Local Veteran Supporting Vets with Service Dogs
photo credit: Nancy Miramontez
Veterans service-dog-in-training Olive with Jim Uhlik, who heads the local nonprofit Every Little Life Matters (ELLM), which supports the national Paws4Purple Hearts organization.
Castro Valley Navy veteran Jim Uhlik is a familiar face around town, not only from his work on behalf of veterans but for the work he’s done for other community groups and with his fellow veterans at Christmas events.
Now retired, he heads the Every Little Life Matters Foundation (ELLM), an organization that tries to get veterans, especially injured ones, service dogs where needed and help with their other needs. They work through the Menlo Park chapter of the nationwide nonprofit Paws4Purple Hearts.
“The dogs can be amazing,” he said. “Not only can they bring a veteran his or her keys, but they can also open the refrigerator and bring them food for a snack or meal.” It takes three years to train a dog to that level, though.
Dogs can start their training quite young. Olive, for instance, now being trained for a local vet, is still quite the puppy, having been born the day after Christmas 2024.
The group plans to bring Olive to the Holiday Lights festivities in Castro Valley on Saturday, November 8. They had brought an older service dog—Schatzie—to last year’s Holiday Lights.
Sometimes a dog makes shorter visits to numerous vets to cheer them up.
“We recently provided funds needed to Paws4Purple Hearts to help cover costs associated with a therapy dog, Oakley, being assigned to a handler/volunteer who will visit veterans,” said ELLM Treasurer Minda Amsbaugh.
ELLM also tries to meet other needs of veterans, like bringing meals or sometimes treats like root beer floats to vets getting care at Veterans Administration hospitals like the one in Livermore.
Some of those vets are there long-term or even for life, said ELLM’s Ethel Gilmore.
“We go out there and put a smile on their faces,” Gilmore said. “They really like those root beer floats.”
Uhlik and Gilmore have both worked as service officers with the VA, helping vets with paperwork to get all benefits they are entitled to, including those where the rules just changed.
Veterans who worked around potentially toxic “burn pits” in Afghanistan and Iraq weren’t eligible for compensation until 2022, for instance, but now are.
“We help veterans fill out forms and keep up to date with changing regulations, but due to privacy laws the VA can’t tell us if benefits were eventually approved,” said Uhlik. “But sometimes we hear back from a veteran or his friends and family that the extra benefits they got have made a big difference in their lives.”
The group also raises funds for the Veterans of Foreign Wars National Children’s Home in Michigan. It was founded to help war orphans in World War II but now provides wrap-around services to returning veterans as they try to readjust to civilian life, with housing, job placement and job training. They can stay there for free as they sort these out.
ELLM also supports the Sea Cadets, Hancock Division, at Hayward Airport and the Young Marines. Many of the families have low incomes and would otherwise have trouble paying the cost of uniforms and or the travel required for some training.
Uhlik, who comes from a military family, has sought to give back to American society even as a high school student, feeling a debt to past generations.
“You see how people live in other places, and it makes you really appreciate what we have here,” he said. “Wanting to give back is part of why I joined the military, and now I try to give back to the vets who have often given all of us so much.’
Joining the Navy a few years out of high school in Nebraska, he did get to “see the world” as he’d hoped and made many lifetime friends. He served in the First Gulf War aboard the aircraft carriers Kitty Hawk and Enterprise. His brother was aboard the USS Iowa in 1989 when it suffered a deadly gun turret explosion, but he was uninjured.
Jim’s own rehab from war injuries at the Livermore VA hospital was brief, but he did see other veterans who will carry their service-related injuries with them all their lives.
“But even if we’ve gone through things, if you ask any of us if we’d do it again, we would,” he said.
If you’d like to donate or to volunteer for ELLM programs, text Jim Uhlik at (510) 593-6703. Their website at www.ellmfoundation.org is online but is currently being updated. If you’re a veteran who might benefit from a service dog, you can contact Paws4Purple Hearts directly to see if you qualify, at www.pawsforpurplehearts.org or call 844-700-7297 (PAWS).