Young veterans become new face of the homeless

By Jeanette Steele, UNION-TRIBUNE STAFF WRITER

Friday, July 16, 2010 at 7:55 p.m.

Charles Worley stood in the smoking area, looking at the uniformed Marine volunteers walking around Stand Down for the Homeless.

That used to be him, with the confident stride, bulked-up muscles and full stomach.

Instead, this Marine veteran who served two years in Iraq is a Stand Down client. Two years after being discharged, Worley is homeless.

“I’ve been couch-bouncing. I’ve actually been outdoors for the past three or four days,” said the 31-year-old whose defense industry job lost funding, then unemployment ran out. He missed the deadline for college summer classes, so the G.I. Bill doesn’t help him right now.

“You think, I’m a United State Marine. As soon as I take my uniform off, I’m going to have 20, 30 job offers. Didn’t work that way. Not in 2008.”

Worley and young veterans like him are the future faces of homelessness.

Advocates are braced for a flood of Iraq and Afghanistan war veterans on the streets as the combined stresses of combat trauma, a poor economy and lack of a civilian track record take their toll despite the newly amped-up G.I. Bill and five years of free Veterans Affairs Department health care, among other programs.

A few young faces mixed with the largely older crowd at Stand Down, the three-day effort organized by Veterans Village of San Diego to help homeless veterans leave the streets. The event, now in its 23rd year, was the first of its kind and a national model. Officials say about 900 people entered the gate at San Diego High School on Friday to get services.

The line started along the fence outside on Tuesday. Many of the faces camped out, waiting for entry, were old hands. Some seasoned Stand Down veterans didn’t have a lot of sympathy for the younger folks who showed up.

Young spirit, strong back — that should add up to a job and enough money for rent, said Tom Ambersley, 61, who waited in a lawn chair along Park Boulevard for two days before the event started.

A Navy ship mechanic from 1966 to 1981, he worked in civilian shipyards after that until he hurt his back. Eventually, the state disability checks didn’t cover the bills and he hit the streets of Chula Vista.

This is the 17th year Ambersley has attended Stand Down, where he is looking forward to getting free dental work. With only a few remaining teeth, he says at least one more needs pulling because it’s loose.

“I don’t see any connection with the homeless and coming back from the war, unless they are so brain damaged that they shouldn’t be discharged in the first place,” Ambersley said. “They should be able to get a job doing something.”

But two young Iraq veterans volunteering at Stand Down get it.

Former Marine Matt Camp and Mike Judd, former Army Airborne, recently started a group called Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of San Diego. Mainly, it’s an effort to gather their fellow veterans for camaraderie.

But they also see it as a way to catch people before they start slipping toward bad places.

“We’re going to police our own ranks,” Camp said. “We need to care for our own.”

Camp had a brush with the streets himself. The first month after his discharge in June 2009, he lived in his truck and on friends’ couches. Still looking for a job, he didn’t have the money for rent. All that combat pay had already been spent.

Judd said the streets have an allure for someone accustomed to the mindset of the war zone.

“I do understand the appeal, because I’ve thought about it myself,” said Judd, who is a counselor at Veterans Village of San Diego. “They like the idea of just surviving, because it’s what they did for so long.”

Like Worley, the former Marine, Keenan Thompson fell a long way to land at San Diego High this weekend.

The 27-year-old former sailor was featured on the 2005 PBS series “The Carrier,” a 10-part documentary about life about the San Diego-based aircraft carrier Nimitz.

More recently, he was living, high, on the streets of his native Los Angeles.

Hurt when an F/A-18 jet rolled across the deck, he got a medical discharge for post-traumatic stress disorder. His drinking turned worse and he couldn’t hold down a job. He hit bottom when he got arrested for drug possession.

The Los Angeles judge told him to get into a recovery program. He did, turning to Father Joe’s Villages in San Diego, where he is living now.

“When I got out of the military, I became more emotionally cut off. I was dealing with a lot of nightmares, dreams, alcoholism and all the PTSD symptoms,” he said.

“It put a lot of strain on my wife and family. I couldn’t hold down a job, and it was a rough time."

Thompson was at Stand Down in the hope of getting his speeding tickets handled. He’d like to get his drivers license back.

“I’m just trying to stay positive,” he said.