PHOENIX — A first-of-its-kind remote claims initiative launched by the Disabled American Veterans Department of Arizona is helping rural and tribal veterans file for the benefits they’ve earned without driving hours to the nearest service office.
The program, a roughly $50,000 investment over two years, outfits service officers statewide with 38 Windows laptops, 11 tablets, and 11 iPads, each paired with keyboard cases, styluses, and boxes of flash drives.
The equipment allows veterans in remote communities — including the Navajo Nation and the mining town of Globe — to connect by video with trained veteran service officers, turning what was once a five-hour trip into a computer call.
“It’s all about getting out of the chapter house, going into the community where the veterans are that can’t come to you,” said Dr. Carl Forkner, a veteran service officer and Adjutant of the DAV Department of Arizona. “If you’re in the Navajo Nation — Piñon or Chinle — you’re five hours away from the nearest service officer. That’s a long drive. That’s an overnight trip.”
Forkner said Arizona is the first state to roll out this kind of remote claims network for veterans, with other states already expressing interest, especially those with large Native nations and rural populations.
While veterans can technically file a claim online themselves, advocates say the process is complicated, easy to get wrong, and full of traps that can lead to denials or delays.
“They don’t speak VA,” Forkner said. “This program works very well, and it’s just like you’re sitting there with the veteran.”
Through the new system, veterans in communities such as Globe, Claypool, San Carlos, and Roosevelt Lake can walk into a local site — often a lodge, wellness center or community building — sit down at a dedicated computer and connect via Zoom to a DAV service officer anywhere in the state. After documents are transmitted and forms completed, the veteran leaves with a flash drive copy of their claim and the peace of mind that it was filed correctly.
The goal is to help veterans secure disability ratings, survivor benefits, and education benefits both for themselves and their families.
In Globe, Army veteran Linda Merlin is on the front lines of the rollout. She serves as the veteran liaison at the local Elks Lodge and as a veterans advocate with Veterans Affinity, a nonprofit focused on helping older veterans.
“We look for the senior veterans to help them get their DD 214, their benefits, help get them a rating,” Merlin said. “They’re the ones that kind of got left out.”
Before the remote claims station arrived, Merlin said, most Globe-area veterans had to travel 68 miles to Mesa for help, often without reliable transportation.
“If you’re disabled and don’t have a car, you’re not going,” she said. “You have to have a friend or a family member to take you down.”
Now, on designated days, veterans can come to the Elks Lodge, grab coffee — and likely cookies — and sit down at a computer that links them directly with a DAV service officer.
On the Navajo Nation, where an estimated 30,000 veterans live on or near the reservation, leaders say the remote DAV system is answering a desperate need.
“From the data we collect from our Navajo Nation VA office, that’s the number they work with,” said Dave Nez, chair of the Piñon Veteran Wellness Center, a 501(c)(3) nonprofit. “This is veterans that live on Navajo Nation as well as off Navajo Nation, but they still come here for services.”
He explains the new virtual connection helps in so many ways, even taking the large expense of traveling on a fixed income.
“The ones that want to take the burden to travel — a lot of times overnight and spend their own money — those are the ones that go to Prescott or down to Phoenix to start their claims,” Nez said.
Bringing DAV claims workers in by video, he said, changes the equation. Veterans can now be scheduled in a series of appointments — 12:30, 1:00, 1:30 — without leaving their community. Nez said that is only the beginning.
“We’d like to really extend that to more advocacy as well,” he said. “Once the paperwork is done and submitted, it’s the follow-up that a lot of veterans don’t really take the time and effort for. A lot of them are lost because they need interpreters, they need transportation, they need funding to travel.”
For older Navajo veterans and widows, language barriers add another layer of difficulty. During one recent remote session, Nez watched as volunteers translated back and forth between English and Navajo so a widow could understand the survivor benefits she might be eligible for.
“Particularly the older veterans, they might be hard to hear, might have limited education,” Nez said. “So, you repeat the questions, translate into Navajo and then back to English. That was happening here.”
Nez said the wellness center concept his nonprofit is building goes beyond claims work. It is meant to address what he calls “insular veterans” — men and women who have returned home but remain emotionally and socially detached.
“These are veterans that are basically disconnected,” he said. “They’re still in their military mode, or they are isolated because of what they experienced. The reintegration process is difficult for them.”
The center aims to become a resource hub and safe space, where veterans can rebuild trust, regain confidence, and reconnect with their communities.
“We want to find everyone and help them make that adjustment, build that confidence back up into the community and be more productive,” Nez said. “They’re full of knowledge and expertise, but it’s just really bringing them back out gradually and kind of putting them back into the community as a normal person.”
The Piñon Veteran Wellness Center was formally organized only in early January, but its founders say the need has been evident for years.
For Barton Hustein, a former Army military police soldier and reconnaissance specialist who served from 1989 to 2013, including two years in Iraq, the system’s shortcomings are personal.
When he returned from combat in 2006, he said, he struggled with trauma and couldn’t get along with anyone. Yet, on the Navajo Nation, there were virtually no local resources.
“We had zero — nothing. No benefits, nothing, claims worker, nothing,” he said. “So, I started going off the reservation, here and there. Prescott, Carl T. Hayden, all that. It took me almost five years to get to 100%.”
The constant travel, appointments and paperwork — often undertaken with his late wife — took a toll.
“It was really hard,” he said. “But finally, I got it — 50, 70, and 100. They got me to where I couldn’t work no more. Through VA, I cannot work. They pay me for it. They take care of me really good. So, I did that on myself.”
That experience, he said, convinced him that a wellness center in Piñon was essential.
“We want it here,” Hustein said. “Let’s start from here. It was through me that this wellness center started. We found that it’s a need. That’s why we’re at this point.”
Asked if the new organization and remote claims access would save lives, Hustein didn’t hesitate.
“Yes, sir,” he said. “That’s where we’re at now. We’re going to start getting what the veteran needs.”
The group is seeking funding and grants to move from a modest beginning toward a fully equipped wellness center offering claims support, counseling connections, transportation coordination and
a welcoming space for military families.
“Within the next few months, we’re looking for funding that could become available so that we can give better services, improve what we have here,” she said. “If somebody out there hears and says we do need this for the natives to come in and to heal, starting through here — that’s what we’re hoping.”
For Andrew Simpson, an 80-year-old Native American Marine Corps veteran of Vietnam, the journey to full disability has also been long and unfinished.
“I came back fully alive, but not as good as I was when I went into the service,” Simpson said. He has filed and refiled for years, reaching 90% but still short of 100%.
He and his wife now use two computers at home to help other veterans start the claims process and understand spousal benefits.
“A lot of times we’ll try to help the people that haven’t gotten their disability either,” he said. “We need your help. We need Veterans Administration’s help all over the world. That’s what we need.”
On the Navajo Nation, Saraphine Josley, president of the All Navajo Veterans Auxiliary, said her organization helped guide Nez and Hustein’s group through the 501(c)(3) process because their missions were aligned.
She envisions a one-stop resource center not just for Navajo veterans, but for non-Native veterans married into Navajo families and for military families more broadly.
“There’s no limit of who we can help,” Josley said. “We’d like this to be a one-stop place where they can feel confident, secure, and safe that they can get help here.”
Her group and the Piñon Veteran Wellness Center operate as what she called a “mirror image of the Red Cross,” on call to respond when veterans or families need support.
Back in Globe, Merlin’s message is simple and direct.
“Anyone out there that’s a veteran, look us up on Facebook, Veterans Affinity,” she said. “Come have coffee and donuts with us, and let us help you. Let us help you by minimizing those barriers to care. Let us help you get to your doctor’s appointment. Let us help you sign up with the VA. Let us help you get that rating or those benefits, because we’re all volunteers, and we all have a purpose — and that’s to help other veterans. Nobody gets paid. We do this for the love of our fellow veterans.”
