First Veterans treatment court graduate is proof anything is possible

The first graduate of the first Veterans Drug Treatment Court, Manny Welch, is living proof that anything is possible, that if the bad that life brings your way doesn’t kill you, you can overcome it and a lot more.  You can reinvent yourself.  You can go home again.

Manny is a Vietnam-era Veteran who “used to live and lived to use” long after he left the military in 1979.  Before he would begin the long road back from alcohol and drug addiction, he lost two families, four children, more than one job and his self-respect.

“My addiction was full blown,” said Manny at the Justice for Veterans national conference in Washington on July 27.  “I was sitting in a soup kitchen (in Rochester, N.Y.) and there was a gentleman driving a van.  I forgot what his name was but he came to the soup kitchen and he said, ‘Are there any Veterans here who want to turn their life around and, if so, you are welcome to get on this van and I will take you to the Buffalo VA.’”

Manny remarried – 24 years now – and has two children.  His son, Manny Welch III, who attended the Justice for Veterans Conference with his dad, is now in college in Pittsburgh.

Manny said he began his road to recovery after his introduction to the Buffalo Veterans Treatment Court, the first such court begun by Judge Robert Russell in January 2008.

Manny Welch II and son, Manny Welch III, at Justice for Vets national conference.

“That’s where the transformation began, because when they asked me in there, Judge Russell asked me a certain question,” Manny recalled.  “He said something to me that nobody else had ever said, and he said, ‘Thank you for your service’…and they all stood up…and they all started clapping…and, I’m looking around and I’m (thinking), ‘What kind of court is this?’”

A drunken binge in 2008 following the death of his father led Manny back to jail and before Judge Russell, who refused to give up on Manny, and Manny’s transformation took its most positive turn.

“The motto leave no Veteran behind is truly true, because (no one) would give up on me and they said, ‘You’re gonna do this and you’re gonna get through it,’” Manny recalled.

Manny considers his greatest achievement graduating from the Buffalo Veterans Drug Court and is proud being the first graduate of the first Veterans Court.  From there, he worked his way through VA treatment programs, right into a steady job at the Buffalo VA Medical Center.

Along the way, Manny also got a degree from Erie Community College, a bachelor’s degree from the University of Buffalo and has risen to the position of peer support specialist.  It’s a job he says he was always meant to have, “that God led me to.”  He said every day he can apply his education and life lessons to help Veterans maneuver the turns and twists, fits and starts he encountered on his road to recovery.

Ken McKinnon is the video team leader on VA’s Digital Media Engagement team. He has a 45-year career in journalism and government service, 13 years with Florida newspapers, 10 as a press and communications director on Capitol Hill, and 22 with the Department of Veterans Affairs’ Office of Public and Intergovernmental Affairs. He is the proud son of a career Marine Master Sergeant who served in World War II and the Korean War.

Veterans court program helps warriors battle addiction, mental health crises

By Melinda HennebergerDecember 2, 2013

Former Marine Cpl. Eric Gonzales doesn’t remember much about the night last year he led police in Orange County, Calif., on a high-speed, 26-minute chase that ended when he threw his truck into reverse and crashed into the patrol car behind him.

When he finally took his foot off the gas, he was handcuffed and later charged with DUI, evading arrest, assault on a police officer and more.

Still in the Marine Corps at the time, and living at Camp Pendleton, Gonzales’s first court appearance was brief; he argued with the judge and got himself ejected.

But then he finally listened to his counsel: “My lawyer recommended I go to veterans court” — one of a growing number of such programs that oversee criminal cases involving military veterans who were arrested at least partly because of an addiction or mental illness, most commonly depression and post-traumatic stress disorder.

An average of 22 military veterans commit suicide every day in this country, perhaps the best measure of the mental health crisis among veterans. And 130 special courts for veterans in 40 states are tackling that problem.

The first one was started in Buffalo in 2008, modeled on the drug courts that have significantly reduced recidivism rates by substituting treatment and other support programs for incarceration.

Gonzales, who served in Afghanistan in 2009 and 2010, was facing a nine-year prison sentence, so he was eager to opt for oversight from Judge Wendy Lindley’s veterans court in Orange County. He “graduated” from the program in September.

On Monday, the 23-year-old stepped up to a podium in a ballroom at Washington’s Marriott Wardman Park hotel and addressed a crowd of about 900 as the first speaker at the first national training conference for those who work in such courts.

Gonzales, a high school sports star from San Bernardino, had a college scholarship but persuaded his parents to sign the waiver that let him enlist at 17: “I joined the greatest fighting force I could — the United States Marine Corps!” he said, to a big round of hoo-rahs from Marines in the crowd.

But while serving in Afghanistan, he saw the man who had been “like a father” to him blown up by an improvised explosive device. So once he was back home, Gonzales told the crowd, he began drinking heavily and was “shocked at the truth of the beast.” He skipped the specifics but said, “I had fallen off my white horse.”

Through the veterans court, he started to work on his problems instead of masking them: “I did mindfulness, PTSD and exposure therapy — which . . . really do work, actually.”

After he spoke at the conference, a succession of big names did, too: “He’s what it’s all about,’’ retired Army Gen. Barry McCaffrey said of Gonzales. “We’ve got this battle force that kept us safe since 9/11; now we’ve got to stay behind them.’’

After the program, Gonzales’s former drug court parole officer, Bert Eitner, came up to congratulate him.

During his first week in Afghanistan, Gonzales’s base was attacked by a suicide bomber; two Marines were killed. The later loss of his mentor, Sgt. Maj. Robert Cottle, who was killed by a 300-pound explosive device, was hard — as were orders from his superiors that prevented Gonzales from quickly retrieving the body.

“That’s what broke my mind,’’ he said.

After returning home in May 2010, “we’d only discuss when we were drunk who died.”

The veterans court doesn’t take men and women on active duty, Eitner said, “because there’s no point giving them all these services and then letting them go back to deployment.”

“If you mess up,’’ Gonzales said the judge told him, “you’re going to prison.” Instead, he lived in a residential treatment center. He meditated, worked out, did cognitive therapy, underwent exposure therapy — in which he was taken back to his mentor’s death again and again— and attended every 12-step meeting he could.

Asked whether he was tested regularly for drugs and alcohol, Eitner and Gonzales burst out laughing. Six times a week by Eitner alone, Gonzales said, “even though I was already peeing for four other people.”

Since graduating from the program three months ago, he’s back in school, studying audio engineering and getting some work, too, while living with his parents and advocating for the program that he feels saved his life.

Both Gonzales’s problem and his progress are pretty typical of what Eitner sees, he said, in a program that has a recidivism rate of 3 percent. “This guy,’’ Eitner said of his former charge, “was sent someplace no one should ever be sent, but that’s what we do to our kids because they’re good at it. And you can’t strap a gun on every day and have it not affect you.”