The Daily Signal - INTERVIEW | Jim Lorraine and the Fight to Prevent Veteran Suicide

Episode Date: May 29, 2023

The return to civilian life can be an extreme challenge for men and women who have served in the military, says veteran Jim Lorraine, president of America's Warrior Partnership. America's Warrior Partnership works to build relationships with veterans and provide them with the tools and support they need to succeed after their military service. The veteran organization uses a four-step plan to connect, educate, advocate, and collaborate with veterans and prevent veteran suicide.  Lorraine joins the podcast today to share his own journey of adjusting back to civilian life after over 20 years of military service, and to explain how America's Warrior Partnership is working to prevent veteran suicide. Enjoy the show! Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Today is a special day in our nation. It's Memorial Day, a day we remember and honor those who made the ultimate sacrifice in service to our country. I'm Virginia Allen, and today it's Memorial Day, and I'm honored to be sitting down with a veteran who is dedicating his time to serve other veterans, coming alongside them to prevent veterans suicide. Jim Lorraine is an Air Force combat veteran. He served as the founding director of the United States Special Operations Command Care Coalition and as special assistant for warrior and family support to the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. And today, Jim is president of America's Warrior Partnership. Jim, thanks for being with us today. Virginia, thank you for having us.

I really appreciate it. Well, Jim, you are a veteran. And first, I just want to thank you for your service. How long did you serve? I served 22 years, a couple of years in the reserves, and then the rest of my time on active duty, and all both in the Air Force. Yeah, I was an Air Force nurse corps officer. Wow, wow.

So I'm a nurse by trade. And during your time in the Air Force, where all were you stationed? I started out in Biloxi, Mississippi, so they took this kid out of Central New York, who had never been south of Washington, D.C., and sent me to Biloxi, Mississippi. And I spent a few years there. And then I went to, from there to Frankfurt, Germany, and had one of the best assignments of my life.

I flew air medical evacuation all around Europe, North Africa, the Middle East, and Eastern Europe. And then from there, I went to another unit that flew air medical evacuation, flew patients out of combat zones. I ended up, it was based out of Pope Air Force Base. I ended up in Mogadishu, Haiti, Desert Shield Storm, lots of things, lots of deployments. And then from there, I went to run aeromedical evacuation around the country, around the world, and lived in St. Louis, Illinois.

From there, I went to the Pentagon, served as a fellow to the chairman of the joint staff. And then my final assignment was I finished it as a deputy commander, deputy surgeon at United States Special Operations Command down at Socom. And had the pleasure of working for the best forces in the United States military, the Army, Navy, Air Force, Marine Corps, Special Operations, folks. Yeah, had a wonderful time. And then from there, I left, and you mentioned about the CARE Coalition. That was a civilian. I retired from active duty, and I was hired immediately back to found a program that advocated for all wounded ill or injured special operations people forces for life. And we did a great job.

and it really is the model for what we do at America's Warrior Partnership. Wow. Well, tell us a little bit about the work of America's Warrior Partnership, how you got involved with them and what your mission is. Yeah, so when I left Special Operations Command, my wife, who was also active duty, she retired and said, hey, I'm moving home to Aiken, South Carolina, which is right next to Augusta, Georgia. and she said, come on up.

We'll have a new life. And so I left McDill Air Force Base in Tampa, Florida, moved to Aiken, South Carolina, stood up a local program, took over a local program in Augusta, Georgia. One of the big highlights for that program is that we used what I had learned at SOCOM toward veteran homelessness. And in Augusta, Georgia, at the time, we had 159 homeless veterans. and with our team and some great partners.

In 18 months, the number came down to seven. And what it showed me was what we did in the military we could do in the civilian world, which was the basis was go find and build a relationship with a veteran, understand who they are and where they want to go in their life in the future, connect them to all the resources that were available to them, and then stay with them on that journey. Just don't give them, just don't help them with housing and then break contact. help them with housing and then say, okay, what's next?

Let's get you into school. Let's get you into job. Let's get you into training. And then stay with them. And I will tell you that that model, while it doesn't have a fast return, what you find is that it has really effective. It's really effective. And so we've, America's where your partnership uses that model as four steps.

It's called connect. So connect with the veteran and connect with the community. educate the veteran and educate the community, advocate for the veteran, and then collaborate with everyone. Those four steps we've used to replicate our model in nine communities throughout the United States, and that's our local work. On the national level, what we do, on the national level, we have a program called the network. And what the network does is it works with communities and veterans to bring national resources to them. So if I have a community, one of our communities is the Navajo Nation of Arizona.

If I have a veteran in the Navajo Nation and they need help and it's not available within their community, then what we do is we reach back to our nonprofit partners and our government partners, and we make sure that we bring that services to them. And, you know, one of our big partners, you probably know the name of Gary Sinise, the Gary Seneese Foundation works very closely with us. Wounded Warrior Project works very closely with us. We do really, our focus is to bring those resources together. And last year we did about 5,000 cases,

and they're usually the toughest that you have. And we have a 92% success rate in solving the problem. And what we are, what the network is, it's called the America's Warrior Partnership Network. What the network is, it's really, it's the one call that a veteran can make, no matter who they are, where they live, and get help. And they can contact us through our website. And again, we have a really high success rate because what we're doing is understanding who the veteran is and what they need

and then connecting them to that resource and making sure that they get it. Yeah. Yeah. That's huge. Jim, help us understand because I think for those who haven't served, they might not quite understand what the adjustment is like back to civilian life. For those military members who leave, who retire, what is that process like?

And what are the challenges that most commonly our veterans face when they are trying to readjust a civilian life? Yeah, well, that's a great, great question, because we hear it a lot, like, people, say, well, what's the big deal about moving from one job to another job? But what you have to understand when you move from the military back into the civilian world, you're really not just changing a job, you're changing a culture. And so you're moving from one culture into another culture that you really don't understand.

And one of the things that when I transitioned, my business struggle was going to try. And I'll tell you the reason. I'll give you an example. when I was in the military and I walked into a room and the room is full of people in the uniform I knew everything about them just by the uniform they wore then now flashed into the civilian world and I walk into a room and everybody's wearing civilian clothes

there's no markings there's really you don't know who is who and you don't know anything of you have to you literally have to learn to talk to other people and that was one of the things for me was holy cow, I'm not sure who is surrounded me. And who can I trust, who can I trust, who's going to deliver in the military. One of the things that I always love was that we were all in it together and we were focused on the mission.

And you knew everyone was moving that direction. The civilian world isn't quite that way. And it's, as I said, it's a cultural change that happens, not just a job change. Yeah, I mean, it does. It makes sense. I never thought about that with the uniforms. That is very different from civilian life. I mean, you're working off of, you know, maybe suits and casual clothes when you walk into our room in America or in civilian life, but very, very different, obviously in the military. Now, you all have, you've worked with so many veterans, I know, over the years. There may be one or two stories of folks that you'd be willing to share with us. A veterans who have reached out to you all, reached out to your organization, asked for help, and America's Warrior Partnership has been able to really help those individuals in their time of need. Yeah, I'll tell you one.

And I'll just use her first name, Virginia. Virginia had served in Desert Shield Storm. She was an Army logistics NCO. had gotten out of the military, was working as a nurse's assistant, but she didn't have health care. And she got sick. And she got sick, big medical bills. She lost her house. She was living in her car and struggling.

And she didn't realize that she was eligible for VA health care benefits. And that's not surprising. about 40% of the women in the female veterans don't consider themselves veterans. That's why it's important. We advocate to the partners that we have to not ask if you were a veteran, but ask if you served in the military. And so with Virginia, she didn't realize that she was eligible for VA health care. And so what happened was she was living in her car. She came to us and said, I don't want to do this.

I can't continue to live in my car. I'm homeless. I'd like to get out. And what we did was we worked with Virginia. We got her enrolled in the VA so she could continue her health care at no cost. We got her into a temporary housing. We moved her into training. She had to get recertified in her.

She wanted to stay in the health care world. Got her retrained, got her certified, got her, kept her in her apartment. She moved on. She got her degree. She got a better job. She used her VA home loan and bought her own home. house. And that was over about a three-year period. Huge success. Another story that I'll tell you is that I'll give you an example. We work with company. And so what companies do, there's a lot of

companies have employee assistance programs that provide mental health care and other services to their employees, but they're not specialized in VA issues. So we work with companies to work with their veterans to bring VA services and VA benefits that they've earned to them that can enhance their quality of life. I was at a company out in Oklahoma City, and I met, and I was meeting with a manager, and I was meeting with a group of former service members, and the manager pointed out this one young man, and as one of his stellar employees, and really happy to have them. An hour later, I was waiting for my lift to come pick me up.

And the young man came out and he said, hey, Mr. Lorraine, can I talk to you a little bit? I'm homeless. And I said, what? I said, does your leadership know? He goes, I don't want them to know because I'm afraid they'll let me go. But I'm homeless. And can you help me?

So this was at like noon. I listened to the gentleman, to the young man, had gone through a divorce, head was financially strapped. He was living in his car, he'd go to the gym in the morning, work out, take a shower, go to work, work, 12-hour shift, go back to the gym, shower up, and then go and sleep in his car. He'd been trying for six months to get to use, to get housing through VA services. By four o'clock that afternoon, we had him housed. We had him housed. He kept his job. He continued to move forward. He didn't realize all that he had was as eligible for

VA education benefits as he was. We got him connected to that. Work with the school to get him admitted ahead of the, even in between the semester cycle so that he could start benefiting from it. This young man, eight months later, he called and he said, hey, could you talk to my manager? He doesn't believe me that I was homeless. And I talked to his manager and I said he was homeless. And he said, the manager said, I don't know what we would ever do without you guys. And I said, it's not us. It's this young man knew what he wanted to do, knew where he wanted to go, but just didn't know how to navigate the system.

And I'll give him credit for coming up to me and saying, can you help? And I think that's the biggest barrier that our veterans have is that we don't seek help until we're in crisis. And that's why it's so important to build a relationship ahead of the crisis. And that goes to suicide prevention for us. Yeah. Yeah, our belief is that veterans who are hopeful and see a future aren't likely to take their lives, are less likely to take their lives, I should say. And that's what we have to do.

We have to work to build a relationship. I don't know if you know this, but the VA, there's about 17.5 million veterans in the United States. The VA serves about 9 million. So there's another 8 million out there who weren't involved with anything. veterans. They've earned all these services. They just don't, either they don't think they're eligible, like female veterans, or they don't know how to navigate the system. And that's what we're here to try and change. It's so critical. It's filling a need that is so apparent and so obvious and makes so much sense. And like you said, that need for connection, I really appreciate, I think,

the holistic approach that that you all have taken. And, I think that commitment to time, because that's a huge commitment to say we're going to, we're going to take the time to build a relationship with these folks, to connect with them deeply. Then we'll move into the education and really getting them the help that they need. But taking that time to build the relationship is key because I know so much of the work that you all do centers around that prevention of suicide. As you know, there's a Brown University study that found that over 30 years. thousand veterans have died by suicide since 2001. That's more than the number that have died

in combat. For those families who have lost loved ones, who've lost those who have served, whether by suicide or serving our nation in combat, do you all do work to come alongside and support those families and give them tools and resources? Yes, absolutely. And this weekend, my thoughts, prayers go out to all those families. You know, I have many friends who've died, who died in combat, and tragically more that have died since we left Afghanistan, sadly, poorly, you know, a couple of years ago. And it's gotten worse.

And I just, it doesn't change for these families. It doesn't change. It doesn't matter when they lost their loved one. They lost their loved one. And so there are a lot of resources that we use. I think for surviving families, our biggest partner is a program called Tragedy Assistance Program for Survivors, led by my good friend Bonnie Carroll. Taps has been there.

She's a survivor herself. Her husband was killed in a plane crash up in Alaska, and she realized there was no services for no programs that helped her. survivors. And so she created it. And it's, it is the program for those who are affiliated with the military to go to. So we, we use that for the families. We also use the program that's run by the Red Cross. It's the military veteran caregiver network. They're great programs. Now, what I'm saying to Elizabeth is that America's Warrior Partnership, we're focused on the relationship and understanding the problem, but we stay out of, we stay out of doing what somebody

else does really well. And so we use partners extensively. There's no need to replicate what's already existing. And TAPs and the military veteran caregivers network are the best in their in their class. And, you know, and I just want to, if I can, I want to talk about that Brown study, which I did read. And I applaud them for doing the work. We do, we have a similar study called Operation Deep dive. Operation Deep dive, our focus for Operation Deep dive is to understand who the veteran is that's going to take their life based on the community where they live so that we can move from fishing for those who are going to take their lives to hunting for them. And what I mean by that is we want to know who the person is, like I said, I'm in Hyannis, Massachusetts right now.

I want to know the veteran in the Cape Cod region who's most likely to take their life. What was there service like what was their what's their age how long have they been out how long did they serve and then I want to build a relationship with them before the crisis occurs yeah and it's being proactive and getting ahead of the crisis and our operation deep dive does that the thing about the brown study is with operation deep dive we did some work and we released an interim report in September of last year and when we compared the VA's numbers and and information about the states in the same state that we were studying, which were eight states, what we found was that we, our numbers were 35% higher than what the VA had on their numbers.

And it wasn't the VA. What happens in the community around death certificates is that there's no way for foreigners or medical examiners to really confirm whether somebody served in the military or not. What ends up happening is they don't mark it on the death certificate. And if it doesn't get marked on the death certificate, it doesn't feed up to higher reports. We took the death information from the state and merged data from the Department of Defense to confirm who actually served in the military and who didn't. And so sadly, very sadly, I think there were numbers reported by Brown are very low, are probably low. low. Wow. Wow.

You buy about 7,000. Oh, wow. So, I mean, as you're talking, I know for myself, and I'm sure for so many listening, the response is, wow, this is such a clear issue, and I feel

as a citizen a little bit overwhelmed by it and almost just the question arises, well, what can I do? Are there ways that you would suggest the American people can really get involved, can serve our veterans, and how can we partner with America's warrior partnership?

So I think the number one thing I would say to vote to your listeners is no, go to America's Warrior Partnership.org, our website, and read about the network. Understand it. If you have a neighbor or if you have somebody who lives in your block or if you have somebody who lives in your building, or it's a friend who served in the military, and you don't think that they're doing very well, number one, do something. Just don't let it go. Say something and say, hey, you don't seem the same. Are you doing okay? And if they're struggling with things, the neighbor doesn't have to fix it. They can say, hey, there's an organization that can help you. And it's America's Warrior partnership. That's the number one thing. Number two, but that, number two, but it goes along with that is,

if you know a veteran, just reach out to him, say, hey, how are you doing? Don't say happy Memorial Day. It's Happy Veterans Day. Memorial Day is, hey, I'm thinking of you on Memorial Day. Yeah. And, you know, I learned this lesson when I was standing up my first chairman of my board, a wonderful man, I'd worked for him for about two years. And then after two years of working with him,

He subtly said, you know, I served in the Air Force. I had no idea. Wow. I should have asked him. I should have been aware, but I wasn't. But the point is that there's people around you who have served in the military, especially Vietnam-era veterans, who didn't have a good reception when they came home. And now's the time to give them a good reception when they came home and make sure that they're taking care of too.

Yeah. Jim Lorraine, I so appreciate your time today and encourage all of our listeners, check out America's Warrior Partnership and the work that Jim and his team are doing, we really appreciate your time today. And again, thank you for your service and the way that you are continuing to serve our veterans. Virginia, thank you. I want to give a shout out. Again, I'm in hyenas, but I'm here because there's a race called Fagawa, and we have a number of boats that have veterans on them.

And it's a time where we all come together. And I want to thank Fagawa. I want to thank my boats of Valkyrie and Defender and all my buddies who are out here sailing this weekend to remember our lost one. That's powerful. Jim Lorraine, President of America's Warrior Partnership, Jim, thank you again. You bet. Thank you.

All right, well, we are going to leave it there for today. Again, invite all of our listeners to check out the work of America's Warrior Partnership by visiting their website, Americas with an S, warrior partnership.org. But thank you so much for joining us on this Memorial Day. And if you haven't had the chance to leave us a rating and review, we encourage all of our listeners to do so. We love hearing your feedback.

We will not have a Top News edition this afternoon. We'll be back with Top News tomorrow, but we hope that you all have a wonderful Memorial Day and take a minute today to, to call a veteran, you know, to check in on them, see how they're doing, to thank them for their service. And if you know family members who have lost loved ones serving our nation or tragically to suicide after their service, reach out to them today. Let them know that you are thinking of them. Thanks for joining us here on the Daily Signal podcast.

The Daily Signal podcast is brought to you by more than half a million members of the Heritage Foundation. Executive producers are Rob Louie and Kate Trinko. producers are Virginia Allen and Samantha Asheras. Sound designed by Lauren Evans, Mark Geinney, and John Pop. To learn more, please visit DailySignal.com.