James Anderson sat in the shade and fiddled with a pair of reading glasses outside a Veteran's Administration medical clinic trailer Thursday. He took a hard look at the booths around him at Beckwourth Riverfront Park.

Anderson, 57, says he came to the same Yuba-Sutter Veterans Stand Down event last year to seek treatment for some old ailments.

He's come a long way since then.

"There's days now when I'm depressed," says the lean, soft-spoken man. "But I don't feel like doing drugs anymore."

Anderson spent 25 years living in the riverbottoms around Marysville, and after 46 years as an addict — mostly of methamphetamine — had been newly clean and sober when he finally asked for some of the medical benefits he was entitled to as a Navy veteran.

His resulting hernia surgery fixed more than just problems in his abdomen, he says.

During his stay in the hospital last fall, VA workers took on his case, and filed out his pension paperwork.

When he got out of the hospital, he says, "I was still homeless, but they had saved my life, more or less."

On Sept. 1, Anderson will celebrate 19 months of being drug free. On Sept. 2, he will move into the first real home he has known since the early 1980s.

His military benefits took care of the deposit and first month's rent on an apartment in East Marysville.

It all started at this time last year, he says, with a visit to this mobile medical clinic.

Lance Ayres, chief financial officer of the group sponsoring the stand down, says the riverbottoms between Gridley and Shanghai Bend are currently home to some 1,500 U.S. military veterans like Anderson.

By late Thursday afternoon, about 75 vets, including many of whom are homeless, had found some manner of assistance at the eighth annual Stand Down event.

Margaret Carrico, a U.S. Army veteran and VA physician from McClellan Air Force Base outside Sacramento, says most of her Stand Down patients come in for Hepatitis C and blood pressure screenings. Many seek referral to a drug rehabilitation facility.

"A lot of the guys (vets) that come here are not in the system," she says.

She and other Stand Down facilitators are tasked with linking them up with the appropriate paperwork to begin receiving benefits.

"We convince them that it's important to take care of themselves," Carrico says.

Representative of the area Veterans Services Office, as well as the veteran's representatives from the California Employment Development Department are also available at the Stand Down.

Amongh the many services for veterans and their families are assistance for VA claims, one-one-one job search services and referrals to other programs and agencies.

Schedule

• Stand Down continues today and Saturday, 8 a.m. to 5 p.m.

• 24-hour camp open to assist homeless veterans

Contact Appeal-Democrat re-porter Nancy Pasternack at 749-4712 or at npasternack@appealdemocrat.com