Farmland donated to help local vets, first responders

GALWAY, N.Y. (NEWS10) – Veterans, like Gus Kappler, said learning how to cope is important because they never forget the trauma. A nonprofit that helps veterans, first responders, and frontline healthcare workers will now be expanding their programming due to a generous donation. 

“You’re trained to be a very efficient killer, you are 18 and 19 and you’re trained to kill, that's your job to kill,” Kappler said. “So even when you’re in combat, there’s a little voice in the back of your head saying, ‘Maybe I shouldn’t be doing this,’ – alright – and then you have to live with that little voice.”

Alliance180 is helping veterans, and other frontline workers, by providing horse-assisted therapy. 

Anonymous donors stepped up and gave away 15 acres of farmland to assist those on the frontlines with their mental health.

Kappler was a doctor during the Vietnam War and described how hard it was to see young people mutilated. Images, he said, he’ll never forget.

He says the military does not help rehabilitate soldiers and called Alliance180 a ‘Godsend’.

“Essentially they’re sent home to sink or swim that happened to us and it’s happening now,” said Kappler.

Co-founder Bob Nevins used to transport people to Kappler during the war. He described how the organization is helping bring emotions back.

“That’s what happens for people who have experienced trauma, basically their emotional nervous system shuts down to deal with it, and what we’re able to do is create that re-regulation where it all comes back online without the nightmares,” said Nevins.

He said they have to experience something more powerful than the trauma that triggered their shutdown and that’s what they do by connecting people with horses. 

Nevins says, after going through the program their lives turn around for the better. 

He hopes in the future they can continue to expand and help more veterans and first responders.

Eventually, with the help of neuroscientists – who are conducting long-term studies on what they do – they’ll be able to share that information with the mental health community and offer a different pathway to deal with PTSD.

“And that’s going to be a big plus down the road. It will eliminate a lot of medication and a lot of talking that keeps people in therapy for years,” said Nevins.

Nevins encourages people to provide direct support to nonprofits. Alliance180 pays for everything from housing to transportation, and they do that because people will use any excuse to not go, he said.

“You just can’t say, ‘Thank you for your service’ while we have thousands of veterans killing themselves,” said Nevins.

He went from saving people from jungles in a medevac to the work he does now, trading the helicopters for horses and still saving lives.