NVRA Chairman Stuart A. Steinberg is literally an unsung hero. He has championed veterans rights tirelessly and selflessly for decades. He has won back benefits that have been capriciously denied deserving service men and women, at times taking their cases to the Supreme Court.
The Nomination
Twice Mr. Steinberg has been nominated for the CNN “Hero” Award. This is the most recent (2016) nomination:
Tell us about your nominee and what is special about his work
Stu Steinberg has been assisting his fellow veterans with claims for VA and military benefits since 1978, when he was a second-year law student. He does this as a volunteer for Vietnam Veterans of America and works for free. After almost 25 years as a public defender and capital defense investigator, he retired in 2004 and helped found, along with eight other Vietnam veterans, Central Oregon Veterans Outreach (COVO), a full-service, non-profit program that assists homeless, disabled and disadvantaged veterans, their dependents and survivors. COVO provides everything from camping gear, to cold-weather clothing, food, housing, and employment services.
COVO’s first project was to establish a transitional housing program that has now helped several hundred formerly homeless veterans come in from homeless camps throughout the Central Oregon high desert and has provided them with mental health and medical services, education advancement, and employment assistance. COVO now owns several properties in Central Oregon that provide low income housing for veterans and their families. Stu assisted COVO’s clients with securing healthcare from the VA and many of them received disability compensation or pension due to Stu’s work.
More recently, Stu helped found the National Veterans Rights Association (NVRA), a non-profit whose goal is to provide every possible service that veterans, their dependents and survivors need. I am also a founder and serve on the NVRA’s board and Stu has been a major reason why we are off and running in short order. He did all of our non-profit paperwork and got our 501(c)(3) status from IRS on the first filing. He writes for our web site’s blog at http://www.nationalveteransrights.org, and does a podcast helping veterans understand and navigate the VA claims system. In fact, one of the first things NVRA did was have a documentary film crew go to Oregon and film a documentary, primarily about Stu and five of his clients. Each of his clients was unanimous in stating that the work Stu did for them had changed their lives. In a far-reaching and technologically advanced program that the NVRA has introduced, along with Luminec Corporation, they hope to offer treatments using stem cell applications for medical conditions suffered by veterans who come to them.
Beginning in 2005, Stu began to handle veterans’ claims on a full-time basis as COVO’s in-house service officer. In the past ten years, he estimates that he has helped in securing benefits from the US Department of Veterans Affairs and the military services for approximately 1,000 veterans from World War II through the present conflicts. I know this first-hand because Stu handled my claims, and over a period of several years, with much struggle and a ton of work, I was finally rated as 100% disabled.
I had contacted Stu after hearing him speak on an NPR program and he immediately took over my claims. The rest is history.
He has done this over and over again, for all of the veterans who have come to him – and they come from all over the country; he even has clients outside of the United States. He told me that he currently has claims pending in 23 of the VA’s 52 regions. When he loses at the Regional Office level, he appeals and keeps on appealing until he wins. He had one case for a former Vietnam Marine that went all the way to the US Court of Appeals for Veterans Claims, which determined in 2014 that Stu had been correct when he filed the original claim in 2007. That veteran was awarded almost $100,000 in back benefits payments.
In another case he took to the Board of Veterans Appeals, the Board ruled that the veteran’s original claim that he had filed in 1994, was wrongly decided, as Stu had claimed. The retroactive award allowed this veteran and his family to purchase their first home. In fact, they had been homeless at one point prior to Stu’s winning his case.
If a client passes away, he makes sure that his widow gets Dependents Indemnity Compensation and the burial benefits the VA provides. When he has a client rated at 100%, if they have a child in college or technical school, he ensures that the child gets monthly education benefits. He also assists military members who are medically retired – usually for combat injuries – when he determines that the military service Physical Evaluation Board made an erroneous decision about how to rate the soldier’s disabilities.
Then there are the military services’ board of corrections cases he does to make sure that a veteran’s official record accurately reflects his or her service by seeing that all awards and decorations are on the veteran’s discharge form.
Finally, he helps military retirees apply for Combat-Related Special Compensation which means that their VA disabilities that are combat-related are given a rating by the military service and that portion of their retirement pay is then tax-exempt. There are very few people out there who work as hard for their veteran clients as Stu does.
Stu left COVO in the fall of 2010 and now works out of his house. He is the VA Benefits Coordinator for the National Explosive Ordnance Disposal Association (NATEODA), serves on their board of directors, and helped found the Vietnam EOD Veterans Association (VEVA) in 2007. On many
Saturdays, you can hear him on Boone Cutler’s radio show, “Tipping Point”, on KKFT in Reno, where he talks about issues that are important to veterans and active-duty military personnel. He also serves as the VA Benefits Director for the Oregon State Council, Vietnam Veterans of America.
Stu served in Vietnam from September 1968 – March 1970. He served as an Explosive Ordnance Disposal specialist with teams in the Central Highlands and Northern I Corps, near the DMZ. He was awarded two Bronze Stars, one with a “V” Device for heroism in ground combat, two Army Commendation Medals for Meritorious Achievement in Combat Operations, and the Purple Heart. Not satisfied with everything else he was doing, in 2009-10 he was in Afghanistan doing counter-narcotics work for the UN Office on Drugs and Crime and served as an advisor to the Afghan Border Police. He taught courses in Improvised Explosive Devices, Ordnance Identification and Community Policing, and helped with counter-narcotics operations on and near the Iranian border.
Continuing his belief that helping others is a primary responsibility, he helped plan and deliver 60 metric tons of food supplies to a district located in Herat Province.
During the time he was in Afghanistan, he continued to work his VA cases by using the Internet, including my own case. From the time he enlisted in the Army in 1966, until the present, he has devoted his life to public service, and particularly to his fellow veterans.
Accomplishments and impact: How is his work making a difference?
Stu’s accomplishments are monumental in terms of what he has done for his fellow veterans. I would have to say that his major accomplishment is that he rarely loses a claim because he is very careful about the issues he raises on behalf of his clients. He has recognized that the VA claims process is so backed up that he will not make claims that he believes cannot be won. Although he might not win every claim he makes in terms of how high a rating he gets for his clients, he almost always gets his clients rated for a particular disability at a level that is satisfactory to the client. However, when he knows that the rating should have been higher, as in my claim for Traumatic Brain Injury, he will pursue an appeal until the correct decision is made. While the money was not paramount in my case, Stu knew that the rating was wrong and continued to work my case until the VA conceded that the original decision was incorrect. This is what he does for all of his clients, for Free and the impact cannot be gainsaid.
Many of Stu’s clients are low-income and middle-class veterans with families. His Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans often have children, and the work he does for these men and women ends up making it possible for these veterans to be able to afford a decent life when he wins their claims, providing them critical additional income in order to have decent housing and the ability to pay their bills.
Stu’s work is often the difference between a veteran being on the street, or living in substandard housing, and being able to afford a nice place to live, the ability to pay utilities, and being able to afford something to eat other than Ramen noodles and fast food. When he gets a veteran rated at 100%, he is often successful in getting the rating made total and permanent which means that the veteran’s spouse is then entitled to education benefits and health care through the CHAMPVA system. If they have college-age children this also entitles them to education benefits, often providing the ability for the veteran’s child to remain in school and not accumulate huge debts from student loans.
Stu has made a difference in the lives of all the men and women he has assisted with their claims for VA benefits, benefits from the military services, and the work he did establishing Central Oregon Veterans Outreach, which he continues to do with the National Veterans Rights Association and the National EOD Association.
My sincere regards,
John Everding
View Video
The video below is part of the NVRA documentary project and offers compelling evidence that Mr. Steinberg is more than deserving of the CNN Hero Award.