Donations for homeless veterans during the holidays

Writer: Drew Hill
Published: Updated:
marines delivering gifts

Veterans sacrifice so much for our country but are often forgotten. This holiday season, Marines in Southwest Florida made it a point to not only remember, but help them.

Two Marines came bearing gifts to Army veteran Susan Rogers. “I was surprised and I thought that’s fricking cool,” Rogers said.

Rogers lives at the Punta Gorda Veterans Village, along with 22 other veterans. Every single one of them got gifts. But, each of them still have one Christmas wish – to find a permanent home.

“When you’re in a position like this you feel like your invisible and you feel like a nobody you feel like a failure you feel like a loser and we’re not,” Rogers said.

Joy Pasquariello spent four years in the Navy. On Tuesday, she felt appreciated. “Homeless vets are definitely forgotten. They don’t know what we go through every day,” said Pasquariello. “Between getting food stamps the whole process here it’s like they.. they don’t think we exist but we do exist.”

The Collins family from Charlotte County along with Volunteers of America and other community sponsors joined forces to help these homeless veterans out.

Marine Private First Class Zane Collins is home for the holidays awaiting his orders. Collins said he feels a kinship with these soldiers. “It made me feel good knowing that I can help people I can, that helped keep us free before I can do it,” Collins said.

Rogers says the gifts are perfect! “These gifts are perfect because they’re going to help us keep going forward you know we don’t need the little game set no we need stuff that’s going to help us,” she said.

The mission of Volunteers of America of Florida is to create positive life-changes through affordable housing.

Volunteers of America works not only with homeless veterans but with families and seniors as well.

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