USA Cares expands lifeline with new Louisville call center to help veterans in crisis

LOUISVILLE, Ky. (WDRB) -- A Kentucky-based nonprofit that helps veterans in crisis is getting a major boost to expand its reach across the country.

USA Cares, headquartered in Louisville, is turning what was once a storage space into a full-service national call center. The expansion will allow the organization to take more calls from veterans who need emergency assistance and, leaders said, help save lives.

"This new project came about a couple years ago, and we started looking for ways to really help our team be more collaborative," said Matt Castor, president and CEO of USA Cares. "We just need more employees. We need more help. And this new project will allow us to do that."

The call center will house 10 case managers who will handle cases from all 50 states, right out of Louisville. The goal is to bring faster, more direct help to veterans and their families when they face housing instability, job loss or mental health challenges.

"Real soon, we're going to start construction on this and get this converted into a beautiful call center where our employees can really dig into each individual case and help," Castor said. "The whole idea here is to eliminate the factors that lead to veteran suicide. That's going to happen right in this room. Lives will be saved right in this room."

Many of the organization's case managers are veterans themselves or have strong ties to the military. They often respond to what Castor calls "panicky calls" — emergencies involving eviction, job loss or hunger.

"These are very often panicky calls," Castor said. "These are 'We're about to be evicted from our home. We don't have any food.' We had one recently where a family was living in a tent trying to figure out where their next meal was going to come from."

When veterans qualify for help, USA Cares makes payments directly on their behalf to stabilize the situation.

"We never give them money directly," Castor said. "We want to calm the situation down, bridge them through and then give them follow-up assistance to help them on the back end."

For Marine Corps veteran Adam Durrett, that kind of support can mean the difference between despair and recovery.

"Some of the struggles we had is just, I wasn't prepared for the job market," Durrett said. "The military is very structured and it's just not like that in the real world. I had trouble adapting because I didn't know where to turn or how to cope with it."

Durrett said, for many veterans, asking for help doesn't come easily — but knowing someone is there to listen can make all the difference.

"A lot of times, it's just listening," he said. "They just want somebody to hear what they have to say, to empathize with what they're going through and not judge them or think less of them."

The new call center is expected to open in the spring of next year. USA Cares leaders say it's part of a larger effort to expand services and continue the mission of helping veterans in crisis — one call at a time.

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