Category Benefits
WEBINARS OF INTRIGUE: HOW CALTAP WENT VIRTUAL DURING THE PANDEMIC TO KEEP VETERANS CONNECTED
When the COVID-19 pandemic arrived in early 2020 and shut many things down, CalVet stepped up. When other offices stopped answering their phones or were unable to reply, CalVet picked up. When military bases, college campuses, and other community-based points of connection closed, CalVet booted up and took vital information right into the veterans’ homes […]
WITH CALVET’S HELP, SIKH SOLDIER FINDS NATIONAL GUARD RELIGIOUSLY ACCOMMODATING
When Kanwarpreet Singh came to the United States from India four years ago, he knew he wanted to serve his new country. Military service, he said, is important to members of the Sikh faith no matter where they live. However, he would need some help to join any branch of the U.S. Armed Forces, and […]
VETERANS DAY IN THE BOOKS? AT CALVET, EVERY DAY IS A NEW PAGE WHEN IT COMES TO SERVING THEM
The parades and picnics are over. Speeches made and proclamations read. The American flags that lined the streets throughout the country and California are neatly folded, stored until the next national holiday. Veterans Day – America’s annual day of thanking veterans for defending this country and the freedoms our Constitution guarantees – is in the […]
GO AHEAD, MAKE MY VETERANS DAY: WHEN FORT ORD WAS A SPRINGBOARD TO HOLLYWOOD
From World War I through the first Gulf War, Fort Ord was a U.S. Army base known for producing soldiers. Today, it is home to CalVet’s California Central Coast Veterans Cemetery and also to Cal State University-Monterey Bay, among other things. For a few years in the early 1950s, however, the outpost on the Monterey […]
THE ‘THANK-YOU’ NOTES THAT MEAN SO MUCH TO CALVET’S ANALYSTS HELPING INCARCERATED VETERANS
Steven Smith scrolled through his emails one day a few months ago, and came across one that simply moved him. Smith, a United States Navy Veteran, is among the seven veterans claims analysts working directly with incarcerated veterans in California’s 35 state prisons through CalVet’s Justice Involved Veterans Initiative. The analysts help veterans—many imprisoned for […]
CALVET PROGRAM DOES JUSTICE TO THE CONCEPT OF HELPING INCARCERATED VETERANS
Mary Donovan, a veterans claims analyst with CalVet, talked benefits with about 30 veterans in the Sierra foothills community of Ione one recent morning. This wasn’t just any veterans’ group, though. All are inmates at Mule Creek State Prison, and among the more than 5,000 military veterans incarcerated in California’s 34 adult state prisons. Despite […]
STAR AND INTERNET POWER GAVE VETERANS A WIN WITHOUT THE VIOLENCE THAT MET THEIR PREDECESSORS 90 YEARS AGO
A few weeks ago, with celebrity Jon Stewart giving an impassioned speech on their behalf, U.S. military veterans pleaded for Congress to pass the $280 billion PACT Act to help those suffering from toxic burn pit exposures and other service-related health threats. Using the U.S. Capitol as a backdrop, 100 or so veterans staged a […]
CALVET HOME LOANS TEAM PROVIDES CALMING INFLUENCE, HAPPINESS FOR VETERAN STRESSED BY FINANCING SNAFU
CalVet Home Loans client and Army veteran Mark Dust will tell you that a bomb in the road in Iraq in 2005 and the bombshell news he encountered last month each wracked his nerves similarly. In 2005, infantryman Dust rode on the hood of a Humvee that suffered major damage, avoiding obliteration only because the […]
CALL TO RIGHT FRIEND AT RIGHT TIME PUTS VETERAN ON RIGHT TRACK TO CALVET HOME LOAN
One day while working at CalVet headquarters in Sacramento, Craig Hollis got a call from Rod Totton, a Marine veteran and longtime personal friend. Totton expressed frustrations at his attempts to finance a home he wanted to buy in the Sacramento area. A foreclosure from more than a decade ago, along with some other issues, […]
STATE PARKS AND RECREATION AREAS FREE TO DISTINGUISHED VETERAN PASS HOLDERS
California operates nearly 300 state parks and recreation areas that offer forests, beaches, buttes and boating, historic military sites, railroads and everything in between. Of those state properties, all but three – Columbia State Park in Tuolumne County, Great Valley Grasslands State Park in Merced County and Robert Louis Stevenson State Park in the Napa […]
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