I would like to take an opportunity to introduce myself and my organization and those goals I hope to accomplish for the foreseeable future in NYC. As the rare organization that works exclusively with justice-involved veterans, I am seeking working partnerships to expand suicide prevention awareness and to create oppotunities to better serve our incarcerated brothers and sisters.

I originally traveled to this wonderful city in late July at the invitation of RIP Medical Debt founder Jerry Ashton who has also seen medical debt as a major contributing factor in veteran suicide. Mr. Ashton and I are continuing our working partnership with Veteran Mission Possible which he launched in response to the Veteran Affairs $20 million suicide preventiuon challenge that neglected to provide any funding for veteran homelessness, medical and judicial debt, mental health, or outreach; all factors in veteran suicide, but all passed over in favor of algorithms and artificial intelligence. 

As formerly incarcerated three times myself (DUI, Marijuana), I have seen that suicides in both the veteran and the general community have ties to the criminal justice system to include crushing court fines and fees for minor infractions. Those same unpaid fees and fines of $3,200 from my case when my probation was terminated have been sent to collections and my credit is wrecked. The Maricopa County Veterans Treatment Court denied my petition to have the fees set aside (“forgiven” as I worded it) where the only veteran in a courtroom is the defendant.

Catholic Charities MANA House

In early 2016 I became homeless and was referred to MANA House (Marine, Army, Navy, Air Force) a veteran’s transitional program exclusively for eligible veterans in the Grant Per Diem (GPD) program. The program was founded by a Vietnam veteran to provide housing and transitional services for 49 veterans experiencing homelessness for which I was the front desk clerk for nearly two years. Army Veteran Herbie Davidson and I also ran the outreach program which provided hot meals, showers, computer and laundry access, and clothing to approximately 100-120 visits each month from veterans either living in area camps or at the Phoenix homeless shelter Central Arizona Shelter Services (CASS).

Outreach to Incarcerated Veterans

Over the last three years since release from prison in 2019 I have taken my experiences from MANA House and Dept. of Corrections and applied those to assisting other veterans in jails and prisons across the country. Very few incarcerated veterans have online access to various VA-related tools such as MyHealtheVet and eBenefits, so most any dealings with Veterans Affairs must be done either by the VA’s prison outreach program, Veteran Justice Outreach (VJO), loved ones, or they can try to maneuver the system from a prison bunk.

In 2021 I founded Veterans Justice Advocates (VJA) as a non-profit outreach mechanism to specifically ‘Bridge the Gap’ between the incarcerated veteran and the VA with a Do-It-Yourself process for requesting documentation, filing claims, and applying for transitional services. In addition to specific requests from veterans, VJA publishes and distributes a monthly newsletter, ‘The Forgotten Veteran’ mailed directly to each veteran who requests them. The most reliable medium for providing outreach to the incarcerated veteran is by snail mail so the newsletter serves as double duty both as a source of articles meant to relieve tension, but also as a valuable informational tool on any number of topics from Agent Orange to Direct Deposit that can be instantly printed from .pdf and mailed directly to the veteran or loved one. It is hoped that more loved ones and prison officials will consult the Veterans Justice Project website as I work to finetune expansion of various sections and to increase turnaround time by supplying numerous solutions to the one fundamental problem of how is the best way to keep our incarcerated veterans engaged.

Veterans Justice Project (VJP) is a limited-liability company I founded in Arizona (2020) to facilitate processing of VA claims, assure documents get to the proper destinations, follow-up on research, and file criminal complaints on behalf of incarcerated veterans, if necessary. Those services are provided to the incarcerated veteran based on ability to pay but still never denied or withheld.

Veterans Mission Possible (VMP) is a collaborative veteran advocacy campaign to reduce veteran suicide and end veteran medical debt. VMP is an initiative built on the experience of competing in the VA Mission Daybreak initiative – and not being selected to be among the thirty organizations recognized and financially rewarded. As a veteran who has been on all sides of veteran suicide, I can assure anyone reading this that combatting veteran suicide does not begin with a bunch of money for an algorithm. Veteran suicide starts with engagement and outreach to the at-risk veteran communities who are living on the streets and in our prisons.

Outreach to Veteran’s Organizations

I am in the process of reaching out to other veterans’ organizations (for-profit & non-profit) to enlist their assistance in expanding the outreach program to incarcerated veterans, many who are wholly and solely reliant on the Veteran Affairs and the Department of Corrections to provide. It is not uncommon to see a valid claim denied because of a missing x-ray or a scheduled phone interview. It is my hope that Dept. of Veterans Affairs will provide a representative from each department to assure consistency and to establish a standardized set of policies and procedures specific to incarcerated veterans. This set of standards can then be provided to various agencies which might otherwise be hesitant to accept incarcerated veterans as clients.

Community Involvement 

Since arriving into the NYC shelter system, I’ve been exposed to a different style of cooperation between the many agencies and organizations dedicated to the well-being and success of the at-risk veteran, while at the same time promoting suicide prevention. As part of my journey from ‘homeless to homeness’ I am also supporting local veteran’s organizations. In October 2022, I attended a conference for the Military Veterans in Journalism in Washington, DC and participated in a walk of 22 miles in Kingston, NY for the, ‘Walk in My Shoes” campaign of suicide prevention awareness sponsored by the Hudson Valley National Center for Veteran Reintegration (HVNCVR).

In addition to the above events I have participated in, I am looking forward to marching in the NYC Veterans Day Parade on November 11, 2022 with my other brothers and sisters from Borden Avenue Veterans' Residence located in Long Island City, as well as the many other events and celebratins of our veterans over the weekend.

I also look forward to discussing other ways to continue to bring down the epidemic of veteran suicide through awareness and hope. In the coming months, the NYC Dept. of Veteran Services is spearheading a campaign for housing and suicide prevention with a series of grants ranging from $25-100k. It is my goal to secure a grant for my project, Tell Your Story, which will encourage other veterans to also ‘tell their story’.

My experience with veteran suicide is at the heart of my words here. Providing hope, cooperation, and advocacy to those veterans most at risk of suicide and incarceration spreads to other veterans, who then spread it to other veterans. The result is less stigma and less suicide which is the basis of the documentary that originally brought me to NYC. Please feel free to reach out anytime.

Timothy Pena

US Navy (1977-81)

(602)663-6456

www.VetJusPro.com

I first met Jerry through his organization Veterans Mission Possible

The Stewart Foundation

Veteran Outreach begins and often ends on the street which is where anyone in Phoenix can Gregory Stewart. Greg has been panhandling on the same corner of 7th St. and McDowell for several years. Like many veterans, his need to serve others outweighs his own, so he collects donations of money, food, and clothing for distribution to the homeless in Central Phoenix. Greg is in the beginning stages of founding his own non-profit, The Stewart Foundation.

Military Veterans in Journalism

I’ve never thought of myself as a journalist; certainly not in the realm as we see correspondents and reporters on our television screens and in our newspapers everyday-but being in such supportive company made me realize that a formal background in journalism isn’t as important as having the real-world experience that veterans bring to the discussion in any newsroom. I was struck by the number of veterans who simply like to write, as I do, about our experiences in the military and how those experiences apply to everyday reporting.