Event Reaches Out to Help Homeless Veterans : Assistance: Three-day ‘Stand Down’ program at Ventura College offers free legal advice, medical care, haircuts and more.

About 50 homeless military veterans on Friday warily ventured into a mini tent city erected on the Ventura College campus by a consortium of social service agencies offering food, shelter and medical care.

Organizers hope that hundreds more veterans will take advantage of the free services offered during the three-day event, which ends Sunday afternoon. Veterans are allowed to live in military tents on the college football field, while social workers, lawyers and physicians attend to their needs.

The event, the first of its kind in Ventura County, is billed as a “Stand Down”--a reference to a military term used when a unit is shifted from combat readiness to rest and recreation.

“The purpose is to reach out to homeless veterans and give them as many services as we can in three days,” said Bob Delzell, a stockbroker and Vietnam veteran who has volunteered as director of the event. About 45 community service and public agencies are participating in the event.

Volunteer lawyers are on hand to help veterans clear up outstanding warrants for misdemeanor charges and fines from convictions. Career counselors are helping them look for jobs, and psychologists are available to assist with substance abuse problems. Doctors and dentists are giving examinations, and barbers offer free haircuts.

Organizers said that low turnout is normal for the first year of such an event.

“The homeless population is wary that this is a sting operation,” said Hal Nachenberg, who works at the U.S. Department of Veteran Affairs.

Similar programs for the homeless vets have taken place in recent years in San Diego, Long Beach, Santa Monica and Sacramento. Organizers said they plan to make it an annual event in Ventura County.

Officials said they expect today’s and Sunday’s turnout to be higher because organizers plan to canvass areas such as the homeless shelters and the Ventura River bottom, where homeless people often live.

Organizers said any military veteran is welcome to take advantage of the services and other freebies. They verify military service records by checking in a computer set up on the football field. Officials said they turned away two people on Friday who appeared to be gate-crashers.

An Army veteran, Ray Fryman of Ventura, said he was glad that he decided to come. Not only did he get some new clothes and meals, but the 24-year-old was able to clear up a fine he owed from a commercial burglary charge that was reduced to a misdemeanor.

Instead of compelling him to pay the remaining $70.63 balance on the fine, Ventura County Municipal Court Judge John Dobroth sentenced Fryman to two days of probation and eight hours of community service at the college.

“It’s a lot lighter than what I expected,” said Fryman, a former parts and records specialist in the Army.

With the help of lawyers from the public defender’s office and the district attorney’s office, Dobroth presided over nearly a dozen misdemeanor cases and infractions on Friday inside a health classroom in the college’s Athletic Department Building.

Many of the veterans who appeared before him said they could not afford the fines. So Dobroth altered their sentences to substitute hours of community service for fines.

“All of them have been able to go to work within a half hour of their sentencing,” Dobroth said. “These are probably all sentences that they would get if they came to court.”

A few classrooms away, reservist and volunteer physicians were giving veterans free medical, eye and dental exams.

Dr. Edwin Seligson said two people on Friday were taken to the Ventura County Medical Center. One person needed a refill on his medication for grand mal seizures and another was suffering from acute bronchitis and diabetes.

“(Veterans) tend to let themselves go, as far as health,” Seligson said.

Dr. Robert Kating, who has a private dental practice in Oxnard, said the most common problems among homeless people are gum disease, broken teeth and missing teeth.

“You don’t have much gum down there at all,” said Kating, as he probed Robert Moore’s mouth. Kating filled out a form for Moore so that the 52-year-old Thousand Oaks man could get some new dentures at a veteran’s hospital in the San Fernando Valley.

Moore, who said he has been homeless for more than 20 years, received a prescription for new glasses as well. “I was embarrassed to come here, but the people here have been nice.”

A self-proclaimed alcoholic, Moore said many veterans have a hard time adjusting to civilian life, or find jobs that suit the skills they learned in the military. When he served in the Army from 1958 to 1965, Moore loaded nuclear bombs onto planes.

“You get out, and you find that TWA doesn’t fly with nuclear bombs,” Moore said. “If they’d take me back, I’d go.”

As darkness settled on the tent city, some veterans joined in the evening’s entertainment, which included a sing-along of popular songs, such as “Up on the Roof” by The Drifters and The Animals’ “We Gotta Get Out of This Place.”