 Okay, welcome to another edition of Hawaiian Uniform. I'm Calvin Griffin, your host, and thanks for tuning in. And for those of you who may not have seen the program before, here we talk about different issues concerning the military and also veterans and how it interacts with the community. Today, I have two special guests. One is Caroline Galouyou, okay, and also Rene Patakio, right? Patasio. Okay. Before we get into our conversation, one or two things I want to put out. If you're not familiar, they have the Oahu Veterans Council, or center, land in Foster Village, and there's a lot of good things going on down there with different programs. One is that on the 19th of July, there is a hep C screening, so you might want to go down and check it out. If you have any questions about what's going on with them, you can call 422-4000 and talk to Claire Levinson, and she'll give you an update on what's happening down there. Also there's been a news release at FEMA, it will be going door to door to let people know about, I guess, the insurance. If you suffered anything with the rains or whatever, they'll be interviewing people. So if somebody knocks on your door, you know, it might be them, but you can also call the cops and find out. That's it. Okay. At this point, Ms. Galouyou, may I call you Caroline? Oh, please. Please, please. Okay. And may I call you Rene? Of course. Well, not the same. Okay. Well, Caroline, the organization you're with, could you tell us a little bit about that? Yes. And one of the things you deal with. Well, also, before I do that, I want to tell you, my husband retired after 23 years in the Air Force, so we have a real connection here. Our organization, which my husband is the treasurer for, what is he? He's one of those. And it's Rainbow Family 808. And we stand up and advocate and support all families, meaning we're inclusive. We the people means everyone. And so when we started about four years ago, I'd already been working with Disadvantaged Youth and with another organization. And this one came up because of the homeless teens on the street. And that really touched me. While in the world, would parents allow their kids to be out on the street with no support? And so our focus, even though we do advocate for all families, our focus right now is the youth, because in the state of Hawaii, there is no law that gives them the right to check into a shelter. And so every time a new shelter opens, I get angry, because I know that the kids are still going to be out there on the street. And the best, our small organization, where 501C3 can do, is provide fresh vegetables, fresh fruits and dairy for a whole week. We take it down once a week to Yoh, which is youth outreach in Waikiki. And our kids are very smart. They can get there from any part of the island. And they have a shower or whatnot. That's basically what we do. So this next January, we're going to go back to the legislature, change those bills. They're the ones that make the laws. And so they have to change their laws, so it allows the kids to check it. OK. Question I have. We talked offline when I first met you. The military dependents. There we have people who are the parents of station over here. And for some reason, they are out there on the streets. This is the first time I heard about this. How widespread is it? And what is the military doing to go ahead and address this issue? Or, you know, what's happening? Well, we haven't taken it to the military. One of the things was most of the times in the military, I remember, the military member doesn't want people in his home business. So the military, it has not been addressed to them as far as I know. How I came back to it was a couple of weeks ago. I was on base at. What are they? I'm an old timer, so I was on Hickam. I was a joint, but it was a joint forces Pearl Harbor Hickam event on Hickam, and it was the pride of pride event. Listening to those young sailors and Air Force and Army and Marines that came, some of them talked about joining the military to get away from home environments, meaning that they were either being abused, it can be medical, physical, either because they're gay, because across the board, across the nation, and it works out here in Hawaii, 40 percent of all homeless youth are LGBT. And I'm just, see, I was almost in tears through the whole presentation because I didn't, you know, hearing what some of them had come from, that they come to the military to get away from abuse. If they're gay, then it's not just abuse in the family. It can be abuse in the community. And we already know that we have so many documented cases here in Hawaii. But there is that percentage. So whatever the percentage of military we have, which is a large percent, because we have Coast Guard as well on this main island, but then you also have them in varying degrees on all the other islands as well. So we cannot, and I really believe that that's, but the kids don't want to tell you when they're in these. They're they're hiding. Yeah, I don't know. So I'm going to have to do a little bit more research on that. I hope I didn't come into this with a false impression that I had all the answers. But I have wanted to get on bases. And I'm just retired now. So I have no really not too much standing other than I can go to the commissary. And if I wanted to use the medical and whatnot. But I would like to go to the the spouses clubs. That's something that's changed since I retired in 90. And so now we have spouses clubs. I'd like to come and just talk to them about it because not everyone lives on base. But there's enough people that live on base that will notice all of a sudden a family member is missing. We have to and nobody wants to ask because we don't know. Yeah, well, there's a lot of things that go on and within the military community. Some of the things we talk about around the program. Yeah, it's a very close knit. There's a lot of things that happen that the public is not aware of, you know, in the persona that everything's a hunky dory within the military community, which is not necessarily so because I think with some of the my opinion or what I see here is if there's any runaways that's from the military community, it may not have to do with sexual orientation. They say, OK, but what it may also have to do is with the stresses that a lot of these families are under with the multiple deployments, things of that nature. Then, you know, the mom or dad's are deployed. All these things come up. It's like, OK, I got to get out of here or whatever it is. There may not be that mechanism in place within the military community to address what's going on with a lot of the younger people going through. A lot of people don't realize and I brought this up in the past programs before. A couple of years ago, we lost more dependence by suicide here in the state of Hawaii than we lost troops in combat. And that's another thing that wasn't talked about. You know, I'm quite sure Renee is where, you know, a lot of things that goes on. But the thing is it has to be addressed. OK, even if, yeah, even if you haven't, you know, had the opportunity to do so, this is something I believe is so important that what I'm going to do, as with the program here, we will contact the military and we will allow them or ask them to give a response. OK, because the main thing we try we're going to do here in the program is give out information, not misinformation. That's right. Things is going to help people out. And, you know, that's the reason why I wanted to invite you to come on the program to broach this subject, because again, I was hopefully unaware of what was going on. And I think with a lot of people, you know. So anyhow, Renee, what are you familiar with or have any input on this? I'm not quite familiar with this issues, because I really might just focus now on helping veterans. Yeah. I know they exist. And I know there are support groups out there. Yeah. You might want to contact a family support center or something. There might be some help you can get there, because that's what they're there for, especially for military families. The other thing I want to follow up on is you mentioned that when these young people out on the streets, the day, what's the danger period? 24 hours, 48 hours before they get sucked in and so forth? They will be encountering drugs. They will be encountering sex trafficking. And so we really have to have people out there. And Yoh does that at night, because they only do that. It's just a drop-in center, and it's only open four days a week. That's all the money that they have. They're underneath the Waikiki Health Center. And so it's one program fighting amongst all the other programs, for money, for whatever. And so we have helped them, because we've changed their diets, you know, with the fresh fruits and vegetables. They couldn't get them before, they're getting that. So we give them a lot of things that they don't. And sometimes I can get certain things not only at Costco. Costco's my big, big person, because I can get lots of things for a good price. So I'm a penny pincher, I have to, because all of our money is donated from individuals. We don't have any grants, we haven't gone that route, because we're just, you know, we're sort of small. But look at four years, never missing one week. Yeah, there's another thing that I'll briefly mention is. Tell me about the different organizations out there that's helping people in many different ways. I'm surprised to find that there are thousands of non-profits over here. And a lot of them have redundant systems where they're not connecting the dots, talking to one another about what the, how to alleviate or, you know, some of these problems that's going on. It's like everybody got their own thing, like say I'm going to do my thing. I don't care what you do, but they may be doing the same thing. The end thing that we need to be thinking about, how it impacts the community, those who need to be helped. And I don't see that happening, like say for the large part, when you have thousands of non-profits over here on the island or the state this small, you know, something's not right here, you know. And I think the questions need to be asked by those individuals who are handling these different organizations. What is your purpose? What is your mission statement? Are you really trying to do something that's worthwhile or are you stroking yourself, you know? And I think that really needs to be, I mean, if we want to come up with some kind of code and answer to some of these problems, we need to talk about this in an open and honest way in a forum. The other thing that you mentioned before with some of the kids, they can't be signed and they can't go into the shelters. They can't sign out. And that's a law. And there's a pushback from some of the legislators? Well, it's a pushback also from the communities because one of the people at the legislator said to me in a closed door, I think the Catholic Church needs to step up to the plate because they have a large number of kids on the street that come because of religious things. You, women can't get pregnant if they're not married. So if a young girl gets pregnant and they go, I'm sorry, not in my church, not in my home. And so there they are out on the street at their most vulnerable, you know? And so I did, and there still is, one organization, it's a program run by the legislature and they have both senators and representatives on it. It's called the Kakey Caucus. But when we go to the Kakey Caucus, we're voling for attention to get our bills passed like I want a bill to open up for the kids. And others want, and see a lot of the agencies are funded by state and federal programs. So they want, they need to be there because they have to be front and center to make sure that their services are being, and I have nothing against them, but you're right. We need to work a little bit more together because, but the money that I've been drawing, or we've been drawing for over four years, is from individuals that either have been in that position they know, and I also, because I am a social worker, I have my master's in social work, I have reached out into other areas and the Navy called me many years ago because they had a sailor that had been accused of inappropriate behavior with another sailor. All right, speaking of appropriatenesses, we have to take a short break. We'll come back, didn't mean to interrupt you mid-sentence. We'll finish up on that then I want to get Rene as far as catch up on what he's doing. Okay, we're gonna take a short break, come back, this is Hawaii Uniform, I'm Calvin Griffin, stay tuned. Hi, I'm Bill Sharp, host of Asian Review here on Think Tech Hawaii. Join me every Monday afternoon from 5 to 5.30 Hawaii Standard Time for an insightful discussion of Contemporary Asian Affairs. There's so much to discuss and the guests that we have are very, very well informed. Just think, we have the upcoming negotiation between President Trump and Kim Jong-un, the possibility of Xi Jinping, the leader of China remaining in power forever. We'll see you then. Hi, I'm Pete McGinnis-Mark and every Monday at one o'clock, I'm the host of Think Tech Hawaii's Research in Manoa. And at that program, we bring to you a whole range of new scientific results from the university, ranging from everything from exploring the solar system to looking at the earth from space, going underwater, talking about earthquakes and volcanoes and other things which have a direct relevance, not only to Hawaii, but also to our economy. So please try and join me one o'clock on a Monday afternoon to Think Tech Hawaii's Research in Manoa. And see you then. Okay, welcome back to Hawaii Uniform. And again, we're in the conversation about what's happening with the in-military community. Carolyn is updating us on what's happening with the homeless situation and some other things also. And also again, Brene, you came back to join us. Brene, continue, but Brene, how's things going with you? Last time we had you on the program, of course, you're a veterans advocate. You're trying to do things to help people alleviate or address PTSD, all these things. Let our viewers know what you're doing and how it's going. Good, thank you. Actually, I hosted a panel of psychologists, artists, doctors at our last month's Vietnam Veterans of America chapter 858 meeting and attended by the organization members in which they filled out some questions about how we could help people with PTSD or any type of trauma that is causing them pain, emotionally, physically, whatever. And it turned out very good. And there are people out there who are willing to take patients or clients, if you may call them, to help them with their program. The Veterans Choice Program is what we are trying to tap into in which veterans have the option to choose a provider that is not necessarily available in the Veterans Administration Program, so they can go there and get the help that they need if they're not satisfied with what is going on in their current situation. So that program is available. It is highly encouraged, especially for our chapter, because sometimes we know and you know that VA is not a perfect place for some people. And with all the issues that we have with the VA in the past, some people get a little bit kinda, they tend to shy away from the VA. So they offer that program, so they have the option to go to a provider that can provide them the help that they need, and that's what we do. Well, it seems to be, no matter what issue we're talking about lately, homelessness, veteran situations, or whatever, it seems to be a problem where there is a disconnect. We're talking in this case about the VA, we know there's problems with that, all right? Of course, we're familiar with the number, I mean, the number of suicides, especially among veterans that are not being talked about as being underreported. We have roughly about 120,000 vets give or take over here. And the thing is, with these different programs in place, oh, that's well and good. But there are times where, systemically, there's some problems that are not being addressed on the people or the personnel are not handling it in the right way. And sometimes by having someone who's been there, done that, got the t-shirt and all that, like a mentor like you do with the Veterans Treatment Court, all right? This is what we need more of. And I believe there are more people out there that want to get involved. But from what I'm hearing in a lot of cases, even if you want to volunteer, you want to do something that benefits whatever issue it is. Then you got the bureaucratic mess, we got people who tell you, well, okay, well, I know you're good hearted and everything else. But the thing is, you can't do that, all right? We have certain people, we have designated spots where these people can go to to find the help that they need. We don't need your help, all right? It's nice that you care, but stay away, all right? But we need to break through that on all levels because if we really want to go ahead and do something that's going to be worthwhile for the community, all the different issues we're talking about, we need to get back to the grass which we need to allow these people, whoever they are, and they're sincere in doing something, to be part of the solution and not part of the problem. And I think that on too many levels, I keep stressing this over and over again, we need to go ahead and do that. So, I'm gonna let you continue out of the way, I'll get off my soapbox. Yeah. You know, there are a lot of people who are still not comfortable going to the system. That's why we're out there really trying to put the word out that, hey, you don't have to deal it yourself. You don't have to go to the VA if you don't want to. That's why this option is available. And give it a tie. I mean, there are plenty of holistic ways of getting the treatment or healing that they need. It doesn't have to be just the VA way. And I've seen yoga, I've seen Pilates, I've seen meditation, I've seen many different modalities that could really help people with their pain. Yeah. Yeah, and that's what we're trying to promote. Caroline's saying I thought this at you. Do you see, I mean, with all that you do with your organization, I'm quite sure that you're running the people who do want to help to do something and they run into certain speed bumps. Speed bumps. Well, yes. I keep getting people wanting to help out with us when we go to yoga. They have to go through training because this is for the safety of the kids to make sure that the people that are there are vetted, have no back. They do a fingerprint test and all that because you also have some predators out there that like to get in that way. So we have to be very careful. So I just return them over to yo and have, I said, but if you're going to be a volunteer, you have to take the training. You have to, you know, you have to, you know. And that's just the rules. One of the things I was gonna, my husband is a veteran and he was invited to go to a veteran's coffee group out in Kapolei. They have one. And so I was thinking that would be one way for people to get, to get involved for you. Because, and when he went, he never got to sit with the guys. He had to go through, they wanted to make sure he was a vet. They wanted to make sure, you know, what his background was and whatnot. But he's going to start going to them because we met someone in a restaurant and they were sitting at the next table. So that's other ways people can get help without going to the big pink lady on the hill. Yeah. The same way, you know, we see how these things intertwined. Yes. Right now I want to ask you, what you're trying to do to help the veterans out? Does it come up sometime, the subject matter, like say, of whoever the individual is, they're dependent. Some of the problems they may be having are issues that, you know, are affecting them or delaying some of the positive responses to some of the treatments. Sometimes people, especially people with PTSD, are very close of divulging that information or admitting that they have PTSD. So sometimes it takes time to really build that trust for them to crack open. That's why you need to build that relationship. Got a dumb question for you. Is there anything called generational PTSD? Or again, we have like, say a lot of things that's going on within the families, whoever the family, the military members, they're going through it and therefore that's in a certain way being passed. So I don't know if there's a term or a terminology for it, but of course, distress is, you know, do you notice any of that or are some of the children that you're running to, do they divulge anything like that? That's just one of the reason why they may be out there in the streets or left the military environment. I have not heard, could be, but trauma could be a constant, anything, like in the military, it's usually related to something that is traumatic, especially when people go to war, come back, and they're not the same, because the experience they had in the war zone is really just traumatic for them to, that sometimes they hang onto it themselves. What I found when we were in the military that there are these stressors, depending on whatever the military member is involved in, and one of our friends, he caused stress within his family because he was just a really angry person, and his children couldn't eat a meal. They never knew when he was going to come in. He ended up having a girlfriend somewhere else. That's why they never knew when he was coming for dinner. And the kids would go to sit down to eat and they were always on guard. If dad comes in, he's gonna throw a fit and disrupt dinner and maybe throw dishes at people and those kids would really shake. And I didn't know this because we were church friends and then they kept coming over and our house has always been an open house. And come over and have dinner. Hey, we're having such and such. Do you wanna have it with us and come over? And she told me after many months, almost a year, of I was going, don't, they wanna go home. And she said, my kids only can eat safely at your house because they know their father's not gonna come in and disrupt the meal. That ends up being generational because of what he did to them. They had nervous stomachs. They were having medical problems, but the military didn't wanna look at that because and he had told her, do not take this to the doctors because they're gonna look at me. Yeah, I can understand. See, so that happens. Or the poor military comes back and there's so many stressors. We could spend how many days talking about stressors from those in the military. Yeah, you know. Okay, we're getting down to the wire, but the one thing as far as this particular issue, yeah, I know it's difficult if there's certain things in time and place on how to deal in the military. But once the question is out there, or it begs to be answered, we need to do something about it. That's right. We got about 45 seconds anyhow. Renee, you get 10 seconds or 15 seconds. You wanna give out any information or follow up on it? Yes, actually, it can call me. My number is 808-800-7232. I do all kinds of meditation, active, guided, or silent meditation, or even do calligraphy. But mostly meditation to really just calm the mind because when you quiet the mind, the body rests and gets healed. Great, okay. We're gonna do a follow up, and then maybe sometime in the future, you'll have a program here on the station. Caroline, again, I think we're down to 15 seconds, but... Call me, my phone number's in the book. Well, there aren't any books anymore. 779-9078. And if you have questions about not seeing a child in a family next door, across the street, in your room, let us know because these families need to be re... If there is a value of saving the family, regardless of whether they're LGBT or not, there's all kinds of reasons that they're out in the street. Okay, in about three seconds that we have left, I wanna thank both of you for coming on the program. Thank you for tuning in. We'll do a follow up, especially about the military thing. And God bless until that time.