March Forward

It's been a while since I posted, but that doesn't mean I haven't been cranking away. In the past month or so I've gotten a lot of feedback. All of it has been positive, some a lot more proactive than others. I want to list people and places I've contacted. I hope this doesn't come across as a "shame on you for not getting back to me" list, I merely mean it as a way of keeping track of who I've looked into, for your benefit as well as mine. I'm simply trying to streamline for all parties involved.
To date, only a few people I have contacted have gotten back to me, hence the reason I've been hesitant to post (I don't want to put up negative news). I do want to say that sifting through the pebbles has brought some golden nuggets. First of all, huge thanks to the following people: Angelo Tota, a friend of the family and former teammate. He turned me on to http://www.patriotguard.org/ They have returned my e-mails, and are looking into any further participation. I haven't heard anything more from them, but at least they responded, and they do have some experience in this sort of thing, so I'm hopeful. Also huge thanks to my friend James Ozenne. I find his input on pretty much all things to be intellectual, inspirational and helpful. He turned me on to the President's New Era proposal, which lists Mr. Obama's plans for a budget, including veteran affairs and VA money. You can read more about this at http://www.whitehouse.gov/omb/budget/ This has led me on to some other organizations, and in the process I sent an e-mail to the Department of Defense about this blog.
Next up I want to thank Jessica Leung and Debra Ballard for all their suggestions, information, inspiration and motivation. Digging through all of this stuff has been time consuming and at times frustrating, but their input has kept me going. I also want to thank Susan Carpenter of the Los Angeles Times. Ms. Carpenter covers motorcycles and riding for the paper, and she has given me some good advice on how to proceed. Per her suggestion, I contacted Oliver Shokouh, the founder and chairman of the immensely popular and succesful Love Ride http://www.loveride.org/lr25/. He has gotten in touch with me as I was typing this latest post, so I'm looking forward to talking with him. His input so far has been extremely valuable!! Last but certainly not least, I want to give a huge thanks to my friend in the Air Force, Tech Sgt. John Peck, who has been sending me a ton of links and information. Not all of them are hits, but all of them have led to something useful and informative. His interest and participation is literally above and beyond the call of duty!! Of course I want to thank everyone who has responded in some way, it's all been helpful.
I'm not saying this is the "bad news", just the list of entities I've contacted that I've yet to hear back from, but hope will contact me soon. So far, nothing from the National Coalition for homeless veterans http://www.nchv.org/index.cfm
or the Los Angeles Homeless Services Authority
http://www.lahsa.org/default.asp
In my mind, their participation is critical, so I'm going to keep trying. I also contacted the Director of Operations at the Amer-I-Can Program http://www.amer-i-can.org/, which was created by Hall of Fame running back Jim Brown. They are Los Angeles based, so I'm hoping they get in touch with me.
In addition, I've contacted the founder of Veterans and Families http://www.veteransandfamilies.org/home.html and am looking into the local chapter of Rolling Thunder http://www.rollingthunder1.com/. I watch the local KCALchannel 9 news on a regular basis, so I contacted them via their website. No pun intended, but stay tuned!
I am happy to report that I was able to get in touch with a contact for Los Angeles born actor and activist Edward James Olmos. Since I don't have a date set for an actual event, Mr. Olmos can't confirm or commit, but to even hear back from them was HUGE motivation to get this going.

That's all for now. The only other thing I want to mention is that I've gotten a lot of info and feedback regarding the military and veteran side of things, but finding info and interest in the non veteran homeless has been slow going. If anyone comes across more non veteran info and ideas, please let me know. Thanks again to everyone!!

Pete