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Veteran's Affairs Plus discusses the issues that veterans in Las Vegas deal with on a daily basis. Your host, David L. Washington connects listeners with relevant community resources and information that they need to help veterans or themselves.
Announcer 0:00
This is a K-Unb Studios original program.
Wesley Knight 0:04
You're listening to special programming sponsored by Making Moves Life Coaching Services. The content of this program does not reflect the views or opinions of 91.5 Jazz and Moore, the University of Nevada Las Vegas, or the Board of Regents of the Nevada System of Higher Education.
Music 0:30
You can see what's going on. great
Dave Washington 0:48
day, Las Vegas, great day. This is Veterans Affairs Plus on 91.5 jazz and more. I thank Wes for being here to keep me on track. We are going to have a nice first guest, Miss Ashley, and we'll get her on shortly here, but before we bring her on, I'd like to once again announce that the Carl Holmes Executive Development Institute will be celebrating 35 years of existence. It is a program, as many of you know, because I've spoken about it. It's a leadership program to help firefighters move up through the ranks and be better executives within the fire service, and we've been around once again for 35 years, currently 25 years at Dillard University in New Orleans, Louisiana. And also, I'd like to say, congratulations to the graduating students, if they're going even from elementary to middle, junior to high, as well as college students. So, congratulations to all you students out there. And something I certainly almost failed to mention, but I need to, and that is condolences to the family of Thomas Sonny Whitson. He, they lost their daughter just a few weeks back, and he passed away most recently. So his services, I believe, is june 5 or sixth, but you can check the obituaries for that. But what a great guy, and he will be missed. So once again, condolences to that family. All right, this young lady, believe it or not, Las Vegas, I met her on the golf course, and I'm like, when she told me what she did, because I always - I'm an inquisitive person. My wife said, "Oh, you'll talk to a rock. Well, I talk to people, and I try to find.. because we were in the same foursome. So, Miss Ashley, properly introduce yourself as well as pronounce your last name.
Ashley Milne 2:41
Yes, can you hear me?
Dave Washington 2:43
Yes, absolutely.
Ashley Milne 2:45
All right. My name is Ashley Milne. I am from St. Louis, Missouri. I am a Vegas transplant. I moved here three years ago. I am a licensed therapist. I specialize in trauma recovery and addiction recovery. Been practicing for about eight years now.
Dave Washington 3:07
Okay,
Ashley Milne 3:08
doing mostly private practice right now.
Dave Washington 3:10
In private practice, so where'd you actually go to school at for that particular training?
Ashley Milne 3:18
Yeah, so I got my bachelor's in psychology and my master's in rehabilitation counseling from a school in St. Louis, Missouri, called Maryville University.
Dave Washington 3:28
Okay. All right. That's.. and you say you've been in Las Vegas, how long?
Ashley Milne 3:34
Three years. Yeah, I lived here briefly in my 20s, back in the early 2000s for a couple years, but I moved back.
Dave Washington 3:44
Let me ask you,
Dave Washington 3:45
so why
Dave Washington 3:46
do you feel that this particular discipline is so important to our community, to our world?
Ashley Milne 3:54
Yeah, I think, especially right now, there's so many people that are struggling, struggling silently with trauma, and if you look at studies, right, a lot of the underlying causes of homelessness, addiction, right, loneliness, and even suicide, trauma is at the root of that, they all kind of go together, so I think many people don't know that this type of therapy and health is out there, and it's evidence-based, and it works
Dave Washington 4:31
well. I can tell you, I am pleased that you accepted this opportunity to be on this show, because I know that you know this is a veterans affairs show, and we do have a lot of veterans to listen, and I know sometimes with things that they have going on in their lives, particularly from those who, God bless them, who've been in the war zone. I'm a Vietnam era veteran, but I was blessed by the fact that I did not go to Vietnam, but I know a number of guys, friends. Family members who did go, and it really messed them up. I mean, to go and see their kind of trauma, you know, death on the on the battlefield. Those things can affect a person for a long, long time. And I will say this about a dear friend of mine, and I won't call his name because I have not been approved to do that by him, but he, when I got out of the army, I took pre-apprenticeship carpentry, and he encouraged me to go down because the city was hiring apprenticeship carpenters. However, they had clothes, and the lady said, "Well, why don't you come in and go become a firefighter? Nah, not interested, but my point to that is he got in trouble later on in life, and it all had to do with the traumatic experience I believe that he had while at Vietnam, while in Vietnam.
Ashley Milne 5:50
Oh, yeah, absolutely, yeah. And there's, you know, we, there's a fascinating study out there in regards to PTSD, you know, and they took a group of men that went to war, and they were like, why are some of them coming back with this awful PTSD, and some of them seem to handle it better, and the difference was their childhood. So, what people don't really understand is that developmental trauma, right, the attachment trauma that happens in childhood absolutely is a precursor, right, for stuff like that, of how it affects
Dave Washington 6:29
people
Ashley Milne 6:30
differently.
Dave Washington 6:31
I can tell you that, in fact, happened to have breakfast with my fire service group today, something we do a couple times a year, and I remember one of my, well, my former supervisor, Chief John Ryan, he told me that when he went to Vietnam, and I think John, I think I believe he was in the Air Force, but he said he went over there as an 1819 year old young man, and he said when he came back he was a fully grown man from all the different traumatic things that he happened to see while in that country, and again in the war zone.
Ashley Milne 7:09
Yeah,
Dave Washington 7:10
so tell me, or tell our listening audience, do you have office hours? Do you have a location that you can tell people about? Have a website, any means of them contact, because I think it's important for them to know. Oh,
Ashley Milne 7:27
yeah, I mean, there's some fascinating therapy out there. The one I particularly do is called EMDR. It stands for eye movement desensitization and reprocessing. It is incredible, and that is the one I like, because you can see phenomenal results with it. I mean, I've had guys with flashbacks, right, of images they've seen, you know, audio flashbacks, emotional flashbacks, and in one session you can really get that healed, where they're no longer experiencing those symptoms, so it is powerful, right? It's very vulnerable, and I think that's the thing with veterans, right? I think, and any really emergency first responder responders, there's so much stigma with needing to have it together, right, and to not be vulnerable, right, we got to be tough, and so I just want to encourage anybody out there that's struggling. I mean, this is life changing, you know, to just allow yourself to be vulnerable, it can change your life.
Dave Washington 8:35
Absolutely, you know, I've said it many times on this show, but I think it further needs to be reiterated, and that is during my tenure as fire chief for Las Vegas Fire and Rescue, one of our engines rolled on its side, and some of our staff members, personnel got injured, and one became a quadriplegic, and it just, you know, what we had an incident debriefing person. She said she came by my office several times. Do we need to talk? I said, no typical firefighter police mentality. I'm a tough guy, I'm good. And then one day, standing before a classroom down at the Carl Holmes Executive Development Institute, a woman officer said, "Chief, were you ever debriefed on that particular situation? I start crying because I hadn't been, and you know what, I haven't cried since, but Brenda kept trying. Brenda Donohoe kept coming to my office at least three four times, trying to get me to allow her to debrief me on that, because you know when something happens on your watch, you feel responsible, you know, and it was a load, a load came off my shoulders that particular day, I didn't even realize I was carrying. I had no idea. So, once again, Ashley, do you have a physical location that you can give an address to?
Ashley Milne 10:08
I do not. So, I actually am fully remote. I am located in Henderson, but yeah, all everything I do is through Zoom. I obviously was trained in person, and after COVID, everything changed for the therapy realm, right? So we had to adapt and find new ways to be able to use bilateral stimulation, which is basically we're engaging right and left brain as you're going back to the trauma, and it helps the it helps regulate your nervous system in that process, which right helps your the trauma memory file away as normal. That's why it works, but we can do that just using right tapping or tapping yourself. We have these little buzzers that buzz in your hands, or we have an option to use a ball across the screen that I control for my side, and it just, you basically follow the ball as it hits each side.
Dave Washington 11:09
So, we got Ashley, we got a couple of minutes left. Do you have a website or some means of folks getting a hold of you? Because hopefully, there's someone out there who might need help that can get a hold of you, and I think it's really something I had no idea of how this kind of discipline can be done through Zoom. That's very interesting.
Ashley Milne 11:30
Oh yeah, it's incredible, and it's just as effective in all my outcomes that I track. All my people are definitely just as well as in person, they're responding just as well. So, if you want to get in touch with me, which I am happy for anybody to reach out to me, I will help you get connected to resources. There's so many resources out there. I am listed in Psychology Today. You would just look my name up, Ashley Milne, M I L N E, I also have an Instagram profile, which you can reach me through there, and that is Recovery Therapist dot Ashley A S H L E Y.
Dave Washington 12:12
Once again, this is Veterans Affairs Plus on 91.5 Jazz and more. She's a pretty decent golfer. In fact, I met her with the Monday group, but Jim Li Cassie had us teamed up together, and it was decent golfer, and I'm trying to find my.. I'm trying, Ashley, I'm trying to find my way back to an 1820 handicap. I'm a 2023 right now. Thank you so much for coming on the show. I think that what you offered up will be good for people, and hopefully some will respond and make contact with you. Thank you so much, Ashley, and we'll get you on again sometime in the future.
Ashley Milne 12:47
Okay. Thank you so much for having me. For sure.
Dave Washington 12:50
Oh, for sure. Once again, this is Veterans Affairs Plus on 91.5 jazz and more. We're signing off in this segment. We'll have one more segment coming up shortly. Once again, this is Veterans Affairs, plus some 91.5 jazz and more. I am pleased to be back on this side with our upcoming guests. I will make a few further announcements, and then we will have our guest to come on and talk about a few things. She works security, Miss Harper, with a lot of work with veterans, so we definitely want to hear from her. So, once again, I want to say that again, we know that we just recently had the services for Dr. Ruby Duncan, and we appreciate the work that she did in our, in our community, particularly for, for moms, for welfare moms, and others, not only in the city of Las Vegas, but also around the world. Also, I like to again say and share that on June 27 2pm at the theater, the old West Las Vegas Library Theater, but it's called West Side Theater now. There will be a documentary shown of me and my journey with cancer. It was done very well by our daughter, Angel. So we're encouraging the public to come out. There's no charge for it, but it, it really gives an gives us an opportunity as people to think about faith, family, and friends, and that's kind of.. we're not trying to monetize or anything like that, but ultimately it'll probably be out on Facebook. But we appreciate the work that Angel did, and it's a.. if I must say so myself, it's a, it's a tear jerker, so it'll be posted out there everywhere, because we do want to have a full house, and I think the theater holds about 300 people, if my member serves me correctly. So, Miss Harper, how are you today?
Miss Harper 14:56
I'm okay. How are you?
Dave Washington 14:57
I'm doing all right, doing all right. So April referred you, said you had some things to talk about. So, first thing I like to ask you, how long have you lived in Las Vegas?
Miss Harper 15:10
Oh, I think about 16 years now, about 15 years now.
Dave Washington 15:15
1516, years, 1516, years. Where are you from?
Miss Harper 15:19
California,
Dave Washington 15:21
where
Miss Harper 15:23
Long Beach,
Dave Washington 15:25
Long Beach,
Miss Harper 15:26
LA.
Dave Washington 15:26
Okay, in the South, SoCal, Southern California. I had a dear friend, he's an ancestor now, Chief Herschel Clay. He was from, I lived there in Long Beach, got a number of other guys who live in Southern California, firefighter friends, so now what profession are you currently in? And tell us a little bit about
Miss Harper 15:49
it. Well, I have a security guard for Help USA, which is a place for homeless vets. Basically, we bring them in and we, and we basically put them in a program, we help them get housing. If they're doing their social security, we do social security. If they need a job, we do have job placement, and a couple of other programs that we also
Dave Washington 16:13
do. Oh, wow, you know, April just kind of gave me just a general on you, and that's pretty cool. So, your overall organization, where are you guys located?
Miss Harper 16:25
We're off of.. we have two locations. The first one is 1455 North Main Street,
Dave Washington 16:31
between
Miss Harper 16:32
Main and Owens, and the second one is 606 40 McKnight Street, which is between Eastern and
Dave Washington 16:41
McKnight
Miss Harper 16:42
Eastern 28
Dave Washington 16:44
and how long you been with them?
Miss Harper 16:48
I've been with them for seven years.
Dave Washington 16:50
Okay, why did you feel it was important to work in that particular industry, and with this particular group? Was there any particular reason for you doing that, or just something that happened.
Miss Harper 17:03
Actually, it was just something that happened. My sister was looking at first, and then she brought me in on it, basically, because I needed a job at the time. But I actually grew to love it. I actually, I like working with the vets. I like learning different things that they had going on. It's a lot of lot of information that I didn't know that was going on with the vet, so I learned a lot of things. Started moving up in the company. We're supposed to be opening a new building in a couple of years, I think it's about a year or two, actually. So I should be moving up, then I talked to my boss about becoming a housing specialist, so I'll probably be doing that in about a year or two.
Dave Washington 17:48
Becoming what kind of specialist?
Miss Harper 17:51
A housing specialist, where I can
Dave Washington 17:54
place
Miss Harper 17:54
that to the house.
Dave Washington 17:56
Okay, that's good. You know, one thing I always encourage people, if there's something you think you want to do, and then you're not, you don't meet the minimum qualifications, work on getting that done, so you'll be prepared, and when that opportunity presents itself, you take a shot at it, so that's excellent. Now, you mentioned earlier about someone, one of your children getting ready to graduate,
Miss Harper 18:24
get my six year old getting ready to go to the first grade.
Dave Washington 18:27
Oh, that's cool. You know, I just mentioned a few minutes ago I didn't even take into account going from kindergarten to first grade, but that's another nice move that is good for people. I had, I did mention elementary to middle, junior to high, and then to college, but I forgot about the little ones going from kindergarten to first grade. That's great. So a decent student, or
Miss Harper 18:58
it's him, and then about another day or two, I got two pre-Ks, and then I have a my niece that's just turned 18. She graduates on Thursday, and she'll be going to, well, she got accepted into UNLV, and she got accepted into Reno, so she don't know which one she wants to go to yet, but accepted into both colleges.
Dave Washington 19:20
Has she got a plan on what she wants to study?
Miss Harper 19:24
She said nursing,
Dave Washington 19:26
nursing,
Dave Washington 19:27
that's what she's looking for.
Dave Washington 19:28
Oh, that is great, because you know we need nurses. There's always seems to be a shortage of nurses, and you know many, many years ago, my wife Marsha wanted to be a nurse, and she was like, I don't know, I think she may have been one of those what they call candy stripers, but she was definitely working in food service, helping people, you know, taking trays of food, and one day she went in and she said, "Where's mr. So and So? She said they said he died, she said, "Why? It's not funny, but you know, back in the day, one of the favorite programs that people would watch was Dr. Welby, and she, you know, on TV back in those days, no one ever died, and that was her assumption in her mind, and no one's gonna die, but that's not true, so your goal now is to move up within it, within your particular organization, which is, which is great, and that's achievable. So, how do you plan to make that move, doing what to prepare to get there,
Miss Harper 20:36
learning how to basically, how to go by finding the housing section eight is really good. It's pretty, it's pretty good. It's from Housing Authority. They, they actually put the vet exactly where they need to be, like if I was to call and tell them that it's a vet, they need a home, they either do what's it called Hud Bash Housing on SLVS, but they get them the housing first before they get the housing for the civilians, so which is a good thing, because we have a lot of homeless vets out here,
Dave Washington 21:14
so you're saying that you're saying that the veterans have priority,
Miss Harper 21:19
they have priority, yes, as they should.
Dave Washington 21:22
I agree, I agree. So the housing that you guys seek for veterans, they, they could be private homes,
Dave Washington 21:34
etc.
Miss Harper 21:35
Yes, we also get them apartments as well, if we can't find, like, so we had a few vets that did get an actual house, but that's like very slim to that. So apartments
Dave Washington 21:54
is what it is, that
Dave Washington 21:55
is, that is interesting. So, is there a number of veterans that's on, I guess that are actually listed in the program, is there a particular number, is there an amount of, or a number of veterans that you can, you guys deal with at one particular time?
Miss Harper 22:14
Yeah, we have actually 75 we have 75 rooms, so we deal with 75 vets
Dave Washington 22:21
and and
Miss Harper 22:23
that's that's that's how many we have down there. I'm not sure exactly the number that we have on Main Street, but we have 75 at the building that I work at.
Dave Washington 22:34
So, you
Miss Harper 22:34
also, we have a building behind Genesis too, called Renaissance, so if a vet needs to actually get an apartment, and we have some available, because that's for regular people, we do open that also to the veterans as well,
Dave Washington 22:55
so in the current, in the two facilities that you have, those are they, they actually house veterans, or they just strictly an administrative setup.
Miss Harper 23:08
We actually house them. We have some that we house permanently, and we have some that we house just transitional until the SSVF or the bass falls through.
Dave Washington 23:20
So, is it more like an apartment, or is it like a hotel, single bedroom, or something like that? How is it set up?
Miss Harper 23:28
It's more like a single apart, like a single apartment. Um, the only thing is, you know, it's not an extra room for the bedroom, but it's, you can put your bed and have your table, it's got a kitchenette on the inside, got your.. it's a big bathroom with a shower, it's got a closet, it's pretty decent, it's pretty
Dave Washington 23:50
decent, and in one facility you house 70, you can hold up to 75 and what's the.. what's the other one, or is that 75
Dave Washington 23:59
total?
Miss Harper 24:00
No, it's 75 total at just my building. I'm not sure how many denses hold. Um, it could be more than 75 over there, because they, they are, they have a bigger space than what we have. But, uh, my building is only 75 we hold,
Dave Washington 24:16
and I trust that there's some veterans out there that listen to the show, who may know someone who you know, may be homeless and need a little bit of help. So, is that what is the criteria? I would imagine you guys have some strict guidelines for application process. Can you give any indication of, well,
Miss Harper 24:36
they have to go down to CRRC, which is the Northeast Clinic on Charleston Atlanta, and what they do down there, I think they are the ones that do the screening of who they want to put up there with us, which is the Veteran Affairs Clinic, and then they send them to us, and then we have an application that they do do that. Far as curfew, we don't have that, because we have 24 hour around the clock security, so we don't have like a curfew. They just have to be fined in between 7pm to 10pm to show that they are sleeping in that that bed. We do serve dinner Monday through Friday on the weekends we don't, because I guess they're teaching them, you know, how to be able to cook and do for themselves. We do have paralyzed vests that come every month and give us food bags and hygiene bags, and we pass them out every month to the vet, so there's a lot of things that come with it. They get a lot of, they get a lot of purposes of all types of sorts of things that go with it, but they still have to still do on their own. They still have to go out and look to work, they still have to go out and go get their IDs and things of that. So, yeah, we help with it, but only to a certain extent, right? Right, teaching them how to be independent,
Dave Washington 26:03
absolutely, and that makes perfect sense, because if you live by a crutch all the time, you won't get up off your butt and do what you got to do to take your rightful place in this society, so there there's no strict, strict guy, like you said, there's no curfew, but you do have to go and be processed in, and they will screen out those who they feel may necessary, may not be desirable to live in that type of facility, I assume. So, on top of the housing that you have there, like a little studio, and then beyond that, even the ones who live in the studio, they can also be applying to get out into a bigger home or an apartment, etc.
Miss Harper 26:49
Right.
Dave Washington 26:51
Okay, so you have so there's some type of counselors that are on site there now. You're working specifically in security and learning more about the overall operation of the system there, but is there some counselors that that are on staff there at the at the facility where you work?
Miss Harper 27:13
Yes, we have case managers that they do see,
Dave Washington 27:15
case managers,
Miss Harper 27:16
case managers that they go to that helps them with certain things, and then we also have the Director of Social Services, which helps them as well. If the case managers can't go no further than what they need, then they go to the Director, and you know he could push a little further on things that they need or need to do, since he can reach out a little more to the VA deal with the case managers, can, but they see their case managers once a week, they help them get their IDs, their socials, their DD 214 anything else that they're missing, but they still have to put in the footwork to go out and actually get it, even though we're giving them the information and application to go and get it for either a little cheaper or sometimes free, but they still have to go out and do the footwork to go get it
Dave Washington 28:07
right once again. This is Veterans Affairs Plus on 91.5 Jazz and More. We have Officer Security Officer Ms. Harper. She works for, give the name of the company again, or the organization
Miss Harper 28:21
Help USA,
Dave Washington 28:22
Help USA,
Miss Harper 28:23
USA,
Dave Washington 28:23
and Help USA is a veterans type program,
Miss Harper 28:28
correct?
Dave Washington 28:28
Do you guys have a particular website? We got about a minute to go that you could share. Is there other..
Miss Harper 28:35
they don't have a particular website to go on, but we do have a number, which is 7026 46 778. 00 just in case they want to call and get some information.
Dave Washington 28:47
Give that number again,
Miss Harper 28:50
702-646-7800 All
Dave Washington 28:55
right. Well, Miss Harper, I'll thank April for recommending you, and hopefully you continue in that new job, that the position that you're looking for, hopefully you'll be prepared, and we appreciate you once again. This is Veterans Affairs Plus on 91.5 Jazz and More, signing off for this week. Thanks again, Miss Harper. We appreciate you, and congrats to the children and the niece.
Miss Harper 29:18
Thank you so much. Bye.
Music 29:31
Up all the smoke in the air, feel the hate when they stare, all the pain that we bear on.
Transcribed by https://otter.ai