NAPLES, Fla. (AP) - Alan Demorett acknowledges he messed up a few times while in the U.S. Navy, after coming home to Naples and while in college.
“I was pretty good at shooting myself in the foot,” said Demorett, 32.
That’s the past. Today is the future and he has a plan.
“I’m very excited to be getting my life in order,” he said after finishing a work day at his landscaping job. He wants to become a certified arborist.
Demorett is the first resident to move into the recently named Alpha House opened by Wounded Warriors of Collier County to help homeless veterans get back on their feet.
The four-bedroom house at 1361 Fifth Ave. N. is in the River Park neighborhood in Naples. A house manager from Nextep, which operates certified recovery houses in Southwest Florida and will manage Alpha House, moved in before Demorett.
Today, three formerly homeless veterans and the house manager live there. The goal is for seven veterans and the house manager as the eighth.
The city of Naples must grant a variance first from its rule that a maximum of four unrelated adults can share a residence.
Supporters of Wounded Warriors gathered Wednesday at Alpha House to celebrate its official opening.
It’s a milestone in the organization’s two-year quest to begin tackling the lack of dedicated transitional housing for homeless veterans.
About 50 supporters attended the event to credit Wounded Warriors and its base of donors, businesses and volunteers who helped bring the transitional residence to reality.
“This is really, really, really a labor of love,” said Dale Mullin, president of Wounded Warriors.
The job is not done; additional housing support for veterans is needed.
“This is the first house,” Mullin said. “We believe it is the beginning.”
Alpha House is being leased for $2,200 a month by Wounded Warriors and may be purchased down the road. The nonprofit raised nearly $300,000 last November and December at two fundraisers for the home’s operating expenses and for the possible purchase.
The variance request to allow seven veterans and a house manager is scheduled for two public hearings February and March, according to Rebeca Linz, the attorney for Wounded Warriors.
HE GOT OFF TRACK
Demorett and his family moved from Minnesota to Naples when he was 16.
At Gulf Coast High School, he loved science and mathematics. He planned to join the U.S. Marines but was dissuaded after listening to a Marine recruiter.
During chemistry class another day, a Navy recruiter came and Demorett was intrigued by the recruiter’s talk of the training school in submarine nuclear power operations.
After graduating from Gulf Coast in 2006, Demorett enlisted in the Navy. He was 18.
He initially was sent to Naval Station Great Lakes in Illinois for basic training and later to the Navy’s Nuclear Power School in Goose Creek, South Carolina.
He finished the intensive training and was attached to a submarine at the Naval Station in Norfolk, Virginia. He was 20 years old.
“Life was good,” he said. He shared a house with others who completed nuclear training school with him.
“We were treated pretty well by Navy standards,” he said. His rank was petty officer second class.
But during free time, Demorett liked to party and it was getting him in trouble.
“They sent me to a rehab and for a while I held it together,” he said. “I liked to drink a lot. That caused some problems.”
Ultimately, he received an administrative discharge. It was not for bad conduct, he said.
He came home to Naples in May 2010. He was 22 and had no direction. He was back to drinking. He worked as a pizza delivery driver and later delivered mattresses.
“I bounced around a lot,” he said. He moved back and forth to Fort Myers several times and spent time in Ohio.
BAD DECISIONS
In 2013, Demorett was arrested for drunken driving in Collier County. He tried addiction recovery programs in Naples and quit. A second drunk driving arrest occurred last year, records show. He’s lived in his car at times.
He was staying at St. Matthew’s House, a homeless shelter and recovery program, when a counselor mentioned Wounded Warriors and its transitional housing.
“He (the counselor) thought it would be a pretty good fit for me,” Demorett said.
He spent a couple months in a Nextep certified recovery house in Naples where Wounded Warriors was renting rooms while working on plans for Alpha House.
Demorett is grateful Mullin, president of Wounded Warriors, gave him a chance. He has been sober six months and realizes he must stick with the 12-step program and meetings.
He sees the positives of Alpha House.
“The idea is veterans will be able to help each other and they just have things in common,” Demorett said. “(Mullin) has his heart in it. I have nothing but good things to say about him. He is incredible.”
Demorett plans to continue landscaping and climbing trees as long as he can physically do it. The long-range plan is to become a certified arborist. His family still lives in Naples and they are in contact.
Turns out Alpha House is a good fit for him.
“Nextep is great, they are doing it the right way and (Mullin) is taking it one step further,” Demorett said. “This is a sober environment and a place to get on your feet. I could not have asked for more.”
MAKING STRIDES FOR VETERANS IN NEED
Two years ago, Mullin learned about the vast needs of veterans struggling to adjust to civilian life, many of whom have post traumatic stress disorder, from Collier County Judge Janeice Martin.
Martin runs the county’s diversion courts for mental health, substance abuse and for veterans. Transitional housing has been the top stumbling block for veterans after completing any of the diversion programs.
Little did she know how determined Mullin and Wounded Warriors would be to start tackling the housing issue, she said at the dedication of Alpha House.
“I couldn’t be more pleased,” Martin said, adding that two years since he took on the cause seems more like five seconds.
Veterans often may not know how to ask for help and sometimes may feel they don’t deserve it but that’s not right, she said.
“These are folks who have stood proud and deserve to stand proud again,” Martin said.
There are 35 to 40 veterans in Collier who are homeless at any given time that the sheriff’s office knows of and there could be more, said Lt. Leslie Weidenhammer, coordinator of the sheriff’s mental health bureau.
Their run-ins with law enforcement are usually for petty crimes with no victims.
“They are the victims. They have no place to go,” Weidenhammer said. “How many more are out there in the county living in the woods and not doing well? You have no idea how this (house) is going to change lives.”
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