By Martin Kuz
Deployed to Iraq in 2006 with the Marines, he served as an operations specialist, arranging the logistics for truck convoys delivering fuel and supplies to U.S. troops. He enjoyed the complexity of the work as much as the clarity of purpose.
What bewildered him was returning to civilian life after his honorable discharge in 2008.
He left the military hoping to save a marriage that unspooled over the next two years. In 2012, he lost his job at a retail store when his bosses refused to alter his work schedule so that he could attend community college.
As Perez started taking classes, he ran through a series of low-wage jobs that paid too little for him to keep his
apartment. By this summer, he had slipped into homelessness, couch-surfing from one friendās house to another.
He recovered a measure of stability in August after learning about a veterans transitional center housed inside the Rio Grande Plaza Hotel on the fringe of Laredoās downtown. Since opening in February, the program has provided shelter for more than 100 homeless veterans, creating a refuge from uncertainty.
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