Alison Perry - A Community For Veterans

Alison Perry is a Licensed Professional Counselor and military-family member who has worked with veterans for over 15 years in government, private, and nonprofit settings. Her passion is healing combat trauma across the lifespan. After six years'  clinical counseling in the Department of Veterans Affairs, Alison left to pursue her vision of "a place where veterans could work on the land, sleep under the stars, and be in a community of other veterans". 

She founded Central Oregon Veterans Ranch (COVR) in 2014 and currently serves as its Executive Director. You can learn more about the ranch at COVRanch.org. Alison taught for four years at Oregon Department of Public Safety in the Behavioral Health program, co-facilitating Veterans' Awareness for law enforcement students. She has been the recipient of the Red Cross Hero Award (2009) and the Bend Chamber of Commerce's Community Hero Award (2017). 

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Unknown: 0:06

This was really a model that was meant to reduce stigma and and kind of change the paradigm of the medical model where we view veterans as disabled or disordered. And really to say, Hey, these are people whose lives have been changed by combat but that doesn't mean they're just a mental health patient so to speak. So the ranch is really a community for our our region's veterans.

Michael Sipe: 0:32

Welcome to cascade views a discussion with Central Oregon leaders. Your host is Michael SIPE, local business and community leader Best Selling Author of the Avada principle in candidate for Oregon State Representative for House District 53, which encompasses southern Redmon, sisters tombolo, and Northern bend. The purpose of these discussions is to share the views and insights of local leaders from a variety of community sectors on a range of timely and important regional and state issues. With that now, here's your host, Michael SIPE. Thanks for joining us on cascade views. My name is Michael SIPE, and I'll be your host. My guest today is Allison Perry. Allison is a licensed professional counselor and military family member who's worked with veterans for over 15 years in government, private and nonprofit settings. Her passion is healing combat trauma across the lifespan. After six years clinical counseling in the Department of Veterans Affairs, Allison left to pursue her vision of a place where veterans could work on the land, sleep under the stars, and be in a community of other veterans. She founded Central Oregon veterans ranch in 2014, and currently serves as its executive director. You can learn more about the ranch at C ov R. And then it's co VR Ranch, but it looks like CO VR and so co VR ranch.org. Allison taught for four years at Oregon Department of Public Safety in the behavioral health program, co facilitating veteran's awareness for law enforcement students. She's been the recipient of the Red Cross Hero Award in 2009. And the recipient for which I nominated her actually the big Chamber of Commerce's Community Hero Award in 2017. Alison so glad you're on the show.

Unknown: 2:32

Good morning. It's so great to be here with you, Mike.

Michael Sipe: 2:36

It's a real pleasure to have you on the show today. I remember sitting in Starbucks in house, I don't know it was in the one there in North Bend in probably 2013 or 14. You might remember better but but that was back when the Central Oregon Ranch was your dream. And you were in the early stages of raising money launching the nonprofit. It's just amazing what you've accomplished. I know it hasn't been easy. And I just want to acknowledge your personal tagline that I I crack up bad every time I see it, never give up. Never give up. And I know it's been a journey. So fill us in just a bit on the inspiration for the ranch and what it took to get it launched.

Unknown: 3:16

Sure. The inspiration is really a story I come back to and I never get tired of telling this story. It's just so powerful. I worked in the VA for six years as a trauma therapist and this was at the Portland VA Medical Center and was working with a young veteran 22 years old who had served in Iraq and combat had come back home and had been sexually assaulted actually by his combat buddy and was also having his first symptoms of paranoid schizophrenia and just a very traumatized young man, very interesting young man and really just formed a strong therapeutic relationship with him but saw him struggle in the institution of the VA and got a call one day that he was in the psychiatric lockdown unit five c at the Portland VA and was throwing furniture and threatening staff. And Mike I just might my first reaction was just really anger honestly because I thought if I'd been through everything this young man had been through and I was in a you know locked lockdown facility fluorescent lights, white walls and doctors poking and prodding me I thought I might react the same way. And I just literally had this flash of a vision and I said this to my social work colleagues, you know exactly what you said in the introduction. I wish we had a sheep ranch out east where we could send these vets when they got home or they could work on the land, sleep under the stars and be in a community of other veterans. And so really Mike the key word there is community. This was really a model that was meant to reduce stigma and and kind of change the paradigm of the medical model of We view veterans as disabled or disordered. And really to say, Hey, these are people whose lives have been changed by combat, but that doesn't mean they're just a mental health patient, so to speak. So the ranch is really a community for our our region's veterans. And, yeah, building, it has been quite an adventure. I think that was 2014 2015. When I met you, when we were just really making connections and trying to get things off the ground. We partnered with a private investor to get the property and began operations in 2015. And since that time, we've really built I say, Mike, that there are three pillars of the ranch agriculture, peer support. And in the program, we're going to work to get launched in the next year, which is specialized end of life care for combat veterans. The last the last years have been focused on building those ag programs and, and our peer support programs. And I'm happy to say more about that, that I kind of want to I want to pause for a minute, I don't want to go too into depth, right?

Michael Sipe: 6:09

Well, actually, I would, I would love to hear just a bit more of description about the ranch, like what, what's on it and and maybe directives for the vets that you serve. And, and maybe just a little summary of the of the services that you provide?

Unknown: 6:23

Sure. So we are, we're located centrally right between bend and Redmond off 61st Street, actually, and we're a 19 acre working farm. So we have a greenhouse business. Some of your listeners may have seen our lettuce at Newport market, we have a vertical tower hydroponic system. So we're able to run a greenhouse business as well as provide education, to veterans about hydroponics and crop production. We also have free community garden plots for veterans and veteran families. And we're in the middle of a big pasture rehab project. So our end goal is to sort of have a demonstration site and raise livestock. Really, the agriculture is a way to engage that it's a I call it going through the back door. Rather than saying to a combat veteran that's struggling, Wow, you really need to go to the VA or you probably need counseling. You can say, you know, Hey, did you know that there's this ranch that has all these different agriculture programs that you can go check out and peer support groups and etc. So the agriculture is really a vehicle to get vets engaged. It's also a way to get people involved in being productive giving back learning growing, I refer to the ranch as a post traumatic growth model. We want to move away from this this vision of veterans as disabled disordered broken, because that's oftentimes how they view themselves after war. And and and then that's just reinforced oftentimes, by getting a diagnosis of PTSD or being labeled disabled. What we want to do is allow veterans to find their inherent worth and value. Sometimes that's simply just by being a member of community, and being present to your, to your tribe, to your, to your teammates, to your fellow veterans. So the agriculture is a healthy, fun way to get veterans involved in working together. And again, learning and literally growing as people. We also really facilitate peer support at the ranch. This is not, hey, we're the doctors, you're the patient come here. This is about veterans helping each other, they know each other better than anyone else. They've had the same experiences, lived experiences. And that's really where the magic happens is getting them together, getting them talking. And they can go as far as they want, or not talk about combat or their traumatic experiences at all. It's really their at their own pace, their own comfort level. And that happens in informal ways whether veterans are just out interacting on the property, or whether they're actually participating in peer support groups, and we were just awarded a contract last fall from Oregon Health Authority to hire a veteran's peer support specialist. We have you know, Mike, it's amazing how much we've grown the last two years actually, during the pandemic, we've actually doubled in growth each year. And I think that's due to the fact that we have a food production facility and outdoor space, but also just, I think, for everyone across the board in our nation right now. Human human to human interaction and contact is so important and we see that so much with our vets. So the ranch has really been a sanctuary. It's been a haven for them. So we do have formal peer support groups, the vets center, some of their PTSD support groups have been meeting at the ranch. It's really a community hub. And then as you know, we're really working the focus this year is to open the home that we have on the property that's been fully remodeled and licensed with the state back in 2017. As an adult foster home, it's currently inactive the license, but the house is basically turnkey, ready at this point, it's a matter of building the partnerships and finding the investments, the donors, the investors to, to really help us launch that sort of final leg of our mission, if you will.

Michael Sipe: 10:35

Well, help me understand just a little bit more about the issues that you see with the veterans that you're serving, what kind of situations caused them to be candidates to be at the ranch? What brings them out there? And what holds them there? What keeps them as part of the community that you describe?

Unknown: 10:51

That's a great question. I would say one of the biggest challenges for veterans, particularly our combat veterans is isolation. feeling disconnected from the general population from the culture, because of the experiences they've had, it's really hard to relate to people who haven't had similar experiences, there's all kinds of other, you know, challenges that veterans face coming back to our nation after having served in a war zone. And so getting them there can often be difficult, you know, we have a sheep ranch, and a lot of people joke about that. But there's actually a lot of deep symbolism around this idea of the shepherd, and the lost sheep. And I always refer back to Ezekiel, you know, that when one of my sheep is lost, I will go after them, I will bring them back, I will heal them, I will bind up their wounds. And so I kind of view the ranches, like we're the shepherds that bring veterans that are isolated back into the fold back into the flock into community with each other. So oftentimes, it takes a while to get them there, just because the trust issues are also really significant for veterans. But once we get them there, whether they're referred by a clinician family member, they find us online, they've just new to the area and looking up, you know, what kind of veteran services are available. And they think, Wow, that sounds really interesting. That sounds really different. And they come out. What engages them, I think, is there is an immediate sense of belonging, when vets come out, it's a very protected environment, Mike. So we really monitor the flow of civilian traffic. We don't allow children out during the week, because so many of our veterans have war related trauma around children. So we've heard veterans say repeatedly that they have not experienced this level of camaraderie since they got out of the military. So that number one, there's just that immediate sense of belonging, which is intriguing, because there's a national suicide researcher, Thomas joiner, who says that the two primary reasons people die by suicide are lack of sense of belonging, and feeling like a burden. And we see those hands down with our vets. And so if you think about this idea that they come out, and they immediately feel a sense of belonging, and then not only that, but they're actually giving back contributing, helping build the community, helping maintain the property, taking care of animals, growing food, that sometimes they're growing food for themselves, or they're growing it for us to donate to food banks. So that idea of feeling like a burden is, you know, really reduced because they're, they're feeling valued rather than feeling like a burden. Well, that's

Michael Sipe: 13:45

so good. You've got to have I mean, those are the are outcomes that are really attractive, but I bet you've got a couple of specific success stories that you obviously not using names, but can you give us a couple of anonymous success stories so we

Unknown: 14:03

can actually give you a success story and use a name because this is we just posted three new testimonial videos on our website. So I would refer your listeners to our website and is it it is actually c o v? ranch.org. So there's not two Rs just to make sure everybody, because our acronym is CO VR cover. But it's c o v ranch.org. So one story that I that I just love to tell and I will say we've had countless veterans just say that the ranch has saved their life. So that's that's one piece. But as I said, this isn't just about survival and surviving trauma. This is about thriving and growing. And so I love to tell the story of Jeremiah because it's really a story of post traumatic growth. Jeremiah is a marine Iraq combat veteran. He first came to the ranch at the end of 2024. harvest day we were we were clearing out our big hoop house which is where our victory garden Are and we met Jeremiah he was referred by his girlfriend who I met at a coffee shop. So pretty random. He came out and he said, Wow, I didn't, I didn't know you guys existed. I'm gonna start coming out here every week, Jeremiah had dropped out of college, he was frustrated with not being able to relate to his peers, sort of some of the politics that happened in in school, sometimes he just was frustrated, dropped out of school, had kind of dropped out of the VA run his course with the VA, and was just kind of drifting didn't didn't know what he wanted to do kind of had a semi committal relationship with his girlfriend. And literally did start coming out every week, started volunteering in our greenhouse, started helping out on the property started, join joined the peer support group, we have an Iraq and Afghanistan combat vet peer support group. So he was in this, you know, doing this regularly for months, and then it became a year. And I ran into him one day, right before his peer support group. And I said, How's it going? He said, it's, it's, it's going, okay. And I said, really? And he said, Well, it's hard. He goes, I'm doing the work. So with his peers, he was really doing more of this personal growth work focused on you know, who he was what he wanted to do with his life. So let's flash forward. He said, he said, but it's good. He said, You know, he goes, you're, you're doing God's work here. And don't don't let anyone tell you otherwise. So flash forward a few more months, Jeremiah gets certified with the state, his peer support specialist. He is engaged, he has a baby on the way. And he got hired with Deschutes. County as a peer support specialist. Wow, what a story. Yeah, that's so cool. Yeah. So this, this mic is what happens when we need to engage veterans in community and support them. And when they're when they're part of that clan, that tribes that they were part of when they were in the military. And they have their brothers and sisters who have their back. And they're like, hey, this this is about how can we support you to grow post combat? Who are you now what do you want to do with your life, and I can tell you many other stories like that. Veterans who dropped out of school, but started coming to the ranch, they were too anxious to go to class. But by coming out to the ranch every single week, and feeling safe in relating to peers and getting support, they were then able to go back to school. So there's just so many wonderful stories of that, again, what I call post traumatic growth.

Michael Sipe: 17:30

That's fantastic. So you're, you're clearly doing great work. But if you could wave a magic wand, and get whatever you want for the ranch, like, see where it goes next? What would that be? What's your dream now?

Unknown: 17:45

My dream right now is launching that final part of our vision, our mission and Mike sometimes I refer to the ranch as a monastery for veterans because we have different ages and eras working together caring for the land, taking care of each other. And there is even though we're not a religious organization, there is a sense of the sacred there, there's a sense that this is a spiritual place. In all the veterans know, our goal to open this home on the property for specialised end of life care for combat veterans, helping veterans who have suffered the wounds of war in their life, to die in peace, and to harvest their wisdom for younger generations and to help younger veterans care for their dying brothers and sisters at the end of life. So my magic wand would be to get the investors, the donors, the people who are passionate about our nation's veterans who have served and lived with the wounds of war their entire life, for us for our freedom, is to get those people who want to support this. We're going to be starting some committees and and focus groups this year. Developing continuing to develop our community partnerships. We're very engaged and networked in the community. But it would be to say, we are ready to open and we are ready to receive your family members and your patients and your clients who have combat trauma. Within a few months or a few years of the end of their life and they can be any age they just don't, you know don't have to just be old. I'll share a quick story, Mike about one of our board members whose father was a World War Two Marine who fought and Guadalcanal. She's been committed to our mission for years, several years. But she had the experience of moving her 95 year old Marine Corps father into assisted living. This man had lived independently his whole life. He was incredibly proud of being a Marine Corps veteran, high functioning, and she saw him slowly decline in that in that skill in that nursing facility over a year's period and he died last year on Fourth of July his favorite holiday. She found out later on after he was in Kansas. She wasn't live him all the time at the end and nobody could be because he was in this facility. But one of the caregivers said, Debbie, at the very end of beer father's life, all he wanted to do was talk about the war. And there was no one there to listen to him, there was no one there to hear him, there was no one there to honor that experience. And that's not even talking about veterans who are going to be struggling with moral injury in all kinds of issues that come up at the end of their life. But it is a profound, beautiful, sacred time. And my dream is that we we are able to receive those veterans into this home within the next year or two, that's that's my dream.

Michael Sipe: 20:43

What a beautiful vision. I just went through that with my father in law. And, and you're right, the those those memories of service are so poignant and so prominent in the last days that being able to recognize and listen to those is a is an incredible service. So how can we support you, and the rich.

Unknown: 21:07

So please go to our website and check out what we have to offer. Again, c o v ranch.org. Obviously, all all nonprofits love financial contributions. That's a given. But we have different ways folks can volunteer and you can you can contact us through their website to find out more about that, as I said, we have limited civilian presence on the property. But we do have events we have this year, we're going to have our fifth annual Armed Forces Day plant sale. So it's the third Saturday in May, so that, you know, we love to invite the community in for special events like that, that's definitely a way that you can support us. We have a peace garden on the property where we sell bricks for what we call our cornerstone members. And you can see pictures of that on our website as well. But just get in touch with us. We also provide for our workdays for our veterans, we have amazing people who cook amazing food for our vets, we like to feed them well and give them really good food. And so that's another way folks can contribute as well and just spread the word. If you know a veteran if you know a veteran, you know, have a veteran family member or neighbor, let them know about Central Oregon veterans ranch.

Michael Sipe: 22:23

Well, Alison, it's been great having you on the show, congratulations on all you've accomplished. I know, it probably seems like, forever, you've been working on this so hard for for so long. But really, when you look at it, it's you've accomplished an amazing amount in a very short amount of time. And as of that, I thank you for that. It's an incredible service that you're, you're providing my my, my high point of the day, I think is just reflecting on the the isolation challenges, you know, we've come to a couple of years where we're almost all of us feel the the challenge of isolation, and it's, it's 10 times 100 times worse for for event, as you've described, and so the community that you've developed and the the way to break that, that chain of of isolation and and get these guys and gals together is just really extraordinary. So thanks so much for your time and your work. Thanks for the ranch. And thanks for your message today. Allison,

Unknown: 23:27

thank you so much. It's been an honor. Speaking with you. I really appreciate it.

Michael Sipe: 23:32

My guest today has been Allison Perry, you can learn more about the Central Oregon veteran's ranch at c o v ranch.org. That co v ranch.org. Thanks for joining us.

Narrator: 23:45

Thanks for listening to cascade views with Michael SIPE. To find out more about Mike the upcoming election. The key issues he's focused on and his campaign to represent Central Oregon and Salem as a state representative. Visit www dot a voice for Central oregon.com that's www dot a voice for Central oregon.com You can get your own copy of Michael SIPE best selling book the Avada principle@amazon.com. And finally, please vote in the upcoming election. Your Voice Matters