Damian Horne, a military veteran with several combat deployments, recalled how he was on vacation in Mexico after returning from Afghanistan when a call left him reeling and shaken — a comrade had been killed.
He felt alone with that information, at least for a spell.
“I had no one to go to, no one who understood until I ran into the Vet Center,” said Horne, a retired local public defender. “I just thought, ‘I’m going to duck in.’ You look in people’s eyes who have been down there, and you know they understand. You know they get it.”
Horne was among about 100 people, some wearing leather jackets and other garments bespeaking military service deployments and foreign wars, who convened Friday morning next to the Vet Center’s new location on Airport Road to dedicate the new facility.
At 5,000 square feet, it’s a little more than twice as large as the current 2,400-square-foot center on Brothers Road.
Several hundred veterans use the center’s services, center director Albert Gomez said. “We’re going to expand a whole lot more now,” he said.
The Brothers Road facility, somewhat hidden from the public eye, opened in 1994 and offers an array of services, from helping veterans access their benefits to providing therapy sessions for those dealing with post-traumatic stress disorder to offering couples’ counseling for veterans and their spouses. Those services are shifting to the Airport Road facility now.
At community-based Vet Centers, individual, group, marriage and family counseling is offered in addition to referral and connection to other VA or community benefits and services, according to the Department of Veterans Affairs.
New Mexico has a high concentration of veterans, and the legacy of service remains robust in many communities, particularly in rural areas. According to a 2024 New Mexico Department of Workforce Solutions report, 7.4% of Santa Fe County adults are veterans, exactly the same as the state’s rate, which is higher than the national average of 6.1%. In Mora, Los Alamos and Taos counties 10.3%, 8.7% and 8.6% of adults, respectively, served in the military. Catron County had the highest percentage of veterans in the state at 17.2%.
Veterans in the crowd credited this center with saving their lives.
Horne described growing up on the west side of Santa Fe and joked he was already a Green Beret by the time he graduated from high school. Jesting again, he said some Northern New Mexicans heard they would be going to ” ‘Nam” as the U.S. became involved in the Vietnam War.
“They thought ‘Nam’? Nambé? I can go there anytime,” Horne said, drawing laughs from the audience. “Whatever the reason, guys, in this small state, we have a tremendous heritage of service.”
“This is a mecca for soldiers,” Horne said. “It is a holy shrine because I know when I have those dark nights of the soul, I know I can come back here and speak to any of you people, and we get it.”
Other veterans described their own struggles with reentering civilian life and how some of their peers steered them toward the center. Jonathan Sanchez, a Marine Corps veteran, was reeling when he returned to Santa Fe from Afghanistan in 2012 after two tours.
“I walked into the Vet Center, and I said, ‘Someone tell me what to do,’ because I was used to taking orders and without those orders, I was lost,” Sanchez said. “A counselor came out.”
Gomez, the director, noted the new facility is much more visible from major transportation corridors and this has prompted veterans just passing by on Airport Road to stop in for the first time.
He said it cost over $1 million and took about a year to build the center, which is federally funded through the Department of Veterans Affairs.
Jeff Kramer, a veteran of the Vietnam War, remembered when talk first surfaced around 2005 about building a larger facility. The new center is no more than a three-minute drive from his house.
“This is where we feel safe,” Kramer said. “We don’t have to have our back to the wall. Thank God for the Vet Center.”