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News
Families find moral and financial support
By Jeanette Steele
UNION-TRIBUNE STAFF WRITER
March 3, 2003
Military spouses are turning to aid societies after finding themselves strapped for cash or short-handed since the buildup of troops in the Persian Gulf called away thousands of local Marines and sailors.
Raquel Guajardo's Marine husband flew out early last month. Guajardo, 32, a former soldier, was prepared to handle matters alone.
Then she got word from the Camp Pendleton housing office that a long-awaited bigger house was available. Due to give birth any day, Guajardo decided if she could move that weekend, she could unpack before the delivery.
But there was no time to find professional movers and no extra cash to pay them.
Instead, two volunteers from the San Diego-based charity Operation Homefront helped do the work. One volunteer rode the bus 50 miles from downtown San Diego to Camp Pendleton to help.
Guajardo said she was overwhelmed by their generosity.
"I was so touched by both of them," said Guajardo, a mother of two boys. "This is like living back in the '50s. People helping each other again."
The number of similar emergencies could be almost as high as the number deployed.
For the largest local military involvement since the 1991 Persian Gulf War, the majority of the 45,000-person 1st Marine Expeditionary Force at Camp Pendleton and Miramar Marine Corps Air Station has been ordered to the Persian Gulf for possible war with Iraq. Many left in the past month. Thousands of San Diego-based sailors also have shipped out.
With the pace of events, some families haven't had time to put their affairs in order, as they do for normally scheduled departures.
"The deployments have been so sudden," said Sandra Aldridge, Operation Homefront director.
The nonprofit group of military spouses was formed during the Afghanistan conflict early last year to help local families.
"It's Murphy's Law. As soon as he walks out the door, something goes wrong," Aldridge said. "If the wife is not a mechanic or a computer expert, that has to be sent out, and that costs money."
The Navy-Marine Corps Relief Society at Camp Pendleton has seen more financial aid requests from families who lost an income with the deployment, said director Michael Hire.
Some spouses had to quit jobs because no one is left at home to watch the children, Hire said. Or the Marine or sailor worked a second job for extra income, which is now lost.
In those cases, Hire said, "We see an increase in requests for rent because they can't make it."
Credit cards and income-tax returns will get these military families by for a few months, Hire said, but then he expects to receive more calls.
Military Outreach Ministries was flooded with calls in December and January, said Sandy Bowen, interim director of the Solana Beach-based charity.
December's requests were largely for furniture, as young couples hurried to marry before the deployment and establish a household on base, Bowen said.
Then, in January, young wives returning to their hometowns called to ask for moving help and to return furniture borrowed from the ministry.
Now the demand is for moral support, Bowen said. Her group is forming movie clubs and big-sister-style support groups to help lonely military spouses.
"There's this tremendous sense of depression on base. It's like an ache," Bowen said.
A relative newcomer to the nonprofit scene, Operation Homefront has assembled a team of San Diego County businesses and volunteers to cover a wide swath of family needs, including car, computer and household repairs done at discounted prices or for free. The group is a collaboration of www.cinchouse.com, a Web site for military women and spouses, and San Diego radio personality Roger Hedgecock.
In sprawling Southern California, car repair is one of the biggest needs.
Kimberly's sailor husband shipped out to Kuwait in mid-January. Soon after, the air conditioning in her truck broke. Kimberly asked that her last name not be used.
It made life hard for her 2-year-old twin sons, who suffer from respiratory problems that demand a cool environment. And with their medical prescriptions to fill, she said, she couldn't afford the $800 to $900 to install a new air compressor.
She had attended a pre-deployment briefing and heard about Operation Homefront. The group got the truck fixed for free.
"Little to my knowledge that I would end up calling them, 'cause we thought we had everything under control," said Kimberly, a La Mesa resident.
Kimberly, a native of New Orleans, said she doesn't know what she would have done otherwise.
"It was such a blessing. I don't have any family out here," she said. "They were like guardian angels to us."
Aside from bread-and-butter assistance, Operation Homefront also provides a frill sure to warm the hearts of worried wives: free home computers for e-mail messages.
Joy Roberts of Oceanside recently received her computer. Without it, the only way to tell her Camp Pendleton Marine husband when their first baby arrives was the old-fashioned way: an emergency message through the American Red Cross. He left for Kuwait last month.
Her life is "completely better," said the 27-year-old from Georgia. Their son is due today.
"It's just going to be so much better to be able to be in contact with him," Roberts said.
Navy wife Sylvia Reid's heart dropped when her computer crashed. Her husband, deployed on the aircraft carrier Constellation since November, was suddenly out of reach. With his ship in the Arabian Sea, waiting for war, every e-mail is a lifeline.
Through Operation Homefront, the computer was fixed without charge.
"Being able to e-mail him, that enables you to talk to him on a day-to-day basis," said Reid, who lives in Paradise Hills with their three children. "Some days, every time I e-mailed him, he replied right back. It was so wonderful. It was like talking on the phone."
Michael Levy, owner of Aaron's Computer Rescue in Sorrento Valley, is one of Operation Homefront's computer benefactors.
Levy, the father of a Navy medical corpsman, Levy recently began giving away older computers he rebuilds from spare parts. He also asks customers buying new computers if they want to donate their old machines to military families.
In return, he gets tears of gratitude from spouses -- and sometimes baskets of cookies, he said.
"When you can stay in touch with loves ones, how can you put a price on that?" Levy said.
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