By: Megan Way and Su Phelps | Photos by: Su Phelps and Lawrence Oravetz
Alfie Huang and his cameraman from Sanlih E-Television, a news channel from Taiwan, came to Las Vegas to interview Su Phelps, Publisher/Owner of Veterans Reporter News on being a Female Taiwanese Business owner in the US. On their trip in Nevada, Su Phelps introduced them to many people in the veterans’ community including Director of Nevada Department of Veterans Services (NDVS) Katherine Miller, State Commander of Purple Heart Len Yelinek, Commander of Veterans of Foreign Wars Chapter 10047 Dan Myers, Former State Commander of Purple Heart Dr. Smalls, Representative of Jacky Rosen Blake Boles, Host of Veterans Talk and Founder of Veterans Transition Center Jim Lynt, Commander of VVA Chapter 1076 Neil Johnson and Founder of Veterans Village Dr. Arnold Stalk. We’ve captured their interview with Dr. Arnold Stalk below.
Sanlih E-Television’s Alfie Huang: Dr. Stalk, thank you for giving us an interview
Dr. Arnold Stalk: Oh, absolutely thank you.
Sanlih E-Television’s Alfie Huang: It’s our pleasure and honor. Our first question is can you briefly and neatly tell the concept, like how you help veterans?
Dr. Arnold Stalk: The Veterans Village was started in response to the growing amount of homeless veterans, United States veterans in our country. And this is a very grass roots organization that helps veterans get off the streets and get into a life of respect and dignity. We’re open 24/7, 365, always here to serve our veterans.
Sanlih E-Television’s Alfie Huang: So far how many people have you helped?
Dr. Arnold Stalk: I don’t have an exact amount with me but we help about 5,000 people per month in various ways. We don’t house 5,000 people but through our doors we provide food, clothing, housing, jobs, education, medical, mental health services and things through a partnership with the community. So that’s how we help our vets that are in need of help.
Sanlih E-Television’s Alfie Huang: Even though you’re called Veterans Village, you don’t just accommodate them, give them a house, but also just like you said, food, education, a lot comprehensive services.
Dr. Arnold Stalk: It’s called crisis intervention, which is a term that’s used to say, we intervene while the crisis is happening and before it happens so it doesn’t get worst than it is. For example if someone needs dentures, if they need to go to a dentist, if they need a job, if they need help with a food box, any type of thing, clothing, we’re here to help them get that so that they don’t go homeless. Prevention is a huge part of what we do.
Sanlih E-Television’s Alfie Huang: Is there any specific example, like you show the report or you post some news to the government and then they give more help?
Dr. Arnold Stalk: The vehicle I use most is social media. Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, I lost track of all of them. I forget the name of the other one, but we shout out a lot of social media and we have a friend network on Facebook that is very large and that’s how we get our word out. And like I said we’re very grass roots, grass roots meaning that there’s people helping us, not large government agencies. We work with the VA we work with the HUD, and we work with the housing authority, but it’s actually in the trench people that help get the word out to help one veteran at a time. We’re not gonna solve the problem on our own…
Sanlih E-Television’s Alfie Huang: What makes you like to cooperate with Su? What’s special?
Dr. Arnold Stalk: There’s something still very special about a newspaper. People, especially our older veterans, they like to read it, they like to look at it, they like to think about it. You know, it’s home to a lot of people. And when veterans look at these images and Su covers a whole plethora of issues that’s not covered in the main media at all. It’s a home piece to a vet. It’s really a good media.
Sanlih E-Television’s Alfie Huang: How do you think of her, always we think of someone who come to support a veteran, a white man or a man but for her as female and Chinese does that really amaze you or?
Dr. Arnold Stalk: She’s awesome but when I look at her I don’t think Chinese, Taiwanese, any -ese, because she’s a humanitarian. She’s a media humanitarian which makes her very different from other outlets a lot of media comes in here, ‘Oh give us some of that, we wanna interview someone, we wanna hear veterans’ war stories, we wanna hear how their plane crashed-‘ we don’t do that. That makes her very very different.
