Female Marine Veteran's benefits cut off after VA used wrong address?

Happy UPDATE

In the wake of a KARE 11 investigation exposing a Marine Corps veteran facing eviction because of a VA mistake, a judge expunges the veteran’s record.

KARE 11 Investigates: Mail sent to wrong address puts family on brink of homelessness

KARE 11 NBC News
Author: A.J. Lagoe, Steve Eckert
Published: 12:13 PM CST February 3, 2020

A Marine Corps veteran had her PTSD benefits dropped from 100% to zero after VA sent important notifications to wrong address.

LAKEVILLE, Minn. — Join us Monday night for KARE 11 News at 10 p.m. to hear Maria's story.

“That’s my daughter’s dress,” Maria Jewell said, pointing to the picture of a little red dress listed for sale on an online garage sale.

“I feel like I failed her,” Jewell said, fighting back tears, “I’m supposed to be taking care of her, it’s not supposed to be the other way around.”

Instead of celebrating Christmas by buying gifts, Jewell and her teenage daughter resorted to selling their furniture and clothes just to put food on the table and gas in the car.

The family spent the holidays fearing the looming possibility they’d end up living in a shelter.

“I did not do anything wrong,” Jewell said. “And here I sit, can’t pay my rent, facing eviction.”

Their struggles could have been easily avoided.

A KARE 11 investigation discovered she was facing homelessness all because the Department of Veterans Affairs kept sending her mail to the wrong address, even though records show they had her correct address all along.

Still, the VA blames her for the mistake.

KARE 11’s investigation of improper ER bill denials led VA Inspector General Michael Missal’s office to discover years’ worth of mail piling up in processing centers around the country.
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Who will rescue me from this body that is subject to death?

Does it offend you because you did not ask for it?

PTSD Patrol
Kathie Costos
January 31, 2019

When someone offers to pay for something you need, do you allow your pride to reject the offer? Does it offend you because you did not ask for it?

Too many times we do not believe we deserve help, even though we know we need it. If we decide to go-it-alone, we remain where we are, suffering within the darkness we created. It suffocates hope.

The Word Became Flesh
1 In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.
2 He was with God in the beginning.
3 Through him all things were made; without him nothing was made that has been made.
4 In him was life, and that life was the light of all mankind.
5 The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it.
John 1:1-5

We have been conditioned to believe that we need to get right with God in order for Him to hear us, see us suffering and then solve our problems. The truth is, God does hear you, see you and He also knows what you are going through. 

Is He trying to open your eyes so you see Him? Open your ears so you hear Him? Trying to guide you to the answers you seek?

After Jesus was crucified, there was a man named Saul. He did not believe Jesus was the Son of God and all of those who believe He was, were worthy of death.

9 “I too was convinced that I ought to do all that was possible to oppose the name of Jesus of Nazareth. 10 And that is just what I did in Jerusalem. On the authority of the chief priests I put many of the Lord’s people in prison, and when they were put to death, I cast my vote against them. 11 Many a time I went from one synagogue to another to have them punished, and I tried to force them to blaspheme. I was so obsessed with persecuting them that I even hunted them down in foreign cities.

12 “On one of these journeys I was going to Damascus with the authority and commission of the chief priests. 13 About noon, King Agrippa, as I was on the road, I saw a light from heaven, brighter than the sun, blazing around me and my companions. 14 We all fell to the ground, and I heard a voice saying to me in Aramaic, ‘Saul, Saul, why do you persecute me? It is hard for you to kick against the goads.’

15 “Then I asked, ‘Who are you, Lord?’

“ ‘I am Jesus, whom you are persecuting,’ the Lord replied. 16 ‘Now get up and stand on your feet. I have appeared to you to appoint you as a servant and as a witness of what you have seen and will see of me. 17 I will rescue you from your own people and from the Gentiles. I am sending you to them 18 to open their eyes and turn them from darkness to light, and from the power of Satan to God, so that they may receive forgiveness of sins and a place among those who are sanctified by faith in me.’ ACTS 26:9-18

Saul saw the light and he was made blind so he could see how to help others find the way out of their own darkness. The thing is, he did not ask for it. He did not seek it and on the surface, he did not deserve it, but Jesus saw what was within him and made the offer.

Saul could have let his pride reject the offer. Is is because his eyes were opened enough to know that he had been wrong all along? Did he think of all of those he hunted down while he was wrong and they were right?

21 So I find this law at work: Although I want to do good, evil is right there with me. 22 For in my inner being I delight in God’s law; 23 but I see another law at work in me, waging war against the law of my mind and making me a prisoner of the law of sin at work within me. 24 What a wretched man I am! Who will rescue me from this body that is subject to death? 25 Thanks be to God, who delivers me through Jesus Christ our Lord! Romans 7

No one is without sin, but time and time again, we have seen miracles happen. When we ask for help, God hears us. He sends the answer to us, or sends help to come to us. Sometimes those He sends, do not hear Him. Sometimes they do not go where they are led. Sometimes they postpone doing what God wants them to do. And we wait suffering wondering why God did not hear us. 

In those dark moments remember all the other times He proved He heard you and cared about what you were going through when help finally came. Remember He does not wave a wand to produce all you want and cannot mess with the freewill of others. If those He called upon to help you, do not respond, He sends someone else in their place.

My own freewill gets in the way sometimes and I reject what God is asking me to do. This post is because this morning when I started my computer, there were some images on my background. I did not remember what they were, so I opened them in Photoshop. The image above started this post because I knew I had to do it, so that someone who needed to find it, would find what they were looking for.

The following video is one more example of my unwillingness to do what God asked of me. I fought Him for months but the song kept playing in my head and the images popped into my brain. I surrendered. I hope it helps you!

After 20 Years Of Military Service, Giving Back To Female Vets

After 20 Years Of Military Service, This Single Mom Is Giving Back To Female Vets

HuffPost
01/30/2020

As a member of the military, “you understood your role. You had a very important — but also a very specific — role in military life, and so now you are finding that new path” in society.

COURTESY OF JESSICA CHAPMAN

Chapman in the cockpit of a C-5 Galaxy aircraft in October 2018.

Raising children while active in the military can provide a single mother with unique challenges.

For Jessica Chapman, mother of two 13-year-old twin daughters, every day of service to her country was an honor. But as she reflects on her time spent throughout her two-decade Air Force career and four deployments abroad, she says that it got harder and harder to leave them behind.

“It is an enormous sacrifice,” Chapman, 43, says, adding that her final deployment, a year-long installation to a post in Afghanistan, was especially hard for her daughters. “They were 7 years old when I left and 8 when I got back and [I missed] everything in between,” she says.
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Navy Veteran lost everything, until stranger wanted to help her

Homeless veteran gets second chance, thanks to kindness from a stranger

CBS 12 News
Kristen Chapman
January 24, 2020

"Don't be defeated by your situation, you defeat it." 

Bakita Denegal

LAKE PARK, Fla. (CBS12) — A Navy Veteran who had been living in her car in Lake Park for weeks was given a second chance from someone she had never even met before.

60-year-old Bakita Denegal spent 15 years in the Navy based in Virginia, then moved to Riviera Beach where she worked for the Riviera Beach Police Department. It wasn't until years after she retired when she found herself homeless.

"I never say why me? Because then I think, why NOT me," shared Denegal.

Denegal says she hit hard times when doctors discovered blood clots in her legs, and then found blocked arteries in her heart. The procedures kept her in the hospital for weeks at a time, twice in two months.

The hospital bills were so high, she couldn't afford her rent.

"He found I had blood clots in my legs, my thighs, my lungs because the right side of my heart was weak," she shared, "She [her landlord] mailed a copy of the money order back to me and it says, 'I don't want your rent.'"

Her landlord evicted her.

Derrick Dorsett owns the Kangaroo House Subs restaurant in Lake Park. However, he says it's only around to help fund his higher purpose, which is helping others through his non-profit "God's Loving Hands Feeding Homeless."
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Female Native American Veterans Struggle For Same Treatments Male Veterans Receive

Native American veterans still struggling to get the health care they were promised

Cronkite News
By Madeline Ackley
Jan 19, 2020

“It was very hard to get into,” Barnes-Saucedo said of the VA system. “Since I was freshly out of the military, I still had a hard time getting into a clinic down in the Phoenix VA.”

Vanissa Barnes-Saucedo said she hasn't received the same respect and resources as fellow Hopi veterans who are male. She is one of an estimated 133,899 Native American Veterans. Madeline Ackley Photo Cronkite News

KYKOTSMOVI — Vanissa Barnes-Saucedo was 21 when military recruiters stopped her in a shopping mall, waving enlistment papers in front of her. Although she says she wasn’t entirely sure what she was getting herself into, she signed the papers anyway.

For the next six years, Barnes-Saucedo was stationed around the world: Virginia, Colorado, South Korea, Kuwait and Iraq. However, by the time she was honorably discharged in 2014, she suffered from post-traumatic stress disorder.

When she returned home to northeastern Arizona, Barnes-Saucedo had difficulty navigating the Department of Veterans Affairs — the government agency in charge of veterans’ health care. She’s Hopi, born and raised on her tribe’s ancestral lands. The nearest full-service VA center, in Flagstaff, is a two hour drive; the VA campus in Phoenix is a four hour trip.

“It was very hard to get into,” Barnes-Saucedo said of the VA system. “Since I was freshly out of the military, I still had a hard time getting into a clinic down in the Phoenix VA.”

Although she didn’t mind making the trip, she said she was bothered by the treatment she received there.

“They made me feel like . . . I was making up some of the issues I was having,” she said. Barnes-Saucedo also wanted to make in-person doctor appointments but felt pressured by staff members to use the telemedicine service instead.

“I felt helpless . . . It was difficult,” she said. Eventually, she decided to go to her local Indian Health Service center, a government-run agency tasked with caring for Native populations.
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