[wvns] Homeless Vets Play the Waiting Game
Homeless Vets Play the Waiting Game
By Aaron Glantz
http://www.ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=39731
James Eggemeyer in Iraq.
SAN FRANCISCO,(IPS) - U.S. Army Specialist James Eggemeyer injured
himself before he even set foot in Iraq, jumping out of a C-130
gunship during training at Fort Bragg, North Carolina.
"I jumped out and the jumpmaster who was holding that line that was
wrapped around my arm had to cut the line because I was pretty much
being dragged behind the airplane," the 25-year-old Florida native
told IPS as he drove a donated truck through the streets of his
hometown of Port Saint Lucie, a two-hour drive north of Miami, Florida.
"I hit the side of the plane with my Kevlar," he added. "My parachute
was twisted up like a cigarette roll and I hit real hard and my ankle
and my knee and my back and my shoulder (got hurt). I tore my rotator
cuff. I feel like a 50-year-old man."
After the incident, military doctors prescribed Eggemeyer painkillers:
the opiate Vocodin, the anti-depressant Percoset, and the steroid
hydrocortisone.
Then, in April 2003, they sent him to Iraq. For the next year, he
drove a Humvee, running supply convoys to U.S. soldiers stationed all
around the country.
His experience in Iraq was rough. His convoys were attacked twice. His
worst day occurred early on, when the military truck in front of his
Humvee hit a civilian vehicle. Eggemeyer says he slammed on the brakes
to avoid adding his vehicle to the pile-up. Then he got out and loaded
an entire family of dead Iraqis onto a U.S. helicopter, including a
little girl.
After that, Eggemeyer says his condition worsened. The longer he
stayed in Iraq, the worse his body felt. He also started to take more
of the opiates and the steroids the military had given him. The more
he took them, the more he needed to dull the pain.
But violence wasn't the only thing Eggemeyer had to deal with while
deployed overseas. While Eggemeyer was in Iraq, he filed for divorce.
His mother had called to tell him his wife was cheating on him with a
man in a local hotel. Then Eggemeyer checked his bank account and
found 7,000 dollars was missing.
So for the duration of Eggemeyer's time in Iraq, James's parents took
custody of his son, Justin, who had been born just two months before
his deployment.
Returning to Fort Bragg in April 2004, James was quickly discharged
from the military. His experience in Iraq had changed his disposition.
He started fighting with his captain, and was given "dishonourable
discharge under honourable conditions", which allowed him to use
services from Veterans Administration but denied him access to college
tuition assistance or vocational training.
When his parents moved to Miami with Justin, James Eggemeyer opted to
stay on in his hometown of Port Saint Lucie on Florida's central
coast, where he had secured part-time work buffing, waxing and
shampooing cars at Kare-Pro Car Wash.
Located right outside the gates of the exclusive PGA Country Club and
down the street from the private Legacy Golf & Tennis Club, Kare-Pro
had a decidedly upscale clientele.
It did not go well. Eggemeyer said his main problem was that the
manual labour he engaged in at Kare-Pro was aggravating his training
injury. After a dispute with the manager over whether he would get
Memorial Day off, Eggemeyer quit.
By December 2006, when James Eggemeyer filed a disability claim with
the Veterans Administration, he had already joined the ranks of the
United States's burgeoning population of homeless veterans, and was
living out of his girlfriend's Ford Explorer. So when the VA responded
with a letter to his old address requesting that he come in for a
physical examination, he missed the appointment.
It's a vicious cycle so familiar to homeless people across the
country. They need help from the government because they don't have a
home, but can't receive mail because they don't have an address.
Eggemeyer pawned everything he could: his girlfriend's diamond ring,
his guitar, his X-Box video game system, and his television. Then he
went to get help, from Tony Reese, a Veterans Services representative
working for Martin County, Florida.
Reese let Eggemeyer use his office as his address and made sure that
James showed up at all his appointments. He checked that all of
James's documents were in order and used the VA computer system to
ensure his claim was on the right bureaucrat's desk at the regional
office in Saint Petersburg.
But even with that, the process dragged on.
"We were just waiting for the VA," Reese said. "I really don't know
how the VA is processing these Operation Iraqi Freedom and Operation
Enduring Freedom (Afghanistan) claims. Supposedly they're supposed to
be separated and moving quicker but, you know, it doesn't seem like it
to any veteran who files a claim."
So Reese tried to raise money from private organisations -- just
enough to keep Eggemeyer afloat until his claim was settled.
In June, he convinced the William J Peterman Foundation for Disabled
War Veterans to donate enough money to put James up in a cheap hotel
for the month, with both Reese and the foundation believing Eggemeyer
would surely be receiving a disability cheque by month's end.
All the VA needed to do was have a claims adjuster stamp a decision on
his file, and since James was homeless, his file should theoretically
be at the top of the stack.
But after 30 days passed, the VA still hadn't rendered a decision. The
Peterman Foundation's money ran out and James Eggemeyer was back on
the street.
Then, on Jul. 21, Eggemeyer crashed his girlfriend's 1999 Ford
Explorer -- which was also his home -- into a utility pole. Eggemeyer
blamed the intoxicating effects of VA prescribed pain killers for his
accident. The police report noted Eggemeyer wasn't drunk and he was
only cited for "careless driving".
"I was on so many painkillers that I thought I was getting in the
turning lane, but it was actually the curb," Eggemeyer said. "I
wrecked it and totaled it and then I didn't have anywhere to live."
Reese sprung into action again. He got the local Veterans Council, a
membership organisation of groups like the American Legion and the
Veterans of Foreign Wars, to cough up enough money for James to buy a
used truck to live in.
July passed, August passed, and James was still waiting, unemployed,
on a decision from the Veterans Administration.
"It's a representative case," Reese told IPS. "The more you stay in
contact with the VA, the more you stay on top of your claim, the more
the chance of your claim getting processed as it should be. But
sometimes weeks and months just pass by and before you know it the
claim is sitting God knows where. (James Eggemeyer), he's just your
typical guy returning."
Indeed, the VA's own statistics show that Specialist James Eggemeyer
received what could best be described as "standard treatment".
Since the start of the Iraq war, the backlog of unanswered disability
claims has grown from 325,000 to more than 600,000. On average, a
veteran must wait almost six months to have a claim heard. If a
veteran loses and appeals a case, it usually takes at about three years.
Veterans groups maintain that the backlog amounts to official
negligence. Since the launch of the Iraq war more than four years ago,
the number of people charged with reviewing and approving veterans'
disability claims has actually dropped. According to the American
Federation of Government Employees, the VA employed 1,392 Veterans
Service Representatives in June 2007 compared to 1,516 in January 2003.
The VA's patient-to-doctor ratio also grew -- from 335 to 1, to 531 to
1, between 2000 and September 2004.
But across the country, people like Tony Reese continue to take their
jobs seriously. Through the months of waiting, Reese continually
called the claims adjudicators he knew at the rating board in St.
Petersburg. He reminded them of what they already knew from the forms
in front of them: that Specialist James Eggemeyer had served his
country in Iraq but he had sustained both physical and mental injuries
in the field of battle and was now homeless and suicidal.
On Sep. 5, a claims official at the Department of Veterans Affairs
told Reese and Eggemeyer that the first cheque would come within the
week. Eggemeyer had been given a 100-percent disability rating
retroactive to the date he made his first claim.
As a result, James now has an apartment and will soon be reunited with
his son.
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