The Fremont County Veterans Office will host a check ceremony at 8 a.m. Wednesday, Oct. 9 at the Cañon City VFW at 215 N. Cottonwood Ave.
The idea began when Fremont County Veteran Service Officer Patricia Hill applied for a grant for the office to purchase, laptops, cellphones and essentials to enable she and Veteran Service Officer Marty Peek to visit homebound veterans to help them with their disability claims.
“I thought I did a pretty good grant,” she said. “I'm pretty experienced with this in the Army. It was turned down. It turned out their focus this year was on a different area. I was really discouraged. I had a week of thinking that, 'gee, what now?'”
In the past, she had taken a laptop to the Cañon City VFW, Penrose VFW, the American Legion Post 25 and American Legion Post 13 to fill out claims.
“I really thought it was going to be a productive idea,” Hill said. “I was just accepting it and thinking 'I'm just going to have to do it the way we do it.' Double trips up in the mountains.”
About that time, Fremont County Administrator Tony Carochi contacted her, saying he met some people from an out-of-state company who was interested in what the county was doing with women veterans.
“We started a women's veterans group,” Hill said. “We meet on the second Wednesday of every month. We're over at the (Cañon City) VFW now because we outgrew our waiting room. (Tony) had talked to them about what I was doing and they wanted to give some money to our county. It turns out the company is Charter Communications. (Tony) hooked us up with a teleconference call not long after that.”
When the officials at Charter asked her about the community, she told them there were a lot of veterans, not only in Cañon City, but about a third to a half live in surrounding communities and in the mountains.
“There's no Internet up there,” Hill said. “You can't even get cellphone reception. I was just talking. They can't even come to town to do a claim. They have disabilities they need to be getting money for.”
She said she told Charter she had applied for a VA grant to get laptops to save them half the trips they were making back and forth, but it was turned down.
“This lady named Kara said, 'Well Patricia, this is your lucky day, you've got your $5,000,'” Hill added. “Just like that. I could hardly believe it. I was still feeling bad about not getting it for the veterans and here was somebody telling me I have it. The only thing they asked of us is we would invite the community and they would have a check ceremony.”
She noted the money will be used not just for women veterans, but also for the Fremont County Veterans Office at 615 Macon Ave. Room 203.
Everyone is invited to attend the check ceremony at 8 a.m. Wednesday, Oct. 9 at 215 N. Cottonwood Ave. in Cañon City.