Local responders say they care more about troops than trophies

CANANDAIGUA — Their work was award-worthy long before the Oscar folks said so.

When the 2015 Academy Awards air Sunday, Feb. 22, locals might be shocked to discover that one of Canandaigua’s most far-reaching and effective emergency resources is hidden behind closed doors at 400 Fort Hill Ave. in Canandaigua.

Tucked innocuously onto the second floor of Building 37 at the Canandaigua VA Medical Center is the national Veterans Crisis Line, which receives more than 22,000 calls each month and has gotten more than 1.3 million calls since July 2007. Staffed by more than 300 trained, caring responders, the Crisis Line literally hums with activity 24 hours a day, 365 days a year, serving veterans and active duty personnel and their families struggling with life issues or contemplating suicide because of physical or psychological wounds, relationship difficulties or the challenges of returning to civilian life.

“You drive onto this campus from Fort Hill and you have no idea what goes on in the back of this campus and how it affects the rest of this country,” said Crisis Line Responder Robert Griffo.

HBO cameras were on hand four separate times in 2012 and 2013 at the Veterans Crisis Line center to capture the traumas endured by America’s veterans, as seen through the work of Griffo and other trained responders at the hotline. Out of more than 110 hours of filming came the HBO documentary “Crisis Hotline: Veterans Press 1,” which first aired Nov. 11, 2013, and was nominated this January for an Oscar in the documentary short subject category.

The film captures extremely private moments where responders, many of whom are veterans or veterans’ family members, attempt to interrupt the thoughts and plans of suicidal callers to steer them out of crisis. The viewer never hears the voice of the veteran in crisis — the stories are told only through the voices and expressions of those responding live from the Crisis Line.

When the 87th Academy Awards go live on ABC, director Ellen Goosenberg Kent and producer Dana Perry will be listening for their names, as will local responders, veterans around the world and residents in Canandaigua.

But for many of the professionals featured in the documentary, the Oscar nod is moot.

“Whether the documentary got nominated or not is irrelevant to what we do,” said Griffo, who has been at the Veterans Crisis Line for 4 1/2 years. “In fact, at times I thought filming it was a pain in the neck. But I knew the documentary could possibly be seen by a lot of veterans and give them pause to say, ‘maybe I need to call these people.’"

It was an important step to take.

One veteran dies by suicide in America every 80 minutes, according to the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs. And since 2001, more veterans have died by their own hand than in combat in Iraq and Afghanistan. Just 1 percent of Americans have served in the military, but former service members account for 20 percent of all suicides in the U.S.

In an interview with HBO, which can be read in full at www.hbo.com and via www.mpnnow.com, director Ellen Goosenberg Kent expanded.

“The suicide rate among veterans is staggering and beyond heartbreaking,” she told HBO in the interview. “About 22 veterans kill themselves every day, and this has been going on for years.”

A wealth of talent

Kent described Veterans Crisis Line responders as “superbly well-trained people, deeply compassionate and about a quarter of them are veterans themselves.” Some have even been suicidal themselves or had family members return home with post-traumatic stress, she stated in her HBO interview.

Griffo, a former U.S. Coast Guardsman in Alaska and former crime victim specialist in Ontario and Steuben counties, launched a career on Wall Street after military service. By 1990 he became by his own admission “a very sick, drug-addicted man.”

“I lost everything and ended up on the streets in a box,” he said. “I have a good life today, but I learned the benefits of helping others because I was helped. It’s a very rich job in that regard.”

Griffo’s experiences have equipped him well to aid struggling veterans today. He said his role as a responder is “not a job, it’s a vocation.”

“I love coming here, I love the people I work with,” said Griffo. “I’m grateful they gave me the opportunity to work here.”

Health science specialist and responder Elizabeth Olson has been at the Veterans Crisis Line for 7 1/2 years, since its launch in July 2007. When she read the job description, her first thought was “who in their right mind would do that?” Two weeks later she applied for the job and has never looked back.

“It’s extremely gratifying, and it changes your life,” Olson said. “It’s incredibly priceless.”

The registered nurse, program manager, case manager, community mental health nurse, developmental disabilities specialist and hospice worker comes to the table with a wealth of experience.

“She’s in the top five of responders,” Griffo said of Olson. “I’ve heard her on the phone for hours, talking somebody down. And somebody who wouldn’t give out any information, three hours later was doing whatever she asked, because of how she approaches the calls.”

Responder Maureen McHenry has been on the job 4 1/2 years.

“They pay us well to do the job we do, but it’s not the paycheck that brings me back day after day,” said McHenry. “It’s the people that I work with and the opportunity to help people when they call.”

One night when she was working the overnight shift, McHenry answered the phone and it was “a young guy” who had been calling the hotline repeatedly and was being abusive to responders, eventually causing the termination of calls. This time was different.

“I let him swear, I let him yell, I let him do whatever he needed to do,” she said. “And about halfway through the call he was apologizing for how he had acted, and at the end of the call he was crying.”

McHenry eventually learned that the 25-year-old Marine had been in an explosion in Iraq where his arm had nearly been blown off. To his horror, he wasn’t able to drag one of his friends to safety, but instead got himself to safety and watched his friend die.

“I sat there and I just listened to him, and it was huge,” said McHenry. “That’s when I thought, we are really doing something here.”

Filming challenges

Taping was done over the course of about nine months, in four separate installments.

“It was nerve-racking,” said McHenry. “The calls they taped with me were all really high crisis calls. The ones that made it to the documentary were two gentlemen and they both had loaded guns.

“The more intense the call is, the calmer I become,” she said. “But with the camera and the recording devices and the producer and all the other people standing behind the camera looking at you, it’s very nerve-racking — very nerve-racking.”

At the time of filming, Olson had two sons deployed in active duty — one for 19 years and the other for nine years. Her daughter is married to a Marine. So the issues she dealt with then and now on the phone hit very close to home. From a personal standpoint, she said the filming was “really hard.”

But it’s also difficult to help people understand that “you go from an informational call, and the next call you get is where someone is standing on a bridge,” Olson said.

McHenry agreed. Waiting between calls is probably one of the most stressful times, because you don’t know what’s coming next, she said. And it could be a five-minute or one-second gap.

“You never know what is going to be on the other end of that call,” she said. “I’ve had people tell me ‘you have 10 seconds to tell me why I shouldn’t pull that trigger.’ Or you have somebody who cries for the first five minutes. Or you have a mom calling about her son. The anxiety of waiting for the phone to ring can be very stressful.”

Public Affairs Officer Dan Ryan said in addition to the responders featured in the documentary, the entire Crisis Line staff are to be commended for their work.

“During the 110-plus hours of filming, many Crisis Line responders participated in the project,” he said. “Although they may not be seen in the film, sharing their experiences with the producers contributed greatly to the success of the documentary.”

Kent told HBO that on the production side, it was challenging to film without being able to hear the callers. Since they are never taped by the hotline — to protect their anonymity — Kent also had no access to their side of the conversation. Conveying the anguish, the suffering and the details of the veterans’ experiences without hearing about them first-hand, or seeing their faces was challenging. It was up to the responders’ compassionate reactions to tell the story.

It was also difficult, Kent told HBO, that there was often a lack of resolution, especially in situations where calls ended abruptly or it was clear the veteran had a long road ahead, a difficult bureaucracy to navigate and other immediate crises in their lives.

In real life, storylines don’t wrap up neatly or on schedule. Responders said they rarely hear “the rest of the story” once a call concludes. It’s a condition they’ve come to accept as part of the job.

It’s the message, not the movie

“I think when HBO was here we were all a little nervous about what sort of spin they were going to put on it,” said McHenry. “They spent seven hours at my house on Christmas Eve filming me and my family. It was nerveracking to think ‘what are they going to do with this?’ And you just have to trust.”

In the end she was happy with the outcome.

“They put us in a light that is true,” she said, adding that “they showed a lot of intense phone calls, and not every phone call we get is that intense.”

Some of the responders’ best work would be very boring to people watching a movie, Griffo said.

“The one thing I was very happy about is that it did show that when we need to, we become very intense on helping that person,” said Griffo. “Whether it’s doing a rescue and finding a veteran that doesn’t want to be found but is suicidal, or talking down a veteran who is in crisis and is suicidal or homicidal. The documentary was able to capture the intensity.”

There was a lot of bad press about the VA in 2014, Griffo said. And responders know that — they get phone calls from veterans who remind them of it, he said.

“But we remind ourselves that we are VA employees and we give a crap — we care,” he said. “I think the documentary reinforced that to the public. These are men and women who are not here for the pay, but to serve the men and women who have served our country.”

Spreading the word

Ryan said he hopes the recognition the documentary is receiving will encourage veterans to call for “confidential support 24 hours a day, seven days a week, 365 days a year, even if they are not registered with VA or enrolled in VA health care.”

Not enough veterans know about the crisis center — Griffo is sure of it. The line, which used to be called a suicide line, was changed in 2011 to a crisis line, he said. That opened it up to many veterans who were not suicidal, but were having a crisis and gave it a call. But the word needs to be spread.

“Honestly, who isn’t in crisis at some point?” said Griffo. “Whatever stressors are going on — economic, interpersonal, medical, the death of a loved one, post traumatic stress, adjustment disorders, coming to the end of your life as a Korean vet or an elderly Vietnam veteran — the opportunity is there to help you get through it.”

Veterans also need to be assured they can make a call and they’re not going to have police standing at their door in five minutes, Ryan said. Less than 6 percent of all calls result in that scenario.

“We don’t always jump in and send the fire department and police,” Olson echoed. “In this economy, the last thing we want to do is make it worse by calling an ambulance, because that’s a $1,200 bill. You’re not doing them a favor if you do that.”

The goal, Olson said, is to connect veterans with services without calling in emergency responders, without traumatizing veterans and their neighbors and the gossipers.

In very specific situations, responders team up with “social service associates” who “can find a needle in a haystack in a matter of minutes,” Griffen said.

“I don’t think the people in Canandaigua have any idea what’s going on on the second floor of this building,” said Griffo. “And how people from all over the country, and some parts of the world, will call us up, and we can do a rescue in Korea from Canandaigua, N.Y. It blows my mind still.”

Olson, Griffo and McHenry said they’ve talked with veterans and active duty servicemen and women from all over the globe: Alaska, Florida, Afghanistan, Guam, Philippines, Germany, Camp Casey at the Demilitarized Zone in South Korea, and from tents in Iraq.

And it’s not just veterans in crisis who can call the hotline: it’s the mothers, the fathers, the grandmothers, the sisters, the cousins, the teachers, Olson said. Anyone who has concern for a family member who’s a veteran or in active duty.

What’s the cost?

After this round of Academy Awards are handed out, work will go on at the Veterans Crisis Line. It will continue to be important, even life-changing for many who call. But what’s the toll on those who serve those who serve?

Olson said she sometimes experiences loss of appetite, loss of sleep and strained relationships.

“It’s hard to relate to people who are very materialistic and frivolous,” she said. “That has changed some of my friendships quite dramatically.”

Sometimes a song on the radio will remind her of someone she spoke to recently or long ago.

“You remember the kid you talked off the bridge — twice,” she said. “You remember the guy with C-4 (plastic explosive) strapped to his abdomen. You never forget things like that, so they’re with you. I wouldn’t say they’re like having PTSD flashbacks, but they’re pretty damn close.”

McHenry said the job is “the best and worst job” she’s ever had. And it most definitely takes a toll on personal relationships.

“I think you give so much here at work — every phone call takes a piece of you and you give it to the person you’re on the phone with — that you’re less able to deal with people who aren’t empathetic and who are not emotionally supportive, people who are not helping you down the road in your own life,” McHenry said. “You just can’t do it anymore.”

Griffo said he likes to smile and joke and laugh, and that gets him through the day. He’s a firm believer “that every day above dirt is a great day.” Though he does get frustrated when people whine about petty issues.

“I’ve become a bit intolerant of those who like to complain,” he said. “We get calls from vets, especially the homeless ones. They don’t have (any money). They just gave four years of their life in a combat zone, they come back, and now they’re in a state where they need a lot of help. I want to say to people in these social gatherings with petty complaints: Stop. Just stop. You’re insulting yourself.”

He said the Veterans Crisis Line and other similar services at the VA — the Veterans Homeless Call Center, the Women’s Call Center and the Caregivers Support Line — are staffed with “very smart people who could get jobs in any area they wanted to.”

“There are a lot of licensed social workers, nurses, people who came from other professions, security, police — they could find other work,” said Griffo. “They’re here because they want to help people. We’re serving our country again.”

Griffo is convinced the Veterans Crisis Line has put Canandaigua on the map for veterans all over the world.

“There’s a vet somewhere in Banana Falls, Iowa, that knows where Canandaigua, N.Y., is because of this crisis line,” said Griffo. “And I think the community should be proud of that, considering where this VA was going to go in 2007 (when it was targeted for possible closure). I think it’s important that they know they’re getting a big bang for their taxpayer buck around here.”

By the numbers

1,349,000 — Calls received by the Veterans Crisis Line since its inception in July 2007

192,000 — Live chat visits received by the Veterans Chat Line since its inception in July 2009

28,000 — Text users who have connected with the Crisis Line texting service since its inception in November 2011

240,000 — Referrals forwarded to local VA suicide prevention coordinators on behalf of veterans to ensure continuity of care

20 percent — Of all suicides in the U.S. each year are veterans

15 — Number of Veterans Crisis Line responders at its launch in 2007

255 — Number of Veterans Crisis Line responders, supervisors and managers today

64 — Number of Homeless Veterans Call Center responders, supervisors and managers today

Tune in

The 87th Academy Awards — 7 p.m. Sunday, Feb. 22, on ABC

“Crisis Hotline: Veterans Press 1” can be viewed on HBO and HBOGO

Links to the movie trailer and HBO Q&A with the director can be found at www.MPNnow.com

Veterans Crisis Line

Online www.veteranscrisisline.net

Confidential live chat www.veteranscrisisline.net

Confidential text message to 838255

Crisis Line toll-free call 1-800-273-8255, press 1

Support for deaf and hard of hearing individuals available

Other VA Call Centers

Caregiver Support Line (1-855-260-3274)

National Call Center for Homeless Veterans — 1-877-4AID-VET (1-877-424-3838)

Homeless Veterans Chat Line – www.veteranscrisisline.net

Women Veterans Call Center at 1-855-VA-WOMEN (1-855-829-6636)