Navy veteran Mark Coulter couldn’t save his fellow sailor from getting sucked into the engine of a S-3A Viking onboard an aircraft carrier.

“I went in to grab him and I was too late. … To live with that 35 to 40 years is rough,” Coulter said, telling the story in an understated, factual way.

For many years after the brutal accidental death in 1980, he used alcohol and hard drugs to forget and to sleep.

“You see people walking around like zombies and I can relate. For many years, I gave up,” said Coulter, who is now 63.

Former motel being renovated to become transitional housing for Springs Rescue Mission

While in the Navy, he worked as a jet mechanic and then he went into floor installation in Louisiana, jumping from crew to crew.

His post-traumatic stress disorder made it hard to stay in one place and impossible to be around other people sometimes. Even after getting clean for a trucking job 14 years ago, he struggled and occasionally couldn’t go into work.

About two years ago, his manager at Kohl’s told him: “There are people out there to help you with that,” he recalled.

While he had known that help was out there before, he credits her words with helping him “wake up,” saving his life. He has been working with a psychiatrist in California via telehealth appointments on his phone for his PTSD since then.

His psychiatrist, who reminds him of Janis Joplin, is a third-party provider through the Department of Veterans Affairs and has been with him since he first sought help. While he is still fine-tuning his treatment, he has made notable progress that’s allowed him to publicly tell his story, he said.

This fall, he faced a life setback when he went to Minnesota to deal with a family emergency and lost his housing. When he got back, he spent two nights in a hotel and then two freezing nights on the street. His second night outside, he heard gunshots near Pikes Peak Avenue and Weber Street and that persuaded him to go to the Springs Rescue Mission.

About two weeks later, he went to the annual Veterans Stand Down to get some winter clothes and new socks. At the event, he was among 10 veterans selected by Mt. Carmel Veterans Service Center for transitional housing at the MCM Eleganté Suites along North Academy and Dublin boulevards. UCHealth provided a $35,000 grant for the 30 days of housing.

While at the hotel, veterans receive meals, and get help applying for government benefits, finding jobs and permanent housing. Mt. Carmel also plans to provide a case manager to each person for a year, a news release said.

“It’s been a blessing,” Coulter said, who told his story in a tidy hotel room on a day off from a new job.

Housing is a key building block to stability that can allow veterans and others to get jobs and improve their health.

“It’s been well-established that housing is a social determinant of health, and a person’s living situation is directly tied not just to their physical health but also their mental health,” said Damian McCabe, director of behavioral health-military affairs for UCHealth in a statement.

Nationally, addressing veterans homelessness has been a well-heralded goal for years. In 2009, the VA set out to end it by 2015.

While the VA missed its goal, a 2022 Department of Housing and Urban Development report found homelessness among veterans had dropped by 55%, a decline of about 40,238 fewer unhoused people since 2009.

The Colorado Springs region has also made gains. On a single night in 2023, 115 veterans were homeless, down from 148 in 2022, data from the Pikes Peak Continuum of Care showed. The region had a total of 1,302 homeless residents in 2023 that same night, the lowest since 2016.

“I think there has been a lot of work in the community on increasing collaboration and sharing resources so we minimize the length that someone experiences homelessness,” said Beth Roalstad, CEO of Homeward Pikes Peak. There has also been an uptick in housing supply.

Across the city, nonprofits run 165 permanent supportive housing units, city spokesman Max D’Onofrio said. Freedom Springs, a complex of 50 units, is set aside just for military veterans.

The regional goal is to make homelessness, rare, brief and nonrecurring, in line with Coulter’s two-week stay in the shelter, Roalstad said.

“If we have strong rebound systems that person will have more stability and more success because he has not languished in the emergency shelter system,” Roalstad said. Once people are housed, they can work on other issues, such as employment and getting treatment for mental illness.

While Colorado Springs has made progress, Roalstad said the community needs to continue to welcome affordable housing and increase the number of behavioral health care providers willing to accept patients on Medicaid. Most people exiting homelessness qualify for Medicaid, but almost all the providers who accept that form of insurance in town are short staffed, she said.

The shortage might have been exacerbated as more professionals moved to telehealth post pandemic, she said. But many people working through trauma need an in-person appointment.

As for Coulter, he has found a job at Dicky’s Barbecue Pit and an apartment close by so he can ride a donated bike to work. He stopped working in construction in 2017, after he lost a portion of his finger to a table saw. Since then his employment options have been more limited. Still he is trying to keep an upbeat attitude and noted getting picked for housing was lucky.

“I am going to make it work out,” Coulter said, adding he feels like he has lost too many years.

“Right now, my goals are just make it every day and stay clean,” he said.