Episode 39: Creating Opportunities And Helping Veterans To Live The Most Fulfilling Lives With Brett D'Alessandro And Alexa Modero
We all can be of value to other people. It doesn’t matter if it’s small or big; we have to focus on making positive impacts on people in need. Helping veterans is a way to make a huge difference and serve a purpose. The co-founders of Backpacks For Life Brett D'Alessandro and Alexa Modero sit with Anand in Limitless One's first in-person podcast. Backpacks For Life’s mission is to provide a unique and personalized support system for homeless and at-risk veterans struggling to reintegrate into civilian life. Brett and Alexa discuss how they helped veterans of all eras, equipping them with the right tools and solutions to seamlessly and confidently reintegrate into society and thrive. They also share details of their personal experiences and explore how they started in this field. Listen to their amazing journey of turning personal pain into positively contributing to the lives of thousands of veterans in need.
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Creating Opportunities And Helping Veterans To Live The Most Fulfilling Lives With Brett D'Alessandro And Alexa Modero
We are going to go deep with an amazing couple story of turning personal challenges into a multi-pronged organization whose mission is to serve our United States military veterans. I'm honored to host Brett D’Alessandro and Alexa Modero as our first in-person guests. After serving six years with the USMC, Brett has found himself giving back to his brothers and sisters by serving the homeless and at-risk veteran community.
Brett was deployed in Afghanistan in 2014 and came home to discover a large void in the care being provided to veterans returning from war. From this realization, Backpacks For Life was born. Brett is the Founder and President. His fiancé, Alexa Modera, is the Cofounder and Executive Director. Upon Brett's return home from Afghanistan, Alexa witnessed firsthand how challenging it was for Brett to reintegrate into civilian life. Alexa works closely alongside Brett to ensure that our veterans and their spouses are taken care of. Alexa oversees the general operations and communications of Backpacks For Life. Welcome to the show, guys. How are you?
We're good. I’m honored to be the first guest. It’s good to be in person.
This is the first in-person. We were at the Float Expo in Portland. Were with you and such. We’ve done some travels with you.
That was amazing. You guys are the first people that I'm interviewing here. Also, it was the second day we were open here at om.life Wellness, my recovery spa, you guys are here. You came out after float so it's amazing that we've known each other now for more than 3.5 years. Later that year, it was in August 2018, I ended up going to the Float Conference and you guys were there, too. You guys are in the floats industry but tell us a little bit about why you were at a Float Conference.
Part of what we do with Backpacks For Life is so much exploratory work about what we can offer to veterans. If it's not medication, are there other methods of healing that might work? Fly fishing, equine therapy, cooking classes, you name it. We're always exploring and trying to get a good hands-on look at what that is. We’re doing it ourselves so we can make an accurate recommendation.
You forgot the most vital way of recovery is coming to om.life. We’re not trying to plug om.life in but seriously, cryotherapy and also floatation therapy. That's why I went to this Float Conference to learn about these amazing natural approaches towards recovery. This isn't something new, floatation therapy. It's Epsom salts. It’s literally salt. It's always been around since the dawn of time. Cryotherapy is putting some ice on you but in a more sophisticated way. They're amazing naturalistic approaches towards recovering. That is why we started Backpacks For Life.
We started this organization when I returned from Afghanistan. I didn't know what was out there. I felt like this weak-minded marine. I was so strong but I couldn't get a haircut without having a mental breakdown. I felt like I was doing a dishonor to my fellow veterans because I couldn't cope with my recovery or transition back from my deployment. I was put on medical hold and I was going through these various programs. I still thought that this will all be better. I was going to a doctor's appointment up in Rhode Island during the winter. I saw a gentleman with a sign, “Homeless vet. Please, help me out.” I’m like, “We can go back to my motel and get some supplies.” I put them inside a backpack and went back out and gave them to the gentleman. There was little, small talk and nothing more. I saw him again three days later and I pulled over to the side of the road. He’s also with a little child. Before I could get a word out, the son said, “Thank you so much for the backpack. I no longer have to go to school carrying my books in my hands.” The dad said, “Thank you for the warm layers and supplies inside the backpacks.”
At that point, I was like, “There are other veterans that are like me who are dealing with this that didn't have the best transition possible.” I called up Alexa and I was like, “What if we get some backpacks, put some supplies, toiletries, some resources and get them out to veterans out there that might not have the best resources liked I do?” I was very fortunate. I had a great family to come back home to. I had Alexa helping me out. Unfortunately, a lot of veterans don't have that. I felt like this was my calling and my purpose again. I was fired up and I was like, “I know why I’m here. I'm here to help others. That's why I joined the military.” In my transition back, I felt like I lost that and have the ability to help others. This is what I was fired up for and that's how Backpacks For Life was born.
Thank you so much for sharing that. The best ideas are the most contribution you can do. It originates from a sense of pain or a sense of healing on our own. The fact that you went through what you went through in Afghanistan and came out and said, “I'm going through a hard time and other people are going through a hard time.” The best way to heal that is through contribution. It's amazing that you came up with this concept. It came from being on the go and seeing somebody who needs a backpack and you give them some supplies and amazing ideas created from that. Brett, there are a lot of misconceptions about what it's like to be a vet and going into deployment. You were there in Afghanistan. If you don’t mind, can you tell us a little bit about the experience and what it was like to cope in that world and then come back to this world? You see how maybe the perception of what's going on in Afghanistan is different in the media versus what it was for you.
It’s different. You felt like you were on a different planet compared to New Jersey. Being in Afghanistan, it’s an interesting setting. I remember we were going on this one mission and these kids were running around and trying to play on the trucks and stuff. I remember opening the door and this gentleman pulled up and he had a rifle with him. I can see that he’s about to shoot me. He looked at me and said, “Hello.” He had a rifle slung over his shoulder. He’s like, “Do you speak English? Let me get these kids away.” I was like, “They’re people. They’re not these crazy third-world individuals who are lower than us. They're humans just like us.” I remember that and he’s like, “They’re people trying to get by like everybody else.”
This is a whole different subject but you can talk about the media and how they spin on it. There are people trying to profit from this war with the opioid epidemic that's happening in the US. They’re feeling all different things. I went there because I want to make a difference in somebody's life and help somebody that was over there because there are some conflicts going on and stuff. There's some tribalism going on but I feel that like us, they want to live their life. They want to have an amazing family. They want to help others but they want to make sure their kids have it better than them. Everybody has a right to enjoy life. It's hard to say.
I'm not the most knowledgeable but I do know that President Biden wants us to finally exit Afghanistan. I want to get out of there but maybe we need to strategize a little bit more because there are the Taliban out there and other terrorist organizations that can grab hold of the society fast so we have to be careful with that because they don't have the funding and government type structure as we do. I’m not going too far off that path. They're people trying to get by.
What was it like coming back after deployment to back home and trying to live a life after everything that you've seen over there, the conflict and everything and then tries to manage every day?
If I were to take you and throw you into another country where English isn't their first language and you're there, it hits you hard. It’s culture shock. When I was over there dealing with that and came home, I saw everybody. I thought everybody would be right where I left them but everybody carried on with life. I felt like I was behind the eight-ball. I felt isolated and different from others. They didn't understand what I was going through but also, it's not their fault. Everybody's gone through some scenarios but I felt different. I felt like I was left behind. That took a hold of me but I was also losing my purpose. I had this amazing high-performing job and came back home to society. I'm talking from a reservist's standpoint.
Some people on active duty might have it a little easier because they get to go back on base and work with people who are in their setting. It might be a little more challenging for a reservist to get plopped right back into the civilian world. That was difficult. Finding my purpose where it's wanting to help others helped me out. It’s still lonely here and there but surrounding myself with other people that are like-minded, I’m not saying people in the veteran community but people who went through challenges and experiences in life helped me deal with it. I'm not going to say cope because cope is like it's there and put a Band-Aid on an effective wound. Deal with it in a healthy way and use that to strengthen me to help others.
It's one of those things when the vets come back it affects them and their family as well. Alexa, what was it like to see your boyfriend come back and try to acclimate to this world after being in such a different environment? I'm sure you can speak on behalf of many veteran wives and girlfriends.
It's a weird feeling as a reservist. We were in college at the time when Brett was deployed. I was young. I had a grandfather who served. Was I well educated and up to speed on what a deployment looks like? What are the possible things that could happen when Brett comes home? I wasn't privy to any of that. For me, it was super isolating in the way that all my other friends were not with folks who were in the military. We weren't living on a military base. We were in college. In a sense, it’s isolating because I didn't know who to talk to about how I was trying to help Brett. This is a common thread with all spouses. There's a barrier. You will never fully understand what the veteran experiences. You can try as much as you want but there are things they've seen, done or experienced themselves while serving overseas that you'll never be able to feel at that same caliber. You can't fully get there and say, “I know what you're going through.”
It's a heavy load. Spouses deserve so much credit especially those that are on active duty. You move around a lot. A lot of things are uncertain. We were fortunate enough that FaceTime became a thing in 2014. We were able to FaceTime. We still did letters to try to be cute and keep that thing going. It's a wild experience. It’s one that I could have never imagined. It felt super hard to find people who related to it. It was overall isolating and challenging because as Brett was struggling and trying to find programs, support and health care that worked for him, I was trying to do my due diligence but it's such a complexity. No veteran story is the same. Part of it was me trying to understand what it means for a veteran who went to war to come back and struggle with PTSD, anxiety or depression. A lot of it was a learning curve, too.
There is no one-size-fits-all treatment program for vets that come back and suffer from PTSD. Brett, you've tried a lot of different modalities in terms of that type of healing. What are some of the things that were offered to you when you got back from the deployments? Where did you see that there was a void to fill to help other people now in the work that you're doing?
Nothing against our command with how we got back or people transitioning back to the civilian world or EAS, which is leaving the military or coming back from a deployment. There are programs out there. There is stuff out there but for me, I'm going to talk through my own experience. We call it death by PowerPoint. It’s like, “Here are the slides. Don't beat your wife. Don't abuse drugs and alcohol. Don't hurt your spouse. Your kids are going to take the time or need time to acclimate back to who you are.” It's dull but also, I was high in life. I didn't even need that stuff. I was still glowing. I couldn't wait to see my family again so I absorbed that knowledge. There's some stuff out there but it's like, “Fill out these forms. Do this.” I didn't hear too much about equine therapy, mindfulness, peer-to-peer mentorship, hiking or fishing groups and things like that. I didn't know about these things.
There are tens of thousands of veteran service organizations out there that talk about those things. There is stuff but it was like a booklet. It’s like, “Here's the big booklet. Read through it.” Honestly, is anybody going to do that? No. Also, in the beginning, I just wanted to get home and see my family. I didn't have time to look at that stuff. I feel there should be a way that they go through this knowledge slowly but also wait a little bit to get you settled, because of that, I didn't know what was out there. They talked about, “Go to the VA. Maybe it’s possible to get some medication. Talk to somebody at the vet center.” They didn't let you know about all these amazing groups out there that can go look for fishing clubs or hiking clubs. I'm not discrediting anybody or saying that they don't give you anything at all. That's not true. They give you something but you need to find a better formula in how they let you understand and obtain this knowledge as well. That's the disconnect.
Some people are like, “There's nothing out there. They're not helping you at all.” Go to the VA. In my experience, US Army’s VA is good and great. The people are nice but it's confusing. You have to put a lot of time into it and figure it out. Nobody's going to grab your hand and help you through it. I'm not saying that we all have to be spoon-fed. You need to have somebody help you through this process, educate you on what's out there, and give you the baton and let you run but somebody has to guide you a little bit.
This is what we see time and time again with veterans, it's that learning curve. Brett is feeling overwhelmed by this big booklet he's passed. Some veterans don't have that person to champion them or advocate for them and guide them through the process. You're coming off of life and a mindset of being structured and in the military, you do the same thing. You get up every day and life is militant. When you come home, you're expected to figure it out on your own. What it does is it flips the switch and becomes this sense of overwhelmingness and the veterans close themselves off and say, “There's too much paperwork. There are too many things to read up on. What do I qualify for? I don't know what paperwork or documentation I have to bring.” All of those snowballs and they shut down. That's where we find our veterans falling off track. The biggest area of need and what we saw was the lack of the know-how and navigating through these processes where veterans do need a little bit of handholding until they can get themselves back on a path toward self-sufficiency.
Going from strict structure, there's no higher structure order than the US military. Going into a place where there's no structure can be overwhelming for a veteran. How are you guys filling that void?
It's different for every veteran we serve. We've figured it out. What we found that works well is we never approach a veteran in their scenario and hand them a stack of intake forms or say, “What's your name and date of birth? This and this.” We sit down and have a genuine conversation and say, “How are you doing? What's going on? What are you up to now that you’re out of the military?” Break bread with them and break down those barriers to create a foundation of trust first because that's going to go so much further. Many organizations treat veterans like a number and that's not what we do. That's led to a lot of the effectiveness of the work that we do.
When I first got home, I was put on medical hold. I went to go see a doctor at the Newport Naval Base and they gave me so much medication. The medication made it worse for me. That was the trap door to my depression. That right there was probably one of the most challenging things to get off these medications. Dealing with what I saw overseas. We did lose somebody. We did get shot at, blown up and all those things that you hear about in the news of what it's like to be overseas.
Losing my purpose hit hard but then putting these medications on there to bog down in my brain, slow things down and put me in this mental fog got me depressed. I also was having stomach issues because of this anxiety and I didn't know what it was from. I thought it was burn pits. All this stuff was a bunch of different things all happening. The medication was like putting a Band-Aid on an infected wound. It wasn't curing it. It was keeping them quiet, keeping them at bay and stuff.
There's so much stuff out there to deal with these things in a more natural and holistic way. That's where we fit in to make sure other veterans know about these things and educate them. The doctor will say, “What's going on? You have PTSD. You see some stuff. I recommend this medication, this SSRI, Benzo, Xanax.” They should say, “Let me hear your story. Let me see what's going on. Let's talk. Let's get to know each other. Do you want to go get some food? Let's go get some food. Let's get outside.” We’re in this little cubicle, “Let’s go outside and talk.” That's how it should be.
I felt like it was a doctor talking to a patient. It should be a person talking to another person, somebody that you can relate to and feel like, “This person understands where I'm coming from. I'm not a 4:00 to 4:30 and they’ll have somebody else right after me. They're going to spend time with me. They don't care about anything that's going on besides getting to know me.” That right there is a way that we need to help veterans. It's nothing against what's happening. There are resources and people helping but we need to find more effective ways and that's getting the better trust, getting to know them and seeing, “Let's try all these other things out there. Let's get you with somebody that you can relate to.”
That's where you base your model off of NAA. When you’re nervous you go to this place because you're dealing with drugs and alcohol. You start to listen to the stories of people who are saying what you're going through but they've been in sobriety for 20 to 30-plus years. You're 20 and this person is 40. It’s like, “He or she is saying exactly what I'm going through and they're sobered. They look happy. Maybe I can do this.” Putting it in a way like that is more effective than being a number and getting that 4:00 to 4:30 time slot and, “Here's a medication I would recommend.” We need to change up the process a little bit. It's not destroyed but we need to change it up.
A lot of what's missing in all that mess, and I don't want to knock out mess because it can be active for a lot of people in many different ways. When I cut my arm, I wouldn’t go to a doctor. I’d go to a surgeon. In terms of the compassion aspect, it is also a business transaction. If there are 50 people waiting in the waiting room, he or she is not going to be able to spend an hour with you to take care of and understand where you're coming from. He has to see a set of symptoms, put a prescription together and that's how the treatment is.
After that, the vet is on their own. There could be therapy along with the medication but at the end of the day, you need to have somebody who has a good heart and who's able to find out what this person needs. You guys are filling that void. I know this organization was sparked and birthed from helping one person. Once you guys decided, “We're going to dedicate a lot of time and our energy into this,” what was the vision at the beginning of Backpacks For Life? What did you guys want to start accomplishing?
When we started this, we cared about veterans and this is healing us personally. We didn't think much else of it and it was this grassroots effort. We started a GoFundMe campaign, raised $3,500 and handed out a bunch of backpacks after that one encounter. They were horrible. They're this neon green, thin toilet papery and they all broke but it was a starting point. We started in 2014 and by year three, we were handing out backpacks everywhere from Rhode Island, Maryland, California and Iowa. Brett was going out and advocating for veteran homelessness with other veteran service organizations. We had no idea what was going to end up being what it is now. We got to a turning point a few years ago where it was like, “This is becoming an actual organization with a clear and defined mission. People are receptive to it and we're effective at serving veterans and their families.” I ended up quitting my full-time job and decided to take on a role full-time with the organization. We would have never thought that it ended up here.
Over time, we found new and more effective ways to serve them. Developing our own backpack to cater to a homeless veteran with security and safety features based on everything they told us for years and people are like, “How did you come up with that?” It's because we're listening to the people we serve. Evolving our coaching and mentorship program, being a peer-to-peer program, veteran to veteran or spouse to spouse and creating an online platform to help mitigate all the noise and streamline the process and make it more effective for veterans. We had a call to present our platform, Roger, to a suicide prevention committee to help post-9/11 veterans who are struggling with that transition period.
We presented it to them as a possible platform that they can use and they're like, “This is incredible. Why hasn't anybody done this?” That's the one thing. We're willing to push the limits and the envelope to get it done. We entered a space where we have been the youngest in the room by easily twenty years. We have older VFW and American Legion members but we're in a space where people are slipping into the processes of how to serve veterans but not being willing to change them. That's where we came in and disrupted the space to say, “We see inefficiencies but we also see a way to change it.”
I'm going to go a little off-topic because, first of all, Alexa Modero, my fiancée, was in the fashion industry dealing with shoes. She was getting hundreds of designers from designer shoes, hundreds of shoes a year because she was the model size and they're giving these shoes. She stopped that. She's having a great salary to work for pennies on the dollar to help homeless veterans. She's an amazing person. I'm blown away by the things she does. That’s why I want to throw that out there. I bring that up because it's just not the veteran, if the house burns down, she’ll help you build up one side of the house. It's the entire family.
A lot of people think, “Let me work with the veteran directly.” You have to work with their child to help them understand what the veterans are going through and help the veteran know how to deal with their child and the same with their spouse or their family members. It's a whole community effort to let them understand but also have the veteran understand where they're coming from as well because it's traumatic on both sides. People are like, “It’s just the veteran.” The family might be dealing with more than the veteran. They have to deal with keeping things on lock back at the home front. We look at these things, it’s through our own experience but listen. We shut up and listen and see what's going on.
The lack of the know-how, a search platform that could figure out what's out there based on demographics, income or different categories and going beyond government programs and stuff even though there are great government programs. There are some government programs that I’m still learning about. I'm like, “Why didn't I know about that?” Alexa and I deal with this on what I call a 24-hour, 8 days a week basis. We're always out there asking questions and seeing, “What do veterans need?” That's why we constructed this backpack called a Bowery Pack to fit a veteran's need to help us survive and get off the streets. That's why we created Roger.vet, a search platform to help veterans figure out what's out there.
People are like, “No medication at all.” First of all, I would never recommend a veteran to get off their medication and I would never discredit Western medicine that is out there. It's amazing. We're living longer than we ever did before. I'm not spreading that but I'm saying, see what else is out there. If you're on medication, that's great. Maybe talk to your doctor about maybe getting off it or maybe you're on it and that's fine. It's like a portfolio. You're not just going to invest in one thing, the one stock. Let's diversify that portfolio by checking out other things and put it on top of that. I'm not saying to get off medication and try something natural. Talk to your doctor about other ways to deal with what you're dealing with. That's all we're trying to do.
I'm so impressed that both of you had full-time jobs. You were also working a lot then whatever time you had free you then working on the Backpack For Life organization and all the other projects you're working on. You're also limited in time and in resources. How do you scale an organization like this to create the capital and the funds to be able to help other people and also build an organization of like-minded people who are on the same mission as you?
Something we did right when I quit my corporate job and we decided like, “We're all systems go.” We seize every opportunity to build our network. That sounds so cheesy and cliche but our organization would not be where it is now if I didn't go to 5,000 veteran entrepreneur networking events in the city. I could talk to a wall at this point because I was like, “What do you do? How can I help support? How can you support me?” Creating this ecosystem around us. That is what helped us get to a point where we are two people and we run an organization that has that national reach. We're limited but we built this network around us and it had the snowball effect. I don't know what it is but it picked up speed. There's always burnout. We always experienced that because we are only two people, but that's why we tap other volunteers who know our methods and know the way that we choose to treat or work with a veteran to do it in the most effective way.
It’s a balancing act. We got burned out so we were like, “Let's go to the vet center and talk to somebody there about what we're dealing with.” That's fine. People are like, “Go to the vet center?” “What’s wrong?” That right there, the misconception, that stereotype of going to seek out help is because you're dealing with an issue. We need to reverse that and go talk to somebody, reach out to somebody or go to a therapeutic setting because we want to prevent something from happening. There was burnout and we’re extremely stressed. I don't know how to explain it but some messed up in the servants scenarios and stuff. We're in this non-judgmental setting where if I were to judge anybody, I'd be judged 10,000 times over already. It's coming from a place of love and compassion to work with these individuals. You have to have that love and compassion for yourself as well. I still have a full-time job. Alexa quit her job to run this full-time. We have amazing people to help us out but we're only two people and we have a lot of veterans coming to us because people know, “Send them to Backpack is Life. They're going to work with them.”
I’m not saying we have this Wild West approach where we will do anything but we're not limited by what a grant our government agency allows us to do. We have a more open approach to get them a bus ticket. We had this vet who, for six years, had no teeth. She served our country. She was humble discharge. She's an amazing person. We were able to get inside our network to find somebody and she's getting veneers now. That's a beautiful thing. We have to work on ourselves as well so we have to say no to events in the beginning. We were going out there and helping everybody out. Honestly, I'm still figuring it out. I get guilty when I have to tell somebody, “I can't help you out at this time.”
I have to say no to people because I'm only one person. I do have a life and I have a full-time job. I'm still figuring it out myself. I'm just a human. I still get depressed. I would go home and cry sometimes because it is overwhelming with the scenarios. We have people with domestic violence situations, sexual assault or rape. It's a lot of disturbing stuff. It’s not disturbing for them. It’s sad that people can do this to each other but we're here to be that shoulder out and say, “I don't care what it is. I might not be able to help you but I can at least be here to listen to you and I'll talk with you and stuff.”
It's interesting because we run a business. My mindset is operational. At the end of the day, we're a nonprofit. We do not profit. It all goes towards programming efforts to support veterans and sometimes we have to take a step back. It can get super heavy and feel like you have someone’s life in your hands. We've dealt with a serious female veteran’s domestic violence situation and she had a young six-year-old son and had to flee her home with his boyfriend who was abusing her for years. She put up the courage to come to us and needed to tell us that she felt she was in an unsafe scenario. She shows up and we've put her up in a hotel for three nights. She shows up with a gun in her glove box because she feels so threatened and in danger.
We did all the right steps. We've worked with police, we call lawyers, we made sure that person cannot find her and get her transferred to where her family lives. She drove cross country from New Jersey to Washington State. We made sure she had stops along the way every night to go do a fun excursion with their son so this was a positive experience. This wasn't something that would traumatize him for life. When she left after being here for three days while we worked out a game plan, I sob because you have someone's life in your hands. Sometimes we get a little bit stuck in the operations of being nonprofit. “What sponsors do we want to get? What funding do we need to bring in?” You have to get back to that core mission. We have since changed that woman's life. She's living in Washington, thriving, has a healthy son and they're living a beautiful life. We forget that part sometimes. Sometimes you do need to take that step back and remind yourself of those stories of people we have helped and see them thriving. That is what makes it all worth it despite getting burnt out and working hard.
It's always coming back to that purpose. I get burned out too running this business and figure out how to make enough money to pay for all the expenses. At the end of the day, you have that one interaction where you're changing somebody's life. It makes all the difference and it refuels you. You guys go through that process. You gave some great examples. Can you tell us some more stories about that, that stuck out in your mind about why you're on this mission?
We spent Christmas years ago with an older gentleman who's probably in his 80s. We got a call from a local law enforcement officer saying, “We found a homeless veteran. Unfortunately, he was sleeping in an ATM vestibule and he's covered in his own feces.” That right there was mind-blowing to us. We went through all the proper channels. He did need some mental health support. He didn't need to go to the hospital. Brett was there along the way to make sure an advocate for him because he didn't have the wherewithal to make sure he had all the right documentation and to ask for the right things. It ended up being this beautiful story and he ended up in this incredible home. Brett spent his birthday with him. He spent Christmas with us and our family. We gave him a sweatshirt and it was three sizes too small and he wore it anyway. He was bursting out of it and it's the best story. He had the best time.
I remember him. He was sitting in this vestibule. I got there late at night. We put them in a motel. We got some clean clothes. It was my own clothes. I brought it to them and I got him some food. I went to his bed. How do you acclimate him back to society? I'm not there to prescribe medication. We called the police and an attorney every single time, attorneys that we use to help let them know what's happening like the police in their town and stuff.
We're not just doing this road. We have people. We call these people and let them know what's going on. We’re making sure the veteran's privacy is the number one objective. This person has been by himself for so long. What I did was we called all these vets and we had people go there to hang out and bring them some of the bed garments and shoes. That got him some food. We're bombarding them with veterans to hang out with them. I remember when I had gotten to his motel.
Two days later, I came back there. I was like, “Are you sure this is the same person?” He’s clean-shaven and looks amazing. He didn't need some mental health and he was afraid to go to the VA. We did a little pinky promise and I said, “You don't have to work but I'll come there every day.” I did. I came there every day. He had to go to the psychiatric ward, I was like, “That's fine. I'll be there every day.” It was his birthday there so I got authorization to bring a cake. I brought in the cake. I’d go up to the eighth floor. They’d buzz me in, I got the cake in, they brought a TV out and we played some games and stuff. Everybody was a little silly but it was great. It was the coolest thing ever hanging out with them and stuff. That right there is what we do, be there for them. We can't promise them the world but we can promise them that we're not going to give up on them. We're going to be there to talk with them. That was so beautiful.
We had this guy who needed a car seat for their kid. We got him the car seat. We had another veteran spouse where she was dealing with mold issues in her house because of a leaky roof. We had a company come and repair the entire roof. We had another guy who didn't have AC during the summer. Their AC was broken. We had a company come in, HA Perry repaired their HVAC and their water heater as well. We connect with these organizations. You mentioned how to get funding for all these things. We do what we're doing. People see that and they come and help us. They see that we're authentic and we genuinely care. It's the most beautiful thing. These things are more than the weight of gold to me.
That is what I could get paid if I get paid at all. Alexa is our only paid employee which is technically illegal what we're paying her. Hopefully, she doesn't press charges on her nonprofit. It gives me a purpose to see somebody covered in feces and now they're having their own little garden. This other organization sent us a picture of him there because he was like, “Send him this picture of me.” It was an equine therapy place. I remember my friend sent me pictures like, “This person said they know you.” It was him with the horse. I'm like, “That's fucking awesome.”
In order to help other people, there are resources that are needed. How can some of our readers, if they’re reading and they want to contribute, how they can help either with their time, funding and supplies? Please let us know.
Everyone can find us on our website BackpacksForLife.org. We have a get involved page there where you can sign up to get notified about our hands-on volunteer opportunities, which are packing backpacks, helping furnish formerly homeless veteran's homes when they finally get a home. There are tons of opportunities to get involved. We have fundraisers all in New Jersey. They can follow us along on Instagram and Facebook. We're always doing Instagram and Facebook Lives to bring people in and see what we do. There are tons of hands-on opportunities and people can donate voluntarily as well.
I’m probably the least likely person to promote our nonprofit because it's not about our nonprofit. I could care less about promoting our nonprofit. It’s about serving the veterans or serving people in general or helping somebody out. For me, when people say, “How can you get involved?” See what organizations are in the local area that inspires you or something that you'd like to do. Go connect with them. Try to do one good thing a day or a week.
If you see somebody that's sitting there with a sign, “Homeless. Please help me out.” First of all, I wouldn't give them money. If you have a couple of seconds and $1, go buy a water bottle or maybe do some research online to see, “This person is homeless. He's been there for a while.” Look up some resources, print them out and go give them to them. Maybe contact those resources and let them know about that individual. It doesn't take that much time. Go buy a sandwich with that $2 or $5 and give the sandwich.
If you give somebody money, one it enables them to stay out there but also people are impostors that are using your love and passion to take some money off you. They could be dealing with drugs and alcohol. It's enabling that. Somebody said, “They need money to get a bus ticket.” Get them the bus ticket then. Whatever they need the money to get whatever it is, give them that thing. Ask them or talk with them. Go and say, “How's your day going?” If you're having a good day, people will ask you or not. Talk with them and ask them how they're doing. The guy was in Castaway, he went crazy and started talking to a ball, which is no human interaction. Interact with that person. They're a person. They're not crazy. They're not this person who you see in a horror movie that's going to eat your head off or something like a monster. They're literally just a person, you can talk to them as a person.
Loving everybody and realizing that we're all human. We're all divine children and now looking at the separation. I love the fact that that extra life is the basis in what you guys do but also, you're customizing the help for everybody that they need. Also, you started that Roger platform. Tell us a little bit about that. It's helping vets find positions for employment. Also, let's get into the cannabis space a little bit and how you guys are helping because that's a big thing in terms of helping PTSD.
Roger was a brainchild of seeing a problem in the way that the Veteran Service Organization space operated. We created this platform and it's for New Jersey veterans because what we realized is every state serves veterans differently whether they have certain eligibility requirements or not. For a veteran, a family member, they can go online, put in their zip code, their income and what branch of service they were in. They'll be given, in real-time, listings of nonprofits, government programs and resources that pertain to them based on everything you filled in. What that does is help mitigate time wasted in going through intake processes only to be told, “You don't qualify for our programs.” What's great is it's a platform for veteran service organizations, too.
We’re very much in a sense of working together with other people in the community to get the job done. It allows veteran service organizations like another nonprofit to create their own profile and share with veterans, “Here's what you need to do to get involved in our program. Here's what we require of you.” It's taken us three years to get it up and running. It's been a labor of love but it's this smart platform that we've shown to many people who are like, “We did this for so long. We can't believe someone finally did it.” We were willing to take that challenge on because we knew how effective it would be if it existed.
Alexa pretty much said it all. It's a place to find resources based on all these different variables and how we didn't create the platform and add everything to it. We reverse-engineered in a way that, “How did things operate? Let's build the platform around that so we can find these things more effectively.” That's how we did it in vets. It’s been an amazing platform so far. There are little hiccups and stuff but it is what it is. It's perfect now. First of all, those hiccups are gone because we launched one several years ago. It was awful. We took it down and spent a couple of years on it and going out there. This is similar to Google to find a bunch of stuff and add it to Roger.
We spent years boots on the ground going through these programs. I myself or other veterans that I’ve known of that went through this program. We’re boots on the ground going through that, learning about these programs, see if they're effective and then putting them on Roger. Effectively gets to work with me in an ethical standpoint that they're not trying to stamp the veteran by taking their money, “We offer a 2% discount for that. Everything is 100% is free.” You don’t have to use your username and password for it. There are no intake processes. You can go on there and start searching.
You guys are involved in the cannabis space as well.
We focus on what are alternative treatment methods that push the envelope. Especially here in New Jersey and a couple of other states, PTSD has now become a qualifying condition for medical cannabis. We've worked with a handful of groups. There are groups that are now doing studies through the FDA to get this approved for veterans to use. Brett touched on this. You get prescribed medications and another medication to subset the side effects of the first medication. When you could be focusing on something that's grown out of the ground and supernatural. It's piqued our interest tremendously to see how effective this can be for not just PTSD but anxiety and depression as well in veterans.
Cannabis is involved over millions of years by evolution. They’re doing amazing things to make sure this is the best thing possible yet we're like, “Somebody in a lab coat, a scientist that maybe has 30, 40 years of research under their belt to create this drug.” You can go through that hypocrisy for hours but it's a natural remedy. They prescribe it to help against opioid dependency now. It's natural. There's all the taboo, misconceptions, stereotypes and all this thing out there. The petroleum industry is bad. Is the pharmaceutical industry against it? Yes because they can't patent it and keep it for themselves. You can go all through these things but it's something there. I've never heard of somebody that overdosed from cannabis or who was in a domestic violence situation because of cannabis. Let's try that.
First of all, there are no side effects. That's not true. If you smoke it in it can cause carcinogens. There are side effects to everything but the other side effects outweigh the side effects of cannabis. Let's look into it a little bit more and let's keep an open mind. I know that in a couple of industries that you're not allowed to be on cannabis but you could be on opioids, Benzos and drink alcohol, which is poisoning your body but you can't be on cannabis and take a little tincture and oil.
We're exploring it. We're putting some more time into it. I know cannabis helps individuals out. I'm not trying to get a veteran on to a substance and use that. There are natural approaches. I recommend anything to the veteran but I also let them know the realities of what might happen if you utilize that. They always say, “Go to a doctor.” I let them know to go to people to ask those questions. That's how we guide them.
Cannabis is a beautiful thing. We're investing our time into it. We’re outside of our nonprofit. We want to get into it within the for-profit way with cannabis. We have a couple of base ideas. We're looking to open up a dispensary in Jersey City and a cultivation site in Passaic as well. We want to have it as a way to help individuals who can't afford it and help them get cannabis as a form of medication because some people, it's expensive so they can't obtain cannabis. We want to make sure everybody has the option to use cannabis as an alternative to SSRI, Benzo, opioid or whatever other medications that are very addicting and mind-altering as well.
Also, people who tried to use cannabis to help themselves when it was illegal, they now have a criminal record because of that so we're helping them with that. We're helping them with the expungement processes as well. We're trying to help people out and let them know that there are other things besides these harsh medications that if they go, “It's just a pill. It's safe. A doctor gave it to me.” I’m not discrediting doctors not to use medication but do a little research before taking that thing and digesting it.
I resonate with you guys so strongly because you're coming in from a humble point of view and looking at all the options on how to help people and choosing or guiding people into different modalities. You're not saying, “This is the only way. If you don't want to listen to me, you're cut off.” It's all about being humble and your why is important. It's important to highlight that you guys went into this with such a strong purpose but not necessarily a lot of experience in the field and you put the time you put the effort in and eventually you got ahead. One day at a time and making this happen and I know that at some point you’re on the billboards of Times Square.
I always see pictures with the governor or the state senators and all this stuff. It's incredible what you guys have done and it's an honor to know you and to what you guys are doing is making a positive impact in the world. If there's anything that people can take out of this, it’s being inspired to be more of a contribution in this world and not only focusing on ourselves but also helping people that are in need. Once everybody starts putting that energy into helping the collective, a rising tide lifts all ships. That's how we move forward. That's how this planet evolves. Let me ask you guys a question. Why do you think you came here when you chose to come here to Earth as Brett and Alexa? What did you want to experience?
I never thought I'd end up in any line of work where I was giving back. Not that I wasn't a person who wanted to help others but growing up, it was never something I saw for myself. Now being in a space ready to give back every day. This is such a crazy thing to already say but I know that when I leave this Earth, I will have left it in a better place and will have done something. If it was 1 veteran, 2 spouses or 5 spouses, whatever that number is, I feel like I can confidently go out saying, “I know I've made a difference.” Leaving this corporate job where I was pushing paper 9:00 to 5:00. I loved what I was doing and I was in fashion but there's nothing that compares to work that's so meaningful and to now have that purpose in life. I've been doing that and never thinking I'd be in this position. It makes you feel good.
I've been bullied and abused. I've cheated, lied, stolen from a store, I've done all these things. Sometimes people are like, “Look at that person. Listen to this podcast. They sound so perfect. They're amazing. There's nothing wrong with that.” It’s BS. Everybody has issues and everybody's going through stuff. People have cried. People have been going through depression so deal with depression, anxiety and from general social norms, internally. I'm still working on this myself. People are like, “You guys are perfect, you're doing amazing things.” We're still going through this ourselves. We're like you. We have those downfalls and faults with us, internally and externally. Why am I on this Earth? I went through hell and a lot of stuff. It was being an alcoholic in recovery to deal with these things and seeing these horrific things and also deal with veterans that are going through. I can’t comprehend why another human would do that to them. “Why is that person dealing with this?”
Why I'm saying all this is I feel like I'm here to let people know that it's okay to be different. I love people who are odd, unusual, weird and everything in between. I love those people and those people I resonate with because they make me feel like I'm not crazy, unusual and odd. There's nothing wrong with that. People who are not are people I love and stuff and it's good to be different. I feel like why I'm here is to let people know that it's okay to ask for help and to be different and unusual in stuff.
Society gets everybody to feel like, “You have to act like this and if you don't, we're going to shun you.” Do whatever makes you feel happy, obviously in a safe way. That's why I feel like I don’t deserve to let people know through my own experiences that it's okay. It came to me and like, “Give him heroin. Brett, I've done it again.” That's fine. It's all good. I'm not going to judge you. I'm not going to yell at you and say, “I told you that we work so hard for you to be sober now you're out in heroin.” That's okay. It’s fine. Let’s get through it. Maybe this is the reason why to get you to stop and suffer. If you use it again, that's fine. Let's talk about it. I'm never going to tell somebody, “I tried to help you out and you didn't listen to me or you lie to me.” That is fine. People do things because of other reasons.
All that long spiel and I can keep going on and on rambling. It is okay to be different and I feel like I'm there to let people know that through my own experience, it is okay to be yourself and don't let anybody put you down for who you are and get out there and ask for help. It's not a sign of weakness but it's a sign of strength to understand that and asking for help as in, “I'm dealing with this anxiety, depression, alcohol or drug dependency. I want to better myself. I'll live in a more healthy way.”
I love this is where you start out. We're all trying to heal ourselves and go through this and navigate this crazy life together. If we create a community of people who are also on that same path, we're all figuring shit out. I'm looking to help other people heal and that's why I created it. It’s the same with you guys. It's so beautiful. I want to thank you for being on this show. How can we learn more about you?
Check us out on Instagram and Facebook, Backpacks For Life. We're active there. You can see the work we do with veterans and whatever crazy new business idea we've come up with in a way to help veterans, we're always posting there. Our website, BackpacksForLife.org and Roger’s website is Roger.vet. That’s where you can find us.
Thank you so much.
Thank you.
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About Brett D'Alessandro
Sgt. Brett D’Alessandro returned home from a seven-month deployment in Afghanistan to what he thought was the end of a long road. He learned very quickly that an even longer road filled with struggle and confusion lay ahead. After a challenging deployment, Brett and those with whom he returned home, were now facing the hardest part of the process; reintegrating into their civilian lives while battling with the hidden wounds of war.
Following a face-to-face encounter with a homeless veteran on the streets of Rhode Island in the winter, something resonated with Brett. It wasn’t just him or those he was deployed with or this man on the side of the road…it was MANY veterans, nationwide, who had to deal with the trauma of coming home and not knowing where to turn. Brett took this moment as a sign to do more and be more for his fellow servicemen and women. That day, Brett distributed a backpack to this veteran filled with socks, t-shirts, and warming layers. From this simple act…Backpacks For Life was born.
Since 2014, BFL has devoted its life to make sure that no Veteran has to suffer by providing him/her with the correct tools to recover. These tools include coaching services, communal meals, making the veterans feel human, and letting each Veteran know that he or she isn’t alone. The recovery process is aided by countless hours of personal interaction and the physical distribution of backpacks. Backpacks represent the first line of defense, a symbol of hope, and so much more to the team at Backpacks For Life.
About Alexa Modero
Upon Brett’s return home from Afghanistan, Alexa witnessed firsthand just how challenging it was for Brett to reintegrate into civilian life. Alexa works closely alongside Brett to ensure that our veterans and their spouses are taken care of. Alexa oversees the general operations and communications of Backpacks For Life.
