Korean War Veteran Patrols Streets for Homeless

Korean War vet keeps homeless warm at night
San Diego Union Tribune
Pam Kragen
January 2, 2018

Since 2011, the campaign has distributed more than 3,250 sleeping bags. About 40 percent of downtown’s homeless population are veterans, Field said, but the bags are distributed to any one in clear need.

San Diego Veterans for Peace volunteer Stan Levin, 88, gives Shayne Dunn, who is homeless, a package of food before he and Gilbert Fields, background, a new sleeping bag in downtown San Diego on Friday. (Hayne Palmour IV / San Diego Union-Tribune)

At age 88, Korean War veteran Stan Levin has earned the right to spend all his evenings in the warm comfort of his Serra Mesa home.

But several nights a month for the past six years, Levin has patrolled the streets of downtown San Diego, handing out free sleeping bags, socks and snacks to homeless men and women he finds sleeping on the sidewalks.

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Suicide Awareness Stunts Don't Work in Australia or Anywhere

A year ago, this was the headline from Australia.

More Australian Defence Force veterans have killed themselves this YEAR than those who died in combat in Afghanistan due to post-traumatic stress disorders

• More soldiers committed suicide in 2016 than were killed in Afghanistan

• At least 50 Australian Defence Force personnel killed themselves this year 

• The Department of Veteran Affairs have been slammed by former soldiers

• They said the Department force them into lengthy battles for support

So they pulled stunts, just like here in the US. The headline from 2017 is this.

Veterans' 2017 suicide toll is 84, say activists

Loren Ries drew this on a road in Huonville, Tasmania, for the Veteran Chalk Challenge to draw attention to 84 Australian veterans' suicides in 2017.  Photo: Supplied

Mr Steley said the 84 figure "is a conservative estimate and only the deaths that veterans themselves can confirm as the government is still unwilling to even attempt to keep a record of the number of deaths". 

Mr Steley said the veterans had "offered so much to Australia and our government to protect them; now when they need help they are being either ignored or actively targeted by an uncaring, inflexible system." read more here

Fight to take back your life! I did!

Trauma is what happens but surviving is what we make it!

Combat PTSD Wounded Times
Kathie Costos
January 1, 2018

By the time this picture was taken, I had already survived five times.

Before I turned six, it was already three times. There was a car accident and I still have the scar on my chin from hitting the dashboard while my head hit the windshield. 

I was pushed off a slide, had a concussion and scull fracture (along with brain damage) but the Doctor missed all that and told my parents to let me have a good nights sleep.

The next day, it was obvious I was in trouble. The next Doctor told my parents that I should have died twice the night before. Not "could have" but "should have died." There was no reason I was still alive.

Then there was the health scare that was caused by shingles. Yes, the one that "old people" get. It was horrible, painful and terrifying but usually not life threatening. It only seemed that way.

My Dad turned into a violent alcoholic but I was not his target. My oldest brother was. He kept drinking and causing misery until I was 13. Then he stopped after the was pulling apart the living room, threw a chair that almost hit me. He didn't know I was there.

Years later, another car accident. That was followed by my ex-husband coming home from work one night and deciding I needed to die. He stalked me for over a year.

By the time I met my Vietnam veteran husband, I understood what trauma could do to a person first hand. While I did not know what war was like, even though my Dad and Uncles were veterans, I just knew what war was doing to them.

I miscarried twins and hemorrhaged. By then I knew what PTSD was but what I didn't know was that night was PTSD was about to get worse. He totally changed. When our Doctor explained the egg split wrong, he refused to listen and blamed himself for having Agent Orange.

After our daughter was born, I had an infection that did not totally clear up and I ended up in the hospital. Yet again, I heard the words "should have died" when my Doctor said he had never seen a bacteria count that high on a live patient.

That was the last thing I could take. My husband was no longer my best friend. He was a stranger and he was standing by the hospital bed holding our baby, listening as the nurse told him I was fighting for my life. They didn't know I was praying to let go of it.

I lost all hope and the will to fight. Then I understood what drove people to commit suicide. The only thing that stopped me was when I was able to open my eyes long enough to see our daughter's big brown eyes looking right back at me. I couldn't leave her.

Why am I telling you all of this? Because while trauma cannot be prevented, what it does can be stopped from taking over your life.

In my family, there were no secrets. Everything was talked to death. Turns out that is what Crisis Intervention does. It takes you out of the abnormal moments of facing death and brings the survivor back into a safe place within what "normal" life should be.

I knew the worst that could happen but also knew how to take back control over the rest of my life. I became a Chaplain for that reason and trained with the IFOC so that I could help first responders and veterans better than I could have on my own. 

That training was followed by two more years worth of every free training I could get here in Florida. I refuse to be called a "victim" of anything. I AM A SURVIVOR! I do not have PTSD because of what was done soon after the times that tried to take my life.

We learned a lot of things from Vietnam veterans coming home and fight for all the research. I learned a lot about veterans because of the veterans in my life. I learned a lot about about lives can be so much better when we fight to take back control and heal.

Over 35 years later, researching, living with PTSD, I am living proof that tomorrow does not have to be another dark day of misery. It can be a brighter day with the hope of healing.

I also became a leader with Point Man International Ministries because of the spiritual healing that must be included when treating PTSD, especially within those who faced multiple traumatic events.

Some advice on this first day of the New Year. Take the negative energy you are using up and use it to put something good into your life. Fight as hard now to heal as you did to survive the "IT" that could have killed you and stop thinking it "should have" killed you.

Defeat PTSD and fight to take back your life! I did!

Fort Riley Deaths Investigated

Details in soldier deaths show cases of hanging, gunshot wound

The Mercury

Stephanie Casanova

December 31, 2017

The U.S. Army has provided details on investigations into three Fort Riley soldier deaths that occurred in 2017, two of which appear to have been self-inflicted.

Records indicate the cases are still under investigation by local agencies, and the Army continues to say the cause of each death is undetermined. The Mercury requested information on seven of the 12 non-combat-related soldier deaths that have occurred since June 2017, those that appear to have been suicides. The Army so far has returned documents on three.

In the first, a Junction City Police Department detective found Staff Sgt. Garett Swift, 37, “hanging in the backyard of his residence” in Junction City at 5:30 p.m. Sept. 4, according to one report.

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Homeless Veteran "They wouldn't help me."

Turned away at Bedford VA hospital, a life lost
Veteran's suicide adds to questions about response, policies
Lowell Sun
By Todd Feathers
UPDATED: 12/30/2017

He sought care at VA hospitals in Arizona, Wyoming, and South Dakota. About three years ago, Earles decided to move to Massachusetts.

BEDFORD -- Byron Wade Earles sat hunched over, his head resting in his hands, by Building 78 of the Edith Nourse Rogers Memorial Veterans Hospital.
The nurse who rushed out to help found him bleeding and despondent.

"They wouldn't admit me," he told her, according to an account of the incident in Earles' medical records. "They wouldn't help me."

As the nurse spoke with him, Earles took out a knife and began to cut his throat.

Byron Earles, a homeless Army veteran,
tried to commit suicide on Nov. 7, 2016
after the Bedford VA hospital s mental
health clinic denied him admission.
He died by suicide two months later.
(PHOTO COURTESY OF PAUL EARLES)

The 44-year-old Army veteran had arrived at the Bedford VA mental health walk-in clinic on Nov. 7, 2016 -- days after being discharged from the Brockton VA -- asking to be admitted to the hospital because he was thinking about hurting himself and others.

The Bedford clinic turned him away, according to a portion of Earles' medical records obtained by The Sun, because a mental health worker did not believe his account of a recent suicide attempt and suspected he wanted to escape the cold.

Maureen Heard, a spokeswoman for the hospital, said Earles left of his own accord after a psychiatrist suggested he seek a homeless shelter. Hospital administrators declined an interview request, but Heard said several clinic policies changed as a result of the Earles incident.

While Earles didn't die that day -- two VA police officers convinced him to drop the knife so the nurse could treat his wound -- he did die by suicide two months later, on Jan. 6, after walking out of a counseling session at the Bedford hospital.
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