Base Wing Public Affairs.
Over the next two weeks, Mendivil and his crew of volunteer gearheads are rotating to different garages in Harrisburg, North Dakota that have agreed to let him use their space and tools.
Mike Lewis, the owner of Ducks Auto Repair — where the Miracles crew was based last week — was glad to help the cause. “The veterans deserve to have some kind of positive reinforcement when they get back. They’re struggling to readjust from being overseas, they need somebody to help them out,” he told Eames Yates of Fox 43.
Mendivil told Austin Ashlock of the Grand Forks Herald that after he left the service, “I struggled a long time until Veterans Affairs was able to help me out. I was actually homeless for a little while.”
Making it even more special that the first thing that Mendivil did after getting back on his feet was help others.
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Sustainable Furniture Company Puts Veterans to Work
What’s more all-American than serving your country in the Armed Forces? Well, for one, furniture that’s made in America by U.S. veterans.
As more young servicemen return home in search of work, the Arkansas-based company EcoVet is tapping into the veteran workforce to create all-American, sustainable furniture.
The company, which launched in 2011, trains former service members to design and create high-end furniture out of reclaimed materials from old semi-trailers — typically from Walmart — that are destined for landfills. Rather than adding to trash heaps, EcoVet strips materials from trailers like oak or maple floors to create custom-made items like an Adirondack chair, which retails for $850. The company also donates other parts such as plywood to the nonprofit Habitat for Humanity and tires to automobile shops.
EcoVet has trained and hired 28 veterans since its inception and aims to employ 500 over the next three years. Focusing on college-aged U.S. veterans — which have a staggering unemployment rate of 24 percent — EcoVet pays its workers about $15 an hour along along with stock options and flexible hours to help those that are going back to school.
“They’ve been taught how to get things done,” co-founder Drake Vanhooser told Fast Company. “They all have the skill of being adaptable.”
Thirty-year-old EcoVet shift manager Jeremy Higgs is pursuing an associate’s degree in agriculture, food and life sciences at a local community college. The veteran-friendly environment means employees are understanding of outside responsibilities as well as emotional issues including PTSD.
“Everyone is going through some issues,” Higgs said. “We give each other advice.”
EcoVet is slated to open three more decommission centers in Chicago, the Carolinas and Nevada to add to its Springdale, Arkansas factory. The first is expected to open in the next 18 months. With 15,000 to 20,000 scrap heap trailers going to waste each year, EcoVet is hoping to remove 10,000 trailers from the stream of garbage annually.
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Expansion shouldn’t be too difficult for a sustainable product that’s American-made by U.S. vets, according to Adrian Dominguez, the vice president for business development for EcoVet’s parent company, EcoArk. “It’s a profit center for us,” he said. “We manufacture furniture and wood accessories, and we are able to label it as 100 percent recycled, repurposed wood, made by American veterans, right here in the United States.”
Aside from furnishing Walmart vendors, EcoVet has managed to partner with wholesale retailer Sam’s Club, which features two lines on its website. EcoVet is also developing a high-end line for upscale retailers for the likes of stores like Macy’s.
The hope is to not only eventually pluck all scrap heap trailers out of U.S. waste, but to create a welcoming environment where vets can be proud of their work, too.
ALSO: A New Program Transitions Soldiers into Successful Tradesmen
While Her Owner Serves Overseas, This Dog Serves Her Country at Home
To say that the Cook family has a deep responsibility for national service is an understatement.
Alan Cook is an Air Force veteran. His daughter Danielle Cook is currently a Staff Sergeant in the Air Force. Danielle’s mother and grandfather served too. And the line of service in this family doesn’t stop there — now that Danielle is deployed overseas in Afghanistan, her dog Harper helps veterans suffering PTSD through a program called Circle of Change.
Harper lives with Danielle’s dad and visits the Dog Den, a doggy daycare center in Madison while Sergeant Cook is gone. Workers at the Dog Den thought Harper would be a good candidate for the Circle of Change program. “She is very shy and fearful, but at the same time she is gentle. She’s the perfect dog for our veterans program,” Dog Den employee Deborah Crawley told Gordon Severson of WAOW.
In Circle of Change classes, veterans suffering from PTSD teach dogs who have behavioral problems how to relax and follow commands. This training helps the dogs overcome their fears. Another beneficial outcome? The veterans find their PTSD symptoms are often eased by working with the animals, too.
Desert Storm veteran Mike Weber, a participant in the first six-week Circle of Change course, said working with the dogs helped him feel better. “My way of handling my problem was just to avoid everything. This has really helped me come back out and kind of get me back on track,” Weber told Severson. “It’s such a great program and it really has helped me bond with not only the animals, but other vets and volunteers.”
“We’re a military family all the way down to the dog now,” Alan Cook told Severson. “My daughter is just so proud of Harper and thinks it’s a great thing. It gives her something to do while my daughter is away overseas.”
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The City of Miami Steps Up For Its Homeless Service Members
Over Memorial Day weekend, the city of Miami put the phrase “thank you for your service” into action.
The Southern Florida city gathered hundreds of volunteers together in an effort to offer homeless service members a wealth of services during Operation Stand Down. The three-day event, which had 100 organizations participating (such as the City of Miami Veterans Services Department and the Florida Veterans Foundation), helped more than 200 veterans.
In a tent city on the property of an American Legion post, volunteers distributed clothing and performed medical and dental exams. Miami-Dade Judge Steve Leifman was on hand, running a court to resolve any outstanding minor infractions on the homeless vets’ records, such as petty theft or traffic violations. Showers, hot meals, and haircuts were also provided; homeless vets stayed on cots housed in the tends during the weekend.
Veteran Arthur Woods told Natalie Zea of CBS Miami, “It’s helping me out considerably as far as me getting my act together and a lot of things I don’t have due to the fact that I’m homeless…I need dental. I need some eyeglasses. I mostly need a place to stay and I need some income.”
The nonprofit Operation Sacred Trust even provided two of the homeless veterans with their own homes. Coast Guard veteran Gregory Lewis, one of the recipients, said he was “elated.”
“To open that door is gonna be great because it’s going to open other doors. I have two kids and four grandkids and they’ll be able to visit me. I’ll have a stable environment.”
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Meet a Veteran That Uses a 19th Century Art Form to Capture Today’s Soldiers
What do you know about tintypes? Chances are, probably not much. After all, it’s a photography technique that was popular during the Civil War, involving reactive chemicals, metal plates, and a large-format camera.
Photographer and former gunner on combat search-and-rescue helicopters Ed Drew took artistic inspiration from this old format, setting up photo sessions with his fellow soldiers, which he’d have to abandon whenever he was called out on a mission. Still, he had time to capture plenty of striking and evocative portraits.
“I like tintypes because it’s not just something simple…you have to set it up and you have to be really physical with it, you can’t just click,” he told Scott Shafer of the PBS NewsHour. “You’re basically making a photo on a piece of metal. You’re exposing it, developing it and fixing it all right then and there.”
When Drew learned that he would be deployed to Afghanistan last year, he packed his camera. According to Shafer, Drew’s tintypes were the first to be created in a combat zone since the Civil War, when families typically would use them to capture a final memory of a loved one before he went off to war.
Once Drew left the military, he struggled to find his purpose, eventually deciding to use his photography to show the beauty of people. Now he attends the San Francisco Art Institute and works with The Garden Project in San Bruno, California, with a program for at-risk youth. The Air Force veteran now makes tintypes of young people learning job skills through organic farming.
“I think the imperfections of tintypes is what I really enjoy,” Drew told Shafer, “and I think it’s a great analogy for life, life is not perfect whether they have a little speck on them or a little streak of silver that just kind of went awry, you accept the image just like you accept the person.”
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Welcoming Wounded Veterans Onto the Field of Their Dreams
Doug McBrierty grew up on Cape Cod, a die-hard Red Sox fan. So when he returned from the Iraq war with a traumatic brain injury, it was a given that baseball would be part of his recovery, thanks to the Wounded Warrior Project.
Five years ago, the nonprofit gave McBrierty a $3,500 scholarship to attend the Red Sox fantasy camp in Fort Meyers, Florida. Even though he hadn’t played catch in twenty years, McBrierty felt welcome at the camp staffed with former Red Sox players.
“Ability didn’t matter,” McBrierty told Mary E. O’Leary of the New Haven Register. “They greet you with open arms. It’s like a family reunion every year,” he said. McBrierty, who is now a firefighter, struck up a friendship with Gary Allenson, a former Red Sox catcher who currently manages the New Hampshire Fisher Cats, a minor league baseball team.
Today, McBrierty attends the camp every year to help other wounded veterans play ball. “There are a lot of people there with disabilities, but they take the time to teach them,” McBrierty said. Rico Petrocelli, a former Red Sox shortstop and third baseman who helps at the camp, recalls a veteran who’d lost an arm in combat and learned to hit again, and another vet who walked with a cane, but “made a diving catch in right field.”
Now McBrierty, Petrocelli and others are working to raise money to send more veterans to baseball camp. Many former Red Sox pitched in autographed items for a silent auction that was held a couple of weeks ago in New Haven, Connecticut.
The Wounded Warrior Project funds a variety of adaptive sports experiences for injured veterans — from skiing to skydiving to scuba diving.
For those veterans who grew up dreaming of being on the baseball diamond, the chance to join the boys of summer at a fantasy camp can’t be beat.
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When This Vet’s House Started to Crumble, Home Depot Stepped in with a $20,000 Renovation
Many of us have heard of the pervasive problem of homeless veterans, which the National Coalition for the Homeless estimates number between 130,000 and 200,000 on any given night. But what about vets who own homes, but due to disability or financial troubles, can’t afford to maintain them? Staff at the City of Miami Services Office became concerned about this issue and partnered with Home Depot to provide grants to renovate vets’ homes that badly need it.
The first to benefit from this program is Army veteran George Carswell. Disabled due to his service in Vietnam, Carswell lived with his mother Minnie Lee Spann in the home she purchased in 1964. Since her death, Carswell hasn’t had the funds to keep up with the maintenance, completing no significant repairs since 1978; the home was in danger of collapsing.
That’s when Home Depot stepped up and donated $20,000 to make the necessary improvements. Local Home Depot store manager Alberto Contreras even came out to work and personally oversee the renovation. “The house was in deplorable conditions and not livable,” Contreras told Carma Henry of the Westside Gazette. “If the house wasn’t repaired it would’ve been demolished.”
Not only did the volunteer workers stabilize the home, they beautified it, with new paint, windows, doors, sod, and a rose garden planted in the memory of Carswell’s mother.
The partnership between Miami’s Veterans Services Office and the Home Depot aims to help four more veterans with similar repairs this year. Miami mayor Thomas Regalado said, “My goal is to ensure that our Veterans are treated with the respect and dignity they deserve. We are trying to get them the services they need.”
One way to reduce the number of homeless veterans is to prevent vets from becoming homeless in the first place, and the generous people behind this home repair effort in Miami are doing their best to achieve that.
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This Non-Profit is Making Sure Kids of Fallen Heroes Can Go to College
Funding a college education can be a difficult proposition for anyone, but for children of parents who died while serving in the military, it can be downright daunting. According to the Jacksonville, Florida-based nonprofit Children of Fallen Patriots, 15,000 American children have lost a military parent over the past 25 years. Now, the foundation is on a mission to identify as many of them as possible and offer them help paying their college bills. So far they’ve found 5,218 of these students, and paid $7.5 million toward their college educations.
“Our focus is on military children who have lost a parent in line of duty or any related deaths, like PTSD suicide or illnesses from exposure launch,” Army veteran David Kim, the founder of Children of Fallen Patriots, told Helena Hovritz of Forbes. “When government benefits don’t come through, we step in and pay for what they need.”
Hovritz writes that before Daniel Richard Healy’s final deployment, he told his son Jacob Centeno Healy that what he most wanted was for him to go to college. When Senior Chief Petty Officer Healy died, Jacob didn’t know how he could pay for college. “The VA wouldn’t provide benefits to me because they didn’t recognize me as my dads’ son,” Healy told Forbes.
So Fallen Patriots stepped in and funded Jacob Healy’s education. Now he works as a program administer for the organization, helping other people who’ve lost parents in the military find all the scholarships and government aid available to them, and covering the rest of the costs with funds from the nonprofit.
On this Memorial Day, Children of Fallen Patriots reminds us that we owe our fallen heroes so much. They gave our country their parents: the least we can do is provide them with a college education.
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Veterans Receive Donations From an Unlikely Source: A 12-Year-Old Girl
Whereas most teenagers want clothing or a new smartphone for their birthday, Katy Sell wanted something, well, let’s say, quite different, for her 12th birthday. She wanted to help U.S. veterans.
After Katy’s mother challenged her to do something kind for others on her birthday, Katy, who lives in Deubrook, South Dakota, came up with a bigger idea than her mom ever imagined: She decided to donate all of her presents to the California-based Big Paws Canine Academy and Foundation, a nonprofit that trains service animals for veterans and has a Midwest branch in Sioux Falls, South Dakota.
According to the Big Paws website, Katy and her mother Julie Sell, a Navy veteran, were homeless seven years ago. It was that tough experience that gave them extra motivation to help others.
When people heard about Katy’s generosity, her school friends and many others chipped in additional donations to help the nonprofit. At Katy’s birthday party, several veterans brought their service animals to meet the generous teen and her friends. Ricky Crudden told Denise DePaolo of KSFY, “I lost the use of my legs due to a stroke because of COPD.” Big Paws matched him with his service dog Tracer. Crudden said, “He saved my life. He woke me up in the middle of the night.”
During the party, one veteran received the dog he’d been waiting for — giving Katy the experience of seeing the first moments of a new relationship. “It gives me a good, tingly feeling inside because I know I’m helping a lot of people,” Sell told DePaolo.
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