Outreach center will serve vulnerable veterans in Thurston County

Nearly 60 years after serving in the U.S. Air Force as a medical specialist during the Korean War, Walter Simonsen was recently living in his car.

The Olympia native has spent a lifetime in and out of homelessness, struggling to find stability in the civilian world. He blames much of the cycle on alcoholism and womanizing — two vices he has used to cope with what is now called post-traumatic stress disorder.

Simonsen, 80, said his life would have taken a different trajectory if he had sought help right after leaving the military.

“There were times when I tried to ‘soldier up’ and be a man about things,” he said. “The awareness of the veteran to get help is not out there.”

Until just a few months ago, Simonsen had been subsisting on coffee and french fries while sleeping in his car in parking lots at local big-box stores and truck stops. His fate changed when he met a local volunteer for the Bernie Sanders presidential campaign who offered him a studio apartment in the basement of a Yelm home.

From there, Simonsen linked up with SideWalk, an Olympia-based nonprofit organization that has connected him with benefits — including rent money for the Yelm apartment — along with identification documents that he thought were long gone.

Simonsen is among an estimated 32,000 veterans in Thurston County whose lives can be improved through a new Veterans Outreach Center, which officially opens July 1 at 4232 Sixth Ave. SE, Suite 202, Lacey.

The center will act as a hub to meet a range of needs for veterans — everything from medical appointments and employment to affordable housing and rental assistance.

SideWalk’s Veteran Assistance Program, which has served more than 120 veterans since launching in December, will play an essential role at the new outreach center.

The average client has been over age 55, and veterans are twice as likely to become chronically homeless, said Derek Revisky, who heads the program.

Revisky was deployed to Afghanistan twice with the U.S. Army and knows firsthand the challenges a veteran faces when transitioning to civilian life. The federal benefits and funding are available, he said, but many veterans simply don’t know where to look or how to get started.

“The goal is to create a system for maximum impact,” Revisky said. “If you take care of the most vulnerable, you can handle the rest.”

Olympia resident Bob Jones, an Army veteran, is president of the outreach center’s nine-member all-volunteer board of directors. Jones said the center will coordinate core services related to housing, education, employment, health care and legal aid.

The nonprofit charity will start seeing veterans in the next week and will have an official grand opening at 2 p.m. July 1. The city of Lacey pays the monthly lease of $833.34 at the 1,200-square-foot office.

The project has been in the works for nearly three years. Jones looks forward to seeing the outreach center join the ranks of other homeless veteran support programs, such as Drexel House in Olympia.

“We’re going to complement what’s happening now,” Jones said. “I can assure you this will grow.”

This story was originally published May 28, 2016 at 5:32 PM with the headline "Outreach center will serve vulnerable veterans in Thurston County."