After a two-year break, local veterans will again have regular access to medical care and mental health treatment in Hollister on the first Tuesday of each month.
The Santa Cruz Mobile Vet Van will make its first visit on Sept. 4, outside the Veterans Memorial Building, 649 San Benito St., in Hollister.
Tom Griffin, the veteran services officer for San Benito and Monterey counties, said the mobile vans previously came to Hollister once a month but the service had been stopped for about two years.
He said some of it was related to internal issues with Veterans Affairs while some of it was difficulty in getting a place to park the vans at the monthly gathering in Hollister. Griffin said he thought the parking situation has been worked out with the city.
The benefit of the mobile clinics is that the closest V.A. clinic is located at Fort Ord, in Seaside, and the nearest hospital is in Palo Alto. Griffin said the mobile clinics are open to veterans from other nearby cities such as Gilroy and Morgan Hill as well.
“It’s for veterans, and the service is free,” Griffin said of the van visits. “There will be a medical doctor and counselors in the mental health van. They can apply there to get into the V.A. medical system if they bring a discharge certificate. All veterans know what that is.”
Griffin said the local V.A. offices have been short-staffed in recent months, making it difficult to staff the San Benito office for the full 20 hours that is contracted. But he said they have plans to hire two new veterans’ representatives who should be on the job in the next four to six weeks. The office, located in the Veterans Memorial Building has been open Monday, from 8 a.m. to noon; Tuesday, from 1 to 4 p.m.; Wednesday, from 8 to 11 a.m.; and Friday, from 8 to 11 a.m.
Griffin said the VA and the medical clinics serve veterans of all ages from each branch of the military. He said those from older conflicts, such as World War II and Vietnam, have the same issues of younger veterans returning from Afghanistan and Iraq.
“It’s the same issues, just different percentages to how many of them have them,” he said. “War is war. That’s nothing new.”
He said though Vietnam was a more lethal war than the current conflicts, the statistics show that more of the recent veterans are returning with post-traumatic stress disorder than those from past wars.
Griffin said local veterans have the benefit of strong medical care in the Bay Area and Central Coast regions.
“The doctors at the clinic in Monterey as well as Palo Alto are all residents at Stanford,” he said. “In San Francisco at Fort Miley they are from UCSF (University of California, San Francisco.) We’ve got probably the best medical care in the country.”
The California Department of Veterans Affairs also has six operating Veterans Homes, with two new ones opening soon in Redding and Fresno.
The homes are available to veterans who are age 55 and above and discharged from active military service under honorable conditions. The age requirement is waived for disabled or homeless veterans needing long-term care. The homes provide a system of live-in, residential care facilities offering a comprehensive plan of medical, dental, pharmacy, rehabilitation services and social activities within a homelike, small-community environment.
Griffin said some San Benito residents have applied to the program.
“We also have, of course, access to social services and medicare, and other social community services out there as well as the V.A.,” he said.
