Grassroots groups spring up to help Iraq vets

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• http://www.sfgate. com/cgi-bin/ article.cgi? f=/c/a/2008/ 02/11/BAR1UUB3E. DTL
  Grassroots groups spring up to help Iraq vets
  John Koopman, Chronicle Staff Writer
  
  Monday, February 11, 2008
  
  Timothy Wedzik, a disabled veteran of the war in Iraq, was on his way with his wife to make a rent payment. Their landlord likes to get paid by money order, so they had a lot of cash with them.
  
  That's when they got robbed. Two young men stopped them and made them get out of their car. One stuck a gun in Christina's back and ordered Timothy to hand over the money, which he did.
  
  With two kids to feed and work hard to come by, losing the rent money was a disaster for the Hemet (Riverside County) couple.
  
  Christina went online and got on the phone, looking for some help. The Veterans Affairs Department pointed her to a small, little-known organization.
  
  A couple of weeks later, their landlord got a money order from the group, Operation Helping HEAL. (It stands for Helping Enlisted Americans Live.) There were no eviction notices. Not for now. The group also provided money for a car payment, which was also past due, and car insurance. It wasn't a lot of money, by some people's standards, but it got the family through a very hard time.
  
  "It overwhelmed us that they would help us out like that," Timothy Wedzik said.
  
  "We went from hopelessness to feeling ecstatic," Christina Wedzik said.
  
  As the war in Iraq drags on, more and more programs are popping up nationwide to help veterans, especially those who have been wounded. Some of this has been in response to the news of deplorable conditions for veterans at places like Walter Reed Army Medical Center, and some of it is simply a response to the idea that veterans of this war should be treated better than those who fought in Vietnam.
  
  The big national organizations have programs to help. The American Legion, Veterans of Foreign Wars and Disabled American Veterans all do what they can. But new institutions are cropping up as well.
  
  The Injured Marine Semper Fi Fund, for example, started in 2004 when a nurse at Camp Pendleton in Southern California saw that Marines and their families needed more - money, support, help - than they were getting from the government or the standard veterans organizations. So she brought together spouses and other family members to create a fund to help wounded Marines and their families. The Semper Fi Fund has grown nationwide and requires a full-time staff to keep it going.
  
  Operation Helping HEAL had similar roots. Its founder is a young financial manager named Devon Porpora.
  
  Porpora was working in New York City in 2004. One day, while riding the train to work, he saw a photograph in the New York Times. It showed a Marine in Fallujah. The man looked to be in his late 20s, as was Porpora. The Marine was ducking for cover while bullets rained about him.
  
  "Here was this young person, over there, defending his country, being in Fallujah, and I was riding a train," Porpora said. "It just seemed like two very different realities and I felt like I wanted to do more. I wasn't doing enough.
  
  "That's when I decided I could best help by raising money and doing something for them that they really needed."
  
  Or, as he said later, "You do not have to pick up a gun to help our country."
  
  Porpora was a money man, and so went about raising money for the purpose of putting together a fund to help wounded veterans. He has since moved to San Francisco, and he works in the financial department of First Republic Bank.
  
  Operation Helping HEAL - which is a registered nonprofit organization - has raised about $200,000, and the organization has helped about 100 veterans and their families.
  
  Porpora said 97 percent of money raised by the organization goes directly to veterans because there is very low overhead. Operation Helping HEAL has a Web site, from which veterans can download an application. The application is e-mailed to four people: a doctor, a lawyer, a former VA official and the vice president of the organization. Generally, they all sign off on the application, and the veteran then receives help.
  
  Originally, Porpora envisioned the organization making loans to veterans who needed help, but he quickly realized that most of the people who asked for help are already in some kind of debt and don't need any more, even if the terms would be good. So the group simply gives away the money. It doesn't send checks to the veterans; instead, it pays for whatever the veteran is most in need of. Like rent or mortgage or insurance payments.
  
  Sometimes, as in the case of the Wedziks, the group sends along a few gift certificates to help with food and incidentals.
  
  While Operation Helping HEAL is officially located in San Francisco, it operates nationally. The veterans come from everywhere, but sometimes are focused in places where local VA officials know of the program and try to send vets there for help. The organization gets a lot of applications from Southern California, for example, because Don Sutton, a patient advocate at the Loma Linda VA center, knows about it and refers veterans to it.
  
  "For a veteran coming back and new to the system and falling short, for whatever reason, (Operation Helping HEAL) is there to help them and they are very dedicated to doing that," Sutton said.
  
  Thurman King, from Uniontown, Pa., is a reservist who was injured by a roadside bomb near Taquddum, Iraq, in 2004. He got back to the States and went through a lot of rehabilitation for his mangled knee, as well as post-traumatic stress disorder. Along the way, his pay got disrupted several times and he, like the Wedziks, found himself short of money to pay the rent. An Army buddy told him about Operation Helping HEAL, and he sent in an application.
  
  "They're lifesavers," King said. "There's no other way I can put it. I don't know what I would have done if they hadn't helped me out."
  
  To learn more
  For information about Operation Helping HEAL, go to:
  
  www.helpingheal. org
  
  Donation checks can be sent to P.O. Box 26412, San Francisco CA 94126-6412
  
  E-mail John Koopman at jkoopman@sfchronicl e.com.
  
  http://sfgate. com/cgi-bin/ article.cgi? f=/c/a/2008/ 02/11/BAR1UUB3E. DTL
  
  This article appeared on page D - 1 of the San Francisco Chronicle
  
  In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, this material is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes. Reference: http://www.law. cornell.edu/ uscode/17/ 107.shtml
  
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