The News Herald (Willoughby, OH)
Operation STAT hopes to help veterans again in 2021
Adam Cook recalls a time when he saw a Vietnam veteran crying. He couldn’t believe people he didn’t know took time out of their day to just come and visit, and to say a simple hello.
“At that point, I asked him what happened to your friends and family. Don’t they come and visit you,” the CEO of Operation STAT said. “He says, ‘Well, when we’re in the hospital, we don’t really have friends. They got their own lives.’
“It really just made me mad,” Cook continued. “They’ve sacrificed so much for us to have our freedoms, and then people just put them in a VA hospital and expect the staff to take care of them and forget about them.”
Operation STAT - Standing Tall for American Troops - focuses all of its attention on veterans, providing experiences for the veterans in and out of the VA hospitals.
In that same year, Cook went home and started to brainstorm alongside a girl he graduated with. Christmas stockings ended up being the answer, so Cook contacted the VA hospital inquiring about the number of patients they had, he said.
“They chuckled when I asked them,” Cook said. “They were like why don’t you just do the one floor you visited and see how that goes.”
Approximately 60 stockings, which were filled with games, books, snacks and toiletries, were purchased. Two and a half hours were spent on the floor Cook had visited, as he handed out stockings individually to each patient the Sunday before Christmas, he said.
The stocking plan has grown every year since. Operation STAT goes beyond stockings now, he said, but the novel coronavirus has “flatlined” Operation STAT this year due to VA hospital shutdowns.
“Anytime we take the veterans out of the hospital, we provide a motorcycle law enforcement escort,” Cook said. “We load them up on buses and we take them to the event, and they basically get a presidential escort.”
Last month, Cook reached out to inquire about Christmas plans for the veterans this year.
“We always do a Christmas dinner where we cook the food and we take it in, and we put it in hot boxes,”
Cook said. “Then, we have a Christmas party, and the patients come down and we serve them dinner. We have a DJ or a band, and they dance and play games.”
As of right now, the Christmas festivities are most likely not going to happen due to the pandemic, he said. Cook still sees light at the end of the tunnel. Working alongside the director of Voluntarily Services, plans are in the works for the week of Valentine’s Day 2021, he said.
The week of Valentine’s Day is also National Salute to Hospitalized Veterans week. Plans to cook dinner for the veterans and to have entertainment for them as well are in the works, depending on the pandemic, he said. The impact Operation STAT has had on people has been an amazing experience for Cook and people involved with the organization, he said.
“I can tell you that on Sept. 11, 2011, I had no idea what a VA hospital was,” Cook said. “I think bringing that to light for people is a huge eye-opener. Generally people who volunteer keep coming back.”
Cook is always looking for volunteers, he said. The more volunteers Operation STAT has, the more the organization can do for the veterans. Events such as ball games, parades and cookouts take place for the veterans throughout the year.
“We need members,” Cook said. “We need people who want to make a difference for the veterans and expand Operation STAT.”
No one in Operation STAT gets paid, Cook said. At the beginnings of the organization, Cook’s main focus was the veterans, not money. In Cleveland, more than 15,000 stockings have been delivered since the organization’s starting point. As far as the number of veterans impacted, Cook would have to put a number above 1,000, he said.
“Everything that’s donated to Operation STAT goes toward our veterans or creating more opportunities for veterans by developing the organization,” he said. “We plan on making up for 2020 in 2021.”
MORE INFORMATION
To get involved with Operation STAT, contact Adam Cook at 440-321-8016. Meetings are usually held at the VFW in Eastlake on the second Thursday of every month. Due to the pandemic, the meetings are virtual.