The following is a presentation of FCB Faith. This is Keeping America First with Bishop Chawn Tea Coats and Reverend Jeff Jamison on FCB Faith. Welcome to Keeping America First, and we're happy to have with us today the Executive Director of the Lorraine County Veteran Service Commission, none other than mister Jacob Smith. I'd like to ask you, mister Smith this first of all, how are you? And welcome to our show? Well, thank you, Sarah. It's a great pleasure to be with you and look forward to having some veteran conversations. Tell us a little bit about yourself, give us a little bit about your background. How'd you come to be Executive director of the Lorraine County Veteran Service Commission. So I joined the Army. I was in the Army zero two thousand to zero four. I kind of joke with people. I said, I got a fully expense paid trip to Baghdad, Iraq from two thousand and three to two thousand and four, and I was. Like, well, how can I say no to that offer? So I went with fourth Battalion, twenty seventh Field Artillery, First Army Division. From there after I got out I went to the Bowling Green State University where I got a master's in public administration, and I started working for Congressman Marcy Kaptor up in the Toledo area on mainly veterans legislative issues in casework. And I got hired by the. Lorraine County Veterans Service Commission in twenty started in twenty twenty to be the director here. So that's kind of how I got to where I am. Thank you for your service, as we always think all of our veterans that have served in armed forces, what are some of the services that the Veterans Service Commission affords different members? And Ohio is. Unique in that we each county has a Veteran Service Commission. So anyone's watching this and they're not a resident of Lorraine County, a lot of these things would apply to other counties. Now how they execute them can be different, but by Ohio Revised Code ORC fifty nine oh one, we really kind of have four main missions, right, and those are helping county veterans apply for VA compensation and pension. Last year, Lorraine County we brought in over one hundred million dollars in direct payments to veterans living in Lorraine County. When I say last year, I don't have twenty twenty five members. I'm talking twenty twenty four. We also provide financial assistance to veterans, qualifying veterans and relatives. End of twenty twenty five, it looks like it's going to be about just over one point seven million dollars. As a matter of fact, I'm reviewing that later today, but that's pretty close to what it's going to be. Another thing we do is provide transportation for veterans to and from their VA medical appointments, and that's key word, VA appointments. The last thing we're charged with doing by the code is promotion of patriotism within the county. So some of the things we do is we help sponsor veteran events we pay for. If you've gone to Lorraine or Larria or other places around the county, you'll see flags lining the streets. A lot of the times. We are the ones that are footing the bill for those flags. I'm very proud of what we've accomplished. I will tell you Lorraine County in the last last couple of years has come in third in the state for financially assisting veterans of their county. And that's impressive, but it's even more so when you think about it from the perspective of we are the ninth largest county in the state, so I think we're batting well above our average when it comes to assisting veterans of the county. Another thing we're doing is we have recognized in Lorraine County that service officers who file these claims are only they're saying, and I think I heard it in the army where it says you fail at the level of your training, you will always fail at the level of your training. And what that means is that if your training's good, you're not going to fail as much. And if you're failing, if you're training isn't as good, then you're going to fail more often. And one of the things we have recognized is that the training that is provided through the Association of Veteran Service Officers in the State of Ohio hire Department of Veteran Services is not at the caliber and level of what we wished it to be. So we are actually February tenth through the thirteenth, we'll be bringing in a national Veterans Legal Service Program, who is the gold standard in training veteran service officers throughout the nation. We have worked with the state and the association, I would say begrudgingly, they have come over to our side of thinking, and we are happy to hear that they have now, I think because a lot of our pushing have agreed to have MVLSP come in and train all service officers throughout the state of Ohio. So we're really making big game here in Lorraine County, not just for county veterans, but I think for the state as well. That's why you're on our show. We know that you're setting a great example for how a Veterans Service Commission should be run. And we just thank you for again for your service, not just your military service, but the services that you provide to veterans. Tell us a little bit about the services that you provide to not only veterans but their families. Yeah, so let's focus primarily right now on financial assistance at one point seven million dollars. Okay, if you are an honorably discharged veteran, right and you and you have been a resident in the county in which you live, in this case Lorraine, for at least the past ninety days and you are having financial difficulties, we may be able to assist you. And a lot of times we do with financial assistance to help pay for your car, like you're behind on your car. Note you're having like oh my gosh, I can't pay my house note right, how does that? How does that work? There's a lot of times that we will step in and pick that up without getting into too many details unless they say doubles in the details. The two kinds of things we look at as far as financial assistances, we kind of call it, does this get the veteran or the surviving spouse or qualifying family member over the hump? Right? In other words, Hey, I ran into a hard time because I'm laid off. I need some help this type of thing, or is it does it give them the ability for a soft landing. The last thing you want is an individual who is making twenty five dollars thirty dollars an hour and that job goes away and now they're the best job that they might be able to find might be a twenty dollars an hour. When you go from thirty to twenty, you need time to kind of reset your finances to allow a new style of living. So we helped with that. Some one of our. Service commissioners actually does financial counseling. We also work very closely with Valor Home in the City of Lorraine. That's transitional housing for homeless vets, and we actually supply them with a good bit of money each year to do that. As far as the claims go on the VA side, we have. You know that one hundred million. I was talking about a little bit of indirect payments of the county veterans. That one hundred million can change people's lives. And I'll give you an example. Obviously I can't give you a name or anything. I had a Vietnam VET who was working a job and he wasn't making a lot of money, and I asked him, I said, so when you get retired this is probably I don't know, six seven years ago, and he goes, Jacob, I'm paying eight hundred dollars a month and medical expenses. I'm not retiring. I'll be working here to him dead And I said, well, didn't you serve in Vietnam? He goes, yeah, Well we had a conversation with him. We filed a claim and turns out that the things that he was suffering from can be connected to his service. So he ended up a getting free medical treatment for that. So that eight hundred dollars a month he was paying for prescription drugs gone. That right, there is a relief. But on top of that, the VA agreed to give him an additional I think it was like seventeen hundred dollars or whatever. So you're talking a twenty five hundred dollars a month swing, you know, that allowed him to retire. That allowed him to retire, And those are the types of wins that we looked for. And then the transportation. We have individuals that need to get to their VA appointments. We can take them and it doesn't cost them any and that's a big help. So when family members are like, what I tell people is a couple of things. A. If you're eligible for VA healthcare, sign up. Because the VA only funds or the government only funds what it uses. I've had a number of especially in this area, retired forward workers. Ah, you know, I want to save it for the people that really need it. It's admirable but mistaken because if you go there once a year, the VA is bringing more money into Lorraine County than what they're spending on you. So those are the types of things that we're trying to do and having meetings with you, I think really helps get the word out. Thank you so much. We're going to take a quick break and I'll tell you this information that you're sharing, Jacob, has just been incredible and very helpful to our audience because there's so many veterans that are listening and also family members of veterans that are listening. So we want to get this information out to help as many people as possible. We're going to take a quick break and we'll be right back with mister Jacob Smith, Executive Director of the Lorraine County Veterans Service Commission. We're back with mister. Jacob Smith, veteran and executive director of the Veterans Service Commission of Lorraine County here in the great state of Ohio. Jacob, could you tell us a little bit about employment services for veterans. Can they call the Commission and maybe they're looking for employment or jobs? Do you help those individuals? Yes, yes we do, but that's not like our main focus. We work very closely with John Family Services at the county level. Okay, there's some in there that's really there, Baillywick more than ours. So now, what we have done in the past is a couple of things. First off, if a employers will call us and say, hey, I'm looking for this type of person and we'll put it on our Facebook. Hey. You know. One we did recently I think was a couple months ago, Skylift, which is a veteran own business in Ourn County, said hey, can you put on your Facebook? This is what I'm looking for. So we'll do stuff like that. The other thing we are doing is we are helping veterans build a better LinkedIn account, and we're having LinkedIn classes on how you can take your LinkedIn and make it more appealing to prospective employers. That's as for actual job placement, no, we don't do like, hey, I have a veteran and we're going to send you over here to work. I don't know. Okay, okay, understand. So while we're on that subject of employment, do you have a veteran veterans that own businesses that maybe you assist. Yes. So one of the things that's sort of the overarching goal right is to help veterans in Lorraine County live a better life. And then we had a conversation a while ago, like what can we do other than this? And it kind of came from the idea of people come and go, I want to help veterans, how do I do that? And one of the best ways to do it is to spend money with veteran own businesses. So we put on our website and we don't we can't say we endorse any of them. It's just do you have an honorable discharge? Is the business or the owner of the business live in Loraine County And we have a list of veteran owned businesses that are in Lorraine County on our website. So I would suggest going there and doing that. So you're like, hey, I want to help veterans, well, spend money with veteran owned businesses. Absolutely absolutely. I know that a lot of veterans have experienced trauma, and you know they I've heard that music sometimes, you. Know, soothes the the. The wildest piece, Okay, and music plays a big part in our society. And I know that I've heard over the years that Veteran Service Commission helps individuals veterans that may be dealing with trauma or other issues get into the field of music. Can you tell me a little bit about that. Yeah, we have started Project Guitar here at Lorraine County Veterans Service Commission. A number of different service commissions throughout the state, and I would assume veteran organizations for the nation have different programs. Ours is called Veteran Guitar. And what we do is if you are a Lorraine County veteran once again an honorable discharge, and you want to learn how to play the guitar, we will not only give you a guitar that you can keep, we will also pay for ten classes for you to learn how to play that guitar. And we do it for two reasons. One, as you as you mentioned Reverend, the the idea of music and how that kind of sues. The soul right. The other, the other part that we have found is the whole program for each veteran ass approximately between the guitar because we kind of negotiate a deal and we buy that from a local business here in Lorraine all the way to the guys and girls that teach the classes. Also Lorraine County residents. For one veteran costs about five hundred dollars. Right, A billboard on Route two might cost three four thousand dollars for a month. Right, billboard you drive past and no one really cares. I don't know that I could pay these veterans that are participating in this guitar program. I don't know that I could pay them not to talk about us. Right, Because when you give a person to guitar and then you teach them how to play it, and then they meet their friends, veteran friends, whatever, and go, when did. You, Oh, yeah, that the Service Commission did it for me? And one of the requirements is that they come in on their first lesson and we have a conversation with them about their VA benefits, if their in need of financial assistance, that type of thing. And we have found and I haven't looked at it in a while, but I think when I looked at it mid last year, like eighty five percent of the people that are participating in the guitar program had never come into our office. So we are getting more claims out. We are getting we're getting more claims out to the VA, which results in direct federal dollars coming in. Right, and we are changing people's lives not only with the music lessons, but also on some of them that need financial assistance, we're helping them out as well. So I try to look for multiple wins, and this is definitely a multiple win. You find that there's a great interest in that program. Oh yes, we have a waiting list. As a matter of fact, that's awesome. Yeah. So what I would say is anyone who's watching us, who lives in Lorraine County that's horribly just charged veteran. They call up and go, hey, I want to sign up for the program. Sometimes there's a two three month wait. When we first launched it, we bought like, we just bought like ten guitars just kind of test it out. We were out of those ten guitars within a week and a half, and so, you know, budget and everything else, we have to kind of see where we're at and take it from there. There is that maybe experience some type of a crisis. We're just about out of time here. Can you speak to that? What should they do? And if they are veterans out there that just are not aware of all of these services, what should they do? Well, let me take the crisis thing first. Depending upon the level of the crisis. Obviously, if someone's life is in danger, or you're worried, or you're worried about someone living in the next hour of call nine on one because without saying, if you are having a mental health crisis and a rather serious one and you need to talk to someone now because you don't know whether or not you're going you are going to allow yourself to be here in another hour. If you get my. Drip, I would dial nine to eight eight and then press one. That's the Veteran Crisis Line, the suicide line, and they will talk you through that and everything else. If the crisis is not as emergent but urgent, right. And it revolves around financial assistance or what have you, I and you live in Lorraine County, you're definitely going to want to call us or go on our website. Our phone numbers four four to H two eight four four six two five uh, and that would get us connected on our website. You can also reach out by email too. The if you're in crisis, and maybe you're not in crisis, but one of the things we see is dad is older. Dad needs going to nursing home and that and he served Let's say he served in Vietnam, right or mom or what have you or and it's like, oh my, oh my goodness, this is going to cost me three thousand dollars a month. Mom and dad don't have that money. I don't have that money. But there's no option. That's when you need to call us and see if the veteran calls for UH qualifies for Veteran Pension UH. These are some real life saving things that we have seen that have changed people's mental health outlook and other things. So the other thing we do say is we partner with Judge Walter and his Lorraine County Vet Court, So if a veteran's facing legal issues, that's a good and depending upon the level, they might be able to get into VET Court. And the other thing that we do that we're really proud of is we have a legal program here at Lorraine County. And not to get too much detail, but if you need legal assistance because of your conduct, that's probably not what we do right to pay for, but maybe talk to VET court. But if you have like you don't have a will right, you have a guardianship issue, you need to take care of this kind of stuff. Let us know. We may be able to help pay for that. One other thing I would like to say off of our thing is I'm also the president of Honor Flake Cleveland. We fly veterans to and from Washington, d C. From the Cleveland area and you can go on Honor Flight Cleveland dot org and you can sign up for that too. So just wanting to give a little shout out. Thank you, Jacob. We're just grateful that you came on our show. We'd like to have you back sometime. Keep us updated with the services that you're providing to veterans and just some of the latest things that are happening. So we want to thank our audience for being with us today. Let's just keep remembering to to stay informed, keep helping our neighbors, and by helping one another, strengthen our communities. With more information and individuals. We can have a stronger nation, stronger state, stronger community. Thank you again to our audience, and again, thank you Jacob Smith. We'd like to have you back.
