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HELPING VETERANS A TRUE CALLING -- "I started
to
work on this and .. I can't shut if off."
Contra Costa County Veteran Services
officer Gary Villalba
talks with a client in his Martinez office. Villalba has been
helping vets for over two decades.
(photo: Dan Honda/Contra Costa Times)
Story here...
http://www.contracostatimes.com/mld/
cctimes/news/local/states/california/16410826.htm
Story below:
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Helping veterans a true calling
By Dogen Hannah
CONTRA COSTA TIMES
MARTINEZ - Gary Villalba placed his elbows on the edge of his desk and
leaned forward, focusing his attention on the 30-year-old Army veteran
sitting across from him.
Many people had done much to help Ben Crowley, who was badly wounded by
a roadside bomb in Afghanistan. Still, Villalba knew that much more
could be done.
"He's a real nice kid," Villalba said before Crowley arrived to discuss
the many government benefits of his military service. "I have so much
that I need to help him on."
A blend of compassion for his clients and passion for his profession has
defined Villalba's career helping veterans for more than two decades,
say colleagues and clients.
That career began with a phone call out of the blue.
The call some 25 years ago came from a colleague who urged Villalba, a
former soldier and teacher then employed as a social worker, to apply
for the job of Ventura County's veteran services officer. The call was
unexpected, but it immediately struck a chord.
After picking up an application and looking at the job description -- "I
go: Wow, this is really interesting!" -- Villalba knew he had found what
he had been seeking: a fulfilling public service career.
"I started to work on this and ... I can't shut if off," he said.
In 1988, Contra Costa County supervisors appointed Villalba to be the
county's veterans services officer. The office's staff of seven
full-time employees, including Villalba, handles a caseload of about
9,400 veterans, helping them get government benefits and services.
Villalba credits his staff as much as himself for the office's
widespread reputation for quality service. Still, it's clear that
Villalba, a long-distance runner with a lean, compact body to match,
sets the office's tone and tempo.
The seventh-generation Californian, who spent part of his youth surfing
off the coast of his native Santa Barbara, said he has applied the
tireless work ethic that he and his brother learned from their
forefathers.
"They taught us the real deal," Villalba said. "You take care of your
job. You learn how to work. You try to be decent with people along the
way."
Those who know Villalba are not surprised that he is as enthusiastic
about his career now as the day he began it. The years have thinned and
grayed his hair but have done little, if anything, to diminish his vigor
on the job.
"He's got those Energizer batteries in him: He just goes and goes and
goes," said Denver Mills, head of the Concord Vet Center, a U.S.
Department of Veterans Affairs clinic that provides mental health
counseling to combat veterans.
Even as Villalba, 62, a Pleasant Hill resident, prepares for retirement
in about a year, his pace has barely slowed. Villalba never married --
he came close twice, he said -- or had children, and on most workdays he
arrives at his Martinez office by 7 a.m. and leaves as late as 7 p.m.
"A guy like him, he's going to hit the ground running every morning and
not quit until it's dark," said Mike Murphy, president of the California
Association of County Veterans Services Offices.
When the two men first met about 13 years ago, Murphy had recently --
and reluctantly -- become Siskiyou County's veterans services officer.
Villalba's enthusiasm quickly persuaded Murphy that working to help
veterans would be rewarding.
"Before I knew it, he had me hook, line and sinker," Murphy said. "It's
a calling. It's not like a job."
Villalba's sincerity also became apparent to Crowley at their meeting,
during which Villalba helped the Georgia native enroll in the VA health
care system and prepare a request for the VA to assess his disabilities,
and told him about available benefits worth tens of thousands of
dollars.
The lengths to which Villalba was willing to go to help him surprised
Crowley, whose right leg was amputated below the knee as a result of a
bomb blast. The San Ramon resident also has knee, back, ear and shoulder
injuries from his five years in the Army.
"I didn't realize you all do so much," Crowley told Villalba. "I was
under the impression that, basically, you hook me up with phone numbers
that I need."
Villalba and his staff have been trained to navigate through government
bureaucracies, decipher military and medical records, and carefully but
thoroughly interview veterans about emotionally charged subjects.
"Our work is so detailed that we could be with somebody five minutes or
five hours," said Villalba, who works directly with veterans in addition
to managing the office and overseeing its $730,000 annual budget.
"I pretty much have a full client caseload," Villalba said. "It's not
easy. But I'll be honest with you, it's the part of the work that I just
thrive on."
One of his clients was Pleasant Hill resident George McGuffick. The
Vietnam War veteran and former Marine received help getting college
funds for his daughter and disability compensation for himself for the
effects of a war wound and for post-traumatic stress disorder.
"I had to fill out a bunch of paperwork for the VA," said McGuffick, a
retired National Park Service planner. "I certainly wouldn't want to
knock the VA at all, but he was more helpful giving me the type of
information that I needed."
When Villalba came to Contra Costa County, his reputation preceded him.
He had demonstrated his dedication to the profession by spending almost
six years starting and running Ventura County's veterans services
office.
"He was the same tenacious type of veterans advocate that he is today,"
said Mills, who opened a vet center in Santa Barbara in the 1980s and
met Villalba at that time. "He's always gone beyond the norm to help
veterans."
Although public service was an early impulse, helping veterans was not
Villalba's first career choice. He was studying accounting during the
Vietnam War when, nearing graduation and the end of his student
deferment from the draft, he enlisted in the Army.
"My roommates thought I was nuts," Villalba said. "I said: 'I know the
war's a little bit crazy right now, but I'll go wherever the Army sends
me.'"
The Army trained him for the infantry, then sent him to finance school,
perhaps because of his college education or concerns over his childhood
bouts with polio and spinal meningitis, Villalba said. He served much of
his three-year enlistment as an accountant in Taiwan and was never sent
to Vietnam.
After the military, Villalba finished college, taught at a
kindergarten-through-ninth-grade school for about five and a half years
and traveled for almost three years before becoming a social worker.
Then he got the phone call urging him to apply to be a veterans services
officer.
"Many veterans are so humble," Villalba said. "We have so many clients
... never asking for anything. But yet they have these incredible needs
that were all due to their sacrifice -- their valor -- for their
country."
Gary Villalba
Occupation: Contra Costa County veterans services officer, 1988-present;
Ventura County veterans services officer, 1982-88.
Age: 62
Home: Pleasant Hill
Education: Associate of arts degree, Santa Barbara City College, 1965;
bachelor's degree in political science, UC Santa Barbara, 1973.
Military service: Army, 1967-68.
Quote: "I've dealt with everybody at every socioeconomic level. I'm
talking about top CEOs -- very wealthy people -- to the poor guy out on
the street (and) everything in between. ... People you think have it
together who are just on the edge of total crisis -- had 'em in here."
Contact the Contra Costa County Veterans Services Office:
www.co.contra-costa.ca.us/depart/veterans/index.html or
925-313-1481.
Dogen Hannah covers the military and the home
front. Reach him at 925-945-4794 or
dhannah@cctimes.com.
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Larry Scott
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