‘Make Camo Your Cause’: Raising awareness, donations for Veterans Day

LONG BEACH, Calif. - FOX is joining the campaign "Make Camo Your Cause," to raise awareness and donations for our nation’s heroes.

Step by step, Raysa Guerrero is on her way. However, she did not always have that optimism.

She joined the U.S. Navy when she was 17 and served four years at Point Mugu as an aviation mechanic.

She was young, petite and trying to prove herself to her male colleagues.

Guerrero then left the Navy to attend a community college. Now, she’s set to graduate from Cal State Long Beach in May 2022.

While her future is bright, she recalls reaching rock bottom.

The nonprofit organization U.S. Vets and Dr. Miatta Snetter changed her mind and her life, she says.

"Every veteran at some point has had suicidal thoughts and I was heading in that direction," Guerrero recalled.

Guerrero’s is not a unique story.

Dr. Snetter runs the U.S. Vets program outside the wire.

"When you come out of the service, for many [they wonder] how do I find that same sense of meaning and purpose? Where do I find that same comradery? Where do I go’?" Snetter said.

U.S. Veterans is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit that partners with the US Department of Veterans Affairs, but serves veterans without the government bureaucracy.

Guerrero is so grateful to the organization.

Her ultimate goal is two-pronged – she wants to work in aerospace as a mechanical engineer and start her own nonprofit to pay forward the help she got from U.S. Vets.

The U.S. Vets campaign "Make Camo Your Cause," supports the exact programs that gave Guerrero her future.

Click here for more information on U.S. Vets or to purchase a t-shirt for a great cause.  

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