North valley Stand Down heals veterans, volunteers

By all accounts, the recently concluded North State Stand Down, held Oct. 19-23 at the Shasta District Fair grounds in Anderson, was a rousing success.

More than 300 veterans — many of them homeless or down on their luck, most without jobs and even quite a few with traffic-related infractions that deprive them of a driver’s license or any other way to get to work or even find a job — found assistance from other veterans and social service agencies, organizers reported Monday, Oct. 24.

“We helped more than 300 men and women who registered with us. In the past it has been mostly Vietnam veterans, but this year I personally got acquainted with at least five or six who had served in Iraq or Afghanistan. There are no jobs so they cannot find work,” said Tom Johnson, who co-chaired the event this year with Jim Richards, president of the North Valley Stand Down Association.

Many of the veterans came from Shasta County, but Stand Down also had buses shuttle them in from Siskiyou, Tehama, Trinity, Glenn and Butte counties, Johnson said.

This year was the sixth year that northern California veterans have reached out to fellow veterans down on their luck, said Johnson, who helped set up the very first Stand Down in 2006 with Point Man Don Boardman, who recently died from complications due to contact with Agent Orange and other war-related injuries while serving in Vietnam.

This year’s Stand Down was dedicated to Boardman’s memory, Johnson noted.

One of the brightest features of this year’s Stand Down was a legal system, overseen by a Judge Advocate General, who was authorized by court systems in nine northern California counties to adjudicate minor cases, levy community service sentences to pay off court fines and contact appropriate agencies and social service groups to clear past warrants and restore driving privileges or licenses, Jim Richards said.

“We had 18 or 20 people who went in to see the judge and another eight or nine cases, all misdemeanors, that the judge dismissed outright,” he noted.

“We also had five or six from counties that we weren’t able to handle, but the judge noted their attendance and we wrote letters on their behalf. Some of them even stood guard for us as part of their community service sentence. It was strictly voluntary as it is up to the courts in each county whether to accept that sentence,” Richards said.

Nearly 100 homeless veterans or their dependents — including 12 women and eight children — stayed overnight at the fairgrounds.

“I think it went very good. We had a lot of compliments from the veterans we helped as well as from our staff,” Richards said.

One observation I was left with after spending several hours at the Stand Down on Saturday, was the bond all veterans share.

As Richards so eloquently put it, “The healing that goes on here isn’t just for the hurting and homeless. The volunteers who serve are healed in the process of helping others as well.

That is the main reason why the Stand Down had more than 200 volunteers this year helping out, setting up, cooking, keeping the fairgrounds clean and tearing down all of the displays, work areas and shade shelters after it was all over.