22
Wednesday, March 23, 2016 The Nugget Newspaper, Sisters, Oregon
VETERANS: Mission
assisted rangers,
border patrol
Continued from page 1
and continues to recover from
a traumatic brain injury.
“While I was in the hos-
pital I had a lot of time, star-
ing at ceiling tiles, and I kept
thinking about the kinds of
things veterans would want to
do,” Brett said.
Out of this long and painful
healing process, the notion of
Warfighter Outfitters (www.
warfighteroutfitters.org) was
born.
Miller focuses on a single
basic idea: the importance of
getting wounded, and in many
cases desperately struggling,
veterans out of their houses
and onto the land, hunt-
ing, fishing, or participating
in “engagement missions.”
Those missions are conducted
in places such as Yellowstone
National Park, where recover-
ing veterans with Warfighter
Outfitters have helped repair
trails and build corrals, or at
Organ Pipe.
Last year, Warfighter
Outfitters served over 400
veterans, and Brett himself
spent 211 days on the water
guiding his fellow wounded
veterans on rivers throughout
the western United States, in
addition to hunting trips and
the engagement missions in
national parks.
Brett cites the disturbing
fact that 22 veterans a day
are committing suicide as a
driving force behind these
missions.
“If I can get them out of
their house, and out hunt-
ing or fishing, they can find
some relevance,” Miller said.
“Particularly in a place like
this, which is a tactical envi-
ronment, something they
understand.”
For the engagement mis-
sions, Warfighter Outfitters is
supported by Arch Ventures,
a venture-capital firm based
in Chicago that is deeply
involved and committed to
wounded veteran programs.
“What Brett is doing
is incredibly important to
these guys,” said Stacey
Pinsoneault, of Arch Ventures,
“and we are here to fully sup-
port his efforts.”
A member of the Arch sup-
port crew, Pinsoneault, who
lives in Chicago, was joined
by CFO Mark McDonnell,
as well as Alice Siebecker, a
retired senior national park
law enforcement officer, who
flew in from Montana.
And they weren’t there for
window-dressing. In addition
to arranging vehicles, meals,
and coordinating schedules,
all three volunteers joined
Warfighter Outfitters’ veterans
in the hard work under a blaz-
ing Sonoran sun.
The Organ Pipe engage-
ment mission is now in its
third year, and is maturing
into a working partnership
between Warfighter Outfitters
and the undermanned govern-
ment agencies tasked with
enforcing the law and preserv-
ing the monument’s natural
and historical sites.
“This is my second year
coming,” said James Fries, an
army veteran who was shot in
the face in Somalia. “I really
enjoy it. I like being with the
guys, and doing something
important. It just feels good.
You get to see things nobody
else does.”
This year’s trip included
dismantling and cleaning up
smuggling camps and lay-
up hides within yards of the
dilapidated pedestrian fences
and vehicle barriers on the
border. The veterans collected
hundreds of pounds of detritus
left behind by smugglers. The
mission was important not
just for the preservation of the
lands, but for the overall tacti-
cal picture.
A heavily armed Park
Service law enforcement offi-
cer, who was providing over-
watch as the veterans worked,
said, “This is really important
to us. By getting this cleaned
up we can see how the cartels
photo by Craig rullMan
Brett Miller takes his turn in the hole as veterans restore a damaged well
in the Arizona desert.
are changing their tactics,
In addition to these activi-
what new routes they are ties, the veterans were given
going to use.”
a VIP tour of the Border
A second project in the Patrol’s Ajo Station, includ-
National Monument saw the ing a very rare glimpse of the
veterans clearing brush from Tactical Operations Center,
an overgrown corral. A mile- where agents monitor a highly
and-a-half hike from the sophisticated radar and optical
Alamo Canyon Campground network, and coordinate mis-
site, on the edge of a dry sions on a 24-hour basis.
wash in the shadow of the
On their final day in the
Ajo Range, an old corral and desert, the veterans were
a primitive well are remnants taken out to a remote area by
of the Gray Ranch, a desert a heavily armed contingent of
cattle operation that occupied Park Service officers, spend-
the area for decades.
ing time at an observation post
Veterans, at the behest of actively looking for smugglers
a Park Service archaeologist, with high-powered spotting
cleared brush from the corral, scopes and FLIR technology.
and then set to work re-dig-
Miller calls these “engage-
ging the old well, which had ment missions,” because
been completely filled in as wounded veterans are actively
the result of a 2012 flash flood
See VeTeRANs on page 25
that tore through the wash.
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