Your lack of knowledge about those in need is glaring, and perhaps you ought to stop advertising this to those you hope to help. You don’t know (or choose to ignore?) their schedules, which is to say you didn’t consider their use of the resources they were using that would have precluded a visit to the altar at which you hoped those in need would come a-kneeling. This speaks volumes of how ill prepared you are to do anything for them.

Having already run a gauntlet of empty promises and heartbreaking disappointment, those who didn’t grace you with their presence have more reason than injury and mental illness for not showing up at what many of them have come to regard as a do-gooder convention. They know you don’t know what they need, and they know you should. They also know the likelihood of you giving them what you think they need or should have rather than what they tell you they need.

For every shrugged shoulder, rolled eye, and exclamation of outrage this article may provoke from even its most prestigious reader, there are thousands of war veterans in the San Diego area who are still in need because of myopic, misguided, misappropriated, and uninformed “help.” That’s “thousands,” not potentially hundreds, as asserted by Karen Schoenfeld-Smith of the San Diego office of the Department of Veterans Affairs.

Approximately 377,000 former service members and active duty Marines call San Diego County home. Add in their spouses and children, and deduct from that those who have not suffered at all or whose needs have been attended. Schoenfeld-Smith herself said of serving in a war zone, “Everyone comes back from that experience changed."

Still think we’re talking “hundreds”?

Operation Homefront (OH) has you dead to rights, but you’re ignoring the model, as well as the information and experience. Established in 2001 to support servicemembers and their families, OH knows how many are in need and what they need. They deliver as best they can with what (and who) they have. More importantly, OH Southern California chapter head, Jae Marciano, knows stigmatized labeling of services will not create the desired draw. Don’t call your services “therapy,” Marciano says.

People are not projects. Their needs are not best met by those looking for a fixer-upper. The way you’ve used your resources thus far indicates a greater disconnect than would exist if you lived in the White House and had the means to legislate into place what those in need must have to heal: complete, consistent care and rehabilitation, and a livable income that would allow them to maintain home and family now compromised by their injury and lack of treatment.

The motivation of those with the means to help is clear. From where many a servicemember and veteran stands, that motivation is rife with mock altruism. Insisting your need to be needed onto those who require care exacts an unfair price from those in need. It is irresponsible and insincere of the gracious to expect the recipient to accept what is given, even if it doesn’t meet the need; or expect the recipient to be unconditionally grateful, even if what is done creates further problems.