WITH causes positive ripples for veterans and kids

COEUR d'ALENE — It's been less than a year since Wellness Incentive to Health (WITH) Performance launched a pilot wellness program to serve veterans.

In the nine months the program has been active, it has yielded such impressive results that the Lynne Ruffin-Smith Charitable Foundation, which helped launch the program with a $20,000 grant last spring, has granted another $80,000 to help even more veterans improve their quality of life.

"We kept tabs on it and what was going on," said Kristina Kropf, Coeur d'Alene resident and Pacific Northwest representative for Lynne Ruffin-Smith. "I’m actually a WITH member and that’s where I was sold on the program, how amazing it is and what it did for me. Seeing the results and actually meeting some of the vets and seeing the transformation come about was just incredible, and I went, 'Look, we have to move forward.' This has been so successful that I get goose bumps."

WITH owner Shawn Burke partnered with St. Vincent de Paul of North Idaho's executive director, Jeff Conroy, to organize fitness regimens for 10 veterans who were enrolled in St. Vincent's veteran programs. At WITH, the vets have had access to state-of-the-art gym equipment while completing personalized workouts to improve injuries and other physical problems while concentrating on mental, social and spiritual healing. The results showed that on average, participants improved 20 percent across the board, from weight loss to muscle building to decreasing their metabolic age.

"To see someone come in who couldn’t even talk to you, who couldn’t speak ... and now is functioning and has a new grip on life, there’s nothing greater than that," Kropf said. "We’d like to see this go further, more people in here and more vets to go through.

“It’s so incredibly rewarding when we see lives change," she said. "To see around the community that ripple effect that will happen amongst people — one person’s happy, one person’s life’s enriched, that person goes on and there’s a ripple effect that happens. That’s what it’s all about."

As a veteran himself, Burke said it has been his vision to serve struggling veterans and get them back to being happy, healthy contributing members of society. Many of the veterans who enrolled in the pilot program suffered mental illness, homelessness, chronic pain and other life-altering problems.

"We were able to get them their self-confidence back, they were able to get physically fit better and every one of them became no longer homeless and they actually all have gotten jobs," Burke said. "They got physically able to tolerate a job and so that was really gratifying for us."

Improving diet and access to healthy meals have also been a focus of the program.

"Two of those people that we started on that program had no cooking skills at all," Burke said. "Now, just as of (Monday), I was talking to a guy who’s still coming, he’s now buying his own food, cooking his own food and following off that same protocol that we’re working on with health and nutrition."

The success of the pilot program and the $80,000 grant have allowed WITH and St. Vincent to continue their partnership and help more vets. About two weeks ago, 30 area veterans enrolled in the 2016 wellness program.

"It’s incredible," said 20-year Air Force veteran and new participant Bill Hopfensperger of Coeur d’Alene. "I think it's just another positive for the men and women that have done so much. Especially during the current times, we’ve got them stretched so thin. They’re giving so much with less and less resources it seems."

Hopfensperger said he will be working on his core muscles as well as a shoulder injury he sustained while enlisted. He said he thinks it's as important as ever for military personnel to have access to whatever resources are available.

At the same time the veteran wellness pilot was taking place, Burke said the same program model was implemented for an after-school program for high-schoolers. This program was also a positive venture.

"We worked with those kids and the results we got from them were phenomenal," he said. "They came three times a week, they had a nutritional program, so we just took that same success model and did it with an afterschool program. It was a huge success. ... Three kids who went through the program ended up with full-ride scholarships to college. They got that physically fit; they were able to turn their lives around."

Conroy said any program that helps those in need is something he supports. He has seen firsthand the results of the veteran program and concurs that it is a good thing.

"Self-esteem has improved, physical condition has improved, attitude has improved, some mental illnesses have diminished because of their attitude," Conroy said. "We have people that were in the program that didn’t want to come out of their room, that were very depressed and when they came here and participated and got to meet other vets and saw improvement, their whole outlook on life changed."

Burke said he recruited a grant writer to find grants to match the $80,000 and hopes other businesses and organizations will help to build the program through donations and sponsorships.

"This is something we feel that can expand even to bigger and better things down the road, and I think it's a good way of taking a situation that people usually try to put a Band-Aid on and don’t address it," Burke said. "This is a way of addressing those problems — making these people more functional in the community. They want to be functional. The ones that got jobs and are out there working; their whole demeanor has changed.

"You can’t put a price tag on it. These are people who deserve to have that opportunity."

The Lynne Ruffin-Smith Charitable Foundation will be the title sponsor for the 2016 Hayden Triathlon ($5,000 donation) on July 9. This sponsor/donation will allow WITH Performance to have five entries into the race and it will use those five entries to sponsor either a veteran or a teenager in the after-school programs to race in their first triathlon.

For information, contact Conroy at 664-3095 ext 302 or jeff@stvincentdepaulcda.org, or contact Burke at WITH Performance at 660-9378.

WITH Performance is located in Riverstone at 1950 Bellerive Lane.