As Veterans Day is tomorrow, we thought it would be a good way to kick off Veterans Week by talking with Scott Felt. He's the commander of the Disabled American Veterans National Service Officer, United Veterans Coalition XCOM, United Veterans Coalition Legislation and Benefits Protection Team. Scott, how do you fit all of that onto a business card? That's my first question.
That's a lot.
I only use about half of it.
Thank you well, nice to meet you as well.
You're kind of the guy in charge here in Colorado, the Disabled American Veterans Organization. Tell my listeners, a lot of people have heard of you, but maybe they don't know everything that DAV does.
What exactly do you guys do.
Well Disabled American Veterans. It'd begin back way long time ago, about one hundred and five years ago. A gentleman by the name of Robert Marx. He was an infantry captain that was injured during World War One, that Robert Mark mister Marx, Captain Marx would call him Captain Marx. Basically, terans on the road laying around in Cincinnati, Ohio, and he started advocating for veterans and then it grew from there right now, you know, distable American veterans is very
important to us in the state of Colorado. When I retired in twenty twenty from my very long, extensive career, I basically looked at they've reached out to me as far as support and help, and then once I started working with them, it just grew from there. I was able to grow within the veteran community in a quick and timely manner here in the state of Colorado, and I enjoy it every day. With what we do DAV in Colorado, we approximately have about nineteen thousand members in
the state itself. We have four things that we kind of criteria that we work on. First and foremost the claims, of course, and everybody knows that the claims that are six or excuse me, our five NSOs as well as our one national area supervisor. We work on that part and we're very happy with that because in the last year, last fiscal year, we have collected or we have compensated veterans in the state of Colorado and over one point nine billion dollars in compensation to our veterans, so we're
very happy about that. We also have a transportation program. So that's mainly second high that's been going on since nineteen twenty three, Dav's Transportation Coordination in the state of Colorado. We support all VA clinics, basically all VIA hospitals, including Cheyenne Via Medical Center and also Albuquerque Medical Center because we basically covered the entire state where all of our
veterans are. You know, in the state of Colorado, we have approximately last time I read, was over three hundred and sixty nine thousand veterans in there, and we try to support, Yes, we try to support every single one of them, either in the transportation side the claim side. Legislation, like you said, is very big. We're trying to work on that at a state level as well as a federal level. We focus a little bit more here on the state level. There's a lot of things we try
to work on to help support the veterans. You know, we have the property tax build that's very good, things like that for Colorado benefits, and that's what we're trying to increase to help support veterans all just not you know, device diverse veterans. It's not we're not just looking at the av veterans, but the entire veteran community and the state. So that's on there. And then lastly is but not least is we try to focus on our membership of course,
and you know we look at membership as well. It's like I'm sure that of course the Jerry, our benefit protection lead in our horse are assistant supervisor and so basically we don't charge anybody to be able to help
them or anything like that. We just want them to be part of I guess you want to say, I call it our extended family, so to speak, where we're able to help veterans and you know, rough no matter what time, no matter what demographic, no matter what you know, tribulations that veteran goes through, hopefully we can help them through that portion.
You know, there's so many people that.
Have served that have the attitude of you know, well, you know some other guy has it worse than I do, or some other soldier airman you know needs that or needs that or what what do you do with that?
Do you find that to be common?
Well, like you said, we try to get the word out. I want to say one of the big things that coming up on the air today is to thank you and your staff being able to you know, as far as having my personnel up here in the last three months or four months excuse me. We we came on in July again in August, and that has been grateful. We had a couple of info seminars that like you're
talking about getting to those veterans. It helped out. And with those just those three events that we had, we were able to serve about two hundred and fifty veterans that probably didn't even you know, some of them didn't even know that we had that. So I want to thank you guys for your due diligence. It's great to have people on that and what you're trying to do for the community entirely, the veteran community that we have,
so it's greatly appreciated. With the veterans on that portion, a lot of yeah, you're right, there's a lot of the older veterans are basically you know, it's very difficult for them to say that they you know, were injured or mentally physically in that aspect. You know, we tell our veterans like a lot of times that you know,
you have to take care of yourself. There's still your family members that you need to take care of when there's a fact of you have that veteran that just he's hit rock bottom and he can't go any further. You don't want to get to that level. So that's what we try to do. We try to prevent that. So DAV is very big into you know, we try to be proactive instead of reactive. And that's why I'm trying to do what I have once I took over as Department commander, being able to get out in the community.
I just got back from, you know, we were down south in the Four Corners things like that, trying to help to help our members down there, our chapters that we have down there. DAV has about thirteen chapters all over state of Colorado, you know, So we try to get out there and we try to support everybody that we can.
I appreciate that, Scott.
Do you guys have anything coming up this week specifically because of Veterans Day?
Yeah, So tomorrow we have our big event we've been for the past two weeks. We do what it's called it's a national our National Davy Office, it's our Military Event Night that we call it. And basically it's at the Golden Corral where we help celebrate, you know, Veterans Day. Of course, gold Corrals has been supporting with Camp Peril for many many years. Now right now we have all the Golden Corrals and basically in Denver, Colorado Springs area as well. I know the ones that I we help
support is one in this area. In our area Lakewood area we have Santa Fe as well as Thornton area Santa Fe. We're going to have the bagpipes out there this year. A lot of people like that around five o'clock if they want to come out and listen to them. I really like it, I really think. And that was basically our older veterans that taught the younger ones. You
know how important this is. We've had a real big, big response this year when it comes to volunteering, and it's great to see and it's great to see us all come together to help support everybody in that point Scott, how.
Can people if they want to volunteer, they need help or how can they get in touch with you?
Well, they could go online as well. You can go online and help volunteer. Dav has A has a great Uh.
What what really helps me with Dav.
Is they they have so many avenues. So many programs that can help veterans. One of the you know, besides the family caregiver support that's very big to be able. They can call online register any issues or province they may have that family caregiver with the veteran. They can call there and they can request support there. But we also have one thing that we do on our volunteer website and DAV dot org.
Uh.
It's a fact that at veteran if they're having issues or anything like that and there's somebody out there that wants to volunteer, they can go on there. They can basically you know, tap in and everything like that and say hey, I'm here to help. I'm here to volunteer, you know, and a lot of veterans will go on there they need support, like to redo a patch of roof or you know, help with long care or anything like that that they come up. So DAV has kind of thought of all of it when it goes on
their website, the DAV dot org. All kinds of things that they can do on there and if you you know, very simple, all you have to do is email us at office at Davcolorado dot org. It's the office symbol at Davcolorado dot org and you can request that. And I have a very very very good support staff over there in department, and they know exactly what to do
and how to take care of veterans. They've been doing it for a very long time, and they can get you in the right direction to our NSOs or where or the correct chapter to help support you.
And I just want to reiterate because there are so many people who think, oh, I'm not that bad off, or oh, you know, sure, I have horrible tonight's in my ears, or I having this issue, or my back is shot, or I have arthurright, all of these excuses. You need to understand that there's a lot of help
for you out there. And this is one of the things that that I think people don't re is that as we get older, all of those physical issues get harder to deal with, and if you're going to need some kind of help in long term care and things like, it's better to get in the system now and go ahead and get your rating taken care of.
And Scott, I cannot tell you how.
Much I appreciate you, all of the volunteers, everybody at DAV for what you do It's an incredibly important thing to take care of veterans who not only served but go.
Jacked up in the process. Need need some support because.
They wouldn't have necessarily had those injuries otherwise. I really appreciate it, and I hope you can come back soon. We'll talk about the next events where people can come out, but if they need help now, just reach out Dav dot org. I just added it to the blog for some reason forgot to add it earlier. Scott, thank you so much for making time for me today.
Thank you, Thank you very much, and thank you for the time. Yes again, thank you very much for everything you're doing. You're awesome and I truly to appreciate all the support that you have given us these past forms.
Oh it's my pleasure. Scott Fell, thank you so much for Dav