Together we stand
Team Rubicon uses vets’ skills for vital crisis response
WHEN scores of houses were destroyed in Oklahoma after tornadoes hit in May, Coast Guard veteran Todd Adrian dropped his duties as a pharmaceutical marketing director and headed west to see what he could do to help.
“My coworkers all know I use all my vacation days to respond to tornadoes,” said Adrian, 41, who for two weeks led a group of chainsaw operators removing trees that threatened structures. “It fulfills a need I have; it gives me the sense I’ve contributed.”
The Bloomfield, NJ resident is one of some 30,000 veterans who volunteer for Team Rubicon, a disasterrelief nonprofit founded by Marine veterans Jake Wood and William McNulty in 2010 after the devastating earthquakes in Haiti.
Since then, Team Rubicon has deployed more than 100 disasterrelief operations around the world, with most in the US. After Hurricane Sandy, for example, 350 Team Rubicon volunteers helped communities in the New York City area.
Wood and McNulty realized early on that the help they provided in Haiti was also transforming them and the other vets who were with them.
“This was not just a mission helping disaster victims — it was also giving a sense of identity to the veterans who had come along,” says Ken Harbaugh, Team Rubicon’s chief operations officer and a Navy vet. “That’s what made me very interested in Team Rubicon.”
It was also the draw for Navy veteran Lawrence Ksiez of Elmhurst, Queens.
“On their Web site it says, ‘You gain purpose.’ You lose that camaraderie [you had in] the service, and I gained that back,” says Ksiez. “I was looking for purpose.”
“There’s this desire when you take your uniform off to continue to serve in some capacity,” Adrian adds. “Like in the military, there are no individuals — we are a team. And there’s a sense of accomplishment in helping people who need help.”
Ksiez, a systems analyst with Bellevue Hospital, has been on several missions, including one to Moore, Okla., in 2013, when tornadoes killed 24 and injured almost 400.
“That place looked like a war zone,” he says. “The area of destruction was so vast.”
Ksiez joined 450 other Team Rubicon volunteers. A heavyequipment team leader, he worked on removing and knocking down badly damaged homes that could not be rebuilt. “It was probably one of the hardest things I’ve ever done,” he says, “other than serve.”
A longtime volunteer for New York Cares, Ksiez says volunteering for Team Rubicon is a vastly different volunteer experience, because at a moment’s notice he could be deployed to a disaster.
Ksiez has also found the brotherhood in Team Rubi con that he lacks with nonveterans. “It’s great, you are on the same page with them,” he says. “We talk to each other differently. We’re all brothers, it doesn’t matter where you served. It’s like, ‘Su casa, mi casa.’ ”
This bond is helping a large number of veterans cope with posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) as well as helping them transition into the workplace and back to civilian life.
“The sense of purpose you get when you are part of a team is a tremendous help,” Adrian says.
“Leaving their homes sometimes is really stressful, and knowing they are around people who were in the military and who they feel safe around — we can trust each other.”
With an estimated 22 US vets committing suicide every day, Team Rubicon trains members with skills to detect when a fellow volunteer is having a mentalhealth crisis, such as thoughts of suicide, and to get him some care, says Harbaugh.
“There are instances where someone has called me and says someone is not right. We will pick up the phone and call them and help them,” says Adrian.
In addition to disaster missions, which on average last about two weeks, Adrian also volunteers close to home several weekends a month in the New York City area, helping to demolish homes destroyed by floods or continuing work repairing damage from Hurricane Sandy.
“We know we are helping those people on the road to recovery,” says Adrian. “Sometimes we highfive when we’re finished — there’s a sense of accomplishment in helping people who need help. Just getting out a few times a month, I feel better.”