The novel partnership between a California sheriff’s department and a VA hospital has already responded to more than 125 emergencies.
After a parking-lot consultation with Los Angeles County sheriff’s deputies, Veterans Affairs social worker Shannon Teague gets ready to respond to a veteran showing signs of paranoia and other mental distress. By Rob Kuznia March 20 at 8:00 PM LOS ANGELES — The former Army soldier was slumped in the back seat of a sheriff’s department squad car when Shannon Teague and Tyrone “T-bone” Anderson arrived on the scene.
At its core is the belief that veterans are often best equipped to talk brethren back from the brink — and to guide them to services. Since the program’s launch in September, local law enforcement agencies answering such 911 calls have dispatched not only deputies or officers but also two-person teams from the Veterans Affairs hospital in Long Beach.
As Teague and Anderson learned, the veteran had spent the last three days wandering the streets. The home’s operators refused to allow him back in given his repeated violations of their no-drugs rule. That’s when he started shouting threats and kicking the door.“It seems like you’re having a rough morning,” Teague said. “Can you tell me what happened?”She remembers assuring him that she wouldn’t judge him. He seemed exhausted. He apologized that his feet were smelly.
“It’s really hard to be on Facebook and you see somebody starting to decline and showing those signs of, like, ‘Dude I’m struggling really bad,’ ” she said. “And then, next thing you know, we find out he’s passed.” As a rule, neither shares their war stories with the vets they assist, nor do they pry for details about their clients’ combat histories.
The Long Beach facility was receptive. Talks are underway about a similar program at the VA West Los Angeles Medical Center. The VA in Spokane has also expressed an interest. “Him getting a call from the VA — the exact organization he feels has abandoned him — meant the world to him,” April Peters said of her nephew. Teague persuaded him to try therapy.Any intervention that keeps a vet safe is considered a success, yet there’s no certainty for what happens after that. The veteran at that suburban transition house agreed to a psychiatric evaluation at the Long Beach VA and then was sent to an outside detox facility. By early March, he seemed to have disappeared.
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