Veterans-aid group needs help to replace van

Saturday, Sept. 6, 1997 | 10:58 a.m.

You can only get so much out of an old workhorse before she collapses in the field.

The Key Foundation, a 6-year-old Southern Nevada organization that helps homeless veterans get jobs and housing, learned that lesson all too suddenly last week when its aging van broke down en route back from the Furnace Creek resort Death Valley, where it had taken eight people to work.

With 258,000 miles on the vehicle, the Key Foundation has no choice but to put her out of her misery.

"The mechanic said it would cost us $2,500 just to get it back on the road, and that is just not worth the expense," said Key Foundation President Terry Ryder, a Navy veteran and one of the organization's founders.

"The van was donated to us two years ago and we got a lot of use out of it taking veterans to jobs at National Parks."

In its short existence, the organization has placed 1,500 down-on-their-luck veterans and other homeless folks in jobs at resorts at the Grand Canyon in Arizona, Furnace Creek and Scotty's Castle in California, Echo Bay in Nevada and Bryce and Zion Canyons in Utah.

Incorporated in February 1991, the organization provides food, clothing, transportation, transitional housing, substance abuse counseling, job counseling and other services for veterans who are living on the streets.

Nothing could have been worse for the organization than to have its van break down during the busy summer months.

"We have veterans who want to work and we have openings in which to place them -- we just don't have transportation," Ryder said.

To get people to the jobs, the Key Foundation is dipping into its limited operating budget to buy the homeless veterans bus tickets to Beatty at $42 a person. At that location, the Death Valley resorts pick up their new staff members.

"This is quite a drain on our resources because we can take 15 veterans to the site for less than $100," said Ryder, a one-time homeless veteran who now has a regular job in addition to his non-paying Key Foundation duties. "We need to get a van real soon."

If one is not donated, Ryder said the alternative would be for the group to try to raise $9,000 and spend the remaining $6,000 of its annual operating budget to buy a used vehicle.

The Key Foundation, throughout its run, has been the victim of much irony.

Just last year, the organization donated $300 to help the Jewish War Veterans buy vans for the Disabled American Veterans, which donated them to the Department of Veterans Affairs.

The Key Foundation cannot use any of those vans, which transport ailing veterans to medical facilities in California and around Nevada, because they are government property.

Ryder has approached other veterans groups for the donation of a van, but they are not in a position to help at this time.

In 1995, the Key Foundation donated government-issued blankets to Operation Stand Down, a homeless assistance program, knowing that days later it too would be homeless. The organization lost its offices on North Las Vegas Boulevard because it did not have the funds to make repairs and pay the rent.

That same year, the organization received part of the largest federal grant ever issued in the United States for the homeless. However, in a cruel twist of irony, not one penny of the $576,000 could be used to defray operating costs.

The money had to be used to buy five group homes for transitional housing for the homeless. Since then, 300 homeless veterans have gone through that program, with about half eventually finding jobs and permanent private housing.

More ironic was that regular public donations to the Key Foundation plummeted after it was reported that the organization got such a huge sum.

But, the loss of its van may be its highest hurdle yet.

"We'd hate to have to use the rest of our budget money to get a van because those funds are earmarked for our jobs project," Ryder said. "But, we really need a van to get these people working again.

"We hope someone will donate a good used one."

The Key Foundation can be reached at (702) 594-5604.