[MOVING TRAIN]
It's a cool morning, late October.
People in these tents begin to rise.
A passing train, their wake-up call.
[TRAIN HORN]
This is Camp Bravo, next to Santa Rita Park on Tucson's
south side, a place where homeless vets and others can
find comfort, food, and shelter.
The camp is run by veterans on patrol, a program of walking
for the forgotten ministries.
Leaders of this effort seek out homeless vets
and offer safe haven, camaraderie, and a path
to support services.
Bravo is patrolled around the clock in shifts.
Manny was on night watch.
This is Calamity.
She came in during the night in need of help.
I was 101st airborne.
I actually went in as a voice radio operator,
but when they found out that I had
some pretty extensive medical background,
they made me an expert field medic.
I jumped out of perfectly good aircraft with a medical bag
and tried to attend to folks that needed help.
This is for your immune system.
I need those. [INAUDIBLE].
That's magnesium and C coming up.
My name is Martin Marszalek.
Everybody here calls me Doc.
I am the base commander and chief medical officer.
So I kind of keep things rolling along here.
This is vitamin C, keep you from catching a cold.
Our mission is to go out and find as many homeless veterans
that we can possibly locate, bring them in,
try to transition them from homelessness to housing,
get them medical care, things that they've been doing
without for so many years.
I'll have to get the make and model of this thing,
give the VA a call, have them get you another mirror.
We have something here that I have never found anywhere else.
We have a VA navigator, somebody who
knows the system, knows who to talk to,
knows who to call if you don't get what you need.
And he does it for us.
And that's Doc.
He's just the best there is.
I'll call a couple of the mobility places
here and then see if we can get some spare parts for that one.
At least I can get around.
Absolutely, absolutely.
Scrambled eggs and bacon, they should be happy.
Camp Bravo, officially known as Bravo Base,
is one of several in Arizona, including
Camp Alpha in Phoenix, Charlie in Nogales,
and Delta, south of Prescott.
The portable toilets are donated and maintained
by Diggins Environmental Services, the land, water,
and electricity by HMS Fasteners.
Both are local companies sympathetic to their cause.
Food, clothing, and other supplies
are donated by the public.
We've got a lot of really good people
out there that are helping us out and keeping us going here.
There are around 20 residents on base, mostly vets
and a few civilians.
I try to keep it around 16, but we had a little influx
of extra homeless veterans.
Some move on and others take their place.
You can't turn them away.
I can't turn them away.
I'm a Native American.
And every Native American needs to do his war time.
So that's what I did.
I joined the service.
Manny Jimenez is 66 years old and has been homeless
for more than a year.
Somebody needs to take a picture of that, yeah.
He's been here at Bravo for several months.
Four years on the USS Pawcatuck, an attack oiler.
That's a tanker with pom-pom guns, great against jets.
Three more years Merchant Marines.
Yes, I'm an old Merchant seamen, drying, up in Arizona.
Three times a week, Manny travels to the VA
on South 6th Avenue for treatment.
My liver and kidneys are not doing
what they're supposed to do.
So they hook up the dialysis to it and clean up my blood
and return it to me, and that's about it.
This side got infected, so I had to move it to that side.
It's a lube job.
[TRAIN HORN]
That there is still a fair amount of drug abuse
in the park, heroin, methamphetamine.
That doesn't come over here.
To live here, there are eight rules they must follow,
including no drugs, no alcohol, and no smoking in tents.
The third rule is residents need to help around
the base on a daily basis.
There is just tons of stuff buried down here.
One way they are helping is by maintaining nearby property.
Here they remove trash and debris from a trackside ravine.
Well, I haven't found any needles or anything yet,
so that's a good thing.
They work to stay here.
They all have various job tasks assigned to them.
Through donations from the public,
they have enough supplies to share
with folks outside the camp, and they do every day.
A little snack food in there, there's
some peanut butter, some ravioli, good stuff like that.
We love that stuff, thank you.
Hey, you're very welcome.
You guys take care out there.
I'll see you tomorrow morning.
Anybody that needs food can come here and get it.
There you go that looks--
Right now, we're preparing roughly 200 food boxes a week.
It's hot, be careful.
Yeah, oh yeah, yeah, thank you for bringing him over.
What began with just a few tents more than a year ago
has grown both in size and organization.
Camp Bravo has become a refuge for many.
But memories of life without shelter or protection
are close.
For me, it was daily uncertainty,
not knowing where you're going to get your next meal,
not knowing where you're going to spend
the night the next night, where it's going to be safe,
not knowing if somebody's going to come up
and to club you in the head while you're sleeping
and steal what little bit of belongings you have.
I was picked up by two really big people, put in an alley,
and they tried to cut my throat.
And closest they got was my chin.
I kept putting my chin down so they couldn't get my throat.
Somebody from one of the apartment houses
called the cops because they saw what was happening.
And the cops showed up just in time.
I thought that was the end of me.
It hurt my pride first time I had to fly sign and beg.
I think the biggest challenge is the guy who yells, get a job.
The people who just don't see you, you feel invisible.
And that's the most [? forward ?]
thing in the world, is just not to be recognized,
not to be acknowledged.
People don't want to see it.
We want to pretend it doesn't exist.
Nothing that I'm proud of, I'll tell you
that, because I wasn't raised that way.
Had to eat out of dumpsters.
[SNIFFLING]
I can't talk about it.
Okey-dokey, we'll see you after dinner.
OK.
These are just some of the people who live at Camp Bravo.
In time, new faces will arrive with different stories
but common needs.
It's a fellowship.
It's a group of brothers, sisters.
A lot of homeless veterans really need places like this.
Well, I think this mission is just life-saving.
And in that, it's life-changing for a lot of people.
I hope places like Camp Bravo will open up
in different places throughout the country.
If people don't band together and help each other,
then takes away all of our humanity.
And there's always someone out there you can help.
You see somebody who's homeless out there,
he's not necessarily an addict or a drunk.
He's a brother, a sister.
He's you if you lose your job.
[MUSIC PLAYING]