All across America and around the world, this is Veterans Radio.
This is Veterans Radio.
Welcome to Veterans Radio.
I am Jim Fossone.
I'm the officer of the deck today.
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We want to welcome to VeteransRadio today a couple of representatives from the nonprofit Zero Day,
which our veteran radio listeners are going to listen and learn about.
We've got Nate Cropsey on.
Nate, welcome to VeteransRadio.
And Jim Dettler.
James, welcome to VeteransRadio.
Appreciate it. Thanks.
Well, let's start with this.
I'll give a little bio on both of you guys, and then I'm going to ask one of you
to talk about Zero Day a bit and how you got involved.
But Nate is a Marine who is now with the Michigan Army National Guard in the role of a chaplain.
That's an interesting transition.
And with Zero Day, he's the director of veteran support projects.
James Dettler is full-time with the Michigan International Guard,
but spends his passionate time with the assistant manager of outdoor adventure therapy for Zero Day.
Zero Day started in about 2012 with Chuck Ems and Tim Honeycutt getting together and saying,
hey, there's a homeless veteran problem we've got to tackle, and they started tackling it.
It's really expanded over the 10, 12 years at this point.
Nate, why don't you start to tell us a little bit about Zero Day?
Yeah, so I got involved with Zero Day.
I was post my active duty time in the Marine Corps and was going to school
and trying to find out kind of where I fit and met this guy, Tim Honeycutt.
And he basically said, hey, do you want to go on a hunting trip?
And started researching Zero Day a little bit, find out what they do.
And it was kind of all downhill from there.
I rode out in the vehicle with Tim about a 20-hour trip one way
and just asked him all sorts of questions, got to know him, and find out what Zero Day is about.
And then locked him in the truck for about a 20-hour drive on the way home
and to figure out how I can be part of it.
And so Zero Day, we do a whole bunch of different things.
I work with a lot of our veteran support programs.
We have our headquarters at Silver Star Apartments in Battle Creek, Michigan.
Down there, Silver Star Apartments houses 175, has 175 units that house veterans
that have been homeless or struggling with homelessness.
And do some therapy down there.
We do our outdoor adventure therapy and recreation.
But what I've found probably the biggest thing about Zero Day is it meets our veterans
where they are, wherever they are in life, figure out what their current reality is.
And then we help them transition to focus on a personal life vision
and build a bridge from where they are to where they want to go.
Well, it's great timing here that this started with a hunting trip.
We're talking to Nate and James during deer hunting season.
Nate's already reported he's got a couple in the freezer this morning.
So one for him and one from another guy.
James is going out hunting later again today.
So James, why don't we start with, how did you get involved with Zero Day?
Well, Jim, I appreciate it.
I think this story is almost identical actually.
So another Zero Day member approached me and said,
hey, you want to go out to Utah and go on an archery outcon.
And I said, yeah, but I've been married for 12 years and I worked for the government.
So I can't really afford to go out to Utah and go out hunting.
And he's like, oh, it's all paid for.
And I said, OK, what's the catch?
And so the same thing, I rode out to Utah.
So 20 hour drive in a vehicle and I asked a bunch of questions and then didn't really
get too many answers from the people I rode out there with.
But then I rode back with Nate and a couple other Zero Day guys and got some more answers.
Prior to Zero Day, I'd been involved in some other nonprofits.
And honestly, I won't name any names, but honestly, I haven't.
I wasn't very impressed.
There was some times where I thought that veterans were uncomfortable and that sometimes
they were being used as PR tools.
And I just wasn't OK with that.
So I was kind of leery going into Zero Day.
But I very quickly found out that the camaraderie and the sense of belonging that you get from
Zero Day is absolutely what veterans are coming off active duty, what they're seeking.
So being in the outdoors, that's my wheelhouse.
I love it.
And the outdoor adventure therapy stuff.
And I think Nate can probably attest to this.
It makes a huge impact.
I think it allows veterans to open up.
When you get another vet who's stubborn and prideful and doesn't want to air out their
dirty laundry and let somebody else know that they need help, it's easier for them to talk
to somebody that somewhat stands up.
Other stubborn and prideful and grumpy veterans.
I think you just characterized all of them.
So I guess what I see is I see the outdoors, whether it's, I mean, we're fishing, we're
camping, we're doing hunting, whatever we can do in outdoors.
I see it as an avenue to let veterans open up and let us know what kind of help they
need.
And most of the time you don't get that unless you're sitting by a fire at base camp having
a conversation.
And James, there's a lot of real empirical research that the therapeutic value of this
outdoor therapy, whether it be hunting or fishing.
And zero days, not just here in Michigan.
Give us some breadth and scope of the outdoor adventure therapy programs that you've been
a part of.
So yeah, we take an annual trip to, you went to mountains in Utah, we do an archery elk
hunt.
Usually that season is about 25 days and veterans will stagger in throughout the 25 days.
Obviously, we're not asking them to leave their jobs and their family for that entire
time.
We usually, they stagger in and out and Tim, honeycut the CEO, he'll, he typically stays
out there for the entire time.
And we've had some pretty good success this year.
I think we took 11 or 12 vets, correct me if I'm wrong, Nate, but I think we took 11
or 12 and we had two elk harvested.
So that was a pretty un-amazing trip.
Also, we've had, we just sent, I think four or five vets to Kentucky on a bear hunt.
We had one successful harvest there.
We've done some hog hunting down south.
I can't remember if that was, I wasn't a part of that, Nate, was that South Carolina, North
Carolina?
Where was that?
Yeah, that was down in the Georgia area.
Okay.
So I stand corrected, apparently.
I'm not very good with a map, but yeah, there were some down in Georgia.
So there's no, there's no boundaries to zero day or the zero day outdoor adventure therapy
program.
We, we try to get out there as much as we can.
And we've had numerous opportunities to get vets out on.
And then every year I started, this year will be our third annual.
We do a winter camping thing up north.
It's just one of those bucket list things that I wanted to do.
And we have a great time.
We've done some, we just go up and we set up a couple of tents and put some heaters in
them.
And, and we hang out, we go coyote hunting and hang out by the fire.
And it's been, it's been a pretty amazing experience.
So this year in February, it'll be our third year of doing that.
I haven't gotten Nate to go yet.
I think he's afraid of the cold.
Well, you know, those Marines, you know how they are, they're very delicate.
Let's, let's talk a little bit about, as I said, zero day kind of started attacking
the homeless problem that it saw in the Lansing area.
And it's been involved in a lot of different, with a lot of different organizations on housing
issues and construction projects.
Nate, can you talk any about that?
Yeah, some of it that happened at the Lansing was just a little bit before I actually came
on with zero day.
But I know that Tim Honeycutt, when he started with, with his partners, their, their intent
was to begin teaching the construction trades to the veteran population in Lansing.
And they would take on, they would take on projects and have those veterans come out
and actually learn construction skills on the jobs that zero day was taking on.
And now with our headquarters in Battle Creek, the, the apartment complex there has 175 units.
And in order to live there, you have to be a veteran, a honorably served vet.
And you also have to struggle with the homelessness side of things.
So that facility is, is usually 80, 80 to 95% full.
A lot of vets from Michigan, we've, when I first started working there, we had vets
that were World War II era that were living there at the time.
And now we actually just got a grant that is a, a grant to help with the homelessness
side of things as well.
So hopefully here in the next, the next several months or so, we'll be starting another project.
We'd like to focus on single family dwellings because we're finding more and more families
with, with kids that are dealing with the homelessness side of things.
So we see that need and we're trying to step into that arena and provide some more housing
for them as well.
Well, I think that's something that a nonprofit like zero day can be more nimble about.
Really homelessness among female veterans who often come along with some kids in tow,
don't fit the model of, well, we've got a one unit that you can go to there.
You really need that single family house for that kind of situation and that type of veteran,
don't you?
Yeah, you really do.
Otherwise you end up having, you have in several families that are letting the, letting the
veteran and their kids crash on the couch or in the basement, some along those lines,
but living on top of each other.
It adds to some of the different issues that we struggle with with veterans with the anger,
the post-traumatic stress, any of those underlying factors that make it a little bit more difficult
to stay in a house.
Nate, tell us some more about, because beyond construction and helping vets get jobs and
in that field and everything sort of associated with that housing issue, you've got a pretty
wide array of veteran support programs.
Can you talk about what zero day does in that area?
Yeah, so a lot of our support programs actually, they kind of touch each other, I guess you'd
say, like the outdoor adventure side that James is very intricately working in.
We use that as a, maybe as an incubator for some of the other activities that we have
going on.
For instance, we have a family program that we do where we teach evidence-based practices
for healthy parenting.
And we use that to, well, we use that to help soldiers and veterans become better parents
because they want to be a good dad or a good mom.
And one of the ways that we can help supplement that or encourage that is having them go out
and do a fishing trip together or do a bow hunt together, something like that.
But the programs are distinctly separate.
We also are, we've just rolled out a new system, we call it the NOS system.
It's a mental health assessment and a social determinant assessment.
And the social determinant piece is what are the resources in the community that might
help offset some of the anxiety, some of the stress.
Let's say we have a veteran that's trying to keep a roof over their heads and they're
struggling to keep the lights on.
Well, based off of their zip code, we can begin to work with that veteran on finding
additional resources to help keep the lights on, keep a roof over their head and that
type of thing.
Yeah.
I want to touch on both of those things for a minute because as you talk about being a
healthy parenting and saying, hey, we're going to take the whole family on a fishing trip
or a bow hunting trip, part of what you do here is take the financial pressure off so
that they can actually enjoy that trip, which they probably wouldn't be able to do without
the financial support, correct?
Yeah, that's correct.
And on the mental health side of things, I think there's a lot of services out there,
but the challenge is always that connection or networking to the appropriate available
providers.
And it sounds like that's what you're doing is not so much recreating the whole mental
health therapy, environment or ecosystem, but making sure that veterans who need that
help can, you kind of plug them into it, if I understand it.
Yeah, so we try to use our network to help those soldiers and veterans actually be able
to walk through the door knowing that this entity that they're going to talk to is a
veteran friendly entity.
The other side of that is with James and what he's doing at the outdoor recreation side
or outdoor therapy side is the research is showing that I think it's a half hour a day,
half hour to 90 minutes a day, like four days, four or five days a week in the outdoors being
gulfed in the outdoors.
That actually over time begins to reduce post-traumatic symptoms, post-traumatic stress symptoms
by close to 30%, which is phenomenal.
So we begin to take a holistic approach.
If you're in the outdoors, if you're in nature and the stress and anxiety begins to come
down, if you are connected with a therapist or a chaplain or somebody that's willing to
talk to you and work through some of the more intricate issues, and you begin to alleviate
some of the stressors of everyday life by helping keep the lights on, well, now we're
starting to actually build quality of life for our veteran population.
I want to point out to veteran radio listeners, because you may know somebody out there who
needs some help in zero day may be the right place to go to, but what Nate just mentioned
and James talked a little bit about too is that zero day is involved in making sure there's
what I call a warm handoff from the veteran who needs a certain type of assistance to somebody
at the other end who's veteran friendly, who knows how to work with veterans in these
kind of situations.
It's not walking in and doing a cold call and saying, hey, I need some help.
This really is a warm handoff, isn't it, Nate?
Yes and no.
The idea of helping walk them into a place where they need help, for sure.
The other side is we don't seem to lose too many of our veterans in the zero day space.
James and myself, for instance, once we started getting where we needed to be, we began to
ingrain zero day into our everyday lives.
So, even with them going to see a counselor or getting their house put back together,
whatever it might be, they stay in contact with zero day in some way, shape or form.
Some more than others, some longer than others, but I haven't seen too many people that have
just walked out of our space and never come back.
Well, that's a testament to how well it works.
James, can you talk a little bit about how many outdoor therapy programs zero day puts
on in a year?
Is it two?
Is it ten?
How does the size of the program work and maybe how many veterans do you get to touch
in a year?
I don't think we have a specific number.
We have our annual trips that we do.
I mentioned the Utah elk trip and the winter camping thing.
The Utah elk trip, I think they've been doing that seven, eight years now, pretty close
to since the beginning.
And then the winter camping thing, those are typically the only scheduled events that are
scheduled annually.
The rest of the stuff is mostly based around seasons and fishing times, whatever the times
are available and what opportunities come our way.
I think a lot of everything we do is based off of grant writing.
So the funding for a lot of that stuff is all based off of grant writing.
I've dabbled a little bit in the grant writing space since I got into zero day.
But like you said, the intent for that stuff is to get the families involved.
Actually, my wife and I did a fishing trip last year.
Just her and I and a guide that zero day took care of for us.
And it was pretty awesome.
My wife tells me I'm a better person when I'm in the outdoors and involved with zero
day.
So I think that the sky's the limit really.
I mean, we have a foundation for an outdoor therapy program, but if somebody had an idea
and said, hey, we want to do a white water rafting trip or we want to hike the Appalachian
Trail, whatever, the sky's the limit.
I think Tim would entertain it and enable us.
I say this all the time that Tim's an enabler.
And a lot of times that's taken in a negative context.
And in this case, it's not.
At some point, I think you have to sometimes reel in the veterans.
If you got a guy that's working in a factory, he's underemployed.
And his goal in life in 10 years is to be an astronaut heading to the moon.
You might need to bring him back down to the reality.
But for the most part, this sky's the limit.
And whatever these guys want to do, the network that Nate talked about.
Yeah.
Tim and Nate.
Yeah.
Part of this, it seems like to me, James and Nate, is that zero day has been able to
partner, as you mentioned, James, with a lot of other nonprofits and organizations to
help accomplish the goal.
And Nate, do you see that in the counseling and therapy that you do?
And maybe just, is that inbred into the DNA of zero day?
Is that partnering aspect?
Yeah.
The partnering aspect, the way that we approach things is we look at the veteran and we take
that look at their current reality.
Where are you right now?
And then like James was saying, sometimes when we look at the personal vision, where
do they want to go?
We need to make it help them feel a little bit more realistically.
But we meet that veteran where they are currently, where they currently are in their life, in
their family, in their job.
And then we help them build that bridge.
And for some, it's making that connection with a therapist.
For some, it's a parenting class.
For others, it might be let's rework your resume or what are the other job opportunities
to move from a job to a career.
But it's a focus on the individual person and the individual family.
And then finding the resources that help build that puzzle and put that puzzle together.
Well, it's obviously been a successful program or set of programs and continues to expand.
If folks are interested in knowing more about zero day, where would you direct them?
Yeah.
I would direct them to our website, zero-day.us.
If you get on there, you'll get a pretty good idea of the wide range of variety of
things that we do.
You can also contact Zero Day through that website.
That's probably the best and easiest way to do that.
And again, if folks are out there and say, hey, I'd like to contribute and help support
maybe some of the programs that James is doing or some of the work that Nate is doing, I
assume that they could also donate resources.
Maybe it's an opportunity for a fish in or a camp and trip or something by going through
the website.
Is that right, James?
Yeah, absolutely.
They can reach out via email or phone from the website and reach most of us.
Is there, as we close out here, are there any of your partners?
Or donors that you want to give a shout out to because they've really supported these
projects for you.
We always like to give them a little air time.
Yeah, the PATH Foundation has been a big supporter of ours.
They do some great stuff in the outdoors, and they like what we're doing with our veteran
population.
And it seemed to be a seamless fit.
They've always been a good partner for us.
Well, as I say, you can't do this kind of work without good partnerships and good people
supporting you.
Nate Cropsey, James Dentler, we're glad you took a little time today to talk to Veterans
Radio and explain what Zero Day is involved in and why it's so successful.
We wish you both the best of luck out on the hunt.
And thanks for your time today.
Yep, thank you.
Yeah, appreciate your time.
Thanks.
And I want to thank everybody for listening to Veterans Radio today.
I am Jim Fawcone.
It's been a pleasure to be your host.
I'm a Veterans Disability Lawyer at Legal Help for Veterans, and you can reach us at
800-6934800 or legalhelpforveterans.com on the web.
You can follow Veterans Radio on Facebook and listen to its podcasts and internet radio
shows.
By visiting us at veteransradio.org.
That's veteransradio.org.
And until next time, you are dismissed.
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They're experts in handling cases before the U.S. Court of Appeals for Veterans Claims.
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And until next time, you are dismissed.
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