A One Woman Help Line
By Steve Liewer
UNION-TRIBUNE STAFF WRITER
April 17, 2006
LAURA
EMBRY / Union-Tribune
Tonia
Sargent helped her husband, Marine
Corps Master Sgt. Kenneth Sargent,
with his physical therapy at their
home at Camp Pendleton. Kenneth has
largely recovered from injuries
suffered when his convoy was
ambushed in Iraq in 2004.
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Doubled over with
grief on the bedroom floor of her Camp Pendleton
home, Tonia Sargent wept at the prospect of news
no military wife wants to hear.
An officer from
her husband's unit in Iraq was on the phone.
Stunned, she asked if the man she had loved
since high school – Kenneth Sargent, then a
36-year-old Marine Corps gunnery sergeant –
was dead.
“It doesn't
look good. It's a head shot,” the
officer replied.
“I kept
asking, 'Sir, what do I do now?' ”
Tonia recalled later.
That
August afternoon 20 months ago
would be the last time Tonia
Sargent let herself feel
helpless. She quietly broke the
news to her two daughters, who
were 15 and 17. Then she wiped
away her tears, marched into the
living room and gave
instructions to the Marine wives
already gathering to comfort
her.
Find a chaplain, she asked
one. Wash the dishes, she
suggested to another.
“I didn't want to panic.
I just tried to control
everything,” Tonia said.
Community
Solutions
To learn more: To contact Tonia Sargent, send e-mail to toneyatonia@hotmail.com. She has worked with groups such as:
 The Injured Marine Semper Fi Fund: 825 College Blvd., Suite 102, PMB 609, Oceanside, CA 92057; www.semperfifund.org
Operation Homefront: 5173Waring Road, Suite 90, San Diego, CA 92120; www.operationhomefront.net/sandiego/
Soldier Fund: 217 Meadow Pines Place, San Jose, CA 95125; www.soldierfund.org
About U-T Solutions: Solutions stories highlight people making a difference in their community. Do you have a story idea?
To contact Solutions: Our mailing address is Solutions, The San Diego Union-Tribune, P.O. Box 120191, San Diego, CA 92112-0191.You can also reach us by phone at (619) 293-1719 or by e-mail at solutions@uniontrib.com
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She hasn't stopped
taking control
since. While nursing
her brain-injured
husband through a
long recovery, she
ran head-on into a
military medical
system she found to
be overwhelmed by
the crush of
severely injured
troops.
Tonia, 37, hid
her personal
pain behind a
wall of
activity,
working the
phones and
writing e-mails
from her
husband's
bedside. She has
put in hundreds
of volunteer
hours for
military
charities,
raising millions
of dollars while
literally
writing the book
on support
services for
families of
injured military
service
personnel.
On
Wednesday,
Tonia and
Kenny – who
has largely
recovered
from his
injuries –
will help
dedicate a
new Fisher
House
in Palo
Alto, a
temporary
residence
for military
personnel,
retirees and
their
families
when they
need to be
close to a
Veterans
Affairs or
military
hospital far
from home.
The
21-suite,
$5
million
home has
gone
from
hope to
reality
largely
through
the
force of
Tonia's
Type A
personality,
said
Kerri
Childress,
a
spokeswoman
for the
VA Palo
Alto
Health
Care
System.
“She's
like
the
fireplug.
She's
the
one
who
ignites
the
interest
of
other
people,”
Childress
said.
“Advocating
for
her
own
family,
she
advocates
for
a
lot
of
other
families,
too.”
Confronting an ordeal
The Sargents arrived at Camp Pendleton in May 2002, 15 years into Kenny's Marine Corps career. The following January, he shipped out to Kuwait with his unit. Two months later, Kenny moved into Iraq with the 1st Marine Division.
Tonia became a key volunteer at Camp Pendleton. That's a spouse who comforts and sends information to other Marine families. She added those tasks to her two paid jobs, at a YMCA and as an aerobics instructor, which already totaled 65 hours per week. She and her daughters, Tasha and Alishia, avoided the TV news as much as possible, trying to keep up a “normal” life.
LAURA EMBRY / Union-Tribune
After then-Gunnery Sgt. Kenneth Sergeant was seriously wounded in Iraq, Tonia Sargent rarely left his bedside, showering him, shaving him, taking him to the bathroom. Kenneth was leaving work at Camp Pendleton's Repairable Maintenance Center this month.
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“You don't shed tears,” she said. “You put on that wife face, and you're strong.”
Kenny came home in late summer 2003 exhausted. Six months later, he was back in Iraq for a second tour of duty.
“I had an uneasy feeling from the beginning, but I never complained,” Tonia said.
Kenny was traveling in a convoy near Najaf on Aug. 5, 2004, when his vehicle was ambushed. A ricocheting bullet struck him below the right eye, exited near his left ear and damaged the front of his brain. He barely survived.
Tonia flew to Washington, D.C., where Kenny had been airlifted to Bethesda Naval Hospital. She left their daughters home alone, asking neighbors to look in on them. She nearly collapsed after seeing Kenny in the intensive-care unit, broken, unconscious, his body invaded with tubes.
“I didn't even recognize him,” Tonia recalled. “I said, 'Squeeze my hand if you know who I am.' ”
He squeezed.
She moved into Kenny's hospital room and took charge. She learned all of his medications and when he needed them. She charted every ounce of fluid that went in or out of him and hung the records on the door for his nurses.
Tonia rarely left his bedside, showering him, shaving him, taking him to the bathroom.
“I had everything I needed, supportwise, there,” she said.
Kenny drifted out of danger, but he needed rehabilitative help to rebuild his life. After two months, the Sargents flew to Palo Alto, where the Department of Veterans Affairs has one of four regional centers for brain-injured veterans.
After weeks of giving Kenny round-the-clock care in Bethesda, Tonia only could see him during limited visiting hours. His caregivers suggested she go home and pretend he was deployed.
“I was told by the VA, this is not your rehab, this is his rehab. You're too involved,” Tonia recalled. “I went ballistic. I said, 'I'm not a visitor. I'm his wife!' ”
Tireless force
No one could tell Tonia where to find out what assistance she and Kenny could get. Perched in Palo Alto, she had no access to phones or e-mail.
Like most families supporting loved ones in the hospital, she couldn't afford $100 or more a night for a hotel. The only temporary lodging the hospital could offer was a shared room for which she had to put her name on a standby list each day.
“Every day, Tonia didn't know where she was going to stay that night,” Childress said. “Taking care of families was a new issue for the VA.”
LAURA EMBRY / Union-Tribune
Tonia Sargent, with husband Master Sgt. Kenneth Sargent, has become a one-woman help line for other injured veterans and their families who need to navigate the maze of bureaucracy. With them was Lt. Col. Alan Burghard, a Marine Corps reservist who suffered a head injury.
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So Tonia got to work.
First she got her husband's care in order. She e-mailed regular status reports to all of his doctors, case managers, therapists and his command. She learned to brief medical experts in their own jargon.
During her spare time, Tonia volunteered at the hospital and with other military support organizations, including the Injured Marine Semper Fi Fund (which she has promoted on Roger Hedgecock's radio show in San Diego), www.soldierfund.org and Operation Homefront.
She met with Childress to find out why the Palo Alto VA hospital lacked a Fisher House. The San Diego Naval Hospital in Balboa Park has had one since 1992.
Childress told her the Fisher House Foundation had approved construction, but the hospital needed to raise more than $2 million itself. By law, the hospital couldn't use tax money for the project.
“I said, 'OK, Tonia, put your money where your mouth is,' ” Childress recalled. “She said, 'I'm in. Tell me what I need to do.' ”
Tonia became the human face of the fundraising drive. Again and again, she told the story of Kenny's injury, the family's dilemma and the teenagers caring for themselves at home so she could stay at her husband's side.
She called U.S. senators and asked them for cash. She visited with the Blue Star Moms, a club composed of mothers with sons or daughters serving in combat. Cadence Design Systems Inc., a Silicon Valley firm, agreed to donate more than $1 million from its annual bowling fundraiser. A businessman donated about $175,000 to pay for military families to stay at hotels until the Fisher House opens.
“Tonia was open and shared that pain with the world,” Childress said. “When they heard her story, honest to goodness, the pockets of the Bay Area just opened up.”
A year and a half after Tonia jump-started the fundraising, the Fisher House will open this week. Childress said such a drive typically takes five years.
Filling the cracks
Using her networking skills, Tonia doggedly figured out how to get help for her family from the maze of military, medical and veterans organizations, whose efforts she found well-intentioned but uncoordinated.
In the process, she has become a one-woman help line for other injured veterans and their families.
Lt. Col. Alan Burghard, 47, of Westminster is a Marine Corps reservist who suffered a head injury in Iraq. Burghard had a hard time getting appointments, finding out about assistance and getting doctors to talk to one another until he met Tonia in Palo Alto.
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