Help Ken!

Most mornings I head to the Starbucks off of Wendy exit (the Islands/Habit complex one), and most mornings I see a gentleman on the corner there, with a sign that reads “homeless vet, looking for work.”

His name is Ken. And up until recently, from time to time, I’d grab an extra coffee and breakfast sandwich for him. But, while a warm breakfast is nice, it doesn’t provide him anything other than a few hours of some small amount of relief. So, last week I handed him one of my CCO (Conejo Community Outreach) cards to have him reach out to see if there was any way we could help, or connect him to services/people who can help.

Ken is a U.S. Army Vet, who has been homeless for 435 days now. He served from 1983-1989 and worked as a 15 delta and 15 echo. He also programmed warheads for the lance and pershing missile system. After his time in the army, he worked as a CNC machinist. He told me he has basically grown up in machine shops and can program mastercam thru x9, went to vocational training in 2003 for cad cam drawing & CNC programming, and has excellent inspection organization skills and lean machine six sigma 5s training. At one point he was working for Creative Display here in Newbury Park but left that job in 2016 to start a job in Chatsworth at Infinity Precision until May of last year.

Ken doesn’t have transportation, and he needs help with covering his phone bill. He has a prepaid smart phone that he can get wireless on when he’s at Starbucks, or the library, but the actual service for it, other than that, was shut off, and would take $60 to reactivate. For him, having a phone is crucial as it is his only way to track down job leads and research resources, etc. For a while he was able to get work doing hardwood floors and building fences, but he hasn’t been able to find any work since November. I think I can help him at least with the reactivation fee for his Samsung (I can't do it through CCO because our bylaws don't allow us to pay bills), but, I’d love to see if there is a way to get him some help with transportation. Obviously a car is a lofty goal, but he said a bike would be of tremendous help as well. I’m wondering if anyone has an old bike or connections to a bike shop that might be interested in donating a bike/bike lock for Ken?

And, of course, if anyone reading this is looking for help that fits his experience, I could certainly put you in touch. We have been communicating mostly via email, so this is the information I have on him currently.

I have created this gofundme to help him with the cost of a phone and
bike purchase. Google tells me the average bike cost is $350, he needs $60 to reactivate his phone, and I've estimated $600 to cover his           monthly phone plan (he has a Samsung). A few of you have expressed 
interest in helping him with some monetary donations so I have set this up to try and be as transparent as possible with donations.