Military support group serves local VA patients Published Nov. 2, 2015 By Ryan Stark Nucleus writer KIRTLAND AIR FORCE BASE, N.M. -- An organization called Solders' Angels is ramping up efforts to help veterans at the Raymond G. Murphy Veterans Administration Medical Center and is seeking local volunteers tto participate. Vicki Sarracino, Soldiers' Angels vice president of field operations, said they are bringing in a representative to coordinate volunteers at the VA center with tasks including patient visits, distributing care and comfort packages, and coordinating luncheons and picnics, among other projects. She said expressing appreciation to veterans being treated at the VA is vital for those patients. "The biggest draw for our volunteers is serving the veterans that have given so much for all of us," Sarracino said. "They volunteer to protect us, and they can come home with physical wounds and invisible wounds." Soldiers' Angels started in 2002 when a group of mothers with children deployed realized there were other service members in need of care packages and letters. After years of arranging deliveries of packages and letters, the drawdowns in the number of deployed military members spurred the organization to focus more on supporting veterans at VA hospitals. Sarracino said she has had very emotional experiences meeting and serving veterans in VA hospitals. On her first visit, she was delivering blankets made by volunteers. One veteran to whom she had given a blanket came out of his room a few minutes later to talk to her. "He said, 'I didn't know what to say when you gave this to me. Nobody has ever done anything like this for me,'" Sarracino said. "He was a Vietnam veteran, and a lot of our pre-9/11 veterans haven't had anything like this before. It's the most rewarding thing I've ever done." Sarrracino encourages anyone in Albuquerque interested in volunteering at the local VA center to visit the Soldiers' Angels website -- www.soldiersangels.org -- click the "volunteer" button and fill out the application. A local representative should contact the applicant soon afterward. "There are all kinds of volunteer opportunities available, and we try and connect people with the type of work they want to do," she said. Aside from work at VA hospitals, Soldiers' Angels volunteers work on their own in a number of capacities. They still write letters to deployed service members, bake and send treats, help deployed chaplains to take care of service members, as well as provide "TLC" extras for deployed females. Volunteers can also "adopt" a deployed service member and send at least four letters and one care package a month to that person. Volunteers with Soldiers' Angels also support wounded service members recovering at Landstuhl, Germany, or provide adaptive laptops for severely wounded veterans.