LAKESIDE, Ariz.—After leaving an inadequate housing situation in 2023, Steven McAdams found peace fishing along the shores of Show Low Lake in northern Arizona.
He said he didn’t “spiral downward” like other homeless veterans: “I just stayed alive.”
McAdams said he worked his way back up with the help of a service dog named Junior.
McAdams, 63, is thankful for many things this Thanksgiving, including a new car and a chance at a new beginning through Walking Down Ranch at Veterans Village, a transitional housing program for veterans.
“Instead of getting mad, I just worked my way up,” McAdams said. “I live for each day—not with high expectations.”
His temporary new home is a rustic cabin at Veterans Village in Lakeside, Arizona.
“A lot of veterans that come here are pretty much down and out,” said Walking Down Ranch president Ken Sullivan. “They come here, and we try to get them into a program to get their life back in order.”
Sullivan can attest to the program’s value, arriving as a client and working to become the organization’s president.
“The program works,” Sullivan told The Epoch Times. “I came through this program.”
Sullivan said he was deployed to Iraq three times as an Army infantryman, and it was harder for him to adjust to civilian life than fighting.
“I'd rather go back to combat than readjustment,” he said. “People over there had my back. Out here—not so much.”
In October 2017, the organization had 178 veterans and their families in the program and it paid off the $575,000 mortgage for Veterans Village.
The organization has helped more than 2,200 veterans and their families after house fires and the loss of family members and has given 11 pieces of land to veterans to help them start over.
Walking Down Ranch not only provides financial, work, and housing placement assistance to veterans, but it also brings them together every Thanksgiving to offer support.
“It’s the fellowship. It’s the coming together and knowing that whatever struggle throughout the year, veterans have something to be thankful for,” said Brytni Lindsay, the organization’s case manager and administrator.
“It could be the roof over their head. It could be the food in their stomach. It could be that they have friends to laugh and cry with. The fellowship is what means the most to them up here.”
The average stay at Walking Down Ranch ranges from three to six months, or longer if the veteran is eligible.
Each log cabin is about 350 square feet and includes all utilities. Here, veterans can relax, recharge, and connect with other people, said staff.
Lindsay told The Epoch Times that most veterans who stay at the ranch served in Iraq and Afghanistan during Desert Storm.
“If we can’t give them a cabin, we do find the resources for them to make sure they’re not just begging for help on silent ears,” she said.
Some veterans couldn’t stay at a job because of trauma or substance abuse, Lindsay said.
Many veterans move to the Lakeside area from Phoenix, searching for peace.
“From what I hear from other veterans, I believe that recreational activities in the mountains are the best. There’s places to go for quiet reflection and be alone if that’s what they want,” Lindsay said.
“They can find a fellowship like these veterans to be around. They all run up here because they have that peace of mind, that place to breathe.”
“The [Phoenix] heat, believe it or not, is one of their big triggers that makes them upset.”
McAdams said he’s seen veterans “fall to pieces,” lacking family and support. “Guys like me, it’s just another day.”
He credits Junior, his beloved 2-year-old chocolate Labrador, with giving him the support to press forward despite his financial hardships.
“I didn’t have enough income, and prices got too high. I didn’t make enough on Social Security or military disability,” said McAdams, who is a diabetic.
He said that Walking Down Ranch helped him turn his situation around.
“I just bought me a car. Now, I have to rebuild my [financial] security blanket and get another place in the meantime.”
It hasn’t been easy, he said. McAdams has been alone since a drunk driver killed his wife and unborn twins 30 years ago.
“So, I just stayed by myself. I worked with race horses and drove a semi-truck,” McAdams said.
Six years ago, he nearly passed away from pneumonia, and he has diabetic neuropathy in both feet, “but I still get up and go every day.”
Richard Shoemaker, who served in the U.S. Air Force during Vietnam, said that living at Walking Down Ranch feels like home.
And he is thankful: “I have a roof over my head.”
Lindsay said that homeless veterans who don’t get help, their lives often end in tragedy.
“They die from heat exhaustion. They die from hypothermia. We want to let them know we’re here. The veterans we can help, we will help,” she said.
