Slow recovery underway at Yountville veterans campus after deadly shooting

Two weeks ago, the Veterans Home of California in Yountville marked its 134th anniversary with a gathering of more than 100 former U.S. military personnel who call the facility home.

Josh Kiser, a spokesman for the Veterans Home, thought the crowd seemed larger than in years past.

It has been five weeks now since a troubled former Army infantryman walked into a building where he had once lived on the sprawling Napa County campus and shot to death three mental health clinicians before killing himself.

Christine Loeber, Jen Golick and Jennifer Gonzales Shushereba, the victims of the attack at the Pathway Home, a residential treatment program for traumatized veterans, were remembered as dedicated professionals and heroes at a large public memorial on March 19.

Smaller tributes to the women, including flowers and candles, still sit in front of the now-shuttered Pathway Home, where more than 450 veterans suffering from serious mental health disorders were treated over the years. Among their ranks was Albert Wong, 36, the former soldier who strode heavily armed into a staff meeting in Building G at 10 a.m. March 9 and opened fire. He had been kicked out of the program after being found with knives and had told a relative just days before that he wanted to get back at staff members.

Future plans for the Pathway program remain in limbo. Repairs to Building G have been completed, but it remains locked.

Other patterns of campus life have resumed. A Veterans Home softball team is back to practicing on the ballfield, getting ready for their first game later this month.

“(The mood) is hard to describe,” Kiser said. “We’re trying to return to normalcy, but there are little reminders of things, going past the building and you’re reminded of that day, which - I think it’s important to remember.”

Teams of therapy dogs greet veterans on campus sidewalks, Kiser said, and social workers check in with staffers and residents regularly to see how they’re doing in the aftermath of the shooting. It sparked a daylong lockdown of the normally tranquil and scenic veterans campus, a 600-acre community hub at the edge of town.

Throughout the valley, talk of the shooting comes up regularly, said Rep. Mike Thompson, D-St. Helena, who counted Golick, the staff therapist at Pathway Home, among his close family friends.

“It’s everywhere,” he said. “You can’t get away from it.”

The California Highway Patrol’s investigation into the shooting is not complete, but a previous security assessment by the agency showed the CHP was aware of security gaps at the Yountville campus as far back as 2010, including a lack of security at the front gate, few security cameras, inadequate fencing, a small security staff and “spotty use of panic buttons and alarms at key buildings,” the Sacramento Bee reported last week.

Thompson, a Vietnam War veteran and chairman of the House Gun Violence Prevention Task Force, said the shooting is just one more indicator that “we don’t do everything that we should be doing to take care of our veterans.”

Twelve miles to the south, at Napa Valley College, where Gonzales Shushereba, a Veterans Affairs psychologist, worked with student veterans and Wong took classes, staff took extra care to make sure veterans felt supported in the days and weeks following the shooting.

Among the crisis workers who arrived at the college was Shauna Springer, a senior director for the Tragedy Assistance Program for Survivors, a military support organization that works with family members grieving the loss of loved ones.

On campus, she held private sessions with the student veterans and staffers who worked with Gonzales Shushereba, and coached faculty on the importance of conveying to their student veterans the understanding that “they are an asset” to the community, she said.

“Dr. Gonzales was pretty much a lifeline kind of person to a couple of people, where they hadn’t really opened up to anybody else,” Springer said. “She was someone who, that connection with her, was one of their reasons for living because she had invested hope in them, and together they were working on a plan to recover. So they lost their provider, yes, but she held hope for them.”

Pathway Home representatives could not be reached this week. A spokesman in a previous interview said the future of the program is uncertain. Following the attack, veterans enrolled in Pathway were placed with new treatment providers, a process which Springer helped facilitate.

“They’re just taking a step back to see if they can continue, and how that will take shape,” she said.

You can reach Staff Writer Christi Warren at 707-521-5205 or christi.warren@pressdemocrat.com. On Twitter @SeaWarren.