Vicki Thomas, Chief Communications Officer of Purple Heart Homes at the Aging in America Conference/What’s Next Boomer Business Summit in San Diego on March 13, 2014.
Four years ago, instead of retiring like many do at 64, Vicki Thomas listened to her heart and took her prestigious 35-year career as a public relations and marketing executive to a more generous level.
“There’s that calling or desire to do something different and make a difference,” says Thomas. “I needed a change. I needed to feel a sense of value..”
As a protester of the Vietnam War in her youth, she says she always felt the desire to help U.S. war veterans. One day, in 2010, she saw two wounded veterans, Dale Beatty and John Gallina, on CNN talking about their recently founded non-profit Purple Heart Homes (PHH) which provides veterans, like themselves, the opportunity to live with dignity in homes they can afford to own. She wasted no time, and picked up the phone to call the veteran duo in Statesville, North Carolina.
“I went to their answering machine and told them who I was and what my skill sets were and…if they were interested, I could help take them a little more national.”
Thomas says it took them two weeks to call her back, but today she is Chief Communications Officer of PPH and has never been happier. In four years time, she has increased financial support for the organization by 600 percent, got the founders on the cover of TIME magazine, and last year, Thomas won a $100,000 Purpose Prize for Future Promise for her work with PPH.
Last week, Thomas traveled from her Connecticut home to San Diego to speak on a panel about military and aging at the annual Aging in America Conference/What’s Next Boomer Business Summit. She also received a Leadership and Innovation Award for her work raising awareness about the housing issues of veterans.
According to the Center for Housing Policy, in 2011, the median income for male veterans was $36,285 per year; and the unemployment rate for post-9/11 veterans, ages 18 to 24, was 30.2 percent. Despite falling home prices, many returning veterans do not earn enough to purchase a median-priced home and some do not earn enough to afford a typical two-bedroom rent.
Thomas is proud of the two programs she helped develop for PPH. The first, Veteran Home Ownership Program – for which she uses the experience she gained as a former executive with the Credit Union National Association to manage the donations of foreclosed homes, from banks and cities, to provide affordable homeownership for young veterans.
“We take foreclosed homes, renovate them and give them as a hand up, not a handout,” explains Thomas. “The veterans pay the mortgage at 50 percent of the whole market value…In 15 years, the veterans own their own home.”
The second program, Veterans Aging in Place, renovates homes older veterans own to make them safe and barrier-free.
Thomas, says there is one veteran, she recently played a role in helping, which sums up why her job has changed her life for the better.
“Joe Recupero – a Vietnam veteran who owns his own home, but characteristic of many veterans who own their own home, doesn’t have the income to maintain it,” says Thomas.
She continues to say that Recupero has severe Parkinson’s from the Agent Orange he encountered in Vietnam and is bound to living in a wheelchair. PHH redid his kitchen, put a ramp out his back door, and moved his driveway to provide easier access for him.
“He started out with us very doubtful – like many older veterans, he did not want us to help him because he thought someone else deserved it more than he did,” says Thomas. “As the project wore on, I sat with him, and he asked me…’Can we slow this project down? I have never treated this well, and I don’t want this project to end, and I don’t want anyone to leave.’ We just finished it on December 21st, on his 64th birthday. That’s why we continue to do what we do.”
Today, at 68, Thomas says she still feels far from retirement.
“I share wisdom, contacts, knowledge, and I also recognize that we live in a young world,” she says. “I told the guys when they feel I’m no longer at the top of my game, they need to tell me.”
For now she’s found her passion, and advises others to do the same.
“Take a risk,” she urges to the many of us with suppressed passions. “If anyone has a passion, just do it. Pick up the phone like I did and call somebody…Understand it will take a while to make the money you once made. Understand that it’s not about you, but doing something for the greater good – about making the world a better place for us and our future…It’s amazing the great things that happen to you when you give back, make a difference, and help someone else.”