When Wendy Triana joined the Navy in January of 2001, her intentions were to see the world, earn money for a college education, and generally broaden her horizons beyond the scope of her life as a graduate of Roosevelt High School in Southern California.
  But on September 11, 2001, sailor Wendy Triana found herself in a military at war. She was attached to an air wing of the U.S. Navy and served aboard a nuclear powered aircraft carrier which was one of the first ships deployed to the Persian Gulf. There, she became a “Plane Captain,” responsible for 25 other sailors and the care and maintenance of an F-18 Hornet Fighter/Attack aircraft.

16 plus hour days on the flight deck of an aircraft carrier and two deployments to a war zone took their toll. By the time Wendy was discharged from the Navy in 2005, she found it very difficult to re-adjust to civilian life. On a flight deck, where the exhaust of powerful jet engines can blow a sailor off their ship, and where there is the constant threat of attack, hyper-vigilance is a must. In civilian life, this same kind of edge can and in Wendy’s case, did lead to depression.
 In October of 2007, after several failed attempts at getting help, Wendy found The Salvation Army’s Liberty Program, a program funded and designed explicitly for Iraq and Afghanistan veterans like Wendy.
 In the Liberty Program, Wendy found new avenues of help and a compassionate ear in the Director of the program David Leonard. One month later, Wendy was offered a position at The Salvation Army Bell Center for homeless men and women. Wendy is an On-Call Case Manager at the Center and handles thirty clients weekly, many of them veterans like herself, helping them navigate the various programs and services offered there.
 A single mom with a little girl to support, Wendy is slowly and surely getting her life back together. She is taking college courses working towards her degree and soon hopes to access the professional, one-on-one counseling available within the Liberty Program.

If you’re a veteran of either the Iraq or Afghanistan conflict now living in Southern California and need help, you can find it at the Liberty Program. Veterans and loved ones of veterans may obtain more information by calling  (310) 920-0067 or email This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it