Veterans’ Help Center Opens at Point Loma Library

For three days a week, volunteers will staff a brand new ‘help-center’ for American veterans that just opened at the Point Loma branch public library. Now opened just a week, the Veterans Resource Center will connect vets with services and benefits – and just plain, old-fashioned information passed on by a one-on-one basis.

These are services and benefits already earned by the veterans.  The Center will be staffed by volunteers on Mondays, Tuesday and Fridays – these are volunteers trained by the California Department of Veterans Affairs. It’s all part of a one-year pilot program that has also opened similar centers this month in Bakersfield and Redding, California.

Ever since the local Point Loma branch of the VFW was forced to close down its chapter clubhouse, there’s been an uneasy quiet around the Peninsula – normally an area sympathetic to veterans – but whose tony neighborhoods were not suitable or sympathetic to housing a vet’s center known for alcohol consumption.  The establishment of this new Center – which has nothing to do directly with the VFW or to alcohol consumption – will go a long way to distilling that unsympathetic appearance.

The CBS local TV affiliate reported that:

 Navy veteran John Veskerna told a local news station that simply getting telephone numbers and other contact information for services was important.   “There are a lot of benefits for veterans of the military, and people don’t realize that,” Veskerna said.   A female veteran told the station she had no idea how many services were available and, once she looked into it, she was able to get a free hearing aid.