VSO is all about connections

Connecting the county's veterans to military and on-military services they require is an honor for Austin Garner, Kimball County's new Veteran's Service Officer.

Garner, a 2004 Kimball graduate, served in the Army as a flight paramedic stationed in Germany for the majority of his active duty except for his training time.

"With my unit in Germany, I deployed twice to Afghanistan, once in the north and once in the south," he said.

Having just been recently released from active duty, Garner feels that his working knowledge of the military paperwork and the Department of Defense bureaucracy is a big advantage in his position and allows him to better advocate for veterans.

"As you know, a big portion of this job is dealing with medical problems and the Veteran's Administration (VA), and so having that medical background helps me understand the medical problem and relate that to the doctor," he said. "That is probably the biggest advantage I have."

The state mandates that the VSO is a veteran, a fact that Garner said is imperative, so there is an understanding of the backgrounds and the challenges a veteran may face.

"Kimball County has approximately 350 veterans, and we have veterans that served in every war and peace time era all the way back to World War II," he said. "There is still a WWII veteran alive. So it is pretty amazing. We have an all-encompassing age group."

Garner said he is able to find and connect veterans to medical and education assistance and so many additional services that he can't name them all. Although he has a strong grasp on many of those services and benefits, Garner said he will call higher echelons for more assistance if it is needed.

"We are really fortunate around here, we have a lot of knowledgable people. The VSO from the Scottsbluff/Gering area has been doing it for m­ore than 40 years, so he is a huge wealth of information," he said. "I like to deal with any issues, because I know that it is helping out the veteran. If you are veteran and you have served you qualify for benefits and I am going to fight and do everything in my ability and in my office."

One of the biggest challenges for Garner is that many veterans are unaware of programs available to them, while others are simply not used to asking for assistance.

"There are all these tools and programs available and the biggest thing is that people don't know about them," he said. "So the biggest thing is just getting the word out there. A lot of times it is the lack of knowledge, and they wouldn't think to come in here."

Through his new position, he makes new connections with numerous other Kimball County veterans and he enjoys meeting them and hearing their stories.

"I've read through some of the files of our veterans in Kimball County and I have never met so many decorated people," he said. "There is one veteran here who has 11 air medals. That is just astounding. They didn't serve very long, but they were a pilot and they have 11 air medals."

Though Garner did not plan to return to Kimball, he said that being home again is a breath of fresh air and the move has allowed him to reconnect with friends and family

"The fact that you have a community that can come behind you and support you. Kimball is really good about supporting veterans and has a really good heritage. The amount of respect throughout the community is really amazing," he said. "Living in a small town is almost a different lifestyle and you take it for granted growing up, you don't understand it. I have traveled the world and coming back here, its nice to get waved at as you're driving down the road and have somebody call you by name at the grocery store."