COMING HOME FROM IRAQ LIFE AFTER WAR A BATTLE ASSIST: COUNSELOR HELPS VALLEY VETERANS FIGHT THEIR WAY THROUGH MILITARY RED TAPE TO CLAIM BENEFITS.

Byline: Tony Castro, Staff Writer

When he was discharged from the Marines in 2001, Christopher Duarte of Chatsworth felt lost and unsure of his future, especially in the wake of 9-11 and the United States gearing up for an invasion of Iraq.

"I didn't know if I should re-enlist - I was just looking for a mission where I could best serve," he recalls.

Duarte soon found his mission - helping returning veterans like Ramon Contreras of Pacoima navigate through the seemingly endless red tape of a vast government bureaucracy to get the benefits they were promised for serving their country.

"We still have cases where a lot of guys come out of the military, and they really come out with no clue. There's no real guidance from the military," says Duarte, 31, a benefits counselor with the Los Angeles County Department of Military and Veterans Affairs.

"When you get out you really need someone to walk you and hold your hand and really tell you, 'Hey, this is what you need to do to get your life together."'

That's exactly what he did with Contreras in 2004, shortly after his discharge from the military, and today the former Marine becomes emotional in talking about how Duarte changed his life.

"Chris looked me in the eye and said this is what you need to do to get your benefits, and he guided me through it," says Contreras. "I'm indebted to him for the rest of my life. He's the person who helped me get my life back together after coming home from Iraq."

But Duarte is the first to say that his is an overwhelming job. He is the only counselor assigned to the San Fernando Valley, and Duarte's caseload includes all veterans in the Valley - a fifth of all Los Angeles County's half-million veterans.

And the job is about to get tougher, he fears, with the anticipated discharge of larger numbers of troops as President Barack Obama scales back the war - a war that in six years has left at least 4,000 U.S. soldiers dead, with some 30,000 more casualties, and cost taxpayers an estimated $10 billion each week.

Many U.S. soldiers will be returning to Southern California, home to more veterans than any urban area in the country, burdening even more the county and federal Veterans Affairs infrastructure that already has difficulty servicing the vets who live here.

In a worst-case scenario, Duarte says, the already large number of homeless veterans in Los Angeles - estimated to be 25,000 - could become even greater.

"What's going to end up happening," warns Duarte, "is we're going to start having Iraqi Freedom veterans homeless. That's already happening.

"Just last week, I had to find an Iraqi veteran and his wife and child a place to stay and try to get him set up and squared away. It's happening already, although not at an alarming rate."

Duarte says he has no statistics on local Iraq vets who are homeless, but the National Alliance to End Homelessness in Washington reports that veterans make up 11 percent of the adult population but constitute 26 percent of the homeless on any given day.

Feds aware of problem

As the war marks its six-year anniversary Friday, government officials say they are equally concerned about the bureaucracy and the benefit issues that many veterans have complained about. And they say they are working to improve the process.

"In normal circumstances there's a helluva lot of red tape in the military, but we're trying to get things done better," said Rep. Brad Sherman, D-Sherman Oaks, who pointed out that Congress has raised VA budgeting to historic levels during the last two budget cycles.

Among the biggest complaints, Sherman confirmed, are incomplete discharge papers - known as DD214s - which document veterans' military experience and are crucial to qualifying for benefits.

Duarte said many times returning veterans with incomplete DD214s are denied benefits until they receive amended documents, which can often take months.

Veterans advocates, in some instances, have jumped into the fray, trying to help ease the transition as troops return.

Jerry Jaramillo of the American G.I. Forum, the country's oldest Latino veterans organization, said his organization has specifically targeted aspects of the government's new economic stimulus package that he said offer tax credits to veterans groups to create outreach programs.

"In the end, it's going to take veterans looking out for other veterans," he said. "What troubles us is to see so many not getting the help they need."

Bad time to return

Making matters worse now is that returning vets are coming home during the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression, with jobs as scarce as decent veteran counseling services.

In addition, many are returning from Iraq with post-traumatic stress disorder. Duarte has been working in a clinic for Iraq veterans, many of whom have been diagnosed with the disorder.

"It's huge with these Iraqi Freedom veterans, it's the biggest thing that I've witnessed, and that's a big issue because of the amount of tours that they're doing," he says. "Multiple tours. Two, three, four pumps at a time. So obviously it's a mental strain. It doesn't matter who you are."

Nightmare stories from veterans trying to return to civilian life are nothing new, say advocates and others involved in the process. The bureaucratic red tape has historically presented a challenge for returning troops, and Duarte says it is the reason he became a veterans' benefits counselor.

After his discharge, Duarte recalled, he was clueless about how to get his G.I. Bill benefits and got little direction from the military or the VA.

"When I got out of the military and tried to obtain my education benefits and saw how difficult it was for guys coming out and looking into everything ... that's where I became an advocate, when I saw how a lot of things were not right," he says.

A lifelong debt

Today, veterans like Contreras of Pacoima, whose Marine unit entered Baghdad just an hour after Saddam Hussein's statue came tumbling down in 2003, swear by Duarte.

Once back home, Contreras went to enroll at Mission College in Sylmar and happened across a chance meeting with a counselor, Duarte, whose intervention made his return experience an exception to what many Iraq veterans say they are experiencing.

Contreras says Duarte also helped ease him into the overall benefits system, which became invaluable for him as he began experiencing health problems related to his service in Iraq.

Contreras, 26, recalls that he was in perfect physical condition before his enlistment but that his service in Iraq broke down his body. Falls and injuries left him with bad knees and early signs of carpal tunnel syndrome, and he now suffers from chronic migraine headaches from long exposure to the desert sun.

But being able to get in quickly to be examined by VA doctors allowed him to be diagnosed with those medical issues and qualify for 50 percent service-connected disability benefits.

"I wouldn't trade my military experience for the world," he says. "It was a great experience and taught me great discipline, and the military takes care of you with good benefits, if you know where to go and have someone like Chris guiding you.

"I would say my experience (with benefits), though, has been the exception. I've had no trouble getting adjusted to the civilian world, but I have friends who have struggled."

But Contreras also wonders if the young veterans themselves aren't partly to blame for sometimes waiting too long in admitting they need help with medical and other benefits.

"A lot of these guys are stubborn," he says. "You know what it is? They're embarrassed and, no matter what race they are, their machismo does not let them say they need help."

Duarte sympathizes with their plight and, marveling at the resilience of many Iraq vets he counsels, counts himself fortunate not to be in their boots.

"It's harder for these guys," he says. "It's really hard. I couldn't imagine getting out of the military right now, how hard it would be."

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CAPTION(S):

Christopher Duarte, left, is a veterans counselor who helped Ramon C ontreras get benefits earned while serving as a Marine in Iraq. "We still have cases where a lot of guys come out of the military, and they really come out with no clue. There's no real guidance from the military," Duarte said.

John McCoy/Staff Photographer