This story was reported for San Diego News Network on July 15, 2009.
Jobless with an addiction to meth and no where to go, Sandy Borum found herself on the streets of San Diego. A Catholic school graduate, she served in the Air Force for four years after the Vietnam War. Years after being honorably discharged though, she found herself with only one option: take a lesson from her military training and stand down.
Borum’s case isn’t unusual. More than 200,000 veterans find themselves sleeping on the streets every night in the U.S., 10,000 of whom can be found in San Diego, according to the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs.
But hope can be found each year said Borum. The 21st annual San Diego Stand Down, an event offering services to homeless veterans like it has for Borum, will take place July 17-19.
“Stand Down is a three-day event with different versions of the event nationwide,” said Veterans Village of San Diego’s (VVSD) vice president and COO Andre Simpson. “It provides services to homeless veterans and their families. And those services include mental health, counseling, integrative medicine, clothing — all being provided and donated by the community.”
Stand down, a term derived from traditional military training, translates to allowing the troops to rest from combat, have a little R ‘n’ R and stand down, said Simpson. In 1988 though, the term would take a whole new course when two Vietnam War veterans created a unique event of the same name.
Jon Nachison and Robert Van Keuren held the first Stand Down in San Diego 14 years after the end of the Vietnam War. With the number of returning veterans finding trouble entering “civilian life” and for some, finding themselves homeless — Nahison and Van Keuren felt obligated to help their comrades. Now 21 years later, Stand Down is a nationwide event hosted annually in 300 cities. The event is facilitated by more than 2,500 volunteers and hundreds of businesses in San Diego.
According to VVSD, the event has assisted more than 100,000 homeless veterans in beginning new lives since it’s birth. Borum is one of those.
Borum served in the post-Vietnam War years during 1975 to 1979. She said after she graduated from high school she knew she wasn’t ready to continue higher education and took the advice from her mom to join the armed forces.
“My mother said to me ‘Find a job or go to school’,” Borum said. “Then she said, ‘You oughta do what Annie’s daughter did…. She joined the Army’.”
Fortunately, Borum said, an Army recruiter wasn’t nearby in her hometown of Biloxi, Mississippi — she joined the Air Force instead and served as an air controller and combat controller at its base in the same city.
After five years, Borum was honorablly discharged and decided to pack her bags and take her bucket car to California. Upon arriving in San Diego, Borum found a job at the Battered Women Services, a non-profit organization devoted to female victims of domestic violence. She said times were high until she was laid-off. And like many people who are laid-off, Borum eventually found herself on the street in 1987.
As she spent years on the streets of San Diego, Borum encountered a new enemy: an addiction to meth. She would eventually begin selling the drug to other abusers. At the same time, Borum said, she was in denial about the problems she faced and simply believed all she needed was a job to get her life back in order.
She then stumbled upon a red-bearded man on the streets, a man who asked her if she was a veteran.
“It was unusual,” Borum said. “At least during these times because women who served in the military then were discharged weren’t considered veterans. Back then, if you were to ask a woman if she was a veteran she would say ‘No,’ if you were to ask her if she served in the military, she would say ‘Yes’.”
But Borum said yes, and was given a card advertising Stand Down.
Although she visited the event in 1989, she didn’t follow through with any of its programs. It took another 10 years, a few arrests, more meth and a judge named Michael Wellington to tell her if she joined a Stand Down program, she wouldn’t have to go prison.
She did. And the rest of her life can be summed up best with the saying of the well-known U.S. Army General George Patton: “Success is how high you bounce when you hit rock bottom.”
After joining Stand Down and graduating from its substance abuse program, Borum climbed the ladder to her current role as director of development. Along her path to recovery, Borum found distinction when she was awarded the Unsung Hero Award from the National Coalition for Homeless Veterans in 2005.
“My mother went to [Washington] D.C. with me,” Borum said. “That day I realized I had become the daughter my mother had taught me to be.”
Borum garnered other awards for her recovery and work and is now earning her Master’s in organizational management. Most recently, she accomplished a long-time goal: She became a homeowner in El Cajon.
Borum isn’t the only success story though — thousands have walked through Stand Down and have come out at successful members of their community said Simpson.
Simpson said many of the veterans who visit Stand Down stick to the programs at first shot. Although, he said, it does often take time for some veterans to admit to wanting help because of their learnings of survival that were taught to them in the military.
“Our guys tend to have an instinct to survive because of their military training,” Simpson said. “For some of them it’s difficult to recognize the fact that they need help.”
This doesn’t stop VVSD from its mission, however. VVSD has an outreach program that markets Stand Down and its different rehabilitation programs to homeless veterans throughout the county.
Simpson said, though, the event is more poignant this year with the recession and the returning soldiers of the Iraq War.
“We do anticipate a rise in veterans this year,” Simpson said. “Part of that is due to the recession but with the current conflict, our veterans are falling from the cracks a lot faster.”
Aside from more homeless veterans, the saddest part is that they are getting younger, he said. According to Simpson, many veterans that are requiring assistance after their military work are as young as 19 (serving in the military for 180 days constitutes a solider as a veteran when he or she is discharged). And, some even pick up drug and alcohol addictions during their service. And like many soldiers who find themselves in war, many pick up post traumatic stress disorder symptoms said Borum.
But what is likely the largest reason why homeless veterans are so common said Borum and Simpson, is because they enter the service at a young age. They said that because servicemembers enter the military after high school, once they’re discharged, they aren’t familiar with “civilian skills,” like writing a resume.
“The military trains us to do military jobs,” Borum said. “So if your job is shooting out of the butt-end of plane, it’s going to be hard for you to find a job once you become a civilian.”
Their sacrafices, said Simpson, is why it’s vital for community members to assist the veterans.
“These men and women are living here in our communities as citizens,” Simpson said. “And like citizens, most of them are just one paycheck away from being homeless. We have an obligation to take care of our communities.”
If the volunteers of Stand Down 1999 didn’t take care of Borum, she may have been dead by now, she said.
“I’ll always remember that I only had the clothes on my back and that I was in denial about my substance abuse,” Borum said. “Stand Down is where I met the people that changed my life.”
Stand Down begins Friday and ends Sunday at San Diego High School. The event runs from 5 a.m. to 3 p.m. daily. For more information or to volunteer, visit the Web site of Veterans Village San Diego.
Hoa Quach is the political editor for the San Diego News Network.