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A message from Tonia… 

My name is Tonia Sargent and my husband, Msgt. Kenneth Sargent suffered a gunshot wound in Iraq on August 5, 2004. We have experienced financial difficulties and have relied on the generosity of non-profits to assist in monthly expenses.  Last year, Operation Homefront was there for us when we needed a new washing machine and I am excited to volunteer with this new program and assisting in the mission to support military families.

We are a different military family living with survivors of this war.  I hope to encourage a better rebuilding and restructuring of programs to provide the necessary tools and embrace families like mine to not have to pioneer the journey I continue to travel.  I have accepted the responsibility of this task and I am aware it may take my lifetime to get it almost perfect.  I am a partner in self-sacrifice to my nation.  I am a proud caregiver to my survivor and hero.  – Tonia Sargent, March 17, 2006.
 
 

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.
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.


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.
“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.
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