U.S. Army veteran John Steele struggled for years to get help before fellow veterans came to his aid.
In the dead of winter last year, with temperatures dropping to below 20 degrees, Debbie Restivo found the 71-year-old curled up in a sleeping bag on the sidewalk near an emergency shelter on Second Street in downtown Bend. It had been a few weeks since the two last spoke at a local church. Restivo could immediately tell Steele’s health was deteriorating rapidly. He was hunched over, used a cane to walk and had difficulty breathing.
“It almost felt like he was hopeless, that he’d given up,” Restivo said.
At that point, Steele was living out his days in a broken-down van in the Deschutes National Forest, staying away from people whenever he could.
“If you’re not around people, you can’t get hurt,” said Steele, who has post-traumatic stress disorder.
But Restivo, a veteran who works for Central Oregon Veterans Outreach, a nonprofit that serves homeless veterans, told him that he deserved help because of his veteran status. At first, he didn’t trust her, but as the conversation continued, he “took a leap of faith,” she said.