Douglas County Veterans Services is ready to assist veterans

Staff members at the Douglas County Veterans Services office want to help area veterans find out what benefits might be offered to them, as well as assist them with any other questions they may have.

Jacob Turner, a veteran of the United States Army, is the Douglas County Veteran Service Officer. Rhonda Fuchs, a veteran of the United States Navy, is the Assistant Veterans Service Officer.

Turner and Fuchs are fully accredited with multiple organizations and everyone in the office has been through suicide prevention training.

Below is the contact info for the office, as well as email addresses for each staff member:

Veterans Service Office (inside the Douglas County Services Center building) 806 Fillmore St. Alexandria, MN 56308 Phone: 320-762-3883 Fax: 320-762-3094 Jacob Turner – jacobt@co.douglas.mn.us Rhonda Fuchs – rhondaf@co.douglas. mn.us

Both can assist veterans and their dependents in obtaining benefits from the U.S. Department of Public Affairs and the Minnesota Department of Veteran Affairs.

Benefits include: Service connected disability compensation Non-service connected pension Dental and optical vouchers for both qualified veterans and their spouses

Burial benefits for qualified veterans dependents and survivors pension for the surviving spouse of a deceased veteran

Veterans can also receive assistance with transportation to and from Minneapolis, St. Cloud and Fargo VA medical facilities, as well as many other benefits.

First and foremost, veterans services officers act as advocates for veterans.

They can help veterans with the following: Filing of disability compensation claims Applying for healthcare benefits Help with non-service-connected pensions Advocate for state benefits

Residential/Commercial Cleaning Service

We thank youfor yoursacrificeandservice.

Jacob Turner, right, a veteran of the United States Army, is the Douglas County Veteran Service Officer. Rhonda Fuchs, a veteran of the United States Navy, is the Assistant Veterans Service Officer. Lowell Anderson / Alexandria Echo Press

The Veterans Crisis Line is 1-800-273-8255.

Preventing veteran suicide is a priority for the Minnesota Department of Veterans Affairs. Suicide has claimed more than 100 Minnesota veteran lives per year during the past five years. As this rate continues to increase, especially among younger veterans, the Minnesota Department of Veterans Affairs is collaborating with others to identify the root causes of veteran suicide and create an innovative, cooperative way to reverse this trend.

The Veterans Crisis Line is the world’s largest provider of crisis call, text and chat services, according to the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs. It serves more than 650,000 calls every year, 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. Users may also text to 838255 or chat online to receive confidential crisis intervention and support.

Assist with applying for all benefits for the veteran and/ or the widow or dependents of the veteran Resources for information regarding all benefits and programs both veteran and non-veteran

(Jan. 1 through Sept. 15) Office visits – 715 Phone calls – 1,663 Home visits – 13 Emails – 1,320 Van riders – 132 Forms completed – 1,169

(Jan. 1 through Sept. 25) Office visits – 709 Phone calls – 1,844 Home visits – 9 Emails – 1,001 Van riders – 48 Forms completed – 1,090

(Office closed March 17 through June 1 and van rides canceled from March 26 through June 21 due to COVID-19) Office visits – 646 Phone calls – 2,179 Home visits – 13 Emails – 1,261 Van riders – 105 Forms completed – 1,261

2,707 veterans in Douglas County 312,843 total veterans in MN 103,168 Vietnam War veterans 45,769 Gulf War veterans (post 9/11) 33,638 Gulf War veterans (pre 9/11) 21,324 Korean War veterans 7,308 WWII veterans 91.7% are male 8.3% are female

Source: Minnesota Department of Veteran Affairs

JOYCE

From page 5

Throughout his time being deployed and seeing the things he saw, Ron said he was prepared for everything.

“When you prepare yourself, you have to also be grounded in something, and I was grounded in my belief in God and he showed up,” said Ron. “My team was the only team in Afghanistan that didn’t get hit with an IED or was ambushed or ran into Soviet pressure plate mines.”

When Ron was at NDSU, he was also an enrollment officer, so he recruited hundreds of students, he said.

All of them who joined did so because they wanted to do their part, Ron said, noting that he would tell them to try and be prepared no matter what job they wanted. He said they needed to be prepared when they were deployed so that their survivability would go up.

Ron is proud that he served and has no regrets, but also said being deployed is hard.

“I think the hardest thing for me being in the military while deployed was seeing death,” he said. “That was the hardest thing, especially when I had just talked to some of those guys that night. And then in the morning, they’re gone. Is that something anyone can prepare themselves for?”

He answered by saying to a point you can, but it is hard because no one wants to die.

“Well, everyone knows that we’re all going to die eventually, but you don’t want to die in that circumstance. You don’t want to die at that age,” he said.

Ron shared that if those who served need help in any way, to know there is always help available and to reach out.

Rebecca, who grew up in southern California, graduated from California State, University of Bernardino, which is where she ended up joining the United States Navy.

She was going to school for nursing when during her sophomore year, some recruiters came and offered her a scholarship in nursing. She accepted, joined and then the Navy ended up paying for her last two years of school, she said.

Rebecca had thought about joining the military as both her grandfathers are veterans – one is retired from the Coast Guard and the other is retired from the Navy. She remembers hearing their stories, so she had thought about it, but never did anything until the recruiters came to the school.

She graduated from college in 1994 and was commissioned as an officer into the Navy the same year.

Being a Navy nurse was now her full-time job. She was first stationed at Camp Pendleton in California, where she learned a wide variety of nursing skills. She also learned that with more years and more service, she could move up in ranks, but that also meant a desk job was in her future.

“The reason I went into nursing is because I wanted to care for people,” she said.

After some research, she learned that a Navy nurse practitioner would still be able to see people in a clinic so she went back to school to become a nurse practitioner.

After schooling and moving from one base to another, Rebecca landed at the 29 Palms, a Marine Corps base. She noted that the Navy provides medical care at Marine bases.

She was stationed with them, working in the ER, for the first six years of her Navy career.

In December 2000, she was done with school so she petitioned the Navy for a position as a nurse practitioner. They had an opening, but it was in Japan.

“So, I ended up packing up my family (herself and her husband at the time) and we moved to Japan,” she said, noting that she worked in a clinic doing family medicine and urgent care at the Navy base.

Halfway through her stint in Japan, Rebecca became pregnant. Her daughter, Jessica, was born at the Yokosuka Naval Hospital, which they had to fly to. But they did that because that way she could get her daughter’s passport sooner and the two of them could go back home for maternity leave.

Eventually, she ended up back at 29 Palms working as a nurse practitioner in the family medicine clinic. Then, in February of 2006, she was told she was being deployed

““When I thought about being deployed, I thought

I’d be on a hospital ship, going somewhere, floating over to some humanitarian mission or some place of mercy, not in the middle of

Afghanistan, opening up a hospital, teaching them how to use everything.”

Naval Officer and Army Reservist

and that she would be leaving in March. Her daughter was 3 years old at the time.

Rebecca explained that the Navy was augmenting the Army mission in Afghanistan because they didn’t have enough Army personnel to supply all positions. Navy reservists and active duty sailors were being pulled from all over the country.

She trained in Mississippi for about eight weeks, learning how to drive Humvees, carry weapons and “all the other stuff you don’t do in the Navy.”

She arrived in Afghanistan in May 2006 and was there until about May 2007. While there, she was more in an administrative role, teaching others how to use the hospital and all its equipment. And she managed the medical team.

“When I thought about being deployed, I thought I’d be on a hospital ship, going somewhere, floating over to some humanitarian mission or some place of mercy, not in the middle of Afghanistan, opening up a hospital, teaching them how to use everything,” said Rebecca.

But while in Afghanistan, Rebecca ended up being stationed at the same base as her now husband of 14 years, Ron. That is where they met.

She ended up leaving the Navy in 2008 and moved to Minnesota. She had 14 years active duty with the Navy, but ended up leaving because she didn’t want to spend any more time away from her daughter.

“I missed my daughter’s whole fourth year of life,” she said. “I didn’t want to do that again.”

Fast forward a few years and Rebecca decided to join the military again. She tried to go back to the Navy, but was told they didn’t have a need for nurse practitioners.

“I walked next door to the Army recruiter and said I want to come back to the military. I have 14 years in and I want to be able to retire from the military,” Rebecca said. “They said they’d take me, so I filled out the paperwork, raised my hand and was back in the military.”

That was in 2011. And in 2013, she joined the Army reserves, which she is still a part of. She belongs to a medical unit that drills in Fargo.

In March of 2018, she ended up being mobilized to Fort Hood, Texas and was there until the end of February 2019. Her unit provided medical care to the soldiers that were either going overseas or coming back from deployments.

In December, she will retire after serving nearly 23 years in the military.

Both Ron and Rebecca, when asked if they would do it all over again, said they would.

But are also both happy with the lives they are living now running their winery and supporting veterans in the area.

Rebecca and Ron Joyce

Downtown by Big Ole & next to Viking Plaza, Alexandria

Feature pricing every day on many Minnesota wines, beers and liquors!

www.dmichaelbs.com • 320-762-2697